Phoebe heard from the other interrogators that the stories of all the scientists added up. They could of course all be telling the same lie but the attack on their systems was impressive enough to lead her to believe that Sarah, the one she had interrogated herself, could break out and run away whenever she wanted with those fingertip implants. After the interrogation she questioned the three of them together. It was quite unsettling to see that Harald indeed was almost completely paralyzed, whenever he wanted to say something he wrote it down onto a small note pad on the armrest of his wheelchair and looked at the whoever it was meant for, who would then have to take the piece of paper.

After some discussion with the rest of the agency, Phoebe decided that it would be best to set up camp in the lab where they had found the scientists. Hannah said that she would drive them there.

Now the scientists, Hannah, Phoebe and a few guards stood in the wide open warehouse the lab was situated in. Gerald was also along for the ride since he absolutely did not want to pass up on the opportunity to examine their setup. Everything in the lab was very clean without looking lifeless, it made sense since this was a laboratory as well as a home. One side of the warehouse was dedicated to research, the other side had containers lined up against the wall which functioned as living space.

Anna showed them around. The first thing she showed them was a white cube with multiple vents, the cube had bundled cables coming out of it.

Phoebe said: "I assume that that is the server you set up here. The one that connects all those people."

Anna nodded. "Yes."

Gerald pointed to a smaller cube next to the large one, this one was black. "What's that? A backup server?"

Anna explained: "No, all backup systems are contained within the main cube. The smaller cube is housing the closest thing to artificial intelligence that we were able to create. We named it 'Mencur-Besh'."

"Fascinating. What does it do exactly? Can it speak?"

"It can speak, but not to us. It lives inside the server as well. It is manifested as a variable number of independent sub-personalities which can be linked. Each sub-personality is fully functional on its own and can think logically."

Gerald was visibly trying his best not to start spouting questions. He asked: "So, how do they interact?"

"All sub-personalities are permanently linked loosely, enabling them to access a common repository of skills and facts. Multiple sub-personalities can engage in a strong link, the collective formed by them is able to feel emotions, the more are linked the more complex their emotional capacity gets. If you would theoretically link all of them together in a strong link you would get one fully fledged and feeling personality. The problem with this is that the more join the link the more processing power it takes, with the technology of our time it isn't possible to achieve a full linkup for a sustained amount of time yet." Anna paused.

She continued: "There has been an incident though, about a year back our diagnostics system reported that for no apparent reason all sub-personalities decided to form a strong link. The link persisted for longer than should be possible, after the link broke only a third of the sub-personalities were left, the others were gone."

Gerald said: "Wow… this has got to be the most interesting day in my life. First I find out about actual for real brain-computer interfaces and then there is AI? Just wow. Tell me more, everything."

Phoebe chuckled to herself, Gerald really could be like a child sometimes when it came to computer science things he didn't know. She felt a tap on her shoulder, it was Sarah.

She said: "Thought that it would be a good idea to show you the other side of the warehouse, your friend definitely has the tech side covered. It would be good to show you the home side of things, you will be living here for an indefinite amount of time after all."

Phoebe answered: "Yeah."

They had decided that they would not leave the warehouse since cars constantly coming and going tended to draw attention. Phoebe followed Sarah to the containers, there were labels above the doors, indicating which ones were bathrooms and which ones were bedrooms. There were also a few unlabeled containers.

"What are those for?"

"Those three there are connected to form a living room of sorts. One is a fridge. The rest are guest rooms, there should be enough for everyone."

The guest rooms were an odd mixture of sparse and luxurious, there wasn't much in there but what little was in them was of high quality. Each room had a bed, a desk, a wardrobe and a washing basin, a dedicated bathroom was in a different container.

At the end of the tour Sarah showed Phoebe the living room, it was fairly spacious. One wall was occupied by a canvas that had a projector pointed at it, in front of it was a red couch. The other three walls were hung with abstract paintings.

Phoebe asked: "Are those the paintings you made with your mind?"

Sarah nodded. Then she walked over to the couch and sat down on it.

She said: "I imagine you have some more questions."

Phoebe sat down next to her and replied: "I do, we need every bit of information we can get if we want to find those hackers."

"Then I have a proposition for you."

Phoebe raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"

"Instead of giving you the information verbally I can just transfer it from my brain to yours."

"Whoa there. Is that safe? I don't want to end up with permanent brain damage."

Sarah smiled. "A two brain linkup works without any problems in almost one hundred percent of cases and even if there are problems, it is unlikely that it will cause permanent damage. We made sure of this. I wouldn't be suggesting it to you if it wasn't safe."

Phoebe asked: "What about when more people are connected?"

"With three people it is about as stable as with two but it goes downhill from there. Just like with our AI, the more are connected the more resource intensive it gets, which means that small calculation errors and interference are more common and have more devastating effects. The difference is that the Mencur-Besh's sub-personalities were made to be able to form links while our brains were not."

Phoebe said: "I am still not entirely convinced by this."

Sarah replied: "It will be much faster than asking me verbally and we can make sure that I leave nothing out."

Phoebe had to agree with Gerald on the front that a day ago she would definitely not have believed what she heard now. And she would have not agreed to a brain linkup with someone she had only known for a few hours. Then again, there were a lot of lives on the line and she really needed all the time she could get.

Phoebe sighed. "Okay. One more thing though."

"Yes?"

"Is it possible for you to manipulate me in any way?"

"It definitely is but that would be a very bad idea since you would notice it and you have armed guards with you. That and I wouldn't risk my only chance at saving the people on the server."

Phoebe had made her decision: "Fine. So how do you go about this?"

"Give me your hand."

As the implants in Sarah's fingertips touched Phoebe's hand everything started spinning. She let herself fall backwards into the couch. A numb feeling started spreading from her hand through the rest of her body, a few seconds later everything went black.

Phoebe found herself in a seemingly infinite white room, the only thing that wasn't white was the black wooden bench with silver decorations that she was sitting on. Sarah was sitting next to her.

Phoebe asked: "Where is this?"

Sarah smiled and said: "This is our connected mind. As you see, right now it is still blank. We can bring things from our own minds into this connected one, watch."

She stood up and waved her arm towards the horizon. Colors spread from her hand outwards, painting the white room with a blue sky and green meadow, which then quickly turned into a forest.

Phoebe was awestruck. "Wow…"

Sarah said: "You can try it too, bring something from your mind into here."

Phoebe had no idea how she knew what she was doing but somehow everything seemed as if she had been doing this since forever. She made flowers sprout from the grass and created a pond a few meters to the right.

Sarah explained: "This is the potential of our software in its pure, unbound form. I think I don't need to explain why some people might really want this."

Phoebe said: "It's amazing."

"Okay, now for why we came here in the first place. What do you want to know?"

"I think it would be good to know more about Peter since he is the only other one directly involved in this who I haven't met yet."

Sarah said: "Good point. I will now give you my memories of Peter, you will see everything through my eyes."

Phoebe was overcome by a sudden flood of information, pictures, sounds, smells and other things. They were suddenly hers even though she had never actually experienced them. She would need time to process them but she was sure that they were another step closer to understanding what was happening.