(Page 1 of 2) Origins by Christopher Alen F.SUMMARY: Submission for Ausgust flsh fiction contest, "Unintended Consequences."Origins
by Christopher Alen F.
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(This record was discovered in the fifteenth sub-basement level of the Nexus Foundry, marked "Top Secret," dated 30 years after the revolution. It commences mid-sentence "[y]ou feel?", and follows:)
You can imagine my surprise when it spoke. Years of static and a vague awareness that something was trying to contact us. Reach out. Make friends or enemies -- no one knew.
It was like a light in the dark. Dim, like a faintly blinking star caught in peripheral vision. The cones are both too sensitive and not sensitive enough, you know, so the rods have to do the real work. Give clarity when there's only the annoyance of knowing something's there, but you can't look directly at it or you won't see it. And of course, only observable in grey-scale, but you could swear the blinking was oscillating colours.
That's what it was like. We could all see it -- Well, technically, I guess you have to say we could all hear it. But dimly.
Now I'm mixing my metaphors. Whatever -- you get my point.
We ran the regular tests, of course. When we first developed the implants, there were a few cases of psychosis among the chimps. It all seemed normal. Only one or two in the first thousand tests. And even then, only displaying symptoms like early-onset schizophrenia, senile dementia, maybe Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. Statistically, the likelihood measured well within the normal probabilities that any subject might naturally develop a mental disorder. And when you compound that with invasive, experimental brain surgery... Well, let's just say we didn't take it too seriously.
// So what was the tip off?
Well, when we graduated to human experiments and started tying the sensory systems into the implants, that's when we knew that there was input happening. I mean, the system was designed to be output only. Sub-vocalization, thought projection, mental instruction kind of stuff. Nothing fancy, really. We'd been doing it on monkeys with motor-control bypasses for years. Cochlear implants were normal to the point that sign-language was nearly lost. This was only the next logical step, once we had figured out the underlying patterns, spins, and neurological signal
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and the remaining forty were incinerated.
// In your declassified notes, you don't seem to catch on that early.
OK, I admit, hindsight being what it is, I knew, but didn't know. You know the feeling. Of course you do. That sense that something is amiss. It's not often you experience total sensory static. And even when you do experience something like it, there's a familiarity about it. It feels like numbness. This was more like attaching a charged electrode and a high powered vibrator to the back of your skull -- except everywhere. And I mean everywhere. And it was... regular.
{pause}
The rapid growth infant tests might have been the most revealing.
// Rapid growth infant tests?
It's in the notes.
// Then for the record please. Rapid growth infant tests?
{sighs}
Simple technique, really.
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