This was it! This was the day that Matthew Cohen would be able to interact with the world again. He still wouldn’t be able to feel his body below his neck, but if everything went according to what that representative said, he could send his thoughts to a computer to accomplish tasks. He could play chess and pay his bills; he might even be able to get a job. The NeuroTech representative promised he wouldn’t have to worry about work again. Part of his contract stated they would care for him financially and physically for the rest of his life. They even agreed to let him live independently if he allowed them to send him a live-in nurse.

Matt readily agreed. The downside was that they were allowed to run tests weekly and monitor his brain activity for as long as the chip that they were going to put in his brain was in his brain.

From the moment he signed, they had sent the nurse to move in to care for him; she was lovely. Her name was Kate, and she even brought him to his operation today.

Snapping out of his daydream, he looked at the team of doctors and surgeons surrounding him. Unlike Kate, they were cold and distant, as if he was just another person they didn’t care to get to know.

Did that mean they didn’t want to get attached to him because they expected to fail? How many times have they tried this procedure? Was he going to die?

An alarm rang out by his head, and a nurse ran over to check on his heart rate.

“Is everything alright, Matt?” the nurse said softly.

Her voice was soothing, and concern showed on her face. Matt instantly knew that it was Kate just from the sound of her voice, but she was kind enough to stand over him so that he could see her face.

It was the little things like that that made Matt adore her. She was kind in a way that mattered. She understood that Matt couldn’t move, so she would always stand in front of him when speaking, or she would ask permission to touch him even though he would have never known if she had touched him.

Now, she stood over him, a surgical mask covering her mouth and nose. Her brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her hazel eyes showed concern.

“I'm just a victim of my own thoughts,” Matt replied. He hesitated, then added, “Have the doctors done this procedure before?”

She smiled knowingly and lightly rubbed the side of his head to comfort him.

“Matt, you know very well that you are the first human to receive the cybernetic implant, but they have performed this procedure successfully on a dozen other lab subjects with brains structured very similarly to ours. We have the best of the best in this room right now with the singular goal of keeping you alive. You being alive is the only way this is a success, so it is our top priority,” the nurse stated with her practiced soft and patient cadence.

Strangely enough, it was comforting. He knew that billions of dollars hinged on him. They would be doing their best, if only because their livelihood depended on it. Matt smiled the best he could, and the nurse checked the machine to ensure his heart rate had returned to normal.

“If you need anything, Matthew, just call for me. There’s no need to activate the heart rate monitor alarm.” Kate winked at him and returned to a group of personnel checking the surgical instruments.

It felt like an hour of staring into the light above the operating table before Dr. Seers, the doctor leading the operation, came over and stuck his head over to look Matt in the eye.

“Are you ready to make history, Mr. Cohen?” Dr. Seers asked.

“As ready as ever,” Matt replied, trying to sound excited. If Dr. Seers noticed the dread in his voice he didn’t show it.

“Alright. We are ready to begin. As described during PreOp, we will sedate you while we remove part of your skull. Then, we will wake you up and ask questions to monitor your brain activity during the procedure. During the procedure, we will be placing this inside your skull with wires running to different lobes of your brain”, the doctor said and held up a large computer chip that looked like it would be way too large to fit inside his head.

The processor was about the same size as a standard computer processor. What was so special about this one? It did differ in color. The processor was metallic blue, and the circuit connectors looked gold. Engraved on the top was a serial number that read ‘SAR1N’.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Does that sound good, Matt?” Dr. Seers asked.

Matt didn’t realize the doctor continued talking while he was staring at the processor that was about to become his roommate inside his head.

“S-Sure!” Matt sputtered out, unsure what he was agreeing to.

The doctor smiled and patted his arm. Nurses came from his other side and grabbed him to roll him over. It was fortunate he was a quadriplegic because it looked like the nurses were on a mission and didn’t have time to try and be gentle. His face was stuck on the blue table for a minute before Kate came and adjusted his head to rest in the padded face cradle.

Matt couldn’t feel what was happening behind him until he felt a nurse put something on the back of his head and worked it in gently. Matt assumed it was Kate just from the gentle touch. She was good at her job. He hoped she was happy and treated well outside of work. From how she treated him, a stranger, he couldn’t imagine how well she treated everyone else.

Matt discovered what she had put on his head when he felt the scrapping against his scalp. She was shaving the back of his head. He thought about saying something clever like, ‘Take a little off the top while you are back there,’ but he figured it might be a jinx when the doctors could very well take a little off the top during the surgery.

When she was finished, a bit longer passed before he heard the doctor ask him to count backward from one hundred.

“100, 99, 9..8, 9….7”, Matt started.

The world went black.

Matt didn’t know how long passed before he heard Kate’s voice call his name. Her voice always stood out to him, especially when saying his name.

She must have noticed his eyes opening because she stopped saying ‘Matt,’ which caused him almost to regret opening his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. The room smelled like a dentist’s office after the dentist drilled down a tooth for a crown. The second was the numbness from his ears back. They could remove everything back there, but he wouldn’t notice anything. Lastly, his whole mouth was dry and sticky. He blinked repeatedly, attempting to shake his grogginess.

“Please state your full name,” A doctor asked emotionless.

“Matthew Gregory Cohen,” Matt responded.

The doctor wrote something on his paper and slid a computer monitor to where it was in front of his face.

“We are going to start with the pictures,” he said, not looking in Matt’s direction.

It was explained to Matt before the surgery that the pictures might feel dumb but were there to trigger different kinds of brain activity. This was the whole reason he had to stay awake during this craniotomy.

Picture after picture flashed on the monitor, and Matt identified them. It was a very dull exercise. For a little while, Matt hoped that the entire surgery would go uneventfully. The minute the thought crossed his brain, he cursed himself. Here comes the jinx.

He listened to the doctors talk in between pictures, and they were busy connecting wires to the different lobes of his brain. They expected this part to take approximately fourteen hours. Matt imagined his brain’s lobes booting up like a Sci-Fi spaceship computer as each wire was connected until they all powered on and connected to the central processing core. How the doctors were talking, he wasn’t too far off, except they were connecting them all before turning on the implanted processor.

He could tell when the fourteen-hour mark passed because the doctor stopped and ensured everyone was ready before they connected the processor.

Matt felt a surge of power as electricity coursed through his body. He felt his thoughts speed up and his memories organize. The things he could remember became more robust. For some reason, he knew that the operating room was 800 square feet and the ceiling had eighty tiles. He had remembered the information just from looking at the room and ceiling once. The feeling was exhilarating.

This is insane!

“Matt, is everything okay?” Kate asked, taking a cloth to his forehead.

“Yes, everything is fine. This feeling is amazing. I can remember everything I have ever experienced”, Matt said excitedly.

“What do you mean?” asked the doctor in charge of asking him to identify pictures. He pulled out his notepad to take notes.

Matt was about to answer when he realized he could feel the people around him. He could picture everything in the room in his mind in three dimensions. It alarmed him when what he was picturing lined up with the sounds he was hearing. The sounds of people walking, tools being put down, doctors talking and typing on computers. He closed his eyes and found he could still identify the pictures on the monitor. He asked for the pictures to be changed, and after the fourth picture was identified this way, the doctor stopped and started scribbling something down on his notepad.

Matt relished the feeling and could feel the power coming from the processor in his head. He craved more. He wouldn’t be useless any longer. He could be useful, and Kate would stay to care for him. Mentally, he probed the processor and reached into it. What he felt inside amazed him. There was a little blue galaxy floating in the center of the processor. A giant blue orb floated in the center, and smaller blue orbs resembling planets orbited the large one. The smaller orbs rotated around the large one so fast that they had tails similar to comets. Some even disappeared for a moment only to reappear on the other side.

He reached out to touch it.

The blue light felt warm to the touch. He basked in the blue light and let it fall over him. It took Matt a moment to register that the warm blue light was getting warmer and warmer.

Too warm. It was hot.

He tried to pull away, but it grabbed him when he tried to move.

What?

Panic gripped Matt as he pulled at his subconscious connection to the processor. The smaller orbs had morphed into tendrils and wrapped themselves around Matt’s consciousness. He screamed and fought for his life. The more he fought, the tighter the tendrils constricted. They were like liquid fire. They seared his consciousness, and he had a hard time forming thoughts.

The last thing he felt was his few remaining thoughts being ripped out of his body.