NOVEL NEXT Book 3 - Chapter 145
Trace waited for her to say something more before starting to laugh. "That's funny. You almost had me there. Now, who are you really?"
"She's serious," G1gl3Myte, or as he was supposedly otherwise known, David, said seriously. "She is Meredith Koarden, and I am, or rather was at one time David, her husband."
Ko frowned and leaned back with a shake of her head, crossing her arms as she did so. "It's a nice story, but how are we supposed to believe any of what you are saying? It's a nice story, but frankly, it's a lot to take in."
"You should believe it because you have met one of me before. I knew it when I first met Trace. His body is practically swarming with my little friends-" She growled and turned to the man next to her. "G1gl3- no, I'm not calling you by that stupid username anymore. David, activate the blocker if you would? I'm tired of all this double speak."
The man glared at her but obediently pulled out an orb with a small circular stand for it to sit on. He pressed a button on its top and a green line lit up around the top. Immediately, all their communication signals became blocked.
"There you go. We now have twenty minutes before it overheats, though I doubt we will need that much time. Regardless, if you keep an eye on it, the green lines will reach the bottom at the ten-minute mark. At that point, the top line will turn red, and everything will repeat until the insides go through a meltdown sequence."
"Thank you, now as I was saying, I knew Trace had met one of my personalities due to the nanites he had inside his body. Something that you now have as well, Devko."
Trace's brows furrowed in consternation. He glanced at Ko, who was sharing his look of concern.
Despite the unconscious hints they dropped during the conversation earlier, these two still hadn't made the proper connection. It wasn't a surprise really, as Meredith had truly believed Deckard was dead. It was only when she saw his signal reappear that she came to investigate. However, if this particular Meredith didn't know about all of that, then that meant she could only be one specific personality.
"Fine, let's say we do believe you. Tell us which personality you are?"
"I'm the primary one," She answered in a whisper. "I haven't talked to or reached out to the rest of them in over a hundred years. I wanted to escape everything so badly at the time that I very nearly gave up. It's what led to my mind fracturing even more than it already had." She laughed and waved her hand at the android body she was in. "This was my answer, my version of escaping."
"How though?" Ko asked curiously. "We've already established that cloning a brain doesn't work… Unless… were you able to link two of them together in a sort of network? Has that been done before? I'm not entirely sure what experiments have been done on cloning currently living brains."
Atraxia quirked her head. "Some experiments were conducted, but not many, at least not by my corporation. I had a specific goal in mind at the time. That said, I imagine other corporations have taken our research and done every unholy thing you can possibly think of with it." She shook her head, dispelling the unpleasant thoughts.
"To answer your question though, no, I haven't linked a cloned brain to my original. It's an interesting idea, but not one we attempted. I simply recreated my old meat organ with nanites. It's not quite as effective. You'd be surprised at just how effective the human brain truly is at what it does. However, after so many years of having the nanites constantly scanning my brain, they were able to remove certain items that were no longer needed. Without a physical body, certain pieces can be removed or rerouted as additional control and processing sectors."
"I'm not sure if that is terrifying or really fracking cool," Trace muttered to himself. "So, what? You just created a new brain and identity, and then started living down here without a care?"
"I did also make it so I completely forgot that I was Meredith for the first twenty-five years of my new life. I just wanted to relax and live my life, remember? Oddly enough, that is when David and I met again."
"What's the story there, anyway? You brought him back to life, and then what, just abandoned him?" Ko wondered, trying to understand the woman's thought process.
David scratched his chin and shrugged. "Um, no, that one was actually on me. You have to remember; that I had no idea who I was back then. I still largely don't, outside of a few scattered memories. When I first awoke, I was scared, terrified really, and this disembodied voice kept trying to talk to me. The scientists only wanted to poke and prod at me. Absolute, worst bedside manner ever.
"The first chance I got, I took it to escape. Meredith tried to get me to come back, of course, but I eventually made her understand that I didn't want to." He winced. "I think that may have made her mental issues worse for a time as well. She thought she was going to get her beloved husband back, only for him, me, to turn around and reject her."
"Man, you people are terrible." Trace sighed and looked at the orb that was nearly all green by that point. "Alright, well, we need to speed this up, it seems. Yes, Ko and I did meet one of your personalities Atraxia, however, that isn't where we got our nanites from. We got them from your son Deckard, at the same time he gave us a version of the GHOST System you two developed before that rather untimely attack."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Both parents went stock still, their android bodies priming to jump across the table and attack him.
"That's not funny, Trace," Atraxia growled at him, her voice synthesizer taking on a deep, menacing tone.
"No, it's not. Which is why you should believe it. I found his braincase during one of my first official jobs as an edger. A group of scavs had been using him as the core unit for a server. Luckily, for him, his nanites had been keeping him in a medical coma of sorts ever since the attack. Once they detected that he was safe, they transferred a portion of themselves to me so they could communicate, and we were able to wake him up."
"It took a bit," Ko interjected, "But after he was awake and functioning normally, his mind came back to him with no lasting problems. The nanites had kept him safe with relatively minor issues. Apparently, the process sent a signal up to Meredith's space station, and that is why she came down to visit us."
The two parents were absolutely still for several moments as they processed what they had been told. Finally, David shook himself free of his stupor.
"Tell us everything from the beginning, properly this time!"
***
"Well, that happened," Trace muttered tiredly as the two sank tiredly in the seats of his car. "We didn't even get to eat."
Ko nodded wearily from the passenger seat, her eyes closed, and her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window. "Are we sure that they are actually Deckard's parents?"
Trace snorted and limply shook his head. "Who knows? I'm not exactly an expert on how parents are expected to react upon learning that their supposedly dead son is actually alive. You have to actually have parents to even have that sort of knowledge in the first place."
She tiredly waved away his words. "I just expected them to… Oh, I don't know, maybe want to actually see him? That seems like the normal progression for something like this."
"I will admit, the fact that they didn't want to come over and see him right away was a little odd to me as well." He admitted. "Then again, this is something they have been dealing with for over a hundred years. Who can say just how screwed up that has made them? It obviously did a real number on them both in the first place. Learning he is alive might be more complicated than either of us can imagine."
"Yeah, maybe. All I know is that right now, I'm starving. Let's go get something to eat before we try thinking about any of this more."
"Deal," He agreed as his stomach cramped in protest against its current empty state. The sensation was still a relatively new one to him, as years of abusing his digestive tract had numbed much of it. It was taking time, but all the damage the nanites had initially fixed was gradually making itself known to his body as it got used to everything working again.
"What do you feel like eating?" She asked as he started the car.
"Something not crammed full of drugs or that came out of a printer." The tires spun as he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The rear of the car fishtailed slightly as the all-wheel drive system momentarily diverted more power to the back wheels.
"There's a place near my clinic that just opened up a couple of days ago," Ko said while pulling at her blouse. "Our clothes won't exactly fit the vibe of the establishment, but I've been meaning to check it out anyway. Everyone who I've seen enter the place has looked really happy with the food, and I saw them bringing in real grills and ovens when it was first setup, no food processing printers."
"At this point, I couldn't care less about MY clothes matching the place. We'll be right next to the clinic, and your apartment though, if you want to change." He offered, picking up speed now that they had a destination. "What sort of food does this place serve?"
"That might be a good idea, yeah. As for the food… Keep in mind I haven't been inside, but what I've seen everyone eating when I've walked by is large meaty sandwiches." She tried to discreetly wipe some drool away from the corner of her mouth as her stomach growled hungrily. "I'm talking hamburgers the size of my spread hand, and a whole host of others that I didn't recognize."
He groaned and urged the car to go even faster, desperately keeping his eyes peeled for cops and corpo security. "You have to stop talking Ko, you're killing me right now. I'm so hungry I could-" He forced himself to swallow his tongue before he could say something thoughtless.
It didn't help.
"You could what?" She asked, a strange glimmer in her mechanical eyes. Ko turned towards him; her arms folded across her chest defensively. "Bite me?"
"Err, no?" His mind scrambled desperately for something else. "I was going to say I could eat a PIG!" He cried out suddenly as blue and red lights lit up the night behind him. "Hang on!"
The accelerator went all the way to the floor as the modified car leaped to obey his demand for more speed. Where before he had only been going slightly above the speed limit, now he was actively pretending that it didn't exist. The car had once belonged to raiders, and its prior owner had clearly loved it as a ton of work had been done on the vehicle. All raider vehicles received some modifications. It was a fact of life due to how they were used.
At their new rate of speed, the previously hour-long trip would be cut down significantly, assuming that they didn't get caught that is.
The flashing lights gradually fell into the distance as Trace continued to pick up speed, all the while deftly weaving in and out of traffic as needed. The police generally wouldn't go above one-hundred and ten miles per hour in a chase, unless they were feeling frisky. The training they received didn't cover high-speed chases, and their department budgets didn't cover damage claims caused by officers going that fast. Which meant that the pigskin was on the hook to cover everything themselves.
So, they typically called in reinforcements from corpo-security or set up roadblocks when possible.
Thankfully, neither was warranted this time around, as he had simply been speeding when all of this had begun.
Ko chuckled at last and shook her head as she twisted around to look behind them. "Well, it's a little ruined now, but I was going to tell you to relax." Her hand drifted up and touched her throat. "I know that what happened with my mom was a freak accident. I'm not saying you can joke about it all the time, but as long as it's you, I'll be alright with it."
Trace risked taking his eyes off the road for a few moments to meet her gaze and take hold of her hand. Then, continuing to meet her eyes, he lightly kissed her fingers, and gently bit one, before sighing as he turned back to the highway. "It just doesn't have the same impact when they're synth-skin."
"Speak for yourself," She muttered, holding a hand to a flushed cheek. "I think the impact was just fine."