...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 4-10: The Q Link

"Ray, I'm getting pretty good at making the QAR do what I want it to do. But I still don't really get how the computer side of it works. Do you think you can explain that a little?"

They were in the QAR lab again, getting ready for another day on Bear's development project.

"Glad you said 'a little' because I don't get it either, not to any depth. I don't know the details of how the Q link works. I'm not even sure the guys who designed it do. A hundred years ago maybe one guy could know all there was to know about programming. Now as you know programming is done in layers, programming at one level is just telling the next layer down what to do. And there are so many layers no one can say in detail what all of them are doing.

"But I think the best way to explain QAR is to say it's all about pattern recognition. And that just means noticing when two patterns are equivalent, or nearly."

"I think I see. That's what the QAR is good at, and it's also what our minds are good at."

"And our brains. In all the talk last night we neglected that bit, but after all that's what brains are good for. They sort our neural inputs into all sorts of patterns, that are displayed to us as visual and other senses. In fact a lot of people think the human brain is the most sophisticated pattern recognition device ever evolved.

"Drake would say most of that is just a capacity to probe the Q more deeply than other life forms, to find more resonances. But maybe QAR is close to being that good. And QAR gives us electronic storage and playback. We both know that. Maybe that's all we need to know."

So they went back to work. Marian and Drake came in and helped Bear make sure he hadn't missed any essential nuance. Cheryl spent a lot of time with them, and gave Bear some suggestions for accurately capturing the roles of the chickens and goats.

But it was mostly Bear and Xayna. She managed to spend a lot of time in the QAR dream with him. At first she had thought all she could do was lend moral support, but she quickly understood what Bear was doing. She felt the cold technical edge of the virtual reality the QAR presented, and knew what he was trying to add. She began to make valuable contributions of her own from her native Haida insight. Together they infused the dome dream with their spiritual awareness and enthusiasm, their sense of reciprocity, their true love of life.

As Ray witnessed their progress, he felt it himself, and knew that it was working. He realized, possibly for the first time, what Drake and the others had been saying for years. Immersed in the worlds of science and technology as he was, he'd had little time or inclination to stop and smell the roses, as it were. He had never for a moment thought of the dome, or even the farm, as a rose. It was not that he wasn't sensitive to those things. He was fully capable of love, as Cheryl had helped him realize. It was just that, intellectually, he hadn't seen the point in giving it much attention.

Now Bear's version of the farm was awakening something in him. He realized that it was possible to love a fish, or even an earthworm, the same way he loved his computers. He could love them for what they could give him, and understand the importance of reciprocating that gift, by giving back his support for their survival.

Even this he had understood intellectually. No one could be on this team and not embrace the concept of balance in nature. But the cult of science preached the importance of cold objectivity, impartiality, abstraction, and he had been indoctrinated early.

Bear's dream was changing that in him. Not, he noticed, by falsifying any of his scientific understanding, but by adding a new layer to it. In a way it was like the layers of computer programming he'd been reminding Bear about. Learning more about one layer could enhance your understanding of what the other layers were doing. As Bear's dream awoke that in him, he began to feel that he understood everything better.

In particular, he finally understood that the original QAR program had celebrated the farm and the dome as technological achievements, leaving it to the visitors to imbue it, and the actual domes that were deployed for them, with whatever cultural or spiritual qualities they might.

At first that had been enough, because the need had been for basic survival. Now the expectations were changing, the domes had proven worthy and survival in them was almost a given. Now they were seen not as emergency rescue units but as human habitations, and the quality of life they offered had gained importance.

Ray was a trooper, but he had never been a shaman. He had unlimited respect for Tengri, and could idolize Dema from afar for her special nature, but he had never hoped to understand them. Until now. Bear's dome dream was giving him a window into that world.

More than that, he realized that the sensory channel his QAR program was using to stimulate this new awareness was innate. He'd had it all along. The new patterns that the QAR was superimposing on the fringes of his visual and audio reception were being recognized. Or maybe they were coming via the Q. It didn't matter. If he was picking them up, anybody could. With the help of QAR and Bear's program, anyone could have shaman awareness!