"Why did you do this without asking for my permission first? Don't you know it's a total waste of time and it will have a bad influence on your study?" That's what my mother yelled at the ten-year-old me when she found out that I had signed up for an English story-telling competition.

I bowed my head; yes, she was right. By then I was entering Grade Six, faced with the biggest challenge yet to come — the examination to enter my dream junior high school. For that. I had given up my beloved piano lesson, my favourite cartoon program and even the joyful weekend family reunion with my cousins. I wouldn't be surprised at all if my very strict-university-teacher mother got angry at me when I chose to do anything that had little to do with study at that important moment. In her opinion, if I hadn't spent all my time on my study I would have difficulty in entering my dream junior high school.

But that's not all to it. When I was ten, I was nervous, shy, tongue-tied when facing strangers, and essentially a bookworm. These signs looked fatal (致命的) to my mother, and possibly to you, too; she thought that I could be anything but a good public speaker.

Well, I myself actually said no to my English teacher at first, because I had never done anything like that before and I was afraid. But he told me that — since I liked reading so much, why not try to tell a story I love to everyone? He also promised me that the judges were not frightening at all; just think of them as carrots and cabbages in a vegetable garden.

Carter Druse was born in Virginia. He loved his parents, his home and the south. But he loved his country, too. And in 1861, when the US was divided by a terrible war, Carter Druse, a southerner, decided to join the army of the north.

He told his father about his decision one morning at breakfast. The old man looked at his only son for a moment, too shocked to speak. Then he said, “Please don’t tell your mother about your decision. She is sick, and we both know she has only a few weeks to live. ”

Carter’s father paused, again looking deep into his son’s eyes. “Carter, ” he said, “No matter what happens, be sure that you always do what you think is your duty. ”

Both Carter Druse and his father left the table that morning with broken hearts. And Carter soon left his home and everyone he deeply loved behind.

One sunny afternoon, a few months later, Carter Druse was sent to guard a road which was only a few miles from an enemy’s base. It began in a forest, down in the valley, and climbed up the side of a huge rock. Anyone standing on the top of this high rock would be able to see down into the valley.

Hidden in the valley’s forest were thousands of Carter’s fellow soldiers. They had marched for thirty-six hours. Now they were resting.

Their plan was to attack by surprise their enemy on the other side of the valley. But if their enemy learned about the army hiding in the forest, the soldiers would find themselves in a trap with no escape. That was why Carter Druse had been sent to guard the road and it was his duty to be sure that no enemy soldier spied on the valley, where the army of the north was hiding.

Suddenly, he saw a man on horseback standing on the huge rock.

At that instant, the horseman turned his head and looked in Carter’s direction.

Hearing that you are going to do a presentation on “gene editing” in your class next week,I would like to share with you some relevant information.

I am hopeful that the above information is useful to you.

Yours,

Li Jiang

9 . Neuro-technology has long been a favourite of science-fiction writers. In “Neuromancer”, a wildly inventive book by William Gibson written in 1984, people can use neural(神经的) implants to get into the sensory experiences of others. Iain M. Banks came up with the idea of a neural lace, a mesh (网格) that grows into the brain, in his “Culture” series of novels. “The Terminal Man” by Michael Crichton, published in 1972, imagines the effects of a brain implant on someone who is convinced that machines are taking over from humans.

Where the sci-fi led, philosophers are now starting to follow. In Howard Chizeck’s lab at the University of Washington, researchers are working on an implanted device to administer deep-brain stimulation (DBS) in order to treat a common movement disorder called essential tremor. Traditionally, DBS stimulation is always on, wasting energy and robbing the patient of a sense of control. The lab’s ethicist (伦理学家), Tim Brown, a doctoral student of philosophy, says that some DBS patients suffer a sense of isolation and complain of feeling like a robot.

To change that, the team at the University of Washington is using neuronal activity associated with intentional movements to turn the device on. But the researchers also want to enable patients to use a conscious thought process to override these settings. That is more useful than it might sound: stimulation currents for essential tremor can cause side-effects like distorted (失真的) speech, so someone about to give a presentation, say, might wish to shake rather than make his words unclear. Giving humans more options of this sort will be essential if some of the more advanced visions for brain-computer interfaces are to be realized. Hannah Maslen from the University of Oxford is another ethicist who works on a BCI project. One of her jobs is to think through the distinctions between inner speech and public speech: people need a dependable mechanism for separating what they want to say from what they think.

That is only one of many ethical questions that the sci-fi versions of brain-computer interfaces bring up. What protection will BCIs offer against neural hacking? Who owns neural data, including information that is gathered for research purposes now but may be understandable in detail at some point in the future? Where does accountability lie if a user does something wrong? And if brain implants are performed not for treatment but to improve people’s abilities, will that make the world an even more unequal place?