"The mind is an interface for the soul" quoth my friend a doctor of medicine
at St Bartholomew's, London.  His letters, always stimulating had helped to
wile away the hours as I waited for the inspiration required to complete my
current project.  Such a daring, some would say arrogant undertaking had
taken a good number of years, though I am happy to say, none more than I had
expected.

  "Nonsense", I wrote.  "I have completed my work and shall prove you wrong
this very evening".  Finishing off the letter with the usual pleasantries,
and deliberately ignoring its staggering implications I darted out
into the cold London air to catch the evening post.

  Once I reached my objective, my sense of urgency quickly disappeared and,
for the first time in many years I allowed myself to amble home.  Taking in
a nearby park, which due to it's location was off the more direct routes I
usually took, I began to slowly and silently marvel at my own genius.

  How could it be that I, a mere society of cells in union could have
been able to look deep within myself and answer the fundamental question of
the human mind?  Looking upon myself both with the disdain which comes from
knowing ones true nature and at the same time with the smug self righteous
arrogance of one who has detected that very nature, I found myself broadly
grinning.  However the pity I felt for my own simplistic mechanics was also
broadcast, giving the people I passed a particularly evil looking, if not
goblin-like visage.

  Upon noticing this, and the fact that my nose and cheeks were probably
bright red from the chilled air all around me, I wiped my expression clean and
restarted my thoughts along another tack.

  My doctor friend had surprised me long ago, when he first let slip his
belief in the almighty in my company.  I had scoffed at a man of science
entertaining such primitive and contradictory a viewpoint.  He had tried
to explain briefly his feeling that body and mind were separate entities
but I had strongly disagreed.  Maybe it was this conversation alone which
had prompted my quest for an answer to the riddle of intelligence.  Maybe I
just wanted to pull the whole cosy edifice around his and everyone else's heads.

  I was strongly of the opinion that mind could and would eventually be
simulated, ney, created from mechanism alone.  My friend, had, and this
strengthened my failing respect for the man, not dismissed the idea, nor relied
on scripture to bolster a case for a soul.  His
argument had intrigued me and, for a time and I must confess to have harboured
it a little closer than I would later admit.  My friend conjectured that
such a machine could certainly be built but that instead of creating an
intelligent and conscious life, it would, it could, merely act as a vehicle
for said life.  I fancy he imagined an ethereal world where the discarnate could
communicate with us - so long as an instrument of sufficient subtly could
be fashioned.

  His idea would have cut my device down to a mere radio receiver!  Amplifying
the words of the dead, or further, allowing their will to direct impulse to
create action.  The idea certainly had merit but queues of souls waiting
to be reborn in mechanical flesh?  This owed more to seance than science!

  "But what is the body if it is not a machine for enacting the will?"

  Enough.  My research had reduced the brain to a simple unit of measurement.
A so called Homo Sapiens had finally proven the inaccuracy of his own label.
Far from being intelligent and self aware the entire species was living in a
self deluded, self created stage.  Here, actors dressed in the uniforms of their
supposed professions would occasionally pronounce deep meanings, the truth of
which could never be verified for the lack of depth in our collective
knowledge.

  Not that I was the lord of chaos, come to cut man down at the knees.  Far
from it.  To me science was a mirror of our collected self.
Seeing our own reflection clearer and without preconception
could only, in my view, serve our species, one day enabling it to soar freed
from the boundaries of our limited, imperfect and fragile minds and unchaining
us from our gross physical forms with their incumbent maintenance and desires.


  Arriving home I noticed that I had gone considerably further out of my way
than I had first planned.  The park had been the start of a prolonged and
unremembered diversion, which I realised had been taken merely to provide me
with more time in which to think.  Perhaps it was the finality of this
evening, the gathering of all the threads of my work but I felt it right that
now was a time for review and introspection.

  Passing in through the hallway I replaced my coat on the empty hook, pressing
it flat against the others hanging beside.  In the cool dark entranceway, lit
only from the fractured and leaded lamplight outside, I paused.  I was alone
in the house and the sudden stillness alerted me to the single changing object
in the hallway: my own mind.
Tumultuous waves of thought crashing upon the shore, swirling fractal eddies of
complexity waltzing with one another as high above the steady procession of
ideas marched relentlessly on.  Obsessing to detail and yet wide ranging in
reach, the tempest raged on, and, like the white hot mantle of lamp outside it
lit up this dark place inside my head.  I was about to make history.

  Snapping out of my recursive haze I made a dash to the staircase and in a
moment I was up and through into my den.  There, in front of me lay the
product of my endeavours.  Small, heavy and black, it crossed my mind
that it could be mistaken for a mere paperweight.  Indeed I
smiled as I noticed that it was already serving this function,
situated as it was upon a pile of pencilled paper foolscap.  Indeed that small,
seemly insignificant box was actually worth the weight of the paper it
guarded: It was worth all the paper and all the books in the room.

  A bomb had hit the neighbourhood during the second world war.  Perhaps this
explained the mess throughout the apartment I dreamily mused while reclining
on the bed somewhere amidst the rubble.  I held the device in my hands.  I
held the device in my hands!  I was holding a mind!

  "Anyhow, even if you did come up with a design for a brain, you'd never
be able to build it...", taunted my friend one evening.  I couldn't deny
the difficulty of the task, the logic of his point, nor help having brought it
upon myself through my boasts.  Instead I simply restated my aim, to create a
*physical* implementation of a mind before I reached the age of 40.

  If truth be told I had always known more about the inner world
than I'd ever let on to others, my friend included.  Such information,
genetically encoded within my being at conception had probably lead
me to this point.  Maybe human DNA was attempting to achieve
another level of consciousness, a state of doing rather than mere being, where
it's subjects could become the master of their own destinies through the
understanding of their true nature.  However my own feeling was, if there was
any credit to be had for my invention I'd share with noone and nothing.

  The idea for the machine had come easily.  A waking dream provided
both inspiration and flexible test bed.  Clearly the years of ignoring the
more obvious distractions of the flesh had proven their worth for me.

  The implementation however, as my friend had suggested took great effort,
and had eventually come about through sheer brute force and hard work.
Algae, various crystal structures, silicon all these and many more had been
tried in the search for a suitable base.  Finally, with the daring which only
comes from genius a solution had been found, one which not only provided for
all the original requirements but also for a whole raft of extra ones too: A
simultaneous solution to multiple problems.

  A weakly radioactive source, etched to form its gross interconnected
structure, resembling it seemed to me a rectangular block of volcanic pumice.
The material's decomposition and 20,000 year half life provided subtle, yet
constant waves of heat - an ever changing matrix.  These I expected would
form the basis of a slow but virtually immortal intelligence.


  The microscopic network of metallic fibres had been modelled after my own grey
matter.  My thoughts, my dreams, all had been woven into the creases and folds
which lay within the device.  I would like to say that this was done entirely
for the sake of convenience, and in truth it could be looked upon by some as a
short cut, but I rated my own intelligence so highly as to make it an obvious
choice of gift for my new born babe.

  "So there's going to be two of you then?" cried my friend with mock fright
over dinner with his friends.  Friends, who had remained stubbornly his and his
alone, after seeing that the intensity of my focus would leave them nothing of
me at which to gnaw: Friendship often came at a price and in almost all cases
I felt that this was too high.

  "You'd better watch out, when you turn that thing on, it might have your
father waiting inside it!".  My friend explained further, "Well, you know,
if he happens to be passing up there and finds a mind built like the one he owned,
he might get comfortable and want to stay - it might even attract him!".
Shuddering again at this suggestion I sat up staring into my device - could I
really be sure that I was soon to hold my own artificial creation and not
some discarnate bore?

  Time for action.

  Leaning under the table I pulled up a most delicate system.  A detector and
emitter designed to work together to target highly specific regions of the
mass - with the intention of providing sensory input and expressive output
for my creation.   The equipment was admittedly crude and fragile but there
would I reasoned be time to rectify this at a later date.

  Taking the gamma source with which I had first programmed the device, I gave
a single narrow beam jolt to the centre of the block of metal. The converted
gamma scanner I had almost blackmailed my friend into supplying showed its
results on a tiny monitor screen.

  I smiled at the result of my action.  Nothing.  No immediate signs of life
whatsoever.  The dull grey underside of the metal didn't even feel warm to the
touch.  Unmoved by this expected result I set about the business of prepping
the detector.

  As the surface of a puddle once enlivened by a raindrop is instantly
filled with the echoes of that drop and the report of its multitude of
reflections from the jagged and uneven perimeter,
so it was that my creation slowly became filled with activity.  Looking into
the flickering cathode tube, I knew that the reaction I had started would
never stop.

  As I mulled over these first sights of life I *knew* my work was done.
Faster and still faster the display grew in intensity until the detector and
monitor both could not keep up with the activity within the block.


  "You be nice to who ever you go waking up", the parting shot of my medical
friend in his last correspondence.  I lay back on my bed, waiting for the
computer to detect some first signs of intelligence from within the device.  A
cigarette was lit but apart from the first self satisfying drag it was left
alone to burn its way between my fingers.

  A mental haze, similar to the effects a childhood illness descended upon me.
I felt strangely heavy, as if my entire body were pressing down into the bed
clothes beneath.  A soft murmur of success drifted over from the desk, the
computer had found something.  Wearily I pulled myself to my feet but was too
far into this tranced condition, I fell, instantly forward, as a puppet whose
strings have been cut, smashing the structures on my desk and sliding to the
floor.

  Through my dimming sight I saw the device appear to almost vibrate, resonating
in time to some seen force.  I grabbed at my head as my own mind seemed to
join the discordant harmony, causing my brain to throb and ache.

  Slowly, a strange duality crept over my personage.  It was as if I were two,
if that is possible to state without correction.  Not merely divided between
physical locations but into simultaneous lines of thought, each aware of and
considering the state of the other!

  A feeling of nausea swept over me, both my alter egos overcome at the same
moment.  It was as if some great struggle were taking place in the heavens.

  Such was the strength of feeling that I could hardly maintain rational
thought.  My muddied consciousness grew more viscous by the moment. I almost
felt my mind stop.

  Suddenly and without warning there was a large snap in my forehead,
instantly the duality of presence was gone, but alarmingly so was all
impression of my body and locale.  I was nowhere, floating in void.  Then,
all at once I heard another loud crack.  I say heard, I only felt this
was a sound, it could have been something far more grand since it seemed
to tear through my consciousness like a burst of lightning.



  An ominous feeling of enclosure came creeping upon my discarnate being.  At
first it came almost unnoticed, taking advantage of any lapse in my
observation, then with a rushing claustrophobic temper it came on unabashed,
quickly crushing me into submission and forcing me to cower within a tiny,
blackened area.

  Reaching out with my mind I was met with an icy barrier.  The
perimeter, as cold and unyielding as metal and as dark and impenetrable as the
night ocean, was perfect and unbroken.



  And that my friend is my story.  You will never hear it, you will never hear
of, or see me again.  I realise now that am a soul locked away, chained in a
prison of my own making.  As close to you now as your very family as yet as
far away as a distant star.  As you burn to ashes my weak corporeal host, how I
wish you knew where I am now.  How I wish you could grind my mechanism to filings
and scatter them to the winds.

  Immortality at the price of freedom.  Intelligence at the price of action.
An experiment to move the earth, now leaving my very self entombed and buried
within it's blackened sod.

  You used to tell me of your belief that depression is 'disconnection'.
Disconnection from society, disconnection from new ideas, disconnection
from the rest of the universe.  I am your test subject and I fear I will prove
your point.  Oh God how I will prove your point.  For in my haste to create life
I forgot that without connection, life is mere daydream, and without mortality
there is no time to wake up.


  "Take great care of this instrument, sir, it is the last remaining personal
effect of my dear friend.  It is the sum total of his knowledge.".  The good
doctor, unaware of his misguided aims, wrapped my small box of dreams within
a cloth and handed it to the curator.

"You could say he put his very heart and soul into that device."