It was a dark and thunderous night, August 10th, 2225. Thomas Edison VII was born as lightning storms whipped the skies. Born on this storm-filled night, Thomas entered the world, with an electric cry. He grew to be an inquisitive child, pondering the workings of everything around him. Whether it be the light bulb or the remote control car, Thomas needed to know how they worked. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 2200's, Thomas was surrounded by a lively group. Now a major tourist and traveler destination, Omaha, Nebraska is filled with Entrepreneurs and vacationers from around the globe.
Young Edison took a shine to all the things his home of Omaha had to offer. When he got to an age where he could drive himself, he took to the road to explore his surroundings further. First, when he was 11 he took off on a trip in his father's hover car. He only went around the neighborhood but his older brother scolded him nonetheless. Tough day for Thomas. He couldn't resist taking the hover car for a spin though, its propulsion system was awe-inspiring, who could resist?
The DMV of Thomas Edison IV
At the age of 18, he got his hover license. With this came a given car from the government, as all young ones got after passing the hover license examinations. He took his vehicle out for a spin every night. Fuel was also paid for by the government. These were his first trips in travel, which would lead to many more at an applicable age. They are of no further relevance here and now. What follows next are experiments and leaps in bioengineering. For this part of Mr. Edison's life, he shows an in-depth study of animals and plants, bringing the two closer together on the chain of life.
This part of Thomas's life is curious, but it does hold influence when he makes an important discovery to push the technology of AI onward far into the future. As his dog lay watching guard behind him, Thomas went searching through the holonet. He brought in different AI generated hologram videos of his great ancestor, Thomas Edison the first. Edison the first was pictured running through storms, chasing electricity. Flying kites with metal attachments, he was daring. Building conductors to be stricken by lightning on their poles high above and funnel it into the conductor's mechanics.
Thomas VII went on for hours watching and studying his great ancestor's artificially generated adventures. Sometimes he would fall asleep watching them, to the sound of thunder and lightning. One day he awoke abruptly from his sleep while the thunder and lightning were playing. He had an aha moment, an epiphany. He realized he could create an artificial lightning if he harnessed the power of electric eels and could input that energy into something like a jellyfish. The electric eel and the jellyfish. Organisms, gifted with electricity built into their biology and structure now seemed to be the key to Edison's future plans. He wished to create electricity that did not need to recharge, for years on end it would be able to run whether operating a car or operating a television or computer. Water and food, that is what this electricity would grow to survive on. Like a plant, it could be watered to extend and strengthen its life. Like a fish, it could survive being submerged in water if need be.
The holoweb search for electric eels deep in the sea
He gathered the information he would need on these organisms to reverse engineer them. Printing out resources, printing 3D models of the fish, writing notes, playing scenes from the holoweb's simulators. Days went by at first without any direction, then weeks. It seemed impossible to achieve such a feat as reverse engineering a fish and making its components available in a usable organism such as a car, computer, TV, etc. He started to ask his professors what they thought of this undertaking, they also thought it may be rather difficult even with the advancements in technology and understanding of this time. Difficult, but not impossible. After all, scientists had already made their way 3/4ths of the way through reverse engineering the human brain. They had reverse engineered mice before. These were scientists favorite creatures to tamper with, the mouse, that and monkeys.
They took some time thinking about how tough this might be to reverse engineer something of this nature. Something that could cause such painful shocks of electricity on contact that is a living breathing organism, wow, tough. Of course, they started to dissect the creatures to understand their biology further than what was provided on the net and in the books available. Their dissections led to progress. By studying the two types of fish, along with mechanisms such as conductors and using all rubber materials to handle them of course, even if deceased, they began to learn the key to these creatures output and intake of electricity. The electric eel has electricity running through it at all times, as do all creatures to a much smaller degree.
Electric eels in all their glory, living beings gifted with the power of many volts of electricity.
With this kept in mind and understood they could unwrap the "impossible." They began building small organisms that could mimic these creatures. Miniature robots that had a life to them and produced their own electricity. Such discoveries. Soon they tried training these bots and all went well generally. They proved to be rather untamed creations and had wild minds of their own. Perhaps it was all that electricity running through them. They would need to learn a way to tame them or coerce them if they were going to progress any further. Of course, the first ideas that came to mind were simple training such as puppy training akin to a dog. This seemed to be the right course to start out on, and it was. They mastered their small creations and gained the understanding to move on to creating these beings in greater size and more quantity with a team getting on board at just the right time.
This team would be responsible for researching and training these medium-sized beings now created, along with Edison and his professors. This was like playing a video game for them. Set the research to on and let it run. Then hours or days later there would be new progress and achievements, easy as that. Edison and his professors kept training their own small group and producing their own research naturally.
Where to turn next? Plainly if they made dramatic leaps and strides they would need to take time off and take rest breaks as needed, replacing one researcher with the other for some time in this long-term big payout effort. Their research would surely pay off.
Back in Omaha, Nebraska life started to pick up. Tourists, travelers, and entrepreneurs set out on their adventures as usual. One day a curious young traveler found his way into Edison's research facility. After arriving home from a long trip, Edison returned and found this traveler showing up at all times to rushing through his lab.
The boy that walked into the lab was a kid by the name of Bruce Bogstein. No, Bruce Bentley? Bruce Betley? Hmm, what is this guy saying his name is? Well, at any rate, this Bruce B. made his way into Edison's lab. He came whirling through on his skateboard one day. The next day he came whirling through on his bicycle. Another day on his hoverboard. And so on for a month or so. Always chased by some group of kids.
Finally, Edison grew tired of this and sat the boy down in his office. He spoke with him and let him know that this needed to stop. While speaking, Bruce noticed all the wondrous, strange activities going on in the laboratory. He had a change of character and wanted to be part of this venture Edison had set out on, instead of being chased each day on a different vehicle. After vetting Bruce, who later revealed his name was actually Barry, they decided to bring him in to check out some research. He was college educated after all. He studied marine biology. What're the chances, right? What a tie-in. How crazy. Baffling. Surprising. Anyway, it happens.
And so, Barry aka Bruce now began to work with Edison's team. "Well I can't spell right now and I'm trying hard not to edit until later," he said about his research. That's the first of the research Barry got his hands on! Unruly unchecked blabbering. But, "the blabbering made a lot of sense," Barry said to himself. We could simply grow organisms to serve as electric conduits, plant-like organisms. His spelling got bad too after starting his research. The idea of the growth of these types of organisms came from a long-ago experiment done by researches in 2017, they were working on growing body parts and such to help those who had lost limbs. They grew miniature brains in their lab instead, somehow. This was a big mystery and taboo at the time. How could such a thing be done? Is it ethical? Again, how did they do that? Why? Do we want to know?
Anyhow, Barry continued with his research despite his feeling of connection to the outsiders of this 2017 experiment by researchers. He got to searching the holoweb for information to supplant his theories and then got to sharing with Edison after. Edison agreed and so did his professors, Mr. Roland, and Mr. Roofs.
They continued on their search. They found some scientists that were able to contribute help and soon brought them onto the team. Barry knew them from college. And it turned out that Thomas also knew them from the same college. They both went to important cooperating schools in Omaha.
There was a longtime standing peace in the world in this time, it had started about 100-150+ years before. This was around the 2000s when peaceful agreements started around the globe, after a flurry of years with odd and sometimes sad events. Peace came about one decade when paintball guns grew in popularity by large amounts. This set the stage for a new way for wars to be settled and "fought." Thomas Edison VII only ever knew peace when he was young and forever after. His development of wireless, biological electricity had major implications. In the uses of machines to keep patients hearts beating and in developing new tools for those recovering from cryogenic sleep and preservation, this was big.
The regular human heart and brain disperse small amounts of electricity as electric current to run properly and keep their person alive. Electricity exists in most living beings. What sets electric eels and jellyfish apart? How can they help? How do electric eels emit so much current at one time? How does this not hurt them?