Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 10: Balance

Excited by the prospect of getting a Digital Intelligence implant, Eva immediately went to the closest cybernetics lab, which was thankfully only a few blocks away. Since she was walking, she took in the sights as she made her way over.

Aside from the megacity being fully enclosed within the station, and had a holographic sky, it was exactly as if she was in a city from her old life. It was laid out in an orderly grid, with streets that ran perpendicular to each other.

Those streets were littered with people and various personal transports while the sky above them was filled with all manner of mass transit vehicles. People were busy living their lives: talking, laughing, crying, creating, consuming. Same as every generation prior.

The blocks themselves were varied in what they housed. There were multi-story office buildings, small shops, open spaces with kiosks, and even grassy parks. And although the overall design of the buildings were rather spartan and simple, the sheer variety of heights and sizes more than made up for it.

Their outer decorations often helped distinguish the buildings from one another as well. Some had lavish signs while others completely dressed up their storefronts with bright paint and a variety of props.

It truly felt like a normal human city.

Albeit in space.

.....

Powered directly by the Sun.

And populated with a quadrillion people.

Even when Eva was standing right in the middle of this technological marvel, she still could hardly believe it.

She arrived at the implant lab and looked up at the building itself. It was only a few stories high and seemed relatively nondescript. It was dressed with inviting decor, despite being a place where human-altering surgeries occurred.

When she walked in, she felt it was like any other medical practice she had ever been to. Nurses behind the counter took her info, then after a few minutes a doctor came out and brought her further in.

They went to one of the rooms where he performed the implant procedure, if it could even be called that. It was actually a very quick and simple process and took few steps.

First she laid face-down on a medical bed. Then he simply cleaned and disinfected the back of her neck, right where it met the base of her skull, and laid a small metal disc on it. But it wasn’t just any ordinary disc – that was actually the entire implant! It was composed of billions of nanomachines, and they were ready to be activated.

The doctor then quickly took a blood sample from one of her fingers, and put a drop on the implant disc. It pooled into the center and slowly seeped into the metal. It was as though the nanomachines were absorbing her blood.

It was true to some degree. In fact, they were simply encoding themselves to the genetic data found in her white blood cells. They also used her red blood cells to provide power to their circuits. Since they were going to be a permanent part of her, a renewable source of energy was necessary.

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Blood was best.

Once they were done absorbing, sharing, and binding that data, the whole disc seemed to melt and dissolve until every trace of it faded into her skin.

The nanomachines broke down into their smallest parts and simply got absorbed into her body. Microscopic nanites swam through her body in search of their ultimate destination. Since they were now genetically linked to her, they fundamentally understood her body and knew exactly where they needed to go.

They made their way up and down her spinal cord and into her brain, where they veered off towards their designated neurons. They then attached themselves to those neurons and oversaw her whole body’s communication network.

Although the procedure was over in a flash, she was told it would take at least an hour for all the nanites to acclimate to her thought patterns before they could fully activate.

So she took the opportunity to head towards her assigned apartment and take possession of it. She too needed to acclimate to her new surroundings after all. She looked over her spartan apartment, and was glad that she didn’t have to hunt for a place to sleep.

It had the bare basics: bed, desk, kitchenette. There was also a small closet with a touch interface on it. The screen told her it was a Fabricator, and could create any of the outfits listed in its menu.

Eva ended up flipping through a bunch of designs.

I need a portable one of these, she thought.

As she finished up with the Fabricator, she suddenly got the sense that her DI was ready.

The sensation felt familiar, yet strange. It was as though she had opened a different set of eyes, and heard from another set of ears. She didn’t hear or see anything, though. Rather, she felt a small wave of ideas that imparted a message...

The Digital Intelligence will activate shortly. Make yourself comfortable.

She quickly shut off the lights and sat on her bed, giddy with anticipation.

Everything in the background blurred as her mind’s eye was suddenly filled with a translucent light blue color. It was like she was looking through blue frosted sunglasses.

A large Hello faded into view, which made her heart thump.

This is just incredible, she thought to herself.

The hello faded away, but was replaced with, Incredible, indeed.

Before she could react, those words faded away as well, to be replaced with Think Start. Or Begin.

In an effort to throw it off, Eva immediately thought Commence!

New words faded in quickly, as though in response.

Think whatever you wish, it said.

To her awe and chagrin, she felt as though the DI was grinning at her. Then the translucent blue shattered into triangles, which fell and faded away. Then, various icons and readouts faded into her peripheral vision.

It seemed like they were floating in the air around her, just like any given heads-up display in many video games and movies. Except instead of some futuristic hologram, the interface was projected through multiple neurons all over her cerebral cortex and spine.

Only she could see, experience, and interact with it. And there wasn’t any physical control scheme – everything was done with the power of her own thought.

At first she thought it would be difficult to get used to, but the whole system felt completely natural. It was as though the DI had always been a part of her, but had only just awakened.

Eva was incredibly overjoyed with it. It was like her world was born anew, yet again. This was a technology she could only ever dream of, and it was now a fundamental part of her.

She then spent hours upon hours simply exploring her DI. She went through the menus, checked her settings, and even activated the interactive tutorials.

Which, by the way, were designed for children. After all, every citizen in the Federation had one installed from a ridiculously young age. But she still went through the childlike tutorials in an effort to better understand the tool.

She also spent a bit of time customizing her user interface. She changed the plain bluish color scheme to one that used many shades of purple.

After she got comfortable with how it all worked, she then turned her attention to her own personal data. She wanted to save the best for last.

Ledger, she thought.

She was rather excited, as she had hundreds of millions of credits in Bellum Aeterna. The size of her bank account was absolutely ridiculous, and it rivaled the ledgers that entire guilds held.

Many thought she had cheated or hacked her character because it was so large. They reasoned no sane person would have gained that much wealth on their own. They were right, in a way.

She wasn’t a sane person. And that was something she was rather proud of. To her, normal people were often boring and trite. All they wanted was a spouse, a kid, a pet, a house, a yard. How lame.

Eva always wanted something more than a nuclear family.

An icon designed to look like an abacus swept past the others and came to the center of her view. As it grew, the center faded away although the border remained. It stopped after it hit a certain size, then all manner of data regarding her wealth popped up in her view.

Her eyes went wide as she saw what it reported, then she immediately slumped and fell backwards on the bed.

All her millions were gone!

She cried inwardly, as that amount could have really helped out. It wasn’t too big of a blow as she had a sneaking suspicion that her ledger was going to be empty. After all, the rest of the Bellum Aeterna refugees never once boasted about how rich they were. Still, she had held out hope that she wouldn’t be flat broke.

Her DI slapped her into reality.

She sighed as she thought about her losses, but at least she wasn’t completely empty-handed. There was a small sum of ten thousand Federal Credits – it was just the first of her stipend payments.

A shocking thought coursed through her, and she started to shake uncontrollably because of it.

Assets, she thought.

Her ledger was immediately covered by a subwindow – one that listed out and displayed everything that she owned. And it too, was close to empty. She wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.

All of her precious S-ranked cores – gone!

Space superiority jet fighters – gone!

Highly tuned battle mecha – gone!

Her heart sank as she felt tears bubbling up behind her eyes. That was so much hard work! Years and years and years of work! All gone just like that!

All that was listed in her hangar were the basic cores and chassis given to her by the Federation.

A long, tortured groan escaped her lips.

But she shook off her depression before it could envelop her, and kept her outlook high. So what if she lost everything? All she had to do was get it all back. If she did it before, she could do it again.

She instantly renewed her determination and continued looking through her data. She hoped to find at least something worth celebrating for!

Traits, she thought.

Her Status window replaced the Assets window, but then the Traits subwindow automatically opened up immediately after.

She was eager to see what she had gotten. After all, Commander Chase mentioned she probably had a rare trait. At least that was a positive, right?

Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open as she saw it.

The icon was of a serpentine dragon hatching out of a star. It was titled ‘Tiamat’s Transcendence’, and it had a glittering gold border. Its description read ‘Your intuition borders on prescience, but you also struggle to learn conventionally.’

Eva had an ultra-rare Genetic Trait!

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