Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 21 - Thought Patterns
~ Mars
He sat on a low bench in a featureless room, the walls were slate grey, perhaps two shades lighter than the floor. K-Rox glanced around, he noted there were no doors and windows, signifying he was in a virtual room.
He surveyed the other people in the room with him, about two dozen other tourists, K-Rox studied their faces as he waited for his memory to return. In particular he focused on the too-jovial man who appeared to be in charge, he had been speaking for what seemed like a few minutes now.
“…OK, so remember, unless you decant into a body in the real, you won’t have access to your empLInk, however your NPlant access codes were sent along with you, and you should be booting up presently; any questions?”
K-Rox did his best to ignore the excited chatter emanating from his fellow travellers, instead deciding to run some internal system checks. He closed his eyes and searched, the beginnings of a mild panic died almost as soon as it began, caused by the complete lack of response from his NPlants or any local net.
Where were those NPlant codes?
In fact, where was he?
He felt like his thoughts were being dragged through an invisible cotton wool fog. Spikes of information needled into his mind, slowly reminding him of his purpose.
He was on Mars . . .
At least his mind was, his body was lying in an immersion pod, in his apartment on the Central Pacific Island, on planet earth, around a quarter of a billion kilometres away.
K-Rox idly thought to himself that he would be able to get the exact figure once his NPlant codes were uploaded. He studied the other faces in the room, all of them looked very similar, the men could all have been brothers, and the women sisters. K-Rox realised this was because they were standard avatars, used to orientate QSID travellers to their new Mars environment.
In truth both your mindstate and neural implant codes were broadcast with barely a picosecond between them. However delaying the NPlant codes allowed time for travellers to discover all the differences when it came to operating on the MarsChain as opposed to the terrestrial Qblock.
“…OK, so that’s it! As your codes come through you can patch an open link to the main Mars net, and link up to the navigation helper whereby you can use your responder codes and travel to your various destinations. Remember if you are renting a body in the real, you will be transported to our second orientation room, for the rest of you, you’re free to go when you’re ready.”
K-Rox watched as one by one his fellow QSID explorers winked out of existence. He suddenly became aware of a request to connect to the local net, he accepted and was immediately greeted with an internal cacophony of voices and data streams.
His NPlant codes decanted themselves into his mind, filling all the empty crevices that had previously added to his feelings of disassociation. He sent out various pings to the MarsChain as the memory of his mission came flooding back through the open damn of his mind.
K-Rox did the mental equivalent of a stretch and a yawn, he sent the request codes that aZorl had supplied him. He felt his cognizance spreading onto the net, at last he felt human again, he took one last look at the remaining of his fellow passengers, as he felt his ping request being accepted he readied himself for his mission, at around forty microseconds before he was dude to teleport out, he remembered.
She called him K-bot
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 20 - Reality Dysfunction
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 19 - The Lost Scream
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 18 - The empLink Story
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 17 - A Problem With Time
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 16 - Neither Here Nor There
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 15 - At The Edge Of Madness
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 14 - A Sense Of The Real
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 13 - The Search For Truth
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by @nekromarinist
Original words by Cryptogee
I have to admit that the "K-Bot" uttered by Jemima in the last chapter somehow escaped me, so I returned to Chapter 20, and yes, she did say "K-Bot"! Even the more interesting that "at last he felt Human again".
The image by the way is genius☺
It has to be K-Rox, the facial expression is just like in Chapter 8 "Chasing phantoms", only that it is his robotized version "K-Bot".
I envisage this temporary loss of memory, or absence of thoughts quite exhilarating, at least for those few moments. It must feel like waking up after a long and refreshing nap, despite brief disorientation.
I stay tuned as to what he'll experience on Mars!
Thanks, I had fun making that :-)
Just to fill you in, the image is of Malcraft, and Isaac.Asimov.
I can understand why you missed that, because I introduced Malcraft in the first 5 chapters which I wrote last year.
I'm going to start collaborating with a new artist so should have some nice new images soon :-)
Cg