Chapter 3:  A Title in an upcoming novel called “Working Memory” by K.L. Patrick

        The soft sound a deep wind chimes lighted upon Daniel’s consciousness, rousing him from a deep sleep.  His eyes flickered open, and he sat up.  He had had a difficult time getting to sleep.  While this was “his” bed it felt strange.  He was momentarily possessed of very depressing thought, that there was no bed on this entire planet which would “feel like his” right now.  

        He shook his head to clear away the thought, “All right, up and at ‘em.  I’ve got some shit to do today.”  Daniel swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and he suddenly remembered he’d spent the better part of the last two months unconscious, and he had just fallen last night.  His body protested.  He reached over to the bedside, and flipped on a light.  While some parts of his apartment were the very bleeding edge of modern, his sleeping quarters would be recognizable from anytime in the last hundred years or thereabouts.  It was an anachronism, a place devoid of technological inputs.

        He walked carefully on wobbly legs to the kitchen.  He needed water.  He opened up a cupboard near the sink and found plates.  He opened up another, bowls.  Finally, he had all the cupboards on that wall open.  No cups.  What the hell?  Don’t I drink water?

Dan turns his back, and opens up a little tiny cabinet next to the stove, an old sort of antique.  In it were several rows of glasses.  “This is a dumb place to keep glasses...:” he said to no one in particular.

His thirst quenched, he opened the fridge, his stomach rumbling.  All of the food in there was worthless.  Great.  He snagged his device from its charging dock, and put it on.

        “Concierge.”  he said aloud, depressing a button just in front of his right ear.

        “Good morning, Mr. Holk.  I trust you slept well?”

        “Yeah, fine, thanks.  I was wondering if you could call a cleaning service to come in here, clean out all the spoiled food, and then have some delivered?  I’m tapped out, and I have other errands to run today.”

        “Yes, Sir.  Of course.  One moment.  I have several companies on retainer, the cost for this will be $468 in US dollars or ¢300 in standard credits.”

        “One second, there pal.”  Daniel quickly brought up his bank statements.  Insurance settlements, paychecks, and other sources of income had continued to come in over the past two months, and he could comfortably live for a couple months on what he found there.  “Yup, that’s fine.  Go ahead and have that done, please.”

        “Yes, Sir.  I’m showing that they will be here from 2pm to 3pm, with deliveries at 3:15pm.  I’ll give them access to your apartment, and lock the bedroom doors for you while they’re here.”

        “Excellent.  Thanks.”

        “My pleasure, Sir.”

        Glancing at the time, Daniel saw that it was just past eleven in the morning.  He’d slept for fifteen hours.  Whoa, who knew being in a coma could be so tiring?  “Badum tss!” he suffixed his mental joke with a rimshot and drumming motion.  Daniel limped back into his room, and started digging through the closet and dresser.  Jeans.  Dark colored shirts.  Hoodies.  A minimum selection of dress clothes.

        “I’m apparently a simple kind of man.”  His device, hearing him asked if he wanted to hear that particular song.  “Sure, play it.”  The guitar began to unfurl and Daniel swayed to the rhythm of the music, albeit it a bit awkwardly, while his device pumped the song through the speakers in the living room as well as his aural receptors.

        His mama told him some useful advice as he pulled a dark shirt, pair of jeans, and hooded sweatshirt out of the closet and tossed them on the bed.  He peeled off his bed clothes, and tossed them into a basket.  

        “Oh won’t you do this for me, son, if you can?”  He sang as he pulled on what was apparently his standard uniform.  Daniel made for the bathroom to clean his teeth and hair, when he was momentarily overtake by a sense of vertigo, and he nearly lost his feet.  He flung his hand out and caught the wall, keeping himself upright.  He huffed, and shook his head.  He thought for a moment that he had a memory, of a woman.  Laying in that bed.  He turned and looked.  The room was empty, and he was alone here.  The only clothes here were his own.  It was a bachelor’s apartment.  No woman.

        “What the hell…”  He shook his head a little, and walked to the sink, the bags under his eyes still visible despite his spending the majority of a day unconscious.  Daniel washed his face and brushed his teeth.  Combed his hair and beard, and ran a little oil through his bear as well.  

        “Whew,” he said to the empty apartment, and the man in the mirror, “I need a nap after that!”  He limped out to the living room, and sat down, looking around.  The coffee table was a slim and modern design, with stacks and stacks of books under and around it.  Next to the couch as well.  “I read.”  he said to the aether.  A book called Enchiridion was sitting next to him on the couch and he leafed through it as if it were a magazine at a doctor’s office:  someone else’s.  

        “Never say of anything, "I have lost it"; but, "I have returned it." Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise returned? "But he who took it away is a bad man." What difference is it to you who the giver assigns to take it back? While he gives it to you to possess, take care of it; but don’t view it as your own, just as travelers view a hotel.”

        “Easier said than done, brother.  But good advice, I guess.  If you can follow it.”  Daniel set down the book where he got it from, and hauled himself to his feet.  He stumbled a bit, and rang the concierge.
        “Sir?”

        “Yes, is there a cane or some crutches in the building I can borrow?”

        “Let me see, Sir.  Yes, we have a set of crutches would you like me to have them sent up?”

        “No, no.  I’ll come down and get it.  Can I get cab to this address?” he asked, sending the information from Bob’s encrypted message to the robot downstairs…well, maybe not downstairs,  I have no idea where that computer is, really.  

        “Yes sir, it’s on the way, should be here in about five minutes, give or take.”

        “‘K.  Thanks.  I’ll be down in a minute.”

Daniel cut the machine off in the middle of what would probably have been ‘very good, Sir.’  and started to amble towards the door.  The mechanical assistance machines were interesting.  Humans still needed to talk to them.  Sure, you could just push a button, or issue a strict command, but it seems like the more social a system is, the more users it has, and the better it sells.  So, we make humanoid machines.

        Whether that’s a commentary on our state in the universe, our desperate need not to be alone, or merely a quirk of an advanced bald monkey’s central nervous system, it’s interesting nonetheless.  Daniels thoughts were bent to the existential as he rode the elevators down to the 15th floor entrance.

        “Good morning, Mr. Holk. Your crutches…”

Daniel limped over to the counter where the digital concierge was currently present, and picked up one of the crutches, tucking it under his arm.  “Thanks, big hoss.”  Daniel turned and crutched over towards the door, which opened for him.  A rail taxi was waiting, and he entered the car.

“Sir, your apartment concierge has already charged your account for this trip.  Please sit back and enjoy the ride.  Would you like to listen to some music along the way?”

“No, thanks.  I’d prefer a quiet ride.”

The machine running the speech engine cut out, and the rest of the trip was executed in perfect silence, absent the noise of hurtling through the city at 200 mph.  Daniel watched out the windows as the city blocks whipped by him.  He glanced up and down, since in a very real sense the city was a truly three dimensional creature.  Bridges and walkways connected various buildings at different heights.  The entire seventh story of nearly every building in this part of the city was one giant shopping mall.  It went on for miles, each penitent carrying their ritualistic coverings, spending time and money to the many gods of Commerce, Consumption, and the most powerful of them all: Entertainment and Distraction.

The human mind can form and idea, whole and complete in so short a time that it appears instant.  The only way we can know it’s not, is by checking our memories in the past for a time when it didn’t exist, which we remember quite well.  Our minds require of us to understand that some “time happened” in the interim.  

Daniel caught a snatch of a young child, one hand clutched in his mother’s fist, leaning and pulling with his arm pointed out at some thing which had caught his eye.

We spend time to create realities for each other.  For instance, Daniel was suddenly giving a lecture, mentally, to folks who weren’t even there.  His inner life was so rich to him, that he had to teach it, even if there were no students.  I have just created an image in my mind, but it’s not merely an image, it’s a reality.  It happened in an amount of time so small I cannot process it.  Now, let me share it.  He glanced at his watch.

There is an apple, and it sits on a table in a room.  The table is near a window, which has  blue and white checked curtains.  A shaft of sunlight penetrates into the room, and thousands of motes of dust float, turn, bob, and weave on and through the invisible air currents in the room.  The apple is in sharp focus, crystal clear.  The rest of the room is bathed in soft light, and is slightly out of focus.  Inside the apple, the worm.  The worm is eating little bits of the apple, taking in its sugar and other substances and converting its use to its own.  Here’s the kicker.  No one knows about the worm.  It’s hidden, invisible.  Secret.  

Now, to share that image, and whether it was transferred correctly or well we shall never know, took me… he glanced at his watch, one minute and twenty seconds.  Now, only you here have received it.  If I had typed it in a message or, god forbid, written it out by hand like a caveman, it would have taken even longer.  To share my inner creation with you, which took the tiniest time to make, takes minutes of my life.  Minutes I shall never get back.  They’re spent.  This time, its orders and orders and orders and order and orders of magnitude longer than the creation!  But if I don’t, no one ever knows.  LIke the worm in the apple.

“Sir… your destination.”

If I don’t remember where I’ve been and what I’ve done, what does that make me?  Conscious?  Alive?  Nothing?

The rail taxi had recently stopped, but Daniel had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he had neglected to notice.  “Ah, thanks.”  He opened the door, and stepped out onto the pad in front of the door, tucking his one crutch under his left shoulder.  He checked the frame of the door, and saw they were on the twenty sixth floor of the building.  He checked the HUD on his device, and found the room he needed, it would be on this floor.  He stepped up to the door and walked boldly into it.

Not through it, mind you, but smack into the poly-glass, which was bullet proof, laser proof for nine hours, and also man-proof if he were walking at a limpy pace.  His device informed him he did not have clearance to access this particular building.  “Shit.”  Daniel said, cueing up an email:

From:  Daniel Holk ;
To:  Bob ;

Subject:  MSG

-----BEGIN GPG SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I’m outside.  I can’t get in that building.  Little help?

--- Daniel

-----BEGIN GPG SIGNATURE-----

Version: USNMcorp v4.2.1
...

-----END GPG SIGNATURE-----

        His device popped up a new notification, temporary security access granted.  Access to building for two hours.  The nigh indestructible glass doors slid back smoothly and quietly.  A screen displaying the location of several businesses was immediately to his left.  Most of them had suitably vague and techy titles, Rj-84-M Inc., Neuro Web LTD., JM Walsh and Sons, well maybe not all of them.  A small local map appeared in his view, with a blinking red dot indicating his destination.  

        Daniel hobbled over to the main hall and began pulling himself slowly down the hallway.  He had to stop and take break, leaning against the wall which was painted an industrial off-white, slick and glossy to the touch.  He tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling with its faux-skylights dispersing a soft and diffuse white light.  He caught his breath, and continued down the hall.  Finally, he found the door, a screen informed him he was at the location of 16384.net, whatever the hell that was.

        Daniel raise his hand to knock on the door, as it slid back into the wall.  He stepped through, and it shut behind him.  He quickly looked about, and found himself to be in a sally port!  A screen on one all came to life:

        “Daniel,”  a synthesized voice called out to him.  “I’m sorry for the cloak and dagger jive, but it’s really a requirement at this point.  I was pretty shocked when you asked to meet, and I figured something was up.  Please deposit your NM gear in the drawer.”

        A drawer opened up, ready to accept whatever Daniel would put into it.  Gear?  “Now,”  Daniel began, “just why in hell would I do that?” he asked of the computerized voice.

        “Quite simply, because you agreed to it.  Moreover, you actually wrote the protocol we’re following… well, I’m following.  You don’t have to do any of this.  Say the word, and I’ll reopen your door to the hall and you can go on about your life peacefully howsoever you wish.  Your move, cowboy.”

        Daniel stopped for a moment to think.  He could leave.  He could turn on his heel and march back out to the city, take a cab home, maybe have a beer or eight.  Maybe he’d pick up a woman.  He thought he might like that.  They keep those right next to the milk, yeah?  He shook his head, whoever had come up with the phrase “pick up a woman” either only had experience one very specific type of female human, or none at all.

        Doing any of these things, however, meant that this question would remain unanswered.  Why had Bob contacted him, and what appointment had he missed?  If he was fine living in a universe where these two questions would never be answered, he should leave.  If, however, he could not abide living in such a universe…  

        Daniel pressed a button on the left frame of his gear, turning off the electromagnetic tethers, and removing the NM device.  The phrase “your move, cowboy” stuck out at him, and had clinched it.  He set the ‘gear’ down in the drawer, and it slid home.  

        “All right, now that that’s out of the way…  If you wouldn’t mind putting your hands in the yellow circles on the wall to your right?”

        Daniel turned and complied with the request, he figured he was in it now, might as well ride it out.  A series of blue lasers traced themselves in three dimensions over his body, and he was momentarily bombarded by force air blasts from the walls and floors.  A warm electric hum suffused the room.
        “Sir, are you classified as human?”
        “Uh… yeah.”  Daniel answered uncertainly.

        “Boo, wrong answer.  I mean, technically correct, but not the one I wanted.”  The voice lamented to him.

        “Sorry about your luck.”  Daniel said, unmoved.

        “Anyway… cool beans: no bombs, volatile or radiological substances, no weird-ass diseases, and no weapons other than your rapier sharp wit and and tongue!”  the voice noted.  The slew of checks and processes came to an end, and a man-door in the wall slid open.  Daniel gathered up his crutch and hobbled through the passage.

        Daniel found himself in what looked like a bachelor’s crash pad.  A single room, a cot against the wall, and a bank of computers across from it.  A table was set up with various means of heating synthetic food substitutes, and maybe real food; but let’s be honest, someone staying here wouldn’t be eating a single vegetable.  Daniel looked around sort of astounded.  He wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

        “That’s a lot of security for what looks like a weird teenager’s bedroom.”  Daniel announced.

        “You decorated it, Dan.”  the unmodulated voice replied.

        “Daniel, please.”  He pressed.

        “Yeah, you’ve been Dan to me for about fifteen years now, so we’ll go ahead and stick to that.  You’ll get used to it.  Welcome to chez-nous!”  

        “Uh… so you’re Bob?”  Daniel asked.

        “Well, Bob’s a joke actually...?”

        “Yeah, I got the Alice reference.”  Daniel interrupted, “what should I call you?”

        “Eh, let’s stick with Bob at this point.  We’re in uncharted territory now, so let’s play it safe.  We have learned some interesting things in the past two months, but just how much we can extrapolate from that is yet to be seen.”  Bob said.

        “Uh…”  Daniel began.

        “Why don’t you let me give you the Cliffsnotes version, and we’ll just hold all questions until the end, thanks.”  Bob gestured to a rolly office chair to Daniel’s right, indicating that Daniel should take it for himself.

        Bob sat down on the cot, and took a deep breath.  He looked like a man getting ready to perform the key soliloquy or monologue on opening night.  “Well, tell you what.  Why don’t we start off with you telling me everything you know to be true.”

        Daniel started to open his mouth, and then closed it.  Can I trust this guy?  Do I have a choice?  He thought.  He had already made a decision to trust this “Bob” and to go through with whatever was happening here.  That’s not what Daniel was thinking about, what he was thinking about was what did he know to be true? Well, that’s kind of what I was getting at in the car, now wasn’t it?

        “Wait, hang on.  I sent you down a thought-hole.  My bad.  Daniel:  tell me what you remember, give me the abbreviated “About Me” section to your life, right now,”  Bob interjected.

        “Uh, well, okay.  My name is Daniel Holk.  I used to work with computers for US Neural Mechanical, as a developer.  I have an apartment, and I sleep in a very sparse bedroom.  I read a lot, and I think I have an interest in philosophy.  I was in a car accident two months ago, and was in a coma for almost all of the time since.  I met a red headed nurse that I am taking out for dinner later in the week.” Daniel pauses, waited, and then shook his head.  That’s it.

        “Ha!  You certainly don’t waste much time.”  Bob noted, “Okay, allow me to fill in some holes there.  You are a developer for US Neural Mechanical, which among other things is a government contractor, and superpower in its own right.  It’s one of the five big mega corporations.  The lines between corporation, state, and finance are so blurry as to be practically non-existent.  Let’s just say all those folks eat lunch together and hang out at the same bars.  

        “As a government contractor, US Neural Mechanical has access to some really cool toys.  One of which is the gear you were rocking just a few moments ago.  That technology has been on the market for about four years now, but was in development for much longer than that.  Civilian application was not its primary purpose.  US Neural is a .gov contractor, remember?

        “It was military and paramilitary.  I mean, by that point the writing was on the wall that national armies were on their way out.  They’re bound by all kinds of treaties, and laws, and international opinion.  Private military contractors though?  That’s where the money and the national interest is at these days.  But I digress…

        “So, US Neural is churning out these neat neural mechanical interfaces, the first of which were basically walkie-talkies, you know?  Hell, that’s still their main use for most consumers.  So, yeah.  US Neural basically figures out that the EM field created by the human central nervous system can be machine readable, but more importantly, it’s also machine writeable!  It’s a one-to-one like radio signal, there’s an electro-chemical component, but that’s like logistics.  Boring.  So, anyway, you have to be tweaking with brain waves and a person’s subjective experience to cause them to “hear” a message right?  Well, that’s what they were doing.  But we didn’t know how far that was going.

        “So about four years ago, the consumer market opened up for NM gear, and they sold like hotcakes.  It wasn’t too long before hackers and tweakers were tinkering around with it long enough to do some cool stuff.  At first, it was kid stuff.  Someone figured out how to mess with serotonin and dopamine levels, another person figured out you could cause an adrenaline dump with the right set up of interference patterns.  Humans are strange, if they can mess with brains, they will.  Whatever.  

        “So while this is happening on the streets and clubs, US Neural announces to the .mil, .gov, and corporate sectors that they can use this technology to train employees.  Why spend weeks of real time training someone for a task when you can basically just download the process the brain?  Cut out the middle man, right?

        “Well, the corporate interests thought that was about the greatest thing since the concept of limited liability and corporate personhood.  Training is a serious business expense.  Heck, if they play their cards right, people will probably sign up to pay to be trained!  Well, after the seedier parts of the internet are done burning out their central nervous systems, they realize they can probably do this, too.  

        “You have to understand the way this training works, the person knows its training.  It’s effectively a false memory of doing some process.  One person goes through the action and the gear records the action from their perspective.  Then the second person receives this memory, and it’s replayed a bunch, reinforcing it.  But people know its not an authentic experience, it’s like, paler kind of.  Less substantial that living real life.  At least that’s how it was at the beginning.  We’ve made some really interesting progress in four years’ time.

        “So, you have the NM gear which are hooked up the wider networks, right?  And you have the tech to basically ef with people’s memories.  Seen any problems?”

        Daniel answered right away.  “Memory hackers and memory thieves.”

        “Bingo,” Bob said, placing his finger on his own nose. “That’s it.  You know the phrase ‘rubber hose cryptography?’” he asked.
        Daniel nodded his head, “yeah, the weakest link in the cryptographic chain is the human with the password, or key, or whathaveyou.”

        “Well, you don’t need the rubber hose if you can just gank the password from the dude’s mind while he’s watching weird porn in his own brain, right?”

        Daniel grunted.  I’ve been hooked up to this thing every waking minute since I got out of the hospital.  Which was quickly followed by, well, I don’t know anything to give away.”

        “Well, after the first few high profile mind hacks, the state did its thing and stepped in making extra double-dog illegal to acquire information that way without permission.  Naturally.  And US Neural added some superficial protection things, which were all broken on a scale of weeks after their release.  Some kind of firmware thing.  Anyway, here’s where we enter the story.

        “The folks on the deep web (not the creepy porn ones, the secret admirer types) were noting that no-one had been tried for violation of the new Intellectual Copyright Protection and Rights Management Act (ICPRMA)?  Weird, right?  Anyone worth their salt knew the firmwear blocks on the gear were ineffectual one you had a certain skill set, and while it might stop 90% of the users from misusing the tech, that’s not who was doing the sneaky skullduggery, right?  Right.  

        “So what’s the deal?  Is it that no one’s getting caught, no one’s committing the crimes, or something else?  That’s the question we’ve been trying to answer for fifteen months now.  There are some things we’d labelled conspiracy theories, but after a while a few started looking like real, viable options.

        “So, you remember the serotonin and dopamine junkies, right?  Well, it turns out that a black market in NM gear hacks cropped up like right damned fast, and one of the things that was super popular were bootleg training memories, most of these are just called ‘vids.’  So these vids spanned the gamut from sword fighting, to explosives manufacturing, to the internet’s favorite pastime: porn.  

        “Porn ‘vids’ are hot, and there’s some relatively vanilla stuff that everyone knows how to get at, but there’s a whole underground of weird shit.  Like weeeird shit.  But remember how these are made?  Snuff films, horrible stuff.  Someone still has to go through the experience, right?  
        “On a less criminal level, there’s the more vanilla stuff.  Well, whose side do you want to experience?  Every wonder what a female orgasm feels like?  Yeah, you and every other male ever.  Except other than a human central nervous system, you don’t have all the right equipment. You definitely don’t have the right electrochemical system; and your central nervous system is awash in androgenic hormones, all this shit matters.  So your specific central nervous system isn’t even right for this.  

        “So, you download one cross-sex porn vid, no big deal, your brain goes fucking haywire for a while, and it’s fine.  Really.  It’s no big thing.  Unless you start chasing it.  You start dabbling in lots of weird vids.  And just like we had the people who were just twisting the knobs on their bodies endocrine system, we had people download crazy amounts and varieties of experiences.  

        “Eventually, purely synthetic vids were figured out.  Things no human could ever possibly do.  And people burned themselves out on them.  Just like everything else.  Well, the consequences turned out to be a little more severe with the memory vids.  There’s a threshold, and it’s not the same for everyone, and it’s a scale.  You see the effects midway through and if you stop, you’re still mostly okay. But some, they boldly charge on past that point.  

        “They get to a place where they’re not themselves anymore.  They’ve overwritten their experiences, their personalities, and they end up some weird kind of ghost in the machine hodgepodge of memories and personalities.  

        “Someone tried to start calling these poor clods Replicants, but that never caught on, but it was funny.  Anyway, these burned out folks are called Sybil, which is a bit of misnomer, but those kind of memes have sticking power.  Like, they’re directly called Sybil, as a proper noun and as a generic one.  

        “Example:  There’s four sybils over there.  Hey, Sybil, put that dog down!”

        Daniel leaned back in his chair and took a look around the room.  “None of this makes sense.”

        “Well,”  Bob picked back up, “in a way you’re right, and in a way you’re wrong.  The deep web spat out this idea that maybe some of the sybils were criminals.  Hackers who’d gone after the wrong memories and got bit.  That’s what we thought.  I mean, a thirty second conversation with a sybil will tell you right away that there’s nothing happening in there, nothing serious.  It’s a mish mash of every vid they’ve consumed, and a whole lot of weirdness besides.  It’s a perfect punishment, it takes them out of the loop, and they can’t misuse whatever they took.  Hell, they can barely tie their shoes.”

        “Okay,”  Daniel took a deep breath and attempted to get his thoughts in order.  It took a few seconds, but Bob was willing to wait quietly.  “Okay, so the where did we come into all of this again, were we trying to rescue information from the sybils?”

        “No.  Not quite.  See, we were kind of on the bleeding edge of this whole thing, and while publically we were merely watching the debates, behind the scenes we were getting dirty.  Which was especially risky for you, being a dev at US Neural.”

        “Right.  So I imagine we took some steps to mitigate that risk.”

        “Exactly.  Once a week, we’d come here, upload some memories to our local storage, and in the event of one of us getting sybil’d, we’d re-upload the original memories.  Or, at least that was the plan.”

        “Okay, so what changed?”  Daniel prompted.

        “Well, when you got arrested…”

        “Wait, what?  I was arrested?!”  Daniel yelled, “ Wouldn’t the hospital tell me that?”

        “Well, you weren’t so much ‘arrested’ in the traditional sense as you were fucking kidnapped off the street one day, and we didn’t see you for a week, and then you were “in a car crash” and a coma for almost two months.” Bob offered.

        “Oh.”  Daniel said, dejectedly.

        “Yeah, the car crash thing threw me for a loop. I’ve actually been living here for the past two months, thinking you’d been sybil’d and they’d come for me next.”

        “Yeah, I can … smell that.”  Daniel said.

        “Thanks,”  Bob said with a disapproving, wry twist of the mouth.  “The plan went sideways when you emailed me.  I was all set to hole-up here for the duration.  Then you emailed me.”

        “Yeah, so?”  Daniel prodded.
        “You didn’t come back sybil’d.  You came back… neutral.  So, some folks focused on this area of theory that had posited that if you knew enough (a big gods damned IF), you could remove memories and leave someone what they called “neutral functional.”  Basically, they’d be a human, they’d have a personality others would recognized like before, they’d feel real and normal, but most of their memories would be gone.  At least related to whatever parts of their brain you were dicking around with, that is.”

        “‘Neutral functional?’  hmm…”  Daniel chewed on that.  “So, I’ve been rendered ‘neutral functional’ by … someone, presumably for pissing off the wrong people in and around the NM device hacking community?”

        “No, no one we know or associate with could do this.  You pissed off the state, some corporation, or US Neural Mechanical themselves.”  Bob corrected.

        “Okay, then let’s re-upload our previous sessions, and go from there.”

        “Yeah.”  he pulled air through this clenched teeth, inhaling, and looked around like the a kid clearly caught in some serious time-out-level offense.  “We can’t.”  Bob said.

        “Why not?”

        “Because almost all of those files are gone.  Someone took them.  They left a few, but the size difference is, like, an order of magnitude smaller, and I have no idea what’s in those files now.  It could be madness, or ten thousand years of torture, or a coma, or insta-death, or it could turn you into some sort Terminator-like killing machine who baths in the blood of innocent hackers.. err… people!  It could be anything!”

        Daniel raised his hands, palms towards the clearly agitated Bob.  “Whoa, whoa.” he said placatingly,  “Look, I don’t know what was in there, so I can’t really be upset at the loss.  You’re exactly right, it’s too dangerous to download those files.  Can we read them somehow?”

        “No, it’s not human readable unless it’s being pumped through the central nervous system.  We won’t know until we stick it in someone’s head.”  Bob said firmly, sitting back on the cot and crossing his arms, “and I’m not going to do that.”

        Daniel sat back and set to thinking.  Well, if we can get those files back, I can figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.  I can figure out who and what I am, and I can basically get my life back.

        “Bob,” Daniel began, “We need to get those files back.”

        “, he says, simply. It’s not that easy, Dan, first we have to figure out how they got in, then we have to figure out who ‘they’ are, and then ‘where’ those files are at, and then come up with a plan to get them back.  Execute that plan, and then get back to re-upload the files, all the while hoping they aren’t compromised.”  Bob laid out.

        “Well, that’s the plan then.”  Daniel said finally.