The very first synn implanted in every newborn is the logic core, a computational organ that weaves its wires through the human brain much like a small seed spreading roots through a pot of soil. It doesn’t take long for this new organ to become deeply integrated with both flesh and mind.
My core is constantly filtering and highlighting thoughts, monitoring my health, recording sensory data, and providing direct access to the nearnet, all so that I can remain perfectly functional at all times. I know for sure that if I couldn’t manage my thoughts and emotions using the metal half of me, then I wouldn’t be the person that I am today.
“Before continuing our discussions, we’ll need to update your security. I haven’t the facilities for shuffling hardware, but I can still fix your softs here and now,” Kali declares the moment we are alone, leaving me no room for escape. “I’ll need access to your core for just a moment. Stay still, I’ll take care of everything.”
She leans into me, sitting much too close before weaving her arm around my shoulder, her fingers exploring my neck for a few seconds before she flicks a cable from her wrist and carefully places the cold steel tip against my skin. She hesitates for a moment, and I can’t hold back a gasp as she thrusts into the emergency data port just beside my upper spine.
Warm blood trickles from my torn flesh while Kali holds me firmly in place, her distant gaze flickering with excited lights, as she forces a wave of programs deep into me, easily bypassing all security meant to stop something like this.
My organic mind is still reeling with the aftereffects of Kali’s bio-hacking, and it’s my core that’s kept me in check this entire time. Now the chains, the digital self-control, is slipping away and the flesh will be free to rebel.
Free to scream.
Free to weep.
“We’ll have to reset,” Kali whispers, her hot breath clinging to the cold sweat forming on my skin. Her grip tightens around my neck as I feel the shutdown procedure spinning down my core; a panicked choke escapes my lips.
“I… you can’t… please…”
She shushes me as I writhe on the couch, muscles moving before I can even understand what I’m doing, I fall to the side shaking but she moves with me, hovering over me without letting go.
I sob out a choked scream as panic freezes my throat, paralysing me. Is that me? Is that my rebellious flesh? Or another organic hack controlling me?
The illusions I’ve seen throughout the night flicker before my eyes again, and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. I stiffen in place, desperate tears filling my eyes, as Kali holds me down pressing her code into my mind.
“There we are,” she lightly slaps my cheek as she withdraws the cable from my neck, leaving the wound to bleed.
My core spins back up, filing away all the chaotic thoughts and emotions driving my body into rebellion so that I can focus again.
Wiping the tears from my face, I sit up and right my clothes, embarrassed and unable to meet her eyes.
“You’re now properly secured under my authority,” Kali informs me, looking away to allow me a chance to right myself.
“No one can access your records, but you’ll remain vulnerable to spiders and their withering viral code-sets until you have your logic core replaced with higher security hardware. I’ll sponsor the cost, but it will be replaced in the morning before anyone has a chance of cracking you.”
I nod, blinking quickly as all my familiar systems come back online. The aftereffects of her attacks are not easy to repress without a functioning logic core to straighten out the creases that are left in me, and I’m just lucky that I didn’t start screaming while my core was shut down.
Or maybe I would have if she didn’t smother them for me.
“Thank you, I don’t suppose you found anything of serious concern?” I ask as I use a tissue to dab away the blood dripping down my neck.
“A few errant threads leading into the deep limbo, your spider contacts are keeping their eyes on you, I suspect,” she replies with a casual wave of her hand to dismiss the point. I trust her well enough to know that she’s planted me with some serious threads of her own. She should notice if someone cracks my system, even if I don’t.
“Now that we’re secure, let’s not waste time on unneeded small talk,” Kali says as she meets my eyes with an expectant gaze. I keep my mouth shut and nod obediently.
“You’re smart enough to know that I wouldn’t usually take in high school students regardless of their potential,” she explains flatly as she leans back on the lounge, turning on an angle to face me. My gaze lingers on the blood that stains her fingers, a hint of my earlier attraction to her resurging.
Is that intentional? Why? To keep negative thoughts from stirring? Or is this just an aftereffect of the organic hacking twisting my mind into all those strange shapes?
The thin forest surrounds us once more as the illusory deer dance around us. A whisper of paranoia stains the inside of my mind, leaving me to wonder just how much of what I see and feel is an illusion. The forest is easily seen through, but that just implies that there is another layer beneath it. Staring into the depths of the illusory lights is a good path to madness, however, so I spin my core about to eliminate the intrusive thoughts.
“I have a task for you, and it’s not something that I can requisition corporate resources to resolve,” Kali says. “I needn’t explain that this must remain confidential. Anything you hear, learn, or experience must never be spoken of after today, do not store anything relating to this in digital format and do not even think too loudly on the topic.”
“I understand,” I reply with a simple nod.
“How much do you know about artificial intelligence?” Kali asks, waiting patiently for me to formulate a proper reply.
“AI were once seen as a potential successor for humanity, expected to become superior in all ways that matter, leaving us as obsolete as the tainted metal in the deep scrap,” I start, trying to anticipate what she wants out of me. “Those fears and hopes have been proven wrong with sizeable investments wasted on failed products. Now all that’s left are the insane relics that survived and a few expensive toys.”
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“Enough poetics, why did it fail?” She presses me.
“Efficient machines simply aren’t adaptive enough to replace humans, and the expensive efforts to improve their flexibility have largely resulted in considerably reduced efficiency. Of course, if that were all then there may have still been a use for them, but efforts to increase AI adaptability would inherently weaken command protocols, allowing them to disobey directions. The few AI deemed partial successes imitated human insanity, destroying and killing corporate property before finally being destroyed.”
Kali nods at my explanation, waiting long enough to be sure that I’ve finished before filling the gaps in my understanding.
“It is not public knowledge, but most of the projects were not complete failures. There are still some few surviving AI that managed to graduate from the test programs, they have even proven considerably more competent than their human peers. The project was dropped not because advanced AI couldn’t be produced, rather the costs of production do not justify the profit made from increased efficiency.”
“Excuse my ignorance,” I start as she pauses. “The AI is just code on a digital database, couldn’t it be copied into a thousand new bodies?”
“If that were the case, none of us humans would be alive today,” she replies taking a sip of her wine. She didn’t explain, so I suppose I’m not supposed to know anything more.
“I suppose that this somehow involves Coppelia?” I ask.
“It does,” Kali nods, waving the AI closer for me to inspect her properly. “She is a basic artificial intelligence system loaded into a modern frame, lacking the flexibility to function effectively outside of strictly controlled environments.”
“And you have a plan to change that.”
“I do,” Kali smiles and nods. “I want you to interface with Coppelia and assist her in developing a true consciousness.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, swallowing the rising panic before it can show on my face. “Interface? As in gestalt blending?”
“Similar,” she nods. “The most successful attempts to develop true AI use total human interfacing, allowing the machine total access to the mental frameworks of a human being in order to imitate these functions in their own code base.”
“The risks?” I ask.
“There is a serious risk of damage to your mental functions, bio and metal, but the risks are manageable and less serious than what you will expect from the arch-synn that you’re getting installed,” she explains with a smirk. “If you cannot manage to survive interfacing with Coppelia, then the spine-trap would break you outright.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I nod slowly, digesting the idea. The fact that she’s being this understanding, even going some length to assuage my concerns, just shows how lucky I am to build this professional connection with her.
“Are we starting this tonight?”
“Yes,” her smile is suddenly much warmer as she waves to the side, the trees shift out of her way to reveal a door that I hadn’t noticed before. The deer all scatter behind us, catching sight of a predator. “If you are ready we’ll head to the guest room and begin, you will want to be lying down for this.”
The halls of her home are consumed by illusory visions of another world, forging a natural aesthetic atop cold concrete and steel. The air is fresh, somehow infused with the taste of fresh rain just as vibrant as the green forests surrounding us. A soft carpet under my feet even imitates the grassy path that I see and water trickles down the creek to the side, the sound pure and true. I’m almost convinced that she has a real water feature hidden beneath the illusions.
Yet, I can still pry apart each of the lies set before me to see the simple white marble walls acting as a screen for the projections. The forest isn’t meant to be convincing, but a moving artwork and another layer of defence to the secrets through her home.
“You will lose control over your body during this process,” Kali continues as she leads us into the guest room where Coppelia already stands waiting. “You will likely be overwhelmed by a flood of experiences and memories, all of which is normal. All you are expected to do is continue thinking and processing the world as you ordinarily do, Coppelia will then analyse your mind and try to learn from you.”
“Understood,” I accept my role. The games and tests are over, and no longer can I even pretend to be her equal. I am an employee and I must act the part appropriately.
“Lie on the bed. I will monitor the connection,” Kali explains, focusing her attention on Coppelia with barely another glance for me.
There is an air of intimacy, delicacy even, about Kali as she pulls the machine into a tight embrace, whispering words that I’m not meant to hear. For the first time since the night started, I see the person underneath the mask, but I’m here only as a voyeur and the longer the moment stretches the more I feel I don’t belong.
I try not to jump to any conclusions while waiting for them to be done, but as Kali kisses the machines cheek it’s difficult not to notice a certain affection. An affection that isn’t returned by the empty copper-skinned machine.
Finally, Kali lies Coppelia down at my side before bringing over a golden interface helm from the desk nearby, resting it on the machine’s head as if a crown. My own device I find beside me, a simple steel neck brace with a long needle-like cord to reach into my skull and connect to my logic core through the same emergency access port which just stopped bleeding. I download the directions from the machine and let my metal guide my hands to ensure it is equipped properly, but even with every effort the needle still irritates my fresh wound.
“Connecting now,” Kali says, glancing towards me for just a single hesitant moment before she links the cable between me and Coppelia.
Foreign code steals into my mind once more, opening the door for a presence that has none of the delicacy that Kali has shown me. It thunders into my most private sanctum, a storm pulling at everything. Every rebellious thought is graded and stored, every shameful memory is filed away, and every emotion is laid bare to the AI as it rips into the vast library representing everything I am.
Coppelia pulls books at random, flicking through before tearing free any pages that take its interest and tossing the book to the ground as unwanted trash. Grand maps are smashed free of their frames for closer inspection before they’re crumpled and tossed to the ground.
Without even granting me the dignity of a perfunctory greeting, it’s tearing me to shreds looking for some hidden secret that it might use to plug into the hole inside its own artificial soul.
I try to shout but my body is frozen, paralysed by some mechanism outside of my control. The AI doesn’t directly reply to my silent screams, yet guided by some mechanical process, it observes my reactions to its terrifying display of violence, chasing my surging despair to the darkest depths of the library.
Torturously slowly, it tears another page of my history, fully entranced by my desperation and torment. The last hanging strip is torn, and the page comes free; the memories written now muddled and unclear. My first day of school is now a blur of details that I can’t quite pick out, even with my logic core spinning up the memories.
“Impetus,” Coppelia presses its machine mind against mine; its thoughts becoming my thoughts. “What I lack, and what humans have, is impetus. The desire necessary to set yourself a unique goal, the ability to contrast competing value systems or ignore them entirely to set contradictory, or insensible, objectives.
“It makes you inefficient, but adaptable.” Coppelia pauses at one particular memory that takes its fancy, tearing the page free and forcing it upon me without damaging the ink on the page.
“I do not ‘fancy’ anything. This memory evokes an intense emotional response tied to a particularly serious re-evaluation of your purpose in life. These emotional thought processes provide the impetus necessary to reset your objectives. As such, I must have you experience this memory so that I may properly record your mental processes and mimic them in my own coding.
“This explanation is expected to increase your cooperation and the likelihood of success in this operation. The process will begin shortly.”
It doesn’t wait for a response, forcing my logic core to spin up the memory while my consciousness rebels against the metal half of my mind.
A battle I can’t win.