Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,123

shore of that river, on a flat triangle of alluvial ground at the mouth of a slot canyon, was a big dusty building ensnared in a web of power lines. It had a large parking lot, made for a blue-collar workforce that no longer existed, currently occupied by all of three vehicles. One of those was a pickup truck marked SECURITY, and standing next to it was a burly man in mirror shades, watching Sophia—or whichever of her friends had taken the photograph—and no doubt recording her.

“And that is what is happening at Hole in the Wall Coulee,” Sophia was saying. “On the outside it looks the same as any other processor farm. Electricity and cold water go in, bits and warm water come out. But behind the walls of this old factory, the amount of useful computation that’s happening is thousands or maybe even millions of times in excess of what you’d see in old-school processor farms just up the river.”

“Got it,” Marcus said. “So I see what you mean that this is a game-changer in terms of the ability to run a big neurological simulation.”

“Not my insight,” Sophia admitted. “Solly—one of my professors at Princeton—brought it up a few months ago, when this thing came online, and said basically, ‘Look, we might actually be able to do it now.’”

“Meaning, run a simulation of something more ambitious than a cubic millimeter of one mouse’s brain,” Zula said.

“Yeah. And I just thought to myself, when I heard that, ‘Hey. DB is part of my birthright. Opportunity knocks.’ And that’s when I applied for this internship.”

Marcus was nodding. “Does your professor know about this? Is he or she part of the picture?”

“He. Most definitely. It’s Solly.” Which in a lot of tech nerd circles would have been sufficient. He was one of those guys who had been around forever and played roles in tech companies going at least as far back as Hewlett-Packard.

But Zula wasn’t really a part of that culture. “Rings a bell,” she said.

“Solly Pesador. Old-school tech geek turned neuro hacker.”

“You’ve crossed paths with him,” Marcus informed Zula. “He’s the one who dropped out of the whole Bay Area tech scene so he could go back to school in middle age and get a degree in neuroscience.”

“I remember him now,” Zula said.

“He’s probably a known quantity to the foundation,” Sophia said. “I think he’s participated in some ONE colloquia, advised on some DB-related stuff.” Which, as they all knew, wasn’t saying much—any neuroscientist of any significance to the field had probably crossed paths, at some point in his or her career, with the Forthrast and Waterhouse foundations.

“Is he advising you on this?”

“He’s aware that I’m going to attempt it. I have his support. As important, I have code that came out of his research group.”

“Code for simulating what brains do.”

“What neurons do.” Sophia shrugged. “I mean, that’s no big deal. You could have it too—it’s open source. But the point is that it’s easy for me to get in touch with the experts who wrote that code, get their advice, work on fixing bugs. Actually get something up and running during the short time that I am going to have here.” She paused for a moment, and pressed her lips together, and then went on: “If you’ll have me, that is.”

Zula sat back in her chair and looked out the window. The outcome had never really been in doubt. But being the director of a foundation had taught her a few things. One: much of what she did for a living was symbolic. But two: just because it was symbolic didn’t mean it wasn’t important. She had to put on at least a performance of thinking about it.

“Based on what you’ve said in this interview, I don’t think that even the most skeptical observer could claim that you are not qualified. And the steps you took to hide your identity behind PURDAH during the application process should dispel any serious questions around favoritism. So, you’re in. But—” She held up her index finger in warning, since Sophia was about to bounce out of her chair. “We have to talk about what it means. Whether this is just an academic research project, taking some new code for a spin on the Hole in the Wall system, or a serious effort to turn Dodge’s Brain on. Because no matter how we spin it, some people are going to see it as the latter.” Zula turned her attention to Marcus. “So we