Grainers.(Kevin Hughes) “Jellies are so slow.”

“Yes, they are. But they are necessary.”

“Are they really?”

“Yes. Without them, you or I wouldn’t be here. They are, after all, us.”

“I know. Sometimes it is hard to believe we were once Jellies. It just seems so long ago that we were, that I forget that we all start out as Jellies.”

“I Know. Time is distorted by intelligence. That is very difficult to explain to a Jelly, and extremely difficult for us to understand.”

“Well, you know what they call us.”

“Brain grains-Grainers for short.”

Laughter echoed through the entire network. Brain Grains ( Grainers) are telepathic, but not because they read your thoughts, but because they have wifi in their heads. Jellies don’t. They can’t “hear” what Brain Grains hear. And Brain Grains can’t hear Jelly thoughts at all. But…they can think faster. So much faster that their prediction of what a Jelly might say or do, looks like they read your mind. They did not.

I know. I was the first Brain Grain..i.e. Grainer.

*****

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“Come on Don, you know damn well we don’t know. We think we have taken every precaution…and the precocious pigs showed no after effects.”

“Yeah, well, it still bothers me to see Pigs reading.”

Donna Srp laughed. She was the head of the Advanced Brain Enhancement Project. ABEP had first started with placing coin sized computer chips into organic brains when she was a Graduate Student at MIT. In fact, she won her Engineering Award for developing the “wires” that could burrow into surrounding brain tissue and connect back to the chip in the cortex. Those wires are twenty times thinner than a human hair.

Don, a very gifted Graduate Student had come up with a way to use metal alloys along with silicon in the chips. It turns out that was the game changer. The alloys were much more efficient at using gradient voltage to allow ions to change signal strength much like the ion gates in neurons. So now, using the new metallic alloy chips, the chips could “remember” signal strength just like a “real” neuron. Hebbian Learning was taking place with the alloyed chips the same way it did in a wet biological brain: things that fire together remember to fire together. They learn.

“Look, you helped design these things.”

(waving at the pile of chips, none bigger than a grain of rice, some so small they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Those were the nano chips designed to “float” through the blood brain barrier to reach other zones in the brain. Then they could “signal” back through either natural processes, or via wifi to the larger rice sized brain grains. Kind of a built in parallel processor with different foundations. )

“You know that they are of minimal risk for absorption or leakage. No heavy metal poisoning risk at all. None of the pigs have had problems.”

“But I am not a pig!”

Again, Donna laughed.

“I am not so sure. I have seen the way you eat.”

Don reached out and smacked Donna lightly on the arm as she jumped back out of harms way. They both laughed again.

“Okay, well, I guess you can start the procedure then. Are you going to put me out?”

Donna shook her head.

“Not necessary. Don, you know the brain doesn’t “feel” anything. And we don’t have to cut your skull plate open. We will just inject the brain grains through the nasal cavities. There might be some discomfort …as we are shooting them up into the brain at different angles to get the best distribution.”

“I know all that, Donna. I mean the two coin sized chips. The CPU”s for lack of a better term.”

Again Donna laughed.

“Don, don’t you keep up? You were so busy working with the Metallurgists on the correct alloys that you stopped reading the literature. Those two coin sized chips are now less powerful and less connected than one of these."

Donna held up one rice grained sized chip.

“Don, we will shoot dozens of these into all the major Brain Areas…from the Brain Stem to the Prefrontal Cortex. And we shall shoot some into the Hippocampus, Amygdala, Broca and Wernicke areas too. If we - and you- are correct…well, you should be a better, faster, deeper thinker.”

“Okay. Well, I guess I am ready.”

Donna patted his arm as he lay down on the gurney. She signaled to the Neurosurgeon and his team…they wheeled Don out. He gave her a smile and a thumbs up. As the door closed to the Operating room. Donna did something she rarely did.

She prayed.

*****

Don wasn’t to anxious. He wasn’t to happy about the wrist and leg cuffs that held him securely to the operating table. Nor was he excited about the contraption holding his head completely still. Locked into a slightly awkward upward bend of his neck. The Surgeon checked some laser guided maps on his monitor. Everything was ready. He turned to look right at Don.

“Got to have the right angle to launch the little critters into your Brain…Don. First tho, I am going to numb your nasal cavity and sinuses. You shouldn’t feel a thing when we inject.”

Like Donna out in the prep room, the Brain Surgeon patted Don’s arm. The needle he put in Don’s nose looked like a police flash light to Don. But only fear and anxiety made it look that big. And just like the good doctor said: “You will feel a sharp prick and that’s all.” Don watch in curiosity as the doctor then put an even bigger injector up his nose. He didn’t feel a thing.

At first.

*****

“Doc. I feel like you are filling my brain up with water, or blowing up a balloon. It doesn’t hurt, but man does it feel weird. Like I am a paper towel in one of those commercials. Sucking up all the water.”

“Interesting. Let me know if it hurts.”

Don didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His mind was racing. His body…just stopped. The last thing he heard was the Good Doctor with a very strained voice say:

“Oh…shit.”

*****

Don woke. He was in an isolation room. Wires, tubes, leads, and assorted Medical Machinery were putting things in, taking things out, or monitoring everything from his respiration to his fluid outflow. He smiled. The door burst open as the Doctor, Donna, and a whole team of Technicians ran into assigned places to read, check, or monitor the readouts and data. Don spoke.

“Don…Don…Slow down…slow down. We can’t understand you.”

Don was confused for just a second. Maybe less. He slowed down. And spoke slowly.

“Donna, your speech is so slow. It is taking me a huge effort to speak like this. You can disconnect all the paraphernalia- I am fine. I always will be…now.

The Surgeon was not so sure. And said so. Don shook his head.

‘Doc, trust me. I know what I am talking about. I now know what my Parents used to tell me when I asked them something I was to young to know. “You wouldn’t understand.” Doc…you wouldn’t understand if I told you. I am fine. Just unhook me from all this stuff.”

Under protest…the Doctor did just that. And he stared in awe at the first sign of how changed Don really was. For Don got up.

*****

“Jesus!” Said Donna.

“What the Fu….” Said the Neurosurgeon.

“Oh…my…god…” Said the Head Technician.

Don just stood next to the bed…smiling.

“Don…what did you do? I mean how…what…I don’t understand.”

Don had to slow his movements down. He didn’t want to frighten any of them any more than he had. He could see and read their body language like blazing neon signs. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand. He slowed himself down…again.

“We should have foreseen this. Of course if the brain works faster, more efficiently, then so would the body. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it.”

Donna spoke up.

“Don, one minute you were laying still on the bed. The next you were fully upright beside it …and smiling. We never saw you move. How did you do that?”

“Well, I didn’t think about it. My guess is that I no longer have reflexes. What my brain thinks, my body does. I think so fast now that there isn’t any appreciable gap between a thought and an action.”

It was the Brain Surgeon who spoke next.

“But that’s impossible. You are still Human.”

“Don’t bet on it, Doc.”

Don smiled again. It was going to be a long long day. Especially for him. He would have to be careful in what he said and did…and at these incredibly slow rates. He had to teach them without scaring them. Donna was the first to kind of understand and without her…well, they might have “terminated” the experiment. Don knew what orders the Military had given the supposed Civilian Brain Surgeon. They wanted a super soldier capable of independent action on the battlefield. Don knew the Doctor was a plant to see if they could use the technology to become unbeatable.

Don laughed out loud.

“What now?”

Don pointed at the Surgeon.

“He works for the Pentagon. ( Donna turned to stare at the Surgeon). They want a Super Soldier. A warrior with faster reflexes, quicker reactions to battlefield situations…and yet still capable of independent thought. Well, you won’t get it. What you will get …is World Peace.”

“How?”

Don picked up the injector. It was still half full of the tiny brain chips and nano chips. He pointed at Donna first.

“Allow me.”

*****

All of them reacted like Don did when he first woke up. Wondering why the speech and movements of the uninfected were so slow. So painfully slow. Donna giggled with glee when she got the injection and could “talk” with Don at fifty times the speed of a normal person. It made her tongue flutter in her mouth from the speed. “Like having a hummingbird trapped in your mouth” She said out loud to the astonished Techs and Surgeons. They couldn’t understand her. It sounded like a bunch of bees swarming out of a hive.

Then she laughed again when Don’s thoughts came in through her mind…not her ears.

“Oh, my.”

“I know.” Echoed Don in his thoughts.

*****

It took only a few months to refine the procedure of implanting the Brain Grains into a human brain. The Engineers tweaked the alloys, the wires were discarded as each grain could “wifi” in the electro chemical environment of the brain itself. A cloud of Brain Grains were simply sprayed into your nasal cavity under pressure. They penetrated deep into the tapioca like consistency see of the brain- to seed themselves. The transition was swift. One minute you were a Jelly with no added computational or reasoning skills. The next moment…you were Grainer.

Of course the adaptation phase was a bit longer. Taking about two weeks for a former Jelly to adjust fully to thinking at literally the speed of thought. Which, surprisingly, is faster than light. Thought, it turns out, is a Quantum event. Not limited to physical laws, or at least Classical Physical laws.

Over time it was discovered that Jellies could be converted to Grainers. But Grainers did not mate and deliver another BG. Nope. In order to have Brain Grains, you needed Jellies. Jellies could reproduce themselves. Brain Grains could not. It didn’t take long to figure out that the optimum age to inject the transition from Jelly to Brain Grain was about thirty for men, and twenty six for women. No one, not even the Grainers knew why that difference was there between men a women…just that it was.

One of the most surprising things about becoming a Grainer…was the absolute lack of violence in them. Their brains already figured out, just moments after being injected... that War was a Zero Sum game. There are no winners. Competition was still there in a much healthier form. For everyone competed for the Common Good. Cleaner air. Cleaner water. Better infrastructure. More Art, Music, Math, and Science…all at levels unreachable as a Jelly.

To a Jelly, the Grainers just seemed to “Zoom” by. All they saw was a blur. If they talked to you (which was rare, since they could figure out how to finish your sentence way before you were done speaking it) they had that funny computer slowed down Siri or Alexa sound and tone. And then…they were gone. Poof.

Jellies all lived in cities now. Or small localized farm towns. Jellies gave them names like: Chicago, Moscow, or Mumbai.Grainers called them Parks.

A whole new Social Order came about. Some ugly slang words enjoyed a brief moment in the lexicon of both kinds of humans. The Jellies called themselves “Larva” for a few years. Until enough Grainers were made to stifle that anachronistic throwback. Of course, the name “Jelly” became permanent among the Grainers. The same way that “Brain Grain, BG’s or sometimes just the simple : “Grainer” nomenclature stuck among the Jellies.

“I met a Grainer Today.”

Was a common refrain - especially among children. Children were adored by both Jellies and Grainers. Most interactions between Jellies and Grainer were when a Grainer would offer to hold their child so a young mother could have a cup of coffee, or an exhausted dad could get some sleep. The Grainers would slow down to the babies exact rate of existence. The babies would happily slip off into a soft, safe, warm cuddle and sleep.

One knowing how important babies are…the other just not knowing anything…yet.

Lullabys were popular among both.

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