The Cy;borg

CY;BORG

High Street, Columbus, Ohio
Friday, April 20, 2007
2:15 p.m.

The 1998 cherry red Camaro hurtled down High Street at 75 miles an hour. It didn't slow for the 10 red lights between Ohio State and the City Center. Its driver, a young man in his late twenties, had blonde hair and light complexion....and a blank stare on his face. That was all she saw right before it hit a brand new Lexus....black without a speck of dust. The impact was heard throughout downtown....a loud explosion of metal and glass as the driver's side door caved in, and the chasis bent around the Camaro. The driver, a business man from Nationwide Insurance's corporate office, had just pulled out onto High Street when the stop light had turned green. He was declared dead at the scene. The carnage was like a horror movie...the body was still strapped into the seatbelt, lifeless with a puddle of dark blood seeping under the vehicle. The young blonde man walked away from his Camaro without a scratch. He seemed to be in a trance..walking stiffly and his eyes were fixed...not focusing on the local environment. The police handcuffed him and wisked him away in the back of a cruiser.

Ohio State University, Psychology Building, Room 205
Friday, April 20, 2007
2:45 p.m.

"Esteemed gentlemen and ladies, please be seated. Class is about to commence," a grizzled man in a rumpled brown pair of pants and blue shirt with a loosened polyester tie said to the young twenty-somethings as they filed into the classroom.

"Professor Krug," a young blonde coed interrupted as she smacked her bubble gum and twisted her stringy blonde hair," are we still taking the test over animal behavior? I didn't have my  notes last night because my boyfriend's car broke down on High Street."

"Rest assured, Ms. Cole, your test scores will not improve that much from one night of cramming. However, I am about to give a reprieve to the class...we will take the test Monday. Please be seated, " he smiled a grandfatherly smile.

"Class, please be seated. We have just had a wonderful question from one of your classmates. Ms. Cole was unable to study last night since her boyfriend's car broke down and she didn't have access to her notes.(Snickering from the back of the room) So, I have decided to give your class a reprieve...we will review today. The test is Monday."

"As you well remember, where we left off on Wednesday, we had just begun to talk about the use of primates in our study of the neurobiology of the brain. Some researchers at Cornell University had implanted some leads into the brains of apes, and with slight electrical pulses, were able to map out the brain functioning. Apes that wanted a banana had learned to emit certain responses, and were rewarded with a big, ripe, yellow banana. Just like our former colleague here at Ohio State University...B.F. Skinner theorized. A Condition then response. It was not a biochemical response....no...I would add that it was a learned behavior....from electrical impulses. Researches postulated that they could change that behavior by implanting electrical impulse generating devices that would cause them to starve themselves rather than eat that banana. Or perhaps, I could point to the work by Delgado in Spain...using implants in a charging bull to make him stop dead in his tracks...with a hand-held remote control. Or better yet the work of our esteemed colleagues at the University of New York, Stony Brook. He developed a way of teaching rats with implants in their brains to go down a hallway....charging left or right when their whiskers tingled on one side or the other. What a great idea for some of those Art Professors that seem to get constantly lost going to class...."