Rechipped: The Button by DeVere Taya

Author:DeVere, Taya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DVM Press
Published: 2022-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

IMMORTAL

Never in their lives have they been this strong. Dominant. Indestructible. Two forces melded into one seamless stream of might, they flow through the network. Getting past Nurse Saarinen is easy; their enemy couldn’t care less about data equipped with biochemical responses. All it wants is to conquer Doctor Solomon. Feelings and instincts—such insignificant things have nothing to do with a super-being. Why would they? Such elementary concepts only slow down their otherwise unlimited access and supremacy. But this one time, a hint of humanity has come in handy. And here they are, a stream of might, surging faster, further, deeper into the Chip-System. After this one last task—once Nurse Saarinen ceases to exist—they’ll abandon such dead weight for good.

While Nurse Saarinen’s attacks continue to rattle Doctor Solomon’s cloaking code, a hot spot in a server farm under an old bakery, they have successfully exited their hiding place.

>>Yes, that’s right. Our data moves better together. Yes, CS or not, we still need to bring Kaarina back to the bakery, to access her nanobots. Right, because the switch won’t function if it isn’t connected directly to where our special bit of code is hosted. And yes. It has to be Kaarina’s decision to press the button.

The dog is out there, roaming the city on a new mission. The rat is gone, too. Marg-rat has gone back to Sanna, hiding in the woods with the Chipped animals. There’s only one human left to find. To access. To use. Only one homo sapiens to manipulate—to gain ultimate power over the rest of them.

>>Or in better words, to save humanity. Right?

Kaarina’s decision will be hers. Like a mouse chased by a thousand starving cats before meeting a helpful viper, this little mouse will use its biochemical processes and do its unconscious calculations without even understanding that all it is—all it ever was—is a mere algorithm.

>>Yes, but we’re not putting Kaarina down. Right? Just like the people in the stasis are needed for data collection. So is Kaarina.

And the mouse’s only trivial goal? To stay alive. Through its greatest asset, consciousness—which it doesn’t know is only mental pollution: an afterthought of too many neural networks, firing at once—the mouse will reason, debate, fight—and doubt its every move. It’ll ask questions, it’ll plead, it’ll try to understand something that the materials it’s made of simply can’t process, access, or comprehend.

Not in its current state, that is.

>>Okay, let’s check our numbers. I think our—I mean your—biochemical response level might be unbalanced right now. It’s okay, I know it’s been a while.

And then the mouse will stare at the viper. It’ll hear it hiss, “Let me swallow you alive. The world is a dangerous place. You’ll be safer in my belly.”

>>Okay, nobody’s eating anybody. Let’s stop and recalculate . . . no, I don’t want to smell a new scent right now. I want to focus on Kaarina . . . Oh. Interesting.

And even though, deep down, the mouse knows better. Even though it doubts the snake’s motives.

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