As it rotated, the pattern looked to have the same crystalline structure and shape as a snowflake.
“Are you familiar with fractal antennas?” Malik asked.
Lorna fought through her despair to answer. It took her an extra beat to croak out a “No.”
“Do you own a cell phone?”
The strange question pierced the fog in her head. Curiosity focused her sharper. “Of course.”
“Then you already own a fractal antenna. In the last decade, scientists have learned that antenna arrays patterned after fractals have an amazing ability to broadcast along a wider range of frequencies with a greater strength-to-size ratio. This breakthrough allowed manufacturers to shrink antennas down to microscopic sizes, yet still function like antennas a hundredfold larger. It’s revolutionized the industry. That’s the power hidden within fractals.”
Malik pointed to the screen. “And that’s what we’re looking at here. A fractal antenna grown from natural magnetite crystals in the brain.”
Lorna studied the snowflakelike pattern and remembered her own crude analogy to a satellite dish. She also recalled the strange synchronization of EEGs. “And it’s this fractal antenna that allows the animals to link up neurologically.”
“Exactly. The pattern of magnetic crystallization seen here is definitely fractal in nature. The entire neural matrix is made up of the repetition of the same basic crystal shape.”
“Like the triangle multiplying into a mountain.”
Malik nodded. “But this is only the tip of that mountain. Initially this scan was the best we could discern using standard techniques. Such methods only allowed us to look so far. Even zooming down with an electron microscope only revealed a crystal made up of hundreds of even tinier crystals. It was like with those Russian nesting dolls. Every time you thought you’d reached the smallest crystal, it would open up to reveal even smaller versions of itself inside. It went on and on- stretching beyond our ability to detect.”
Malik’s voice cracked with frustration. Lorna remembered the raw desire in the researcher’s eyes as he described his search for a fundamental fractal that was the root of all intelligence.
“No matter how hard we looked, the primary fractal kept retreating out of reach, growing smaller and smaller, eventually disappearing beyond where we could scan, down a spooky hole no one dared follow.”
Lorna pictured the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland bounding down his rabbit hole.
“And though we weren’t able to go down that hole, I could guess what was down there.”
Lorna’s interest piqued sharper. “What?”
“The strange world of quantum physics. Following fractals smaller and smaller, it eventually leads to the subatomic world. In fact, some physicists now believe that the science of fractals could explain away some of the spookiness of quantum theory. Such things like nonlocality and entanglement, how a subatomic particle can be at two places at once, how light behaves both like a wave and a particle. When you get that small, things get weird. But fractals may hold the answer to explaining it all.”
Lorna didn’t see where this was going. Her impatience must have been plain to read.
“So let me show you what I learned myself from that research. Something practical, yet amazing. I scanned this same brain again, but this time, not looking for crystals, but for the magnetic energy produced by those crystals. Though I might not be able to see the physical crystals, I could still measure the electromagnetic signature from those invisible crystals.”
“Like the light from distant stars,” Lorna said.
Malik’s eyes widened, caught by surprise. “Yes, a perfect analogy. Though we can’t see a sun or a planet, we can detect the light that reaches us.”
“So you repeated the scan looking for energy instead of crystals.”
“I did. And this is what I found.”
He pointed a remote control at the screen and pressed a button. The blue snowflake suddenly bloomed outward, becoming a cerulean storm within the specimen’s skull.
Lorna gasped and covered her mouth in shock. “It’s everywhere…”
Malik smiled, proud of his discovery. “Each node is like the seed of a fractal tree. The crystals spread outward into branches, then into tinier stems, and on and on.”
Lorna pictured the fractal tree she had been shown earlier, how a single Y grew into a three-dimensional tree. The crystals were doing the same in the brain, spreading outward while growing tinier and tinier at the same time until they were no longer visible with any scanning tool, but they could still be detected by the electromagnetic radiation coming off the hidden crystals, energy rising out of the subatomic world.
Malik waved her back to her seat by his desk. “So I’ve shown you how far down this fractal puzzle burrows. How it roots down into the quantum world. So now let’s consider the opposite: how far this fractal tree stretches outward. You already know these specimens are capable of linking up, of networking together.”
She nodded and understood where he was going. “You believe by linking together that same fractal tree is branching out further into the world.”
“Correct. The fractal tree is growing beyond the confines of a single skull. And growing stronger.”
Lorna remembered Igor reciting the mathematical constant pi.
“Which begs the question where will it end? If it can spread nearly infinitely down into the subatomic world, can it spread infinitely outward. If so, what might be the result? What level of supreme intelligence might be created?”
In her mind’s eye, Lorna pictured the roots of this fractal tree disappearing into the world of quantum energy, feeding on that infinite source of power. Yet she also pictured those tree branches expanding ever outward. Maybe it was the earlier biblical analogies that had started this discussion that drew one last comparison from her.
“It’s almost like the Tree of Knowledge. From the book of Genesis.”
Malik gave a dismissive snort. “Now you’re sounding like Mr. Bennett.”
Her voice grew firmer, drawing strength from certainty, fearful of what manner of intelligence would be born from this experiment. It made her go cold.
“You have to stop what you’re doing,” she said.
Malik sighed as he sank into his desk chair, plainly disappointed. “As a fellow scientist, I had hoped you’d be more open-minded.”
She was saved further admonishment by a knock on the door. The genetics technician stepped again into the room, bearing aloft a steel tray holding three large syringes.