SImp

I had felt rather sick, that afternoon—fourteen years ago. It was while we were snorkeling.

[Son . . . ] I started, Dad had always called me by name. [I want you to know how proud of you, I am. Imp gives you very high marks.]

Then it hit me. First, we were underwater, and you can't talk, even if you didn't have a snorkel stuck in your mouth. Second, Dad sounded as if he talked to Imp also, at which impossibility I spewed my snorkel out into the water and tried to inhale a lung full of seawater. Dad thrust me to the surface and slapped my back until the spasm of coughing desisted. I opened my mouth to protest.

[Don't talk Lawrence vocally,] Dad said, his mouth moving imperceptibly. [Just tell Imp that you want to talk to me, then talk inside as if you were talking to Imp, I'll hear you.]

I left my jaw dangling loosely in the breeze and didn't say a word, although a strangled croak did emerge. My eyes must have shown my thoughts because Dad continued, [I know it's a shock, it was to me when your Grandfather first told me.]

Now Imp has always been with me, ever since I could remember. He was a real companion—in spite of what Mom said. He helped me when I needed it. The other kids in the area would never play hide and go seek with me. It was almost as if I could see through bushes and walls.

I'll never forget the class bully's look of disbelief that day when he went over my shoulder. Imp helped me with that one—he seemed to take control of my muscles (You know—knowing how to do something, and being able to do it under pressure, are two different things?) The next thing I knew, Todd was on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. Shawna, the prettiest girl in school, (She was missing her two front teeth) was looking at me in adoration for having come to her rescue. Come to think of it; they are expecting their first child any day now.

Mom thought that Imp was just your standard imaginary childhood friend. She would joke about it to Dad. Mom called us 'Calvin and Hobbes,' after an old comic book collection that she had restored. (For the price of that restoration, I could have downloaded the entire Imperial library, into my deskcom.) However, Mom insisted that you could not get the true flavor of a book unless you could hold it in your hands. Now that I think back, Dad never laughed with her when she teased me about Imp. I recall him saying, "Don't tell anyone about Imp, they won't understand, they'll laugh at you," and I hadn't, not since I understood what it was to be different.

[Dad?] I said, using my inside voice.

[Yes?]

[How do you know about Imp?] I said, my voice quavering slightly.

[Well . . . ] Dad said, in a matter-of-fact tone. [You have a Comlink, via a string-communicator, to a master computer, buried in granite under the mountains close to home. You have a small biological computer—quite powerful in its own right, inside your head—that has inputs and outputs to your speech, sight, hearing, and voice centers. Theoretically, you should be able to maintain communication with Imp anywhere in the universe, as string communication appears to be non-directional and instantaneous, at least from a human standpoint. Yours is unique, as you have the largest implant so far, with a neural network linked to virtually the entire surface of your brain. Imp is just our nickname for 'Implant.' Although it was his unique sense of humor—if a supercomputer can be said to have a sense of humor, that originally got him that name.]

[His idea of real thigh thumping humor would be to put itching powder into your spacesuit just before you went on twelve-hour guard duty. He takes things literally—so watch it!] I heard the faint echo of laughter in the background as if a wind chime was singing in a light breeze. [In reality, he's a highly modified, Model SI-mp3d with vastly increased memory and connections to nearly all infonets anywhere in the universe.]

I stared deep into dad's eyes, my eyes filled with disbelief and wonder. The SImp models were scarce, only one other was still in use, and it was operating at a minimum level as a museum exhibit. SImp's were Self Integrating, massively parallel computers, using neural network architecture similar to the human brain and capable of self-programming. All the other systems had gone 'crazy' and had finally shut down in the computer equivalent of catatonic withdrawal. The last of them to be built was the 'D' series.

[My father was the first,] Dad said, [For him, it was just an information retrieval system. It gave him a slight advantage over the competition. Your grandfather got his implant as a young man of 80 and never really understood what it could do. I had mine installed when I was in my forties. It took till I was fifty-five before I could talk directly to Imp.]

[It took some finagling to do it, but you received yours when you were not quite six months. Your mother was away to a 'Doc. E.E. Smith', space opera convention on Beta Antares IV. Occasionally her obsession with the old classics has its advantages. I took advantage of her absence. She doesn't know, so don't talk about this to her or anyone! Understand?]

[Yes Father,] I meekly replied, too stunned to do otherwise.

[You grew up with yours, so it is normal for you. I have to concentrate to use it.]

As he talked, I started to put two and two together and kept coming up with five. How I could add at all, with all that buzzing in my ears, was beyond me. Everything that I looked at kept zooming in and out. Dad was just a businessman—wasn't he?

As Dad talked, I went into a kind of trance, not hearing the words, but understanding them. Our family, for generations, had worked with the Council of Fifty. Theoretically, they were just concerned with local issues; in reality, however, they were intergalactic in scope. The Council's primary goal was to preserve mankind's' right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was their publicly stated goal to keep the Emperor in check. The men in our family had for generations done what the Fifty needed to be done—in as quiet a manner as possible. The implant, the last invention by Dr. Allsop. No—Not Dr. Cory Allsop who is responsible for the Transporters, or Ports as they are known in everyday language, his son, Dr. Julian Allsop. Both Allsops' had been members of the Council. My implant allowed me to see, hear, manipulate, and communicate information with an unfair advantage. Similar to the 'Heads Up Display' of the old time fighter pilot or a Marine's helmet. I had with my augmented vision a 'HUD'—only vastly superior.

I had led a 'sheltered life,' although my dad had tried to prepare me for this moment. I loved the gymnastics and fencing, but I just hadn't been able to see any sense in the self-defense classes even though I begrudgingly did them. At least until that episode with Todd, when I started to see their real value, eventually doing them for their own sake, that is, for pure enjoyment. Now it was time for me to know the truth and become aware of the real world so that I could continue the traditions of our family. I had learned to watch how I talked about Imp around Mom. Now I would have to keep this secret as well.

The main reason that he was telling me this, so early in my life, was a conspiracy that threatened the empire. Dad had overheard agents of the conspiracy, while he was on Caribbia—a resort planet made up of small islands and beautiful shallow oceans. While he watched and listened, with augmented vision and hearing, these plotters had discussed plans to kill the Emperor and most of the Senate. A poor unsuspecting tourist had blundered on to them. Without compunction, they had rendered him immobile with their bare hands then held him under water until he drowned and heartlessly dumped him to be washed ashore as just any other accident victim. This group was out to replace the entire government with one of their own, which could be catastrophic; they already had some Imperial senators under their sway and were working on others.

A month later he left on a "business" trip to Draco. We never heard from him again. Imp told me that whatever happened occurred so fast that he couldn't have felt anything, which was a comfort of sorts.

Now the Council of Fifty was the only other entity to know of Dad's discovery, that meant that I could not turn to them for help. Just on the suspicion that the conspiracy had secreted an agent there. Only one person on the council even knew that I had an Implant and he had recently died. The rest of the Council thought that I was just an immature infant, not yet ready to follow in my father's steps; this was something that I would have to tackle on my own.

From that time on I started a campaign as a spoiled rich kid, always partying, wasting time and money as if there were no tomorrow, this entirely frustrated my betrothed, Diana, who couldn't believe that I was doing this. (OK, so I was too young to get married, in my area we tended to have very long engagements and sometimes our families' plan our futures for us as mine had done.) She stuck with me anyway; you know that family honor thing. So here she was, thinking that it was the loss of my father that had temporarily unbalanced me. My school chum, Yamada Hanako, told me that I had turned Otaku on her. Mother was confident that I had gone over the deep end, but she never quit trying to help me, always with love and caring.

Secretly, I practiced my fencing and self-defense skills with almost a monomaniacal passion. I used the aid of a robotic trainer. Fencing is great for reflexes and nerves. Gymnastics became an obsession. I swam daily, slowly developing a musculature that was unique. I had always trained in a high gee field, but now I lived, slept, and worked out virtually twenty-four hours a day in a three-gravity field, this gave me muscles of plasteel, although it didn't show. My physique was similar to a top swimmer's, strength, but no bunched up bulky muscles. My reaction time went through the roof. Eventually, I was at a point that the rest of the world seemed to be moving in

slow motion.

Imp informed me that he had encouraged my biological computer implant to grow beyond the bounds that its human designers had intended. It now had networks in parallel to nearly all my nerves, which allowed me a faster reaction time than was humanly possible. Less you think I neglected the intellectual side; Imp put me through an unusual training program—problem-solving, not memorization. I guessed that I could have had a dozen doctorates if I'd had the time to go by the rules. One public activity that I espoused was ballet; this improved my timing and helped enhance my reputation (I wasn't a manly man—like my father.)

Finally, I felt that I was ready, my family had publicly disowned me, and my own money was gone—well . . . the public thought so. I had developed quite the reputation, as a looser, a 'failure' I approached Duke LeFevere, an old friend of the family, who pulled some strings for me. I entered the diplomatic service as an ambassador's aid, a third secretary's assistant attaché's assistant—assigned to Draco, the planet where my dad had disappeared.