They arrived at the temple in the center of the town just before midday. Its steeples towered over the surrounding buildings. They were trussed up ceremonially, but their primary purpose was to serve as a wireless broadcaster. The front doors, on the other hand, were 40’ tall for purely ascetic reasons. All in all, the building invoked feelings of insignificance and powerlessness. It was said the effect only grew post inoculation.
The doors opened at their approach, and they walked into a large atrium, leaning on each other. Priests of various denominations were present, most already engaged in conversation with visitors. An unattended priest saw their arrival and approached them. He wore navy coveralls with the sleeves ripped off and his body looked as if it were slowly being eaten from the right by a clockwork-based flesh-eating disease. His right arm up to the shoulder was a collection of gears and pistons, and a similar growth covered the right 20% of his face.
“Welcome visitors. You are here for inoculation, yes?” His eyes took in Deimos’ attire, the wine stains speckling the front of his shirt, the mostly empty bottle hanging from Greg’s hand, and his smile dropped. “… Unless you’ve come here by accident, in which case I will show you the exit with prejudice.” The gears in his clockwork growth began accelerating, steam leaking out of several nozzles down his arm.
Deimos’ lips, curse him, parted in a grin and he curtsied. Greg stepped in front of him and lifted both of his hands up.
“Yes priest, we’re here for inoculation. We’re simply enjoying our last moments before… Ya know.” Greg said.
The priest’s clockwork bits spooled down. “Very well sirs, you may follow me then.” He began walking deeper into the building, and Greg and Deimos hurried to match his pace.
“If I may, sir, why are there so many different priests here?”
“We have nothing to do until everyone is inoculated, so we often loiter in the entrance on inoculation day to scout out potential talent. Many promising candidates can be swayed to join an order with a well-timed sales pitch.”
“So, you’re recruiting, gotcha. What’s your God?”
“I am Priest Galatia of the innovation God Tinker.”
“So, you have a sales pitch then?”
“Yep.”
“Are… You going to give us it?”
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
Greg let the conversation lapse into silence after that. Galatia finally stopped halfway down a hallway. Each wall was lined with 2’ wide cylindrical plates composed of slivered metal radiating from the center. It reminded Greg of pizza, and his stomach grumbled. Hopefully inoculation was catered.
“Why’d we stop?” Deimos asked.
“Oh, we’re here.” Galatia said, turning around with a grin.
The irises of the 4 closest cylinders opened, and serpentine metallic tentacles erupted from each. The first tentacle wrapped around Greg’s arm before he could react. The wine bottle clattered to the ground as he was yanked off his feet. Deimos bent horizontally at the waist, kicking a leg out for counterbalance as he slipped under the second tentacle. The third tentacle wrapped around Greg’s legs and started crawling upwards around his stomach. Deimos snatched the wine bottle off the floor as the fourth tentacle wrapped around his ankle. Twisting in the air, he flung the heavy bottle directly into Galatia’s surprised face. Glass shattered and Galatia stumbled back as his head was flung backward by the impact. Deimos started giggling as he struggled against the tentacle wrapped around his ankle. Galatia roared, face dripping with blood as he stepped towards the struggling Deimos. The tentacle around Greg retracted back into its casing, pulling Greg with it. The last thing Greg saw as the iris closed was Galatia’s fist making contact with the side of Deimos’ head, then Deimos’ head bouncing against the stone floor.
…
Greg banged against the side of the tight shaft as he was drug away from the hallway. His shoulder slammed against the metal as the shaft changed direction and he was abruptly yanked down, eliciting a wet pop from his arm. His scream of pain reverberated down the tunnel.
Then there was light. Blinding light, so strong he could feel the heat of them from every side. More tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs, holding him into a T pose. A heavy weight shoved his head to the right, pinning his ear to his shoulder. Whirring noises began emanating from his left. Greg frantically thrashed against his prison, but his bonds were unyielding. He felt two strips of cold metal press into his skin just below his left ear, and then a searing pain erupted between them. He screamed, helpless as a laser dug its way through his skull. It stopped, and he had a second to pant in relief as he hung limply from his wrists.
Small, nigh-imperceptible wires wriggled their way into Greg’s head. They wrapped around his brainstem and discharged faint electrical charges. Various muscles in Greg’s body tensed, straining against his joints against his will. A tingling flash illuminated every nerve in Greg’s body simultaneously, and then the torment was over. He felt small needle pricks around the wound, then cool unfeeling numbness spread around his head and down his neck. He lay limp for several minutes while the surgical equipment finished its work.
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When it was done, Greg was dropped to the floor without warning. He sobbed softly as one hand cautiously explored behind his ear. He felt a metallic slot there, maybe a couple inches long –3.2cm– and barely wide enough to fit anything –1.2mm–. Greg’s had flinched away as he noticed the precise measurements intruding onto his psyche. He slowly moved his hand back to the slot, and felt its dimensions again. It was much longer than wide, roughly –3.2cmx0.12cm–. His hand tensed, but he held still and focused on those numbers. Information began spilling into his head.
*BCI interface specs here*
MindMesh Specifications
Dimensions: –3.2x0.12x4.0cm–
Cryptography: Admin rights prepopulated during installation using the user’s neural pathways as a key. Device will go dormant if separated from its continuous feed of brainstem and extremity neurological data.
Web Connectivity: Device has up to 5Gb/sec download speed from broadcast Cyberspace networks. Upload can be completed at any sanctified temple with appropriate hardware. Direct tunneling unsupported.
Remote Connectivity: Offline {Disabled}
Physical Connectivity: Offline {No hardware device found}
Digital Proprioception: Offline {Disabled}
Divine Integration: Device supports native software integration of divine boons and augments up to complexity: Deacon. Corollary physical augmentation requires external hardware.
Disease Prevention: All communication from unregistered third parties disabled. All Admin access keyed to current user’s neurology. If quarantine contamination procedures are ineffective, the user is recommended to self-destruct immediately.
*/BCI interface specs here*
The information spilled directly into Greg’s brain, downloaded through his memory. It felt like information recall, only… perfect. It was nauseating on a philosophical level, encroaching on his very sense of self. FUCK THAT. Everyone who walks the divine path has a crisis of self, and I am NOT having mine in the first 30 fucking seconds. Greg envisioned pouring his revulsion into a mason jar, screwing the lid shut, and placing it in storage. He’d pull the emotions back out another time, when he had space to deal with them. It was a trick from his dad, a way to displace unhelpful thoughts and emotions for a later date.
He returned his focus on his new data stream, but quickly ran into another issue. It felt like the system baby-proofed itself on startup. He didn’t have access to most settings, and folder and routine locations that clearly weren’t empty appeared so. He poked around until he found it. –Safemode: Active– Greg had the ability to change this setting, and from the tooltip it seemed disabling it would unlock his admin’s permissions. He braced himself, and mentally flipped the setting.
Safemode: Disabled. Boot in process
…
Remote Connectivity: Searching
Digital Proprioception: Online
Remote Connectivity: Connection Established
Quarantine Level: Very High {Downgraded from Extreme}
Greg’s sense of self doubled as he felt his digital self spring into existence. It felt like an entire second body, joined with his own at the neck, and it immediately fell out of sync of his physical self. Greg hit his limit and vomited onto the ground. He started to curl up, and then vomited again as his virtual presence was forced even more out of sync. He focused on his sense of the digital body, ignoring the red fluid puddling around him. It felt like trying to learn how to walk again, only where every muscle memory response moved his own body instead. Greg gave up on moving his digital self and simply paid attention to it. It had clear boundaries, and he had a clear sense of where it was at all times, but its sensory data was all backward. Some physical objects were imperceptible, and he passed through them seamlessly. Other objects, like the limp tentacles and cords hanging from the ceiling, felt blindingly bright and solid. His jacket, while not bright at all, also felt solid, digitally ‘real’. He focused on a part of his digital self that touched the jacket, and he flowed into it. He could feel the jacket, and in some sense became the jacket. His attention slipped momentarily, and the jacket polymers down his back began constricting. Greg began hyperventilating as he ripped himself out of the jacket entirely, terrified he’d do something wrong and crush his own ribcage with his thoughts.
The instinctual rush out of the jacket lent him some insight into how to maneuver in virtual space. His virtual clone didn’t have muscles, bones, or any moving apparatus, so instead of trying to move his body from inside, he thought about where he wanted to go. Where did he want each piece of himself to end up, and when did he want it to end up there? He let his digital self be pulled in that direction. He used the walls the jacket provided as guard rails, something stable that existed in both the physical and virtual world, as he slowly guided his digital torso back into alignment with himself. Once the torso and arms were in place, Greg took a series of long, slow breaths, relieving some of the nausea and tension. He worked on his legs next, developing a feel for how to move an entire limb somewhere simultaneously, instead of one piece at a time. The trick was to visualize a graph stretched across each of his legs, and at every point along the graph he placed a vector representing what direction he wanted that point to move, and how quickly he wanted it to do so. Finally, he was able to nudge his legs back into synchronization, and the sense-of-self dejavu faded somewhat.
He lay in a puddle of half-digested wine, composing himself and getting his physical and virtual halves used to moving together in sync. He finally pulled himself to his feet when a panel on the wall in front of Greg cracked open, lowering to reveal a large covered amphitheater. It was made of three foot wide aisles of fitted stone, with more accessible stairs placed periodically through the stands. The walls were made of the same stone, but the ceiling was an expansive mosaic of colored glass. His room was on the upper edge, and as he looked around, he saw hundreds of similar doorways ringing the upper rim of the amphitheater. Most were closed, but a dozen or so were open like his own. A dozen people were milling around towards the base of the structure.
Greg looked towards the crowd and then back down at himself, covered in vomit. This was not how he wanted to make his debut. He looked up at the malevolent torture devices that kidnapped him and then performed surgery on him without his consent. He shrugged, what else could they do to him? “A little help with this?” Greg gestured to himself. There was momentary silence, before three tentacles dropped down towards him. He stepped back instinctually before stopping, forcing himself to hold still as they sped towards him. Two split open when they arrived, spraying him with jets of cold water smelling faintly of cleaning fluids. They worked him over once from head to foot, then the third blew scalding air over him. His hair became a frazzled mess, but at least he was clean. He nodded at the room “Thanks.” Greg walked to the door, and hesitated. Beyond it was his new world, an entire universe he’d known was there his entire life but was never able to experience. Finally, it was his chance. No regrets. He ran a hand through his hair, fussed at his jacket, then stepped through.