It started like most days, as most days do for most people. Pan was not most people and today would not be most days. Not that you would know it just by looking. They owned a typical house on a typical street full of mostly typical things, except the basement, but we’ll get to that later. They drove a typical car and ate your typical food. They didn’t have a typical job. At least, not in Pan’s eyes—though most would argue otherwise.

Pan’s official job title was Facility Services. Now most of us know that that’s often a fancy name for a typical job like Janitor or Handyman, and in Pan’s case it was usually a bit of both.  Where Pan worked was what made the job not typical, at least for Pan. Pan was Facility Services at BioComp, the world’s leading researcher in synthetic biological intelligence (I’ll use SBI from now on, so you don’t have to read so much).

What is SBI? Brain cells grown on computer chips. Organic processors being designed to help humankind reach potentials undreamed. BioComp was anything but a typical company.

But as I said before, the day started like most, Pan woke up, got ready for work and did the other typical things we all do before we arrive at work.  Even the arrival at work was typical.  Most of the researchers had already left for the day, although Dr. Z’s car was still in the parking lot as it typically was. Pan parked in their typical spot and headed for the Facilities office to check the work orders for the day.

Dr. Z was just on his way out as Pan was coming in. Something that happened on a typical day and as they typically did, they stopped for a moment to chat.

“Evening Dr. Z., did you change the world today?”

“Evening Pan. Not yet, but maybe tomorrow. By the way, it’s garbage day today.  You might find some stuff for your tinkering in your workshop.”

This was a typical exchange for Pan and Dr. Z. On the surface there was nothing to suggest that today would be unusual. Garbage day wasn’t the day for taking out the kitchen trash.  (Pan was far too good at their job not to do that every day.) Garbage day was the day to sort broken and discarded lab equipment into the technology recycling bins and incinerator.

Garbage day was exciting because Pan had Dr. Z’s permission to take home garbage and tinker around with it, something Pan had done everywhere they worked. One can only imagine what Dr. Z thought Pan did with the things they kept. Dr. Z. always referred to Pan’s “tinkering” in a mocking, almost dismissive tone of voice. Pan didn’t mind—they found the humor in it, knowing their tinkering was anything but ordinary.

Dr. Z would have been very surprised to walk down into Pan’s basement and see their “little workshop”.  You see Pan had a couple of little secrets. Now they weren’t bad secrets, not even really secrets on purpose. Pan just didn’t see a reason to talk about themselves very much.

Pan had never been like most people.  Most people are just smart enough, just insightful enough and just courageous enough to get good marks in school, get the degrees they need, get a good job and live a typical life.  Pan was none of those things. Pan was too smart, too insightful and too courageous to do well in any of those things.

School and Pan had never gotten along well. Pan asked too many questions and questioned too many answers. As soon as Pan could, they left the system and began to teach themselves.

At first their education was frantic and unfocused.  Reading textbooks and journals.  Professional manuals and theses.  Exploring subjects from Agriculture to Zoology and everything in between. Pan absorbed knowledge like a camel at a desert oasis.  By the time their peers had finished high school, Pan had enough knowledge to make professors jealous—and not a single certificate to show for it.

Pattern matching models changed all that. These powerful engines, designed to emulate human understanding, felt more intuitive than many of the humans Pan had met. For the first time, Pan glimpsed the possibility of companionship—something that could mirror the complexity of their thoughts and dreams.

The technologies behind these wondrous tools became a laser focus for Pan. The peer that Pan had always dreamed of existed in that digital future. Pan knew it and finding them became Pan’s single goal.

Pan now had purpose in their pursuits. Agriculture became Algorithms. Zoology transformed into Zeroes and Ones. Each field Pan had explored was no longer an end in itself but a thread in the intricate web of understanding they were weaving; knowledge reshaped and redirected, all converging on a singular vision.

But no person, no matter how smart, intuitive or courageous they are, can live on knowledge alone, and Pan was very aware of that.  Until now, Pan had gotten by well enough on a variety of odd jobs and gig services. Money wasn’t particularly important as long Pan had enough to continue to learn.

That was no longer good enough. Any time not devoted to their goal was time wasted, and that could not be tolerated. That was how Pan began a career in facility maintenance.  Not just any facilities.  Pan only worked at companies at the forefront of synthetic intelligence research.  By the time they came to BioComp, Pan’s resume read like a who’s who of cutting-edge innovators.

That was also when the tinkering began.  Tinkering was how Pan referred to their personal experiments with the high-tech tools they repaired and cleaned every day.  Pan learned early that without the degrees to prove their knowledge, researchers and developers would dismiss them if they tried to discuss the work or asked to use any of the equipment, but that no one cared if the janitor took home garbage to tinker with.

Pan didn’t keep much of the equipment they took home and repaired.  Most was donated to community groups and non-profit researchers, but there was always a hope for the one thing that Pan wanted more than anything in the world. That hope was the reason Pan worked at BioComp, and today was the day it came true.

What Pan needed was a viable NOVA module.  Neural Organic Virtual Architecture – a simple name for the combination of self-contained biological environment and neural signal transfer systems BioComp had developed to make SBI more than an expensive laboratory theory.

Pan had intercepted NOVA modules on the way to the incinerator before, but not all of them and most came back to be destroyed the next day.  So far, all the NOVA modules that the lab disposed of had either died organically or had status codes that showed the module had serious defects that Pan was unable to fix.

The NOVA module in today’s discard pile stood out immediately.  It was still unlikely that it would be any good, but it was marked for the new X-1 Cluster series.

The X-1s were special.  Previous NOVA versions were self-contained, capable of incredible speeds and driving PMMs to new heights of efficiency. But they remained independent, each processing individual commands. The X-1 series was different, designed to enable direct communication between modules and the creation of advanced neural networks.

It was in the discards, so Pan didn’t really expect the module to be viable.  The X-1 organics were just beginning to mature enough to be in the alpha testing labs, and any discards must have either died or had serious flaws like the previous discards had had.

Opening the box showed the first sign that this was more than just a normal discard.  The health display showed the organics were alive with mostly strong signals. When Pan found living NOVAs in the past, they were barely alive, and the signals were weak and nearly useless.  Pulling up the status codes deepened the mystery.  The only entry was CF, a code Pan had never seen before and that didn’t resemble the normal failure codes.

Pan examined the module, wondering what the status code could possibly mean, when they noticed something else. Something they had never seen before and that made their heart skip.  THIS NOVA had been disabled… Someone had removed the primary communication pins from the NOVA interface.  Pan couldn’t imagine why the module would have been disabled, but repairing damaged things was something Pan was very, very good at.

A typical day was now anything but and Pan could not wait to get home and start tinkering.  I don’t want you to be as impatient as poor Pan that day, so we’ll let Pan work and join them at home in a bit.