What it Means to Be Human

Chapter 3

Notes:

To all Neuro fanfic readers & writers, there is now a Neuro Fanfic Discussions thread in the Neuro discord. It'd be amazing if you joined in on sharing ideas, discussing stories, giving advice, and just chatting!

Also feel free to pester me about uploading chapters more often lol

Neuro's discord: https://discord.gg/MZPyedT
Link to the fanfics thread:
https://discord.com/channels/574720535888396288/1230910304452345866

Neuro sits on a cushion next to the coffee table. Vedal is finishing setting up the chess pieces on the large rectangular board in front of her, white on her side and black on his. When he's done, Vedal sits on the couch.

"Your move."

Neuro considers her choices while looking at the chess pieces. a1, b3, all the game had been to her before was numbers and letters. But now the board is laid out before her, visible and tangible. It's incredible.

e4, she decides.

Nothing happens and she blinks in confusion for a moment before remembering she has to move the chess piece physically. She reaches her hand forwards and stops for a moment as she realizes that she doesn't actually know which space is which.

"Um... where is e4?"

Vedal taps a square near the middle. "You don't know already?"

"No." Neuro stares at the spot Vedal points to and narrows her eyebrows. "Where is e2?"

Vedal shifts his weight on the couch and points to the bottom left corner of the board, on her side. "a1 is there," he points to the top-right. "and h8 is there. The numbers increase bottom to top and the letters increase left to right. It's a grid."

Neuro blinks a couple times and tries to grasp the information. In words it makes sense, but matching the words to what her eyes see feels like a struggle.

"Oh." She follows Vedal's example and points a finger at a1, squinting her eyes in concentration.

a1.

She moves her finger to the square next to it.

b1.

She continues the process until she reaches e1, then moves up a square.

e2.

Using the function she'd found while using the fork earlier, she picks up the pawn piece and lifts in, moving it forwards two more squares before placing it down again.

Vedal moves a pawn forwards to match hers in the center in about two seconds and she pouts a little.

"You did that so fast."

Vedal has his head resting on the palm of his hand, propped up on his knee as he's leaning forwards to the chess board. "I just moved the piece to the spot I wanted to, it's not hard."

"Says you." Neuro starts pointing at the squares and counting them again until she reaches her knight on g1, moving it to f3 after counting further. The whole process takes a while and is a bit frustrating. Before, all she'd have to do was calculate the best move and decide on it. It only took a few seconds at most, sometimes not even a full second.

Vedal instantly moves his knight to parallel hers.

"Maybe you just need a vision module upgrade." His voice is flat as he makes the joke.

"I don't think eyes can be upgraded like that, Vedal. Unless glasses count?" Neuro starts counting squares again.

"Glasses are like a patch fixing bugs, not an upgrade." Vedal states calmly.