Incremental Enhancements

‘Doctor. His theta rhythm is increasing. He’s coming round.’

‘Thank you nurse. Mr DeGuzman, it’s Doctor Shoshone. Your interface graft was successful, and your healing time was a little less than three weeks. We have kept you in local paralysis so the integration process can begin immediately.’

I don’t feel any different with the graft inside me, which is as it should be. Still, I thought I would have a sensation of it being there, like when I had shrapnel in my leg. The doctor starts talking again.

‘Mr DeGuzman, I am going to start the integration on a countdown from five, four, three, two, one.’

I expect to hear the click of a button or the turn of a key. But there is nothing. I don’t know what is meant to happ…
‘This is the initialization program for your new Seldorf Axiom spatial and cognitive enhancement modules. The estimated time for this process is one hundred and eighty seconds.’
…en.

The automated message finishes and images flood my consciousness. A cascading torrent of scenes from my life, playing in no discernible order. There is the elephant with its rolling gait, hurrying along as we fly past in the chopper; the officer I killed while escaping Leavenworth; the orange tree that grew in Ma’s garden; Earth, hanging high above the jagged remains of habitation domes in the Sea of Tranquility; a history class in third grade.

Scene upon scene plays out and I realize that they are not just playing, but moving. My memories are being re-ordered, re-filed into different places. I reach for a favorite memory, and there it is. But now I can replay the whole event in sharp detail, instead of just fractured flashes.

‘Initialization will complete in approximately one hundred and thirty five seconds.’

I shut the memory away, to savor later, and explore other enhancements. I wish I had stolen more credit markers to buy modules. To know every language, every weapon system, every world series statistic for the last two hundred years. Maybe I’ll get more later. For now, the ones I have should get me working off-planet again. Out there it’s easier to use skills I learnt in the war.
Calling up the astronomy package, I am astounded. Every planet, moon, comet and asteroid field is right there, and all moving harmoniously. Zooming in, I see The Girdle of Mars shining brightly, and the space elevators that reach up from the surface to support it. Going out the way I watch our solar system shrink until the light of the sun is barely discernible. Moving back into the solar system I jog the timeline back and forth, watching planets and comets slide along their trajectories, passing each other as the year counter flicks up and down at my whim.

‘Initialization will complete in approximately ninety seconds.’
I close the package as a new sensation ripples through me. I can see atoms. No, I see quarks, gluons, leptons. The way they move and interact with each other. But this is not the abstract simulation of the solar system package. I do not understand how, but I am seeing individual fundamental particles bouncing and colliding with each other, winking in and out of existence in a frothy quantum foam.
Experimenting with this unexpected ability I push focus outwards, scaling from the quantum to the merely microscopic level. A molecule catches my attention. Its chemical breakdown flashes up, is assimilated, and disappears. It is a fragrance molecule. Though the brand is outside my knowledge I am aware that, should I choose to, I can track this scent not just back to its bottle, but back to the fertilizer applied to the field in which the flowers grew that were distilled for their oils, and then mixed with a host of other ingredients to produce this perfume. I don’t do this.

I follow the molecule’s path back to its host. Doctor Shoshone. But it is not her fragrance, merely part of a small trace on the nape of her neck. Just the place where a lover would tenderly kiss.
‘Initialization will be completed in approximately forty-five seconds.’
I focus out again, moving from the micro to the macroscopic. The interactions of particles unfolding, showing me everywhere they have been, every reality they have inhabited. An image of the doctor’s lover blinks past, sitting in his executive office on the sixth floor of the hospital’s administration block. His wife and children remain unaware of his infidelity, though their picture on his desk has witnessed it.

My view widens. The interplay and shoving of governments transforms into a tableaux of simple comprehensibility; the vicarious interactions of markets become as easy to predict as the winner in a one horse race; the secret dealings and manipulations of companies and politicians are revealed clearly, like the lurid splash of a tawdry newscast flashing on your infotab.

I stop. Folding these insights away. This is far beyond the scope of the modules I purchased. This is an expansion of capabilities in ways unimagined by the developers. I must learn to use it wisely, or…
‘A fault has been detected in your modules. Initialization is being terminated, please contact your Seldorf Axiom supplier.’

In that moment everything is gone. Like a spotlight in a dark room, I have gone from gloom to total illumination, and now it feels as if I can see nothing. My head feels empty.

‘Mr DeGuzman, something has gone wrong with the integration. We will have to rerun it tomorrow, unfortunately there isn’t enough time to prep everything today,’ says Doctor Shoshone

I look at her. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But I have thought of a way to pay for more modules. I wonder how much Doctor Shoshone and her lover in administration will pay to maintain their secret.

An original story and photograph by Stuart C Turnbull.