Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Author:Michael Crichton [Crichton, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Suspense, Fiction, Thrillers, Science Fiction, High Tech
ISBN: 9780307816429
Google: yyNt2IGuKDUC
Amazon: B007UH9BX8
Barnesnoble: B007UH9BX8
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2012-05-14T05:00:00+00:00

“I’m going to tell you,” she said, “that you’ve cut too many conferences. You know about autonomic learning?”

After a guilty pause: “No.”

“It was a big mystery for a long time. Classically, it was believed that you could learn to control only voluntary acts. You could learn to drive a car, but you couldn’t learn to lower your blood pressure. Of course, there were those yogis who supposedly could reduce oxygen requirements of their body and slow their heartbeats to near death. They could reverse intestinal peristalsis and drink liquids through the anus. But that was all unproven—and theoretically impossible.”

Gerhard nodded cautiously.

“Well, it turns out to be perfectly possible. You can teach a rat to blush in only one ear. Right ear or left ear, take your pick. You can teach it to lower or raise blood pressure or heartbeat. And you can do the same thing with people. It’s not impossible. It can be done.”

“How?” He asked the question with unabashed curiosity. Whatever embarrassment he had felt before was gone.

“Well, with people who have high blood pressure, for instance, all you do is put them in a room with a blood-pressure cuff on their arm. Whenever the blood pressure goes down, a bell rings. You tell the person to try to make the bell ring as often as possible. They work for that reward—a bell ringing. At first it happens by accident. Then pretty soon they learn how to make it happen more often. The bell rings more frequently. After a few hours, it’s ringing a lot.”

Gerhard scratched his head. “And you think Benson is producing more seizures to be rewarded with shocks?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what’s the difference? He still can’t have any seizures. The computer always prevents them from happening.”

“Not true,” she said. “A couple of years ago, a Norwegian schizophrenic was wired up and allowed to stimulate a pleasure terminal as often as he wanted. He pushed himself into a convulsion by overstimulating himself.”

Gerhard winced.

Richards, who had been watching the computer console, suddenly said, “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?”

“We’re not getting readings any more.”

On the screen, they saw:

11:32 ------

11:42 ------

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.