“Samantha. Can you hear
me? It's Doctor Talbet.”
Samantha felt like she had
woken up from a deep sleep. The room slowly came into focus. People
were busy with machines and equipment. Sam wondered how long she had
been asleep for. Was she in a coma?
“Samantha? It looks as if
we really did bring you back. This is so exiting. Don't you think
so?”
Sam thought about her
memories before waking up there in the bed. Normally, her memories
were foggy and she had to concentrate to remember details. Somehow,
she was able to recall her last few memories in crisp and painful
detail.
The first memory she
recalled was blood all over her hand. Blood pouring from between her
legs. She touched her belly, the baby had stopped moving. An hour
ago, maybe two hours? It was an hour and thirteen minutes.
She called out from the
bathroom for her husband, “Don! Don somethings wrong!”
Don ran down the hallway to
find Sam sitting on the floor with a blood soaked towel between her
legs.
As Sam wiped away tears from
her cheeks, she replaced them with blood from her hand. She shook her
head as she looked down at the towel, “I can't stop the bleeding,
Don.”
Sometimes a second lasts a
lifetime. The brain takes a snapshot and imprints every detail into
the brain. This very moment was one Don would never want to remember
again. He found himself stuck. Time froze and wouldn't let him make a
decision, react to the situation or feel an emotion. The milliseconds
ticked and ticked.
Sam was trapped in that same
second. Her face looked so helpless. This wasn't the way her life was
supposed to go. She could feel some anger overtaking the
helplessness. Bleeding out on the cold bathroom tile floor was not
how her life was supposed to end. Her eyes slowly lifted up to meet
his. They both waited for the second to pass.
Sam's next memory was in the
car, the seat soaked in blood. Then being wheelchaired into the
emergency room. Laying in a bed, her hand in Don's. She never felt so
tired before. They smiled at each other until she fell asleep.
Sam was happy to finally be
awake again. She moved her arm to feel her stomach. Make sure the
baby was okay. Odd, she couldn't seem to find her stomach. She
decided to raise her arm in front of her face.
Doctor Talbet caught the
movement out of the corner of his eye, “No, don't do that,
Samantha.”
She stared at metal, some
hydraulic tubes, wires. What she thought were her fingers were some
kind of mind controlled prosthetic. She wiggled the fingers in front
of her face.
“What happened to my arm?”
“Samantha, my hand is on a
switch that allows you to control that arm. As long as you behave, I
promise not to flip the switch.”
“I don't give a damn about
your switch, Doctor. Where is my baby?”
“Be rational please. You
had a miscarriage and then began to hemorrhage a lot of blood. You
were near death once in the hospital.”
“Where is my husband?
Where's Don?”
“It's very complicated at
this point because everyone you know, everyone you love had a funeral
for you about a year ago.”
“I died?”
“To them you died, but I
brought you back. Your consciousness lives on. Maybe even your soul.”
“I didn't agree to any of
this.”
“That's okay. We didn't
expect your cadaver to transfer all the 'files' we needed to bring
you back. Better you than most of the deceased prisoners we normally
work on.”
“Modifying my body without
my consent. Bringing me back from the grave. You have no right to
control me or hold me here.”
“You're probably right,
but if you get out of hand I can wipe your files clean and there
won't be a trace of you left on earth.”
Samantha didn't move.
“Now what I'm willing to
do for you is to get you caught up on the world that had gone on
without you for the past year. I'll plug you into the internet and
you can surf all you like. How does that sound?”
No reply from Samantha.
“This is awkward for both
of us, trust me. I'll work hard to earn your trust. In time, we'll be
ready to great the media together and show them an advance in science
that defies belief.”
Sam felt the jack plugged
into her shoulder. Or what she thought was her shoulder. It was easy
to scan the internet with her mind. Her obituary was easy to find,
comments friends had left on various social media about how she will
be missed. She found that Don had been offered the chance to join a
group of lumberjacks being sent to Alpha Centauri to clear cut
forests for building a new colony of humans.
Some twenty years ago, Don
had landed a Rover on Mars. It wasn't well received by the science or
space community, so he was treated like a black sheep by NASA and any
private space companies. They knew he was too smart for them, but
they also viewed him as a loose cannon and not worth the chance of
another major scandal. He gave up on any chance to go to Mars or get
a job involving space exploration. Instead, a friend from high school
contacted him and asked if he was afraid of heights. He didn't think
so. Years later, Don was a foreman of his own crew of lumberjacks.
They either dropped trees or climbed them to remove specific
sections.
According to the list of
names Sam found on a website, Don had been recruited to remove
several thousand trees where a colony would be built on a planet
orbiting Alpha Centauri. Some of the men were allowed to bring their
families with them. Don was listed as traveling alone.
“What is it you're doing
in there, Samantha?” the Doctor asked as he stepped over to peer
into her eyes.
Samantha looked up when and
where Don would be launching into space. First she found today's
date, then the time. Don's flight was launching in one hour.
“Seriously, what are you
doing in there?”
Doctor Talbet's tie hung
down at just the right height for Sam to take hold of it in one hand
and push up on the knot with her other hand. The doctor choked on
the floor of the room as Sam sat up and unplugged the control switch.
Standing up, she found a full length mirror and expected to be
looking at some cyborg of her former self. There was nothing left of
her human form. Metal legs, arms, torso and head. She thought about
not having to blink, ever again.
Sam crouched down and placed
her robotic hand on the choking doctor, “If I cannot inspire love,
I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my
creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred.”
The quote came from Mary
Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Sam read the book between the time she
looked at herself in the mirror and crouching down to speak to the
doctor.
She knew she was on the
second floor, park bench below more than likely a clear get away as
long as she didn't cut any over her hydraulic hoses on any of the
glass as she smashed through the window.
Another doctor was entering
the room as the window smashed into a million pieces and the first
ever human consciousness inside a robot was gone.
Sam kept watch of
overheating sensors as her robotic body ran like an Olympian towards
the launch pad of a rocket headed to Mars, the one Don was on. She
reconfigured her wifi connections and began to hack into Space X's
computers, letting her hack into the space ship itself. Searching for
just the right storage drive, artificial intelligence that she could
take over or pair with. She found a poorly written AI code for the
maintenance section of the rocket. There was enough room for
everything she wanted to upload and the ability to move about the
rocket from there.
The Space X rocket with Don
aboard began to launch.
As the WiFi signal began to
weaken, the robot Sam was housed in collapsed to the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment