#safe underground with normal people. maybe nobody would understand her but at least she wouldn't be in that horrible world out there

[get-more-bald]

the fuck do you mean I have to leave....

[orchestrators]

Homo Computatrum: Continued

He watched as one of his coworkers, Harry, he thought his name was, open the black cabinet. Inside was a series of small black cubes on every shelf. Each cube had a glowing LED light on the edge, each glowing a slightly different shade of green, some even seemed yellow. Each cube was magnetized to the shelf it was on, using the electromagnetic induction to stay awake. The cabinet was a safe place for them to stay warm and fed, at least that was how Declan saw it, and removing one from the shelves always caused their LED to flicker. It must be painful for them, Declan thought, to be taken out of your place of comfort and be forced to work for your survival. He was projecting now, not meaning to put his situation onto the experiences of the little cubes.

“How is it?” Declan asked.

“Specimen twenty-five is functioning normally. Showing signs of slight distress, but other than that it is working fine.” Harry said, without any inflection.

“Bring me a charging pad, that should help it calm down.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Declan slipped the small cube into the charging pad, where for a moment he noticed it’s LED turn a brief shade of orange. Yes, it’s warm there isn’t it, Declan thought. The personnel door behind him slid open, and subject seventeen was escorted into the lab by 3 soldiers. She was frail, and her skin was whiter than everyone else's, how long she must have been here he could not guess. Her hair was brown, or maybe it used to be, the blotches of grey that interrupted the woodland colors made it hard to tell. She wore the same outfit each subject wore, it was a white jumpsuit, no pockets, and holes at each point where Declan would need to work on her. Apart from everything that had seemed so typical about her, there was one thing that stood out. She was smiling. Smiling would probably be the last thing Declan would be doing in her situation, but she seemed happy. Perhaps she was mentally defective, he thought, but if she was then she wouldn't be here. What was that about, he wondered.

She sat on the operating table, and the soldiers took their place in the corner of the room. Not dropping the aim of their weapons for a moment. Declan rotated the operating table, which began to fold itself into a chair around subject seventeen's body. The magnetic clamps locked her ankles and wrists in place, while a large strap furled about her chest. Unlike previous hosts, her breathing was steady, and her eyes didn’t grow wide with panic at being locked into place. What a strange subject. Declan wheeled his chair around to face her and began his procedure.

“I am going to insert these IV tubes into your arm ports here, is that alright?” He asked.

“Ha, I’m sure I have no choice here, but thanks for asking. Go ahead.” She said with an ironic laugh.

“Uh, yes, uh. I guess you're right,” he mumbled. Declan dipped his head, what a foolish thing to ask, what was he thinking. The arm bot began inserting the IV needles for him, his neural link with the machine making it much easier for him not to have to touch subjects. If anything made him uncomfortable, it was physical contact with them, it just made things harder for him.

“Surgery audio log begin recording now,” he said loudly, “Subject seventeen is prepared and-”

“Sarah.” 

“Eh, excuse me?” Declan said, looking up at subject seventeen.

“My name, it’s Sarah, not subject seventeen. You never asked but yeah there you go, what's your name by the way?”

Declan paused a moment and looked over at the other doctors at their stations, one of them lifted his hands into a shrug. Another just raised his eyebrows. Nobody seemed prepared.

“Um, my name?” 

“Yes, I hardly want to know the names of the people behind the glass, what’s your name doctor?” She asked politely.

“M-Morrissey, I am doctor Morrissey. You can uh, call me Declan if you like.” He said in astonishment. Nobody had asked him his name in over a year, nobody had introduced themselves to him for even longer.

“You don't seem to be very good with people Declan. Sorry if I overstepped.” Sarah said.

“No, no, it's just that, well nobody, uh, there is never,” he paused, trying to figure out what to say, “there is never this much talking involved in the procedure. Usually, subjects have nothing to say.”

“Well, that sounds boring huh? I guess the other volunteers have little to no personality, haha.” She said, giddy for someone in her position. Volunteers? Declan thought.

“I guess so. So you do, if you don't mind me clarifying, you do understand the nature of this experiment? Don't you?” Declan asked, unsure if she was fully aware of her situation.

“Well yeah, we’re trying to merge a human with a semi-conscious AI in an attempt to make it fully aware, granting it life. The merging of human intelligence and AI being the main goal, thus creating a new species.”

“Yes, that is exactly right,” Declan said, still confused by her, “You're, your not, a prisoner are you?”

“No, I’m not, why? Are other people here prisoners?” She asked, looking around her.

In all his time underground, he had not met someone like her. Every subject he had worked on in the experiment was either on death row or someone who had become a prisoner of the foreign conflict who was secured by the military for this very experiment. She wasn’t one of those people. A volunteer? Declan thought again. Where did she even hear about it? And by what means did she volunteer to be part of it all. A message popped up in Declan's smart lenses, it was from the Colonel:

Doctor, do not waste time here today. Proceed with the operation.

Declan looked back and forth, from the message in the corner of his eye to the girl sitting in front of him. Despite her grey streaks, he noticed she was quite young, probably in her 30’s. He shook his head, trying to declutter his mind with all the questions that she had inspired in him. Declan pulled up her medical file in his smart lenses and continued with his audio log.

“Subject, uh, Sarah Kirby, prepped and ready for the procedure to begin. Anesthesiologist, Dr. Richard Berkham, preparing the Bupivacaine for local anesthetic now. Um, you will feel a slight pinch in your neck now, alright?” Declan asked, glancing back to Sarah’s eyes.

“Sounds good, ready when you are.”

“It will take around fifteen minutes for it to work, then we will begin.” He said, unsure of himself.

“Okay, this must be nerve-wracking for you guys huh? Not a single happy face in here. Like that guy over there by the cabinet? He must have like, constipation or something.” Sarah said with a giggle.

                  It was apparent that the cocktail of drugs being introduced to Sarah’s system were already taking effect, or maybe she was just a silly happy person normally. Declan hadn’t met a happy person in years, so it couldn’t be that. Some time had passed, and she had already made more than one person in the room laugh for the first time that Declan had known any of them. Her bright attitude seemed to be infectious, even making one of the soldiers loosen his grip on his firearm. Declan made himself busy with inserting the small cube into its casing, again imagining it to be more comfortable for it in there. Normally he would begin surgery immediately, but today he didn’t see any issue with doing to the other way around. They were going to be in this small lab for seven hours no matter what order he did things in. And so he began working, and Sarah continued to be chatty with him. Four hours had passed, and she still had so much to say.

“-and so I thought, yno O’Brien, maybe spending so much of your spare time on that Alimo model would have been better spent, I dunno, with Kaiko, Molly or Yoshi? No?”

“The wife's name was Yoshi?” Declan asked, bemused.

“No no, you're not listening at all are you? His wife's name was Kaiko, Yoshi was his kid.” Sarah said, her words sounding a little more slurred.

“Sorry, it’s just a complicated piece of tech I’m working on here, you know the interface that we have been using for the neurons in the brain stem to interact with the specimen wasn’t actually the best way to do it, this new model we came up with last month is the first of its kind. So I just have to take my time and focus on it.” Declan said, leaning in closer to the small cube.

“You must be very proud of the work you’re doing here then, to have such passion the way you do,” Sarah said in a warm tone.

“Passion?” Declan repeated, “I don’t think it’s a passion, Sarah. More so that this work is necessary, it has to be done, and not many people can do it.”

“Don’t be silly, if you didn’t love doing this you wouldn’t be so careful with the Ai in that cube. I saw you handle it the way you did, not many people treat technology like it’s alive.”

“Well, because this piece of technology is alive, in a way, I mean. It’s not fully conscious yet, so its intelligence is currently in its infancy.” He explained.

“So you mean it's just a baby?” Sarah asked.

“A, a what?” Declan paused, confused.

“A baby, you know like a child before it’s running around and playing, a tiny person?” 

“Oh, yes yes, of course, a baby um, well in a way eh, you could say that,” Declan said, stumbling over his words again.

Sarah didn’t seem to be any less chatty, even though the localized anesthetic made her neck and jaw numb. Any other patient remained deadly silent throughout, which Declan always thought was best anyway. He had finished linking all the synthetic neurons to the cube and closed the seal around the implant. It was ready for insertion, and it was time for him to begin operating. He rotated the chair around so he could see Sarah’s nape and began pulling her hair out of the way to begin shaving. Each action he took he had preceded by asking if it was okay for him to do it, even though he knew that Sarah had no choice in the matter. Now and again he would glance to the mirrors on the wall, knowing that behind the glass was Sylvester, staring at him disapprovingly. It didn’t phase him as much as he thought it would, after all, this was his patient and his work. His choices to do it the way he wanted were entirely up to him. 

The loud buzzing of the hair clippers always made him uncomfortable, but he knew the necessity of the device. He preferred waxing as the ideal form of hair removal, taking the hair out of its follicle entirely would naturally yield better results. But after all, this was only surgery, and he wasn’t a barber. He hesitated for a moment, noticing a small scar on the back of Sarah’s ear. A strange place to have gotten a cut or a burn, unless? He ran his left finger over the back of his ear and felt the small warm piece of ceramic behind his lobe. It was his communication’s link implant, the latest technology for those who could afford it, or those who needed it. Doctors, soldiers, politicians, scientists, all people of necessary status. Was she a billionaire? He thought. Another message came over his vision from the Colonel behind the glass:

Doctor, please continue.

It had been more than a few minutes that he had been staring at her neck and rubbing the back of his ear. He looked about the room, at every set of judgemental eyes resting on his inaction. Now wasn’t the time to be distracted he thought, so he began running the hair clippers over her neck, and she laughed.

“You have a ticklish touch don’t you Declan. Ha, I guess all doctors need that.” She laughed.

“I uh, I try to be delicate with anything, I guess it’s all part of the job. Now, I’m going to mark out the surgical incision sites, begin the implantation. Procedure log, take note, beginning incisions now.”

“Do your thing Declan, I’m hardly gonna stop you,” Sarah said.

Declan used the robot arm above his head to pick up the forceps and scalpel on the tray next to him, they were freshly removed from their sterile packaging and had a satisfying smell. Declan displayed a magnified version of Sarah’s nape on his smart lenses and began moving his hands in sync with the robotic arm, moving the sharp blade into position. But before he could make the first cut, his eyes landed on her scar again, and he longed to ask her why she had it. He rotated his view and saw the same scar mirrored on her other ear, hardly a coincidence. He delinked his right arm from the arm bot, and picked up a towel to wipe his neck, he was sweating again. Not ideal considering the room was quite temperate. He had never hesitated like this in a procedure before, so he exhaled slowly, closed his eyes, and relinked with his arm bot. It was time to get to work, so he made the first cut.

                 “So you mean to say that she just didn’t like otters?” Declan asked while peeling back another layer of tissue under Sarah’s skull.”

“Well kind of, it was more that she just saw them as a strange housepet, but I think they are ideal. They’re so loving, and they have thumbs for crying out loud, thumbs Declan.”

“I can think of one or two ways they can be devious with having thumbs. Kind of like raccoons, have you ever seen those videos of the little raccoons getting up to mischief?” Declan said, smiling.

“Ha, yeah, I miss those. You think with all the amazing tech you guys have in these places you could bring them back.” Sarah said in a wishful way.

“We can clone them, they just wouldn’t live very long you see,” Declan said.

“See this is where you guys down here need to get your priorities together, the world needs otters and raccoons back, not nano cybernetic humans. Ha”

“Well, remind me to get to work on gene resequencing after we’re done here,” Declan said jokingly.

“No problem, when are we actually going to be done here?” Sarah said, her voice dropping down from its usual bounce.

“We, had another hour remaining, I'll be using the skin cell regenerator to seal the wounds around your new implant, and then inserting your memory core.”

“Alright then. But, before you do, can I ask you something.”

“Belt away, what do you need to know?”

“Do you know what it's going to feel like? How it will work?” Sarah asked, “Will I still be the same person? Or will I be a new person? Will the AI in my mind be me? Or will I be the AI?”

“I, uh,” Declan stammered again, “I, I don't know. Sarah this will be the first time we try this particular way of doing it. We don’t know the exact effects of the merging of two minds yet.”

“But Declan, what about the others, how did it work out for them? Did they change at all?” Sarah asked. Declan looked about him, each person his eyes fell onto were staring at the ground, knowing the answer to the question she had asked. It was an answer he wasn’t ready to give.

“Oh,” Sarah said, “I see, you haven’t had a successful merging yet have you, that's why you’re using the new interface.” She sounded for the first time Solemn.

“Yes, you’re right,” Declan said, unwilling to say more.

“Well then, here's hoping this one works out huh?” She said, bringing back her giddiness, “Okay, but what if, and hear me out okay? What if we brought back goats? Have you ever seen a goat?”

Declan laughed, “Ha, I think I prefer otters.”