The Corrections

“Of course, chemistry, too, even brain chemistry,” Eberle was saying, “is basically just manipulation of electrons in their shells. But compare this, if you will, to an electronics that consists of little two- and three-pole switches. The diode, the transistor. The brain, by contrast, has several dozen kinds of switches. The neuron either fires or it doesn’t; but this decision is regulated by receptor sites that often have shades of offness and on-ness between plain Off and plain On. Even if you could build an artificial neuron out of molecular transistors, the conventional wisdom is that you can still never translate all that chemistry into the language of yes/no without running out of space. If we conservatively estimate twenty neuroactive ligands, of which as many as eight can operate simultaneously, and each of these eight switches has five different settings—not to bore you with the combinatorics, but unless you’re living in a world of Mr. Potato Heads, you’re going to be a pretty funny-looking android.”

Close-up of a turnip-headed male student laughing.

“Now, these are facts so basic,” Eberle said, “that we ordinarily wouldn’t even bother spelling them out. It’s just the way things are. The only workable connection we have with the electrophysiology of cognition and volition is chemical. That’s the received wisdom, part of the gospel of our science. Nobody in their right mind would try to connect the world of neurons with the world of printed circuits.”

Eberle paused dramatically.

“Nobody, that is, but the Axon Corporation.”

Ripples of buzz crossed the sea of institutional investors who’d come to Ballroom B of the Four Seasons Hotel, in central Philadelphia, for the road show promoting Axon’s initial public offering. A giant video screen had been set up on the dais. On each of the twenty round tables in the semidark ballroom were platters of satay and sushi appetizers with the appropriate dipping sauces.

Gary was sitting with his sister, Denise, at a table near the door. He had hopes of transacting business at this road show and he would rather have come alone, but Denise had insisted on having lunch, today being Monday and Monday being her one day off, and had invited herself along. Gary had figured that she would find political or moral or aesthetic reasons to deplore the proceedings, and, sure enough, she was watching the video with her eyes narrowed in suspicion and her arms crossed tightly. She was wearing a yellow shift with a red floral print, black sandals, and a pair of Trotskyish round plastic glasses; but what really set her apart from the other women in Ballroom B was the bareness of her legs. Nobody who dealt in money did not wear stockings.

WHAT IS THE CORECKTALL PROCESS?

“Corecktall,” said the cutout image of Curly Eberle, whose young audience had been digitally pureed into a uniform backdrop of tuna-red brain matter, “is a revolutionary neurobiological therapy!”

Eberle was seated on an ergonomic desk chair in which, it now developed, he could float and swerve vertiginously through a graphical space representing the inner-sea world of the intracranium. Kelpy ganglia and squidlike neurons and eellike capillaries began to flash by.

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“Originally conceived as a therapy for sufferers of PD and AD and other degenerative neurological diseases,” Eberle said, “Corecktall has proved so powerful and versatile that its promise extends not only to therapy but to an outright cure, and to a cure not only of these terrible degenerative afflictions but also of a host of ailments typically considered psychiatric or even psychological. Simply put, Corecktall offers for the first time the possibility of renewing and improving the hard wiring of an adult human brain.”

“Ew,” Denise said, wrinkling her nose.

Gary by now was quite familiar with the Corecktall Process. He’d scrutinized Axon’s red-herring prospectus and read every analysis of the company he could find on the Internet and through the private services that CenTrust subscribed to. Bearish analysts, mindful of recent gut-wrenching corrections in the biotech sector, were cautioning against investing in an untested medical technology that was at least six years from market. Certainly a bank like CenTrust, with its fiduciary duty to be conservative, wasn’t going to touch this IPO. But Axon’s fundamentals were a lot healthier than those of most biotech startups, and to Gary the fact that the company had bothered to buy his father’s patent at such an early stage in Corecktall’s development was a sign of great corporate confidence. He saw an opportunity here to make some money and avenge Axon’s screwing of his father and, more generally, be bold where Alfred had been timid.