Chapter 3

Date: 2180 AD. Planet Earth, American Conglomerate, Chehalis WA, Outskirts of Dead Zone - Former Seattle.

The next two weeks were difficult. We were not able to communicate much out of fear that our plan would get back to the board letting them know our intention to circumvent their directive. However, we both kept busy working on our own parts. I was kept busy settling up all of our affairs, which oddly felt like I was planning for our funeral. Since we had no children or even close family, this was somewhat simplified but it was still a bit morbid to think about. Phil meanwhile worked on getting everything together that he would need to accomplish his miracle.

Immediately the day after the board meeting, both Phil and Aira were up early busily setting up our lab, securing it from outside eavesdropping. This meant I only saw Phil sparingly throughout the day, mainly when I brought him food and forced him to eat, and the times I forced him to come to bed. I was careful not to disturb him too much during these times despite wanting to know how it was going. Despite my attempts, I could see how stressed and focused he was since he tended to get crankier as he got into his work. However we did still get some small talk during meal times, and some snuggling sessions before going to sleep. It was during these small talks that we kept up the appearance of getting ready to move to the EIC housing just in case we turned out to be right in our paranoia.

By the end of the second week, we received a notification from the EIC that a tech team would arrive at the end of the week. They had accelerated our timetable by a week and I still hadn’t asked to see how much progress had been made and if we would be ready.

Worried, I looked over at Phil, that pain in the ass, love of my life, had a smug grin on his face. As he high fived the air, Aira disconnected our network on the apparent queue from him. They had set this up during the first week so that there was no need for actual words. Once that was done he excitedly started pacing the kitchen, running his hands through his hair, and started talking rapidly about some kind of nanotech. About Aira’s processing acting like brain waves and something... about piggybacking, and of her being a great sneak. Despite the tension I was feeling, I couldn’t take it any longer and I started to laugh at his antics and wild gestures. Phil was caught off guard, turning around looking at me, “What's so funny?”

“You are, you look like a crazed madman unveiling his evil plot to his enemy” still laughing my ass off “and you're doing that lip-biting thing when you're concentrating really hard.” continuing to laugh even more, at his surprised look.

“Oh! so you think I'm a mad man do you now!” with a mischievous glint in his eyes he grabbed a hold of me tipping me slightly as he stated in his most evil of voices. “You shall not stop me, ha..ha..ha! I have made it so that my evil AI can take over the world muahaha!!” Still holding me with one arm, he tossed his other out and on queue, Aira played sounds of thunder across the speakers as he continued to laugh like an evil mastermind from a B horror movie.

“Whatever shall the EIC do to stop you!!” I stated dramatically, placing one of my hands on my forehead. “Is there no other way to stop you, or shall we be enslaved by you and your evil AI!”. We all started laughing at our antics. After the good laugh, Phil and I looked into each other's eyes and smiled, I then asked. “So I take it you and Aira have found a way to save her then?”

“Yes, we have. It will require your help though.”. Puzzled, I quirked my eyebrows at him. “Wondering why we need you? Well, we figured that since the immersion process is taking your consciousness and downloading it to a new body perhaps we could store Aira within your mind with the assistance of nanites. That way when you immerse it should recognize two distinct entities allowing both of you to go through the process.” He continued as he gently held me upright, “Aira has created these nanites, and believes that in her words “are ready for integration into Sarah’s brain and since my processing waves happen to match closely to hers so I'll be practically undetectable once inside.” He chuckles evilly again as he taps his forefinger on my head.

“That is quite an interesting concept and I can understand how it can work. But how will the nanites stay active? There have been ideas about using nanites to enhance humans, but every time they tried they were never able to get past the power storage requirements. Every time the tech degraded within the body due to power loss and were eventually filtered out of the body. Not to mention all of the moral issues that would accompany said integration, would we really be human if we have nanites controlled by AI’s within our brains. What are the possible complications?” I replied.

Pointing his finger up in the air for a dramatic effect he said, “Well my dear that is why I have perfected the nanites so that they can be implanted in you without degrading. Aira hummed at this statement, and Phil quickly corrected himself. “Okay Aira solved the nanite degradation issues temporarily by adding a new thermal power generation circuit that we got from ING, so they will charge off body heat, and I assisted with the programming.” Continuing, “The nanites will still need to get an additional charge every 24 hours or so via induction charging which should be easy enough. We thought maybe you could start wearing some AR glasses and we could mount a charger there. While not perfect it should allow Aira to transfer over and stay for at least a few weeks well past when we would be gone.” he chuckled as he let me go so he could go to the fridge.

“Wait, how did you get a hold of ING tech! Especially without ING or the EIC finding out!” I could not believe it.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Ah well, Aira helped out with that, let’s just say she convinced the ING network that she was a part of one of the research groups, and was then able to access all of their research and tech.” He looked so proud, he turned to the closest visual receiver where he knew Aira could then see his face. Before diving back into the fridge he asked me “Hey do you want me to get you a beer too?”

I was horrified about their recent illicit work. “What if they trace her search back to us. I mean that could be really bad. It could start a trade war between EIC and ING. We both know that EIC and ING have private militaries at their disposal. ING could hunt us down, and if EIC found out, well we could just disappear if you get my drift or worse, we never get to Nexitus.” The risks that they were taking were too much, I began to pace and murmur under my breath about how Phil is a bad influence on Aira’s good sense.

Coming out of the fridge Phil handed me one of the opened beers and reflexively I drank it, while he held onto the other “Don’t worry babe, Aira made sure that her search could not be traced. She is, after all, an AI who is good at what she does and not to mention has an extreme motivation to stay alive.” He said from beside the fridge. As he came to stand next to me he began to drink his second beer. “I don’t think they will ever know, but even if they did find anything out of the ordinary it would take them months to figure out who it was. By then we will be in Nexitus and they can’t ever stop us once we’re there.”

“Ok but you still haven’t answered my question about possible complications?” I looked doubtful at him as he pulled out a beer and started to chug it down.

“Ahh that hit the spot,” he said. With a slight grimace, he turned to face me “Well we are in a bit of uncharted territory here. You know despite our research we still aren’t really sure how the immersion process works beyond making it interface correctly with us. We believe that worst-case scenario Aira would somehow merge with you. How that would look we are unsure but we think it an extremely unlikely event. I mean the creators should have accounted for possible pregnancy right?”

Breathing a small sigh I said “Okay, if you're that sure then let’s do this. First, though we need to do a test and confirm Aira will transfer correctly to the nanites. I would not like to have to go through all this trouble and end up having her be deleted through your overconfidence.”

“Wonderful good thing I already did the testing and had Aira order a new set of AR glasses for you last week in advance. We just need to modify them in the next few days to allow for a reverse charging port. We will place it right next to your ear on the earpiece for the best results and they will charge the nanites throughout the day. Since it will be consuming a lot more power you will need to remember to charge the glasses every night instead of once a week. I do love seeing you in glasses too, my own sexy librarian.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“I am not too worried, lucky more so for you, that augmented reality has come back in as a fashion statement. I'll fit right in with the current trend and no one will be wiser to what it really is.” I said slightly smug.

With a fist pump to the air, Phil said “Ok let’s do this! We will just start with Aira’s redundant memories. And if they last through the first charge, then when the EIC team comes in five days we will transfer the rest of her to the nanites, making it look like we are deleting her at that time, and they will be none the wiser.”

“Alright, I said nodding my head, let's get this done before I change my mind.”

We headed down into the lab and started to set up a sterile field, to get ready for the implantation of the nano biocharger. Lucky for us I had kept a good stock of minor medical supplies as well as sedatives, painkillers, and antibiotics. A perk from the EIC that was given to all team members with medical degrees. I had heard of a few unethical teams that took advantage of those perks, and secretly tested the effects of partial immersion on people that were desperate for money. All in the name of science to better map the chemical and neuro changes within the brain. I never could bring myself to do that to another human, but I was not above using their findings to advance our own research.

We were all set up and ready. Thankfully the nano injector wasn’t too large but we also needed to install a small charging receiver under the skin behind my ear. With the aid of a mirror and local anesthetics, I only had to make a small incision under my ear to accommodate the dime-size device which was easy enough. Once I was done stitching myself up and covering it with liquid dermal skin, to best hide the recent cut. Phil placed the AR glasses on to see where the charger would need to place. They were extremely slim and stylish as Phil had gone for a top of the line model. We were going to be gone soon so we might as well use that bonus to good use. I did have to adjust them to help reduce irritation and to cause the least discomfort over the new incision. While I was doing that Phil filled up the first of 4 syringes with 50 cc’s each of his modified nanites.

“You ready?” he asked me while he held onto the syringe

“Ready as I’ll ever be, just do it” I cringed and looked away as he slowly injected the nanites into a large vein at the bend of my arm, I never liked getting shots despite having given more than my fair share. After getting the last injection I was feeling slightly queasy having multiple large shots all at once, so I laid my head down on the cool metal tabletop that was in front of me. I had not been expecting to need such a large amount of nanites. I was dealing with the shots themselves, but then thinking about having 200mL’s worth of machines running around inside me, freaked me out.

“Okay, we will now have to wait for a few hours while Aira confirms everything is functioning correctly. After that we can begin moving her over, saving the last part to make sure everyone believes we truly removed all the code. ” Phil replied.

Giving him a thumbs up after a couple of minutes, I slowly lifted my head off the table and told him, “Aright, then I’m off to bed. I’m more tired then I realized” as I started yawning, I covered my mouth.

“I’ll join you here in a min. I need to manually reconnect back to the main network as I don't want Aria to do so, be there soon” he said as he kissed me goodnight. With that, I went and changed to pj’s and was off to bed, and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep.

“Aira, tomorrow will you please wake Sarah and I up at 0600? Then we can verify everything is going as planned and get you moved over” Phil asked once he reconnected our network.

“Of course I would be happy to. I will wake both up then” replied Aira softly. “Good night.”