Jade awoke slowly, yet couldn’t open her eyes. Energy was slowly being felt throughout her body. Eventually she learned to feel around her; feeling and kneading the flesh-like walls of her new location. She felt drowsy; unable to think coherently and then fell back into a deep sleep.
She awoke once again; her body felt heavy but slick. She felt around blindly once more, coming across to a seemingly pudgy stomach, but she was alarmed at what she felt. A warm small fleshy protrusion from her stomach; she slowly followed it until it came in contact with the fleshy walls. In fright, she kicked her legs; only to be horrified a second later to feel a huge lurching and shuddering in the walls of her containment. She was now awake to finally hear the voice resounding in her mind; the voice felt different to her thoughts; but so familiar.
*Ma’am, you’re awake!* the calm male voice resounded in her mind.
Slowly flashes of memories began to surface in her mind; the prior events resounding like a nightmare, her previous life all the way up to the final fight before that flash.
Slowly she began to put together her memory, her mind felt as if it had hands continuously sorting and making sense of her memories before digesting each one. Once she had finished, she was free to think and asked in her mind, very slowly:
“Jason. What happened? Where am I? And why am I in, what I assume to be, a womb?”
*What happened after you died is beyond my ability to process. Despite the fact the sensory organs were destroyed, I managed to record readings of parts of the process. Do you wish to view them?*
“Beyond your ability?!” she thought incredulously, “that shouldn’t be possible, the knowledge accumulated in this mind is near perfect. Furthermore, sensory readings without using the sensory organs? How can this be!” She began to panic once more, her eyes were shaking yet still sealed shut. She calmed down once more
“Is your operating system unharmed, is the integration between us completely undamaged? Are the memory, storage and processing augmentations still in effect?” She asked with urgency. She panicked at the thought of her severely reduced capabilities that had culminated from her early life’s work. Furthermore, if she were truly being born anew, then having those augmentations would be massively beneficial in her so called “new life”.
*Although the circumstances are different as to the growth of the mind in this body….*
“What do you mean! How can the circumstances be different; all creatures have a brain, and the brain can be reconfigured as we did previously….” she trailed off in panic…
*It would be best for you to see Ma’am, the VUI alongside my core programming, operating system and control capabilities are still in effect. Please see for yourself, rendering now.*
In the darkness of her mind, where she would have used to see through her eyes; a new screen appeared. It showed a full figure of the brain, before zooming through the pink flesh and into the centre, wherein a large sphere of light could be made out. Down near the bottom it showed an uncountable amount of connections to the surrounding parts of the brain, all connected to the sphere; yet each only let off a dull glow.
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The screen panned as if a camera were moving closer to the sphere, as if coming into contact; as the view and the sphere touched, an enormously tall white wall came into view. Embedded on this wall was a seemingly mystical drawing of a huge dark blue fish in the centre, as if it were guarding. It was slender, each scale’s glow could clearly be distinguished, its maw was open displaying obsidian teeth and its eyes were the clearest of crimson.
Immediately the eyes flashed, the image seemingly came to life as the body rippled forward, the scales glistening as the monster lurched forwards, opening its jaws before a deep monstrous roar could be felt before the screen turned black.
Jade’s body once again kicked, followed by another lurch from the mother. Internally wincing and cursing herself for forgetting.
“FANTASTIC! Something completely new has appeared, and it has appeared inside me!” She slowly calmed herself down and began to think with a scientists rational. She paused once again and asked in her mind: “What are those connections to the orb and the mind?”
*I concluded that they are the means to which all types of processing and storage power is connected from the orb to our physical mind. In my databanks there are records that remain pertaining to a belief of certain secular monks that could be interpreted that the initial learning matrix and the numerous synapses associated to processing and storage in the human mind was considered a human’s soul. As they would gain so called “enlightenment” they would grow until the “soul” could separate from the body.* As Jason spoke new windows began to pop up in Jade’s view displaying the written information and relating photographs.
“So if the connectors are basically wire links to the orb, how good are my mental capabilities compared to my previous body?”
*Some information was lost in the previous events and transfer; however I managed to cycle the information whilst your mind was unconscious so that the superfluous memories, information and archived copies were destroyed; 64.5792% of the total data bank is intact. Processing, comprehension and storage have all been similarly reduced yet still exceed a normal human by a factor of thousands. However these reductions are recoverable due to the current situation.*
“What about this new body’? How does it fare physically and mentally?” she asked excitedly, this was just too good a news. She had maintained at least a single copy of every significant and usable piece of knowledge of her entire planet and civilization whilst only just being born? Her new life had unlimited potential to be even greater and to learn even more!
*The supposed soul orb and this body were integrated after an estimated 10 weeks from inception; after that point, whilst you were unconscious I manipulated the cell growth and neural layout to be as efficient as part of my core programming, strong and intelligent as possible. After I gained control I remedied inferior areas created prior to my control. However the toll on the mother was large; I estimate it has shortened her life span immensely, with only a few years to live due to the energy required for such cell mitosis. Furthermore certain substitutes had to be made due to a lack of available resources. Birth is estimated to be in 3 weeks as a human female.*
Jade’s heart couldn’t help but beat faster and faster in excitement. She had never been so thankful to have created Jason. He truly was her masterpiece.
“Thank you Jason, I’ll leave the remainder of the time for you to continue molding this new body; awake me a few days before my birth. I can’t have them thinking I’m dead if I am born prematurely.” She whispered in her mind, she had never spoken in such a kind gentle manner before, not even to Jason. She could not wait to have a fresh start, She would not make the same mistakes again.
*Yes ma’am* Jason’s voice warm, masculine voice resounded out before she again fell into a deep sleep.
Time passed quickly for Jade in her deep sleep; her body was growing bigger and bigger. Finally the day of her birth arrived, Jade sat in place excitedly, head nearest the entrance of the womb. Finally a flash of light flooded in as the muscles contracted pushing smoothly as Jade wiggled free headfirst.
Jade only saw a blinding light and started crying as she drew her first breadth in this new world. As her vision settled she saw she was in the arms of a maid cutting the umbilical cord. Moments later she was handed to a huge hulking man in smart dress with a large black apron covering his powerful chest. His hands were rough and callous but held her with great care, large tears could be seen forming in the corners of his big blue eyes. The man was excited, but spoke so softly; Jade couldn’t understand what he was saying, even with Jason’s archive of languages.
Slowly the man handed her over to a woman lying in an enormous bed. She was a true beauty, long black hair hung straight down each side of her pillow as her snow white face panted in exhaustion and sweat dripped from her head. As Jade lay there looking up into her new mothers tired but tender loving eyes. She heard her mother pant heavily before murmuring “Jiao, Yu Jiao” before collapsing into deep asleep from exhaustion. It was at this point Jade had her observations interrupted as she heard a familiar voice:
*Alert, airborne anomaly detected!*