Justin wasted no time. Like the table in the Manhattan office building, screens arose out of the woodwork as well as several more screens around the room. They crystallized into a complex grid of monitors, a console for Justin and his team to use, as well as something like the score display system at Madison Square Garden located higher up near the ceiling. An enormous, curved transparent screen then arose out of the ground in front of the latin wall, multitudes of data flashing up on Justin's console that no doubt only he and his team could decipher. He pressed a button and the screen crystallized into a solid black mass, dark and impenetrable, hiding the wall behind it.
"Stand over there," Justin pointed and Quinn did as he was told, taking his place behind the screen in front of the wall.
Justin inputted some commands and looked up as the large screen began to swirl, atoms bouncing around with increasing ferocity.
"It supposed to be doing that?" Quinn asked nervously. The atoms were energizing, becoming more and more violent, much like boiling water in a pot.
"It's harmless, just particles so small that you won't feel a thing."
"Won't feel a--?"
Justin hit a button and the particles rushed out from the screen slamming into Quinn taking him completely by surprise. After the initial shock, Quinn opened his eyes realizing he was still in one piece, a haze of particles passing harmlessly through his body.
"Stay still," Justin called out and Quinn tried his best not to move.
All attention converged on the other side of the screen, which now showed Quinn as a digital projection formed of the very particles that flowed through him and returned, a circular flow of thousands, hundreds of thousands of particles in a mist-like stream. Quinn watched in wonder as his digital projection rippled back at him and console screens flashed up multitudes of information, vital statistics that Justin and his team would record to benchmark Quinn's training. Justin inputted more code and the image of Quinn began to alter, atoms on screen falling away like sand, effortlessly removing his outer clothing to reveal a naked Quinn for all to see. His heart rate spiked seeing his digitized naked form laid bare for the others, but he reveled in it.
Elena moved closer to Justin, watching over his shoulder as the scan moved on, the skin receding as muscle, cartilage and bone revealed itself underneath, a grotesque, disintegrated version of Quinn on display. She had never seen anything like it, such clarity, such detail combined with her already improved vision, the technology far beyond that of an X-ray or MRI scan or even the binoculars that stripped back the walls of the Encephalon city. The layers stripped further, Quinn's body peeling and Elena watched in awe as dense layers of Quinn's neurons, synapses and glia revealed themselves, beads of light that pulsated and shot down through his body in a system of intricate neural highways. Within seconds Quinn's body was stripped of all flesh, all extraneous atoms except those of the central nervous system, a mass of synaptic fibers connecting his brain and stem to every cell in his body. The sight was mesmerizing, a living nervous system transporting signals to and from the brain.
"Your turn," Justin called to her.
She looked up; he wanted her to stand and reveal herself as Quinn had done? He kept his gaze steady indicating that he did. She walked over slowly, deliberately avoiding Quinn's gaze as she took his place in the scanner. The machine took a moment before she felt the same rush of particles pass through her and the program began its scan causing her to blush bright crimson as her digitized, naked image soon stared back at her; Justin and his team diligently carried on their work, treating her with nothing more than professional interest, but she felt Quinn's eyes bore through her. The moment quickly passed and the scan continued through the various levels of her body running through each of the major systems in turn, from the muscular, the skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, lymphatic and digestive, each system clearly depicted and its data analyzed before it peeled back to reveal her nervous system, beads of light flashing up and down her body from head to toe.
Her discomfort dissipated and she took a moment to observe herself, eyes wide with wonder, raising her hand gently, watching the mirror image of her nervous system deliver her conscious thought to the rest of her body: microscopic beads of light igniting as synapses fired and in a fraction of a millisecond transported the message to her arm. With her advanced vision, for that fraction of a second she could see it; she could see the synapses flare at each and every point along her arm, a moment of volition truly visible to her for the first time in her life. The monitors flashed recording countless data and Elena looked up bringing her back to reality and reaffirming that they probably knew more about her in that moment than she even knew about herself.
"Anything in there we should be worried about?" Quinn asked, not being able to make sense of any of the recorded data about either his or Elena's bodies. The machine wound down and she stepped out from behind it to join Justin and the others behind their console.
"No cancer, no inherited diseases, but--" Justin brought up both Elena and Quinn's data simultaneously for them both to see, "There's degradation in the frontal and posterior lobes." He rotated the images on screen to focus on each of their brains and showed where dark gaps existed in their brain scans, parts of their brains that were literally decaying. "If minds go unstimulated, entire regions of your brain can shut down and the rest will work harder to compensate."
"Like kids who suffer brain damage?" Elena asked.
"They often seem as though they've fully recovered as one hemisphere compensates for damage in the other, but it is nevertheless a loss of brain function. It's a problem endemic to the entire human race."
"Except for those raised Encephalon." Jody called out and walked over to stand in the scanner the same as Elena and Quinn had done.
"Here," Justin pointed to some dim neurons at the rear of Elena and Quinn's brains on their scans, "This is reclaimed space, the visual cortex stealing back no man's land that was once just a rotting and decaying recess of your brain, your expanded vision requiring more processing power. Our ultimate aim is for your entire neural network to regrow and strengthen like this."
He hit a button, the machine fired up and particles raced through Jody as they had done before, quickly projecting her digitized image on screen and scaling back to reveal Jody's perfect naked form. It took Quinn completely by surprise, her body pure perfection, his animal instincts flaring; Elena watched him disgusted. The scan went beyond skin deep, Quinn calmed and Jody's physiology flashed up peeling back the layers until her nervous system revealed itself.
They stared in shock; beads of light cascaded down tight formations of neural highways, denser, more intricate and with a gilded symmetry, than either Quinn or Elena had been. Jody radiated light, sending waves of beads down and through her system at will, her brain one tight, intricate maze of networks showing no cerebral regression, no dark spots, just perfect equilibrium on a scale beyond anything an average human could ever hope for. She smiled at them, moving her body gracefully in a spectacular synaptic display.
"That's what you're aiming for," Justin said, bringing up Elena and Quinn's digital projections alongside that of Jody to compare. She completely eclipsed them, Jody's body radiating energy from its dense neural networks making Elena and Quinn look like specters in her wake. She was the perfect being. Justin and his team were all perfect beings.
Elena's heart sank. Jody was born Encephalon, having spent her entire life taught how to use her mind to its full capabilities. How were they ever going to catch up? How could they be sure that she and Quinn, the first of their kind, would ever be able to be brought up to the same level as them?
"We can get you there," Justin said reading both their thoughts, though whether he believed it or not neither she nor Quinn were able to tell. "But you're going to have to work for it."
Elena and Quinn shared a loaded look. The race was on. She could not let him get there first.
YOU ARE READING
Encephalon: Emergent
Science Fiction[COMPLETED] New York, present day. Elena's neural network has languished her whole life. Like the rest of us, she has eyes with weak receptors, memory that cannot record every detail and a brain that uses a fraction of its capacity. But Elena is abo...
