Didn'T See It Coming, Part I

His name was Carson Wetherstrum, and his childhood wasn’t grand, his mother was plain trailer trash, his father a confidence man. He never knew his dad that much, and only saw the man three times, Carson had to live by his wits, lucky for him, they were tuned fine. See Carson was quite observant, like Sherlock Holmes, if he were real, he saw small things, and assembled them into something he could feel. As if he could enter your skin, walk around with your point-of-view, and having skills like this meant that there was only one thing to do. Carson became a mentalist, would ‘read you mind,’ put on a show, figure out your hidden secrets, from glancing simply at your clothes. He’d read your personality by the tone you used to say, “Hi.” Not really psychic, of course not, but impressive to onlooking eyes. He’d consult for police sometimes, helped them to find leads they might miss, even took pay from private eyes, got a good income stream from this. And all this work caught attention of a man in a college town, a psychiatric professor who invited him to come down. Offered money to scan his brain, so that he might see how it worked, said it could advance their knowledge, Carson let the man do his work. It went beyond cat-scans and such, they gave him an array of tests, memory, visual recall, Carson scored high, amongst the best. After a couple days of this the professor took him to lunch, said, “We do work we have to hide…” Carson said, “Yeah, I had a hunch.” The professor said, “There’s a fact which has bothered me a long time, the way that chaotic systems exceed the grasp of human minds. “You saw it with the socialists, cut down by the one, brutal fact, that economics is too large, to master it our poor brain lacks. “You see it with teachers like me, struggling to figure things out, coming up with these grand theories, only to be cut down by doubts. “Because we missed something back there, some small detail along the path, that threw us off, made us look dumb, and all of society laughs. “The human brain is not enough for all of the factors out there, yet AI has not our feelings, or instincts to make it aware. “But if we could combine it all in an advanced brain like your own… Then maybe we’d take the next step, master the things we’ve never known.” “So I am guessing,”said Carson, “You want to make me a cyborg?” The prof said, “We’ve done it to apes, one of them now writes on the floor. CONTINUES IN PART II.