NOVEL NEXT 47: Currents Within Us
RYST
"Everything, Peydran, everything!" I declared. "How does it work?" My eyes roved from his head to the equipment floating around us. "I mean, how? Peydran? How did you hack something that is in your brain?"
He smirked. "Think about it, Ryst. Really think about it. What is a brain? What are nerves?"
"Tissue?" I asked.
"And how does your brain tell your hand to move? You think, and your hand moves. How?"
I started pacing, reflecting. "Signals. We don't fully understand it. Electrical pulses travel along the nerves and are received."
"And how does the augment know to move?"
"Well, I don't really know, Peydran. I'm not a cyberneticist."
"I had a lot of time to think in that hospital bed. Not moving. But sensing everything. Learning how to feel everything with my right hand— my skin, my movements. So I could program my mind and the relay to send signals to the augment. I studied. What I learned was that a brain and nerves are a lot like a computer. An electrical system. It's all current. You think about grasping your hand, and the thought is an electrical current going down to your hand. Then your hand moves."
"I think about moving the augment. The relay turns that thought into a command and moves the augment. It's just another current. Another message from the brain, with a mechanical interface. It's all a computerized system. Body and machine using the same current."
My eyes looked from his head to the augment, back and forth, back and forth. Something was starting to come together for me.
"So, how does the message get from the relay in your brain to the augment, Peydran? There aren't wires all that way?"
He grinned broadly. Right question, then. "You don't need wires when you are a wire, Ryst."
"Hmmm." I mused, trying to connect the dots. "What do you mean?" I said slowly.
"Humans are fantastic conductors of electricity, right? Get struck by lightening, and bad things happen. Lightening will scramble your internal electrical system: your brain, your heart. The cybernetic relay in the brain uses the human tissue, the brain, the nerves, as an electrical system. It's a current."
"The relay acts like the brain, telling the augment to move. The nerves, the real tissue, carry the information— the signal— from the relay down the neck, down the shoulder, down the upper arm, and connect to the augment's electrical wiring. The relay? The augment? They are a mechanical copy of the human brain. Not as good. No sensory feedback, but they can carry the signal out and move the augment like a body part."
"Wait, so the human nerve tissue is a substitute for a wire?" I asked.
"Yep!" he confirmed. "And a bit of code, and the relay became a wireless transmitter to the equipment you see hovering around you. I can send commands directly to anything I can reach through wireless."
"Then you needed to be able to command the relay that's inside your brain? Woaaah. Unh unh. Nooo. How did you? How did you take command? Unh unh, no way, Peydran."
He grinned. "It's in my brain. It's electrical. My brain is electrical. My brain is a computer. The relay is a computer. Think hard enough, and you're not just using the relay to move your hand, you ARE the relay. You control the relay. It is your SLAAAAAAVE!"
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"Holy shitting turd balls of fuck!" I cried. "What the blazing fuck turds, Peydran!? You are one with the computer in your BRAIN!"
He threw his head back and rocked with laughter. "I Art and Practiced the hell out of this thing! I am one with the relay!" he sang out.
I looked everywhere around the apartment. "So what, everything? Everything with an electrical current? Stove? Cooler?"
"Nah, that would be a waste, even if I wanted to spend the time trying to do that, and I don't. What's the point? It's the sophisticated stuff. The things I do all the time for work. Pad, video, drones, camera, coding. It's faster than typing. Sooo much faster than typing. Way faster than voice commands. Speech is too slow. Thoughts are so much faster than words."
"But, I still have to think the code, the commands, and send them. Like, to get a video to play on the pad, to zoom in on the ass shorts. I have to think about sending the command. I just keep practicing at it and getting faster. My brain still doesn't process as fast as a computer, or at least, the command part where I have to think about what I want to do. I dunno, is that making sense?"
"Yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. It's just—astonishing. Astonishing, Peydran." Shaking my head, I said, "It's astounding. That it is even possible. And why isn't everyone doing it?"
He just shrugged. It felt like something was pushing at me, some sense of something growing and pounding down into me. I shook it off and focused on Peydran. "Does it help? With work? Is this better for Produced by Peydran? Faster?"
"Mmm. Maybe in some ways? I'll never know because this is just the way things are now. And there's NO WAY I will ever do anything like this—" he motioned to all the equipment hovering in the air, "in public. So, it definitely has limitations. But it really helped get past the difficulties with typing. I'm still practicing typing with the augment, and I'm not terrible. But it's not the same as a hand— just no sensory feedback, you know? Sometimes it's just faster to use my right hand."
He shook his head, and his brow furrowed for a second. "No, I'm gonna get there. I'll be able to type just like a normal hand. No laziness."
He nodded to himself, then grinned, "Yeah, it's faster, and it helps with work. Work is good. We had a little lag, but Gorshan, and Lorren— well, I think they kinda needed that push of me not being able to work. Or at least, I couldn't go on site for months. So, basically, I ran everything from off stage. From the hospital, then from home. And they did all the leg work. They really took all the responsibility, so I don't have to do as much field work now. Which is probably how it should've been anyway. And it's fine, it's fine. We could've had more work, right on the heels of the launch. But clients still roll in, and I'm happy with it."
"Is it too much? With all the productions and then everything with Living Foods? I mean, Peydran, you're taking sessions with clients, like, counseling."
His face softened, "That's just being human, Ryst. Just taking a few minutes a week to listen to people who need someone to talk to for a bit. I know what it was like to have someone there for me, and I can do that for other people. Just listen to them." He smiled at me softly. I smiled softly back.
I switched gears, "Okay, I have an idea, but I'm not sure how far we want to go down this road."
"Hit me with it."
"Alright, so we haven't really tried much with my Talent lately. Or, you've been doing the questions thing, and that helps— like, a lot. But you still block me with your mind and feelings all the time. There was only that one episode in the hospital when you first woke up. So, what if we try somemore? And get people like Lirin to ask questions. Lirin and Denten are good at the question thing too. Maybe I can start to understand this big thing I keep sensing if everyone works together. And maybe someone who knows you too, like Jerun."
His eyebrows shot up in surprise, "My Tindin Teacher?" He nodded, "Maybe, maybe. Well, it's a different variable, that's for sure. Hmmm," he looked thoughtful. I hoped he wouldn't make the connection. He couldn't, could he?
I wanted Jerun there because I thought Peydran was ready for Purple Beads— Level 6 in Tindin. I thought he had already demonstrated a mystical connection to a force outside of him. He had reached out to me in the hospital, and we entered a mystical embrace. I thought he was probably already higher than purple. But I couldn't tell him that was the next level up.
He nodded decisively, "When are we doing it and where?"
Dream Journal
There was a box outside my house. It was an oxygen box. No, it was an electrical box. There were wires everywhere. In the ground. In the sky. And current. Electrical current. Pressure! Pressure in my brain! All the current in the wires! It was too much pressure, pushing down on my brain! It was going to explode my ears! I covered my ears with my hands so they wouldn't explode.
There were no more wires. No more electrical box. It was just my brain. It was a current. It was in my brain, and it was outside my body. I could feel current all along the outside of my skin. It didn't touch me. I just knew it was there. A current in my brain and a current swirling around me. Like light, but more solid. All flowing about. Inside. Outside. Flowing about.