"Hey, Min-Ah! What's up?" A middle-aged, haggard woman turned to face the source of the voice that called her. It was a young woman she hadn't met before, so her eyes narrowed slightly.
She responded. "Umm. Have we met before?"
Putting on a jokingly aggrieved expression the other woman responded, "What? Did you forget? It's me Maron from the Technical Support department."
Min-Ah started to scour her memory to find a match, but the search came back empty. As she observed the expectant gaze of the person before her, she decided to feign recollection and said, "Oh… Oh right… So what are you doing here?"
"Nothing much. The guys from the Youth Outreach department are getting a little testy, given the number of test candidates coming in tomorrow. They filed in a last-minute request to do a quick check-up on the machine."
Min-Ah took a step back mentally. She remembered that the check-up was done recently. "Didn't you guys just do it yesterday?"
"You know how it is? The machine's friggin' ancient. A relic from the Age of Expansion. It's already on its last leg."
Seeing as it was just a simple once over, Min-Ah concluded that she didn't have to stay back and monitor the diagnostic process. "Well, I get what you mean. But why right now? Almost everyone's gone out for lunch."
"Ah, it's fine. Just gonna run some diagnostics is all."
"Hmm. Well in that case, OK. But make sure you lock everything up after use. Otherwise, it will be my neck on the chopping block." With that, Min-Ah started to make her way towards the elevator.
"Ace! Don't worry about it!" Karina said while flashing a bright smile.
Once the woman left the room, Nathan reprimanded Karina, "The hell was that? I thought I made it clear to not draw too much attention!"
"Relax Nathan. That woman won't even remember what she's gonna have for lunch today."
Nathan shook his head in exasperation. "I'm on clean up. You two get the machine ready. Make sure you don't break anything." He turned towards the large capsule-like contraption in the middle of the room. "Make sure you follow Colin's instructions! It really looks like it's on its last legs"
____
The old man diverted his attention from the game for a moment and called out to the young man before him, "Simon."
"Yes, Grandpa?" Simon answered involuntarily.
The old man spoke with a morose tone. "After I die, I want you to cremate my body. Don't bother with anything fancy."
"Grandpa." Simon raised his head from the projection in front of him and spoke helplessly.
The old man continued, "And I also want you four to leave this godforsaken planet."
He shook his head and spoke with a faint smile, "Oh! By the way, you should take those miscreants from the 23rd floor with you as well."
Simon diverted his eyes from the projection before him and looked at the old man, surprised. It was because he was sure that he hid his affiliation with them quite well in front of his grandfather. Even his siblings hadn't uttered a word or provided nary a hint of their work.
"Did you think I wouldn't know? I think it was June 23rd, 2441. A repossession job?"
Simon's eyes widened in shock, "How?"
The old man smirked in response. "Hmm… It looks like my interference that day made you a little too overconfident. Did you think that remotely infiltrating a SandMen vehicle depot would be something an 11-year-old could accomplish? Please! If I hadn't greased the wheels for you, Byron wouldn't have even made it past the front gates."
"But, you didn't stop us. Why?" Simon quickly reeled back to his calm self as he probed cautiously.
The old man looked into Simon's eyes, "If I stopped you, you'd have done something worse. Believe it or not, I'd expected this to happen."
His voice trailed off as he finished the sentence. Simon noticed how his grandfather's voice wavered near the end. There was something there; he had to know!
"What do you mean?"
The old man diverted his gaze in apprehension. But after an extended pause, he gave in and decided to let off a heavy burden from his chest.
"Have you ever wondered about your origins? About the triplets' origins?"
Simon thought for a while and answered. "I'd be lying if I said no. But after a point, I just gave up. I mean, I don't know what would have happened to us if you didn't take us in."
The old man smiled ruefully, "No! You're giving me credit for things I didn't even intend to do Simon. I've done horrible things. Inhuman things. Things that if you found out, would make your stomach churn! But then again… You wouldn't feel anything. Correction. You can't feel anything."
The man's smile disappeared. The atmosphere turned serious as the temperature in the room dropped significantly - metaphorically.
Simon's hand froze in place. It was as if his deepest and darkest secrets had been put under the spotlight. From an early age, Simon felt different. He couldn't feel emotions, not naturally anyway. It was hard for him to empathise with other people and understand what emotions to display at what time. It took him a long time to figure out how to appear genuine. How to understand if others were being genuine. It was a secret he'd kept hidden from everyone, even his siblings. He wasn't sure if they noticed or if they already knew, but since they never brought it up, Simon figured that they felt it was not that big of a deal. When his grandfather said that he "wouldn't" feel anything, Simon took it that his grandfather had concluded through observation. But he then followed it up with "couldn't". That meant there was an inherent reason for Simon's state, it was not something he had since birth!
His usual indifferent gaze sharpened immediately and locked onto his grandfather.
"I only have 2 hours left. Those three should be back in an hour and 30 minutes. Finish this game before that, and I'll tell you the rest." His grandfather stated in an indifferent tone.
Simon already knew that his siblings were currently trying to get tested in secret. Colin had spilt the beans almost immediately. Because of the boy's abandonment issues, he was eager to obtain Simon's acknowledgement, as he viewed Simon as a pseudo-elder-brother. What surprised Simon was that his grandfather was informed about it as well. "You knew they went to get tested? You're surprisingly calm about it. Weren't you so adamantly against it before?"
His grandfather flashed a knowing smile as he responded calmly. "I was against it because I already knew what their scores would be."
____
"Argh! This machine's so damn slow!" Horace blurted in exasperation.
"Did it take this long with me too?" He asked Karina.
"Yup. Hey, don't look! We promised we'd look at our scores together!" Karina nudged Horace.
"Why the heck are the results printed on paper? Who even uses these?" Horace exclaimed once more, only to face Karina's mocking retort. "It's old! What did you expect?"
A humming sound followed by a hiss emanated from the machine before them. The capsule door swung upwards and Nathan stepped out. He struggled to regain balance as a groggy feeling washed over him.
Horace moved towards him as support and Karina walked around to fetch the printout.
She then placed the three reports on the table next to the capsule's terminal and waved over her brothers.
"You guys ready?" She asked with a sense of excitement reverberating in her voice.
The two nodded in unison.
"OK! On three. 1… 2… 3!" Together, the three turned over the reports before them and stared at it.
There was a deafening silence. No one spoke. The monotonous sound of the capsule faded into the background.
"Do you guys think it's broken?" Karina asked her brothers.
"Maybe. But we followed all the instructions…" Horace muttered.
Nathan looked at all three reports once again. His hand jittered as he held the papers. A new emotion boiled from within him. He couldn't describe it. It felt like a mix of anger, excitement, elation, frustration. Too many to count!
"Fuck it!" He cried out, causing the two to look at him in surprise. It was the first time they saw their brother lose his devil-may-care attitude.
Nathan ignored their disbelieving looks and rattled off instructions. "Put everything back to the way it was before! You know the drill. Leave no trace."
He took one last glance at the reports and internalised the two bold letters on each page under Neural Aptitude and Neural Capacity respectively. He then folded them carefully and stored them within the deepest confines of Horace's backpack.
____
"Ha! When I said to finish it quickly, I didn't expect that it would take less than 10 minutes!" The old man laughed.
As the projection in front of him fizzled out, Simon displayed visible signs of agitation. He'd 'felt' agitation before, but this was somehow different. He'd never experienced this before. The last time he'd sensed agitation it was more along the lines of frustration, but this time there was a tint of positive excitement. The kind you'd feel when you knew what to expect but were still on the edge of your seat. The emotion was novel, and he was enjoying it quite a bit.
The old man flourished his hand as a magician would and uttered exaggeratedly. "Since you so graciously finished the game ahead of schedule. I'm assuming you want to know the truth."
Simon nodded without missing a beat, while his eyes followed his grandfather's hand, expecting something to pop out magically.
The old man retracted his arm and spoke slowly. "I want you to say your name, followed by your date of birth, then my full name, and my date of birth."
Simon was a little perplexed, but he decided to follow his grandfather's instructions. "Simon, 5th July 2430, Mohan Rockwell, 2nd October 2337."
Time seemed to slow down for Simon. Every second was stretched as long as an hour. From within the deepest ravines of his brain, a spark ignited and spread along the muscle fibres. The sparks bloomed brightly and as they spread, they started to mimic a tree growing, albeit one that developed at a visibly fast pace and downwards. The lights propagated without restraint until they reached the end of the brain stem. The lights faced opposition as they tried to breach the spinal cord.
While this was happening within, without, Simon felt a searing pain behind his right ear. He instinctively moved his hand to cover the source, but what he felt instead of flesh and bone, was a rigid inorganic surface. It started as a point, but quickly it grew in size, and with each millimetre he could feel a part of his skull disintegrating, sending a new surge of fresh pain.
It lasted for 5 seconds. But to him, it felt like 5 hours. Before he realised it, he was already sweating. His shirt was soaked.
Breathing heavily, he looked at his grandfather with fear plastered onto his face. The pain was unlike any he'd ever felt before. But the fear quickly turned into a sense of serenity as he absorbed and relished the emotions. He then reached over behind his ears to feel the surface again, but what greeted him were a few familiar shapes. There were a bunch of connection ports!
His grandfather turned to the side and shifted his ear flaps, revealing a similar series of connection ports. He reached in and removed a data chip from within one of the ports and held it out towards Simon.
Simon calmly grabbed the chip and asked the old man, "What is this?"
"Everything. I know it sounds vague. But I think it's easier to show you the truth than to tell you. Besides -" he smiled in resignation "I really don't have much time left."
Simon stared at the data chip in his palm. Multiple thoughts ran through his mind. In fact, it wouldn't be fair to say that Simon had no idea about his origins. All orphans have a natural drive to learn about where they were from and who their parents were. For Simon and the triplets, the case was similar. In his free time, Simon has spread his feelers through the QNet for any trace regarding his parents. Facial recognition, gene recognition, voice recognition, he'd tried countless search parameters. His search turned out to be a futile effort as he failed to find a single trace of his past. This led him to three possible scenarios.
One, he and his siblings were created artificially. That would also explain why he couldn't find any biological matches when scouring through the QNet.
Two, he and his siblings were created through illegal means. They could have been part of undocumented experimentation and were thus wiped from existence.
And finally, he and his siblings were originally documented, but their parents were eliminated and all their traces were erased. This would be one reason why there were no birth records or parentage documentations.
The truth regarding their origins was still an uncertainty. But Simon knew one thing for sure. And that was that he and his siblings were special. That could be the only explanation for their near superhuman-like ability to assimilate certain skills. He knew for a fact that very few people in a Rank 4 system could afford genetic treatment or high quality, near undetectable, cyber implants. Therefore, he could conclude that they were not originally natives of this planet.
After a point, Simon gave up his search. There were too many dead ends, and he felt that knowing the truth didn't really offer any immediate gains. It was unnecessary. However, as he held the chip in his palms, Simon wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. So without any further hesitation, he slotted the chip into a port behind his ears.
He felt a familiar click as the chip fit snugly into the port. Then for a second, his eyesight blurred.
He blinked furiously for a few seconds until his view stabilised. Once it did, he saw a translucent screen before him. He reached out with his hand to grab it. But all he caught was air.
He heard a muffled laugh near him, "It's not real. It's all in your head. The information is being overlaid on top of the images captured by your eyes."
Simon asked inquisitively. "Does that mean that I don't have ocular cyber implants?"
"Yup. Believe it or not. You and every part of your body are organic. Well, that's not exactly a completely valid statement. There are some inorganic components here and there but they are near undetectable - through most scans."
Simon directed his thoughts towards the translucent screen causing it to become completely opaque. On it, he saw folders like a computer's storage drive. As he scanned through them, he took note of the names on the folders and the files within:
00_FOR SIMON.vrf
01_Research
__ Neural impulse conductive metal tests
__ Nerve-metal fusion process
__ Complete artificial spinal reconstruction
__ Cerebral programming - Neural software repository
02_Facility
__ Cerebral and spinal reconstructor
__ Nerve impulse conductive metal injector
__ Neural reprogramming machine
__ Artificial neural growth inducer
__ .Facility.enc [encrypted]
03_Test Subjects
__ Subject 1-135
__ Subject 136 - Simon
__ Subject 137 - Nathan
__ Subject 138 - Horace
__ Subject 139 - Karina
04_Images and Videos
__ Birthdays
__ Events
__ w/ Triplets
__ w/ Simon
__ Family
__ Misc.
05_Software Repository
__ Meka neural interfacer software patch
__ NetDive neural software patch
__ HUD [prototype]
__ Cyber implant software patch
__ AR/VR add-on
Rather than exploring the entire folder tree and its contents, Simon went straight to the point and willed open the first file on the list. Immediately, his sight blacked out.