The Best British Fantasy 2014 by Steve Haynes

Author:Steve Haynes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt Publishing Limited
Published: 2016-05-06T16:40:50+00:00

As the soothing coolants flowed into the maddened biological brain that was Axon, the medics lifted Mariam and Victor onto wheeled stretchers and pushed them down long white corridors to the hospital suite, Julia walking alongside.

‘Prognosis? Assessment?’ Somerton snapped at the Senior Biochemist, who was standing next to him. She took a step backwards, ran her fingers through her blonde hair, and said ‘I did warn you that this was a dangerously large volume to layer at one time.’

‘I didn’t ask for a history lesson!’

‘This is not just a brainstorm. This is a hurricane. We were prepared and we’re doing what we can, but it looks at the moment like total network collapse.’

Axon raged in random fury and fever. The trees of logic grown over years fell apart. The music of the synapses lost all coherence and was swamped in chaotic noise. The older connections fought the new, and the new knew nothing except their urge to be, to be something, to be a link, or a constant, or a function, or the signature of the scent of a rose. Fractal patterns swept through the complex of tissues. Filaments grew and shrank, touched and embraced or touched and withered, as their electrical charges and biochemical payloads summed or negated.

Evolution can be slow. To build a hawk or a daffodil can take several million years. But it can also be very fast. Axon’s brain was a war zone as strategies competed. But eventually, all wars come to an end.

Thirty-seven hours later the anaesthetists turned off the systems which had been keeping Mariam and Victor safe from the storm in their bunker of unconsciousness.

Mariam’s first thought was not hers: ‘I could do with a swim.’ She smiled as the nurse held the plastic beaker of water to her lips.

Victor opened his eyes and saw a thought that was an equation. ‘Sparse search on eleven dimensional vector space in log(n) time. Not bad for a twelve-year old!’

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