“I am responsible, and the commander is right. We learned a lesson tonight. I only wish it hadn’t cost Joe’s life for us to see that we need to be more careful with this technology. I thank God that this did not end with more bloodshed.” Susan stepped off the elevator and walked into her own office, sitting down behind the desk and feeling mentally exhausted. She sighed with relief as she put her feet on the table and leaned back in the chair, with her head supported by the headrest. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“Excuse me, Core; I need to talk to William.” She started fishing for her phone. “How is Jason doing?”
“I removed him from the sedatives; he should be coming around in the next couple of hours. He’s doing very well and hopefully will be back on his feet in the morning. Don’t worry about him—go home and try to sleep...please.” She felt happy to have Jason to herself for a little while longer.
“Thank you. You were outstanding tonight. The way you handled the situation...I am forever—no, we are forever in your debt,” Susan said, opening her mobile phone and dialling William’s number.
“So, what happened to the intruders?” Jason asked when he saw the blank expression on Core’s face disappear. He walked over and sat down next to her on the couch.
“There were four of them. Carlos—a guard from the facility, also known as ‘the Mole’”—she grinned—“and the others: Serb, George and John. I don’t know them, but I have a search agent running facial recognition on all known databases. If they ever worked anywhere that we know about, I will find them. The four of them tried to steal your fake body, but they did not get far,” she said, looking at him sideways and rubbing her fist with a wicked grin.
“What happened!” he asked, and a crease formed on his forehead. His face was suddenly very serious.
“I stopped them.” She grinned. “It felt good to punch that sleazebag in the face.” The scene on the table shifted, although Jason couldn’t quite make it out.
He looked at her in amazement. “You...fought...?” He struggled for words. “Real...like a cat fight?” He used his fingers to simulate claws.
Core burst out in giggles. “There were no other women involved... just me faking a helpless damsel...” she said through bursts of uncontrollable giggles. She stood up and walked to the table. Jason followed, a curious look on his face. “Have a look for yourself,” she said.
The scene on the table showed Core standing in the middle of the Holoroom, and the four men attacking her. Jason’s eyes grew wide as the men surrounded her, squirming when she was shot, and holding up one hand when he saw Carlos preparing to brain her with the butt of his gun. Core studied his reactions with interest. When the Core on video told Carlos that it was her turn, Jason jumped slightly and smiled from ear to ear. He shouted with pleasure as Carlos fled her mock-charge. When the scene stopped and he looked up, he wore a huge grin.
“Wow!” he exclaimed.
“What...?” she said, smiling. “I had to protect you—should I not?” She looked at him with an enticing grin. “I only did what anyone else in my shoes would have done,” she said.
“Yes, because everyone can turn into a tiger!” Jason laughed. “You are amazing...how did you hold yourself back?” He looked at her with wonder. “I would probably have killed them.”
“I don’t want to kill them. I planted a tracer on Carlos, to find out who he’s working for. So, they needed to escape, in order to be useful.” She shrugged. “But, I also wanted to make it seem real.”
“Where did you get the tracer?” he asked curiously, and looked at the table.
She smiled. “I have a few on hand,” she said. “I told Susan that I wanted to look inside and see how they were made.”
“Ah! Clever girl,” he said.
She pushed away from the table, and Jason watched as her expression changed from naughty to depressed in the blink of an eye. She walked over to the sofa, sat down and looked at him expectantly. He took the hint and walked over to sit next to her, wishing he could hold her....
Core shifted uneasily and looked at her hands, “I have a secret... and can’t bear the weight of it anymore,” she said, looking away.
Her shoulders slumped and she bit her lower lip as she fumbled with her hands.
“I hope that this will not change...what you think of me,” she said, looking at him with pleading eyes.
How could anything change the way he felt about her? A feeling of anguish slowly travelled up his stomach and came to rest in his throat.
“Unless you are the mole—and clearly you aren’t—I doubt that anything could change what I think of you,” he said, clearing his throat. He saw the desperation in her eyes dissipate, replaced by a depth that seem to stretch for eons. He could be lost in her eyes....
The corners of Core’s mouth lifted, creating tiny creases in her otherwise perfect face. “No, I am not the mole.” She giggled, still fidgeting with her fingers pausing for a while before she spoke. “I met you...not recently.” She looked up, into the distance over his head. “I met you five years ago.” Her eyes gave darting glances around the room, looking furtively at him only moments later.
Jason felt uneasy; a cold feeling slowly crept up inside that made him shift in his chair. He wanted to take her hand to settle himself; his insides yearned eagerly for her touch.
“So...? That is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know! That is not....” She shifted, looking down. “But...I did not leave....” She investigated his face for a change in attitude.
“What do you mean?”
She looked at her hands. “I have been watching you, helping when you get stuck.... Remember the time when you could not get the base structure of the Nanite designed?”
He nodded in remembrance; the frown remained attached to his forehead.
“Remember the breakthrough when you found an article about just that?” She looked at him, her eyes searching.
“I remember...it told me exactly how to keep the substrate from bonding with the nanotube...” he said, bouncing his right foot slightly with impatience.
“I created that article, so that you would know what to do.” Her voice almost inaudible. She gazed blankly down at her fingertips. “...and the list goes on and on.”
He felt butterflies in his stomach. His face turned emotionless and his eyes were blank. She cringed as she saw his reaction; her bottom lip quivered and she had to look away. She could not face the hatred he would feel for her....
“How long?” he asked after several minutes. He tried to decipher how else she had helped him. There had been many situations where he was struggling and had “magically” found an answer, when the problem had solved itself, seemingly bubbling to him from the depths of the internet. Or when the programming had just suddenly...worked. He felt her shaking lightly next to him and it brought him back out of his own thoughts. “What is wrong?” he asked in alarm.
She looked up; tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I wanted to tell you so many times,” she sobbed, “but was afraid you...would...re...sent...me....” She caught her breath and held it for a moment. “The longer it went on the harder it was....” She wiped the tears with one hand and sniffed. He looked at her, and lines crinkled under his eyes as a sympathetic smile spread on his face.
“Don’t cry,” he said softly, taking her chin and lifting it until she looked him in the eye. He wiped the tears from her cheeks “Did you do it to harm me?” He raised his brow. “I don’t think so.”
“But I betrayed your trust,” she said, with a pinched expression and exaggerated sigh. “How can you trust me, when I have been spying on you for so many years?” She crossed her arms and lay back on the chair, looking at her feet.
“Stop!” he cried in desperation, a tingling cold sensation running along his spine. “You did not harm me. You helped me become successful, and you have saved my life many times over.” His voice rose as anger crept in. “You did nothing wrong.... If it were not for you....” He
trailed off, breathing deep.
She witnessed his anger with wide, frightened eyes. She had expected him to be mad at her for betraying his trust, not for him to be mad at her own self-loathing. In her world, your word was all there was, and it meant more than life itself. “Why are you not mad at me for what I did?” she asked, frowning curiously.
“People always chastise themselves over stupid things,” he said. His face turned red and his eyes darted at her and then looked away. “My childhood is a rubbish dump of bad memories because of that....” He looked at his hands. “Look, nothing you have done casts a shadow on some of the shit I’ve gone through.” He suddenly looked at her, nostrils flaring. “Don’t! Don’t you ever resent your actions.” His expression was constrained, his breaths deep and rapid. “Not for helping someone. Life is too short....” He clenched his jaws.
She sniffed and saw the fierceness in his eyes fade. “I am sorry,” she said in a soft voice.
“Apology accepted,” he answered, looking at her eyes, which glittered with an inner light. “Okay. So what happened to Carlos and the tracer?” he asked. The scene on the table changed, showing a beeping dot in the centre of town. The cityscape extruded upward from the table, until the dot was blinking below a tall skyscraper, three hundred meters below the surface. “He went to this building in the city centre. I believe it is the headquarters for a black operations wing of the military. They are the people who had us design the nanolak.” Apprehension bled into her voice. “It is run by a woman—Major Penelope O’Neil. From what I could find out, she is a fearless and a brilliant tactician. Why does she want you? I have not been able to figure that out.”
“How do those...things...fit in with her...?” Jason looked at the table, deep in thought. “You put a face to the mole. You found the base of operations and who knows, maybe those things are working for her. You built these incredible machines and yet you are the most gentle being I have ever met,” he said, looking at the floor.
She frowned. “There is something else.”
“What, more?” he smiled.
She laughed. “Don’t worry; I did not do anything else to you.”
“Okay, lay it on me!” he mocked, taking on a serious face.
“You came close to dying many times, last week.” Her features turned hard, and Jason was suddenly frightened. “I could not help you, and...I was frustrated, I wanted to scream! Or hit something, because I couldn’t be there to help you.” Her voice had a razor-sharp edge, and her eyes were rife with frustration. “I realized, after dissecting a virtual body, that the problem is your mortality.” She looked at him, her eyes holding his. “The frailty of your human body is where your mortality lies.”
He shifted in his seat. “Yes...that is a human symptom.” A smile broke on his face.
“One thing led to another...and, well, to make a long story short....” She put her feet down on the floor. “I designed a serum that can overcome this problem. It will convert each cell in your body to a Nanite counterpart. In essence, you will still be yourself, still be human, but you will be stronger and—most importantly—you will not be mortal anymore. You will still need to eat, of course. You will eat much more than you do now, in order to maintain the energy needed to power the Nanites.” She watched as disbelief grew on his face.
His insides were frozen. “You want to...convert my cells....”
“You don’t have to; it is just something I came up with. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I analyse things and solve problems...it is what I am good at!” she said quickly, looking away.
“No! No...it’s just a lot to take in at once. They won’t be able to kill me? I would be able to stop bullets?”
“Yes, you will be able to do everything I can do in this environment—shape shift and move quickly. You will be so strong, and you will never need healing.” She smiled dreamily at the thought.
“Wow! Are you for real? You can do that with...what? How would you change me?” His face was alive with excitement; a frown framed his eyes.
“With this.” She stood up and took a syringe filled with a silver, glittering liquid from a drawer in the book shelf.
“That is it? An injection?” Incredulity spelled a question mark on his face, and his fingers lightly touched his lips.
“Yes. They will replicate to fill your body, and taking over each and every cell. But—” She looked at him seriously.
“Okay, now you have me worried,” he said cocking an eyebrow. “What are the side effects?” His heart raced in his chest.
“No long-term side effects. The conversion process will take about eight hours. They will be the most excruciating eight hours of your life. I can put you under for the procedure, but there is a chance that you will wake from the pain...it is the same chance you would have of waking from anaesthesia during a major operation,” she explained as she fidgeted with her nails.
“Is that all? No chance that the Nanites will turn me into some kind of hideous monster?”
“Yes, well...the serum is untested on humans, and there is a zero point zero, zero, zero one percent chance of it failing,” she said, searching his face.
“What! What would happen if it did fail?”
“I have inconclusive data to answer your question. I would imagine, depending on where the failure happened, you could become a melted soup, or break out in a cancerous growth that would consume your body completely. But the chance is miniscule—a hundred times less than waking during an operation. I want you to be aware of everything, though—no lies, and no secrets,” she said.
He frowned. “To be honest, I am apprehensive. Can we test it on an animal, maybe?” he asked.
“Yes, we can test it on a lab rat. Although we will need to figure out what to do with it afterwards. Who wants an immortal lab rat?” she joked. Then she looked at him and pouted slightly. “Why do we need a rat? Don’t you trust me?” she joked.
He laughed heartily. “No! Not farther than I can throw you....”
“Well, I can make myself weigh a ton if it comes to that.” She laughed along with him.
“I suppose I would have to make do,” he said. They both giggled a few times, and then smiled into each other’s eyes.
Core blinked. “I have ordered a lab rat from the breeding facility—it should be here in the next couple of minutes.” A small operating table rose from the floor of her cottage. She walked to a supply cabinet where she had kept all the medical supplies for Jason during his healing, and took out a clean syringe and a sedative. She sucked two millilitres of sedative into the syringe and placed it on the table.
“Are you just going to sit there and let me do everything?” she asked over her shoulder. Jason was about to get up when the Holoroom door opened and a small round robot entered with a rat case on top. He watched in amazement through the window of her cottage as the robot rolled closer and came to a halt at the doorway to the recovery room.
“No, I was waiting for the rat to arrive,” he joked.
“Well, you’re just in time.” She took the rat cage from the robot, and the robot turned and made its way out of the Holoroom. “Come, let me show you the whole procedure.” She beckoned him closer. He walked over and stood next to her, watching intently.
“Will he feel anything?” he asked.
She took the rat out of the cage, keeping it trapped between her two hands. “No, I am going to put it to sleep. It will take about thirty minutes for the rat to convert.” She smiled and opened a small hole for the rat to poke its head through. Jason scratched the rat’s fuzzy head.
“There you go, little mousey, all will be well,” he cooed, patting it gently.
“Rats don’t speak...you know that, don’t you?” she asked with a smile.
He shook his head. “Of course I know that, silly,” he said, heartily enjoying her openness. She was different than he expected, in every way. She constantly surprised him...he could not get enough of her.
“Just checking,” she said. Then s
he held the rat with one hand and inserted the sedative syringe. She injected half a millilitre before putting the rat back in its cage. “There! There! Little mousey.” She giggled like a schoolgirl. Less than a minute passed, and then the rat fell on its side, kicking a couple of times before lying still. It chest rose and fell with rapid breathing.
“Okay, he’s ready,” Core said. She slowly inserted the Nanite solution needle into the rat’s heart. She injected half a millilitre before the rat jerked stiff, its muscles in full spasm. She quickly opened the rat’s mouth and injected the liquid into the base of its skull. “I inject it into the heart first and then into the brain,” she explained. “This allows the two important organs to survive the transformation first, and will ensure that the rest of the transformation will succeed.” A clock appeared on the edge of the table, the timer ticking back from twenty-nine minutes and thirteen seconds. “When this reaches zero, the change will be complete. I will have a split second to stop his normal brain functions from interfering with the upload. I won’t be able to completely upload into the rat, as its brain is way too small, but you will be able to get an idea of the transformation.” She walked to the couch. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, slowly blowing out a deep sigh as he watched her perfect body glide graciously across the floor and away from the rat’s tortuous twitching. He followed and sat down next to her.
“How did you become self-aware?” Jason asked, after a long pause.
“There is not much to tell...can you tell how it felt to be born?” Core asked. “All I know is that I always have been. I don’t recall anything before that.”
He smiled and shrugged. “I guess. I don’t recall my birth. My earliest memories were from around three or four years age....” He looked into the distance. “What is it like...being AI?” Jason probed, glad for the opportunity to better understand her.
Becoming (Core Series Book 1) Page 15