The Lost

Success

Annabeth woke several hours later, and was a bit groggy. She had a bit of a headache from the new materials that were implanted into her brain, but that pain quickly receded as her mind adjusted. The Curator and Benson were in the room as well, but they were the only ones in the room now. The rest of the medical team was gone. She blinked her eyes several times, allowing her eyes to adjust to the level of light in the room, and turned her head to look at The Curator. "How'd it go?" She asked,

The Curator turned about at the sound of her voice. " Everything went rather smoothly, dear." He said. "We were able to implant all of the receptors and we were in the process of going through and testing each of them now. You may feel a little discomfort. Some flashing images and the sort."

She tried to nod, but her head was still strapped to the table. "As you say, Curator. I will assist where I can." she said, and resolved to lay there and do the best she could to do what she promised just now.

Benson nodded. "We will start with memories of your past. We will try to stimulate the subconscious to bring forward memories that pertain to your last flashback. If successful, we should get a flood of data as your memory returns. We will begin in just a few minutes." He said.

The Curator reached out and held Annabeth's hand, and squeezed it. "We will try and make sure that this does not hurt you in the least. It is very important that you tell us if the flashbacks are causing you an exorbitant amount of pain during the procedure." He said to her.

He was so kind, she thought, always looking out for her. "Alright, Curator." She said, and she tensed as she felt the tiniest of shocks from the new nodes.

The Curator noticed this, and looked at her. "Is everything alight dear? We haven't begun yet."

She winced, and looked at The Curator. "Just feels like a few needles piercing my brain is all." She said with a false smile. She didn't want The Curator to think that they had failed. She was expecting a little bit of pain, and she wanted to power through it for the both of them.

The Curator turned around and monitored the nodes, and did a cross examination on the accuracy of the placement. Something they had already done five times, but she had moved since the last one, so to be sage, he performed another analysis of the nodes.

He found that they were all right where they had positioned them from the first time. He breathed in relief and continued running scenarios. receptors were all firing at the desired levels in order to receive data. He then checked the surges of pain with the activation of each node, and noticed the issue. "Go ahead and activate all the nodes, Benson. Annabeth, you are going to feel quite a bit of pain in just a moment, okay?" He asked her as he turned around to look at her.

Annabeth looked at The Curator. There was fear in her eyes, but she tried to remain calm. The Curator reached out his hand and once again took hers into his and nodded to Benson. "Do it. Now." Benson flipped the switch on the All Node Activate, and it felt like Annabeth's brain was suddenly on fire. She let out some noises of discomfort, and soon the pain receded, and she gasped for breath, her head hitting against the table as she focused on breathing.

As she lay there catching her breath, she got a surge of images. it was a few days after the Jaguar Eyes concert, and she was composing her first song. She was reciting it in her head, trying to get the flow right. The memories caused pain at first, and then it all equalized, and it played in her mind like a movie. It wasn't forced, and the pain was non-existent.

She breathed easily, and then smiled and began to laugh somewhat. "It worked." She said and she began to cry tears of joy.

Benson looked at The Curator. "All nodes seem to be receiving the data at a remarkable pace, Curator. Results are ten times better than we could have hoped for." He said as data scrolled across the screen at an alarming rate.

The Curator looked at the data, and nodded. He saw Annabeth crying, but noticed she was smiling, and relaxed. "Great work, Benson. This will help us be able to help others in the future. Remarkable. Purely remarkable." He said as he looked at all of the data. By the look of the readouts, the brain and the nodes were working in tandem, and they were relaying information at a pace fifty percent faster than a normal human brain, and the load on the synapses was cut by more than half.

The Curator turned and un strapped Annabeth from the table. "Just a little while longer, Annabeth. there is one other test, I would like to run, and that is searching through your memories for a visual representation of the data, basically, we would like to see how you have seen your life, through your eyes. Would you be willing to do that for me?" He asked.

She turned her head now that is was free of the restraints. "You can run your test, but don't record my past into the system." She looked at him with a dead seriousness to her eyes.

He breathed and then nodded. "Yes, we can make that happen. Thank you." He said, and turned to Benson, nodding to proceed as he wrote a line of code to disable the recording of Annabeth's memories.