. . .
From Brain to Butterfly
Dr. Shallin walked along one of the many concrete walkways that spidered throughout the entire installation. The facilities it connected were all pieces of the same steel-reinforced puzzle of low-rise rectangle, square, and L-shaped buildings. Most of them had their guts underground, save for the few reserved for non-essential functions such as socializing, entertainment, or consumption.
Life for those who occupied this compound wasn't meant to be enjoyed. The many restaurants, hotels, and novelty shops weren't meant for her to shop or eat in, just as the trees and the exotic plant life that dotted the network of concrete weren't meant for her to appreciate. All extras – those staples of life back on Earth – were for the benefit of the press, visitors, and tourists. Pure PR, and nothing else.
Vey stopped at one corner of the walkway, halfway back to her office from her personal quarters. And just as she always did, she reached out to one of the small bushes and picked off a lavender-colored flower. Bringing it up to her nose, she inhaled deeply – enjoying the small gesture of disobedience and the tangy scent of victory – before discarding the now dying flower onto the grass below. Take that she thought with a smug smile before continuing on to the complex she worked in. If she couldn't kill them for failing to appreciate her and for burying her, then she'd kill their stupid, colorful facades of 'giving a damn' . . . one flower at a time.
"I shall do no harm." She recited the catchphrase, waiting for the results of her scans, and then continued on passed the checkpoint towards the elevator.
She found Shepherd waiting for her outside her door - leaning against the wall with his head down, tapping away at the lighted symbols on his clipboard. He'd forgotten to comb his hair again, and the dark curls looked as though they were attempting to escape from his head. At the sound of her heels, he looked up and watched the rest of her approach. With an elaborate working of the keypad next to the door jam, the door separated from the middle and granted them entrance.
"You actually slept in your personal quarters?" he asked, collapsing into the guest chair across the desk from her own like some mutated starfish.
"I only went to the showers and changed clothes."
He noted the portable gel bedding set up in one far corner of the room as she spoke, the remnants of several cups of coffee littering the floor around it. He watched as she bent down to pick one up, checked to make sure it hadn't gone bad, and downed it. With a grimace, he slid his gaze to the object he'd come to check on sitting on her desktop.
"It's been like that for past two days. Question mark, exclamation mark. Question mark, exclamation mark." Now that the novelty of it had worn off, she was just plain frustrated, and ready to toss the thing she stared at as she lowered into her chair.
Shepherd sighed. "I had hoped things would have went one way or the other by now. I didn't really want to witness anything . . . well, you know."
She nodded slowly, her concentration remaining on the two data chips she snow played with in her hands as if they were some kind of archaic deck of cards. Scrap it? Keep it? Force it? She knew she had to choose something eventually, and remove that AI restriction on her office before anyone came poking around in person. Or if, God forbid, someone from HIGHCOM had to override a breakthrough. Her NCO security clearance went as high as Vice Admiral, courtesy of her deceased benefactor, so only an Admiral would be able to lift the restriction. And if an Admiral has to do it, you're in serious trouble.
"What's he doing in there?" Shep whined as he sat up to toss his clipboard on the glass-covered synthetic wood that separated them.
"He might not be doing anything. It could just be a repeating error. There's nothing wrong with the code from what I can see, but that doesn't mean anything." She'd left the holographic display interfaced with her personal computer so she could watch the mathematical workings going on inside in hopes of catching something out of place, but there was nothing wrong with the code.
Shep, ever the optimist, snorted. "Maybe he's just a late bloomer."
Vey shrugged, not bothering to look up. "Or maybe he's not going to bloom at all."
Standing up, the Lieutenant took one last look at the display before heading to the door. "I've got some work to do, but I'll touch base a little later."
Vey raised a hand to wave him off, lowering it when she heard the whisper of the door closing behind him. Without her AI, she had to tap commands into her screen to lock the door manually. After several minutes of staring at her botched attempt at greatness, she made a disgusted sound and left her chair. After making her way to her sleeping corner, she touched a small keypad attached to her gel bed and brought the gel's temperature to a cozy 79 degrees. Settling in and turning to her side, she closed her eyes.
Consciousness seemed to haze in, awareness trickling into him like a small stream making its first venture into a long dry cavern. He felt muzzy – his thoughts blurry and scattered like pieces of a puzzle that had been turned upside down.
The first thing he noticed through this curtain of wakeful twilight was the absence of hunger pangs that always accompanied his awakenings. He wasn't thirsty, and could detect no need to relieve himself. There was no stretching of atrophied limbs, or tight muscles. He felt no involuntary need to open his eyes, or listen for ambient sounds that would describe his surroundings to him.
But he did remember his previous excursion of the waking world that seemed like it had happened ages ago. And after a quick, frightful check, he determined that his memories were again present and intact. No, intact wasn't the word for it. They were gloriously . . . accessible? It was the oddest sensation . . . razor sharp, and of a precision he couldn't even begin to describe. What had once been uncertain, and sometimes unreliable, was now exact and almost tangible. Like he could decide upon a memory, and literally reach out and put his finger on it not a nanosecond after the decision was made.
It almost reminded him of the way in which a machine could retrieve data – quick as mercury and flawlessly accurate.
And it was upon the testing of this sudden, inexplicable ability that he realized there were other things present, too. Like an orchard of electrified trees, their branches surging with energy and exploding into a network of sapphire Light when he gave them his attention. Curiously, he sensed that he was somehow subconsciously aware of what was, or what should have been there. Most of them were bare . . . pristine and new. But a few of them within the forefront of his attention were a slightly purplish hue of blue, and he seemed to understand that the difference indicated the presence of information.
Suddenly, his inquisitiveness dissipated in the wake of intense panic. He felt something holding onto him, dragging him and making him heavy. Some . . . other was clouding over him, a phantom presence that he couldn't comprehend.
Subsystems active. Initiating full system diagnostic of life-support subroutines.
It wasn't something his senses had picked up. He hadn't heard it, or read it, or recalled it in memory. It was just there, as if it were a part of his cognitive capacity. But that didn't make him any less afraid – the realization only strengthened his conviction to distance himself from this new discovery.
And when he found that he could not escape from this unknown manner of trickery, his alarm increased to the point of being manic, and he blinked off abruptly back into the void.
Her eyes snapped opened, her brain wide awake. Vey wasn't sure if something had awoken her, or if it was merely the result of too much sleep. She stared at the false-marble paneling in front of her, her body turned towards the wall. Her brain lazily registered the play of distorted light on the shiny surface – white and blue moving across it like reflections from the play of light across water. But it wasn't this movement of light that triggered her realization . . .
It was the sound of a low, very human voice bouncing off of the unseen molecules that filled the room. She could make out mumbling – a deep, monotone of gibberish that seemed to repeat every five seconds or so. After hearing it a third time, and before she had time to think better of the action, Vey turned and rose to a sitting position, her eyes shooting toward what she hoped was the source of this new ambience. Her vision made contact just in time to see the last remnants of a dissolved image flutter away – casting her into darkness and silence – and she silently cursed herself for the abrupt movement.
With the precarious layout of her coffee cups memorized, Vey swung her legs over the edge and maneuvered herself away from the corner without incident. She reached for the switch of an ancient desk lamp and sat down in her chair.
She was tempted to make some snide comment about waiting him out, but thought better of it this time around. If his fleeing from her sudden movement was any indication, he was already on edge as it is. Best thing to do, she concluded, would be to wait quietly in a non-threatening manner.
Ignoring the holopad, she turned her attention to the screen in front of her and triggered the appearance of semisolid signs and symbols. She poked at them decisively, and studied the algorithm displayed on the screen. Tapping a few keys on the touchpad she preferred, she managed to make it through a few pages of data before being rewarded with more signs of life.
White blazed into the void, filling all the space it was capable of before a large, cloister-black 'L' was superimposed onto the background. Tiny strings of code scrolled down the letter in semi-translucent white, like snow flurries against a sheet of onyx. Static distorted the image slightly for only a moment before it calmed, and brightened. He repeated his gibberish clearer this time, albeit it almost shyly.
"Do you speak English?" She'd assumed he had, if he'd been stored in England.
The scrolling numbers paused, almost imperceptibly, before continuing their smooth descent down the beaming black. But he said nothing.
"Run full system diagnostic, please." Two cycles of silence before he responded in a steady, deep voice.
"Code directory integrity . . . okay."
"Primary array . . . okay."
"Secondary array . . . okay."
"Life support subroutines . . . okay."
"Ethics subroutines . . . okay."
"Optical processing subroutines . . . okay."
"Interface . . . primed and transmitting."
"Thought Matrix . . . optimal."
"Algorithm cycling . . . primed and ready."
"Logistics center . . . cycling within range."
"Dynamic Memory Matrix . . . insufficient data for–"
"That will do, thank you." She didn't need to hear anymore to know that the "software" had transferred over just fine. Which meant, exactly, shit. It wasn't that part that gave her problems . . . it was always the humanity part of them that failed.
Vey opened her mouth to speak when she happened to notice a blip on her screen – a small animated spiral in the upper right hand corner that indicated data was being streamed from an outside source.
"Well, aren't you quick on your feet." She gave a light chuckle before tapping a series of keys that terminated his interface with the machine. There was the new behavior she'd been hoping for – none of his forerunners had made it far enough to test their abilities, being too disturbed by their circumstances.
"So, would you like to tell me a little about yourself? Your name, perhaps, or how you feel?" Again, she received no response except for the slight pause in his scrolling. "Perhaps an explanation for your choice of display? A letter is a bit impersonal, don't you think? Maybe you should– "
"No. No. No. No and no. That will do, thank you."
He cut her off just as she had him, refused all her questions, and mocked her dismissal of his diagnostic process. And then, as if to say that he was finished with her process, he snapped off in a flash.
Vey didn't know whether she should be amused, insulted, or both. She expected testiness, of course, but that didn't mean she had to like it. And she didn't like it – not the least little bit – because displays of anger such as this had resulted in only one way so far . . . madness. The only comfort she found was in the fact that he'd chosen to terminate communication when all the others had simply ranted and raved until melt down.
She waited for reinitiation for almost an hour, but all was quiet. Apparently she'd thoroughly pissed him off, and that was that. With a shrug, she locked down access to her machine's interface, and retrieved an old book from her antique collection. She had plenty of energy now, with the knowledge that he wasn't a dud after all, and decided to prop her feet up and wait him out.
NCO or Noncom - Non Commissioned Officer. A civilian. Rank can get pretty up there, but they remain under official ranks in the chain of command.
HIGHCOM - High Command, the brass, the big wigs, those in authority.
Nanosecond - one billionth of a second. If you see 'nano' attached to anything, it is incredibly small.
Algorithm - simplified, just a series of steps needed to solve or perform something.
Interface - a means in which machines communicate. Our current blue tooth technology would be a primitive type.
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