“You’re sure you want this, Lin?” Louise asks. “I’ll give you the same disclaimer I gave Valerie. This is an unapproved, untested, potentially unsafe procedure installing an unapproved, untested, potentially unsafe set of devices into your eyes, ears, and skin. Are you sure?”
Lin nods as she grabs the pen and signs document after document in the large stack. Not that she would ever sue us, but Louise said Robert on the legal team insisted. I guess it can’t hurt to have something in writing.
“OK then,” Louise says. “Check your messages on your phone and download the app that I linked for you there.”
Lin fiddles with her phone as Louise gets out the new bots and a batch of workers. Valerie and Evan are here in the lab too, both smiling excitedly.
“It’s so fun,” Valerie assures Lin. “These boys have been holding out on us for way too long with these toys.”
“I know!” Lin agrees, lowering her phone. “It’s a good thing Louise is around to take care of us, since her brothers are clearly miscreants. I’m ready, Louise.”
Louise smiles and directs the small cloud of the new bots towards Lin. They settle into her eyes, ears, and hands as she syncs them with her phone.
“How is it looking,” Louise asks.
“It’s marvelous so far,” Lin answers. “The heads up display is quite well done. Give me a minute to get used to the eye controls.”
Her eyes scan all around, looking in every direction without seeming to see anything in the room.
“Double blink to click, remember,” Louise tells her.
“Yes, I got that,” she says. “Just trying to figure out the menus. The user interface for this is intuitive, but I have some ideas on how to make it better already.”
Of course she does. She’s got a great eye for graphical design and layout on the computer. I wouldn’t expect anything different here.
“Write them up and I’ll get them to the devs,” I offer.
“Can I modify it in place? Maybe customize the code?” she asks.
“Sorry,” Louise says. “Only the compiled binaries go out to the device on this one. It’s the only way the app can run on commercial phone hardware. So no source code.”
“I see. That makes sense,” she says, nodding. “Can we connect some nanobots now?”
I nod and break off a few thousand to get her started. She connects up and I turn on the overlay and see that the new interface gives her glowing green eyes and hands, which for her look pretty cool. Like a superheroine, charged up and ready to use her powers. I feel a tickle down my back and notice Lin making subtle gestures with her fingers. I turn and see her new small cloud swirling around behind me.
“Can I grow this cloud like you do?” she asks, as her bots start to search my pockets.
“Yes, you can,” I answer, “and no, I’m not hiding a ring. I’m not nearly as smooth as Evan is.”
Her lips pout a little as she retracts her cloud from me.
“Fine, I’ll accept just the superpowers today. But you owe me one.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“One ring?” I ask, only half joking.
“One something of my choosing to be selected at a time of my choosing,” she says imperiously as she begins levitating various objects around the room.
“Power tripping already?” Louise asks, her voice artificially stern. “It’s not too late for me to take these back.”
“I’ll be good,” Lin promises, laughing.
Lin and Valerie start comparing notes and challenging each other to increasingly complex feats of telekinesis. Louise nods approvingly, taking a few notes as they discuss and test the new interface. Evan and I end up in the far corner of the lab so we don’t get hit by the pens, sticky note pads, and coffee mugs that have started swirling around the room.
“I’m a little worried that I’m getting worse,” I confide to him quietly. “My memory, I mean.”
“Really?” he asks. “You still seem pretty functional. I haven’t noticed anything different.”
“I still am functional,” I acknowledge. “But things that used to trigger real memories just don’t anymore. It used to be that once someone reminded me of something, it would really come back to me. Now, people tell me things that I did and I can’t remember anything about it beyond what I wrote down.”
“I’m sorry man. Have you talked to Louise about it? She’s your best bet for a way to reverse it.”
“Yeah, I did. Or at least my index says I did. She wanted me to let Max look at it, but it stopped degrading for a while and she was fine leaving it alone. Then she got all obsessed with this thing.” I motion in the direction of the three girls. “And I think she might have forgotten about it. But she couldn’t come up with anything that would help back then, and I’m still not sure about letting Max have access. But it’s degrading again. Slower, but still degrading. It looks like neural connections that used to be used for recall are now just wired for other things. They don’t have any way to wire them back. I don’t know. I shouldn’t complain. I’m paying for what I got.”
I watch the girls playing catch with random items from the lab without touching them, enjoying their new toys. I try to remember enjoying my new powers like that, but all that comes back to me are the words I once wrote about it that I read back this morning.
“You are better with it than any of us,” Evan confirms. “Except maybe Andrea, and I’m thinking she has something similar going on with her language processing centers. She still listens when I talk to her, but I’m not sure she really understands me anymore. Not like she used to.”
Lin and Valerie are floating pens around now, occasionally tossing one at each other.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. I think it’s part of why I can’t seem to get through to her to get her to help me find Jeff.”
“Might be,” Evan says, ducking an errant pen that almost pegs him in the head. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Sorry,” Lin calls out. We give a wave in acknowledgement.
“No worries,” Evan says, picking up the pen and tossing it back her way. It stops in midair and begins flipping end over end as Lin weaves her hands in the air like some kind of sexy sorceress.
“Anyway, you haven’t been begging Andrea for help every day like I have,” I tell him. “If you were, you’d notice. She understands some of what you say, but I swear a lot of it just seems like noise as far as she’s concerned.”
“That’s probably true, now that I think of it. But the contact interface will let us bring the next two classes to bear, at least in terms of being able to contain any outbreaks if Jeff goes nuts. More nuts, I mean. Even without Andrea, we might be OK. At least we should once all the dev tasks for making wild bot containment automatic are done.”
“Yeah, Chuck’s got his team working on it.” I step aside just in time to avoid a fast-moving coffee mug coming from Valerie’s direction. “Should be ready soon.”
“Good,” he says, nodding.
“At least you got a girlfriend before your brain broke all the way,” Evan says helpfully.
“Yeah, a girlfriend who keeps expecting me to put a ring on it now,” I say quietly. “Thanks a lot.”
“You are very welcome,” he says, smiling. “Any time.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be terrible,” I admit. “I really do love her.”
A wave of random junk from the lab nearly clobbers me as I reflexively put up a wall of bots.
“Sorry,” Lin and Valerie say together. I’m not sure if they heard me complain and retaliated or if their timing was great. From the way they’re giggling, I think it was the former.
“I love you,” I call out. Lin blushes furiously. She’s Americanized herself a lot since she came here, but a declaration of affection that loud and public is still out of her comfort zone.
“I know,” she calls back. Something in my brain scratches that I should be able to connect that reply to something, but I can’t place it. Sometimes I really wish I still had a working brain.