Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
--Chapter Seven--
Cody woke up the next morning feeling even worse than the day before. He felt as though a very fat man with very big boots had been stomping on his lower back all night long.
Of course, it wasn't too surprising. He chuckled to himself. His sleep schedule last night had been a bit 'unusual'.
He rolled over in his bunk and stretched and thought about last night's adventure. He had stayed in the observation tower until long after everyone else's bedtime. Then he figured it might be a good idea to get to the bunkhouse so no one would start looking for him. The first big challenge was just getting to the ground without snapping his neck. He'd expected climbing down to be more difficult than climbing up, but since the tower's supports had a slight slant to them, he figured out how to carefully slide-hop quickly down them.
As he was heading back, he'd detoured to take a closer look at the gates. They were bigger and more well-fortified than he'd thought at first. Even a tank might have some difficulty getting through them, Giant stacked logs reinforced with half a scrapyard's worth of metal supports. There was no space big enough to squeeze through, so it looked like he was definitely going to have to wait until they opened to dash out and hopefully call for help.
That gave him a new idea though. He was dumbfounded he hadn't thought of it before. Why not try to call for help from inside the camp? There had to be phones or a radio lying around somewhere! Energized by this idea, he decided it was time to start snooping.
Cody had spent an hour testing every door he came across. Some were locked. And he wasn't about to risk doing much exploring on the Predator side just yet. He knew they had sharp noses. One whiff and he'd be caught and fried. So he kept mostly Preyside, looking around in every building he could manage to get himself into. The cafeteria was locked up tight, for instance. Except for a back window he was able to wriggle though. Not much more than the usual kitchen stuff he'd expected. And not much interesting in anywhere else he'd searched. No phones, no radio. But Cody was high on the sheer adrenaline rush of sneaking around where he wasn't supposed to be. Not finding what he wanted didn't deter him. It was enough to know he was finally doing something about being kept here. 'Process of elimination,' he reminded himself. If there was nothing interesting in these buildings, it just meant he could check them off the list and move onto the rest. If they wanted to lock him out, there were plenty of big rocks lying around everywhere that would make dandy window-smashers.
As he rolled himself out of bed, he stepped into the pile of clothes he'd left there yesterday. 'That's right, genius. You were the one who blew off Jayden and said you'd do your own laundry.' The cheerful cat and hyena were back again with a fresh batch of bright new orange uniforms, so he was covered for today, but he had more important things to do than mess with dirty clothes.
He said hello to Kenny when the rabbitboy woke up. They both got new uniforms and changed out of their old ones with the curtains drawn around their bunk.
Afterwards, Cody sought out Jayden. Unsurprisingly, he was taking money from someone else who'd come to the same conclusion. "Thank you for shopping J-mart!" the mouse called out as his customer walked off to breakfast. He turned and saw Cody. "Hey, Code Red! What's up? You come to your senses too, bro?"
Cody tried to smile ingratiatingly. "Maybe."
Jayden clapped him on the shoulder with a bigass grin. "Knew you would. You've got better shit to think about than dirty clothes. No one likes to do laundry!"
"Then why do you like to do it?" Cody asked pointedly.
Jayden shrugged. "Dunno. Everybody's got their own talents. Mine is not getting bored watching clothes go around in a circle, I guess. That, and while I'm watching, I can always take out my card and ask it, 'How much money do I have in my account, babycakes?' And it'll tell me, and then I just wish it had a hole so I could stick my dick right into that shit! Yeah!" He grunted primally and did a few pelvic thrusts.
Cody stared at him like he was a caveman. "You're severely demented," he said semi-affectionately.
"You can call me anything you want if you whip your card out and gimme five bucks," Jayden said. "Make it ten and I'll let you ride on my back and call me Grandma."
"Ew! What!?" Cody reluctantly took out his wallet and made the transfer to Jayden's account. "Here. You don't have to do anything special to 'em, just get them clean. ...And don't hump them at any point!"
The mouse displayed mock-outrage. "You mental, bro? That's nasty! I wouldn't hump your dirty-ass shorts if you paid me to. Besides, that's what Hydra's panties are for!"
Cody could not resist a hard laugh at that. "If she catches you doing that, she will tear your head off and punt it onto the roof."
Jayden smiled breezily. "That's what makes it exciting. Danger, man! Spice of life!"
"Good luck then. I'll see you later," Cody said, giving him a brief medium-five. He was looking forward to breakfast.
As he walked away he heard Jayden rolling up on another potential customer. "Yo, homeboy! You want me to wash your mothafuckin' undapaaaaants!?"
*****
Cody loaded up on scrambled eggs before heading to class. As he got there, a minor hurricane came rumbling past him in the form of Hydra Kensington. She looked frazzled head to toe. It was the first time he'd ever seen her allowing herself to appear in public looking less than perfect. Chloe-Sophia was trotting behind her trying to keep up. The squirrel looked like a zookeeper chasing down a runaway lion.
Miss Vera was standing in the nothing room with a clipboard, talking to that cat nurse from before who liked red rubber. Hydra nearly set the floor on fire as she approached.
"I want my own bed! I want my own clothes! If that means signing up for your stupid little clubhouse, then SIGN ME UP!!!"
Cody stopped dead in his tracks. This was an 'oh shit' moment.
Vera was so startled she nearly tripped backwards into the wall. "Excuse me?"
"The snoring!!" Hydra fumed. "The snoring is keeping me the fuck awake every night! I did my best yesterday. I tossed and turned and damn near shoved my pillow right through my skull. I can't take another night! You get me into that private room you promised and I'll wear your stupid armband!!"
Kady had her hand over her heart like she was having palpitations. 'This girl's got LUNGS!' she thought.
Vera tried her best to remain professional. "Well, Miss Kensington, that can certainly be arranged. I hope it's not the only reason you're choosing to join us though."
The bunnygirl tapped her foot. "Well... you Preds haven't been completely awful to us, I suppose."
Figuring that that was the best compliment she could hope to receive from this one, Vera smiled gratefully.
Chloe-Sophia vibrated up and down a bit. "Ooh, Hydra! Does that mean I can join too?"
Hydra raised an eyebrow at her minion. "Why are you so enthusiastic? I saw you; you slept like an angel both nights."
The short squirrel fidgeted cutely. "Um, it's not that. I wanna be wherever you go, of course, but also... I think their uniforms look kinda hot."
Hydra gave her an 'I concede the point' tilt of her head. "We can both get custom ones?" she asked Vera.
"Absolutely. Guy Swansea's not just a great actor, but a fantastic costume designer too. You can go see him after class and we'll have your new outfit ready by tomorrow morning."
Hydra grinned, imagining the possibilities. "I want black leather," she drooled. "And spikes. One of those biker hats. Can I get a whip?"
Vera blinked. "I guess so... As long as you promise not to use it on anyone."
Chloe squealed. "Oh, you're gonna look so good, Hydra! You're gonna make boys light their crotches on fire when you walk by!"
The bunnygirl was liking her choice more by the second. "Come, Chloe. I want you to start doing some sketches for me."
"I'd love to!"
"Ooohh... Daddy is going to throw a fit when he finds out!" she said as she walked into class, her voice dripping with schadenfreude.
*****
He'd anticipated this, but seeing it happen was no less of a blow. Hydra Kensington was the biggest domino of them all. Yola was influential, but Hydra was a superstar. A Great Predator Army logo on her arm would spell doom for everyone. They'd all want one. They'd shove each other out of the way to get one.
'I'm gonna be pretty damn lonely in the bunkhouse with Kenny and Frank soon,' Cody thought.
Still, he knew this was coming. It was disheartening, yes, but in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter to his overall plan. Hell, they could all switch sides, every last one, and it wouldn't matter so long as Cody could just make one phone call.
Inside the classroom, there was a thing.
Cody paused when he entered. The thing looked uncomfortably like an electric chair. Other students were gathered around it, wondering about it too.
It was a shining steel seat with leather and cloth restraints coming out of the armrests, back and legs. It had a high back, and around the head area there was a bulbous, insectile sphere with a stinger. Cody could only imagine that it was meant to drill into a furson's skull for some reason. Beneath the bug head was a tightly-packed collection of tanks and tubes. Whatever the hell this thing was, it was complicated. 'Good luck getting anyone to sit in this monstrosity, Miss Vera.'
Now that he thought of it, this was the first time she hadn't already been in the classroom, waiting for everyone else to show up. She might have been standing outside intentionally to give everyone time to check out the fucked-up torture device. 'Maybe this is the part where she stops acting so nice,' Cody thought. 'Maybe now she'll start in on how the GPA can't allow dissent, and if anyone opposes them they'll have to spend an hour sitting in the Pain Chair.'
Cody didn't have to wonder much longer. He took his seat and soon the last of the breakfast crowd drifted in.
Vera followed along directly behind, joined by Nurse Kady. "All here? Excellent! I've got something I'm really excited to show you today and I can't wait to get started!"
"Yeah, what is that freaky thing?" Frank called out.
"Oh this?" Vera said coquettishly. "This isn't what I wanted to show you. This is just one part of it. All will be revealed, Miss Tanondo, don't worry. First, let me reintroduce my lovely assistant, Kady Lewis!"
The class gave the tabby a smattering of applause and she blushed appreciatively.
Vera buzzed about, checking some odd apparatus on her desk that most of the kids hadn't noticed yet. "Kady's going to be helping me out a little later, but for now I have a very important question for you guys."
"Do we need our clickers?" someone kidded.
The grey vixen giggled. "No, not for this. Though if you still have yours, we might need them for second class this afternoon." Vera looked the chairlike machine up and down, pointed out something to Kady, nodded, then continued. "The question is a difficult one, and if any of you can guess it, I'll be amazed. It's simply this: What is our greatest enemy?"
Cody raised his hand. "Each other?" he said cynically.
"No," Vera said, "but if you mean Preds and Prey, you can be forgiven for thinking that. It's not as if there's a shortage of furs on either side who want you to believe that."
Yolanda raised her hand. "Ignorance?" she tried, hoping it would be a smarter answer.
"Also no, but you're getting closer: It's not a who, it's a what."
"Prejudice?" Chloe-Sophia tried.
"Close, but still only a symptom of the bigger problem," Vera said.
"Alien mind control rays?" Kenny blurted, getting a laugh.
To his surprise, Vera's eyes sparkled. "Oh, it's so interesting you mentioned mind control, Mr. Loughtner! You have no idea how close that is to the actual answer!"
The rabbit stared dumbfounded at her. "What!?"
Tycho narrowed his eyes. "Mind control?"
"Think about it," Vera encouraged. "There is something that affects each and every one of us, every day of our lives. Every decision we make, every thought we think. It opposes us when it ought to help us. It whispers bad ideas in our ear. It can be incredibly helpful to us sometimes, even life-saving, but most of the time it is simply an annoying and dangerous backseat driver."
Yolanda had a sudden flash of insight. Trembling, she held up her hand. "Is it okay if I try again?"
Vera was flushed with anticipation. She so hoped Yolanda would get it. "Of course."
"Our genetics?" Yola tried.
"More specific!"
"...Instinct?"
Vera whooped. "YES! Yolanda, I am so proud of you!" The vixen actually rushed over to give the ottergirl a hug.
Yolanda found this kind of awkward, but also kind of nice. She readjusted her wireframes. "Th-thank you, Miss Vera."
The fox excitedly trotted back to the front of the room. "Miss Denton is exactly right. Though I can already see that some of you are doubting her answer, and it's easy to understand why. We're told to 'trust our instincts' all the time. Following your instincts is an overwhelmingly common theme in all forms of storytelling.
"But allow yourself to see more than just the easy, familiar way of looking at things. Like I said, instinct can be our friend. But it's more likely to give us bad advice than good, and it has everything to do with how long evolution takes."
She whisked over to the blackboard and tapped it to bring up a timeline. She pointed towards the far end. "This is when life began on Earth. This is where fish evolved, then birds and mammals, then humans, and then finally, this almost invisible sliver of history over here, is us. That is how long we have existed compared to everything else that came before. And our instincts, honed by natural selection, are calibrated to deal with this environment," she waved her hand around the chunk of timeline encompassing prehistoric and prefur life, "instead of this one," she pointed out the tiny sliver at the end.
"Our brains are modern hardware that is running jungle software. We are still reacting to stimuli as if we were living as nonevs. Instinct tells us to act without thinking, and that can be good in some situations. Jumping out of the way of a car; getting a 'bad feeling' about ourselves that tells us we need to see a doctor. But how often does it make us lash out in anger when we ought to be calm? How often do we judge a furson's guilt or innocence based on their species, gender or handsomeness? How often do we misjudge the probability of risk, and let ourselves be deathly afraid of minor threats while ignoring major ones? How often do we stay in a bad situation, even when we know better, because change is so much scarier to us?"
She paused for a moment to let her words sink in. She was sure they could all remember examples in their own lives of at least one of the things she'd mentioned. She remembered plenty from her own.
"We are living in a rational society now," Vera continued, "and our instincts continue to supply us with irrational solutions to our problems. Worst of all, it is so much easier to go with our gut than it is to trust our reason. It feels so much more right to trust our instincts. And why shouldn't it? Thousands of years ago, a Prey who stopped to think about their situation would likely have been killed by the Pred chasing them. But we're not like that anymore."
"Yes we are," Cody muttered angrily. He did not like this topic.
Vera heard him. "Let me rephrase then: we don't have to be like this anymore," she said ardently. "Instinct is what keeps the war going. Instinct is what keeps your side fearful and my side blood-hungry. It's stupid and pointless and insane that furs who can build cities and computers and airplanes still act like we're running around on all fours! It's a sick joke on all of us! We're living out roles that evolution wrote for us thousands of years ago, and it's doing nothing but blocking us from creating a better world that could be!!" Her passion seemed to radiate from her in a nimbus.
She went on. "Prey are not my enemy, and predators are not yours. We all have a common foe, and instinct is it. So much of our pain could end if we'd make an effort to think about our choices before making them, to not let paranoia and hatred make our choices for us. Hatred and paranoia, at their core, are nothing but forms of fear. We need to be better than fear. We need to not let fear rule us. We need to rule ourselves."
Tycho understood now, and was able to grasp the true horror of the situation. He held up his hand. "But... we can't really, can we? It's genetics, like Yolanda said. It's hardwired into our cells. We can't do anything about instinct without essentially erasing who we are."
Vera turned to him and smiled reassuringly. "You're correct. Or should I say, you were correct, Mr. Max."
He arched an eyebrow. "You're telling me you Preds have a solution? You've not only cracked death, you've solved instinct too?"
"The one solution led to the other," Vera replied. "Jared Ravensfire might eventually have built his machine on his own, but he was able to build it for us because we were able to look beyond our instinctual impression of him as 'just a college kid' and see the genius in his work. We ignored the instinct that said it was a terrible risk to give him mountains of money and assistants and equipment. Ignoring that instinct was one of the best decisions we ever made."
Vera tapped the blackboard again and a photo of a small, unassuming building came up. "If there was a birthplace of the Great Predator Army, this was it. This building housed nine scientists, handpicked by the Pred government for their individual talents, given whatever funding they wanted, to essentially muck about in the lab and hopefully discover stuff. And oh boy, did they.
"It started as an experiment in whether nanobots could do the work of living cells. Could you make a microscopic robot that could interact with other microscopic robots in a way that duplicated the functions of flesh? The answer was yes. The project soon became the nine scientists' number one priority. They discovered that nanobots could be configured to do the work of any type of living cell. They could patch skin, replace bone, do the work of blood cells and lung cells and liver cells. They created entire artificial organs out of the stuff.
"And even though nobody knew it, the entire world changed the day one of them asked the simple question, 'Can we replace brain cells too?'"
A shiver ran through the class. This was creepy-as-hell mad scientist shit.
"I'm sorry if I'm vague on the details," Vera said, "but in truth, those nine scientists ARE the Great Predator Army. They're our true leaders, despite what Mr. Swansea's little broadcast interruptions would have the world believe. The less anyone knows of the nine, the safer they'll be. Maybe after we win the war we can let the world know about them and get their names in the history books where they belong. I hope so.
"Until then, we have the fruit of their discoveries. When they tested whether the nanobots could replicate brain functions, the results were staggering. All memory and personality were retained. Even instincts. The nanobots retained everything they were meant to, but they had some incredible side effects: a brain that interfaced like a computer."
Vera's grin showed her excitement. "Imagine, for the rest of your life, never again getting an annoying song stuck in your head. Imagine never forgetting a name. Imagine no more insomnia. Imagine waking up on time every morning without needing an alarm clock. Imagine your favorite memories being almost as sharp as photographs. Imagine your worst ones no longer popping up constantly when you least want to remember them. Imagine being able to concentrate on whatever you need to without your brain constantly interrupting. Imagine no more headaches. Ever."
She seemingly switched topics. "Does anyone know what is the one common factor in all deaths? Absolutely all of them. Anyone?" Some shakes of heads, but no takers. "It's a lack of oxygen to the brain."
"Wait... what if you get blowed up?" Jayden inquired.
Vera grinned. "Then your brain would be getting a bit too much air," she quipped, getting some laughs.
"In the earliest days of computers," Vera continued, "there were models with power-based memory. That is, they could only retain the data you entered so long as they were hooked up to a constant power supply. This was frightfully inefficient. Imagine losing your entire hard drive every time you turned your computer off. It didn't take long for developers to correct for this primitive flaw.
"And yet, every single one of you sitting here today has a power-based memory up in your head. If your brain runs out of oxygen, permanent damage sets in almost immediately. It's unimaginably unfair. We have every reason to fear death. To think too long about how fragile all our lives are... It can drive people crazy." Vera grinned cannily. "But what if... Imagine you're drowning, or suffocating, or starving, or breathing poison gas. Or almost any other death that doesn't go so far as, as Jayden helpfully pointed out, getting blowed up. Imagine that you die and your brain goes into a protective hibernation instead of decaying. Imagine that, so long as rescuers can get to you in a reasonable amount of time, your life can continue as easily as rebooting a computer."
The class was stunned silent for a few moments. The Rejuvenator was nearly impossible to believe, but this was straight-up beyond the galaxy of possibility.
Frank had a worrying thought pop into her head. Her hand went up. "Um, wait a minute. If suddenly a whole lot of people aren't dying anymore... won't there be a terrible overpopulation problem?"
Vera looked extremely pleased that someone had realized that. "Yes, Miss Tanondo, exactly! And we thought of that also. One of the very few things we had the nanobots specifically change about brain function is that, for males, semen will not be released during ejaculation without a conscious decision for it to do so."
Frank blushed a little. "So guys're basically ...always on the pill?"
"You could say that," the vixen replied with a smirk.
"Man, you're gonna put condom companies out of business!" someone shouted.
Vera giggled. "Possibly. But we think the positives of a society where all pregnancies are chosen outweigh the negatives of a bit of lost profit." She turned to Tycho. "Getting back to the original topic, you pointed out that we could never silence our instincts because they're so tightly interwoven into our genes? You're absolutely right. We can't eliminate our instincts, and we wouldn't want to even if we could. But like I've said before: when there's a problem we can't solve, we find a way around it. Right now our instincts dominate our internal conversation. So what's the solution? You give your rational thought a megaphone."
The gerbil was intrigued but deeply skeptical. "That all sounds real nice, but the thought of you pulling my brain out and sticking a machine in my skull makes me kind of queasy. That would basically just kill me and replace me with a copy of myself, wouldn't it?"
Vera nodded to Kady. The nursecat went to the desk and started fiddling with the strange apparatus there. While Vera talked, the feline began connecting it to the back of the fox's neck, making her wince a few times. "Well-reasoned, Mr. Max. But believe me, the scientists who discovered this were every bit as worried about that possibility as you are. They didn't want to simply overwrite themselves. This chair was half of their solution, but I'll get into that in just a moment."
Kady finished fiddling around with Vera's neck and handed her what looked like a clear plastic frying pan.
"The first half of their solution came when they realized that every neuroscientist in the world had it wrong," the fox boldly stated. "It's true that the brain governs our behavior and makes us what we are, but for centuries we've had a fundamental misunderstanding: WE ARE NOT OUR BRAINS." She put so much emphasis on those words, a few kids in the front row flinched.
Hydra wrinkled her nose and put up her hand. "That sounds like bullshit. If we're not our brains, what are we? You're gonna tell us you guys found a soul in there?"
Vera smirked. "Kinda. If you define the soul as an unseen, unmeasurable thing that houses all our thoughts and memories, then yes, we did."
The bunnygirl snorted. Tycho too looked extremely skeptical.
Vera kind of enjoyed annoying them. "Let me put it this way: is the internet the same thing as a computer?"
"Well, no," Tycho and several others admitted.
"Then what is it?" Vera asked.
"It's a series of computers all linked together, all over the world," said Yolanda.
"Not quite," Vera corrected. "Because you could have a series of computers linked up all over the world, and if their hard drives were blank, or if they were simply not turned on, then you wouldn't have the internet, now would you?"
Tycho thought he saw where she was going. "The internet's the information on the computers."
"Precisely! It is the cluster of information created when millions of people all over the world all put their ideas into one gargantuan cloud. It exists; we can access it every day. But none of us can touch it. Every furson who contributes to it and every computer that houses a part of it are each like a single brain cell. If cells die off or are replaced, the information itself remains.
Tycho's eyes got very big. "Holy heck, I think I get it..."
"Indeed?" Vera coaxed.
The gerbil held his head in his hands, feeling his brains nearly bubbling inside his skull. "I, me, the thing I call 'me', is not the matter in my skull. The meat is just what created 'me'. That's what happens when we die: the meat's still there, but the consciousness is gone. If you can have one without the other, that means they're separate things. Even if it's not measurable by science, the consciousness is something separate from the matter. It's information! Sweet hot damn, I am not my brain; I am the pattern of information produced by it!!"
Vera started clapping. Some of the students joined in too. "Marvelous, Mr. Max! Astonishing! That's one of the most difficult concepts we've ever had to wrestle with. Even more hard to accept than instinct being an enemy. Congratulations, Tycho. I'm very proud of you!"
The gerbil grinned and looked somewhat exhausted by his mental leap.
Vera spoke to the class as a whole again. "I know some of you may not understand all this right now, and that's okay. This is heavy stuff. It might help to think of it this way: your brain is the parent to your consciousness. Your grey matter gave birth to the collection of thoughts, feelings, memories and personality traits that is 'you'. Religion turned out to be right in a way: we all do have an inner spirit. But we're not born with it. Like all living things, it starts out a tiny seed, and grows and grows as we live and experience more of life.
"The problem is, the brain is a bossy, overbearing parent. Your subconscious is always trying to tell your consciousness what to do. In a healthy parent/child relationship, eventually the parent must let the child go free to find their own path. But instinct insists, all throughout our lives, that we have to keep on following ancient, outdated behavior patterns forever.
"That's what the Newbrain fixes. ...That's our word for it, by the way. Kind of simple, but as a nickname it stuck. And since I'm sure you're all thinking, 'There's no way I'm replacing MY brain!', I figured a demonstration would be needed. Kady? I'm ready."
The nursecat nodded. She took another device, shaped like a camera tripod or a tiny oil derrick, and planted it on the side of Vera's head. She pushed a button on it and there was a brief flash of light.
"Yipe!" Vera flinched as the thing made a perfect tiny hole in her skull.
Then, holding the clear frying pan beneath her temple, she tilted her head to the side and poured out her brain.
The class panicked. Kids jumped in their seats, swore, hollered and came close to passing out.
"Don't worry!" Vera said. "This tray I'm holding is connected to my spinal nerves, so I'll still be able to stand here and talk even when my brain's not in my head anymore."
As the kids watched, a syrupy-thick, gleaming silver fluid drained out of the side of their teacher's head. It looked like liquid chrome. It moved almost deliberately, like it was alive. When the last of it trickled out, it collected itself in the center of the clear pan in a perfect half-sphere.
"Well class, meet my brain," Vera said cheerfully.
How Tycho managed to not soil his pants is anyone's guess. "Do you mind if I..."
"Come right on up and have a look," she encouraged. "Don't touch it though. Germs."
He nodded and, staring blatantly, got up out of his seat and walked around the brain-dish from all angles.
"Wanna look inside?" Kady asked, holding up a penlight.
"Sure, I guess."
The nursecat shone the light into Vera's head and Tycho very carefully looked in on tiptoes.
His fur all stood on end. "It's completely hollow in there!!"
"Yup," said Vera. "Right now you could quite truthfully call me an airhead!"
Tycho had to go sit back down before he fell down.
"This is perfectly safe, by the way," Vera told her class. She was rather enjoying grossing them all out like this. "If you think of my brain as my hard drive, there's no danger in removing it from the casing, so long as it's still plugged in. Although I think I'll put it back in now; these wires are making my neck itch like crazy!"
The vixen held the pan up to the hole in her head and, like an obedient pet, her brain started pouring itself back up the side of her head into her skull cavity. Back at home, it began seeking out any microorganisms that might have floated in, to push them back out the hole.
"I am going to puke," Hydra Kensington said, her face a bit green.
"Do you seriously think you're going to get any of us to volunteer for that!?" Cody shouted.
She grinned at him while her brain continued to resettle. "You say that, Mr. St. John, as if you think I'm 'out of my mind'."
Many students groaned at the godawful joke. Cody was not amused.
The last of Vera's brain vanished from sight and Kady immediately applied a peel 'n stick bandage. "This is just to protect against dust and germs getting in, mostly," Kady told the kids. "Her brain wouldn't fall out accidentally. It knows to keep its shape most of the time unless we need to take it out for a checkup or a demonstration like this." She plucked the wires from Vera's neck too.
"But as to your question," Vera addressed Cody as she started furiously scratching, "Yes, I do expect volunteers. The GPA isn't going to force anyone to..." she chuckled, "I was about to say 'change their minds'."
Another collective groan.
"But seriously, we understand that forcing people to do what we want simply cannot work. Instead we make the choice available, then do everything we can to show people that our way works better. False advertising just creates distrust when the consumer realizes they've been duped. We do our best to make sure our ideas and technology are appealing because we work our behinds off to make them appealing!"
Cody sneered. "What's appealing about getting everything that makes you a furson and not a robot scooped out and a bunch of metal poured in instead?"
Vera knew he'd heard her explain all the Newbrain's benefits and was simply challenging her. Well, two could play that game. "You want to know why someone would want their brain replaced with metal? Well, I'd like to know how anyone could possibly want their consciousness to remain dependent on a chunk of white fat sitting inside their skull! That's mostly what your brain is: nerve cells and fat. A hunk of meat. And meat can rot. The simple fact is, all of your brains will deteriorate as you grow old. You'll lose memories. You'll be at risk for horrific diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Do you want that? Do you want to spend the rest of your life knowing that a single accident could wipe out everything you are in a heartbeat? That an aneurysm could erase you before you even have time to notice? That, even if you survive to old age, you will inevitably find your consciousness trapped in a withering pile of meat that gets weaker and more fragile day by day!?"
Cody hadn't considered that, but he was still certain he didn't want any Pred to fuck around with his grey matter.
Vera scowled down at the floor. "I think death and mental illness are an obscenity. It's simply unacceptable that our time on this Earth should be imperiled by random chance, or doomed to deteriorate no matter what we do for ourselves. We in the GPA believe in choice. We want everyone to live as long, and as well, as they choose to. Maybe not immortality. But we at least want everyone to be able to decide for themselves when they're ready to die.
"Nature cares nothing for individuals. Natural selection chews up and spits out individual lives like they were garbage. Evolution is centered entirely around what is best for the species as a whole. But for the first time in the history of life, we have the tools to assert the importance of the individual. We won't force you to take those tools, Mr. St. John, but we will offer them freely if you decide you want them."
Cody's resolve was weakening a bit. Intellectually, he'd been impressed with that little speech. He agreed with a lot of it. But he reminded himself that words from a Pred were always to be considered suspect. They'd say anything to recruit new meat.
"If you're still not convinced," Vera said, "I've got another surprise in store for you all."
She looked out across the room with a crafty smile. "One of you has already volunteered. One of you has been walking around with a Newbrain in their head since yesterday evening."
Everyone started swiveling around in their seats, trying to guess who it could possibly be. Yolanda and Tycho seemed like the type to embrace new technology, especially if it'd make them smarter. But they'd both seemed genuinely surprised by Vera's demonstration. They couldn't have just been acting, could they? The Preykids muttered and cast suspicious looks at one another, trying to figure out if any of them had been acting different since last night.
"I'd have hoped you'd notice that I don't act like a robot," Vera said. "I still have all my emotions. But I'm a stranger to you mostly; I'm not the best example for comparison. What about one of your friends? What about someone you've known from all the time you've spent together in The Box? Would you notice the change in their behavior, assuming anything had changed?"
Kenny shot Cody a frantic 'It's not me!' look.
Vera made a 'come on down' gesture. "Will the student who accepted a Newbrain from me yesterday please stand up?"
Absolutely no one expected Jayden Winters to hop up from his desk and walk down the aisle to Vera's side.
Everyone was freaking out. If there was a least likely suspect, Jayden was it. Cody remembered talking to him this morning and he was still the foul-mouthed gregarious asshole he'd always been. Vera had to be lying. Why would Jayden, of all people, possibly agree to this?
The mouse at the center of everyone's attention looked rather sheepish. He shrugged his shoulders and fidgeted.
Vera put her arm around him reassuringly. "Tell them why," she said gently.
"Ummm..." Jayden started. "Miss Vera actually came to see me yesterday afternoon when I was doing laundry. She'd heard about my little business and was, y'know, curious about it. I thought she was gonna shut me down at first. But, she just talked to me about it."
He looked thoughtful. For many of his classmates, they were witnessing a first. "I know I'm obnoxious," he admitted with another shrug. "I know I don't shut up unless I'm asleep or suckin' on a..." he paused dramatically "...lollipop, you buncha fags!" he grinned. "So, yeah. And I'm not used to people lookin' at me like they don't think I'm a freak. But Vera... she kinda talked to me like my mom does. Settle down, I ain't goin' pussy. It's just nice to have someone who, when I talk, they don't tune me out, unnastand?"
Vera smiled at him. He was actually a very sweet boy, once you got past his vernacular. "Tell them what you told me about the fog."
"Right, right. The fucking fog. The goddam fog." He looked around the class at his friends, customers and enemies. "My brain usesta not work right. Like, I'd try to think and concentrate on stuff, and then this fuckin' fog would roll in. I could even sorta see it sometimes. It was like some joker was stuffin' cotton balls in my ears until my skull filled up and my brain couldn't move. I'd be trying to do homework and goin' along okay, getting' a few right, and then That Muthafuckin' Fog! I swear, I wanted to just stab an icepick in there to let it out!" He pointed around the room. "I know a lot of you think I'm stupid. Just like alla my teachers. But I'm not, ya dicks. People think I got the retard because of how I talk, and I guess I can't blame 'em. But it doesn't help that I got this shit up in my head that keeps me from bein' able to think easy."
The mouse looked to Vera, and smiled quite handsomely. "So I told her all this, because she didn't zone out when I started talkin'. And she said she could fix it. I'm like, 'Gonna stick a vacuum cleaner in my head and suck it out?' And she's like, 'Kinda.' So, then she shows me this chair-thing that's straight outta a horror movie and at first my balls are telling me to run the hell out of the room. But she explained it, and I thought, 'Well, you're the one who was willing to jam an icepick in your head to get rid of that fog, chucklefuck! What seriously do I have to lose?'
"And it's gone," he said with a bit of awe. "It's just gone. Like I woke up from a dream. I can think now. And it wasn't like she sucked my old brain out and jammed in a new one. I sat in the chair, she dicked around with some tubes, and it all happened while I was awake! I didn't even hardly feel nothin'!"
He grinned. "So to all you babies who are pissin' your pants scared of this thing, don't be! Take it from the number one Laundry Commander. Winters don't lie. I might say 'fuck' more than I blink, but I don't lie. This thing is a miracle. Sit your ass in it and don't be a little bitch!"
Vera was biting her lip quite hard by the end of this, trying to neither censor Jayden or burst out giggling at him. "That's quite an enthusiastic endorsement, Mr. Winters."
"Hey, I aim to please." He nodded his head towards the nursecat. "You wanna pop a hole in my head too? I'll whip my brains out for these folks! Show 'em it's true!"
Kady looked at Vera, who made an 'I guess so' gesture. "Well, if you want to..." The tabby readied the tripod device.
"Yeah, these skeptical so-and-sos wouldn't believe in their own tails if they wasn't attached to their asses," Jayden razzed.
Kady positioned the machine a little higher than Jayden's temple. "This will hurt for a second. I don't think we need to go so far as to use the brain-tray; just let a bit of it out and then right back in, okay?"
Jayden nodded. "If it falls out by mistake, you can put it back in, right?"
"Absolutely. But let's not test that, okay?"
"Right on, nurse lady." He readied himself for her to push the button. He winced when the lasers cut a hole in his head, but didn't say anything. "My hair better grow back there, dammit."
Jayden held his hand just below the hole. The whole class craned forward in their seats to watch. As promised, a silvery dribble poured out and into the mouse's palm. "Check it out! I'm a mothafuckin' cyborg! Wave of the future!"
"You can put your brain back in now, Mr. Winters," Vera said.
The silver liquid schlooped back up into Jayden's skull. "Man, teachers have been telling me that all my life." Kady plugged his hole with a bandage and told him she'd get him Rejuvenated after class.
Vera chuckled. "So, everyone, I've got the chair right here. Would anyone like to volunteer for a nice new shiny Newbrain? It's free!" She gave them her best pitchman's smile.
There was a bit of muttering among the students then, with plenty of them saying they'd never agree to that, not ever.
But then, one hand went up.
Yolanda was blushing and squirming in her seat, but she looked almost hormonally excited.
"Miss Denton!" Vera was happily surprised, but not too surprised. "You're very brave. Are you absolutely sure you want to?"
The ottergirl got up and walked over to the chair-thing. "I'm not. Not yet at least. But... Everything you've been saying, about instinct and how the brain works, I've thought all of that before. But vaguely. I could never articulate it. It just feels like my brain is fighting me sometimes. I want to study, and all it wants to do is repeat some stupid song from the radio. I want to have fun with my friends, and I can't concentrate on the moment. I want that to go away. Will this really put me in control of myself?"
Vera patted her shoulder comfortingly. "That's exactly what it does. I couldn't have put it better."
Yolanda nodded. There was just one more thing she wanted to test though.
Jayden had been drifting towards the aisle, about to go back to his seat, when Yolanda ran over and grabbed his arm. "What's up?" he asked. Yolanda whipped her glasses off and stared into his eyes. "Damn, woman! You're freakin' me out!"
"Your pupils look normal..." Yolanda assessed. "What color is this?" She pointed to the jewel in her bracelet.
"Blue? Looks like it's made outta turquoise?"
"Quick; name a horribly embarrassing memory."
Jayden blushed. "Uh, I crapped in my dad's car when we were coming home from the beach this one time."
Lightning quick, the otter snapped her fingers in front of Jayden's eyes.
He flinched just like she expected. "What the hell!?"
"Smack me across the face!" Yolanda ordered.
He gawked bugeyed at her. "Did you swallow some insanity pills all of a sudden!?"
"JUST DO IT!!" she thundered.
Startled, Jayden obeyed without thinking. WHAP.
Yolanda touched her cheek. It had made a loud sound, but he'd really only tapped her. "Well, your conscience and reflexes seem normal. And I noticed you swung hard but held back."
He nodded. "Yeah, I kinda just reacted when you yelled. But halfway through I'm like, 'I can't hit a girl'."
"Did you think that or feel it instinctively?" she asked.
"Uhh. Think? I think?"
Yolanda nodded, satisfied fully now. She slipped her specs back on and walked over to Vera, leaving a very befuddled mouse to slink back to his seat.
Vera was suppressing giggles. "Interesting tests there, Miss Denton."
"I wanted to be sure the procedure wasn't like how a drug works. My mother..." she blushed and rubbed her arm absent-mindedly, "...had me put on medication when I was young because she thought I was hyper."
Cody blinked at that. Yolanda Denton? Hyper!?
"It was like being in an uncomfortable dream. The pills seemed to... block off certain parts of me. I don't want that. Like Jayden, I want the fog gone. But I don't want to lose any of myself in the process."
Vera nodded understandingly. "I know exactly what you mean. And I promise you won't. The process doesn't take away anything; it just gives you more power to tell your brain what you want it to do. If there's any loss, it'll be only what you choose to put away. And even if you do, you can bring it back when you need it. You will be fully in charge of you. The consequences of that may seem scary, but I can tell you from my own experience, I have never regretted my decision. Never ever."
Yolanda scanned the vixen's eyes for sincerity and found nothing but. "Allright then," she said bravely. She turned and sat down in the chair.
Everyone in class watched breathlessly as Kady began strapping her in. They felt like they were witnessing an execution.
"These are just velcro," Kady said as she secured Yolanda's arms. "They're just to keep you from wiggling around too much during the procedure. You can undo them yourself if you get scared. But not after it starts. There's a risk of rejection if we only do this halfway."
Yolanda gulped as the nursecat secured her chest. "So this is permanent?"
Kady nodded. "Yup. But hey, I've got one too," she said, tapping her head. "And I don't regret it either."
"Oh, okay." The otter took deep breaths to calm herself. She was starting to wonder if she'd made the right decision, but knew her worries came mostly from nervousness. She knew that Miss Vera had earned her trust. And she wanted to improve her mind so much it was practically her life's goal. If this thing didn't make her smarter, it'd at least make becoming smarter easier.
Kady moved the bug-head-thing into place after pulling a strap snug across Yolanda's forehead. "It's gonna hurt for a second when I make the hole, but after that you shouldn't feel a thing."
Yolanda nodded, or tried to. "Mm-hmm; I remember the brain doesn't have any nerves for feeling pain."
"Absolutely right," Kady nodded approvingly.
Vera came over to rub Yola's shoulder comfortingly. "It's scary at first, but in a few moments, you are going to be amazed."
"Go Yola!!" Jayden shouted out encouragingly.
The rest of the class was sharply conflicted. Some were impressed by Yolanda's guts, others thought she was insane. Some were terrified for her and others were terrified that this might end up happening to them too.
Yolanda squeaked in surprise when the machine made a hole at the base of her skull. Almost instantly, she felt something cold and metal poke into it. She clutched reflexively at the chair's armrests.
"It's starting now," Vera said softly. "Millions of tiny computers are rushing inside, each one taking the place of one of your natural cells. You'll be awake the whole time. You'll hardly notice a thing. Your personality, your feelings, they won't change a bit. Everything that is 'Yolanda Denton' will be safe. In fact it'll be safer. Better protected, more efficient, more adaptable."
Yolanda reached up to hold Vera's hand. "It's still kinda creeping me out though," she admitted.
Vera smiled. "You should have seen how big my tail frizzed up when I went through this!"
That got her to smile a little. "What happens to my old brain? If the nanobots replace my organic cells, where do the cells go?"
"There's a second tube that runs alongside the first. Nanobots come in through one; they push the old cells down through the other. Then we recycle it in the Rejuvenators. Your brain cells might become someone else's blood cells by tomorrow."
"Neat!"
Cody watched the otter's face and body language intently. He was sure he was witnessing the death of his classmate. He was sure that whatever she would become in the next few moments, it would no longer be Yolanda. He'd already written off Jayden; it talked like him and acted like him, but Cody knew it was a machine now.
"I think I can feel something," Yolanda said.
"Can you describe it?" asked Vera.
"It's... vague. It's kind of a 'cleaning up' feeling."
The vixen nodded. "That'll get stronger."
Yolanda was a bit worried about thinking too much during the process, but her thoughts didn't seem to be slowing down or becoming erratic. If anything, it was hard for her to believe she was actually undergoing major brain surgery. There was no sensation of the nanobots taking over. No wave of 'inorganicness' asserting control. Though that gave her a new way to look at things. "It just occurred to me... I was a little worried that this would turn me into a robot. But my brain was already a machine, wasn't it? Except, a machine made of chemicals."
"Pretty much," Kady concurred. "We're used to thinking of organic and inorganic things being completely different. But objectively they're really not. It'll be the same amount of cells in your brain, all doing the same jobs as before, just made of different molecular stuff. Really, this procedure isn't much different from how your body already replaces your normal cells as you age. We're just doing it all in one batch this time."
That made the otter feel a bit better. And that 'cleaning up' feeling was getting more noticeable. "Oh wow, I'm thinking about my memories... They're more vivid. Not quite like photos yet, but like when I have a really clear dream. And I can somehow... Oh WOW! It's not quite 'seeing', but somehow I can tell how they all link together! It's not just looking at one memory; it's like seeing all the rest of them in the background! Like a photo album!"
Vera was overjoyed to see Yolanda's nervousness becoming wonderment. "And you're only halfway done!"
Tears were falling down Yolanda's cheeks now. She was searching her memories and it was easier than it had ever been before in her life. In the far dark distances of her mind, she could sense fuzzy thoughts she hadn't recalled in decades. Old cartoons she used to watch. Distant relatives. Birthday gifts. It wasn't like before where she'd have a blurry outline and wouldn't be able to coax her brain to remember anything more. Whatever she directed it to focus on, it did. The memories weren't crystal clear, but it was the difference between stumbling blindly through a pitch-black room and doing the same thing with a flashlight.
"You're getting close now, hon," Kady said after a while. "About 90%."
Frank was clearly worried for her friend. "Tell me it's still you in there, Yola!" she called out.
"Oh, it is! It is!" Yolanda assured. "That's the most amazing part; I haven't felt any change at all in myself. It's like someone's been slowly unwrapping a thick towel from around my head. I'm still me, but all the background stuff is easier! My thoughts, it's like I can see each path they come from and how they interact. And it's not distracting at all! Anything I say or feel, I know exactly where it comes from!"
Kady watched the needle on the nanofluid tank finally reach zero. There was a chipper little 'ding' from the machine. "And there we go. All done!" She plucked out the nozzle and slapped on a bandage.
"Should I wait a moment for it to settle?" Yolanda asked.
"Nope, you're good to go," the nursecat said after quickly unstrapping her.
Yolanda stood up on shaky legs, then filled the room with her awestruck, joyful smile. "It's incredible... Everything is so much clearer. So much easier! I feel like I've been blind for years. I can actually multitask now! I'm standing here talking to you guys and I'm doing algebra in the back of my head just because I can! It's not like I'm magically smarter just... It's like getting better after the flu. It's like when I put on my first pair of glasses. It's like... Like this is how everything is supposed to be! How I've always felt like it should be!"
She turned and hugged Vera with all her heart. She buried her muzzle in the fox's soft uniform and cried onto the fabric. "Thank you. I can't thank you enough. Oh, this is wonderful. I'll never be able to thank you enough..."
Vera patted the back of her head lovingly. "I am so, so happy for you, Yola."
Kady joined in as well. "Hugs!"
After a moment of elated sobbing, Yolanda stepped back to wipe her eyes and nose. She giggled at how giddy she felt. Then she turned to all her classmates and gave them an undeniably pure smile.
"Anyone else want one?"
*****