Read Episode 1 - The Beam for Free Online

it’s all about nanos. The neural mapping field is also very promising, of course,” Killian added, making for a doorway at the end of the hall that Doc had never been through before. He’d thought it was a utility room.
    “Of course,” said Doc.
    They reached the door. Killian bared his arm and allowed a concealed scanner to read his Beam ID, then used his fingers to draw a complicated pattern on a swipe screen near the door. Doc was looking directly at Killian’s hands, but he’d never be able to replicate the pattern. It seemed almost random.
    The door beeped and hissed open. “Well, come on in,” said Killian, leading the way.
    Once inside the room, Doc’s breath evaporated. The lab was stark white, and every surface chattered with Beam activity. Even the floor under Doc’s boots hummed in response. The room was filled with devices Doc had never seen before, arranged on what almost looked like display racks. There were long work benches circling the room’s perimeter. Some of these seemed to be staffed by electronics workers who were peering at tiny devices through magnifiers, but other areas looked like biological wet benches. Doc saw vials of reagents, manual and auto pipettes, and what looked like jars filled with gel.
    “Most of the actual production is automated,” said Killian, “but for research — at the macro and not nano level, of course — it’s all done by human hands unless it’s too precise or dangerous. Our technicians all have the latest ocular implants. You’ve seen these?” Killian snatched something from a rolling cart and then extended his hand. Two eyeballs stared up at Doc.
    At first he was repulsed, but Doc couldn’t resist reaching out and taking one of the things between his fingers. It was soft and squishy and slimy, exactly like it looked.
    “Interior is carbon nanotubes,” said Killian, dropping the remaining eye to the floor and then stomping on it with his shoe. He reached down and retrieved the eye, which was completely unharmed. “Just let Moe try to poke you in the eyes with these suckers,” he said, miming a Three Stooges eye-jab. Hardware is all NextGen biologic, grown with synthetic neurons and innately dependent on resident Series Six nanos.”
    He tossed the other eyeball to Doc, who caught it. Doc looked down, shocked. The best ocular upgrades Nero had shown him were either small sensors implanted at the back of the cornea or full robotic orbs made of glass.
    “The software is uploaded via BioFi, of course, same as your skills downloads.”
    “Skills downloads?” He ignored “BioFi,” which seemed to be the less important of the two totally foreign things Killian had said.
    Killian waved his hand. “Like learning ballet or whatever.”
    “Oh,” said Doc, mystified.
    “And that’s the other thing. This is BioFi version 7.6, which enables zottabytes of data to be transmitted in minutes. We could operate at much lower speeds and fidelities for skills transfers, of course,” Killian continued, “but we do still get better fidelity with a hard connection. And I don’t have to tell you what the arrival of 7.6 means for the transfer of meta-neural data.”
    “You can say that again,” said Doc, feigning a laugh.
    “It’s just all so exciting to us,” said Killian, still giddy. “And for you too, if you’re to educate your customers. You know about the dislocation paradigm?”
    “Well…”
    Killian was so excited, Doc didn’t even have to pull a response from his ass. The scientist rushed to explain: “With an upload, I mean. Where people worry about emergent properties like consciousness, identity, and all of that, because who wants to become just bits in an archive, without being who they were before?”
    “Not me,” said Doc.
    “Exactly. But what we’ve done, thanks to the arrival of 7.6 and the speeds it allows (especially when tethered; you don’t have to go wireless), is to create a buffer during the transfer process, allowing