Mike felt dizzy. And fuzzy. And sort of all over the place. He also felt happy because he was finally aware that he was actually Mike and not just some fuzzy-dizzy blob vegetable floating on waves of confusion. That was a major victory in his book.
First came the ability to understand what he was feeling and tie these feelings to actual concepts. Then the noises arrived with a seemingly never-ending orchestra of pounding, whistling and ratcheting.
Like a rock concert he was taken to while too young to appreciate it - it was a loud and drunken cacophony of noise.
Then came the colors which were very frustrating because Mike for the longest time could not figure out how to close his eyes and stop seeing the chaotic kaleidoscope of what he could only describe as rainbow vomit clouds.
And finally, FINALLY his full awareness and memories started to slowly creep in with each concept and memory being a flash, an inspiration, a sudden lightning of sense returning to him.
Despite that for the longest time Mike was struggling to concentrate and stay awake and at the same time struggling to sleep.
Fortunately, the moments of lucidity increased in frequency and length and during one of those he realized that he was lying on what he only assumed was a hospital bed and probably recovering from a medically induced coma. Or an overly-elaborate torture of some sort.
The noises slowly reformed into steady beeping of a health monitor and barely audible murmurs of a TV.
The colors were still present when he opened his eyes, but now he new them to be a way too powerful ceiling lamp that for some reason was never off. Mike was considering suing the hospital for this damn lamp. He hated it with enough passion that for a while he was plotting to murder it in cold blood and then feed its broken shards to its kids who were blinking in fear witnessing this horrific lampicide. Turning it off would work too.
While "getting better" and becoming more and more aware of himself Mike pondered what led him to this situation. Probably a snakebite. Or a tropical disease. Or hitting his head really hard. His squishy brain was definitely not very happy about the whole ordeal so it must have been head trauma. Copious amounts of drugs? A discarded idea because no drugs he had heard of could have lasted so long! And he was pretty sure his time perception was returning so it was a long time, not just his imagination.
What’s next? Probably a long and painful rehabilitation which is going to drain all of his money regardless of any kind of insurance he had. His hope that he is not completely a vegetable was reinforced by the new kind of victory. The tingling one.
Slowly but steadily every part of his body started to itch. In time it almost felt like he was constantly underwater, feeling all of his body parts touched simultaneously. Very inappropriately. Concentrating on trying to move and feel just a single muscle helped immensely. While concentrating on a single finger the itching increased and finally subsided into a sort of… awareness of his limb.
Sometime later he was pondering his bellybutton. Not the most glorious of recovery methods, but if it works – it works. It felt strange though. Mike was pretty sure he was never so aware of… himself? Especially areas without much muscle.
His deliberations about his ex-orifice were interrupted by a new sound. High-pitched and kind of scratchy the sound was repeating itself and held meaning. Slowly he realized that this was a voice.
A doctor finally came to talk to him!
And he had no idea what they just said. But it was something new, something exciting and Mike tried to open his eyes that he held close for a long long time by now. The lamp was still on, the damn thing. But Mike finally had some sort of focus on the plastic and glass demon. Yep. Definitely a hospital lamp.
The doctor, standing above him was way fuzzier, with indistinguishable features and the language was an absolute mess. The problem was not that the language was different. You still can determine words and sounds when somebody speaks to you in an unknown dialect. No, the sounds were wrong. Mike felt… Dyslexic? Probably the best comparison was a dyslexia for sounds. He didn't really know if there was a condition like that, but he now proudly had it. God his brain was messed up. Well, no time like the present to show the massive progress he made all by himself.
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He concentrated and tried to whisper a simple “Hello”. What came out of his mouth could be barely considered a “Hnnnngg” but all noises stopped for a second. Mike felt like the whole universe recoiled and slowed down, and even the lamp blinked in surprise and dimmed slightly.
***
"Oooh this is so exciting! He’s reacting! He’s definitely reacting! It’s working!"
“Calm down, we don’t know that yet. For a science division subAI you should know better than to rush to conclusions. It could have been just a random fart of data the controller picked up from his brain activity,”
“I’m not giving you piloting advice, am I? So, don’t you lecture me on science. And I am telling you this is deliberate! He’s trying to communicate and make sense of things. See, there’s another stream of data coming in. Almost the same as before but slightly different.”
“How is THAT similar? It’s just random nonsense.”
All five AI's that were left on the derelict ship were once again gathered in their "communal space" of sorts. Their awareness focused here on being able to communicate quicker and work on the problems in concert. The current problem was to work on the data stream being fed to their collective patient.
Till now, he did not really respond to anything. By the changes in his brain activity they were able to determine that he was at least processing the data.
“It’s not random. My theory is that he’s trying to tie the data we send in to sensory inputs – and that’s how the brain processes it.”
“Elaborate?”
“Like visualizing things? Hearing things? Most certainly sense of touch. Some involuntary reactions. For instance, see how his body forces all the hairs to stand up? That’s a reaction to cold or wind. And this string of data I sent several times already always produces the same reaction.”
“Okay, correct me if I misunderstood. He’s translating a specific string of data… into wind?”
“Yes! Isn’t that exciting? Oh I wish professor Corx was here we would have so much to discuss!”
“I’m sorry my lowly piloting designation doesn’t allow me to fully grasp the implications. It just sounds… useless.”
“Definitely not useless. It’s a start and a very good start, we have touchpoints, we are starting to build a common language. And you can help by the way.”
“Help? How?”
“Well now that we know it’s working we need to start plotting the common understanding on our end since he won’t be able to do that. Don’t want to end up with his right foot hurting when I say hello.”
“Why don’t we just tie it all down to sense of hearing? Or vision?”
“It would be simple, yes, but the answer is bandwidth. The chip we built and implanted is crude. As his brain is purely biological. I already see that he won’t be able to deal with the massive amount of data required to actually be the prime AI with his brain processing just hearing.”
“Even using the substrate?”
“Data from substrate while preprocessed still has to pass through his brain. And be processed once again whether consciously or unconsciously. No organic can process this much data with just one sense.”
“Okay I get it. So, what can I do?”
“You should be the best of us in terms of well… Space. Not the void outside space, but with “being somewhere”. Physical aspects you know? Knowing where the ship is, knowing what direction you are facing, this kind of stuff. So, if we can tie this down to his special awareness it will eventually help him easily process this data. Almost naturally.”
“Huh. That actually sounds reasonable. Let’s see what we can do.”
***
It was all going well. Mike was trying to communicate with the nice doctor who was definitely coercing him to do something with her pleasant and motherly voice. Or just calming him down. This was a saving grace, even if he was not capable of clearly understanding what exactly was said, the voice still conveyed emotions. He elevated from “Hnnng” to “Haaa…” and was almost able to form the “llo”. Mike refused to start with the basic “mama” because come on!
And then he flew out of bed and smashed into the wall.
It didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Probably because of him being nearly numb. Also, probably because this was a complete surprise to him. Up was suddenly down, then left, then left felt like inside and he was violently retching, his empty stomach refusing to give meaning to the gesture.
The calming voice became alarmed. Strict and commanding. The sudden trip ended as abruptly as it started. With Mike once again lying on the bed and staring at the lamp in utter confusion.
***
“Stop it! What are you doing!”
“What you asked me to! I stopped, you didn’t have to cut me off like that
“You idiot! Slowly, okay? You completely overloaded his senses of direction, I can only imagine what he felt. Also, his heartrate spiked dangerously.” The voice of the medical and research SubAI sounded caring. Helpful. It sounded… Helen.
“Helen, come on! You should have directed me then, data about limitations. I’m flying blind here, you know? Please next time be more specific”
“I thought you had more sense than that.” Helen sighed. Actually, outwardly sighed showing that the conflict is resolved and she has her nerves under control. “You are right. I’m sorry and I should have provided more input and overseen what you are trying to stream. Try again please? More concentrated? Pinpointed?”
“Concentrated how exactly?” the piloting subAI asked. His speech was very methodical, probably the most robotic of all of the AI’s on the ship. Military like. He sounded very… Jason.
“Okay, let’s try to just project a concept of “Down”. Or gravity. Or actually being pushed by gravity? Something like that. And Jason, please, slowly.”
“Right. Concept of down. And gravity. This still sounds insane, by the way, you should know that. Here, check this package of data.”
“This looks way better. Let’s try it.”