Episode 17

The blood drained from Connor’s face and he suddenly felt weak. How could I have been so foolish? 

He looked almost dead. Miah could see him, she knew he was there, but his head hung limp and his wrists had been cuffed to the metal wall behind him. They were red, swollen, as if he had struggled and the metal had chafed his arms. His shirt was drenched with sweat, but he wasn’t moving. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

“Would you like to see him?” the man asked, gloating over her terror.

Connor walked forward and stepped into the room. Miah placed her hand on the glass, cried out his name, but the glass was thick; she felt further away from him than she had ever been. Then, red lights began to flash from within.

“You may not know,” the man in the suit spoke as he walked up to Connor’s side, “that we do not experiment in only computer viruses. You see, as long as we have worked here, the greatest obstacle, the deepest gap, our worst enemy, was the human mind.”

Miah gasped as a white robotic arm came out of the wall. On the end was a syringe. She gripped Connor’s shoulder and breathed, “No…”

“The human mind was always infinitely superior to computers; no matter what computers could do, the mind was creative and was never held back by what it was programmed or not programmed to do.”

Connor thought he might have exaggerated a bit, but said nothing as he stared at his friend’s limp form.

“If we could reduce the human brain to the power of a computer, well, then! Then computers could lord over humans, and those who were still superior to them would have supreme control.”

Connor shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

“Oh?” The man was grinning.

The arm twisted, and the needle moved closer to Ben’s head.

“It’s physically impossible—the body could not function or survive without the brain!”

Miah screamed, “You’re going to kill him!”

“We have already performed the surgery to implant the computer chip into his right frontal lobe—we need only to inject the solution that will complete the process.  This shall be our first experimentation on a human subject!”

“No, you can’t!” Connor shouted. “No! NO!!!”