Game Port by Jules Brae

Author:Jules Brae [Brae, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781943273041
Publisher: Arctic Zebra Press
Published: 2019-12-19T22:00:00+00:00

23

The Mission

Liam did a double take.

“You can’t go back, Tamsin. There’s no way out of the game now that we’ve left Earth.”

“That’s not what your boss said.”

“What is she talking about, Allegra?”

“Well, it’s why I asked the team here,” she replied. “There’s a communications array in the mountains that I need to get to quickly to warn everyone back on Earth about the Retros infiltrating. We’re still close enough for live two-way links and to send large streams, including your consciousness.”

“I hear the cows a-mooin’ at this bullshittery,” Quint said to Tam.

“I’m quite serious. The brain is just an electro-chemical supercomputer running a program. And you’re the program it’s running. We’ve known that for years. We’ve just never been able to figure out a way to duplicate the brain. Your brother is the wizard who cracked that problem.”

Tam looked at Liam. “So it only took you twenty years to go from being a rank-and-file Corps cadet to becoming, what, teacher’s pet?”

“I don’t keep pets,” Allegra said casually.

“No, you just eat their young,” Quint said

Allegra ignored him.

“Dr. Noonien is a science specialist and the head of neurocrystallography. With his background in neuroscience and chemical and biomolecular engineering, he was able to invent blue matter.”

“Wait, isn’t that the stuff in those rocks we got from the ogre?” Ivo asked.

“The geodes in the quest are the AI’s version of what Liam created. Why don’t you show them, Liam?”

He waved them over to the HV table and brought up an image of an iridescent bluish gray sphere. He then swiped across to bisect the object, revealing a deeper blue crystal formation inside.

“This is blue matter—magnified, of course. The actual spherical housing is only three millimeters in diameter, about the size of a bead.”

“So how does it work, exactly? Is my mind burned into one of those crystals?” Tam asked.

“Photonics are involved, but laser-etching crystals with mental data is just storage. Nothing like what the brain does when synapses fire up and branch out in response to stimuli. Crystal etching preserves only preexisting memories, but not a person’s consciousness.”

“Well, isn’t that what you did?” Rowan chimed in.

“No, to be able to transfer your consciousness, we needed a substrate that was like brain matter. We needed a neuromorphic architecture capable not only of storing old information but of expanding in response to new stimuli, the way the brain creates new pathways to store new data. That’s where blue matter comes in. The crystals continue to grow through a process of accretion.”

“And you can copy what’s in there and stream me back to Earth?” Tam asked.

“No, we can’t copy your consciousness. Your mind is unique. It can only be transferred. Your body, however, is capable of being copied. That’s why we were able to store everyone’s genetic material on each of the seven arks for redundancy.”

“Why would you do that if our minds only exist on this ark?” Tam asked.

“Because organic material is more vulnerable. If something happens to the cryostores on Ark Monday—for example, if we

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.