Semantic Space

by Maxwel Lancroft

In 2012, Berkeley scientists constructed the first map of how the brain organizes everything we see - Semantic Space

Their 3D Semantic Space viewer averaged brain regions used by 5 scientists at the lab while watching a two hour movie. Gallant Lab - 3D Viewer

No One Receiving

The movie at first seemed like a documentary filmed at a coastal farm in North Carolina.

The narrator, Reginold, turned over the metal book in his pudgy hands. He picked up a Dremel cutting tool and carefully began the work of removing the metal rings that had held the content in place for over 2,000 years, or at least that's how long the team who validated it had published after it was discovered in a small cave in the Levant.

Reginold had invested a large portion of the family farm's equity in purchasing the metal book now in his hands. The idea that he was holding some of the first words written by Christ's disciples gave him pause. He'd developed an all-consuming focus after first learning about the discovery on the 500 Club. He'd dismissed much of the talk of the books being forgeries, enthralled by the idea that words, or images, from the years shortly after the life of Christ could be tightly sealed between it's secure metal covers, like a very early form of encryption.

When the local media caught wind, they ascended on his tranquil southern farm house like ticks on a hound. Three days later, he'd pulled together an ad hoc security force to keep the mob cordoned off at the entrance to his gravel road, and a boat driven by his cousins Hank and Stu patrolled off the shoreline of North Carolina's newest celebrity.

Reginold had hired a filmmaker to document the revealing. Their resume of Christian documentaries impressed him, but he was more enthused about having the company's pretty host onboard.

"I've been waiting for this day for five years," he beemed to her across from him. She smiled begrudgingly and passed him his tools. She was half there as an assistant, and half as a commentator. A good distraction for the viewers he thought, and more eye-catching than his chubby jowls and perspiring forehead.

She was his GoDaddy girl. She had narrated the program's original reporting on the book stash discovery five years ago, traveling to interview people from the towns surrounding the cave.

"What in tarnation!" The book contained nothing at all, no words, no encryption, just a tiny piece of metal. Wafer thin, it fell onto the table.

The surface shimmer revealed a small circle containing the faintest of etchings, something like a tiny symmetrical network, a spider web in the morning dew, or a mandella formed on an oil drop.

The woman who had been recording my dream, turned to me and said, "brain regions are not exclusive to specific objects." I knew research from Berkeley Labs had shown that our brains rapidly reallocate resources based on behavioral demands.

"Each memory uses a unique rhythm, frequency and amplitude. Your brain hums with entanglement. DNA makes an excellent storage device using twisting quantum polarities."

The science she was describing was also the basis for a new form of cinema we'd been investigating using broadband genetic-sign radio waves. Developed in Russia, my search for the creator of the DNA-Wave Biocomputer projector took several years, and several wrong turns, before ending in success. Building on Peter P. Gariaev's prior work, Alexander Larochenko had unraveled the information retrieval paradigm, creating a pure occipital-cortex stream in the process.

She switches on a screen and the field of white transforms into an arctic expanse.

The night is like a glove and he's floating like a dove
With his deep blue eyes in the deep blue sky
Here he comes the boy who tried to vanish to the future or the past
Is no longer alone among the dragonflies
- Brian Eno

[A long pause]

“You can kick this like a cancer. We believe in you.” she said, trying to sound optimistic.
It was the last thing she said as I turned the handle, and walked out the door toward my car.

I yelled back over my shoulder, "Thanks for believing!" I knew she'd smile at the barb thrown at her overly scientific approach to everything. I had a long, uphill battle ahead - if I was going to kick this thing.