Chapter 3: The NRI
Friday, August 11, Cambridge, Anya & Ted's home, Morning
Anya sat at the low living room table, rubbing her forehead as pre-dawn light filtered through the shoji screens. Her third cup of coffee had gone cold. The tablet in front of her displayed email exchanges she’d read so many times the words had lost meaning.
Three weeks since Woods Hole. Three weeks of watching doors close.
The emails all said the same thing in different words: too speculative, too ambitious, pick a smaller problem. Department chairs who’d praised her work at conferences suddenly couldn’t return calls. Grant reviewers wanted incremental progress, publishable milestones, safe bets.
Fifty years of safe bets hadn’t explained how thinking actually worked. But suggest capturing the complete picture and suddenly you were too ambitious.
Assholes.
From across the room came the sound of Ted settling into a chair, then the first tentative notes from his guitar. The vintage Martin he’d restored himself, its tone warm and rich in the quiet morning. He played without speaking, fingers finding a quiet, meandering melody. No particular song, just sound filling space. The music grounded her, pulled her out of the spiral of rejection and frustration.
She looked up and found him watching her, still playing.
“Got a message this morning,” he said. “Susan wants to meet with you.”
“Susan?” Anya straightened. “About what?”
“Woods Hole. She heard the presentation. Asked me if you’d be interested in discussing it further.” He shifted to a minor key, something contemplative. “She said it could be revolutionary. Maybe fund it through the company.”
Anya felt her pulse quicken. Susan Perkins didn’t fund research out of scientific curiosity. “Through Invita? What does she want?”
“She didn’t say. But she’s been asking about feasibility and timeline.” Ted set down the guitar and looked at her directly. “I got the feeling she has something specific in mind.”
“And you told her...?”
“That I don’t speak for you. But you’d probably be interested to hear what she’s proposing.” He picked up the guitar again. “If Susan’s willing to fund this when nobody else will, maybe hear her out.”
Anya nodded with a smirk. He was right. But that didn’t make her less wary. Susan hadn’t become the richest person on the planet by leaving value on the table. Every deal had an angle.
Her phone chimed. A text from Imani: “Susan asked me to give you a tour of the NRI facility this afternoon. Show you what we can actually do. Two o’clock work?”
She showed Ted the message. He smiled. “She’s already setting the stage. Susan doesn’t waste time.”
“This feels like I’m being maneuvered.”
“You are.” He played a soft chord. “But maybe you’re being maneuvered toward something you want anyway.”
After lunch, Anya and Ted took the short ride to Invita. The campus sprawled across prime city blocks in the heart of Cambridge, gleaming corporate towers of glass and steel connected to low research buildings by covered walkways.
The atrium was like every other multi-trillion dollar tech company in the 2030s. Vast expanses of glass. Giant sculpture. Portrait of the founder. Ted badged them in with a swipe of his hand, his CTO clearance opening doors throughout the complex. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous lobby, bare except for a three-story titanium DNA helix covered with dichroic mirrors that cast rainbows across the white walls.
“Susan takes her money seriously,” Anya said, looking up.
Ted chuckled. “You could say that. But no heir. Don’t know what happens when she’s gone. There’s only one Susan Perkins.”
After checking Anya in at security, they followed signs for the advanced research building. A quarter mile of corridors, then a maze of twisty passages, all alike, until they reached the R&D wing and another security checkpoint. Familiar routine for Ted. New territory for Anya.
“Jesus, Ted. Where the hell is her lab?”
“B9.”
The elevator began its descent.
“The NRI needs isolation from vibrations and magnetic fields. Imani’s prototype has to be deep underground.”
Anya nodded. “I don’t know much about the hardware, but the images are amazing.”
“Getting a meaningful signal was nearly impossible. One of the hardest engineering problems I’ve ever worked on.”
“Yeah, your big ‘secret project’ with Imani. I thought you were exaggerating.”
“Now it’s Invita proprietary.” Ted’s voice carried a note of regret. “They’re keeping all the advanced tech for internal projects.”
Their ears popped at B7. The elevator stopped at Sub-basement 9 and opened into a cavernous hallway stretching in both directions farther than Anya could see.
“Whoa.” She looked left, then right, at passages vanishing into the distance. “This feels like the X-Files. Susan keep aliens down here?”
“You never know.” Ted led her through a reinforced door and down the corridor to the NRI lab.
They peered through the observation window. The machine dominated the space. A giant white donut with a padded platform extending from its bore, like a hospital MRI but much bigger. A man lay inside reading, his head strapped across chin and forehead. The room was surprisingly quiet.
Imani waved from the control room, then emerged. “Welcome to the ninth level of hell.” She grinned and guided them inside. “Let me show you the beast.”
“The superconducting magnets are ten times as powerful as conventional MRI,” Imani said, running her hand along the machine’s housing. “That’s what gives us the resolution.”
“We’ve got our own small nuclear reactor in New Hampshire to power the R&D building,” Ted added.
“Invita doesn’t publicize that,” Imani said, her voice dropping conspiratorially.
She pressed buttons on the console, and a holographic image materialized above it. The volunteer’s brain appeared, thousands of neurons glowing with activity, signals cascading through tissue in real time.
“Right now we’re looking at a limited region at high speed, like the data we sent you.” Imani adjusted the display. “But watch this.”
The view expanded. More neurons. More connections. More patterns flowing through the hologram like rivers of light.
Anya moved closer, to the display. “Seeing the recorded data was one thing. Watching it happen live is...” She shook her head. “We’re watching a person think.”
“I’ve spent my whole adult life working toward this.” Imani’s voice carried deep satisfaction.
“You’re thirty-three,” Anya said. “You’ve already accomplished more than most of us do in a lifetime.”
Imani laughed. “Don’t know about that.”
Ted pressed some keys. The image sharpened, patterns flowing more fluidly. “I’ve been refining the algorithms. Managed to double the processing speed.”
“Brilliant,” Imani whispered. “Maybe soon we’ll have enough to understand consciousness itself.”
“Cognition,” Anya corrected, her voice sharpening. “The mechanisms that allow thoughts. Consciousness is bullshit.”
Imani turned, suddenly interested. “What do you mean?”
Anya looked at Ted, who was already leaning forward with that expression she knew so well. The kid in class waving his hand with the answer.
“Nobody can define it,” he said, “so trying to study it is meaningless. Every definition is circular.”
“They all depend on qualia and subjective experience,” Anya continued. “But look at that.” She pointed at the holographic brain. “That’s it. That’s all there is. Neurons signaling. Information flowing. No ghost in the machine. Just biology creating the illusion of self through precise coordination.”
Imani glanced at the clock. “Susan wants to see all of us. Four o’clock in the executive conference room.”
Anya and Ted exchanged glances.
“This is it,” Ted said. “Ready to sell her on your idea?”
“Hope so. Somebody’s got to fund our research.” She turned to Imani. “What do you think she wants?”
“She knows it’s valuable. She wouldn’t have brought you in otherwise.” Imani shrugged. “But specifically? Not a bloody clue.”
The executive conference room was a different world. Glass and mahogany, with a view of Boston that made the city look manageable. Controllable. Susan Perkins sat at the head of the table, looking up when the three of them entered.
“Dr. Chikacheva, thanks for coming. I’ve only got ten minutes. Tell me why I should fund your controversial research project.”
Anya had the distinct impression Susan had already made her decision before they’d walked in. This meeting was theater. A formality.
“Thank you for seeing us.” Anya held Susan’s gaze. “We’ve demonstrated that cognition depends on precise neural timing. Not just which neurons fire, but when.”
“I attended your lecture. That’s wonderful, but what are the practical applications?” Susan’s voice was flat. Businesslike.
Imani leaned forward. “The implications are significant. The scientific value is immeasurable.”
Susan’s gaze fixed on Imani for a moment. Her eyes narrowed, then returned to Anya. The message was clear: I asked her, not you.
“In dementia patients, the neurons fire, but the timing’s off,” Anya said. “Pharmaceuticals that reverse those effects would be tremendously profitable.”
“They would.” Susan nodded with a slight smile.
“And now that we can quantify the effect,” Imani added, “we can catch it earlier. The NRI is Invita’s lock-in. You own the IP. Every hospital should have a machine.”
“Something tells me you’ve got more.” Susan’s eyes stayed on Anya. “Am I right, Dr. Chikacheva?”
Anya jumped back in. “This is where it gets exciting. We’re confident we can capture a person’s entire brain function with the NRI.” She looked at Ted.
Ted straightened. “Synthetic intelligence, Susan. The trillion-dollar product.”
“What’s wrong with AI? Invita’s already dominating that market.”
He scoffed. “Current AI systems are simplifications. They call them neural networks, but they’re just mathematical constructs pumped full of data. They don’t know anything.”
“What do you mean? Our AIs are smarter than any living human.”
“They’re not smart. Very useful, but not smart. If they were, you’d have replaced all your scientists with AI by now, right?”
Susan glared at him for a moment. “And you think you can do better?”
“What does an AI do? It finds patterns, spits out results. Is that how you think?”
“You think you can build a system that thinks like a human.” Susan leaned forward, eyes narrowed.
“It’s all hypothetical, of course.” Ted shifted in his chair. “I don’t want to promise anything until—”
Anya kicked him under the table.
“Forget the disclaimers. Can you do it or not?”
“I believe so. Yes.” Ted’s voice steadied. “I’ve been testing small networks, and even they show behaviors we’ve never gotten from AI systems. We’re not creating a glorified chatbot.”
“If it just mimics a person, where’s the added value? I’ve got plenty of employees already.”
“You can emulate a brain in a single rack and run it at human speed,” Ted said. “But why stop at one? Why not a hundred? Or ten thousand?”
Susan’s smile widened. “That’s intriguing.” She turned to Anya. “Would this actually replicate the thoughts of whoever you scanned?”
“Of course. It’s modeled on the subject’s brain. Scan an idiot and you’ll still have an idiot.” She allowed herself a small laugh.
“Or scan one genius and you could have ten thousand geniuses.” Susan’s voice had changed. The flat business tone was gone, replaced by something sharper. Hungrier. “What do you need?”
“Computational infrastructure,” Ted said. “Neuromorphic processors. Exaflops of capability for one brain. But these days, that’s easy. One rack could handle it.”
“Done. You have the resources.”
“Dr. Jones, can your NRI handle the mapping sessions?”
Imani hesitated. “The machine can. Whether human subjects could tolerate that many hours of scanning is another question.”
“Dr. Chikacheva, I’ll make sure Ted has what he needs. You and Imani start scanning brains.”
“We’d need to work within ethical guidelines,” Imani added quickly.
Susan’s smile was thin. “That’s my job, Dr. Jones. I’ll make sure you have approval from the appropriate committees. You focus on getting results.”
“Ted, Dr. Chikacheva. Submit a detailed proposal. Timeline, milestones, deliverables. I’ll give you three months for proof of concept. Show me a minimum viable product. If it works, you get full resources.”
“Three months?” Ted stammered. “That’s not enough time.”
“Make it enough.” Susan stood and moved toward the door. “Oh, and this project is classified at the highest level. No publications, no conference presentations. This stays within Invita.”
“But the scientific community needs to—” Anya started.
“The scientific community can wait. I’m not funding your Nobel Prize, Dr. Chikacheva. I’m funding Invita’s future. I own the NRI, I own the data, and now I own this.”
She left. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
The three of them sat in stunned silence. Someone had left the visualization running. The volunteer’s brain still glowed with thought, unaware his neural patterns had just become corporate property.
“Well, Anya,” Imani said finally, “now you’ve met the real Susan Perkins.”
“She wants something.” Anya stared at the door. “She understood too quickly. Most executives would have asked more questions, needed more convincing. Susan saw the implications immediately.”
“She usually does,” Imani replied. “That’s how she built this empire.”
“Welcome to Invita,” Ted said quietly. “Where humanity is for sale.”
They took a transport home as the sun dropped toward the horizon. Anya stared out the window, squinting against the glare. They’d gotten everything they’d asked for. So why did it feel like a mistake?
That night, Ted made gazpacho and a simple salad. Foods that required no convincing in the August heat. Anya managed half the soup before pushing it away.
“Let’s get some air,” she said, leading him out to the deck.
The evening was cooler now, though Anya was still sweating as they gazed up at the emerging stars.
“It’s an amazing time to be alive,” Ted said. “None of this would have been possible five years ago.”
“Susan knows,” Anya said quietly. “She saw it before we did. That’s why she moved so fast.”
“The commercial potential?”
“No.” Anya shook her head. “It’s more than that. The way she looked at that visualization...” She turned to face him. “There’s something she’s not telling us.”
Loving the story, I can't wait to see where it goes.