Journal #4

Nano-Dreams:

“I keep my soul tight and let these lines take flight.”

“The memories are still unclear...unfocused somehow. Like they don’t know what order they’re supposed to go in. I’m guessing its a glitch from the transfer process Doc.” I said. The Doc and I were sitting in his office surrounded by diploma’s and dark wooden furniture. Strangely enough the room reeked of barbicide.

“That is a very real possibility. Dr. Gibson’s protocol wasn’t finished at the time of her...untimely death. We went over this when you volunteered for the procedure, and we have a number of possible solutions.” He said, reaching for another sheaf of paper.

“What kind of success rate are we looking at for these ‘solutions’?”

“Frankly, it could be anywhere between 10%-83% by our current estimates depending on how your body responds to the treatments.”

“This is ridiculous Doc!” I almost yelled, flinging myself from the chair and pacing frantically around the small room. “Those odds wouldn’t get you a chair at the penny slots in Vegas, much less a willing patient for a trial procedure.”

“There are no previous cases to compare any of this too. I need you to understand the importance and severity of your condition. You are patient zero in every aspect of the term. You need to prepare yourself for that. There can be no misunderstanding.”

“When can we begin the trials again?” I ask, settling back in the office chair.

“The lab will be ready in a few days. Until then I’m going to need you to tell me in detail about the memories. Can you tell the difference between the personal memories and the targeted implant memories?”

I looked him straight in the eye. “Can you?”

The setting is still, clear. The wind rockets against the panes of glass dexterously placed inside the flimsy window frame, but she is not afraid. She is safe. She is almost free.

Her parents had named her Eve. They would never know how fitting that name would come to be, her the new mother of American nano-tech weaponry. The hive queen, sitting in her underground layer surrounded by scurrying workers and assistants all waiting for the birth of a new world.

“Could this be it?” she calmly thinks to herself. Her little room sits high above the city, far removed from her professional life buried under the sidewalks and sewers. Strange to think that the beating heart of Cynthia7 stirs under the feet of so many people unaware of the monster so close at hand.

She felt her soul die the day she created Cynthia7. It did not die of sadness, or fear, or a broken heart. It died because on that day Eve felt nothing. No regret, no remorse. She gave everything to her creation and it in turn granted her freedom from her own morality.

There were no more reasons for her to stay.

“Did you say Cynthia7?” barks the doctor in a hoarse whisper. “How can you possibly know about that?”

“I have vague images and thoughts that I think bled through from Eve, I mean Dr. Gibson, during the memory download. I can only make coherent sense of small portions though.”

“We’re going to have to revisit this later but right now we need to talk about the physio-memory integration. The nanocytes grafted into your skin act as conductors of sorts. The problem is that they’re command structure is directly linked to Dr. Gibson’s DNA. For the process to function at full capacity you’re going to have to in essence make Eve Gibson a part of yourself.”

“How can I possibly do that? These memories are fragments at best and unintelligible nonsense at worst.”

“The bottom line is that they are coded to react to her personality and her soul, for lack of a better word. You won’t be able to effectively use the nano-weapons unless you make this happen.”

“Then there’s no choice.”

Eve is standing on a ledge with a white dove. She has been observing its movements so closely that she has lost track of time. Timing is important today. The dove takes one last look at her and leaps into the void of air below, miraculously soaring on invisible tactile currents. Eve wonders if the dove has any idea of what a current is. Does it leap into nothingness because of instinct? Does it know what fear feels like?

She lifts her arms from her sides and stretches them away from her body. Her fingers are spread as wide as they can go, the tips feeling out the wind like feathers. Her knees bend and a smile creases her worn face.

“I leap, therefore I am.” she whispers, to no one in particular.