Early Bird Sneak Peek: “Warning Sign”!

Hi all! It’s time for another Early Bird Sneak Peek, where I share a glimpse at the story my lucky Early Bird patrons will be enjoying next Saturday thanks to their pledges at my Patreon page! Of course, if you’re not an Early Bird patron, you’ll still get a story next week–“Meet Your Master”, teased previously, has already been submitted to the EMCSA. But the Early Bird patrons will be getting “Warning Sign” (MC FF)!

In the future, even serious brain damage can be repaired. The tissue can’t be regenerated, the neurons can’t be restored, but a complex network of nanoscopic computers can interface with the brain and carry the load of cognition once handled by the organic components of the system. After her accident, Marilyn has benefited greatly from this kind of prosthetic… but as she’s finding out, there are some risks to having a mind that can be hacked. Here’s a taste:

I look around, still not recognizing the neighborhood I’m in. Was that what happened? Did I come here looking for a doctor? I rub my temples, my fingers brushing the little bump of the wifi antenna as I try to massage some sense back into my fuzzy thoughts and unaccountably patchy memories. It doesn’t seem right. None of this seems right.

I’m not getting the danger signals. I mean, I’m getting danger signals–my feet are moving again, and that’s a pretty big red flag that something’s wrong with my brain right now–but my supplemental neural network isn’t warning me of any node failures or processing problems. I know what those sound like; they ran diagnostic tests on me for weeks back at the hospital, triggering every conceivable alert and system warning until I got used to hearing the voice inside my head without panicking or wondering if I was going insane. If I was losing my ability to think, or worse to control my body, the network would tell me.

But it’s not. I’m walking down an unfamiliar street in a neighborhood I don’t recognize, with no real memory of how I got here, and my cyborg brain thinks that’s just fine. And I… I don’t know if I can figure this out without it. Without the network, I’m. I’m not very smart. I have trouble holding onto a thought, I have trouble remembering things. The doctors, they told me I might never regain my full mental capabilities, even after years of therapy. Too much brain damage, they said. The cells couldn’t grow back. I recall how much they had to dumb it down for me and I can feel myself tearing up.

Hope you enjoy it!