5:34 A.M.
January 3
Jacksonville, Florida; United States of America, Earth
In the hospital’s surgery waiting room, a lone bed sat with an occupant in it. The lights were lowered deeply to what would be affectionately called ‘night light’ level. The air was mostly still, interrupted only by the gentle noises of the monitoring equipment hooked to the various adhesive pads across his head and chest.
Wanting to sit up was too much of a hassle, so the person just stared up at the ceiling and counted the indentations on the ceiling tiles for what felt like the billionth time. It had long lost it’s novelty but such was the lot of someone waiting to be rolled into surgery. Thankfully the monotony was shattered by the sound of the door swinging wide and the figure in the bed hissed at the sudden intrusion of light stabbing the retinas with their sterile harshness. Head movements pointed the rapidly blinking eyes away from the offending luminescence as the figure who’d opened the door walked up to the monitoring machinery to study the readouts quietly for a minute.
“The light hurt,” came a voice that was half-sleepy from the patient on the bed. It was clearly a young man’s voice, smooth and strong despite the clear sleepiness. The standing figure leaned over the side of the bed, blocking the worst of the hallway’s light to allow him to look back towards them. The figure resolved in his sight as a female nurse looked down at him. She struck him as some flavor of latino; dark hair and eyes along with deep mocha skin, the facial features pretty telling.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t know they had the lights turned down for you, sir. You feeling okay?” His head moved back and forth a hair as he clearly thought. She waited for him to answer like a medical professional would.
“Okay, I suppose. My headache’s mostly gone, but as we’re going out in that light I’d appreciate something to cover my eyes so it doesn’t come back.” She nodded at the request and as she moved unthinkingly towards a cabinet against a nearby wall he managed to avert his head so as to not take another blast of light to the eyeballs. The headache wasn’t an unusual occurrence, but it also wasn’t the reason he was here waiting to be wheeled into surgery. The woman came back to him with an opaque eye mask and held it up for his inspection.
He responded by lifting his head up so she could slip the elastic band behind his head and fit the mask into place, granting him blessed darkness. The head went back down onto the bed as he felt and heard someone else moving into the room. By the gait and feeling in the room it was probably a male; most likely an orderly. His guess was confirmed as the second presence jostled the bed gently, disengaged the wheel locks, and started moving the bed out the door. The nurse was right by him by the sounds of the monitoring equipment’s wheels making tiny clacking noises as they rolled on the laminated flooring.
A short trip later the sounds of the surroundings picked up in pitch and fervor. Multiple people were scurrying about and various metals and papers and plastics rustled and scraped against each other. The bed stopped and a voice announced itself clearly into the room once all the rustling had stopped.
“Mister Zavon. Are you good for this? It’s your last chance to back out.”
“I’m sure, doctor. Final consent is given. Could I request you arrange it so the lights aren’t too bright in my face?”
“Arrangements have already been made, young man. Let’s move him onto the table and hook up his IV.” With that, the activity resumed. The young man was brushed up against the operating table and crawled onto it before laying face-down in the pre-arranged setup they had for him. The blindfold was slipped off before he set his face in the opening for him to rest in. Thankfully the other side of the hole had gauze draped across it’s outer edges to dull the light coming into his eyes.
He felt the IV in his arm hooked up and could almost taste the anesthetic flowing into his veins. He felt sheets being placed over his neck and the back of his head as the drugs began to take effect; the world losing focus and his sense of touch going into blissful nothingness. The last conscious thought he had before slipping into a drugged haze was seeing one of the attending people watching his face for reactions.
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He came back into awareness in a similar room to the one he’d been waiting in. The lights were on a bit stronger than ‘night light’ so that others could see if they came in. His eyes shifted around the mostly barren room, alighting on the door as it cracked open. Surprisingly, it seemed the hallway had either been dimmed as well or some covering had been put across the frame that filtered out the worst of the fluorescent illumination. A small concession but he’d take it.
The young man wriggled himself into a sitting position and regarded the figure approaching him. It was a familiar one and now he was more aware with each passing heartbeat.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said the man that scooped up a nearby chair and sat himself at the bedside like he owned the building. The military uniform was clear as day to casual observation; the decorations and insignia marked this individual as a United States Navy Captain with a respectable litany of honors. The older man was roughly in his mid-40s and had salty-flecked brown hair cut in a short manner. He looked like the quintessential middle-aged military officer who’d been there, done that, and had the operation patch to prove it.
The younger person smiled weakly at the statement before responding. “Feels better already, uncle. Headache’s gone. I take it from this throbbing in the back of my head that it worked?”
“Sure did, Gary. You’ve got the new doodad installed and wired up. Operation went flawlessly.”
“Good. They say when it can get turned on?” The captain pulled out a small key fob-looking device with a single button on it. The now-named Gary looked at the device with anticipation before locking eyes with his uncle and giving a slow nod. With a dramatic flair, said uncle waved it with a flourish at Gary’s head and dramatically pushed the sole button on the device.
Eyes went wide as Gary’s sight went mad for an instant of rearranging sigils of light and alphanumeric symbols. His gaze flicked blindly for a moment before the lightstorm settled into a simple minimalistic heads-up-display at the edges of his peripheral vision. A thought went through his head and a simple box of text sprung to life in the center of his gaze.
Hello World!
It was simple, but the fact the message appeared when he wanted to, the HUD shifted when he sent additional thoughts towards the lights in his vision, and then they vanished as if they’d never existed when he willed them to turn off meant that everything had worked. His gaze finally flicked back to his uncle, an excited tinge to it as his posture straightened up. The rush of the success had flushed the rest of the drugs out of his cognitive functions.
“It works! The test message, the HUD; all of it! There’s no control problems I can see off the jump.” His uncle sagged a little in relief after having been worriedly watching Gary’s eyes flicker to and fro in silence. A hand reached out and patted Gary’s sheet-covered knee in solidarity.
“That’s great news, boy. They’re gonna want to keep you for a bit for observation but we should be in the clear. Command’s gonna look forward to this. We’re making history here!”
Gary Zavon leaned back into the bed with a satisfied smirk on his face. The implantation surgery for the Virtual Network System was a success so far. It was a simple idea in concept: take the newly-refined nanotechnology of the modern age, make it a storage medium to store in the scant recesses of the skull, and hook it to the nervous system so it could access his sense of sight. In practice it had been nearly two decades of research and prototyping in the making. The device currently in his skull was the first production model, the first to be implanted in a human subject, and now the first confirmed successful activation in a human subject.
Just developing this tech had accelerated developments in numerous scientific fields; from microbiology all the way up to prosthetic limbs. The system’s actual design was kept simple for this first iteration: text and still images could be stored in the storage medium that housed the brains of his new toy. He was now a walking server of text-based documents and images that could either be uploaded from a wireless-connected source or he could download anything he mentally wrote or used his eyes as cameras to take pictures of.
To say that it was ‘augmented reality’ was a bit misleading. There were no silly ads here, no holograms obscuring his vision. The displays he’d been blinded with he could control; the HUD to make as opaque or transparent as he felt like. It had already been loaded as per his request with so much information. None of it was classified or anything, but there were written articles and display images of everything he could ever want to know from recorded history. The entirety of everything from how-to’s to advanced theoretical mathematical equations were literally a thought away.
Why had this been developed? To serve the military complex, of course. It had immeasurable impact potential on Humanity as a whole but it was usually the military that got the shiniest toys before the civilian populace.
Well, he supposed he was technically a civilian still himself. All it had taken him was a legally-binding document to be monitored for the rest of forever by every United States government agency ever and an excessively intense battery of physical and psychological tests. Simple stuff, really. Hell, whatever they’d done while rooting around in his skull got rid of his near-constant headache so that alone was worth the whole thing.
“Gotta say, uncle; it feels great to not have to be dealing with my headache and I get literally the first of a device that’s gonna change the world. They’re probably already working on the Mark Two of this thing.” His uncle laughed loudly at the statement.
“Wouldn’t doubt it. Still it is pretty amazing. You can literally have whatever information you want at your fingertips… Err, your eyeballs. Just being able to have every instruction manual ever right there with pictures has the potential to save a lot of lives and a lot of hassle.” The man’s gray eyes looked a bit sad as a thought occurred to him. “...Isn’t this how that movie The Matrix started?”
“Nah. The whole ‘wired into a simulation’ thing came after the robots had to look for new power sources. Easier to use human batteries when said batteries are too busy in la-la land to fight back.” A grunt answered his correction. Gary smirked. “Don’t worry, uncle. I’ll let you know when the nearest toaster develops a taste for human blood.”
Another grunt, this one clearly amused. “Think I can turn up the lights?” Gary thought about it a moment before nodding. The captain got up out of the chair and walked to the light controls on the wall by the door. Gradually raising them up, Gary blinked as he adjusted his sight to the full brightness. Sadly the Virtual Network didn’t offer any protections to his vision, but one step at a time. Surely there’d be a generation of the tech that made a person like half-nanotech and they’d be able to adjust sliders about their bodies like a video game character creator. One day.
His uncle returned to the bedside as a new nurse cracked the door open cautiously before growing more bold seeing the lights up to full. This one was a dark-skinned African-American woman probably roughly his uncle’s age. She came in with a jolly demeanor and was all smiles. “Congratulations, mister Zavon! Your surgery was a rousing success. You feeling any different? Anything we need to address? Any pain?”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Gary lightly shook his head, making sure not to be too vigorous so as not to tug or jostle anything loose. “Everything is pretty good so far. No pain or anything but now that you mention things I need, maybe a trip to the bathroom is in order?””
“Of course, hon. Excuse me, sir,” she said as her body snaked past the captain to do her regulation-mandated checks of Gary’s vitals and such other medical things. “Alright! Looks good so far. Let’s test to make sure you can walk. Some of those anesthetics do weird things to your body that you don’t immediately recognize.” Left unspoken was the fact she was also going to be watching him for neurological problems with things like coordination, balance, and various stimuli. Gary didn’t mind. The world was his oyster. He felt pretty close to invincible at this point.
Socked feet touched the laminated floor as he gently swung his legs over the side of the bed. He’d clearly been given some of those hospital socks with the little rubberized grip pads on them, a dull fire engine red to indicate a fall risk. He frowned down at them before he moved his head towards the nurse to make sure she was standing there in case he went tumbling. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his uncle lurking within lunging range for the same purpose but had seen fit to give the nurse room for her own work.
With a tensing of his body he slowly ascended to a standing position, pausing as he attained his full height. The two adults in the room watched warily as he visibly leaned from one foot to the other to test his balance before nodding that he was good. The two accompanied him to the door of the room’s bathroom and he waved them back as he reached the sink counter to look at himself in the mirror.
Pale eyes stared back at his reflection as the nurse politely flicked the lights on as she and his uncle observed him taking in his reflection. Said eyes were a silver-gray that seemed to shimmer with the ambient light, placed in a normal face framed by short and very messy dark brown hair. Gently running his hand through that messy top covering just made it stick up in weirder configurations until he got to the bandage he’d subconsciously felt at the base of his skull. It felt like roughly the C1 or C2 vertebrae positioning where there was a small incision covered by super fancy medical bandages and paddings.
Instantly at those thoughts images of the human skeleton focused on the neck and lower skull flashed into sight, accompanied by a stock image of the medical wound coverings and a pair of text files flanking each image with relevant information. Gary blinked in startlement before he realized what had happened when the displays stayed to the sides of his direct line of vision despite his looking back and forth in a moment of confusion. With another thought Gary willed the windows away and gently rolled his head around to test the limits of his surgical incision to find if he could move his head like he was used to.
“Settings are too sensitive,” he murmured a little louder than he thought he had intended to. “Gonna have to go into the activation settings and turn that down. Don’t need to get distracted this easily…” As he turned away from the mirror towards the desired toilet, his uncle spoke up.
“I’ll note that in the report. So no problems with balance or sensation so far?”
Gary flipped the back of the hospital gown out of the way - knowing already that he had no underwear on as per health guidelines for surgery - and sat down on the toilet in full view of both the silent nurse and speaking captain. He gently shook his head, waving off the question as he took care of his business, the gown thankfully covering him from their perspective for modesty’s sake. Gary spoke to politely cover the sound.
“I think it’ll be fine. I can feel everything just fine like I could before. Seems like it’s all working fine and dandy. Haven’t tried the wifi functionality yet. I’m gonna get done in here and sit back on the bed before I go tinkering with controls. No issues with vertigo when I use it, but like I said I gotta tinker with the settings to adjust it to acceptable levels so it doesn’t just pop up images and text willy-nilly if I think of something too hard.”
“Well, make sure you compile a list of what you’re adjusting so the lab rats can adjust things for the next person so they don’t lose their shit on bootup.” Gary nodded at that and willed a blank text file into existence. He titled it ‘Settings adjustments for bootup’ and narrowed his eyes as he mentally wrote ‘VERSION 1 BOOTUP SETTINGS TOO SENSITIVE - POSSIBLE PANIC INDUCEMENT’ in bright, bold lettering at the top. These military types sometimes needed things to be simple. Finishing his business, he cleaned up and walked with far more confidence back to the hospital bed before he laid back and started sorting his new settings out. The HUD changed under his internal gaze as sliders and checkmarks flicked in and out of use, the triggering ‘pressure’ for various parts of the system getting readjusted to more reasonable levels.
He obviously added each adjustment to the growing text file; each with a set of notes to describe the reasoning behind them for development purposes. The United States government had given him one of the most expensive toys in the world to play with, so he figured they were entitled to a thorough feedback report. He was paving the way for many great things and it would be remiss of him not to pioneer properly. History would hopefully thank him for his diligence.
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They actually kept him for two days. Day one was actual observation, and day two was some of the ‘lab rats’ his uncle had remarked about showing up to check up on their baby in-person. He’d tested the wireless data transmission function with them, and they had made very pleased noises at him about his feedback and suggestions for further rollout procedures.
Getting out of the wheelchair he’d had to be rolled out of the hospital for, Gary stretched heavily in the morning light. He walked over towards the clearly suspicious large van in black parked alongside the nearby curb, the driver in a decent business suit looking at him with growing nervousness as he did so. Gary waved at him in a friendly manner as he came up to the passenger side window and after a few moments it rolled down at the controls from the driver. The nondescript man stared at the teenager as the teenager stared back with his bright silver-gray eyes in silence for a few seconds before Gary broke the silence.
“Good morning. I take it you’re the morning detail?”
“..Yeah,” the man said with a sighing expression as he deflated a little from the loss of tense pressure. “You know you’re not normally supposed to talk to us, right?”
“Hey, I gotta be monitored by all the alphabet organizations for the rest of my life because of this new toy in my head. There’s no reason I can’t be civil and say hello.” The man nodded at the statement, subconsciously glancing back towards the darkened interior of the van which had the small dividing door slid open. Soft beeps and boops and hums were coming from the rear, only heard because Gary was right there at the window with it rolled down. “So, who’s starting off the rotation? FBI or NSA?”
“Joint team between them and Homeland Security, actually. You’d figure the kid who’s got a spy’s wildest dream wired up in him would have nothing but the NSA practically handcuffed to you, but apparently this is part of some deal with the higher-ups. Promoting ‘inter-agency cooperation for this unprecedented event’ or some jazz like that.”
“Hah! I figured you’d actually be CIA spooks trying to recruit me because they like stealing everyone’s shit.” The man sniffed dismissively as a clearly feminine giggle drifted from the darked rear of the van. “But anyways. Could I bum a ride home from you guys? Uncle’s busy with Navy stuff and I’m wary of taking cabs.”
“Eh, why not? Easier to keep a watch on you if you’re in the same vehicle. Hop in.” Gary heard the door unlock and climbed in. Looking into the back after settling in and fastening his seatbelt, Gary saw the dim interior and thus the van’s other two occupants.
The non-descript driver had been as plain and boring as he thought a human could get - brown hair, brown eyes, average build with slightly-tanned skin - but the two in the back were more interesting. Another man and a woman both in suits with pants greeted his sight. The other man was clearly Hispanic; blacks where the driver had browns, a darker complexion and a body frame that clearly suggested either a vigorous workout routine or military combat experience. A quiet and sagely nod met his gaze before he looked at the woman. She was more nordic in complexion with fair-to-pale skin, bright blonde hair, medium-blue eyes, and a cheeky grin on her slender face. A headset was hanging around her neck from where she’d clearly lowered it to hear more clearly.
The van’s engine turned on as Gary spoke up again. “Nice to meet you folks. Obviously, I’m Gary Zavon. You guys get filled in on why you’re actually stuck on this detail, or did they give you ‘government-issue’ answers? Pretty sure it’s not super-classified.”
The hispanic man spoke up first in response as the vehicle eased out of it’s spot to move on the road. “‘Government-issue answers’ fits it pretty good, actually. Miguel Aguilez, FBI. So are you like some sort of new super-soldier or something?”
Gary smirked at the guess. “Actually, I just had a cutting-edge piece of tech installed in my head. First production model of a new system. It gives me a built-in database of pretty much whatever I want to have in my head; all mentally controlled. I’m literally a walking repository of human knowledge, all accessible at the speed of thought.”
“That sounds super useful, but how is that considered a threat to national security enough to justify a three-agency taskforce to monitor a teenager for the rest of his life? Carla Everman of the NSA, by the way.” Gary smiled deeply as he mentally triggered a function in the Virtual Network before flicking on his wireless connection to transmit data to an open port on the computer equipment Carla was seated at. The flicker of the screen drew Miguel and Carla’s attention as Gary’s smile became something a little more toothy.
It was an image of the two agents sitting in a darkened back of a van; Miguel looking on impassively while Carla was there with a quizzical look on her face. It looked like an extraordinarily high-resolution picture taken by a camera but the angle of it clearly suggested the picture-taker was sitting exactly where Gary was. At the exact angle Gary’s eyes were at.
This fact wasn’t lost on the agents as Miguel leaned back in his seat with a worried expression and Carla slowly turned to look at him with a growing horrified shock on her face. Gary’s grin turned predatory in the number of teeth it showed.
“Jesus Christ. You can just do that?”
The screen flickered again as a simple box of text appeared on it, overlaying the picture that had just been taken. The box simply stated the words ‘And this as well.’. Carla’s face lost a little more of it’s color as this newest revelation sank in.
“What’s he doing,” asked the driver, who flicked his eyes towards the teenage charge before turning his attention back to the road; worry evident in his voice.
“His eyes are a fuckin’ camera is what. And he can text too? Yeah, this kid’s gotta be watched.” Miguel said aloud while crossing his arms in a subtle impressed set of body language.
“If it’s any comfort, I can only do text and still images. But that still makes the Virtual Network System a spy’s wet dream. And I can send all of this as long as I can get a wireless signal.”
“Wet dream,” Carla blurted incredulously. “This isn’t a spy’s wet dream, this is a whole goddamn sexual orientation!” Gary chuckled at that.
“You said it, not me.” Gary turned away to watch the road, and noted the driver had taken to glancing at him with more worry than before. “It’s primarily meant to be a nigh-endless repository of information you can access at a thought. Survival guides, how-to manuals, instruction booklets, anatomy dissertations, the most complex mathematical equations; you name it. I can add to the text files, take pictures of anything I can lay my eyes on… When it comes to the definition of ‘book smart’ I’m officially the most intelligent person on the planet as of a little over forty-eight hours ago.”
“Holy shit. Getting watched by three government agencies is a goddamn bargain, then.” Carla was coming out of her horrified shock, and Gary could easily hear the note of greed in her voice.
“It does come with a couple of downsides. This one I got in my head can’t record or play video or audio, and it doesn’t give me the physical ability to do the things I have knowledge of. I can read about neurosurgery all day long but it doesn’t give me the handwork to actually do neurosurgery.”
“Still,” Miguel spoke up again, “having access to all that at a thought. I can see the applications for it. I can also see how it can get misused real easy. You’re gonna want to reel in that eyeball camera trick, for example.” Gary chuckled.
“No illegal photos; got it. But yeah. Once word of this gets out to the public everyone’s gonna freak out. I expect at least a few foreign nations are gonna try to kidnap me and reverse-engineer it. And for the record, it’s in a spot installed via nanotechnology, so they’ll have to kill me to even attempt to take it out. I will be going lethal on anyone who tries to yoink me so you might wanna put that in the report.”
“Noted,” said the driver. “Nathaniel Arrow, by the way.”
As the van pulled into the long driveway of a nice two-story house with a sizable lawn out front, Gary waited until the van stopped at a footpath diverting from the long driveway that continued to a two-car garage. He climbed out and waved wordlessly at the agents before starting up the path towards the front door. A sudden flash of pain in his head made him stumble, clutching his head.
He heard noises from the direction of the van - perhaps the side door being ripped open violently and three adult shouts of various types - as a new wave of pain shot through his head.
The world ripped apart in front of him. As the pain overwhelmed him, he felt himself twist as he fell down and forward. The pavement and yard for roughly three feet on either side of it vanished like it was scooped out by an invisible spoon as Gary never saw the end; world flashing to nothingness before his failing eyes as darkness took him.