Axon Drive: Install

Chapter One

Jessamy Nightbridge rested motionless on the operating table in a cold sweat. Her fingers numb, head throbbing, neck, and shoulders stiff. Two engineers scrambled around the room checking their equipment. They had successfully moved a nanobot up to her brain and connected it to her cortex through neuron pathways or axons. Jess closed her eyes, and an unusual sensation swept in. It was an incredible moment of lightness of being, like the buoyancy from swimming in highly salinize seawater.

When they opened again, she was confused. She couldn't comprehend what laid out before her—a series of whiteboards surrounded by a metal frame stretched out in a pattern. Raising a hand up to one, she watched in amazement as her index finger passed through and disappeared from view. Was she dead? A ghost? Her lungs didn't move her ribcage with the normal undulations of breathing and lacked the stomach murmuring of digesting this morning's breakfast.

Utter despair struck, but without the usual body, reactions to coincide. Tired of staring at these ugly white panels, A thought came to her, turn around and the translucent form turned in tandem with the thought. Below, a pale figure appeared unconscious on disheveled ultra-white thermal blankets. The figure's shoulder-length hair matted to the pillow. She realized, it was her body and wondered why it took so long to recount the memories of her numerous childhood out-of-body experiences. The panicked scientists, checked her pulse, oxygen levels, and heart rate. Their furrowed brows and scratching of the heads showed their continued confusion of the occurrence.

From somewhere a woman's voice spoke—soft at first and used some unfamiliar syntax. Calling out to the voice, her vision dimmed. She blinked, hoping her sight would return, but it did not. Images formed and flashed before her like a movie, of a time before today—before the installation.