Dr. Markram anticipated the computer cloud would cover 115% of the project’s needs. Hopefully more, but no less. 125% would be optimal.

What he hadn’t realized was just how incredibly big the internet is. By the time he arrived at the lab on August 4th (a good two hours earlier than usual), the servers had already heard from enough machines to provide 372% of the necessary power, and the number was still climbing.

Markram was ecstatic.

Now the team’s only bottleneck was their typing speed. Even with their performance requirements so greatly exceeded, modeling an entire brain would still take a projected five years.

One of the coders had an idea. “Why not let Blue Brain build itself?” he asked. “I mean, it’s small right now… but very focused. If we give it access to the computer cloud, feed it the right stimuli, there’s no reason it couldn’t do what we do, only faster.”

A few team members raised objections, mostly technical questions. It was a curious idea.

Markram leapt to his feet. “Do it,” he said.