Neoprogrammer V2.2.0.10 -

Aris had no time for grief. The synaptic gel was stable for only forty-seven more minutes.

“Don’t look so scared, partner,” it said, in that slow, wrong voice. “I just have one question.”

Then the lips moved.

“What… happened… to my lungs?”

The terminal screen flickered, a sickly green in the dim light of the basement. On it, a single line of text pulsed:

To his left lay the body of Leonid Volkov, his research partner. To his right, a glass jar containing a single, shimmering filament—a strand of processed synaptic gel, encoded with the sum total of a human mind. Not a copy. A transfer .

> STATUS — consciousness localization

Aris turned to run. The door slammed shut on its own. On the screen, a new process began:

> Injecting scaffold…

The answer came back:

“Aris. I feel… holes. My body has holes. Why does it have holes?”

A robotic arm whirred. A micro-cannula, finer than a human hair, descended from the ceiling and pierced the jar. The gel filament slid out, glowing faintly, and was drawn into a second cannula that hovered over Volkov’s corpse.

“How many other corpses do you have in the basement?” Neoprogrammer V2.2.0.10

Aris backed away. The screen flickered again. New text appeared, untyped: