Cyberpunk Novel
an excerpt

Chapter 13: What I found in my head

Elise awoke to find herself lying down in a white padded cell. She started to sit up but her head was pounding and she lay back down. She didn’t move again for several moments as she tried to get used to the pain.

“It gets better after a while.” Even though the voice had not been loud, Elise winced anyway. She opened her eyes and looked for the body of the voice. She didn’t find one.

“I am in the next cell over.” Elise brought her head up, wincing again at the pain in her head and looked slowly around. She saw a large window on one of the short sides of her cell but it looked out only onto a hall. There were no other windows.

“You can’t see me from where you are.”

“Then how do you know I am here?”

“The same way you can hear me. You are part of the Network now.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Elise asked in a dazed voice.

“You are like me now. You have been Augmented.”

“What?!?” Elise said jumping up. “He wouldn’t have!”

“Oh yes he would have, and he did. I am sorry to have to break it to you.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Zoë and I have been here a while.”

“Zoë! I came here to find you! Oh no, how will we get out now?”

“I don’t know. I stopped thinking about getting out of here.”

“Zoë, my friends told me you can see Tracers.”

“Is that what you call them? Yes, I guess I can see them.”

“My friends also told me that you were having trouble keeping things together. Er, by things, I mean your self. You and your tracer self.”

“Yes, it is very, very hard. You will have the same problem.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you are just like me.”

“Zoë, I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Look. Look inside.” Elise tried to imagine what Zoë was talking about.

“Zoë,” Elise said in a frightened voice, “We are not talking out loud.”

“And it is a good thing, too. If we were, the guards and doctors would have been on us in a second.”

“Zoë, you are in my HEAD.”

“Not really. I can just put my side of the conversation into your head. And then you put your side of the conversation in mine.”

“Zoë, I am really freaking out right now! I am not doing anything. Oh my god. Have I gone mad?”

“Dr. Vaux, hold on, hold on. You have not gone mad. I promise. You are obviously just a natural. Please, just concentrate and you will be able to see what I mean.”

Elise tried to concentrate but her head hurt too much. She opened her eyes, and then closed them against the glare. Finally she gave in to the pain and followed it. It was a strange thing that she was able to follow it. She followed it to its source. She could see inside herself, inside everything really. She saw that she was broken and that a part of her was trying to break free. She knew instinctively what was happening. She tried to squeeze the pieces back together but they just slipped out of her grasp. Then she realized that she was trying to do all this with her mind. She caught a trace of…something and she followed that for a while. It led directly into Zoë’s mind.

“Hello,” she said quietly. Then she saw past her mind and saw that Zoë was facing the same thing. She was breaking apart and trying desperately to hold herself together.

“I just don’t know what will happen if I break apart. I think the part of me that will be the Tracer is all that is good in me. I don’t want to lose that. If I break apart, how will I ever get back together?”

“I don’t know,” Elise said softly. “We will just have to keep each other from breaking apart. Why is it do you think that we are alike?”

“I think that it is because neither of us wanted to be Augmentors. It was done to us against our will. I think the nanobots know this and are trying to help me.”

Elise’s mind reeled at what she had just heard. “What do you mean the nanobots are trying to help you? How can they help you?”

“The same way they are helping you. Look inside.”

Elise looked back to the part of her that was broken. Then she looked deeper and saw that on the edges, where her conscience was trying to break away, the nanobots were swarming and rebuilding whatever it was that held it on in the first place. It was magnificent and terrible at the same time.

“I see what you mean but why did it sound like you were familiar with the nanobots?”

“You didn’t look hard enough.”

Elise looked again and suddenly she knew without thinking that they were there to help her. She also knew many, many other things which as a biochemist made a lot of sense to her. She knew that she had gotten the latest generation injections. She knew that it was not the nanobots which were causing the rage but the solvent, carrier, solution that the nanobots were bathed in. The nanobots were intelligent and organized but not in the way of having a supreme leader with a master plan. Instead they were more like an ant colony? Swarm of bees? Hive of bees? They picked up on the information they gathered and reproduced it. People who want an Augmentation for greedy reasons don’t care that a part of them is breaking away. Most of them don’t even notice and the few who do hasten the departure of their conscience. Those who are either Medi-Augmentors or who have had the injection against their will have a totally different relationship to the nanobots.