"They're just...books," Lisa said, sighing. "Seriously. And they aren't even good."

Bath smirked, several books bobbing around him on essence tendrils. "I don't think what's written in them is the point," he argued. "Remember, AI Ninety-Seven doesn't have a digital version of the Arc's library."

"Yeah, I know." She held her current book by its cover, letting it flip open at its spine. "Don't you find it strange," she added, "that these look just like normal books from Earth?"

Bath shrugged. "They don't look just like normal books."

"Okay," Lisa conceded, holding up a hand. "I'll admit that they're a bit different. The covers are all oddly thick."

"Some of their covers are even as thick as an inch," Bath interjected.

"You would know," she said. "They're also written in a different language."

"One completely different from the sigils."

Lisa began to inspect her book's spine. "Book binding is a complicated process," she muttered. "On Earth, you can grab a needle and thread and sew a binding shut, though it's hard to do by hand." She pulled at the spine, stretching it out and exposing the threaded connections to its pages. "This book--like all the others--has an elastic, tightly-secured binding string."

Bath frowned. "In that respect, they are bound in a similar fashion to Earth books. However, given what we know about sapient evolution, this shouldn't be too surprising: if all, or most, sapients develop hands with tactile digits, their civilizations will develop in similar ways."

Lisa continued to rotate the book in her hands. "But that's not necessarily true," she retorted. "For instance, the Inca never developed a proper writing system."

Bath gave her a knowing look. "The Inca were the exception, not the rule. Our world history class said that a writing system is the fundamental basis of any civilization."

"But a writing system doesn't inherently suggest the creation of books," she said. Besides, she added silently, historians don't know everything.

"All humans have ideas and knowledge worth writing down," Bath argued, flipping his current book over. "I assume that all sapients are essentially the same way. I'd venture that most sapient civilizations have, at one point, created book-like objects as vessels to record knowledge."

Lisa chewed her lip. "I suppose."

After two hours, they decided to leave the library room and return to the control room. When they arrived, AI Ninety-Seven was the only...what does AI Ninety-Seven qualify as? Lisa wondered. She almost said that the android was the only living thing in the room. The only...entity in the room?

She turned to Bath, who was casually strolling over to the control pedestal. "Hey; what happened with Fartuun?"

"I finished giving her the V-Tap," Bath said, placing his hands onto the pedestal's glowing white, his fingers dipping into its surface as though into a shallow pool. "So, I took her to the basement of the Anima to recover in the all-purpose healing pool."

Lisa blanched. "She needed the healing pool after you were done with her?"

Bath moved his fingers as though delicately pressing keys on a piano. He looks so self-assured, Lisa thought smugly, but I'd bet my life he still has no idea what he's doing.

"Nobody else was using it," Bath replied. "The microorganisms in the pool have been lonely without visitors."

Lisa snorted incredulously. "What did you do to her that she couldn't heal on her own?" She walked over to the pedestal, standing behind his back to watch.

He looked over his shoulder, staring down at her. "Can you not look over my shoulder? I feel like you're judging me."

Lisa smiled. "Believe me, I am."

"Ugh."

"What are you trying to do?" Lisa asked.

"I'm just fooling around with the menus," Bath explained. "Seeing what kinds of ship elements can be controlled or tweaked."

"You never answered my question," Lisa said, redirecting the conversation. "What did you do to Fartuun to get the implant working?"

"Does it matter?"

"Bath!"

He sighed. "The V-Tap was more stubborn and resilient than I thought."

Lisa scowled. "What do you mean?"

"Well," he began, "the device absolutely refused to work unless it completely integrated into both the central and peripheral nervous systems of the target."

Lisa nodded slowly. "Okay. So what was the problem, exactly?"

Bath sighed again, turning away from the pedestal and spontaneously generating a couch to recline on. "I've made numerous changes to the peripheral nervous system of humans," he replied. "The nervous system as a whole was never very efficient, using overwhelming numbers of neurotransmitters to trigger action potentials and then relying on a reset period to hyper-polarize cell membranes, which of course takes much too long...and changing the way neurotransmitters were taken up at the neuro-muscular junction relied on several other modifications..." He trailed off, realizing that this was all going slightly over Lisa's head. "I had to restructure the entire system," he summarized.

Lisa cocked an eyebrow. "I thought the nervous system was fast." She waggled her fingers. "Converting the thoughts from my brain into physical action--without any perceptible delay--seems incredible."

"'Fast' doesn't mean efficient," Bath rebutted. "Regardless, I had to redo the entire PNS, and made modifications to the central nervous system, or CNS, as well."

Lisa swallowed. "I thought you said you couldn't really...modify the human brain? Not well?" He's clearly made some modifications to the brain, like reducing the perception of pain, and improving people's ability to teach and think critically...but nothing world-changing, or even qualifying as super-human.

"With regards to the CNS, I mostly focused on improving the transmission of signals propagating down from the brain and through the spine."

Oh. Lisa felt a bit foolish. The spine is a part of the CNS too; I almost forgot. Generally, when she thought of the central nervous system, the human brain was all that came to mind. So most of his CNS modifications didn't pertain to enhancing the human brain.

"So, you modified the entire human nervous system," Lisa stated. "No big deal, of course."

"Yup," Bath chortled, smiling mischievously. "However," he added, his expression turning solemn, "as I said before, the V-Tap was programmed to work only after integrating fully with the CNS and PNS."

Lisa frowned. "Can't it integrate with both? Why should it matter that you've modified the human nervous system?" I doubt all sapient species have similar nervous systems, Lisa thought. I can hardly believe that most sapients look the same. To say that, aside from their outward appearance, most sapients also have similar physiology...it's too improbable, isn't it?

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

"It doesn't matter," Bath replied, shaking his head and rubbing the empty section of couch to his right. "I never said that refurbishing the human nervous system posed a problem to V-Tap implantation; I merely gave that information as background."

Lisa plopped down on the couch. "So, the V-Tap had no problem integrating with the modified nervous system."

"Exactly. Which brings us to the main problem: the V-Tap is too resilient for its own good. I didn't want the damned piece of technology to integrate itself into Fartuun's peripheral nervous system."

"Why?" Lisa felt like she was asking too many questions, but she wanted to get to the bottom of why Fartuun needed the healing pool. If I'm going to get the V-Tap, I want to know everything about it.

Bath tsked, his face pensive, as though he were trying to think of the right way to explain. "The V-Tap integrates directly into the PNS for one purpose: to read information about the host and to stimulate muscles to act in unconventional ways."

That doesn't sound bad. "Okay," Lisa said, nodding along.

"It's terrible," Bath snarled. "I let the V-Tap integrate into Fartuun's full nervous system out of curiosity. I wanted to see how the V-Tap works to control the muscles and cells of the human body." He snorted, shaking his head. "It's lacking compared to what I can achieve with biological enhancements. Technologically impressive, but lacking.

"This being the case, I decided to undo the PNS integration process. I needed to strip Fartuun's body of this web-like network of..." he struggled for a moment. "Plastic-metal nano-material lacing through everything."

"Sounds difficult," Lisa assumed.

Bath rolled his eyes, his head flopping onto Lisa's so that her head rested in the crook of his. "The nano-material continued to reform even after I tore it apart and ripped it away. It evidently needed to latch onto something. So, I ended up making Fartuun a secondary peripheral nervous system just for the use of the V-Tap."

Bath said this last sentence with such calm that Lisa almost didn't realize the absurdity of his words. "You made a secondary, secondary," she held up her hands, scootching away. "Secondary peripheral nervous system?" How the hell? That doesn't even make sense! Lisa balked.

Bath chuckled sardonically. "It isn't a complete system," he explained. "I made a ring of cells around Fartuun's spine. These cells have a few key differences from the normal PNS. As a result, after I intentionally wrapped nascent V-Tap threads around this new PNS, the V-Tap registered only this small circle of cells as the entire host's PNS."

What...? "That's so...stupid." How is there not a better way? Lisa had trouble believing that, to use the V-Tap without its PNS-integrating technology, Bath had to invent a useless decoy PNS for it to latch on to.

Bath shrugged. "As soon as I did that, the CNS integration worked like a charm. The entire V-Tap turned again like it did before, when I first allowed it to integrate unrestricted into Fartuun's body."

"How did you know that it started up?" Lisa asked.

"It began to glow blue," Bath said. "The three implant vertebrae--which don't replace the vertebrae in full, by the way--have tiny lights."

"Wait, they don't replace the vertebrae?" Lisa asked, confused. They V-Tap implants seemed the exact size and shape of human vertebrae. Not that Lisa was an expert, but she'd seen a few human skeletons before in movies, in textbooks, and in science class.

"The V-Tap disassembles into three caps, which coat three existing vertebrae in a tight mesh. Their contents then unspool and extend out into the body in the web-like, lacey threads that I mentioned before."

"Can't you give me a diagram?" Lisa asked, gesturing to the space in front of the couch.

"Sure." Bath used his essence to create an oddly-transparent human torso that floated aimlessly in space, its back facing them. "See this body?" He outlined its spine and brain in red. "This, here, is the CNS." Then, from the red, spiraled out innumerable lines of veridian. These seemed to connect to every part of the model human, turning it overwhelmingly green.

"This is the PNS. Now, this is what happens when you place a V-Tap into a human body." In an instant, three rectangular incisions appeared, two on the neck and one on the back, between the model's shoulder blades. Then, three blue spheroids floated into the cavities, quickly making contact with the spinal cord. As they made contact, angry strands of blue pierced out at all angles into the body.

"Why are there two neck incisions?" Lisa asked. Wouldn't it make more sense to evenly space the V-Tap implants along the back?

Bath smiled. "That's an easy question: the upper half of the human body has many more nerves than the lower half; for instance, consider the face and hands, both of which possess dense networks of sensory nerves. Even the implant between the shoulder blades has more than enough plastic-metal nano-material to integrate into the PNS of the lower body."

"Huh." Lisa kept her eyes fixed on the display unfolding in front of her. The blue was weaving ceaselessly through the human model. Soon, it seemed as though every green strand had a parallel blue companion. The blue also delved into and encompassed the red sections of the CNS, though this didn't seem nearly as impressive to Lisa as the blue snaking through the massive PNS.

"As you can see, the V-Tap has incorporated itself into the host."

"That's...amazing."

"It's inefficient," Bath sneered. "We don't need these blue threads taking up space within the human body."

Lisa flinched. "I'll take your word for it."

Bath pointed a finger at the torso, rotating it three-hundred and sixty degrees. "Now, watch how I fixed the problem." Suddenly, the mass of blue threads shuddered. Then, as though the threads were ivy anchored to the wall of a building, an invisible force began to yank them away from the red. The invisible force appeared to reel in the flaccid blue, binding the threads into a spool.

"Watch as I create a secondary PNS," Bath murmured. To Lisa's trained eye, he looked just as enraptured by the display as she was.

Yellow lines began to expand out from and wrap around the spinal cord. These looped around repeatedly, almost fully obscuring the red of the spine CNS from view. Then, the spooled blue appeared to be dragged over the yellow and forcibly wrapped around it. The process reminded Lisa of a gardener binding a bonsai in wire. Just as the wire shapes the growing tree, the tree shapes the wire.

It didn't take long, however, for the blue to start latching itself onto the yellow of its own accord. Soon, it extended all the way down the spinal cord, wrapping snugly around the yellow.

"And that's that," Bath said, dispelling the colored torso with a wave of his hand. He then looked at Lisa, his attention fully focused on her. "Did that make sense?"

Lisa nodded. "I know why Fartuun's in the healing pool now," she said.

Bath gave her a lopsided grin. "Let's test that assertion."

"When the blue threads--the V-Tap nano-material--detached from the green PNS, it left...holes. Everywhere."

Bath nodded. "The damage was catastrophic."

Lisa shuddered. "So, can you give me a V-Tap as well? It should be safe, right?"

Bath gave Lisa an intense look. "Lisa," he began. "If I give you the V-Tap, there's no going back. I could repair the damage done to her body, but if you ever wanted to remove the V-Tap from your brain..." He sighed. "I hope that I'll have better control over the human brain one day, but for now, I don't."

"You're saying that if I get the V-Tap now, I'll be stuck with it."

"Essentially. According to AI Ninety-Seven, there's no way to remove the V-Tap once it's been installed."

Lisa paused. While that's kind of sketchy...why would being stuck with the V-Tap be a bad thing? It'd be like having a chip reader working in tandem with your brain. "Didn't AI Ninety-Seven say that he's virtually un-hackable? The chip reader is probably the same way, right?"

Bath glanced over to the corner of the room. AI Ninety-Seven was sitting down in the same meditating position they found him in when they first ventured down the hole leading to the Egdelek Arc. "AI Ninety-Seven," he called out.

The robot's green eyes opened. "Radiance Dragon." Is he pretending to be asleep? Lisa wondered. He's obviously heard everything that we've been saying.

"How secure is the V-Tap from outside influences?"

The android bowed its head and stood. "The V-Tap is protected by the same encryption protocols used by myself."

This information didn't make Lisa relieved. If anything, a seemingly impregnable implant made her nervous. Nothing is truly impregnable, she thought. If we don't trust information about Bath being a World Devourer with AI Ninety-Seven, then why should we trust that kind of information with an implant?

Lisa sighed. Damn it. This is hard to decide: an implant sounds so cool. She recalled the small V-Tap informational pamphlet AI Ninety-Seven gave her a day back. Features like "memory optimization" and "dream capture" sounded neat, while capabilities such as "memory search" and "sensory recording" would undoubtedly be useful. However, these features all implied the same thing: all of Lisa's memories and sensory input would be at the V-Tap's metaphorical fingertips. If someone ended up hacking into her V-Tap, they would have access to everything.

That was what sealed the deal. With a groan, she rammed her head into Bath's chest. "You're right, damn it. I can't use the V-Tap unless we have better control over how it operates, but since it's closed source..."

Bath rubbed her back. "You're screwed for now," he said. "However, I have faith COTD can make its own implants." He gave AI Ninety-Seven a pointed look. "Just wait a few years."

Lisa sat up. "Mhm." She stretched out her arms and stood up. "Well, with that settled...we should probably check in with Dean and the engineers. The first ship should be done by the end of today, right?"

Bath's eyes danced with anticipation. "Right."

Lisa's laugh rang out as she ran up to the control room window, looking out over Jure. "Can you believe that in just a few days, the engineers have created an amphibious, space-faring ship?"

Bath joined her at the window's pane. "Can you believe that all of this has happened in under three months?"

Lisa snorted. "No." Sometimes, I feel like this is all just a dream.

"COTD has made this," Bath murmured. "We've made this."

His eyes met hers.

Lisa turned back toward the window, smiling. "And we've only just begun." Despite her jubilant demeanor, the uncertainty in her eyes shone through her reflection in the glass.