Felix thought he was dreaming at first. While he slept with his back to Catalina’s, both of them resting on the padded duffel bag and in their jackets, he heard a faint humming that pierced his dreams. One second, he sat astride a two-headed bear with Jasper walking next to him, the curvature of a massive ring installation falling upwards at the horizon. The next, the faint, melodic humming interrupted, causing him to realize that everything was not as it seemed. Suddenly, the deep, warped voice spoke again, though it seemed to be coming from a moving location, coinciding with the lowering and increasing pitch and volume of the mysterious hum.
“Subject discovered. Same subject from medical references. To be labeled Subject One until further notice. Device installation was successful, regeneration increasing at a rapid pace. Spinal cord reconstruction ahead of schedule, as well as neurological enhancement. Male. Heart rate: eighty three hundredths of a local Hertz. Currently unconscious.” The humming became louder, and increased pitch for a moment, as if moving towards Felix. By this time, Felix’s bizarre dream ended, and he lay there half awake as he listened to the voice, his eyelids closed. “Subject Two discovered. Does not have the device. Same species. Female. Appears to be in early adulthood, past juvenile state of development. Body temperature slightly below normal. Heart rate: seventy nine hundredths of a local Hertz. Currently unconscious.” The humming grew even louder, and Felix continued to lie there, hoping that it would simply pass over him. “Subject Three discovered. Of similar age and developmental stage as Subjects One and Two. Male. Appears to require artificially corrected vision. Correction to log: Subject Three has prior entry history, dated October nineteenth prior to current log entry, native species calendar. Heart rate: one and a quarter local Hertz. Currently Conscious. Must attempt direct contact.”
Fuck my life. Was the only thing Felix could manage to think before a bright light shone directly in his face, lighting up the pulsing blood vessels in his eyelids. Slowly, Felix crawled away from Catalina, who hardly stirred. He then slowly stood up, and opened his eyes. He was instantly blinded, and groaned from it as he shielded his eyes and put on his glasses. “Turn off the light! I’m not blind, you fool!”
The light dissipated, although it took a while for Felix’s eyes to begin to adjust. While still unable to properly see anything except a few blurs, the voice spoke up again. “Log note: human vision impairment appears to not be light sensitivity based, rather focus based.”
“Will you stop narrating your notes? I’m not a zoo animal dammit.” His eyes finally adjusted, and his jaw slacked in surprise. The voice came from a floating orb-shaped device, about two feet in diameter. Several slots lined the southern hemisphere, and placed along the upper center of its face were eight symmetrical eyes, placed at various widths apart from one another. The rear section of the orb sported a pair of rather organic-looking fins which rotated around at various angles, seemingly indicative of various emotions, like the ears of a dog.
“So be it. My apologies if I offended. First things first, for the log entries, what are your names? Starting with Subject One.”
“That one over there on the table,” Felix started, “Is Jasper. He’s my best friend. We brought him here because a car crash paralyzed him a couple months ago, and he’s been down the bad side of a psychological rollercoaster since. I thought the Ouroboros would heal him, and it did.” He then pointed at Catalina, still asleep on the floor. “Her name is Catalina, or Cat for short. She’s one of his oldest friends, and another one of mine as well. She helped me bring him here.” Felix then looked back at the orb, still baffled and unable to understand how it managed to float. “And my name is Felix. I found this place, and the Ouroboros.”
“Records show that you took a modified weapon as well. Elaborate your purpose.”
“I was originally planning to steal an antique human weapon, then I found this place. I had a target.”
The orb’s fins shifted to the side. “If you intended on taking down a target, then why not steal one of the much more powerful particle cannons? The weapon you took was my associate’s pet project, an attempt at understanding your primitive human weapons.”
“I couldn’t figure out how to use one of those in time for what I needed. The rifle is familiar, and I understand it. Can we please move on?”
“As you wish.” The orb floated over to Jasper, and seemed to use a grid of blue laser lights to examine the whole back and the device now affixed to it. “Interesting… another question. What was it that you called this device?”
“The Ouroboros. That lit symbol on the upper-central module, the snake looping around to eat its own tail, that’s what it is called.”
“Strange. My associate made that device. It’s not one of our concepts, so he probably saw it somewhere. Where? I have no idea. He must have thought it aesthetically pleasing. Waste of lights, if you ask me. Nonetheless, I think he built a status indicator into all the lights on the device, so it serves some purpose. Ouroboros… catchy. Easy to remember. Log update: native-compatible device coded one-zero-one now renamed to ‘Ouroboros’.” The orb then looked at Felix once more. “That central node that the symbol lies on is the organic overclocker.”
Catalina’s weary voice came from behind Felix. “Organic ove-what…?” She rubbed her eyes and suddenly froze at the sight of the orb. “What the Hell is that thing?”
Felix shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not quite sure yet. It hasn’t tried to blast me to bits, though, so I’m thinking it’s friendly.”
“Killing natives would hardly be beneficial to our research.”
Catalina spoke up. “Whoah, our? Where’s the rest of you?”
“My associate is currently unavailable. He is in a deep resting state. Your kind would call it hibernation. Its psychological effects are much more similar to meditation. Nonetheless, I am the one here now. It was decided that upon the inevitable discovery of the laboratory, I should be the one to make first contact. My associate’s physiology is… different… from yours. You would call him a monster, just as you called those biological experiments on the security platform monsters.”
“I’m going to get back to that in two seconds, but what I want to know is what this ‘organic overclocker’ does.”
The orb remained silent for a moment, and turned to the console at the wall. “It would be best to show you.” Two of the orb’s slots slid back, and three-fingered arms extended to interface with a special holographic panel above the console, and after a flurry of lightning-fast movements, the screen on the console changed to show a diagram of Jasper’s central nervous system. The orb retracted its arms and turned to Felix.
Felix put his palm to his face and looked at the thing. “Why didn’t you just compute your way through it? Seems unnecessary to whip out some arms and show off when it would be easier to link with it wirelessly.”
The orb’s fins twitched. “Believe me when I say I wish it were so. However, the consoles along this wall are blocked from my access. They must be interfaced with kinetically, as my associate wanted a more personal touch to it. It’s unbearably slow. Moving on, look at the diagram of Subj- I mean Jasper’s nervous system. Human nerve cells operate on a scale of millivolts, to use your units. The Ouroboros, as you named it, logarithmically scales these signals to a scale of centivolts.”
Catalina stopped it. “Wait, so clearly neither you nor your absent friend are human. Then what are you?”
The orb’s fins perked up, and it bobbed backwards a bit. “Oh my, I seem to have forgotten my manners. I am The Pioneer. I am the sole sentient-functioning quantum artificial intelligence on this scientific survey. You will be dealing with me for a while.”
Felix held a hand up. “A while? We plan on leaving as soon as possible. As soon as Jasper is able to be moved.”
“That may prove complicated, Felix. Look at the diagram, if you would please.” As the others turned their head, Pioneer continued to speak. “You see here the enhanced readings. As previously stated, his nervous system is now pushing through a logarithmically higher amount of energy. That means all sensory and nervous command signals will be amplified to an extraordinary degree. His involuntary signals, such as breathing and heartbeat, were instantly recalibrated for safety purposes. However, all sensory and voluntary signals cannot be calibrated unless he is conscious.”
“So when he wakes up, his life is going to suck.” Felix stated.
Pioneer’s glowing eyes dimmed for a split second, almost like blinking. “For a short time, yes. The Ouroboros can automatically recalibrate, but may not be fast enough to prevent him from going into shock and suffering from cardiac arrest. I must manually recalibrate the device. But you two must keep him restrained. I will wake him in sixty seconds, remove the bindings.”
“You’re doing this now!?” Catalina protested.
“Do you want to see your friend walk again or not?” When no reply came, Pioneer hovered over to the opposite side of the medical bed. “Forty seconds.”
With no time to waste, Felix undid the restraints and sat Jasper upright with his legs hanging over the edge, Catalina on the other side assisting. Pioneer did another laser-grid scan, and several lights flashed. The lights on the Ouroboros went from the dim bluish-white of the dormant state to a vibrant green instantaneously, and Jasper gasped for air as he woke up and his eyes shot open. He babbled incoherently for a moment, shaking, shying away from all sensations of touch. He finally managed to speak clearly after a few seconds. “It’s blinding! I can’t see, it’s too bright! What’s happening to me? Everything I touch feels like a crushing plate of needles! Aaaaggghhh!”
Catalina held either side of his head and looked directly into his eyes. “Jazz, I’m right here! Look directly forward and calm down! Just focus on me, focus on my voice!” Jasper continued mumbling about the pain, but looked directly at her, although he could not see. The Ouroboros’ main indicator, the serpent, began to dim and brighten slowly, like deep breaths. Pioneer hovered around a bit, doing more scans and appearing to make adjustments shown by changes in the lights on his eyes. Another couple moments later, Jasper blinked his eyes very slowly, and eventually held his hand to Catalina’s, which still rested against his cheek. Catalina spoke softly. “There. Is that better?”
Jasper took a deep breath, and looked all around himself, taking in everything as if it were new. “They always said I had twenty-twenty vision. But now I see that the human eye is capable of so much more.” He looked at Catalina directly. “My God, your eyes…” He leaned in, his face inches from hers. “You look like a wild spirit fallen from the heavens.”
Pioneer knew exactly how to interrupt the situation. “Well, it seems that the optical nerves have been calibrated perfectly.”
Jasper then snapped his head and arm around so fast that he practically threw himself from the bed, and tumbled to the floor. “What did you do to me!?” He shouted.
Pioneer hovered over next to Jasper and spoke directly to him. “Jasper. That is your name, yes? The Ouroboros has been successfully and permanently integrated into your physiology. However, it amplifies all electrical signals going through your body, and has changed the very geometric structure of your entire nervous system. Anything you do will be exaggerated. The amount of effort that it would have taken to lift your arm now could lift very heavy weights. What once would have been turning around will now send you spinning in circles. You must conduct all your movements gently, and learn to be slow and methodical to compensate. I am currently running four different calibration runtimes in order to reduce the extreme ends of the system’s sensitivity, but you will still need to learn to do things differently.”
Jasper then seemed to lift himself up on his arms, light as a feather, and sat up against the table. “You’re The Pioneer, research and scout purposed artificial intelligence generation four mark two. You and the Creators, as you call them, originate from a nearby region of space that would be labeled by us as Arcturus Prime. You and The Architect are both from there. The Architect is the associate you mentioned.”
Felix did a double-take and looked at Jasper incredulously. “How could you know all that? He never even told us a quarter of that information!”
Jasper was still for a moment, and looked over to Felix. “This… thing… that you attached to my body. It accesses my brain through the stem. There was some basic information about it that was just… I’d like to say implanted into my head. And everything is processing faster now. I’m remembering things that I’d forgotten from class. I remember every physics equation and AP Chemistry rule. I finally understand concepts from calculus that completely eluded me before. I’m seeing connections that I never could have even believed were possible before, much less stumbled upon.”
“Ah, yes. The organic overclocker is definitely working on the cognitive functions. Just need to set boundaries on how much processing it advances so that way emotions aren’t impeded. You know, to prevent a soulless super genius from forming and destroying the world with a single thought.” Pioneer said the whole thing casually, as if the fact that alien technology wasn’t totally messing around inside Jasper’s skull right then and there. Felix shook his head, and Jasper chuckled a bit. Pioneer bobbed around a bit, and then floated at about eye level. “Now, to finish the calibrations, I’m going to need you to try and walk.”
Catalina stepped in between the orb and Jasper. “Jazz has been stuck in a wheelchair for over two months. He was paralyzed! Even if his spinal cord is repaired, the atrophy that his muscles have gone through would keep him from walking.”
Jasper reached his hand up to her. “Cat, that’s why you help me up, and you find a way to fabricate some crutches. Besides, I was always very physically active. I can’t have atrophied that much in two months.”
Pioneer did a couple more scans. “I’m going to go through the medical files and find some arm-crutch schematics. I’ll modify them to fit your physiology, and have them printed in a few minutes. But for now, get back on the table, and use your feet.” The orb flew off into a tunnel set up in the wall, and vanished without another word.
Catalina lowered her hand, and Jasper batted it away. He used his arms to lift up his torso, and raised his hips, shuffling around until he got his legs under himself to where he squatted. Jasper took a couple deep breaths, and started to push his legs. He laughed and smiled at first through the struggle. “Guys, I can feel my legs working! My muscles are moving! I never thought I’d—!” And then he fell backward flat on his rear end to the floor. Still determined, he tried again, and made it further, standing halfway up with sweat beading his forehead. But he fell back again with a grunt of pain as his shoulder hit the ground first. “I’ve got this!” He tried a third time, and failed a third time, swearing under his breath. He tried and failed once more, only becoming angrier at his own inability to stand up without assistance. He practically screamed with rage after his fifth failed attempt, and Felix stepped around the medical table. Without offering any chance for Jasper to protest, he put his shoulder under Jasper’s right arm, and stood up, bringing his friend with him. Jasper took deep breaths, and looked over at Felix. “We did it.”
Felix couldn’t admit victory quite then, however. “Not yet. We still need to take about four small steps to the bed. Then we’ll have done it. You step when I step, walk with me. You ready?”
“Let’s go!” Jasper took one step with Felix, inhaling sharply. When Felix looked at him hesitantly, he growled. “We finish this, or you may as well rip the Ouroboros out of my body.” Another step, and this time Jasper made not a sound. The next two steps, to Felix’s amazement, went fluidly, and Jasper sat himself on the surgical bed as if it were no big deal. “Now to wait on Pioneer and his 3-D printer.”
“Actually, there will be no need to wait. I’m right here.” Pioneer floated up right behind them, and in outstretched robotic arms held two very strange-looking crutches. “These may look quite exotic to your fellow humans, so you’ll have to come up with some sort of excuse. Also, try to not take your shirt off in front of anyone you don’t trust with your life. If anyone were to discover the Ouroboros on your back, it would jeopardize your safety. Some of your fellow humans will want to tear you apart as a freak, others will want to tear you apart in the name of science. I’ll make this very clear. If the Ouroboros becomes separated from your body for any reason, you will die. Very painfully. Not very quickly.”
“Thank you, Pioneer. Both for helping calibrate Jasper’s new enhancements, and for not blasting us to ash with particle weapons.”
“You’re very welcome on both counts, all of you. Now, you will probably want to be going home. We don’t want your fellow natives gathering a search party.”
Felix looked over to Pioneer. “Is there any other way out of here than the blast door to the military base tunnel? Jasper isn’t strong enough to make that walk right now.”
Pioneer tilted back, as full of himself as an artificial construct could be, and slowly started to fly towards the left-hand side of the bunker. “I already moved your rollers. If you would follow me to the elevator…”
Jasper smiled as he rode in the shotgun seat, crutches in his hands. He looked over to Felix, excited. “That was exciting. I can’t believe that I’ll be able to walk again. Thank you so much, Felix.”
“I’m still worried.”
“Why? My spine has been repaired, and I no longer want to put a bullet through my head. Furthermore, I might actually get an A in Calculus. What is there to be so damned sour about?”
Felix snorted in frustration. “We discovered a bunker filled with alien computers, biological abominations, enough chemicals to make a DuPont R&D lab jealous, and weapons that could end the goddamn world. And furthermore, we met the alien’s fully sentient and emotion-capable artificial intelligence, which can scan every facet of our physiology remotely. And we don’t even know what this Architect looks like, much less how intelligent he is. Better yet, we don’t even know what their mission on Earth is, or how the Hell they got here without breaking physics! Doesn’t that make you the slightest bit concerned?”
“Look, they didn’t kill us. The device the Architect made has allowed me the use of my legs again, man! Don’t you get it!? They aren’t the enemy, Felix.”
“Then why do they have enough weaponry to storm NORAD!?”
“Even the USS Enterprise was armed to the teeth for when violence was unavoidable.”
“This isn’t a sci-fi space opera, Jazz! This is real! We just made contact with an alien species!”
“If only you could see the world the way I do, Felix. You would be euphoric. But that’s because you’re already the smartest, happiest man I know. For me, it’s a second chance at life. I owe this to you, but I also owe it to The Pioneer and The Architect. I’m going to live my life to the best I can. No, better. Please, don’t ruin this with your depressing caution. Now, let’s go give my mother the shock of a lifetime.” He then opened the door, and swung his legs out onto the truck’s step, leaning on his crutches, which he placed to the outside of either foot. Felix turned off the truck, and stepped out into the snow. Jasper waited for Felix to go around the front of the truck and meet him on the sidewalk. With Felix holding up his armpits, Jasper slowly got his feet on the ground and his crutches firmly planted in the snow. Felix held onto Jasper firmly as he closed the door, and slowly walked him up the sidewalk through the flurries and the ice. Jasper stumbled a little a few times, but Felix refused to let him fall. After a few minutes, Felix finally rang the doorbell.
Mrs. Fischer opened the door, and didn’t even say a word. She clasped both hands to her mouth as she saw Jasper standing there. She gasped, tears beginning to stream from her eyes. She looked back into the house, and shouted. “Hansel! Come here now!” She took Jasper into her arms and helped him to the couch in the living room.
Jasper’s eyes were streaming tears as well, about the only time that Felix had ever seen him cry. “Mom… hot chocolate sounds really good about now.”
ravenmountain 