“Nobody is making allegations,” Yuri countered quickly. “Nor leveling charges of illegality. Right now, I have a kid I need to find—and fast. So I need to eliminate as many possibilities as I can, so I’m not wasting time. That’s all.”
“Once we heard claims of this abuse, our growthmasters looked into the process,” Hai-3 said. “From a theoretical viewpoint only. We wished to see if it was indeed possible.”
“Of course. And is it?”
“Without actually using a test subject, we cannot give a definitive answer.”
“Best guess will do for me.”
“Our simulation indicated it would ultimately be possible to transplant a human brain from one body to another, given the correct circumstances.”
“What are those circumstances?”
“That the host and donor bodies would have to share a very similar biochemistry, extending far beyond simple blood type matching. The most ideal match would be between humans in the same family.”
Yuri couldn’t quite avoid the shudder of revulsion that brought on. He did manage to avoid a small prayer of thanks to the dear Virgin Mary that he’d never had children. He hadn’t been inside a church for more than a century, but thanks to his mother, the Russian Orthodox Church had been an ever-present influence in his early childhood. “I see. But if a family member wasn’t available?”
“It would still be possible, though the number of candidates would be small. You would have to be very lucky to find one.”
“Or know a man that can,” Yuri murmured. “Okay. So I’ve done my research and have a suitable donor body. What do I need from you?”
“Such a procedure would require a great deal more than Kcells profiled to conduct nerve impulses between human neuron junctions.”
“What else do you need?”
“Nerve repair in humans is now relatively successful, if expensive. The use of stem cells to regenerate damaged nerves is approaching an eighty percent success rate. However, reconnecting severed nerves is extremely difficult. And for a brain transplant, every nerve in the spinal cord would first have to be severed. Before you did that, you would need a micron-level scanner sophisticated enough to identify and tag the individual nerve pathways. It would first be used on the spinal cord of the person whose brain was to be transplanted, then on the victim, in order to know how to match them up.”
“Yeah.” Yuri closed his eyes, trying to visualize the problem. “I get that. You’d need to join the right pathways up; otherwise you’d think you were moving a leg when you’re actually bending your arm.”
“A crude analogy, but essentially correct,” Hai-3 said. “However, it is not just the nerves that control muscle movement that would be required. You would also have to successfully reconnect the body’s entire sensorium, or you would be completely numb and unable to control the muscles that you did command to move. Apparently our human partners have taken to calling it zombie syndrome.”
“Sounds about right,” Yuri conceded.
“I am not aware of any scanner that sophisticated being built,” Hai-3 said. “Furthermore, as well as this hypothetical scanner, you would require a nanosurgical device to physically connect the severed nerves to both ends of the Kcell bridge. We have been examining this procedure with our human corporate partners.”
“You’ve experimented on humans?” Yuri did his best to ignore Stéphane’s sigh of exasperation.
“Certainly not,” Hai-3 said. “We have formed development and sales partnerships with several human biogenetic companies; they provide us with their requirements, and we try to profile our Kcells accordingly. There have been attempts to use a Kcell nerve fiber to bridge a missing nerve section in pigs. Some were successful. Some not. Progress is slow, but is being made. I would caution you, the largest number of nerves in a bundle that were reconnected by company research teams was eleven. There are several million nerves at the top of the human spinal cord, so the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than anything currently achieved. If a scanner and surgical device could be built, the procedure would have to be controlled by a G7Turing. Given the number of nerves involved, the subject would probably have to be placed in a coma, and the operation would be conducted over a period of months. I am not certain how much human money would be involved in funding such an enterprise.”
“Right,” Yuri said. “So basically, what you’re telling me is that brain transplants don’t exist?”
“Currently, yes, although it may become possible in the future. Another factor in this equation is the Kcell nerves themselves. As I told you, several million individual fibers would be required for such an operation. In the last seven years, we have provided our research partners with a total of two and a half thousand.”
Yuri felt strangely disappointed by Hai-3’s reassurance. At the same time, it did make him wonder exactly what had happened to Horatio. “That’s good to know, thank you.”