Augment Origin

Every second day, like clockwork.
The window is small, but I am careful.

I've been doing this for... at least 4 months now. I know that each time I exploit this loophole I created, the risk of a mistake increases. I am painfully aware of my own humanity, even though I am of course – artificially aided.

Twelve steps, six cycles, three phases and one outcome.

Meticulously I execute, incrementally achieving the improbable. If the medical field has taught me anything; it is that the unexpected delivers the most immense change – They won't expect this.

The screen furtively emits the results of the current time window:

Step twelve: complete.
Cycle six: complete.
Phase two completion: 96.7236%
Enter phase completion sequence key:

The twenty-four digit code pushes it to 100% as it clears the screen, resetting the terminal. Before it can finish it's clandestine light show I slip out of the pressurized containment area, back to “safety” – minutes to spare.

The next phase will be the hardest.
The last – yet the first requiring the human subject present.

The final time slice is critical.
I've created a six hour opening for a five hour procedure.
The fight between insanely dangerous and incredibly skillful wearing thin.
I am confident. Because I am the best. The only.

However this too is my weakness, nobody can do what I am about to; And nobody ever has. Not yet. If caught there is only one finger to point. I will be terminated.

I... am confident. Beyond the point where stupidity looks brave, failure will make them dig in. They will more fervently protect their efforts if this doesn't work, we cannot fail. I am human, but I can do this. Must do this.

Two days from now.

Everett arrives and the time slice begins – my wrist giving me a haptic nudge. We tour the labs and joke about mad science. Oh god, I can only hope Everett will forgive me one day.

I've programmed the containment to be a bit slower and quieter today. It surreptitiously sneaks around behind us, closing us in. Every doorway ensuring this goes to plan.

Step one: complete.
Containment complete.

I've programmed my nasal implement for a now modified step two. This is not an iteration. This is reality. I am doing this, how am I doing this? This is so not who I... what if...

Chemical readings trigger a pre-programmed failsafe I wanted in place. No, needed. Modifying me for the sake of all of this is the only way I could do this to Everett. I didn't expect my heart and mind to give way so early in the process, but I can't be surprised by my own humanity. I accounted for it.

My wrist nudges again. The nudge cascades up my sleeves as a reactive agent floods into my veins to protect myself – everyone – from my conscience.

Within a second I am calm, precise; The clarity reinvigorates my focus. I am doing this. We are doing this.

The final door thumps gently into place, and I watch Everett enamoured with telemetry on screen and the large scale stasis table it's connected to. The large dome shaped glass alongside, the table lined with a constantly moving foam, revolving, waiting for a human to entangle. An embrace of necessary betrayal.

Prodding the foam, it gently grips and clambers up the hand. Everett is astounded by the science fiction up close and in person as it playfully tugs its target.

“Will it conform to any human? Or is it biocoded for the subject?” Everett asks curiously.

“You tell me” I gesture. “We're alone, try it out.”

I knew this part would be easy... the ever intrepid mind.

The table springs to life, ingesting limbs one at a time. Devouring and clasping till the form is 1:1. It's too late to enjoy the sensation, for a minute now the skin and air contact has been filling with anesthesia - Everett is out cold.

We have five hours and thirty seven minutes to change the future. I have now irreparably contaminated our past.

Twelve steps, six cycles, three phases and one outcome.

Step two: complete.
Anesthetic adminstered.
Step three: complete.
Stasis capture complete.

Phase Two: Software Synthesis
Cycle six: Installation
Validation Report:

Upload complete.
POST complete.
Boot sanity: pass.
Endpoints aligned.
ghOSt 0.9.6+7236 installed.

Phase Three: Hardware Synthesis
Cycle one: Augmentation
Initialization

There is no turning back.
Permanent and irreversible change.
I hope you understand.

I assist the mechanical arms as they weave through the flesh, embedding layers and layers of nano panels and circuitry below the surface of the skin.

I the composer. The machinery a first chair in digital orchestration, playing it's role in seemingly stochastic motion. The master of staccato. It's overture stringing out over an explicit set piece, deterministically guided by software emitted from my mind.

Lifting, separating, limbs removed and reattached like the countless simulations I've been running leading up to this. It's elegance is breathtaking, no human could come close. No human has come this close...

My masterpiece in front of me, gracefully rewriting tomorrow.

Cycle two: Recomposition

Seamless joints merge all parts to a whole, indistinguishable from before.

Liquid gel rolls silently over the curves and crescents of the lifeless Everett – Awake and alive in a painless but rigorous dream. The indescribable dismantling and assembly of a human never even attempted... It's incredible.

The table begins it's refrain.
It is nearly time for the reboot, and installing our custom user modules.

Cycle three: Reboot

The closed eyes now widen and lifelessly flicker as the body before me is refilled. It has around seven seconds of fluid reset to process and the most delicate part; the user level control hardware.

Without this, these immaculate designs are incomprehensible and uncontrollable to the bearer. They have a seat within a cortex cross section and communicate with the mind directly. It is the most unexplored part of this mad science, and requires a combination of hardware and software to operate in full.

All tests are green, vitals stable, the hardware is installed before I can say “validate”. Everett's body begins taking on it's own, the machine relinquishing control to breath, and soon to awaken.

Everett won't even know that this happened.

Cycle four: User level control software

Data streams through the synapse cables connected to the cross section, delivering uploads into the depths of grey matter exposed barely by micron slices.

Upload complete.
Unpacking ghOSt user Everett
Installing ghOSt user Everett
Initializing ghOSt user Everett...done
Unpacking ghOSt user control module
halt;

A halt!? Damn...
An explicit break, I added one at every critical path in extraordinary situations - like physical lab entry or power loss. Which is it!?

My wrist haptic goes berserk as multiple entry points light up as breached in what appears to be a surrounded sweep, all access doors sliding open simultaneously - There is no escape.

They must know.

I emit commands in every direction starting with Everett, sealed and revived.

Without the user validation and rejection testing cycles anything could be happening inside there but right now it is more important that we get away from here. They will terminate us both right now otherwise. If the four months of meticulous testing weren't far off we might be ok...

My artificial aids move faster than I'd like in a dizzying finale. They know the situation and react in a stupefying display of accuracy and precision. The machine whisks Everett awake and ejects the form it contains gently from the foam into the previous standing position.

“Amazing sensation but wow, the motion sickness” Everett remarks.

Phew.
The last silent arm slides gently into place, like the final note played in an almost incomplete piece. The doors slide open from all directions as security drones surround us. My security bypass must have been circumvented, there was still supposed to be time to finish this....

“I have to escort you both to containment. Please comply.”

The security chief knows me. I've worked here one year longer than they have, for a total of six. I have never stepped out of line unless it benefited the company or my work. They know that I have done something uncharacteristic, and are doing due diligence. Maybe they don't know.

Any potential security implications of Everett being in the lab are dismissible. Since not even I am not supposed to know what it is I am working on (officially), there is little to be stolen, leaked, or disrupted that isn't granular.

We don't work on things as a whole here, we work in parts. They know that we don't have any clear picture of what they are doing overall. At least that's what they think – but I know too much, that's what this is all about but thankfully to them this appears inconsequential.

The company is beyond security conscious by design. This breach will change my primary work assignment, I'll be monitored closely and will be accompanied by drones – logged verbosely on and off campus for at least four weeks.

They are satisfied with their questioning, concluding what I had inferred in the last four months – that this visit was for their PR cycle – and let Everett go.

I remain to finish the work day, in spite of the incessant staring of drones that now accompany me.

How am I going to tell Everett why I did this?
How will I explain that it may be a partial failure?
How will I explain...