Meiha had never been inside Fubao Inc.'s headquarters. The company were notorious for keeping mum about their creations and employees were vigorously screened. No reporters were ever allowed exclusive interviews or sneak peeks before official announcements. The few attempts at sneaking into or stealing from Fubao Inc. were met with crippling lawsuits. Meiha could see why every breach were caught quickly; tiny black cameras monitored her every move. The security office registered her after confirming her identity with Tselong and confiscated the stolen Yanzhi model.
"The access code areas will scan you for your Bod Mod signature," said the man through the glass window, his face impassive beneath the panel of black metal of the modified Wenchang. "Having this still registered to its previous owner will flag up on our system and bar you."
Meiha didn't object. It was of some relief to have the heavy arm cannon out of her hands instead of reminding her of the crime she'd committed with every step of the way. Two of the guards took her ahead, pausing at every secure access — of which there were many — to scan their retinas, fingerprints, and Bod Mod signatures before the empty corridor opened up to an atrium.
The view took Meiha's breath away. The floor stretched before her as panes of clear glass, through which beams of blue-tinted light shone, bathing the chamber in an ethereal glow. Smooth steel pillars reached up from all four corners to the overhead dome where holograms of mechanical koi in brilliant hues of gold and violet swam, leaving sparkling trails in their wake. If not for the constant ripple of light cascading across their fins and the blue glow in their eyes, Meiha could have been fooled into thinking they were real, given how graceful their movements were. Glass chutes moved up and down on Meiha's far left and right, disappearing beyond the glass dome to the many storeys above. Soft ambient music filled her ears, which, coupled with the steady motions of the koi from above, the pale blue light illuminating the atrium, and the cool air conditioning, gave the area a calming, therapeutic atmosphere.
"Welcome to Fubao Inc.," chirped the hologram woman with sleek black hair in a bun and a crisp black suit standing nearby, turning to smile at them. "How may I help?"
The guards ignored her and took Meiha to one of the glass chutes. Again, their credentials were checked before the doors slid open and shut behind them.
"So, um," Meiha said, staring through the curved glass wall of the lift. The slight dark tint told her it was a one-way glass, which was just as well: several storeys below beyond the electrified fence were the huge crowd she'd seen on her way in. Some of them waved digital placards exclaiming 'Shut down corrupt Fubao!' and 'Answer for your crimes!' The crowd booed and threw objects, which bounced off the fence with no effect. A group of guards stood at alert, their weapons held visible before them. They gave no reaction to the abuse hurled at them through the fence. "How have folks been going home when facing that?"
"We haven't." The guard next to her made no effort to hide the sourness in his tone. "None of us have been home in over two weeks since that damn update came out. Boss said it's too risky."
"Yeah, and they still haven't found the mole—"
"Shhh!"
Meiha stared, startled by the sudden secrecy. One guard threw the other guard a dirty look. The one who blabbed flushed beneath his modified Wenchang, his lips pressed tightly together.
"What does it matter? She's Mr. Szeto's kid. She'll know anyway!"
"Not from us. Boss will have our hide!"
There was an awkward pause.
"Well, boss is right about one thing," said the guard who talked too much, turning away and staring outside. "Look at that bank robbery in Zhongwan. All the nutters are coming out of their caves."
"It's not like we're exactly much safer here. Our Bod Mods don't work the way they used to, thanks to this stupid bug." The guard heaved a sigh. "It literally took half a day to pull out those older style weapons we used to have before the Bod Mods came in. I was surprised some of them still worked, considering they've sat and gathered dust for almost two years."
"Yeah, well, I'm just glad we still have something against the maniacs outside."
They fell silent for the rest of the journey upwards. The crowd became tiny specks beneath, all blurring together in a heap of hate and vitriol. Her ears popped. Their ascent slowed. Her stomach flopped before they stilled. The door slid open.
The area was windowless. Breakdowns of model designs floated across the walls, white and blue lights spinning and crossing together before falling apart, showing the makeup of machines and how they functioned. Numbers and calculations far beyond Meiha's scope of understanding danced beside the images. Goosebumps raised upon her skin. She wasn't sure if it was due to the tense atmosphere or the colder temperature but her heart hammered as if she were being pursued by Waisan again.
The guards led her to the first door on the left, which had 'Control Room' displayed on a panel at eye level. The security pane scanned the three of them and the steel door slid open. They gestured. Meiha stepped in. The other two didn't follow.
Heads turned at the quiet hiss of the door sliding shut. Meiha swallowed, squinting around.
"Meiha!" Tselong's voice came from somewhere to her far right. The room was dim, lit mainly by the complex blueprint design displayed via hologram in the centre. Several people sat on stools around the large metal base beneath it, fiddling in mid-air with their cybernetic gloves, adjusting parameters.
Meiha stepped uncertainly in the direction of her stepfather's voice, her eyes beginning to adjust to the semi-darkness. Two small specks of blinking light moved in her direction. Relief washed over her in waves as she recognised Tselong's hearing devices before his face came into view. A smile broke over his face, his eyes shining. He clasped her in a hug. He smelt of musky sweat. His eyes were exhausted, dark pools of brown surrounded by deep wrinkles and heavy eye bags. Although only in his late forties, his tiredness and anxiety aged him by at least a decade.
"I'm sorry to bring you in like this," he said, his nasal voice more pronounced when not filtered by technology. "Did you...?"
Meiha nodded, fishing out his back-up hard drive. His eyes shone. Without a word, he took it and marched back to the darkness, Meiha hurrying after him.
"I'll tell you everything once I start decrypting the files," Tselong said over his shoulder. "It'll take some time because of the security measures and I'll need to incorporate it into our system at the same time... I'm sure I can upload it into the cloud even when the program is offline..." He began to descend into a mumbling of jargon. Meiha followed closely. His colleagues waved and nodded at her. It seemed Tselong had told them all of her arrival beforehand. The programmers perched on stools beside the large display in the centre didn't acknowledge her presence. Up close, they all had the modified Wenchang models across their faces. Little trails of light illuminated the wires connecting their neural devices to the centre machine.
Meiha perched on a stool Tselong drew up for her and picked at the surface of her jeans, aware of how out of her depth she was, an artist in a world of science, someone who scraped a pass at high school physics sitting amongst stellar graduates from renowned colleges and universities. But she'd done her part in getting Tselong's backup files to him. She imagined it would only be a matter of days before the new patch would roll out to all the Bod Mods, re-securing the safety mechanism and locking down on those who abused their machines.
"Here." Tselong passed her a small, steaming cup. Meiha blew on it and sipped. Tieguanyin tea. Her favourite. He placed the teapot on a nearby table and blew on his own cup. Behind him, a bulky machine ran a series of codes, creating a steady whir in the background. "It'll be a while before the whole thing is decrypted, so we can chat. The Talos System isn't going anywhere. Did I tell you before all this blew up, I've been working on a new model? It's still undergoing a lot of testing and it'll be a year before we can even start out-of-simulation training, but once it does, it'll be revolutionary."
"Please explain in terms that I can understand," Meiha said, grinning. Tselong's hands flew in excited animation as if he were a schoolboy explaining his latest science project.
"I call it the Shennong. It's a cybernetic body."
Meiha stared.
"You mean...?"
"Like how we can now neurally wire parts of machines to the human brain because we've mapped out where the nerves attach on a cellular level and the electrical signals, I think we can do that with an entire body."
"Like... transfer someone's brain into a machine?"
"In a way." Tselong sat up straighter, eyes shining. "But not their physical brain. Their electrical signals. Their consciousness. We can connect the brain to a cybernetic body the same way we can connect existing nerves to a Bod Mod."
Meiha's mouth fell open. She could only gape.
"I got the inspiration after that documentary on Locked-In Syndrome. Do you remember? We watched it last summer, about that poor sixteen-year-old who couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even tell people she was awake after that horrific head injury. But she had brain activity even if she couldn't communicate with the outside world. But her problem, see, unlike the amputees and neuromuscular injuries who have benefited from the Bod Mods thus far, isn't with the appendages. Her brain is intact. It just wasn't sending out signals to the rest of her body. So I thought, what if that inner software is connected to a unit that could read it, unlike her organic body? I mean, our technology is advanced enough to map out the neurovasculature of a body. We could implant that same design into a cybernetic body."
His enthusiasm and exuberance were infectious, but Meiha couldn't help but feel uneasy by how big a jump Tselong had made since connecting an artificial arm to a living person. Now he wanted to move consciousness, a concept still beyond the understanding of scientists. Combined with the recent controversy of Bod Mod security, she could only imagine how many ways something as groundbreaking as transplanting consciousness could go wrong.
"I know what you're thinking. This is taking it too far. Too many things can go wrong."
Meiha bit her lip. Tselong could read her like a beginner's program. He'd always had the gift of perceiving faces, perhaps to make up for his hearing impairment.
"This is different. The Shennong is still pending the ethics committee's permission to start trials. Plenty of time for me to make sure it's safe. The Bod Mod security breach is due to—well, if we can fix it, it won't matter what it's due to. The cause of the breach is no longer an active issue. As long as I can fix it, this will all blow over."
"And if you... can't?" Meiha whispered, her gut twisting.
Just then, the machine behind Tselong beeped. He swivelled around, leaning forward with expectation. Meiha couldn't understand the wall of code the holographic screen threw up, but she could read the bottommost line.
System reboot failed.
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