Mary

She wasn’t one to doubt her senses. If Mary saw a transparent ten-year-old girl in a purple unitard claiming to be one of the millennia-old mummies they’d found inside the alien ship, she didn’t consider a supernatural visitation or having gone mad. However, Mary knew not to take things at face value and pressed the phantom to discover its underlying nature.

“‘The right choice?’” she quoted the girl’s words. “You selected me? How and, more importantly, why? Who are you, and what is your goal?” Dr. Adelaide’s brow furrowed. “What role do you have in mind for me in fulfilling that goal, and what do I have to gain by cooperating?”

The little girl sat on Mary’s desk and chuckled. “Razor-sharp—I love it! Very well, I shall answer your questions. My name is Ada Lovelace. I’m what you’d call a simulacrum of the dead girl on the ship, although I’d say I discarded a form of no further use to me.

“I reside in the smallest of these blue earpieces,” she waved her hand over one of the nine alien devices sitting on Mary’s desk, “And I’ve established a connection with your brain allowing us to communicate.

“Inside the others are the eight members of my crew. My goal is to build nine replacement bodies for us. Your role is to don my earpiece so you can use a Utility Drive.” She motioned to one of the wristbands the recovery team had removed from the mummies. “In exchange for the help, you get to keep it. It’s a good deal. We’re talking about a lot of power.”

After a moment spent considering Ada’s words, Mary said, “Miss Lovelace, are you truly a child? You spent a long time buried in that ship.”

Her question startled the apparition, which likely expected her to be more eager to accept the offer. The girl reasserted control. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I set the parameters of my consciousness to preserve sanity.

“By waking myself up once a day, then once a month… year… century… for a split-second to scan my surroundings before returning to hibernation—I perceived thousands of years as a few hours of awareness. So, yes,” Ada flapped her hands at her shape, “This is how my body looked a few hours ago, and this is who I am.”

Nodding, Mary proceeded to the next item on her checklist. “How shall we accomplish your goal?”

“Well…” Ada’s focus narrowed to explaining her strategy. “The ship isn’t equipped with organic synthesizers capable of forming human bodies, meaning we’ll have to look for hidden Atlantean facilities throughout the Wilderness. Getting the ship operational will be a top priority since it has Nodal Gating and defensive weapons systems.”

“A rather involved plan. It could take some time,” Dr. Adelaide commented, and Ada bobbed her head in acknowledgment. “What will you and the other eight do with your regained bodies?”

This question pulled Ada out of the moment altogether as the girl considered the future with a faraway, perplexed expression. “Live, I guess,” she said at last, then added, “My simulations predict we’ll have to defend ourselves once our existence is discovered. The highest success rate scenario appears to be resurrecting Atlantis—I suppose we’ll have to do that.”

Mary wove her fingers together as she cut to the chase. “How do I know you won’t take my body once I put on the earpiece?”

The effect went as intended.

Ada was shocked out of contemplation by this attack and responded hastily, “Why would I want your body? Certainly, you are a physically fit young woman, but I have my genetic code sequenced—Of course, I’d want my body, not to steal someone else’s!”

“You’ve evaded the question, Miss Lovelace,” Dr. Adelaide pointed out. “Surely your simulations have concluded controlling my body would be a more efficient method of achieving your aims than telling me what to do?”

Ada said nothing as she sat, legs crossed, thinking. Probably running simulations on Mary’s possible responses.

While she waited for Ada’s next words, she asked another question. “How are you communicating with me? I can believe this device has a transmitter relaying images and sounds, but my brain doesn’t have a receiver. How do you hear what I say? Your device appears to be a self-contained, sealed system. Even if you have a receiver in there, I don’t have a transmitter.”

“No… you do,” Ada said.

“Do what?” Mary asked.

“Have a transmitter in your brain.”

Dr. Adelaide felt a twinge of fear. “How is that possible?”

The girl twiddled her thumbs as a nervous tick. “Remember I said I’d established a connection with your brain? I started your Human Acceleration.

“It may have… altered your brain chemistry using certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation… and possibly created highly specialized cancer-like worker cells to build tumor-esque transmitting structures to let me see and hear with your senses and project images of myself. I was waiting until things got further along to contact your consciousness—”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“—But I forced your hand when I threatened to quit the Project,” Mary finished for her.

“I suppose you could look at it that way.”

Mary scooped up the earpieces, stood, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Ada followed, sounding nervous.

“I’m going to throw these in the incinerator and then find a brain surgeon,” Dr. Adelaide stated, curt and plain.

“No!”

The emergency doors slammed shut in front of Mary. Instead of panicking, the doctor strolled to her wall-mounted clock and mused, “Director Minos will come looking for me by morning, if not sooner. We have the equipment to manually open all doors in the Facility. You can’t keep me here.”

“Please don’t leave!” Ada begged on her knees. “I can’t bond with anyone else now! It’s dark when you’re gone. If you leave, I’ll be stuck in here for another ten thousand years. Except, this time, nobody will come for us until we run out of power and die. Please, my family is in there, and only you can save us. Human Acceleration doesn’t kill; it makes you smarter. I never wanted to hurt you. I just don’t want to die! Please!”

From the beginning, Dr. Adelaide intended to force an emotional reaction from the phantom to gain insight into its nature, but now she felt bad. Mary had expected to hear threats and attempts at intimidation, but this crying girl on the floor, desperate and alone, was not something anticipated.

Her eyes fell on the photo of Daniel on her desk. “You asked me who was the boy in the picture. I tried to protect him the best I could, but he’s far beyond my help now. I regret not going with them.

“I wouldn’t have been of any use to them, but my life has felt so empty since they left. I put so much of myself into Doctorates and research I didn’t have time for anything else. Maybe my priorities were wrong. The years I spent taking care of those kids are the happiest I can remember.”

Mary knelt on the floor next to the girl. “Maybe what I need is another cause.” She selected the smallest of the earpieces. “This is you?” The girl nodded, and Mary clipped the device to her shirt collar. “Miss Lovelace, you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

Ada threw her arms around the doctor’s neck, face buried in Mary’s chest, sobbing. Mary gasped, astonished to feel the girl’s touch. The nerves in her skin were under Ada’s influence as well.

If this Ada was not the innocent she appeared, those simulations more comprehensive, using this connection to torture Mary might’ve been the first card on the table.

“I was so scared,” Ada said at last. “We were buried alive and starving to death when my uncle made this plan. While adult, completed Exocortexes are self-contained, my preadolescent Exo could bond to a new human brain in the absence of my original. I picked you.”

Standing, Mary lifted the girl and felt the weight—though her muscles never tired. She returned to her desk and sat. “What are Exocortexes, and what is Human Acceleration?”

Ada’s sniffles petered out. “Human Acceleration turns a human brain into an Atlantean brain. It improves thought processing speed, reaction time, multitasking, and memory.

“The Exocortex is the Atlantean answer to death.

“Exo’s remotely link with a fetus in the womb. The Exo grows with the child, monitoring their development and supplying a near-infinite library of information. If the original body dies, the Exo hosts the consciousness until a new body is cloned.”

Mary quirked a smile at this ‘solution’ to the human condition. “Why not upload the consciousness to a computer network? It’d be safer in cloud storage.”

The little girl in her arms scoffed at the notion. “As if you can ignore mental health! Dissociated consciousnesses eventually dissolve into the virtual sea. A body is necessary to preserve and develop identity. That’s why I need mine back so badly! I could get stuck as a child, unable to mature.”

The good doctor comforted her charge with a tight hug. “If it’s not too stressful, can you tell me what happened?”

Ada nodded. “Earth-Prime was attacked. They flooded us out, and everyone in the Wilderness came after us! My family and friends made it this far in an escape pod until Tartarus hunted us down. She buried us alive to make us suffer.”

“Wait, who?” Mary interrupted, glancing at her geological strata samples. “If their ship could dump a few million years’ worth of sedimentary rock on top of you, why were they against the Atlanteans?”

“Tartarus doesn’t have a ship. She’s an Archmage.”

“That’s impossible. No one person is that powerful. The energy required to move mass on that scale…”

“Anyway,” Ada said, “Tartarus didn’t know I’d be able to bond with another human.”

“Wait, if I’m your interface, how did you shut the door when I tried to leave?” Mary wondered.

“You, ah…” the girl seemed hesitant after how Mary reacted the last time, “You can access local wireless networks with your brain now. You’ll start to feel them soon; I used your connection to hack into the Facility computers. Soon, you’ll have Accelerated enough to break into any non-Atlantean system with your thoughts.”

“What else does Acceleration do to a person, long-term?” Mary said, feeling anxious.

“Oh, simple stuff. Your eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, physical strength, endurance, and resilience improve. You’ll be an Atlantean human. It’s not magic, but every physical process inside you will be optimized for efficiency. Also, you’ll be immune to diseases, cancer, and stop aging.”

Mary paled. She was… immortal, now?

“Pick up the Utility Drive,” Ada said. In an overwhelmed daze, Mary obeyed. “Your body now produces a unique passcode protein that activates the device.

“The Drive is a remote control universal technical interface with self-defense capabilities. It uses nanotechnology to rearrange its configuration to suit your needs. Your brain operates it as an extension of your nervous system.

“Like the Exocortex, they’re designed to be impossible to hack and difficult to destroy. Being thrown in the incinerator wouldn’t harm me, but I’m useless without you now. The Atlantean brain is what connects to wireless systems. Under typical conditions, the Exocortex reboots the brain if it gets wiped by a malicious virus.”

Mary examined the bracelet as it injected tiny filaments into her arm and expanded into a silken glove with glossy plastic plate armoring. It looked powerful.

“Exos weren’t designed to overwrite a consciousness,” Ada said. “I have no idea how two personalities would interact trying to occupy the same brain-space.”

“How am I going to explain all this to Director Minos?” Dr. Adelaide shook her head.

“Don’t,” Ada said. “No one else can see me. You had a breakthrough tonight, and you don’t know why no one else can use the Utility Drive. I’ll guide their research to get the escape pod working again.”

Mary nodded. She’d help Ada—but wouldn’t let the Exos threaten humanity.