“The gene therapy you received last month made your neurons sensitive to magnetic fields.”

I nodded as Dr. Simov explained what I had already read over a dozen times in the volunteer package.

“Which allows noninvasive interfacing with this device here.”

Dr. Simov put his hand down on what was essentially a metal helmet with a bunch of cables attached to its outer side. The cables ran from the helmet to server racks housing thousands of cutting edge graphics processing units — a modern supercomputer.

“The device emits high precision magnetic fields which will stimulate your individual neurons to fire as well as monitor your own neuronal firings. Through this input/output interface, each of your cerebral neurons will be connected to thousands of artificial neurons housed in the supercomputer which are themselves randomly interconnected. Your goal is to utilize the artificial neurons to the best of your ability, to make them your own. Should you succeed your effective brain size will increase by a factor of 10. You are then to conduct research on improving the device. Do I make myself clear, Clark?”

“Yes, Dr. Simov,” I replied soberly.

“Good, I look forward to your report. Now if you’re ready please have a seat and put on the device.”

I sat back in the luxurious chair and put on the helmet.

“Raise your hand at any time should you feel discomfort and I will shut down the interface. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Interfacing in 3, 2, 1.”

At first it felt like random noise bombarding my mind. Like a chaotic day dream. Then I noticed that with each thought, like a query, more noise came back. My brain activity was stimulating artificial neurons which were firing back and exciting my own neurons through the magnetic interface. The harder the thought, the greater the response. Like making waves in a pool. Then the noise started to crystallize. I began to witness a glimpse of clarity emerging from the extra noise.

Soon it helped more than it hindered. It’s as if every thought I had was enhanced, a query with more results than I was used to, but welcome nonetheless. I began to feel more capable. I had no formal training in neuroscience or computer engineering, but quickly things started making sense. The artificial neural network I was connected to operated on a “fire together, wire together” principle. It was unstructured at first but as my structured thoughts made waves throughout its synapses it began to behave as a sort of super pattern detector on my behalf, transforming neuronal data in new ways, building abstractions and representations which facilitated further discovery. I now felt like the pilot of an incredible machine — a machine engineered for insight.

Through the neural interface, I started writing a report on improving the imaging and precision of the magnetic fields of the device, increasing the processing capability of the supercomputer and introducing superior background rewiring strategies for the artificial neural network for improved plasticity. As I worked away the lines began the blur. I no longer felt like a pilot, piloting an incredible machine. No, I was the machine. And the machine was me. Working in unison. I could not differentiate whether a thought came from the artificial or natural part of me.

“Time’s up.” Dr. Simov said as he turned off the magnetic interfacing.

As the majority of my brain faded away and I was back to being merely human, I felt like screaming or vomiting but I couldn’t decide which one so I just said “The report is located in the home directory.”

“Yes, I watched the file as it was being edited. Good work. Fascinating proposals.” replied Dr. Simov.

“I didn’t get to finish it.”

Dr. Simov laughed, “That’s okay there’s plenty there to work with. You know the rules. If we kept you interfaced any longer you might not recover from the disconnect. Anyway, same time tomorrow?”

“Change of plans today,” Dr Simov said as they entered the lab.

“Oh?”

“We’re going to do some emergency charity work.”

“We’re going to stop global warming?”

Dr. Simov laughed. “Nope, rogue artificial general intelligence on the loose and you get to stop it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Just an LLM someone at Google thought it would be a good idea to endow with agency. It has no intuition for the physics of the real world, not to mention national security backdoors mean staying in any one corporate cloud for too long is risky for it. Should be a piece of cake really. Just track it down and we’ll make the call to have those servers wiped.”

“What makes you think it will be so easy?”

Dr. Simov leaned against the server racks and smacked them. “See this? Best supercomputer on the planet.” Then he winked and grinned.

I rolled my eyes as I eased into the chair and plugged in.

It’s been a month since I started working in Dr. Simov’s lab. Plugging in and adjusting to the saved state of the artificial network now felt routine. We’d improved on the gene therapy so that it would only active when a certain compound was taken. We’d upgraded the protocols for they way the network wired itself in response to my own thinking — a sort of anticipatory pre-rewiring, reminiscent of branch prediction. And of course, we’d upgraded the supercomputer itself to now be able to simulate 100x the size of a normal human brain. When I first tried the new hardware it reminded me of the rush the first time I plugged in.

While wearing the helmet I invented novel and vastly more effective treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Sometimes I would visit the biochemistry lab housed in the same building to watch these approaches be validated through experiment but never invalidated. It was like living a week ahead of everyone else, or however long the particular experiment took to run.

I never did get used to the disconnected feeling of unplugging though. Every time, it was a shock, as losing most of your brain would be.

“I think I have about half the world’s resumes in my email inbox by now.” Dr Simov joked.

It’s been 3 months. Everyone wants to work at the lab that’s curing every major disease. 99% of the budget goes to more hardware. We’re at 1000x normal human brain expansion now.

“Maybe we should start manufacturing our own hardware.” I said, already plugged in.

“At this rate NVIDIA’s supply won’t meet our demand in a few months.” I added.

“Not to mention if we found a way to make hardware super cheap we would finally be able to democratize brain expansion technology,” said Dr. Simov.

“Already working on it,” I said, getting in a PhD thesis worth work in for every uttered a word.

It’s been 5 months. Every major city now has public brain expansion centers where people can come in and do work that would otherwise be almost meaningless. When Dr. Simov and I went public we were so far ahead with the planet indebted to our discoveries and the computing technology we unveiled so advanced that no force in the world could prevent democratization. The information was everywhere and detailed so thoroughly that anyone with a few thousand dollars could build a brain expansion device. Prior to the announcement I ran countless simulations ensuring that a war for supremacy was not a possibility. Turns out virtual immortality in a scarcity-free world made the stakes for war too high even for the greediest among us. Humanity had finally ascended.

It’s been 6 months. With global ascension, robotics had finally advanced enough that human-like bodies were achievable. Moreover computing technology, always at the forefront of priorities for many, had become so miniaturized that it could all fit inside the helmet. No more cables. No more massive room to house a supercomputer. I came home from Dr. Simov’s lab to my studio apartment. Put on my own personal helmet, turned it on, and let my consciousness expand ten-thousand fold. I drifted in my thoughts and let me mind executive function expand beyond my biological brain. Then I turned and looked back at my biological body for one last time. And I let go.