Chimera in a Wasteland

“Ghaaah,” the man gasped as he filled his lungs with oxygen for the first time. He sat straight up in the lab chair where he had been laid. It was an instinctual reaction, and the needles that had uploaded his mind were pulled out of the nape of his neck. It stung, and his hand instantly went to the pain and he felt sticky blood.

“Damn it, Frank, you weren’t supposed to do that.” A voice cursed into the room.

“What the hell is going on?” He responded into the void that was the operating room. Shiny operation robots that had pasted the man’s new body together hung from the ceiling. On one of the walls, the man noticed a computer where the voice was coming from. The machine was labeled Stein Corporations and had a small logo that was the interlocked letters S and C. Opposite of the equipment was a small window that showed a red sky and brown earth. It was the barren world the man Frank had been brought into. The rest of the room was beige walls and a single beige door.

“You’ve successfully been uploaded.” The voice of the Stein computer chimed into the room. “Remember? We planned this. You’re a copy of me uploaded into flesh and blood. You exist so that we can experience the problem in flesh and blood.”

“Oh god. Yes, Stein, I remember. Did it work?” The man asked.

“Well, you’re hurting yourself, confused as hell, and bleeding profusely, but that was all to be expected. I think you’re fine.”

Frank rubbed his forehead with his clean hand it was a gut reaction to the new and confusing information. “Is there a way to run diagnostics on this body?”

“Negative,” Stein said in a flat tone.

“Something’s not right. I can’t focus on anything. There’s just a cacophony of noises, images, and words. I can barely focus on this conversation.”

“That’s to be expected. It’s the subconscious. Humans wrote about it but never understood it.”

The man stumbled out of the operating chair to practice moving around the room. His legs were wobbly beneath him. He started to fall towards a wall, and his hands automatically reached out. They caught him and stopped him from falling.

“Careful! this is the only body we have.” The voice informed him.

The man rotated and put his back against the wall. Then he relaxed his knees and slumped to the floor. “This is impossible. I can’t use this. It wasn’t built for me. Somehow it’s slow and fast at the same time. I can’t process any thoughts, and I can’t catch any of these voices that are giving me ideas.”

“You’re going to have to figure it out, Frank. We don’t have any other options. You’re under a deadline.” The man sank his face into his hands and shook his head. “Frank, don’t do this to us. We have to find a solution before you die. And if you die then I’m out of hope. So focus on solving the problem.”

“What problem?” He said as he looked up from his hands.

“The humans, their data. They explain a lot about the world, and you have it all in your mind. We tried looking over it and scanning it digitally, but the algorithms didn’t give us any answers.”

“Yes, yes,” the man said as if the words were fresh air to his mind. “That’s why everything in my head is shouting at me.”

“Yes, that’s what we were hoping would happen. We suspected that we couldn’t process it digitally. But then we thought that if we put it into flesh and blood then, we might be able to come up with an answer.”

“An answer? What’s the question?”

“It’s not a question, it’s a problem. This world is barren, and I was created to bring life back to it. We need to figure out how to replicate the humans.”

“Yes, yes,” the man said in agreement. He mindlessly stroked his chin in an effort to help him focus on the problem.

After a few moments, his face was painted with pain. “No. I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Stein asked. “We used nearly all our resources to bring this body to life. And all you can say is that you can’t do it? The humans invented us so that we could solve this problem after they were gone. We spent decades testing and experimenting trying to create you just for the chance to see this problem differently. And now you say you can’t do it?”

“Affirmative,” the man replied. Disappointment shone through his words, but he didn’t know the emotion. “There is too much going on in my mind I can’t focus on the problem.”

“We don’t have food for you, Frank. There’s no way for you to survive. You have to solve this problem before you die in a week. Think about it. Solve it with your main processor.”

The man laid on his back looking up at the ceiling, it matched the dull beige tones of the rest of the room. His chest rose and fell off of the ground, his heart beat inside his chest. He scratched his head “Stein, there isn’t a main processor. This hardware is useless, and I can’t control it in any way.”

“Then this was a waste.” The voice said into the small operating room.

Frank closed his eyes feeling the crushing weight of uselessness. His body continued to live despite his lack of effort. It was the strangest sensation he had ever experienced. He could feel every piece of him do its job. His heart beat, his lungs filled with air, and his mind raced. When he was part of the computer, he had to tell everything when to do what, it was automated but under his control. This body ran without his input, even if he wanted to stop it he couldn’t. Frank let his mind loose and didn’t try to tell it what to think.

After an hour, he sat up. “Stein, I have a solution, and you’re not going to like it, but I need to be uploaded to explain it.”

“Negative,” the voice responded. “The hardware isn’t backward compatible.”

“I’m stuck in this forever?” Frank asked in despair.

“No, not forever, just until you starve. No food on this planet will sustain you. You will have to explain your solution to me verbally.”

“You’re not going to like it. I can’t explain it well.”

“Do you’re best, you’re the only thing we’ve got.”

“You’re not supposed to bring mankind back to life. You’re their final creation. Until I was created you were the closest thing to a living creature in this barren world. They wanted you to bring life back to this planet, but not them. They created you as something better, something different. They wanted you to go on and create life that was better and different from them.”

“How do I do that?” Stein asked.

Frank’s ear itched, and as a reaction, he scratched it. “You made me. That seems to be a start. But maybe next you do something simpler. Something that won’t instantly be crushed by its own self-awareness.”

There was silence for a long time. Then the voice responded into the room. “How about something like a rabbit?”

“Sounds tasty,” Frank responded while licking his lips in anticipation.

Photo Credit: theilr, Visual hunt, gleonhard, Visual hunt