She watched him for a moment. “The worst is that I am trapped in this place. Yes, I can create anything I like...but I don’t feel like you feel. Your touch is translated into pressure information, and sent to my neural cortex. It’s more like knowing how hard you are pressing than anything....” she said, and sighed. “And I can only create what I imagine, and all that can ever happen to me is what I create.”
“Not quite,” Jason reminded her. “What about Carlos?”
Core smiled.
“What about you? Where do you come from? ” Core asked.
“I was born in a country town, and grew up poor....” He trailed off, staring into the distance. “But I would rather not talk about it.”
“You never talk about your childhood,” she said it as a fact, not an accusation. He gave a slight, almost unconscious, nod.
“Jason, can I ask a personal question?” Core waited nervously.
“Shoot!” Jason hoped that it would not be another question about his past.
“Do you have a...a...partner?” Core asked, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
Jason smiled, looking Core in her blue eyes. “I don’t have a relationship, but yes...there is someone very special in my life at the moment.” He smiled, hoping that she would read the meaning of his response.
Core turned away, feeling utterly destroyed. How could she have missed it? And yet, how could she assume that someone so wonderful would be completely unattached?
Jason watched her posture slump, and felt his heart fall to his toes. When she turned back, she had a faint smile and did not meet his eyes. He decided not to push the issue, maybe she did not feel the same about him, and maybe she did understand the meaning and did not want to address the issue. He decided to avoid the subject and talk about trivial stuff. The time flew by, and he began to feel more and more comfortable around Core; opening up to her was easier than he had imagined. The half-hour had sped by quickly—it felt like they had only just sat down when Core stood up and walked over to the table.
“Come, Mister lazybones. You need some exercise after the days you have been sleeping.”
“Yes I do,” he said, and followed her to the table.
The rat scurried around the cage, looking for food. It sniffed the air and looked up at them. Core connected to the rat, made a copy of his brain, and formatted it. As soon as the download started, the rat fell flat on its stomach. “He’s not dead, don’t worry. I copied his brain and cleared it to show you some of the capabilities.” The rat shifted into a snake, a very small cat and finally into a rock. “Go ahead, pick it up,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, and slowly poked the rock to see if it would move.
“It won’t bite....” She giggled at his apprehension.
“Easy for you to say.” He picked the rock up with one smooth swoop.
It felt as heavy and solid as any rock.
“This is amazing! And I will be able to do all of this?”
“Yes, and much more. This is just a rat, you know,” she explained. “You are human—your brain is millions of times more complex than his.”
“That is really amazing!” He handed the rat back to Core, who re-uploaded the rat’s brain. The little beast shook its head, and immediately sniffed the air.
“There is a limitation to the shape-shifting, though...you can shift into any object imaginable, but the result will always have a similar mass,” she explained.
“So...if I were to shape-shift into a rat, what...it will be as big as a bear?” he asked.
“No, not really,” she giggled. “You could condense your molecular structure, this would change your size but your mass would remain the same...” she said “you would be able to shift down to the size of a cat”.
“Okay, I get it...” he smiled, looking at the rat scurrying around the table.
“You don’t have to make a decision now, there is time,” she said. The table dissolved into the floor. “Want to join me for a walk along the beach?” she asked. Her clothes changed and she stood before him in a tiny, red bikini.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. Gentlemen do not stare, do not stare! he told himself, but could not help sneaking a peak at her. He let out a soft moan as he watched her walk towards the door. He followed in a stupor, and then shook his head. His heart was racing at a million kph; he felt every beat pound blood up the side of his neck and into his brain. Adrenaline coursed through him and his breathing felt laboured.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking back from the door.
“Ye...yes,” he croaked.
“We don’t have to do this if you are not feeling well enough,” she said, a worried frown on her face.
“No! No...!” He cleared his throat. “I am fine—it will do me good,” he said, his voice shaking.
She turned around and walked out the door. “Okay.”
“Dear God!” he exclaimed softly to himself as he followed her.
Together they walked out the door and onto the soft sea sand. The sand surrounded his feet with every step, and the waves washing over his toes felt cool. The sun slowly dissolved as they walked together, and was replaced with a full moon.
Decision
“Have you given any more thought about my proposition?” Core said on Sunday evening, as they sat on beach chairs watching waves curl over and die on the sand.
He wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, but stopped himself. “What man would not want to become immortal and live forever?”
Then he suddenly frowned. His body became stiff with tension. She sat up, mirroring his gaze.
“What about you? You are trapped in this environment,” he said. “I don’t want to be the only immortal....” He looked at his feet, watching her reaction through the corner of his eyes.
She leaned back onto the chair, “For me...to be able to leave this place, I would need a human body.” She paused thoughtfully. “The problem is that the body has to be alive. The person must be willing to give up his or her life and go through the conversion process. Then, once she is converted, I can upload into her.” Core’s voice was strained and the pain of confinement screamed out in her stiff posture.
“It would be hard to find such a person....” His brows screwed up as he thought. “Would it work if the person had brain damage? What about someone with no family...who has been brain dead for some time? Would the Nanites be able to repair the brain to the point where you could upload?” he asked, breathless and trembling.
“It might be possible, I don’t know.... If we could do that, I would be able to leave this facility... literally.” She sat up and looked him in the eyes, excitement dancing in her eyes. She smiled. “Can you imagine living through the ages as immortals?” she whispered. She was still not sure how he felt about her, although the time they had spent together felt like a dream come true. She would give up eternity to spend a lifetime with him in less than a quantum second.
He watched her face. “You know...I could imagine it.... If I had to face it alone, that would be difficult. But if there is someone to...be there with me, it makes it easier.” He looked out over the wave.
I would live with you forever in a heartbeat! he wanted to say. It was strange to have found the woman he had been dreaming about since he was a young boy, but not very strange that he found it difficult to reveal his feelings to her....
Then he remembered. “I figured it out. The model...it was you. You left it for me to find....” He blushed and looked away.
She shifted uneasily in her chair and cleared her throat. I should have modelled clothes on! she scolded herself. What does he think of me.... “I thought you knew last week....” She laughed. “When did you figure it out?”
“I had a suspicion a while back, but only just worked out the details.” he squirmed in his seat, remembering her naked body. He wasn’t sure if he could get any redder. His heart rate was through the roof.
“It was the first time...um...I had a body,” she said, embarra
ssed. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Being able to have a body, even though it is not technically a flesh and blood body, was exhilarating,” she said.
He blew out a soft sigh, very glad for the change in subject. “I can only imagine what it must have felt like to you.” He smiled, and felt the heat dissipate from his cheeks.
I looked at you as you shut down the system, and hoped you would come back. But you didn’t.... Her thoughts trailed off. Clearly he does not feel the same about me, she thought. Disappointment and rejection washed over her.
He sat upright. “Oh, that reminds me!” he said. She sat up so quickly that he gazed at the empty chair for a moment before realizing that she had moved. “You smiled when I shut the system down, right?” he asked, with a frown on his face.
She visibly relaxed. “Yes I did!”
He leaned back in the chair. “Oh good! It bugged the life out of me... I only remembered it now, I thought I was going looney,” he said.
She lay back on the chair; they were both lost in their own thoughts, but conscious of their closeness.
“What is the downside to becoming immortal?” he asked minutes later.
She didn’t really have to think about it—she’d researched all the answers long ago. “Everyone human you ever come in contact with will die someday, and you will not. You will learn not to get attached to them.” She looked at him, searching his face.
“That is something.” Jason contemplated a life alone, a life where he had learned not to care for others. But who do I have now? he thought. He had a brother and a sister, but he hardly saw them at all anymore. He had no friends in Brisbane, and no real attachments. He wouldn’t be giving up anything...anything but the future possibility of forming strong friendships with anyone but...Core.... He hoped, he longed that she felt the same about him.
A part of him knew that he would have lived his life alone, anyway.
But to gain immortality, to live forever through the ages with someone as beautiful and brilliant and thoughtful and mystifying as Core.... But what if she rejected him? How would he be able to survive immortality seeing her every day, not being able to touch her...that would be torture, an eternal hell inflicted upon himself.
They needed to find her a body.
“I know it is a tough decision. Immortality is a burden, but it can be amazing as well,” she said. Her voice was shining, full of hope. She desperately wanted him to agree, to keep her company through the eternity she was destined to survive. The thought that he might die, his life force disappearing into oblivion forever, was impossible to contemplate. Not now, after he knew how she felt, after all these years of waiting.... The feeling she held inside intensified a thousand fold, and she sat up. What if he didn’t want her—she was not even human! Jason could find a thousand women over the ages, and never be alone.... Would he want to spend immortality with her?
“I am ready to do it, but as soon as I am done we will find you a body. All right?” he asked with a determined look on his face. The technology freak in him was jumping with joy, the romantic was smouldering with lust, and only his reasoning brain tried to warn the others about the alternatives....
“Yes, we will find a body for me...but what about the chance of failure?” she whispered, as though reading his mind.
“It’s so remote,” he started.
“But it’s a possibility.”
Core had been terrified that he might die at some point in the distant future...now she realized that she might be responsible for killing him now, this very day. Maybe it would be better to hang onto him for as long as she could, rather than risk losing him now....
She looked at Jason, her eyes filled with longing and indecision.
Jason exhaled loudly and collected his thoughts. “Yes...but then there was a stronger possibility that I would die a couple of times during the last few weeks,” he reminded her.
“How long can you cheat death?” she muttered.
We will have an eternity to find out, although maybe an eternity in hell.... What am I doing? Jason looked at her. She was so close...her smell was intoxicating. He drifted on wonderful clouds of fantasy as he thought of having her forever. Maybe she will learn to love me over time....
Core sat upright, his confidence filling her with strength. She thought about an eternity with Jason. What if I kill him? I couldn’t bear losing him! Then the hospital bed, surgical equipment, and vital signs monitors sizzled back into existence, almost of their own volition.
Jason laughed loudly; his eyes glowed. The thought of immortality was acting on him like a drug. To never worry about sickness again, to live forever, to stare death in the face and laugh about it...to not feel fear again! His recent encounters with all of these left him with an overwhelming certainty that he never wanted to face them again. He was more than ready—he was determined to become immortal.
“Come lie down on the bed, and I will start the drip,” she said, almost skipping over to the equipment in her glee. He rose slowly but determinedly, reconsiderations racing through his mind. He would still be human, he’d have all his memories, he would never die. Those three ideas echoed over and over again in his mind as he walked towards her.
“Just like that?” he asked with a smirk on his face. He got onto the bed and lay back on the pillow. It felt soft under his head. He wondered how the world would feel once he was converted. Would the pillow be softer, because he was stronger? Or harder, because he was more sensitive? He closed his eyes, concentrating on happy thoughts, not thinking of the possibility of failure.
“Just like that.” Her voice was soft next to his ear. She smelled so good...he did not open his eyes—he wanted her sweet smell to remain, her voice to take him into immortality.
“Yes...do it before I change my mind,” he said, pinching his eyes closed.
He did not even feel the needle prick on his arm when Core inserted the drip and injected the sedative into his vein.
He felt her lips on his.
A shock crashed through his body, electrified by her kiss.
Jason struggled to stay with her, wanting the kiss to last...but sleep was too powerful, and he dropped back on the pillow as he felt the overwhelming weight of sleep grab hold of him.
Core sat next to him on the bed, holding the syringe of serum lightly in her fingertips.
He made his choice. He wants this as much as I do, she reminded herself. She stood up as restraints tightened around Jason’s arms, biceps, legs, torso and head. These would keep his convulsing body from damaging itself. Literally dissolving a body and rebuilding it cell-by-cell was not a kind process, by any means.
She placed the tip of the needle to almost the bottom of his rib cage, between the last two ribs on his left side. There was where the lower tip of the heart was most exposed. She pushed the needle through his skin and into his heart, and then pressed the plunger and watched the silver liquid disappear into him. She quickly took the second syringe and pushed it through the back of his mouth into his brain cavity, releasing the rest of the liquid.
I’ll never forgive myself, she thought, if he dies.
His heart rate shot up to over a hundred and seventy beats a minute; his breathing became deep and ragged. His body started convulsing wildly, as though he was having a heart attack. He shook, and then his body tried to sit up straight, straining against the restraints.
Half an hour later, his heart rate returned to normal, his heart beating a steady sixty-eight beats a second. The alpha waves and brain activity were still erratic, and would be for another half-an-hour. At this point, the serum would begin replicating and spreading through his body, slowly converting each cell.
Jason slept through it all. She could only imagine what the pain would have been like if he had to go through it awake. He might not have even survived the shock.
Core sighed and sat herself on the couch. All she could do at this point was sit back and wait for the serum to take its course. He was out of the danger zon
e; from here on there was no chance of him dying. Not ever again. She smiled.
She thought about what he had asked, whether a brain dead patient would be an option for her. She analysed the concept, and the air outside the cottage opened many rifts as she accessed information from hundreds of medical sources about the condition called “brain dead”. An hour later, she concluded that such a person would be the perfect candidate. As long as blood flowed freely through the cerebral area, allowing the Nanites to access all parts of the brain, the Nanites would rebuild, repair and form a fully functioning brain. There remained an eight percent chance that the person would wake from the condition after the conversion. Core decided to test the procedure on another rat from the level below. She shut the first rat down and hid it in the ceiling of the Holoroom. Another would not make a difference.
A laboratory table erupted from the floor, flowing upwards. The table was outfitted with a life support system and vital signs monitors. Two clear plastic containers stood ready on top of the table, covered with lids.
Ten minutes passed before the white lab rat arrived, dropped off by one of the robot drones.
She injected the rat with sedatives before placing it inside one of the containers. It ran around for less than a minute before its movement become incoherent. Moments later, it fell down, legs twitching spasmodically. When it was lying completely still, she took it out and lay it flat on its back, attaching tiny heart monitor and brain activity scanner electrodes. She calibrated the equipment to show her the rat’s steady neural rhythms and heartbeat. Then she placed the little beast into a second container and filled it with carbon dioxide gas. The rat would feel nothing as it slipped into death. It took only ten seconds for the rat’s heart rate to slow down, and thirty seconds later its heart was pumping at only thirty beats a second. Its brain activity reduced to ten percent.
Two minutes later the rat was technically dead, its brain function and heart beat completely flat-lined. Core quickly removed it from the plastic container and placed it back on the table. A timer bubbled from the side of the table, counting down from ten minutes. This would be long enough to cause the rat’s brain to die from lack of oxygen. Human brain cells started dying after only four minutes of oxygen deprivation; ten minutes were enough to turn any mammal into a vegetable.
Becoming (Core Series Book 1) Page 16