Later that morning
Nigel and Jet spend the next few hours getting prepared to reverse engineer the cyborg’s programmable interface. Although he was a competent programmer and hacker, he only had limited experience deconstructing code and needed to acquire the proper tools.
“Nigel, I need your help,” Brody said.
Nigel looked up from his computer. “Sure, Dr. Brody, be right there.”
“Before Treeka lost consciousness, she was trying to tell me something about the doctor who modified her. I need to find a Dr. Elizabeth Ash. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Nigel thought for a long moment before shaking his head.
“The name sounds familiar, but I’m drawing a blank.”
“She’s dead,” Jet said.
Brody and Nigel gave Jet a surprised look.
“What can you tell me about her?” Brody urged.
“She handled April’s cyborg conditioning. She never tried helping April—she treated April like a science experiment. She and Jeremiah weren’t happy with my training sessions. They said it was taking too long and accelerated matters by running this voidance procedure,” Jet said.
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“Disposition voidance?” Dr. Brody asked.
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“I’ve been doing some of my own research on Dr. Ash. She published an academic paper on the process a few years ago. Basically, it attempts to speed up the cyborg neural transference. Besides being a very painful procedure, it has side effects. It can cause dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition known to split the brain hemispheres into separate sections. It can cause the emergence of alternate personalities.”
“Can these other personalities be violent?” Nigel asked.
“It can, but that’s not always the case. The person with DID can wake up in another location with no memory of how they got there.”
“That sounds like sleepwalking. When someone interacts with them, are they coherent?”
“Yes, when their alternate personalities take over, they are high-functioning. Most people that don’t know them might not even notice anything is out of the ordinary,” Brody said.
“So someone with DID can commit murder without even knowing?”
“There have been cases where the person affected has killed several people while carrying on with a normal life.”
“How does that even work?” Jet said.
“The personality with the greatest need commands the body.”
Nigel and Jet said nothing for a long moment.
“Dr. Ash may have used the same or different procedure when creating Treeka. Either way, it would be helpful to know if we are going to help Meeka,” Brody said.
“I remember Dr. Ash telling Jeremiah it was dangerous to perform the disposition voidance technique on April because she wasn’t ready. Even Leviathan agreed,” Jet said.
“What is Leviathan?” Brody asked.
“It’s the AI April assimilated with,” Jet said.
“Is that a problem?” Nigel asked.
“I’m afraid that changes everything. From what I understand, AIs are tricky to hack. Do you think you’re up to the task?”
Nigel smiled. “I never met a computer I couldn’t hack,” he replied.
“That may be, but I wouldn’t underestimate an AI built by a well-funded adversary like Jeremiah Mason.”
“If Leviathan is still connected, then I’ll be able to exploit it. It’s just a matter of time.”