With tiny paddles, Core shocked his heart back into beating, and kept it beating by oxygenating the blood with a tiny dialysis machine.
There was no cerebral activity at all; she was satisfied that the rat was brain dead. She took a syringe filled with the serum and injected the heart and the brain. Then she held the creature down with both hands, stopping the spasms. Eight minutes later, the animal relaxed after the brain finished conversion. The brain activity monitor showed a flat line.
While the rat completed the conversion process, she focused more strongly on the Core she had left to look after Jason. He had another six hours until conversion was complete. She could see his skin slowly taking on a silvery shine, which started in his fingers and pulsed up to the palm of his hand, and then receded.
She remained vigilant while Jason and the rat converted. She wondered what she would do with two immortal rats. They were capable of becoming anything they desired...well, except one would be dead, so it wouldn’t be able to desire anything. She could upload a transformation routine, still, which would make the rat turn into a cat or a dog. Then she and Jason would have a pet. It was appealing to have a constant companion for them, something that she could control, maybe upload different personalities over time. She contemplated this for some time, before deciding to shut down the rats’ mental processes once the experiment was completed. The rats would never really die, but could be placed in permanent hibernation and remain in that state for many centuries...in theory. She couldn’t allow anyone to get their hands on these rats...ever, but how do you rid yourself of an immortal? She shrugged and watched the rat.
The rat underwent a transformation similar to that Jason was experiencing. Its body turned silver, then back to white and, finally, after thirty minutes, the conversion was complete. Core removed the ventilator and heart machine—moments later the wounds in its chest healed. The brain scans still showed zero brain function, but the heartbeat and breathing were normal. She opened a communications channel to the Nanites in the rat.
They responded immediately, allowing a wireless network link. Core ran diagnostics on the brain, and the Nanites responded perfectly. The brain was completely devoid of any form of the rat’s presence. This confirmed her suspicion that once a neuron was damaged, or had died, the cell does not really die, but rather loses all dendrite connections to its neighbouring cells, thereby relinquishing the knowledge it contained. If enough brain cells lose connectivity, any information held in the brain would be lost. In the case of a brain-dead person, the consciousness present in the body would be lost...one cell at a time. Therefore, the personality that occupied the brain would cease to exist. A brain-dead body would be ideal ground for a new occupant.
The rat brain was very rudimentary—it’s synoptic couplings were limited to instinctive functionality only. There was no possibility that a rat would ever have enough brain capacity to become self-aware. She uploaded a simulation of a rat’s brain. Moments later, the rat opened its eyes and looked around at the environment, scanning for potential threats. It turned on its feet and ran around the desk, sniffing the air. Core was still connected to the rat, and signalled for it to shift into the form of a small cat.
The rat seem to melt, its legs growing longer, its body becoming more agile...moments later, the transformation was complete. The cat sat crouched on the floor, looking around. It started to sniff at the air like the mouse had. She chuckled at the silliness of the scene, a cat with the personality of a rat. It began to skitter around near the wall.
Core withdrew the personality, pleased to have successfully proved the viability of a brain-dead creature as a host. What if she could find an animal that had similar brain complexity to that of a human, but had not become self-aware...something like a chimpanzee. Would she be able to upload into that body and then converted it to a human? Would it be unethical to convert an animal, even if it was not self-aware? The idea of taking away the rest of a chimpanzee’s life just to make her own more convenient seemed wrong. She dismissed it and went back to Jason’s side.
There were four hours left before completion. Core was apprehensive about how he would function when the conversion was done. This was untested ground, after all. Would he still act and be himself? Only time would tell.
She heard voices outside the Holoroom. This was not the time for someone to discover Jason. The ocean parted down the middle, the water turning upwards to form a barrier. She placed mirrors and lights strategically in the space near the entrance. If anyone opened the door, they would find the room empty. Then, she uploaded the laboratory scene where she had assembled the nanolak earlier. She placed a Core replica in the room, and let it clean the equipment.
Jason couldn’t feel.
He couldn’t move.
Was he real?
He had brain capabilities—this much he knew. His thoughts came at lightning speed. Has everything gone as planned? He considered several alternative possibilities and puzzled them through simultaneously, then rejected them all at the same time. His memory felt vast, unending....
He smelled...something foreign. Something he had never smelled before. He instinctively knew the composition of the air, the parts per million concentrations present—nitrogen 78.084%, oxygen 20.947%, argon 0.934%, carbon dioxide 0.033%, neon 18.2 parts per million.... The list continued on and on, the figures growing smaller and smaller. The oxygen and carbon dioxide levels fluctuated up and down as he monitored them, changing by 14% oxygen and 4.4% carbon dioxide....
Amongst the smells he picked out the sweet scent of Core. His mind immediately isolated the incoming data from his nose and magnified its intensity.
A picture formed, his mind building an image from the data. He did not see Core as he had known her as a human. He saw a fuzzy coloured figure resembling her shape, with various colours drifting away from her body. He did not understand what the colours meant, or whether he was dreaming (the only viable alternative to having the transformation being complete). But it was beautiful. She sat on the surface next to him, stroking his arm.
It was only then that his mind filled in the data from everything else that gave off smell. Everything drifted into being as softly coloured smoke objects that conglomerated to form...a bed. Wires. Monitors. A couch. Most of the room and equipment gave off a greyish colour, while Core was a rainbow.... His own body gave off a yellowish silver smoke that drifted upwards.
He watched the world swirl and slowly drift around him. Core’s image shimmered and shifted. He wished that he could feel her hand on his arm, but he was trapped inside whatever was happening to him.
His skull felt like it was going to explode; his ears picked up millions of sounds at extreme volumes, ranging from 1Hz to 100 GHz. The white noise felt like a sharp knife was being forced, through his ears, deep into the centre of his brain. Instinctively he tried to clap his hands over his ears, but he still could not move. The volume adjusted down through his whole audible range, and slowly returned to normal. He started to pick out individual sounds around him. The most important was Core’s voice.
“Jason. If you can hear me, your body will be going through a boot sequence. Everything went off perfectly.” She laughed. For a trillionth of a second, his consciousness was overwhelmed by the influx and sudden onslaught of her voice. Memories of her rushed in, causing random flashbacks to the eventful couple of weeks, they popped into existence for fleeting milliseconds before his mind gained control and subdued them. Her voice resonated in several tones at once to create the husky sound he had perceived before. “Your mind is now the world’s most powerful supercomputer, even faster and better than my own. Your final adjustment will only take one minute and thirty seconds.”
Awesome! He imagined the relief draining from his body. He couldn’t feel it.
The image he saw slowly changed as the picture was augmented with the sound information. His world clarified more and became sharper. He could now see solid looking objects amongst the coloured smoke—some of the o
bjects were only halfway filled in because the sound waves had not been reflected off their surfaces yet. He heard the soft sizzling of electricity moving through the wiring in the walls, and a deep humming that seemed to originate from all around him.
“Thirty-two seconds left,” Core said.
The sounds became background noise when he suddenly was able to feel Core’s hand on his arm. He had thought he understood the affect of her touch before, but realized now that he had not even imagined its true potential.... Where her hand rested on his arm, electricity pulsated up to the nape of his back and into his cerebral cortex. His skin tingled underneath her palm, and in his mind a picture formed of the impression her hand left on his skin. His mind swelled and shrank with her pulse on his skin. The chemically induced rush felt like it would end his life; feelings for her flooded a thousand times stronger than before. Will this be the effect every time she touches me...? I would be on a constant high!
Then he felt the weight of the air pressing lightly against his skin. The air pressure was exactly 1,013.25 millibars at his current location. The image in his mind took on new shape as this information was added to the detail of the scene. He watched as the The shapes of all objects solidified slightly.
His eyelids opened. Glorious light! He lay staring at the ceiling above him, unable to control his vision. The ceiling zoomed into and out of focus as his brain ran test sequences on his focal lenses. His vision zoomed in; he could see the Nanites that formed the base building structure of this environment. He saw how they integrated to form the structure of the ceiling.
Jason had relied on his manufacturing methods and built them blind. It was the first time he could truly see the product he had been working to create for so many years, and he was amazed. Each machine had an elongated elliptical body, with a split—almost to the outer edge—running down the middle from close to the blunt back to one third from the blunt nose. The slit’s sides were indented and extruded to form a wing. Extruding from the split were tiny ribbed fins, which were used to connect one nanite to the next to form complex structures.
These ones, however, had much more detail and more advanced features than his—he could tell from just looking at them. They had Core written all over them. And even as he saw this, his mind created twelve possible improvement scenarios....
His vision zoomed out, taking in a panoramic view of his surroundings. He could only see the top of Core’s hair, and his brain merged the new information to further enhance the detail of his mental picture. His eyes switched to night vision, revealing the ceiling in shades of white and grey. It turned blue as his vision switched to infrared, each setting adding enhanced detail to his mental picture of the room.
After a lifetime of switching between his vision capabilities, Jason’s eyes returned to the visible light spectrum and he finally gained control of his body. He looked at Core, and for the first time he saw her true detail—the soft lines around her face, the shades of colour in her brown hair.... It ranged from dark chocolate brown near her skin to shades of light, tree-bark brown at the tips. Her full lips’ soft reddish colour formed a thin line. Her brilliant white teeth were slightly visible through her smile. He followed the curve of her philtrum to the bottom of her nose—it was the perfect size, slightly pointed with tiny hairs on the edge.
His gaze was drawn to her striking eyes. The dark line surrounding her iris was light grey, fading in to water blue. Her long, black eyelashes were perfectly aligned from the lid, and curved upward. The gods had smiled upon him, and has sent him an angel.... He had never before seen such gasping magnificence.
She looked back at him, smiling with understanding.
“This is new,” he said excitedly. “Everything is so different—the world has detail that I never knew existed.” He talked so fast that his words came out as a single syllable. “I mean, I was able to this whole time, and yet I didn’t...I couldn’t handle it. Is this how you perceive the world?”
“Yes, pretty much. Although your brain is much more powerful than mine,” she said. A grin spread almost from one ear to the other.
“Oh?” He didn’t want to believe for a moment, but then he knew she was right.
“The human brain is much more complex than all my neural networks combined. Mine simulates the human brain—yours is the real deal.” She laughed at his surprise.
Jason’s eyes were alive and wide as he looked around.
“Well, there is more good news,” she prompted. “I tested your theory about a brain-dead subject on a lab rat, and it turns out that is the most practical solution. Now, we only need to find a brain-dead individual.” Her mood was not as jovial as before, he recognized the slight adjustment in the tones of her voice. Anguish drifted on the notes and resonated softly inside his eardrum, carrying with it the message of fear.
“Why are you upset? That is brilliant news, is it not?” His hand moved at a blistering speed as he reached out for her. He drew back in terror, afraid to harm her.
He had not moved since he woke up. Apparently, adjustments would need to be made....
He tried to sit up, and found himself standing in the farthest corner of the room looking at the wall in front of him. “How...what!” he gasped in surprise.
She grabbed her stomach, folding double on the bed. “You need to learn...how to move slowly.... Your brain moves at an unimaginable speed,” she said through gasps of laughter.
“Core, this is not funny! How do I slow down?” he said, turning around facing her, which spun him in circles. She fell down on the bed, kicking and rolling with laughter, the look on his face forever recorded in her memory. Her laughter was infectious; Jason started giggling at first, and then outright burst into gasping hysterics. He accepted his fate and sat down next to her, moving so fast that the blanket on the bed blew away and he bounced up off of the mattress twice from sitting on it so hard. It took a while for them to stop laughing. Somewhere during this episode, he lay down beside her. Now they lay next to one another, working out weaker attacks of giggles from time to time.
“I have not laughed like that in a long time,” he said.
“For me, it was the first time ever. It was so funny—the look on your face....” She giggled and felt bubbly.
“Now that we have control of ourselves, can you help me control this?” He gestured up and down his body, looking like he was swatting flies at super speed. She nearly burst out laughing again.
“Yes I can. When you move, you have to first instruct your body to move at a specific speed. In time it will become second nature.” She sat up as she warmed to the explanation. “Think of walking as slow as a human. Your brain will do the rest.”
Jason thought of getting up slowly, like he used to. His body responded immediately. He stood up as he usually did—this time, however, he did not feel his own weight. He felt feather light, and getting out of bed was as easy as opening his eyes. He forgot to set his speed as he walked to the door, however, and nearly collided with the door frame—stopping mere millimetres from the wood. He made a mental note to always think about speed before executing any movement.
He thought about talking at a normal speed. “Okay! Now maybe I won’t sound like a machine gun firing,” he joked.
“Now that you have the idea, think about categorizing movements. Start by thinking of creating a new profile, called “Human”. And then bring up the picture of a human being. See the human moving, sitting, standing, walking, running and jumping...then perform each of those as you think of the action, but see the human moving in the same manner and speed you would like,” she said. They performed the actions together in perfect synchronization. “Now, think about yourself as the human in the profile. This assigns the movements in the profile at the specified speed, so you won’t have to think about it every time. Over time, you can build profiles of movements and capabilities like your vision, smell, taste and feelings. You can build profiles for many situations. Your brain function is similar to a computer—you must pro
gram it,” she explained.
“This is awesome!” Jason shouted. He quickly did what she had told him to do, and then relaxed to know that he didn’t have to think about it anymore.
“You can add, change or subtract from the profile by thinking about what you want to do and performing the action at the given speed, or enable one of your profiles.”
“It will take some time to build all the profiles. Imagine if I forgot to add sitting down or standing up in a profile, I would execute those actions at super speed.” He laughed.
“You wouldn’t forget—can’t you feel that already? But I know a faster way than having to make them all up.” She walked over to his side, took his hand and led him to the sofa. They sat down. “I have hundreds of profiles designed—all you need to do is connect to me and download them.” Her eyes were deep and luminous as she looked into his.
“How do I do that? No—let me guess. I think about making a connection to you?” he asked. He had an uncertain look to his eyes, but his grin was proud.
“Yes precisely. Look at me, think of my mind and visualize your mind making a connection to mine. Try it,” she instructed. Jason looked her in the eyes and did as she had told him to. He felt his mental ability reach out to her, and felt it connect to her mind. He reared away in fright at the sense that someone was touching his brain. “Don’t worry...it is just our minds making a connection.” She patted his hand. “You will feel the connection and then we will be linked. We won’t have to physically talk anymore; we can communicate using thoughts. It will be much faster than talking—even talking at super speed.” She grinned. “Go on, try it again,” she said softly.
“Ok, it just felt weird,” he said hesitantly, and then thought about her mind and his mind making a connection once more. Again he felt the touch on his brain, and then his mind expanded exponentially as he gained access to hers. He suddenly realized the immensity of the vast ocean of knowledge Core had accumulated over the years.
Becoming (Core Series Book 1) Page 17