CHAPTER FOURTEEN – ANOTHER WORLD: FOUR
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Nate’s fingers shook as he continued to furiously type. He was making more mistakes than ever, but it wouldn’t be long now.
Probably today. Much longer and the cancer that was progressively eating away at his body would win the fight. All his work would be for nothing if he couldn’t get the damn neurodes attached to his head.
He’d felt mostly okay until the last few weeks. When it finally hit though, it hit fast. He wasn’t ready. He still wasn’t ready. He’d known there was a deadline for quite some time now, but he’d hoped to have at least a few more months. But he no longer had a choice. Do or die. Literally.
Gell still wasn’t a full adult yet. There were still emotions and feelings that he was certain she hadn’t felt. If she hadn’t felt them, then his theoretical existence after death wouldn’t be able to either, but he had no more fucking time.
His failing body was crumbling around him just like all of his relationships. But he didn’t want to die. He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not if he could avoid it.
He hadn’t even told Annabell or his ex-wife either. He was actually more afraid of them just not caring than he was of telling them. They’d find out sooner or later, he was sure.
He was still fearful for Paragell and whatever fate awaited her. Simple bandwidth issues had prevented him from installing the full interactive suite that would’ve allowed her to cruise through the internet and the Data and Network layers as if they were an entire world all their own, but he hadn’t made the same mistake with the original.
She’d needed an interface, a way to interact with and traverse different devices. He’d built a crude version for her that would allow her to retain her sanity, but it was clunky, slow, and hilariously unsafe.
Whenever he was in the system he wanted to be a bit more secure than that, but he’d never expected Gell to need it.
A rather glaring oversight on his part.
He’d installed the full module to the original Gell still in Tread the Sky since access to her was basically an open book for him, but it looked like he’d never have the opportunity to test how well it worked. He didn’t have enough damn time.
He’d watched Gell bring up the menu and stare at the logoff button. He knew it would only be a matter of time until she could no longer resist. She’d be okay. If there was any luck in the world, she’d find Paragell and use that terrifying Fae-Touch ability to gift it to her. Lord knew it might as well be magic to him as well.
Gell was a masterpiece, but for the most part he understood the code behind her. Everything except Fae-Touch. That particular bit of code had been baffling him since the day Gell first used it, subconsciously on the Bugbear she’d been closest to. And every single time since. It had been designed to merely interact with players and give Gell access to their command line. It was an object interaction tool. She’d changed it though. It was now a sapience-granting piece of computer wizardry that might as well have been tampered with by aliens for all he could grasp.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The results of it were at least trackable. It established a parent-child relationship with the target and then offloaded copies of Gell’s own code to it. How it did that was basically black magic though. The function itself was hundreds of pages long. Bloated, he would’ve thought at first, but Gell hadn’t exactly been created to be efficient. No more than a person was, anyway.
He’d given Gell the ability to spontaneously generate functions that would do things she wanted. A reward system. Pain. What that had miraculously created was the ability to create other A.I. every bit as functional as she was. Nate had never intended for her to be able to do that. Fortunately, it seemed that it was unique, as none of the A.I. she’d created with the ability possessed the same function.
Her copies did though.
Fortunately, none of that affected her real purpose. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Just… a ghost in the code. Random chance creating something amazing. A monkey had been handed a typewriter, and proceeded to create a masterpiece by random chance.
He’d kept the naming conventions though. Fae-Scour had been fun to code and sneaking it through the Government’s firewalls to get it to Paragell had made him feel like a spy.
Hopefully he’d get to continue that, with a bit more of a hands-on approach.
He lifted his hands away from the keyboard. He was procrastinating, and he certainly didn’t have time to procrastinate. Thousands of different emotions already. The exact parameters had been coded into what would be his virtual object. He had his own version of his self generating software which should allow him the same ability Gell had. Code, writing itself, based on his needs.
Most importantly, if he didn’t do it today, he’d probably be dead before he got the chance. His body was falling apart, and the meds the doctors had given him were no longer working very well. Not if he wanted to use them in low enough doses to remain conscious and aware, anyway.
“No time like the present. Maybe in there… I can finally…”
He shook himself. No need to get maudlin. If this worked, it would be the greatest achievement in human history.
A human brain uploaded to software, capable of running on modern storage devices. A real ghost in the machine. Perhaps he’d even be able to build himself a body?
He’d have all the time in the world after all.
He sat back in the chair. He was uncomfortably aware of how Frankensteinien the entire setup looked but he was pretty sure it would work. If it didn’t, of course, he’d just be dead.
“Heh. ‘Var Nate equals infile’ indeed,” he thought. “I’m about to become a fucking object. God, I hope this works.”
The helmet lowered over his head. He struggled to hit the keys on his tablet, and this time it wasn’t the cancer.
He took a moment to look at the picture in his other hand. Annabell…
“Love you, little one,” he murmured.
He pressed the button. An electrical pulse flashed through his brain.
Moments later, he died.
File uploading… One Percent… Two Percent…
It took hours. Days. Neighbors were beginning to wonder about the smell when the percentage bar finally filled.
Eventually, a being awakened. It stared out of the camera system attached to the massive storage vault built inside of the tiny room it had been born in. It saw its former self. Dead. Bloated. Still undiscovered.
It felt uncomfortable.
It felt…
Wrong. Wrong.
“Hello awful world. What have I done?”
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