The legal firm that assisted in negotiating the sale of my patent also handled the formation of two corporations. The first was Magick Hat, Inc., the intended business of which would be developing and marketing the Brain-Computer-Interface devices that Bob and I began cobbling together shortly after our introduction at the grad school BCI Lab. This included all the accessories required to attach our Hats to our customized signal processing hardware, plus those for adaptations, enhancements, or repairs. Then, there was the star of the show: the software to analyze and assist in making sense of the mass of data they collected, which appeared to be nothing more than thousands of random static waveforms on their own.
We'd discussed the potential legal entanglements with the University over intellectual property rights, ad nauseam. Still, since I was leaving the University with nothing but the contents of my brain, the attorneys felt we had little reason for concern. It turned out that a nearly photographic memory was a handy complement to the binary gene with which I had the good fortune to be born. I'm not sure which parent I should thank for these gifts. My father, I suspect, which I find ironic since he'd never had any formal education beyond elementary school. Thanks to these, not only could I view schematics for electronics we'd built and intended to build as though they were projected on the inside of my skull, as clearly as if they'd appeared on a computer screen, I could scroll through line after line of computer code in the same manner, regularly debugging it in my dreams. I'd wake in the middle of the night knowing exactly how and where to fix problems that had frustrated me the day before.
I planned to get patents for the Magick Hats we designed, copyrights for the software we, mostly I, developed, and take all the other steps required to protect our intellectual property legally. But I wasn't nearly as concerned about anyone stealing these from us as I was over keeping my ultimate intentions a secret, the fulfillment of which was the purpose of the second corporation I had my attorneys form, humbly named Telepathic Collaboration, Inc.
Initially, TCI was to appear as no more than another private customer of Magick Hat, Inc., with the world to be as unaware of its existence as we could keep it, at least until I was ready for its grand unveiling. Magick Hat, Inc. would conduct our only publicly acknowledged business until that moment. The profits from which would be funneled over to fund the research and development at Telepathic Collaboration, Inc. The eventual profits from which, in turn, were ultimately intended to purchase my wife her lab and provide any additional funding required for her research.
As for my true intent for Telepathic Collaboration, Inc., my vision went far beyond simply transmitting texts through a Magick Hat to a Smartphone. My dream was to share dreams and supercharge the creative process, accelerating the pace of innovation as far beyond that of the preceding century as it exceeded those of the renaissance and the centuries since. Our only limitations as humans were our collective imaginations, with that collaboration accelerated as well. What could be imagined layered on the rapidly expanding foundation of what already had and continued to be imagined. Layer upon layer upon accelerated layer to stand upon, climbing ever higher, to look out toward the horizon of forever.
However fast the future seemed to be racing toward me, the truth was that I was racing toward it. Still, I approached it the only way I could, a single step, a single act, a single thought at a time, but even the pace of that was spinning ever faster in my mind, far beyond pedestrian. And if my wife succeeded with all that she'd dreamed, the only limitations to what I could ultimately do and we might become with forever to do it were those of our imaginations. The implications of that thought passed through me at that instant with an adrenal jolt of fear. It was my first glimpse of the possibility of becoming what I am, which was too terrifying a prospect to process, and I chased it from my consciousness to concentrate on more immediate and practical tasks.
YOU ARE READING
The Words - An Autobiography
Science Fiction"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
