Preface

The ceramoplast shell was warm when they slid him into it. A comfortable pair of goggles covered his eyes, and an electrode studded cap covered his now bald head. Above him the field induction machine hummed into life. As he waited for the scan to begin, Roger Wilton daydreamed about two things, first, what he'd do with the money he was about to receive for giving the government his permission to make a doppleganger of his brain and memories, and secondly, he imagined the situations in which his new mind-clone would find itself.

Outside the ceramic-plastic shell, huge magnets began to chill below zero centigrade, on their way to nearly two hundred degrees negative when they would begin to super-conduct and the magnetic field effect would be magnified many hundreds of times.

As they cooled, the casing holding the magnetic array began to spin up into a simple, semi-spherical pattern that would allow the detectors to cover every inch of the volume around Roger's skull. As they spun, the weak electromagnetic signals accompanying Roger's thinking began to register on the sensitive ferro-resistive crystals in the array. However, Roger's surface thoughts were but a shadow of what the array would soon be able to measure.

As Roger amused himself with idle speculation, the Artificial Intelligence core managing the scan of Roger's brain began to assemble the data necessary to construct a full human brain pattern.

Roger thought to himself that winning a so-called 'Genius Grant' had many advantages, not the least of which were odd opportunities, like this, to market himself ... he'd come out of this whole thing finally solvent, despite being nearly two hundred thousand new-bloc Rials in debt for his education and travel. Maybe now he could start a family. Roger smiled and drifted off in the scanning coffin.