EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 8

Continuing with Part 8 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

*

The next day came too early. After a grueling four hours of questions the night before, I figured I had already lost enough time on the project as it was. And coworkers. And it would seem that for now I would be working alone as my fellow scientists had all--disappeared. Or, died? Nothing seemed to be missing from the lab, though. There appeared to be no other evidence of a kidnapping, or a robbery; well, maybe. And considering there was no indication that Garrison had ever left the building, or Johnson--

I was just finishing my coffee when the phone rang.

“Yes. Dr. Michaelson," I said.

"Dr. Michaelson? This is Thomas, head of security? We spoke yesterday? The Director wanted me to tell you that we have found nothing else. He wanted to know if you knew of any important papers or equipment at Dr. Johnson's house that should be brought back to the lab--before we do anything else.

Also, you will be given armed protection to your home and back and more, if you so desire."

"Thank you, and no,” I thought about it, “we didn’t usually take things home, not that I know of. I assume the police will give us what is ours if there is anything lying about? Is there anything else, Mr. Thomas?" Due to various proprietary applications being worked on elsewhere in the facility, security was always tight around here. None of us would have taken secret anything home.

"No, Sir. Thank you. I truly am sorry Dr. Michaelson, about the, situation. Sir?"

"Thanks? Oh, yes?"

"Sir, do you have any idea what--"

"No, sorry. But I am sure you will be talking with me again soon, correct?"

"No, Sir. `SMIC’, Sonni Military Intelligence Contracting, will take over. I have to go now, sir. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions or think of anything you believe that we should know. Thank you very much, sir. Have a good night."

I hung up the phone. Military Intelligence. I had to laugh at that well-worn, clichéd contradiction in terms. When will they learn? I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. Today I was scheduled to check resonant duplication from the sine wave functions generated by using multiple microphones as it related to EarVu.

I grabbed a random tape almost angrily from the tape storage shelf and went to the “wall”. Popping out the cassette in the deck I inserted a new one. I logged onto the network, called up EarVu and watched as the tape fed it’s audio to be translated into the hologram which displayed an entire colony of black army ants in and around an ant hill. I adjusted to “pan” down through semi-solid matter deep into the nest. Needing both hands for adjustments, I put the tape I had in my hand into my pocket and lifted out the other tape, suddenly realizing what it was!

"Oh, Hell. Test 2 tape?" My hands began to tremble with the realization of what the tape could be. I calmed down as I realized that chances were that it was really nothing. I tapped it on my cheek, considering what happened to Garrison and Johnson, and whether it might yet happen to me. That thought struck home for the first time. I was sure that the security people had thought of it long ago; still—I swapped the tapes out, threw the ant tape on the counter and went to the front door of the lab. I opened the door and, good--no one was there.

I had thought that there might be a Guard nearby for my protection, but apparently not. But as I closed the door I noticed the camera in the hall turn to look toward me. I watched as it zoomed in. Slowly, nonchalantly, I closed the door and hesitantly considered the possibilities. Was there some kind of military project related to what we had been working on? Easily, I supposed. I ignored the implications--for the time being and headed back to the wall. There were cameras in the lab, but not connected externally for purposes of security containment. No camera moved. Good.

I grabbed the remote control. My finger went for the button to initiate the tape but, I found I couldn't press it. I tried again. It was as if something were keeping me from activating the system. But what? Fear?

‘Come on,’ I screamed at myself deep within my mind. And that seemed to break the spell. Both of my colleagues may have been killed and I needed to know. I needed to know for my own safety, what the hell had happened. Finally, I hit the button and the tape initiated.

A few moments later the hologram lit up and I found I was looking at a mini version of the lab reproduced there on the low hologram table. The LASER idea had worked well. Images came out crisp and clear. A phrase Garrison had used to describe the playback popped into my mind.

"A visual so sharp it will make your eyes bleed." And Garrison had been right. The images were hard to look at, they were so sharp. After all, LASER light can be dangerous if you’re not careful. Some glasses hung on a hook by the tape deck, so I put them on. The side of them said they were from the same manufacturer as the LASER deck and tapes: Sonni. With the glasses, the image became even more defined and not so affecting; or dangerous.

Multiple microphones had been set up in the lab so I could clearly see Garrison's face in the recording made in this lab, night before last. He was drawn and pale as he watched himself in "real time" within the hologram from a tape he’d made of himself in the lab. It was a surreal illusion. I thought of the artist, Escher. I realized that just watching Garrison would get me nowhere, so I adjusted the controls to show only what the hologram within the hologram showed.

That was when things changed, rapidly.

Tomorrow, Part 9

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 7

Continuing with Part 7 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

Day 100

Michaelson must have installed the latest version of the Nano Transduction Module. Playback of the visuals using the NTM show, seemingly with purpose, shadow forms moving around. But perhaps it’s a situation like the studio technicians behind sound proofed glass who are just standing around watching and manipulating the recording process taking place?

Or perhaps we are seeing through multiple walls?

Day 101

On the shadow paradox: I have now proved that they are not the technicians at the recording site but in another room. What I am seeing is in the same room with the recording mics. I have viewed many tapes now and nearly all show these shadows when I use the NTM.

I have sharpened the images. A test tape is now ready to record.

#

I flipped through the diary but that was all it said about the test tape; in fact, that was all there was. I closed the book, got up and exited the office. I walked over to what we called, “the Wall”, a heavy assemblage of stereo and processor equipment covering an entire wall of the lab. Near the center of the room there was a low table where the hologram would be projected.

Built into this great wall of electronics were also several monitors where we could more closely scan various elements of the process while viewing the hologram. We used them a lot for commercially produced audio tapes so that we could separate out the various spliced sections and tracks.

Johnson had actually been able to find that a man had heart problems by playing a tape and focusing into the man’s chest, then focusing deep into his heart. Every day we were falling ever deeper into amazing things that we could do with this EarVu technology. There is no doubt about it, Garrison is a genius. The CIA had tried to do this for years and always failed to do what we have done in less than a year.

I examined the test tape more closely. It was one of the cassette-sized LASER tapes. These tapes were made of a similar substance as the tapes used in the old 80s film, "Brainstorm". Using a multi-colored LASER rather than magnetic realignment, they were fast, very dense, could store immense amounts of data and were well acclimated to this type of research. The theory went, since light could carry far more information, using this type of storage would yield much more complicated (and bizarre?) reproductions.

The amazing thing about these tapes was that they were relatively inexpensive to produce. It simply called upon technology which had been around for many years. It was how it was all put together that counted.

On the flip side of the tape was a date indicating that it had been made last week. I tapped the cassette on the back of my left hand, thinking. Opening the deck, another tape was in the LASER deck. It had “test 2” written on it. I swapped them, dropped the other into my pocket, then closed the deck and hit rewind. I walked around the hologram table checking data panels as things warmed up. Then something caught my eye. Down near the cables on the ground, there was a dark brown spot. It almost looked like--

I bent down to touch it. It was tacky and rough to the touch. I scraped a few flakes off with my fingernail. I spit into my palm and rubbed my finger in it, suddenly realizing that I was reconstituting a small sample of-- blood.

For a moment, I just stared at it. I looked around the lab again. I searched the floor for more--evidence. But evidence of, what? The maintenance people came through once every few days and were monitored whenever they were allowed in the lab. Tonight I knew they would be here. But that means they hadn't been in since—

I looked at the calendar, realizing that I was probably the first to have seen this.

I pushed the heavy hologram table slightly to the side, exposing more dried blood until, to my dismay, I saw wet, bloody smears. A great deal of blood had been lost here. Someone it seemed, had tried to clean it up, but they had missed some under the table. I stood back up and away, a bit stunned, wiping the blood stain in my palm on my blue shirt, leaving a purplish stain. I touched my forehead only to realize I was sweating.

I picked up the phone and called for security.

Later today, Part 8

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 6

Continuing with Part 6 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

Day 81

81
A rather large collection of audio tapes has grown around the lab. Each researcher has their own preference for the type of music or subject they use as research media. The most popular tape has actually been one of bird calls recorded out in the wild. We have worked out a LASER hologram record/projection unit and the scene it produced is tranquil and extremely beautiful. One could almost smell the scents of the fall season in the mountain meadow. We have discovered some tapes of a less “pristine” nature that are also popular and probably wouldn't get so much attention if we had a more mixed gender type of team.

Today we discovered that one has to remember not to, let’s say, have sex, when recording a tape; else others at a later playback will have the ability to run it through the Ear Vu processors and see everything that happened while the audio was recording. How many tapes of this type are out there in the world? What will this do to considerations of privacy?

The thought of the things we will see in reviewing old audio tapes is both disquieting and a little mind boggling. I’ve begun auditing my own personal audio recordings at home and have put several into my personal safe. There are two that I’m considering destroying.

Anyone having any thoughts that the desire of privacy will lead to actual privacy, already rapidly becoming a thing of the past, with Ear Vu technology there will now no longer be any grounds of expecting it whatsoever. Our research shows that sometime in the future it may be possible to view everything within a wide range of the recording device, whether or not the microphones were even accessible.

So far this technology does not work very well with old vinyl recordings. So for now, it is in magnetic media where the wealth of data is being collected and analyzed. We received the enhancement chip prototype today around noon and will have to install it when we have time.

EarVu technology will throw intelligence agencies the world over into chaos. Certain aspects of this frankly, terrify me.

#

I smiled. I remember that day. Not thinking, Johnson had scanned us a tape he’d made at home years ago. Suddenly, he and his wife were naked and having sex in a hologram in the lab. I chuckled and continued on to--

Day 98

I had some tapes sent over from the University Medical Center of a man having a heart attack, dying patients, and so forth. When I played it back I discovered there are shadows nearby that always seem to fade as a person gets closer to death. That is the opposite of the behavior I might expect to see by de-energizing? Are we seeing the sprit or soul dissipating? I must study this further.

#

That stopped me dead in my tracks. What the hell was going on? Why was Garrison holding back so much from us? What if intelligence agencies hear of this? What if they have? 

Tomorrow, Part 7

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 5

Continuing with Part 5 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

Day 66

Digital compression codecs such as those used on CDs and DVDs haven’t worked too well due to the digitalization which “clips” ranges; even “lossless” formats aren’t working well and when they do, they’re slow and their storage requirements are massive. But these efforts do have that possibility just around the corner; perhaps as the next medium of choice; though there is some concern about losing data. Multi-chromatic DVDs do show some promising behaviors but still, continuous analog medium is the easiest to manipulate at this time.

There is a certain, “choppiness” to the digital mediums at higher speeds, even with massive built in buffers. A simpler format, using a more complicated method of assembly, seems to be the answer and could be available by the coming spring.

We should receive a completed model of the new enhancement chips any day now. We are now connected to the University’s super computer. We can use it now in the non-peak hours for our more simple processing tasks.

Day 72

Quantum Pixel theory gives the best realizations and eventually will also supply us with the ability to see through things; able to view heartbeats of people in an audience near the recorder; and so much more. Ear Vu related M2-brane theory projections will disorientate the scientific community as it did us, at first.

Application of these theories have now allowed us to use any analog recording to study in detail  exactly what was going on in the audio range of the mics that were recording. For instance, the technicians in a sound studio cannot be seen as they are in a sound proofed room; but a recent breakthrough by Michaelson has shown us shadows of images believed to be those very same technicians! We are still unsure how we are seeing what could not have been recorded.

Perhaps something to do with heat, sound and light waves all being so similar but of varying degrees of the same scale. Although these are rather intense variations in scope, computers can fairly easily bring these numbers down into manageable form through a type of dimensional fractal replacement theory that we are currently working on. The significance of this is Nobel Prize level. There is simply no telling how much these discoveries will advance technology in general.

#

“Awesome,” I said aloud. He’s certainly not much of one for letting us in on these things. But a Nobel would be nice. I thought about that for a moment, then realized that it was actually all pretty obvious. I just hadn’t considered it. I scanned the lab through the glass wall, almost hoping no one would show up yet. This was getting interesting. I flipped forward much more earnestly. I had to smile when I read the opening of the next section, as I remembered well, that day.

Later today, Part 6

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 4

Continuing with part 4 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

Day 41

The reproduced scenes, our “Ear Vu scenes”, are still vague at distances but are now beginning to look much more like a filmed dream sequence. New compression algorithms of my formulas by Johnson are beginning to refine that. So, it’s only a matter of time.

Breakthroughs are happening faster than we have the time and manpower to run down those many possible directions in which we can go. Of the two scientists here working with me, we are also searching our own personal directions beyond the scope of our daily, scheduled research. In this way we will be able to more quickly map the many implications of practical applications that our discoveries are pointing out. Obvious alternate areas of research initially include: medical, nanotechnology, criminal sciences, and then so many others.

Really, the possible applications are limitless.

Day 57

The metal particles on magnetic tape have more recording capabilities than was ever before conceived. Just as it was recently found that pixels on photographic paper in an exposed photograph can be used to “look around corners” within the frame of any photographed scene, “moving pictures”-- no, that is not quite correct; “continuous motion pictures”, can now be made from analog audio recordings on mag tape.

This brings up some exciting possibilities for movies and such that are shot using continuous filmic devices (i.e., analog magnetic video cameras). From audio tape, we have now successfully reproduced a scene that was actually taking place in the room, next to the room, that the recording was made in.

Fascinating!

It is possible that any recording medium will suffice, not just magnetic tape, which is merely the medium of the moment. I have successfully used Ear Vu technology on an antique wire recorder with great success and viewed a scene from 1898 of its Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen using his "Telegraphone wire recorder device”.

The implications of this seem hard to comprehend. We will actually be able to watch holographic video of scenes from the turn of the last century! Adding to that, we can excise more audio than was previously believed to be stored in this or any other medium.

Today there was a strange amorphous mass that floated through the scene. I fear it’s a glitch or media damage, and will have to examine it more closely.

#

I sat there annoyed, wondering. Why didn’t he tell us about that? I paged forward.

Tomorrow, Part 5

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 3

Continuing with Part 3 of Ear Vu....

Image by Marvin Hayes

Day 23

Our new CPUs have now incorporated my EarVu formulas on an integrated farm of Centip3De chips, a near-threshold 7-layer 3D system that contains 128 ARM Cortex-M3 cores and 256MB of stacked DRAM. Most of this building outside our main lab is used up with this farm of CPUs and servers. These can visually (and of course, aurally) reproduce nearly an entire music hall; or most definitely, an entire (and discretely smaller) recording studio where the music would originally have been played at the time of recording.

Due to the piecemeal method of producing commercially recorded music by splicing together snippets of different tracks and “voices”, the most cohesive format for playback of Ear Vu technology is a single track, continuously recorded session.

Ear Vu visual imagery at this time appears more like what a partially blind person would see on LSD. Consider elements of a drum beat as the number one, as it enters the microphone then its echo as number “-1”; then those numbers keep trailing off in a diminishing form. The processors eliminate reverberations and shadow sounds and add contrast and brightness, etc. This will become more “fleshed out” as the coding becomes more refined. Between incorporating Mandelbrot set / fractal theory with translation software and the new super-cooled, next generation processors, we are seeing the quality getting rapidly better, almost by the hour.

#

“Blah, blah, blah,” I said and flipped forward--

Day 36

We have found that any analog recording machine can make good enough audio tape recordings to reproduce the visuals at the time of recording. However, the better the equipment, the better the quality of the visuals reproduced, and the deeper that one can travel into that moment. It quickly became obvious that the "mysterious duality" proposed by Cumrun Vafa, Amer Iqbal, and Andrew Neitzke in 2001, with its set of mathematical similarities between objects and laws describing M-theory on k-dimensional tori, play a big role in this technology and explains how the data can encompass magnetic particles on mag tape. The process is similar for old LASER tape technology from 1967, substituting photonic elements for magnetic.

#

“No, kidding,” I said aloud. Bored I tapped on the desk and looked around. Where the Hell did they go? I thought about getting something to eat, but I really wasn't that hungry, so I flipped forward some more.

Later today, Part 4

EarVu, a Sci Fi Horror story - Part 2

Part 2 of Ear Vu

Image by Marvin Hayes

Ear Vu Research Journal of Dr. Verne Garrison

Day 1

Today begins our “Ear Vu” technology studies of visually viewing from magnetic audio tape recordings. After having worked on this myself for several years, I successfully presented a proposal to the Sonni Corporation and have been given a private lab and a handpicked staff to pursue this new technology. They're an odd company, but they have deep pockets. Everyone knows their logo of the rogue elephant; they go their own way.

They've already drawn up a logo for Ear Vu, their famous rogue elephant looking out an ear with the words: "Remember like an elephant. Ear Vu recalls everything!"

Certainly, no one can say they don't get right on top of things. They are one of those conglomerates that seem to be everywhere and yet no one notices. A powerful organization. Maybe, too powerful.

Now, what exactly is Ear Vu?

The easiest way to understand this is to think of bats, whales or dolphins. Bats have the ability for echolocation using their biosonar, so that they can easily fly while avoiding things in their way. They draw within their minds a kind of sonarscape. One could imagine (incorrectly) that they "see" through sound. Ear Vu technology draws upon that theory and process, enhancing it to quite unbelievable degrees.

As magnetic audio tapes work through the recording of sound waves, forces of pressure rebound against the internals of a microphone, typically of either dynamic, condenser, ribbon or crystal types. Vibrations are transduced into electrical signals which are then stored on an analog medium such as magnetic tape; or digitally, but for this technology, only if there are enough discrete breakdowns and available storage. Typically, digital doesn't work for this in real time as nothing is yet fast enough to convert and record. It is best if done in bulk , using analog formats.

Thus, in turning physical movements into electrical impulses, playback can reproduce audio tones, and with a sophisticated enough system, recreate the dimensions of the original sound quality, depth of field, etc. That is, you can hear each instrument recorded in an orchestra, played back so that you can spatially “see” in your mind where each instrument would have been located, within that setting via the reproduced sound spectrum. It’s more amazing than it sounds.

What I only recently realized was that the recordings on magnetic analog tape, produced by magnetizing particles of either Iron or Chromium oxides, can record astonishing amounts of information. If then linked together with a good processor, it can reproduce far more than sound waves of limited range. We can enhance this in a variety of ways for example, by using analog video; or with LASER tapes, but not in the standard, digital way.

As noted, this is not yet workable using digital formats of storage as the speed of transfer and the amount of bytes required for storage are still quite limited. Whereas on analog recordings, magnetic storage medium is nearly unlimited in the amount of data it can store, “dimensionally”. This is something that was to a degree previously known, though access to retrieving the data was simply unavailable.

Ear Vu technology has drastically changed this retrieval limitation.

#

I lowered the journal and thought about that. Interesting to hear it put that way, but nothing I didn't really already know. I flipped forward a bit.

Tomorrow, Part 3