The Brain Chip: A Science Fiction Story

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--by Robert Arvay

 

        It was the year 2218 when the problem was discovered.  No one knew what to do about it.

        Beginning fifty years earlier, in 2168, everyone had begun being implanted with a computerized micro-chip, in their brain.  It took ten years to insert all the chips.  This included the time it took to hunt down all the hold-outs, and to enforce compliance.  After ten years, almost everyone was a “chipper,” a person who had the chip.

        The chip was deemed to be necessary.  Life had become too complicated for most people to manage.  Suicides were on the rise.  Crime had dramatically increased.  Masses of people were either uneducated, or mis-educated, because few people could agree on what was fact, and what was opinion.  Chaos threatened to destroy society.

        Technology had empowered individuals to such a degree that it was all but impossible to maintain law and order.  A grade-school kid could figure out how to hack the computer systems of banks, nuclear missile silos, and even their own report cards.

        Something had to be done.  Something was done.

        The brain chip solved the problem.  Inserted into the brain early in life, even as soon as a month after being born, everyone could think alike, or at least, enough alike to forestall the radical disagreements which previously had threatened civil war.  The chip had its own microcomputer program, and it could in turn program, in a sense, the human brain of the recipient.  Human brains were then programmed to agree on the most controversial issues which previously had been tearing society apart.  Chippers obeyed the rules, and therefore, chippers could be trusted.

        Even better yet, the brain chips could all receive periodic updates from time to time via signals transmitted from satellites.  This allowed the government to revise failed social programs without the traditional bickering that had previously disrupted every major social program change in the pre-chip years.

        At first, many people had objected to the brain chip.  It was itself the most controversial technology that had ever been introduced.  At first, the chip had been surreptitiously inserted into the brains of children during doctor visits.  Parents were either not told what was happening, or else were given false information.  As word of this leaked out, dissent increased.

        After a few years, however, everyone could see that children with the chip did better in school than most other children.  They were better behaved, more obedient, and easier to raise.  After that, more and more parents clamored to have their own children implanted, and finally, adults themselves began asking for and receiving chip implants.  People with the chip earned much more than most people without it, because with it, they became much smarter than before.

        What no one was told, until there was no denying it, is that once the chip is implanted, it cannot be removed without tragic consequence to the recipient.  Painful deaths occurred whenever a chip was removed.

        For nearly fifty years, no one requested the removal of chip implants.  Everyone who had one was happy with it.  No chipper ever felt depressed, worried, or in doubt—about anything, not even about the chip itself. 

        Unlike as with drugs, the chip enabled the chipper to cope with problems, and to devise solutions, because the chip enhanced intelligence.  Everyone who had it had automatic encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every subject taught in any school.  Since the knowledge was stored, not in the brain, but in the chip, the knowledge did not occupy one’s thoughts until and unless he needed it.  Then, he could access the needed information immediately.  For example, anyone who needed to learn Swahili (or any other language) could instantly master it, and speak it with as much proficiency as any native speaker.

        But one day, the Great Problem was discovered.  It was discovered that the chip had an embedded error in it, an inherent and irreparable malfunction which would eventually, but inevitably, cause the chipper to go suddenly and incurably insane, and violently so.  The incidence of this form of insanity suddenly began to increase, and no one knew how much worse it might get.

        At first, there was general panic in the population, not only panic, but anger.  Who had designed the chip?  Why had it been put into patients without thorough testing beforehand?  Which government officials had authorized the surreptitious implants into children?  How dare they?  The possibility of rebellion loomed large.

        The panic suddenly ended when the next update was made via satellite transmissions.  Everyone suddenly assumed that the problem was only temporary, and that a fix had already been devised.  The fix would be implemented soon, very soon, even as soon as tomorrow.

        Nobody resented the fact that tomorrow after tomorrow came and went, with no solution, because after all, the problem would be fixed tomorrow.

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