Chapter 6

When Stone, Inc. was started, Long was the first hire. The focus of the company then was on creating and analyzing performance metrics to determine takeover candidates for the businesses that hired them, as well as for wealthy investors.

Commercial business is where they began; Long was the team leader, Stone the boss. Five years later when the Nelson Corporation was started, Stone designated himself as its’ team leader.

Using their experience, intelligence, and guidance, they established the required synergy between the teams, laying the groundwork their invention needed. The thirty-year disparity in their ages meant nothing; they became friends over the first six years together.

Their relationship became strained, however, when their current, life-altering project began. Recent breakthroughs on remotely capturing human thoughts, known by aficionados as neural activity, led to a rush to develop powerful, accurate, thought-reading tools. The two of them analyzed the practicality of them developing those tools. It was more like a chasm than a stretch to do so; that didn’t matter. Between them they had money, and more importantly, a desire—no it was a need—to try.

The structure they put in place had Long in charge of developing programming code capable of capturing human neural activity, and sending it to Stone’s nascent software that would translate that activity into human language and display it on specially designed eyeglass lenses.

Hiring additional team members for this project was the next step. Becky Murphy was the first addition to Long’s team. Previously she worked at a data mining and artificial intelligence company called ‘Mine Yours’ while in college. Mine Yours was created following 9/11 to help identify terrorists, but with the uproar over fourth amendment issues (searches and seizures, put simply), the company switched to programs geared to help human resource departments identify the best sources for new hires, and programs for customer relationships in businesses.

Shortly after being hired, Becky Murphy was driving and listening to her streaming music on her way to work. ‘Leave Out All the Rest’ by Linkin Park was playing, and it made her question how her life unfolded, and how she was on her own again at the age of thirty-six.

Fresh from a mutually agreed to break-up of a five-year relationship, she was grappling with what happened and where to go from here. She did hurtful things but so did he; the relationship never developed as it needed to. He was becoming too narrow-minded about everything but himself while she kept an open mind about many things, especially the concern for all the hurt people had to endure.

It was not easy for her to leave someone she thought she had loved and had lived with for that length of time, then found out not only was love absent at the end, but doubted now that love was even there at the start. How was she so unaware of a relationship gone so stale? She was not alone; several friends and countless more on social media were going through the same realization: the person they were with was not the person they needed or wanted. Not only had she been in a stale relationship; that relationship was itself now a cliché.

She moved from Burlington, Massachusetts to Centerville, Connecticut after the breakup. A family friend, Jeremiah Long, told her of an opening in his company. Becky’s double majors of psychology and communication complemented the backgrounds of others on the staff and she was soon hired. She immediately felt at home working at Stone, Inc.

Her selection to Long’s team began when Long and Stone invited her to lunch for an interview. After arriving at their favorite lunch spot and ordering drinks, Stone spoke.

“Becky, Jeremiah and I have been, shall we say, impelled, no compelled, to initiate, develop, and put into action a means to capture people’s thoughts. We have reviewed your qualifications and want to explain what we do so that you can ask questions and we can mutually decide if you will be a good fit. Do I sound like a good human relations person?” he asked with a smile.

Murphy, looking baffled yet smiling broadly nonetheless, as if she expected Stone to say those exact words, said nothing.

The men waited for a moment, looked at each other, and then looked back at her. She continued to smile but not speak.

“Why haven’t you spoken?” asked Stone.

“I didn’t think it was necessary,” she finally answered, again with that smile on her face.

It took the men a second, but then they both nodded at the same time as a light bulb went off in their heads.

“A little slow on the uptake, but we get it. If we want to know what you are thinking, we can simply read your mind.”

Murphy nodded and said,

“Too bad you can’t read my mind right now. On second thought, maybe not.”

Stone momentarily considered asking what she meant by that remark, but decided not to. Instead, he said, “Look, we understand. Reading people’s minds sounds impossible to do. But we are much closer to being able to do this than people are aware of. There is little awareness because scientific community does not discuss it much, it’s not publicized except in trade journals, and it is such a scary and unbelievable concept that people would not approve of it anyway. I see by the look on your face that this isn’t making any sense yet,” Stone said.

“I understand that most people think of telepathy if they think of mind-reading, but how many people believe in telepathy? You are not talking about telepathy though, are you?” Murphy asked.

“No, we’re not. Telepathy is the transfer of thoughts from one person to another. With thought-reading, scientists have been able to monitor brain waves while people were speaking. Then, using machine learning to develop artificial intelligence, the brain waves were matched to syllables and numbers and thought-reading occurred. Right now, a wireless brain-to-computer connection is being developed that will understand words that are thought, not spoken. So in a short time, we will be able to read people’s thoughts. More work needs to be done to get to this point, but we’re getting close,” answered Stone.

“I work with computers, languages, and software all the time, Jon; even so, I don’t think I understand everything you said.”

“You don’t have to understand the technology involved. Understand that in a few short months, people’s thoughts will be read. And with your help we’ll get there, faster than anyone else working on this project. Imagine the uses.”

“I can, and some of them leave me cold and scared.”

“Becky, when we sell our product to the highest bidder, in one transaction we will earn more money than the hundred wealthiest persons in the world have amassed over a lifetime. That thought should warm and fortify you,” said Stone with a smile.

Murphy wasn’t satisfied with that answer but said nothing.

Long’s neural-impulse-gathering team was completed with the hiring of Ralfs Bartulis and Keith ‘Kahuna’ Little. Both were brought on as consultants and both had more than twenty years' experience in programming and systems analysis. As consultants, they would not share in the fabulous wealth that the employees would if they successfully brought the invention to market first. But they would become wealthy.

The assembling of Stone’s team, responsible for the translation of neural output captured by Long’s team’s software into human language, went on apace. In addition to Stone, members were Gary Danders, Sai Jain, and Roy Summa. Jain was trained in Artificial Intelligence programming and was as capable as Stone in conceptualizing, an ability required for this project to be successful.

Summa was a programmer, but his area of expertise was in finances. Stone was competent in financial matters, but lacked the formal education Summa had.

In an effort to keep the development of both systems a secret from the competition, Stone’s team worked apart from Long’s at the Nelson Corporation location in Centerville, CT.