“PSYCHONIX is a compulsively readable roller-coaster ride fraught with psychological thrills, unanticipated dips and lurches, and replete with existential truths. This neo-apologetics whirlwind has the making to fascinate you philosophically, psychologically, and nostalgically in equal measures.” ~ Dr. Gary R. Habermas, Liberty University
"Believe me when I say PSYCHONIX is very interesting reading. I was engaged. Mike Burnette has done an outstanding job of capturing the mind-body problem arguments accurately and in an interesting, readable way." ~ Dr. J.P. Moreland, Talbot School of Theology,
THERE IS A NARNIA, and death was the wooded nexus that made travel there possible. Not through a magical wardrobe, but an induced state of cryobiosis generated in the Amaranth. At any rate that was what Dr. Mark Starr, the director of Innovations Technology Lab (ITL) regarded as true. He believed that experiments would prove it. It wasn’t an imaginary land ruled by a tyrannical White Witch, but a reality conceived by a maximally great being, where perfected bodies may actually dwell symbiotically with conscious souls, and life wasn’t described merely in the language of the typical neuroscientific, physics, or chemistry.
The notion was bandied about but required verification.
Even thinkers who denied this sort of view admitted that it was common religious lore—but scientifically implausible. It was dismissed out of hand in serious academic circles with, you’re on your own, if you want to believe in imaginary friends.
If the afterlife was legit, as Dr. Starr believed, it was indeed extraordinary in the truest sense of the word. You didn’t cease to exist when the “lights go off.” The real questions were who turned the lights on in the first place—and was there a way out?
He was confident that a robust case could be offered for the view that consciousness and the soul were immaterial realities—and Near-Death Experiences (NDE) seemed to count in its favor. The previous one-hundred years had uncovered highly evidenced cases of souls who had, by all accounts, traveled beyond the physical realm, interacted with the dead, and at times revealed themselves to other living persons. The testimonies were disclosed by ostensibly sane people who had entered a disembodied state upon death or near death and had somehow returned to tell their phenomenal stories to experts in the field.
The metaphysical studies didn’t, for one minute, settle the issue of whose religion was right, nor was it meant to. But by nearly all accounts it confirmed the idea that humans were a functioning unity of two distinct entities, body and soul, or an immaterial entity, life principle or ground of sentience—and that there was indeed life after death. Dr. Starr was turned on to the notion through The Journal of Near-Death Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the psychology and psychiatry that studies the physiology, phenomenology and after-effects of near-death experiences.
It was far beyond anecdotal hearsay.
Initially those involved in the Mind-Body Problem project, at Innovations Technology Laboratory, were researching and developing telepathic technologies and a synthetic intelligence designed to match wits and beat the no-win scenarios presented by an artificial super-intelligence on the battlefield. The design model proposed for the U.S. Government was an integration of the human brain and artificial intelligence, to form a transhuman who had creative powers and mental abilities far beyond those of mere humans and robots. Their beta model of PSYCHONIX or PSYCHOLOGICAL BIONICS would likely be worn or implanted and draw from all streams of data, making it the most powerful evolution of a ChatGPT interface ever developed in the world.
If programmed well for its carrier, it may prove to be a profound secret weapon and the only thing separating truth from lies, biased programming, or even the Kobayashi Maru presented by criminals. It would necessarily provide a healthy dose of human creativity, critical thinking, and honesty that could help us survive any future risk. It was fine-tuned using both supervised internet swotting and reinforced private learning techniques adapted by the participant. The adaptive coding logic was demonstrably competitive and was markedly effective in unpredictable environments. The intuitive and flexible person wearing the device could potentially call audibles faster than a Madden NFL Football V quarterback on steroids.
It was truly innovative—in the strictest sense.
It was also conceivable that a neural implant would regulate memory and communicate with DNA through the brain and central nervous system. It would more directly increase and optimize brain functionality with a variety of sensory feedback that may eventually enliven a convincing human-level intelligence, interactions, and provide high-end humanoid robots an AI-generated consciousness.
That would be later.
The vision was for PSYCHONIX to be an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that could perform any intellectual task that a human could with AI-generated 3D assets. They were on the cusp of a JARVIS-like system becoming commonplace within augmented-virtual reality (AVR) glasses, and in due course contacts, ocular implants, chips, and even time release pills. It was all on the table. It was the future and it had undeveloped possibilities to provide cures for diseases, enable lifespans, and develop faster spacecrafts—but misinformation on the internet was already skyrocketing to new levels.
ITL leaned into their projects and spent vast sums of money on research and development. They soon discovered, through a piece of good fortune, that there was a perceptible science to the supernatural. The self-evident lines which looked to separate the disparate fields of study were seemingly erased when ITL unexpectedly detected an immaterial mental substance, they classified as PSYCHON radiation. Unlike Steven Hawking’s speech processor of the past—this machinery didn’t require physical interactions, like eye movement or facial cues, to communicate with the PSYCHONIX technology. What they discovered was that we’re all uniquely coded with an unusual mental radiation, a fine-tuned fingerprint that can be read and amplified.
Dr. Mark Starr presumed that PSYCHONS originated from the soul. His supreme challenge was how to separate and harness this cognitive power source. It would be time-consuming, if not nearly impossible to chart the full range of the Holt spectrum that it was newly defined on. The tiny module of hardware to be tested for this exploration was a high-level AI duplexer with a MDSL-1 (Multi-Dimensional Spatial Lattice) microchip and Psychomorphic Interface (PI) that was expected to both remain with the corpse and simultaneously dematerialize and bind to the soul—if indeed there was such a thing. He postulated that you could untether the soul from the body and allow for a peek beyond death. The gadget should aid the central nervous system and track the person as they transitioned. It, no doubt, highlighted the beyond imagination Innovations part of ITL, although to some Insane was more apropos.
Dr. Starr advanced his theories as a dualist who believed that the soul was an immaterial sort of thing different from the body and brain, at least in the sense that a human could enter life after death and leave their corpse behind. The physicalists on staff, were those who mostly denied the existence of a soul and said that consciousness was merely physical or at least dependent on the physical, in that it emerged somehow from the brain. They might see something, but it would likely be imaging.
The Mind-Body Problem project at ITL was paid by the government to set the pace, argue about it, and traverse possible metaphysical bridges. The evidence demanded a verdict, and they were mindful of short-sighted variabilities. Experience reminds us, he thought, that when we ignore reality, it sooner or later comes back to bite us.
The ITL staff knew that they were on to something important and rapidly evolved the primitive PSYCHONIX glasses with a more sophisticated monitoring device to feasible yoke and unyoke immaterial substances from matter. It was fascinating and a few had reasons to believe it was true.
Bringing about death would be the easy part.
Preserving the body and bringing the person back intact would be the grand finale.
The Federal Government of the United States was in an Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) race and there were radical benefits and serious dangers associated with these types of transhuman developments. Cybersecurity was sealed tight, and nothing could be divulged without causing grave damage to national security. If the AI was hijacked or explicitly designed to kill or destabilize nations, it could be weaponized, and a viral AI could easily be one of the next significant Manhattan Project scenarios. As the project evolved it became more consequential to national security and came to the political forefront.
There have always been those programs and weapons that were so highly classified that public hearings and budgets were deemed inappropriate by the Director of National Intelligence.
This was one of them.
The Black Budgets were projects that included operating funds for intelligence, CIA, global listening posts of the National Security Agency, the super-secret satellites of the National Reconnaissance Office, and NASA. All of these—and only God and the President of the United States knew what else. This beyond Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance was sitting on the President’s desk now, identified in black tape as: P.
The PSYCHONIX proposal argued, ad rem, for more research and development and to ramp up a more progressive technology, which could integrate and enhance the brain and, for all intents and purposes, even probe deep consciousness. It was something state-of-the-art AI couldn’t do. If there was indeed a cutting-edge device that could overcome and enhance human limitations, transcend physical reality, and harness the consciousness of a soul, then they wanted it before the Russians, Chinese, or some other economic superpower got their hands on it.
It was a matter of national security. It was a matter of life or death.
The hard problems of locating and agreeing upon exactly what constituted a mind and how consciousness existed had been debated by science and religion for millennia. But now, to all appearances, science, or Dr. Mark Starr more precisely, had cut the Gordian knot, and more fully understood the metaphysical entanglements of mind and matter. He led the vision, and the ITL staff exhaustively tested PSYCHONIX, driven by the newly developed MDSL-1 that some members called a modem for the soul. During the first phases of the project the microchip and software would be adapted into the augmented-virtual reality (AVR) glasses and used to penetrate the eyes and ears with particular, individual Holt frequencies, tuned to a person’s specific PSYCHON radiation levels. The process allowed the immaterial substance to be channeled by the cochlea and retina, and then converted to electrical impulses. It would be transferred along the auditory and optic nerve, directly to the brain and mind.
Theoretically, PSYCHONIX could tap into cognitive areas that controlled sensations, thoughts, desires, beliefs, and volition. It touched upon the mind, emotions, will, senses, and spirit, and every other physical process that regulated and interfaced with the body and soul. ITL largely understood how the brain worked—but had serious, longstanding philosophical disagreements as to how it was controlled. Dr. Mark Starr planned to forever settle the problem with his own series of experiments.
It was truly the final frontier.
One man, Colonel Steven Scott, U.S. Army Special Forces (Retired), had a dormant mental ability; however, he was chosen for the project due to PTSD and his relationship to the director. If successful, Steven would become the first person to explore and capture all that the human mind sees, believes, feels, thinks, and loves in this world and the next. He and his stepbrother Dr. Mark Starr, the ITL project director, were persuaded by the words often attributed to C.S. Lewis: You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
If Steven Scott can overcome his dysfunctional childhood, mental health issue, espionage, and induced near-death experiences in a cryogenic Dewar called the Amaranth, it’s then that he may ultimately find healing, happiness, and hope—provided it doesn’t kill him first.
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