"Come on, there's nothing to be afraid of. It won't hurt or anything".
It was the first time ever for Anders to wear the scanner net. "All you gotta do is sit down, relax, and close your eyes."
Laura helped him put on the net which looked a bit like a thick bathing cap. Next, she plugged in the electrodes that both of them had had implanted in the back of their necks and upper arms six months ago.
"Are you starting to feel anything?" she asked.
Anders took a deep breath and sat back in the chair. Yes, he did feel something - a flicker, like the burn-in in your eyes if you've been looking directly into a light bulb. A minute later, he started seeing faint shapes and colors, and at about the same time, he became aware that he was having these vague, somehow separate feelings - it all reminded him of the sounds that would come out of a radio if you kept turning the dial between various channels.
"Relax! I can tell that you are tense". He exhaled slowly again and kept his eyes tightly closed. The patterns formed by the shimmering dots grew clearer and started looking like a low-resolution display.
Gradually, he could make out a person sitting in a chair - he knew that it was him. He was looking at himself through Laura's eyes. He waved and the blurred figure inside his head also waved. Laura laughed and Anders suddenly felt a surge of happiness and joy. Not only did he receive the input from her eyes, he was also affected by her moods and Laura's reactions to the situation.
Wow! Anders felt like he was on the threshold of having a totally new way of understanding the world - and he knew that Laura felt the exact same thing.
Anders and Laura were operator trainees. Once they had completed the course, they would be able to operate most types of tele-presence robots, be it the gigantic cranes at construction sites, the exploration robots in hazardous environments, or the rearrangement of individual molecules at nano-scale level. The procedure was largely the same irrespective of the size of robot they would operate. Also, it didn't really matter where the robot was located. Often, they would not even operate a robot in the physical world. The many simulators and 3D universes employed in science as well as by companies for planning and organizing purposes were usually controlled in ways very similar to the navigation of many of the more advanced computer games.
The basic principle was to link up to the system in the most direct way possible. Usually, the actions required were extremely complex - demanding extreme precision, and in some instance the operator's ability to react within a split second was crucial. Therefore, technology had long since outgrown the concept of joystick and screen. Instead the operator's nervous system was increasingly being linked up directly to the computer.
The most recent version of the scanner net had added another important dimension. Not only would the net make a fairly detailed scan of the brain's functions, it would also transmit rough sensory impressions and reactions between several interlinked operators - which was what Anders and Laura had just experienced.
This process made it possible to cooperate at a much more precise and coordinated level and not least it made it possible to combine the controlling skills of an operator with the knowledge of an expert within the field of operation.
While, for instance, an operator would control the tiny surgical robot inside the veins of a patient, a doctor would join it on its journey and chart the course. Or a geologist would appraise the situation while the operator controlled the deep-mine excavator.
Anders' and Laura's instructor always had great fun showing the students his old pictures of the first brain scanners. Back in the 1990's, they were huge machines that would encircle the patient claustrophobically and require him to lie absolutely still. The technological principles, however, were largely the same as today, i.e. measuring blood flows in the brain. Red blood cells contain iron and using an extremely powerful magnet, shifts in activity levels in the various parts of the brain can be measured indicating the shifting flows of thoughts. Whenever one part of the brain is being used more intensively than other parts, that particular area will "light up" on the scanner because the blood will flow in to provide the extra energy required to complete the process.
Gradually, via tens of thousands of scans, the scientists mapped the ways in which individual parts of the brains react to stimuli and tasks, and even now - several decades later - that mapping is being refined into still more detailed and complete insights into the brain's functions.
As has been demonstrated numerous times, biology is a complex matter. Each individual kind of thought does not activate just one area of the brain. Many different areas work together at all times and the ways and manners in which they interlink are key to understanding the brain.
Nonetheless, the precision and reliability of present day scan technology has reached a level that offers us a very useable view of what takes place inside a person's brain.
Today, when you put a scanner net on, its precision is significantly higher than the heavy-duty apparatuses used a few decades ago. It is a good example of how dramatically the tools that we use have changed thanks to recent developments within material technologies. The scanner net is an ultra closely knit cap made from microscopic threads. The material is designed - from the basic molecular level - to be not just super conductive, but extremely durable, as well.