different superEEG unit to record the Ugandan boy’s death. The principles were the same, but he used all-new components, some employing different engineering solutions, to make sure that the previous results weren’t due to some glitch in his recording equipment.
Meanwhile, over the course of several weeks, Peter had also used a superEEG on all 119 employees of Hobson Monitoring, without telling any except his most-senior staff what it was actually for. None of his employees were dying, of course, but Peter wanted to be sure that the soulwave did indeed exist in healthy people, and wasn’t just some sort of electrical last gasp produced by an expiring brain.
The soulwave had a distinctive electrical signature. The frequency was very high, well above that of normal electrochemical brain activity, so, even though the voltage was minuscule, it wasn’t washed out in the mass of other signals within the brain. After making some refinements to his equipment, Peter had little trouble isolating it in scans of all his employees’ brains, although he did find it amusing that it took several tries to locate it in the brain of Caleb Martin, his staff lawyer.
Meanwhile, that selfsame Martin had been working his tail off, securing patent protection on all the superEEG components in Canada, the United States, the European Community, Japan, the CIS, and elsewhere. And the Korean manufacturing firm Hobson Monitoring used to actually build its equipment was gearing up a new production line for superEEGs.
Soon it would be time to go public with the existence of the soulwave.
CHAPTER 12
Peter felt like a student again, pulling off a silly fraternity prank involving putting clothing on animals. He made his way over to one of the cows and stroked it gently at the base of the neck. It had been years since Peter had been this close to a cow; he’d grown up in Regina, but still had relatives who owned dairy farms elsewhere in Saskatchewan, and he’d spent parts of his boyhood summers there.
Like all cows, this one had enormous brown eyes and wet nostrils. It seemed unperturbed by Peter touching it, and so, without further ado, he gently strapped the modified scanning helmet onto its loaf-shaped head. The beast mooed at him, but more in apparent surprise than protest. Its breath stank.
“That it, Doc?” asked the foreperson.
Peter looked at the animal again. He felt a little sorry for it. “Yes.”
At this slaughterhouse, cattle were normally stunned with an electrical charge before being killed. But that method would overload Peter’s scanner. So instead this particular cow would be rendered unconscious with carbon dioxide gas, hung, and then have its throat slit for drainage. Peter had seen a lot of surgery over the years, but that cutting had always been to cure. He was surprised at how upsetting he found the killing of the animal. The foreperson invited him to stay for a full tour, including the butchering of a cow, but Peter didn’t have the stomach for it. He simply retrieved the special bovine headgear and his recording equipment, thanked the various people he’d inconvenienced, and headed back to his office.
Peter spent the rest of the day going over the recording, trying various computer-enhancement techniques on the data. The results were always the same. No matter what method he used or how hard he looked, he could find no evidence that cows had souls — nothing of any kind seemed to exit the brain at death. Not too surprising a revelation, he supposed, although he was quickly coming to realize that for every person who would hail him as a genius for his discoveries, there’d be another who’d damn him for them. In this case, the radical animal-rights lobby would surely be upset.
Peter and Cathy had been planning to go to Barberian’s, their favorite steakhouse, for dinner that night. At the last minute, though, Peter canceled their reservation and they went to a vegetarian restaurant instead.
When Peter Hobson
Meanwhile, over the course of several weeks, Peter had also used a superEEG on all 119 employees of Hobson Monitoring, without telling any except his most-senior staff what it was actually for. None of his employees were dying, of course, but Peter wanted to be sure that the soulwave did indeed exist in healthy people, and wasn’t just some sort of electrical last gasp produced by an expiring brain.
The soulwave had a distinctive electrical signature. The frequency was very high, well above that of normal electrochemical brain activity, so, even though the voltage was minuscule, it wasn’t washed out in the mass of other signals within the brain. After making some refinements to his equipment, Peter had little trouble isolating it in scans of all his employees’ brains, although he did find it amusing that it took several tries to locate it in the brain of Caleb Martin, his staff lawyer.
Meanwhile, that selfsame Martin had been working his tail off, securing patent protection on all the superEEG components in Canada, the United States, the European Community, Japan, the CIS, and elsewhere. And the Korean manufacturing firm Hobson Monitoring used to actually build its equipment was gearing up a new production line for superEEGs.
Soon it would be time to go public with the existence of the soulwave.
CHAPTER 12
Peter felt like a student again, pulling off a silly fraternity prank involving putting clothing on animals. He made his way over to one of the cows and stroked it gently at the base of the neck. It had been years since Peter had been this close to a cow; he’d grown up in Regina, but still had relatives who owned dairy farms elsewhere in Saskatchewan, and he’d spent parts of his boyhood summers there.
Like all cows, this one had enormous brown eyes and wet nostrils. It seemed unperturbed by Peter touching it, and so, without further ado, he gently strapped the modified scanning helmet onto its loaf-shaped head. The beast mooed at him, but more in apparent surprise than protest. Its breath stank.
“That it, Doc?” asked the foreperson.
Peter looked at the animal again. He felt a little sorry for it. “Yes.”
At this slaughterhouse, cattle were normally stunned with an electrical charge before being killed. But that method would overload Peter’s scanner. So instead this particular cow would be rendered unconscious with carbon dioxide gas, hung, and then have its throat slit for drainage. Peter had seen a lot of surgery over the years, but that cutting had always been to cure. He was surprised at how upsetting he found the killing of the animal. The foreperson invited him to stay for a full tour, including the butchering of a cow, but Peter didn’t have the stomach for it. He simply retrieved the special bovine headgear and his recording equipment, thanked the various people he’d inconvenienced, and headed back to his office.
Peter spent the rest of the day going over the recording, trying various computer-enhancement techniques on the data. The results were always the same. No matter what method he used or how hard he looked, he could find no evidence that cows had souls — nothing of any kind seemed to exit the brain at death. Not too surprising a revelation, he supposed, although he was quickly coming to realize that for every person who would hail him as a genius for his discoveries, there’d be another who’d damn him for them. In this case, the radical animal-rights lobby would surely be upset.
Peter and Cathy had been planning to go to Barberian’s, their favorite steakhouse, for dinner that night. At the last minute, though, Peter canceled their reservation and they went to a vegetarian restaurant instead.
When Peter Hobson
Similar Books
