The Infinite Evolution - Conversion (20 page)

Reece diverted the conversation back to Adam, “So,
have you figured out what happened to the backups yet?”

“
No, I have looked at every
possible angle. It’s as if someone sabotaged them.”

Reece stopped walking, looked directly at Chad, and
said, “Do you have proof that there may be a saboteur involved in
this?”

Chad nervously replied, “No, sir, I just can’t think
of anything else. I mean with all the safety protocols we have in
place on our backups, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“
Then you’re not doing your job.
Find out what happened to the backups and the next time you mention
the word sabotage, you better have some hard evidence to back it
up.”

“
Yes sir, I will sir.”

Reece and Chad continued silently
down a long hallway filled with a number of holoscreens that
displayed data pertaining to the development of androids. At the
end of the hallway, they came upon a large entranceway that led
into a room with an octagonal table. It sat twenty-five
comfortably, and already had caffeinated Project Reborn scientists
vigorously sorting though large volumes of data pertaining to Adam.
In order to assist these scientists there were a series of images
showing the prognosis of Adam. The seven automated coffee machines,
staggered throughout the room, were helping to keep the scientists
online. The coffee machines that provided dark roast were already
showing signs of needing refills; the medium and light roast still
had plenty in stock.

Chad announced, “Excuse me everyone, Dr. Reece
Fields is here.”

“
Have a seat,” advised one of the other
scientists.

“
So, bring me up to speed,”
directed Reece impatiently.

A scrawny man wearing glasses and
a white lab coat stepped forwarded and said, “We prefer to wait
until everyone is here so we don’t have to keep repeating the
issue.”

“
You’re joking right? There is a
prototype sentient life form, the template for a thousand more, and
you want to wait until the entire team arrives because you’re too
damn lazy to repeat yourself? Are you for real? Who are you
anyway?” yelled Reece.

“
Hey, calm down,” said Peter, one
of Reece’s long time co-workers.

“
No, I won’t calm down, now
someone explain to me what’s going on!”

“
Ok, ok, no need to lose your temper,” replied
the scrawny man with glasses.

“
What form of stupidity do you suffer from?
And who in God’s name are you?”

“
He is the new AI neurosurgeon,
Dr. Anderson, he will be assisting in the surgery with our micro
circuit engineer,” explained Peter.

Reece stood there with a look of amazement and
shock, “Seriously? It looks like you just graduated from grad
school.”

“
That’s because I just did,” said
Dr. Anderson.

“
Again this is a joke right? The next step in
human evolution is going to be decided by some snot nose kid who
just got his degree?”

“
Reece calm down. Dr. Anderson is thought to
be one of the brightest geniuses in the world when it comes to
mapping and understanding the human brain. Plus he will be working
with Dr. Richardson via remote,” said Peter.

“
Remote! This is going to be a remote
operation?” asked Reece surprisingly.

“
Absolutely, it’s only
because of the delicate connections which need to be made. So we
decided a machine should repair them and who better to control this
machine remotely than
Dr.
Richardson,” illustrated
Dr.
Anderson.

Reece tried to put his personal
feelings in check, remembering his reassurances to Jade about the
best minds working on Adam. So, after coming to the realization Dr.
Anderson is all they had he asked, “What connections need to be
made?”

“
The problem is, the proteins we
developed, which connect the neurons to the silicon electronic
chips in Adam’s head have broken down. Before development of this
protein, we were unable to make the connection between the two due
to the electric current of the neurons. You see this current was
different in nature from that of the silicon electronic chips’
electrons. Once we made the connection we were able to create the
two-way transmission needed for communication,” explained Dr.
Anderson.

“
So basically the glue that
connects the biological part to the electronic part has broken
down?” replied Reece.

“
In a simpler form, yes,
but we’re also witnessing the silicon electronic chips are now
damaging the neurons and we don’t know why. Our goal for now is to
prevent the proteins from breaking down and to reconnect the bond.
We can later deal with the chips damaging the neurons after we
regroup,” said
Dr.
Anderson semi-impressed with Reece’s summary of the
problem.

“
From the sounds of it you have already
figured most of this out. What can I get started on?” asked
Reece.

“
Feel free to review Adam’s
recorded activities in the past twenty four hours, prior to him
shutting down. Once the team assembles we will dole out the
assignments, as for now please attend to your workstation,”
requested
Dr.
Anderson.

“
Yeah sure, tell me when the rest
of the team arrives,” snapped Reece as he breezed through progress
reports made earlier by Adam’s older backups. As he scanned the
documents, something caught his eye. One hour before Adam’s shut
down a maintenance subroutine was accessed remotely from an offsite
location, outside Central Circuit. Reece proceeded to recreate
Adam’s matrix in a virtual environment and tried to access the
programming to see what it actually did. Unfortunately, when Reece
found himself close he was redirected to a secondary subroutine,
which dealt with defragmentation or some other non-critical
operation within Adam's matrix. Reece tried to identify what port
the signal came from, but it was to no avail. He soon realized
every time he identified a cause to the unlawful access he was shut
down.

“
This isn’t right.” Reece
turned to
Dr.
Anderson and asked, “Is Dr. Petrov here
yet?”

“
Who?”

“
Dr. Petrov is the security
engineer for Adam’s matrix, it’s great to see you took the time to
familiarize yourself with the team roster,” said Reece
sarcastically.

“
Why do you have such a problem with me?”
asked Dr. Anderson.

“
Listen, I’m not going to stand
here and explain why I think you are just some overachiever who is
here to gain notoriety. I have work to attend to, so unless you
have specific questions about Adam, this conversation is over,”
uttered Reece.

Dr. Anderson tried to muster up
some courage and answered back, “We all have work to
do.”

“
I know, so go do it!” yelled
Reece.

Dr. Anderson, now morally defeated, turned around
and left the room with enough pent-up energy to light up a small
city. Reece went back to analyze his discovery, but the deeper he
dug the more unknowns he discovered. “Why can’t I figure this out!”
thought Reece.

“
I see you’re still spreading cheer and
happiness,” said a very tall man with a heavy Russian
accent.

“
What?” Reece took his attention off the
holoscreen, turned around, and smiled. “Petrov? Where have you
been? You’ve been gone for over six months.”

“
Sorry, I had some, how do you say, family
problems,” explained Petrov as he pulled his blond hair into a
ponytail. “And stop calling me by my last name, you know I prefer
Telmar.”

“
Sorry Telmar, I’m just glad you’re here. You
wouldn’t believe what they have me working with.”

“
Oh trust me, my dear friend, I can believe
it. I have had the unfortunate pleasure of working with some of
these fools already.”

“
I need you to look at this - we may have a
possible security breach,” said Reece.

“
You think it is connected to Adam crashing?”
asked Telmar.

“
No, although, if he hadn’t
crashed I don’t think we would’ve spotted the hack. Come here and
look at this subroutine and tell me what you see. Oh, and Telmar
try not to spread this to the rest of the team until we can
determine the possible leak.

“
A leak or do you mean a saboteur?” asked
Telmar.

Wake Up
Call

The hospital room Spencer
occupied was an obtuse one-bedroom, with a view that overlooked the
parking lot, and an attached bathroom shared by the adjoining room.
It had very little character with no evidence of the identity
regarding the past host of Spencer’s new body.

After Spencer came to the
realization he was in a different form and he was indeed speaking
with Serafina, he tried to sit up, but soon realized he did not
have the strength. A few minutes had gone by until Spencer found
the energy to mutter, “Where am I? Who am I? What the heck are you
doing here?”

“
Keep your voice down or you will
attract attention too soon. You have just taken over a body that
has been in a coma for over a month. We expect you to be in a weak
condition. Lay quiet and still, I will answer what questions I can,
but for now pretend you do not know anything. That should not be a
hard task for you,” replied Serafina with a laugh.

“
What…?”

“
Quiet,” as Serafina covered Spencer’s mouth
with her hand. The door to the hospital room opened as two nurses
walked in to discover their John Doe awake and
responsive.

“
The patient appears to have just come out of
his coma,” explained Serafina.

“
We noticed his brain activity increased. This
is wonderful! Once again it appears your spiritual work helped to
do the job,” said one of the nurses.

“
I am certain the staff of your
fine hospital are the ones who are due the thanks,” replied
Serafina politely.

One of the nurses pulled Serafina aside and
explained, “To be honest we did not think this John Doe was ever
going to come out. His brain functions were too unpredictable.”

As the second nurse checked
Spencer’s vitals, the first one asked him, “So do you know where
you are?”

Serafina quickly gave Spencer a sharp eye to remind
him to play dumb.

Spencer tried to fulfill his role
perfectly by responding in a weak and low tone voice, “I think I’m
at a hospital, but I’m not sure. Why?”

“
Do you remember your name or where you came
from?”

“
No.”

“
Well that’s what we want to help
you with. You had an insulin shock, you appear to be a diabetic,”
said the nurse.

“
And that put me into a
coma?”

“
Yes. You see when a person is
diabetic, the brain is the organ that suffers the most because
glucose is the main fuel to the brain. The lack of glucose can
cause side effects to brain functions. Sometimes the blood glucose
level falls too low and too fast causing the brain to stop working,
which induces a coma.”

“
How long?” asked
Spencer.

“
How long have you been in a coma? Almost four
weeks, do you remember anything?”

“
No.”

“
Well don’t worry we will help you remember.
Short-term memory loss is common for people who just came out of a
coma. For now just rest and we will get you something to eat, I’m
sure you’re hungry.”

Spencer felt he should play it up
for good measure so he redirected his attention towards Serafina
and asked one of the nurses “Who is this woman?”

“
This is a clergy, her name is
Serafina.”

Serafina looked over to Spencer
extended her hand and shook his; “It is great to have you back with
us, Mr. Doe.”

“
Doe? Why are you calling me Doe, is that my
name?” asked Spencer again playing up his role.

One of the nurses responded, “That is a generic name
we call patients who we can’t identify. We don’t know who you are.
You don’t have a PIC and your DNA, retinal scans, or prints don’t
come back to anyone. To be honest sir that is quite unusual in
today’s age, especially for a diabetic.”

Serafina looked at the nurse and said, “I think it
is too early to talk about this with Mr. Doe would you not
agree?”

“
I agree,” said the other nurse.
“Mr. Doe please rest, we’ll be back with some dinner. Serafina, can
you please assist us with another patient?”

“
Sure, I’ll be back in a few, in
the meantime just rest, ok Mr. Doe?” said Serafina as she gave
him a wink.

“
Certainly, hopefully you can help me answer
some questions,” replied Spencer.

“
I am certain I will be of assistance,”
advised Serafina.

As the three women left the room,
Spencer turned and grabbed a mirror from the right side of his bed,
and pulled it in front of his face. Spencer was amazed at what he
saw staring back at him. He was someone else. As he studied his new
face, he found it to be very attractive. It had a bronze tan, with
blue eyes, narrow jaw, and looked no older than its early twenties.
His hair was short, blonde, with faint highlights, and he had a
rough beard just long enough to give him that almost stud-like
look. Spencer continued to study the rest of his new and improved
body and found it to be quite muscular. He figured he was
approximately one hundred and eighty pounds with very little body
fat and a complete well-defined six-pack. One distinguishing mark
he noticed was a tattoo on his left arm, just below his shoulder,
of a dolphin. As Spencer continued to examine his body, he found it
increasingly to his liking. He felt this was certainly an upgrade
from his former self. The detailed exam Spencer gave himself lasted
for a good half hour until he heard.