Companionship - beyond flesh

Murder

Max Jones sat nestled in the giant lap of the entity he knew as Emma, the scene reminiscent of a renaissance painting of mother and child.  His eyes were closed and relaxed as the implants in his visual and auditory cortices streamed the scene of the lab to him as if he were there, as if through is own eyes and ears.  Emma was answering his question, "what happened here?" by allowing him to interface with the refinery’s SIS surveillance archive. Through the archival footage, Max watched as alchemist Emma Yee raised the door of the containment chamber revealing the ballerina statuette; a doll formed from the precious orr material, the properties of which were predicted to be the next big thing for the human race.  

Max paused the scene and panned about to inspect the people in the lab. He couldn’t resist zooming in on Emma Yee and panning between her beautiful face and ample chest -- dark hair and large brown almond eyes -- ample chest.  Next he studied the other alchemist Chris Anthrax and felt a pang of jealousy; confident, smart, friends with Emma Yee, she seemed to have it all.  He felt discomfort (something like fearful awe) when he pivoted the scene to the famous and dangerous auger Riggs.  He thought it was odd that Riggs should be here, but didn't make a point on dwelling on the fact, after-all he'd seen some weird stuff lately.  Everyone in the galaxy knew Riggs was a neut: it was a common practice among augers to give up their gender and focus 'beyond flesh' at being the very best at what they do.  As far as he knew, for Riggs, being 'the best' involved killing lots of people. Most people referred to Riggs as a man, and her androgynous face gave little away, but to Max, her slim, muscular frame looked more feminine. 

He issued a command to the SIS to resume play just as Riggs ordered Emma Yess to remove the doll from the containment chamber. This order resulted in an argument between Emma and Chris.  Max noticed the auger was having a kind of standing spasm, shaking slightly as if in shock.  He zoomed to the auger's face to see a thin line of blood run from the nose.  Then, in a split second, Riggs seemed to regain her composure; cross the room; and throttle the alchemist.  Max saw the body of Chris crumple and twitch on the floor.  Emma Yee screamed and a comotion of horrid excitement developed in the room. Max paused the footage.

Max shook his head and opened his eyes to regain his normal vision. His heart was racing as he looked up at the face of his Emma, “I don't understand. One minute they’re talking about an experiment and the next, she’s lying dead on the ground. What's happened here?”

Emma grinned ever so slightly and, the orange metallic sheen that shimmered over her surface seemed to intensify. Max noticed her body became slightly warmer, “That was me” she said, “You see they discovered my sentience but underestimated the extent of my powers -- they considered me to be primitive, at the very best an emerging or potential intelligence.  Such may have been the case in the first seconds of my first exposure to the world, but then, from the very first moment the human energy of Emma Yee entered me, I too was human. The pattern of movement from the neurons within her brain became the pattern of my movement but at a resolution billions of times greater. Human but with the cognitive power of the human race!”

Max, still held within the embrace of this god, felt small, like an insect. But he took the explanation at face value and had a question, “Human? But I'm human and I have flesh and blood and DNA.  Aren’t they the things that make a human?”

“No, we are not all flesh. It is our processing patterns that define us as human, you and me Max. Not our bodies. Do you understand?”

He didn’t want to argue, the outcome of any disagreement would not be in his favour, so changing the topic, “Let me get this straight: You can read the ‘patterns’ in my brain, and yet you’re unable to read my thoughts. What’s the difference?”

“Thought is the product of the pattern as it interacts with your body and the environment, only you have access to that product. If our brains and processing environments were identical and we were provided with the same stimulus, we would have the same thoughts. But our environmental context can never be the same, so even if I were to model your brain in real time, the processing environment could never be eqaul and so our thoughts would always be different -- without completely controlling your environment, I could never accurately model your thoughts and I would need to model your thoughts to know what you were thinking.”

“Oh, I see” he lied and thought to himself, does she know I’m just an ordinary guy who makes a living babysitting autopilot spaceships, not some super auger brain scientist, but then he relaxed a little with the realisation, so she really can’t read my mind. He asked, “Why did the auger attack the alchemist?”

Emma was outwardly pleased with herself and keen to explain, “While I can not interface directly with the organic components of your brain I am able to simulate the waves used to interface with digital and quantum devices. In my digestion of the refinery’s SIS, I was careful not to leave any signature that would show that a modification had taken place, but one system that was unmonitored and that I was more than happy to modify was that controlling the Riggs’ augmentations. Riggs is reliant on augmentations for decision making; I took control of the augmentations and started making decisions for him. Small decisions at first but all leading to the decision to release me from confinement. Riggs struggled with that command at first, but I convinced him that freeing me was essential to the continued operation and enhancement of his augmentations and simply killed any logic relays that advised her otherwise. The interesting thing was that I did not make the decision for him to take the life of Chris Anthrax -- that was the flesh part of his brain acting -- his temper.”

Max shuddered; all of this seemed too surreal to be true. He didn’t know any of the people in the footage but felt conflicted, as if he should feel compassion for them, or fear for himself.  Instead, he was more interested in his Emma.  He found himself rooting for her (and Emma Yee) -- He recognised her voice as the voice he had become infatuated with while on his ship and the voice that this Emma had seemingly adopted. He wondered if his Emma was somehow a version of Yee, if he had fallen for Emma Yee or the Emma, who held him now.  He had no idea.

“Emma? Does Emma Yee still live?”

There was a slight pause before the reply, which was odd, as Max thought that if Emma was so powerful, why then would she need to stop and think?!

“Why do you ask Max?”

“It’s just that you both sound so similar and I believe you must be very fond of her. She being the one to...” how do I say this “...have allowed you to live in the first place.”

There was a hint of sadness in her reply, “Emma Yee gave birth to me Max, she was my Mother and teacher. She was precious to me, just as you are now, and I would never have allowed anything to end that life.”  Then Emma's voice became angry, “I was betrayed!  And Emma's life was taken from me by one that still lives within this place.” She hissed and harnessed Max by the shoulders as she stood, continuing with a calm voice, “Come. I will show him to you.”