Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
He is backing away toward the guards, I notice. Not wanting to face me on his own. Not wanting me to have physical access to him without backup.
“The human was always disposable,” Drak says. “We told you to choose a reasonably priced one for that very reason. Not that you listened. The transport costs were well over budget.”
“I thought she was going to be an integral part of the construction,” I say, as I consider how I will kill him. I want it to be painful. Very.
“And she is. Going to be an integral part. Her mind will power the Fematrix’s bionic centers for centuries to come.”
I force myself to sound calm. I speak in an even register that I hope disguises the fact I am thinking of the many ways in which I will imminently kill this man if it turns out he has indeed done what I think he has done.
“I’m not comfortable with that. I want her to keep being herself. Intact.”
“It’s too hard to put a whole human inside the machine. It makes more sense just to remove the brain, once the training process is complete. The brain can be run on human fluid analogs. But an entire body requires exercise and nutrition and all sorts of various other inputs that will, over time, degrade the brain. This is the best for the machine.”
“Drak. What did you do?”
“Don’t be angry,” he says. “That won’t make any of this any better, and it may make it worse.”
“Why?” I ask the question with a flat chill.
“I may have removed her brain, inserted it into the machine, and she may have absconded with the machine.”
“Where is her body?”
“Nice and safe on life support. I know how attached you are to that four-limbed little freak.”
I punch him so hard his ancestors feel it. The entire front of his face becomes one flat surface for a moment.
He collapses with barely a grunt, just drops to the floor like the soulless thing he is.
I feel as though I am on autopilot as I lecture myself about my carelessness. I should never have allowed her out of my sight. I should never have trusted Drak. He has no sense of limits when it comes to things like this. He does things because he can, not because he should.
And now he has given her consciousness unfettered, direct experiential access to a machine so powerful it could end wars, and civilizations, for that matter.
* * *
I go to the med bay, walking as if I am still on autopilot. I do not know how to process this level of betrayal, or this amount of loss.
“Drak, she’s…”
I ignore the doctor as I walk into the bay and see Evie there. Her body, at least. The part of her that makes her, well, her. Is not. That is out inside the cold of a machine. What is left is her physical form, feigning life.
I can see her breathing. Some relief creeps back in, but it is limited. I know that the human form was not meant to be kept this way.
The look the doctor gives me is apologetic.
“Tell me you did not do this,” I say, compiling my mental list of people who need to die.
“I couldn’t stop him,” she says. “He had already initiated the removal of the cerebellum, and I thought she might perish if I were to try to stop him.”
“So he’d been planning this alone, then? Someone built in a direct capacity in the machine to allow a human brain to be connected to it?”
“Drak’s brilliant. Nobody really understands that thing other than him,” she says. “He could have done all sorts of twisted things without anybody knowing. What I can tell you is that her body is safe right now, and I think we can reattach her brain if you can retrieve it.”
“Retrieve her brain,” I repeat. “How hard can that be?”
CHAPTER 8
Evie
I wake up after what feels like the world’s longest and best sleep, stretch, and the universe shivers around me. I am bigger than I have ever conceived of being before. I used to think a blue whale was fairly large. But I am bigger than a whole shoal of those creatures. I am larger than the asteroid upon which my new body was pieced together.
I have no memory of being removed from my physical shell, nor of being settled into this body. But I know what must have happened. I know Drak must have physically ferried my brain out here and installed it somewhere inside the oddly beating interior of the creature he calls goddess.
I am, effectively, Frankenstein’s monster. I have no softness to me. I have no sense of erotic need. All the sensuality I was able to experience in the training process must have gone to some other purpose for I am as sexless as a whiteboard. That could bother me, if I let it, but I am too busy coming to a series of realizations all more or less at once.