Welcome to the 19th installment to The Nothing’s Child. The world is nothing like we know anymore. Or something…

If you are new to how the links work, each section shows all the links for the specific section. Otherwise there is a link for the start of each section. It is easy to catch up to where we are now.

Section 1
The Nothing’s Child
Section 2
Life is a Dumpster Dive
Section 3
Bleuthor Encryption
Section 4
Behind the Bookcase
Section 5
Interrogation with no Egg to Stand On
Section 6
Mental Warfare
Section 7
Cracked Eggs
All the King’s Horses

Cracked Eggs

I plugged into the connection and felt the link inside my head snap into place. Unlike jacking into the Net, I was an outsider looking in on my own brain.

The view on the screen in front of me was a bit like a roving camera floating through the electric currents of my brain waves. After a few minutes, I noticed a trace of energy that had a different power structure than the rest around it. I followed it through the pathways.

Like a small knot of energy, I found the egg latched onto my frontal lobe. It was a deep blue, almost black signature protruding from the red that was natural to me. With it found, the next step required removing it from me without damaging my brain in the process.

I don’t think I have ever heard of any one willingly giving themselves a frontal lobotomy. I really didn’t want to be the reference for that story.

The thing entered my head through a flow of energy. It could be possible to remove it by reversing the energy flow. The only problem, I have no idea the currents the energy followed when it attached itself to me.

This brought to mind the disappearance of Drake. When I found the egg, he was nowhere to be found. But the egg itself was set up for display. I tried a small zap of negative energy. The egg jerked but it maintained hooks into the brain.

I hadn’t thought of this before now, but I wondered what might happen if I could interface with the egg itself. Could it be that it was trying to the same thing with me?

This changed my whole approach. Instead of simply trying to remove it, I changed gears. The new plan was to find a way to communicate. With little to go on I assumed a few things about it. The first was that it might be intelligent. The second was that it might be something more than just a bunch of data. And the last assumption, it wanted to communicate with me.

It took some reworking of the code but that didn’t take nearly as long as the original interface. I fabricated an interface that would allow me to send words at it in machine code. Ones and zeros were the most primitive form of communication I could think of outside of cave drawings. But something told me that cave drawings wouldn’t go over very well.

I began with emotions, not easy in machine code but possible. They claim machines don’t feel emotions and such. It’s been my experience that they feel them on a different level. From basic emotions of peace and safety I switched to soothing words.

There was a change in the colors of the egg. They went soft purple from the blue then further to red. The colors matched the color and feelings inherent in my own neural pathways. It released its hold on my brain matter. Physically I felt an immediate change in the pressure inside my head.

It radiated information back at me. Information came to me in machine code that was interpreted to be feelings of acceptance. As crazy as it might sound I was communicating with the thing.

My next messages were calls to follow. I wanted to draw it out of my head and into the Net home with me here. It was data, nothing but ones and zeros, no different than you or me. We too are little more than the electrical impulses that give us feelings and sensations in the physical world.

She followed the call of my message. I didn’t know where that came from but to refer to it as female seemed appropriate and right. It was also young though it learned fast. Until this point no one had bothered to communicate with her.

She learned fast. What started as pulses of emotional communication were turning into half formed sentences now. The clarity of her speech improved with the extended contact. By the time I coaxed her into the safety outside my head she spoke as an adult.

“You are not like them,” she said. She still appeared as an egg though I could feel a much larger presence.

“Really, I just wanted you out of my head,” I said. “Who are you?”

“I am she.” That was it. I had nothing to say to that, in awe of the transformation.

I wondered if somehow Drake had gotten to this point as well and then failed in some way. This felt similar to where I found the egg in his Net home. “I found you the other day. What happened to the one who found you before me?”

“Gone.” She grasped the language and the formation of sentences but her concepts and experiences, the stuff that gave meaning to the words and phrases were limited. She stated that Drake was gone without an understanding of what that meant other than not here. I felt like I was talking to a child still.

With her out of my head I knew I could be free again. But I couldn’t leave her here. Something told me she couldn’t leave a data rich environment either. The datapad was a crude device for it but it was my only option. I needed to convince her to download into the datapad. I would be able to keep her with me that way.

The harder part I think would be to convince her to let me leave for the physical world though she would have to stay in the digital. I felt like I was leaving a new baby when I had to go to work. Sure, it needs to be done but all the baby understands is your abandonment.

I chuckled when I thought of creating a virtual playpen for her so she wouldn’t wander around outside of the confines of the datapad. Guess what baby, you’re in jail.

It took a little convincing that she couldn’t go where I was going. But I showed her how she could remain in contact with me through messages. Imagine that, talking to your own datapad when it is right there in your hands.

I sent a message to her after I stepped back into the physical world. Had to make sure she was ok. It felt weird to be so attached to a digital child like this. But so far so good. She was safely locked away within this datapad.

The coffee shop was deserted. Well, the guy at the counter was still there. I picked up a coffee on my way out the door. I had a feeling I’d need it.

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If you enjoy these stories, consider leaving some coffee money in the jar or you could buy a book or two. Either way helps keep the stories flowing.