The upper 9th ward of Neon Orleans wasn’t as bad as the stories Mark heard from his father, a time after a massive hurricane named Katrina wiped out the majority of the area, the destroyed houses and yards persisting years after the initial damage was done. Like all repair efforts, it centered on restoring areas with commercial wealth, not residential areas.

Mark had been called out here plenty of times. Domestic disputes, gang attacks, burglaries, all were still common in the area. The lack of maintenance for street lights, road repairs, and other civil infrastructure was the first indicator that this was the bad side of town. Further in, the automated gates, barbwire fencing, reinforced steel window coverings, spray-paint graffiti, and litter clued further clued someone in that things were getting really bad.

His vehicle wasn’t flashy or expensive, but it didn’t fit between the two extremes typical of the areas. Either super-rich vehicles were parked or extremely rundown ones. His car parked itself outside of a nondescript gigantic steel warehouse. The only signs that this place was inhabited were the lack of litter and graffiti on the place. He exited his car and walked slowly up to the building. He resisted the urge to telegraph his stun guns location, but the dead emptiness of the place gave him the creeps.

The only door facing on the building was a reinforced steel door. Mark gave it a quick rap with the back of his knuckles. It wasn’t hollow, and the deep thud his knuckles made told him that this door was several inches thick. A police battering ram wouldn’t be able to take out the door, it would require cutting through the entire door to get this thing off its hinges. He looked for any sign of a doorbell or other system to let him communicate with the inside, but all he saw was a single eye-scanner. He looked into the scanner.

A red error message flashed on the screen and an automated male voice called out, “Halt! Unauthorized visitor. Please state your name and business.”

Mark cleared this throat. “Name, Mark Thomas. Business, I need to see Dr. Cédric Rossignol on urgent business.”

The machine waited a few seconds before responding back. “No walk-in appointments are allowed. Please schedule a visit and report back if it is cleared. Good day.”

“Wait!” Mark shouted. EVE supplied him with the information he needed. Rossignol was one of two French scientists who worked with Dr. Heyman, inventor of the first-line of sex androids. The man was supposedly a mad professor mixed in with a side dose of drug use, supposedly blowing himself up during one of his drug-fueled scientific explorations.

“I have urgent information about human-robot synthesis that will help Dr. Rossignol. This information is both time-sensitive and scientifically revolutionary.”

The machine waited again before the magnetically sealed hinges released and the door opened. Inside, two androids with machine guns waited for him. He knew that they were androids as soon as he saw them. Androids had a flawless complexion that no human could ever match. But even more important, humans evolved to communicate with other humans. Skin flushing, pupil dilation, facial muscle contraction and extension, body language, all of the things Mark used in his old job to detect lies also told him when he was facing an android. They could get the majority of the looks correct, but there were subtle signs that they weren’t human if you knew how to look for them.

The first android on the left had short-cropped hair, white skin, green eyes, and a gymnasts build. The second android on the right had longer, blond hair, white skin, blue eyes, and the exact same build. They were probably variations on the same base model.

“Sir, please raise your hands in the air and allow us to search you. Attempting to resist will result in automatic execution.”

Mark thought that sounded like a fair alternative. He raised his hands in the universal “Don’t Shoot” pose and the second android stepped up to frisk him. It was fast and thorough, including a rough shake near his reproductive organs to make sure he wasn’t stashing anything in his boxers. The android found his knife, stun gun, and stun baton in very short order.

“Your items will be returned when you leave. Please follow us to the destination. Any attempts to deviate from the path will result in your ejection from the facility. Any attempts to resist that ejection will be met with commensurate force.”

One of the droids lead in front and the other stayed five paces behind him. They moved in perfect lockstep with each other, another indicator they were the same model of android. The facility itself looked to be one part research lab and one part manufacturing facility, though on a far smaller scale from the major producers. Humans and androids worked together on different projects, from running tests on new units to make sure they worked correctly to 3d printing different components and testing their tensile strength.

He didn’t have the time to look around that he wanted, but he also figured that falling back to play rubberneck wasn’t going to endear him to his escorts. He walked along with his guards to a spacious office in the back. The first guard opened the door for him and he followed behind.

Inside, diagrams were laid out over various desks, but always at precise angles and with great care. A set of three very plain chairs acted as the only comfort given to any visitor, which probably wasn’t many.

Behind it all stood Cédric Rossignol. He had close-cropped brown hair, a slim athletic build, the beginnings of a brown bear, light skin, and supernaturally good looks. Mark wondered if the doctor hadn’t altered himself, and figured that working in a facility like this, he probably had done plenty of cosmetic work. Most of the rich did, after all.

“I hope you weren’t bullshitting outside.” He said, in a sotto voce tone that told Mark this was a man used to obedience.

“No, I wasn’t,” Mark said. “I am in need of help that only someone with both your pedigree and hopefully discretion can solve. I am using a military-grade simulator for accessing the Proxima Worlds.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Cédric stopped him. “Those are very rare. They caused PTSD, hallucinations, flashbacks, anxiety disorders, and a whole host of other issues. They’re banned. Even the regular units are dangerous, much less when using a military unit that compounds those stresses. Where’d you get it?”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

“Ok, so please go on then.”

“So, the group that gave me the military pod also gave me a series of software hacks that increased my player profile. Something that normally would take years to achieve in-game became available on the first day. Additionally, they gave me a hack that enabled an AI companion into my game, to advise me and to help out.”

“My orders were to find out who the NVA seed was and ask them if there were any players in the game who were unable to logout, then get the seed to enable an emergency logout channel. While attempting that mission, I nearly died in game. Not wanting to forfeit all my progress, I bonded with the AI during that mission. Problem is, when I logged out, that AI is still in my head.”

The doctor thought about it, hands clasped and resting against his chin.

“First, you obviously work for the Reapers corporation. The mission to free people trapped in Proxima Worlds is their part and parcel. Unfortunately, I have reasons to believe that they are very dangerous people. I suspect the reason you came here and are acting like you’re on a clandestine mission is that you suspect that they are also less than honorable in their intents, shall we say?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

“Just try a simple yes or no.” Cédric said, smiling.

“No.”

One of the androids chipped in. “Stress levels in his voice indicate that he’s lying.” Goddamn robots. As soon as he had that thought, a sharp pain went through his head, before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Be nice,” EVE said in his head.

“Ah, so you do.” His handsome face showed a flicker of mirth. “But to your problem, combining a military grade VR pod with an AI taking over in your head, your mental health is going to deteriorate over time. You’re screwed.”

Mark rubbed his temples. “My mental health might be debatable, but the AI has a suggestion to fix it. I don’t have a life chip implanted in me. That means I can get one installed. Modified of course, which is where you come into the picture. You give me a black-hat version of the chip, modified. Scan the portion of my brain that she’s in currently. Then, reverse implant her into the chip.”

“That might work,” Cédric said, “But it will just imprint two versions of the AI in your head, one in the chip and one still in your mind. Afraid we’ll have to prune that out.”

Mark winced at the thought of having part of his brain removed. He imagined it floating in a jar somewhere in the facility, like an old horror movie. “I’m not really fond of the idea of removing my brain.”

Cédric laughed. “No, prune. Not remove.” His laugh suggested that Mark was being a simpleton. “Your brain is composed of dendrite clusters, that’s where this AI is most likely. We use a protein sequence that removes those clusters. New ones can reform over time. You will need to sign some paperwork though.”

He pulled a translucent tablet from his desk and flipped through to paperwork. Mark read it quickly. It was a combination of three documents. A non-disclosure agreement for everything they were about to do, a waiver of any ownership rights for any discovery related to the implant in his head, and a waiver to any claims in the event of his death or disablement as the result of treatment. Like most people presented with a massive amount of legal paperwork, he skimmed over it quickly and just asked where to put his fingerprint to sign off on it.

“I will also need the game logs please,” Cédric said after he handed the tablet back over to him. Mark pulled out a thin filament strip that contained all of the game logs. This was technically a violation of his agreement with the Reapers, but he figured his life took precedence over any agreement with the Reapers.

“Thank you. Please follow me sir.”

He lead Mark into a medical room with robot heads opened up for inspection and insertion of new devices. A gigantic ceramic cylinder spanned the middle of the room, with an opening for a human to enter.

“The test is simple.” Dr. Cédric said. “We’ll be asking you to communicate with the entity currently residing in your head. Then we’ll ask you to speak out loud. This should enable us to pinpoint the difference between your consciousness and the entity. Please make sure you speak everything out loud so that there’s minimal chatter in your head that’s not from the entity. Otherwise, you may wake up with serious mental impairment. Try to ask questions that will keep the entity talking for a long time. We need to establish clear mental baselines.”

That didn’t sound good, so Mark stepped into the cylinder. The door immediately closed behind him and he began talking out loud to EVE, trying not to feel utterly ridiculous talking to himself inside what looked like a sealed crypt.

“So EVE, you there?”

“Yes, of course.” EVE responded.

He tried to think of something that he could ask EVE without having to answer yes/no questions. That wouldn’t do for a long-form conversation.

“EVE”, he said, “Please tell me the definition of an egg.”

“An egg is the organic vessel containing the zygote in which an animal embryo develops until it can survive on its own; at which point the animal hatches. An egg results from fertilization of an ovum. Most arthropods, vertebrates, and mollusks lay eggs, although some, such as scorpions and most mammals, do not.”

“Reptile eggs, bird eggs, and monotreme eggs are laid out of water, and are surrounded by a protective shell, either flexible or inflexible….”

Time passed as Mark asked EVE questions that spanned an indeterminable time. Finally, the cylinder door opened and Cédric and a team of androids looked over the results.

“Thank you, Mark, for your cooperation. We have analyzed the results and determined two non-concurrent regions that separate your identity from the entity. Of course, if you are lying for whatever reason, you will wake up as a vegetable and we will be forced to kill you and use your body parts for science, since you signed that away to us in your agreement.”

Mark started to let out a nervous laugh, but a quick glance at the doctor’s face told him that he wasn’t kidding. They put him on an operating table, set up the IVs and anesthetics, and let him fade out from consciousness.