The Privilege Pt. 01

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Author's Note: I'm back! This Australian summer has been strangely non-productive in terms of my production of erotica, bucking the trend. But then, as we come to the end of the wet season, this past weekend I took this draft I had from two months ago and added about ten thousand words to it! Strange when inspiration -- and more importantly, motivation -- strikes! I really wanted to tell this story, but as all authors do at some point or the other, during the initial production of the draft I got stuck at one sentence. I stared at it, ruminated over it, whinged about it, and eventually gave up on the story altogether. Yet when I got back to it this past Friday, all I had to do was delete it and write a new one. To all my fellow smut and non-smut writers: If you ever find yourself in this situation, believe me when I tell you you're not stuck. You're just in transition from one good word, phrase, sentence, paragraph or chapter, to the next one. Take a break and keep going!

As for this story, dear readers, I'm afraid it's a long one. A simple word count tells me that the introduction -- with a fair bit of sci-fi and world-building thrown in -- is about six thousand words long. I seriously considered separating the intro into its own submission, under the "Non-erotic" genre, but looking at other similarly-sized stories I feel like the average smut reader can trudge through a LOT of sludge to get to the gold. Let me know if I'm wrong, however!

If you just want to skip to the sexy bits, hit CTRL-F and keep searching the pages until you find mention of "Petrosus". The story description should give you enough background on what you need to know about the happenings prior. This is definitely a multi-part series, and I can't wait to see what sexual adventures Ja/mian gets up to next. In the meanwhile, I'd love any and all comments you may have.

Happy reading!

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They would've never believed it.

Given the weight of evidence -- which was the entirety of the existence of the modern homo sapiens -- was stacked against something like this ever happening, they would've thought I was a raving lunatic. They would've sooner put me in an institution for the psychologically disturbed than behind bars with the rest of gen-pop. They scrutinised me with stern eyes, tapped their pens on the table, chewed gum with mouths half open, ran their fingers through their hair and blew raspberries. They poked, prodded, threatened, cajoled, negotiated, pleaded and screamed for answers. But I stayed silent, for I could never tell them the truth.

Their time was running out. In another six hours I would be free to go. They hadn't managed to pin any charges on me in the past forty-two, and it didn't look like they would be able to do so in the time remaining. At best, they could prosecute me for trespassing, breaking and entering. But both of those were bailable offences, and I'd be on a plane back home by the afternoon. But I figured that the detectives suspected something deeper was going on, something bubbling under the surface. They were probably tearing up my house to find something, anything. I wondered how many times in the past two days they had gone through my affects. Three, four times? Each time their search getting more frantic, increasingly frustrating?

My flat in Madrid had some breadcrumbs, but the loaf was long gone. Thinking back, it was definitely stupid of me to have stayed the extra day that I did. If the Garcias next door hadn't noticed me slipping in at midnight and called the police, I would've made it in and out of Spain without anyone being the wiser. But now... I had some explaining to do back home. I toyed with the empty packet of sandwiches on the table, and tried to give the camera my best bored expression, but I was pissed. I had made a naïve mistake. The kind only a young, hot-headed man would make. I falsely believed I had grown past that. I stared at my hands -- smooth, unwrinkled, unmarked. Next to the sandwich pack stood a paper cup. Its bottom was stained with the long-dried dregs of coffee. I wondered how much coffee I had drunk since being brought into this interrogation room. It was making me... unbalanced. A year-and-a-half ago I wouldn't have even touched the substance because of the effect it used to have on me. But in the past twelve months I could afford to indulge, and coffee was the least problematic out of all my indulgences.

Problematic. That was a word I hadn't heard in a while. It was Corinne's favourite, judging by the way she used to bring it up in meetings all the time. I was only too glad to not have attended those meetings in a while. Towards the end of my previous life, they had gotten more and more unbearable. It was almost like any idiot could buy their way into the board, and I know a lot of them did. I had to spend ten years in the basement before I was even allowed past the fiftieth floor, let alone sit in on executive meetings on Level 63. And even that was ten storeys below where Richard Steinbeck had his Director's office. The first time I saw his face was during my second week at the company. He was, like me, much younger then. At least, he still had control of his arms and legs. By the time I became VP of R&D, Parkinson's had crippled him.

Richard was the reason JCD had acquired and funded a biotech company at all. Everyone at Nervosyn had been puzzled about the world's fifth largest cosmetics company investing in their tiny Brain-Computer Interface start-up, beating out top bidders from more closely aligned fields, but no one was dumb enough to say no to the money. Or to the free reign we gave them for the first five years. Nervosyn's prime directive was to develop an electro-neuronal bridge to alleviate the symptoms of neuro-degenerative diseases, like Parkinson's. As far as bets went, Richard Steinbeck had bet big. We basically poured money into the company, to the tune of hundreds of millions. Then one night, Elijah Turner, Nervosyn's Chief Technologist, had called me to their labs to show me the findings from the latest prototype. His tone on the phone had been grim. When I arrived, I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. He kept fidgeting with his wedding band.

"It's not looking good, Damian." He told me.

He took me to their experimentation pen, which was where their prototypes underwent live testing on animals. Elijah led me to a catwalk overlooking two enclosures on the opposite ends of the pen. Both the enclosures had a lone pig in them. One of the pigs was milling about, munching on some slop from a feed. The other one was rolled over. It didn't look like it was breathing.

"What am I looking at?" I asked.

"We implanted our latest BCI prototype into this pair of subjects." Elijah explained. "One of the pigs was perfectly healthy, while in the other we simulated the symptoms of a neuro-degenerative disease. This manifested as total loss of motor control, from the neck down. The second subject could not voluntarily articulate anything on its body except its mouth."

Elijah went on.

"The way the prototype works, is that it has two components: a teacher and a student."

"A teacher and a student?"

"One teaches, the other learns."

"Learns what?"

"How to interpret incoming motor activation signals from the brain. In a person afflicted with Parkinson's, there's a lack of a chemical substance in their brain which is used to reinforce, or inhibit, signals to activate and move their limbs. That chemical basically acts as a lube between the neurons, and when there's not enough lube, signals don't travel between their brain and their spine the way they should. This leads to loss of motor control and function, which manifests as tremors, slowing down of movements, stuttering and rigidity of limbs."

I nodded along. Elijah continued.

"The teacher half of the BCI, implanted in a healthy, functional host, is basically an observer. It observes how those reinforcement and inhibitory pathways function, and what a healthy feedback loop between motor activation signals and the resulting response -- say, lifting one's leg to step forward -- looks like. It records each activation and response, and sends it to the servers in that room over there," Elijah pointed to a dimly lit room behind us. Racks upon racks of servers hummed quietly behind the glass, bathed in blue light.

"These servers host dozens of Tensor Processing Units: AI cores. They process the incoming signals from the teacher unit and learn from the host over time, slowly building a neural network model of these healthy activation loops."

"Uh huh."

"This neural network model basically parses the loop into a 1:1 signal-response relationship which is passed on to the student unit. The student unit then acts as the go-between for the motor cortex, where the activation signals originate from, and the rest of the spinal system. For example, if it sees a signal to raise one's foot, it knows exactly what response is expected out of that signal, and passes it down the spinal cord, bypassing the faulty chemical pathways. Same thing happens during feedback, but in reverse: the student unit records the response to the signal and sends it back to the motor cortex, so the brain knows where the foot is, and whether it's okay to step forward."

"The theory makes sense." I looked out at the two pigs below us. "But I suppose it hasn't worked in practice."

"It would seem that way." Elijah said grimly. "So which one do you think got each half of the interface?"

I furrowed my brow and looked at him. Then, without turning, I pointed my finger at the pig that was strolling in its pen.

"Teacher."

Then I pointed to the one who had given up the ghost.

"Student."

For the first time in all the years that I had known Elijah, a smirk creased his mouth. But it had no humour to it.

"You're wrong."

Five minutes later, we were down in the pen, looking at the healthy pig over the fence of its enclosure.

"Go on." I nudged the Chief Technologist.

"The BCI is malfunctioning. You see the way it's hobbling on its front left leg?"

I looked, and indeed it looked like the pig was limping.

"That's a characteristic of the pig that got the Teacher implant. We surgically lacerated a particular tendon in its leg to see if that compensatory behaviour showed up in the student pig."

"Yeah but the student pig is dead."

"No," Elijah took off his spectacles and slowly rubbed the bridge of his nose. He suddenly seemed a decade older.

"This is the student pig."

So it worked!

"Elijah! That's great news!"

When his features didn't change, I grabbed and rubbed his shoulder.

"Oh come on now! So what if the teacher died? This is just the prototype. I'm sure you'll figure it out as you go."

Elijah didn't respond. Instead, he kneeled in front of the fence and held his hand into the pen between the metal bars. The pig was turned away from us, munching on something.

"Delilah" he called out softly.

The pig grunted and kept chewing.

"Delilah" Elijah called out again.

The tag on the pen's metal swinging doors caught my eye.

"It says its name is Deborah."

Elijah didn't reply.

"Delilah!"

I flicked through the report on the tablet that Elijah had handed me earlier. It had records of the procedure and the preliminary findings from the experiment. There were a series of photos of the two pigs, taken in pairs, before and after the implant surgery. The ones after the surgery were taken every six hours. The first couple after the surgery showed both the pigs recuperating in their separate pens. Only, as the photos went on, one seemed to be getting better, while the other didn't. On the second-to-last page of the report, the photos displayed were ones taken 96 hours after the surgery. In terms of visuals, they weren't very different from the sight that had greeted me from the top of the catwalk earlier. A healthy pig in one pen, a very dead one in the other.

"Cardiac activity ceased in subject D2 at 6:52 PM on the 29^th of March, 93 hours after the implant surgery. Subject D1 continues to show signs of a healthy recovery."

"Delilah! Come here girl!" Elijah called out

The pig turned around and approached Elijah's outstretched hand. The Chief Technologist stroked its snout and petted its head. I flicked back to the first couple of pages of the report where the pigs had their case history.

"Subject D1 is a six year-old Berkshire pig, weighing 273 pounds. Simulated neurodegeneration has manifested as loss of function in both hind limbs and partial loss of function of right fore-limb. Assigned as Student."

Underneath it was the photo of D1. A name tag hung from its neck, with "Deborah -- Student" stencilled on it.

"Subject D2 is a three-year old Berkshire pig, weighing 287 pounds. Surgical laceration of tendon in left fore-limb has led to a slight limp in gait. Assigned as Teacher."

Followed by the photo of D2. On the name tag was stencilled...

Delilah -- Teacher

I put the tablet down and looked at the pig.

"Elijah," I began, as my vision began to blur around the edges.

"Why did you call it Delilah?"

***

"Are you going to be okay?"

Elijah's voice drifted out of the haze.

I felt something cold and hard pressing into my cheek and the palm of my hands. I opened my eyes and saw the world had turned sideways. I was pressed up against the wall...

Elijah's shoes came into dim view. I felt his hands on my shoulder, shaking me awake. I turned over on my back, and saw the high ceiling of the test warehouse. The world righted itself in my head, and I sat up.

"I blacked out"

I murmured as Elijah held out a Styrofoam cup of water to me. I drank it slowly. I saw Elijah looking carefully at me.

"Sorry Doc, at my age sometimes the blood doesn't flow to all the extremities, all at once."

I tried smiling but saw that it only made my companion even more uncomfortable.

"Let me get another glass of water and I'll be able to get up."

Five minutes later, we were in Elijah's office. I settled in a chair and, still nursing the Styrofoam cup, fixed Elijah with a look.

"Alright, give me the whole story."

Five minutes after that, I was back on my feet, shaking my head.

"You're joking. There's no way."

"It's the only verifiable explanation we have."

"Verifiable how? Just because the pig responds to the name of the Teacher doesn't mean..."

"We've done brain scans. The cognition patterns match that of Delilah."

"So..." I sighed. I had to cut to the point. "What are you really saying here? That you downloaded the consciousness of one living thing into another?"

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe it so bad. But if Elijah had broken out in a grin right then and told me it was all a joke... I would have felt relieved. I was trying to protect myself from it, simultaneously as I was trying to pull the curtains back.

"Without dipping into scientific jargon, yes."

For the second time that night, I felt the floor falling away under my feet. I sat back down in my chair. My mind effervesced with questions, but the first one that came to mind was

"How many people in the company know about this?"

"About half a dozen."

"Can you trust them to keep their lips sealed?"

"I would trust them with anything."

"Good."

Good.

I crossed my arms and thought for a long while. My reverie was broken by Elijah's first question to me that evening.

"So, what now?"

***

Three nights later, I had formulated an answer to that question.

It took a month to convince Elijah of my suggested course of action.

It took fifteen months for Nervosyn to develop and test the next iteration of the prototype.

Then, one night in early spring, my phone rang just as I was preparing for bed. It was Elijah.

"We are ready."

One of the researchers met me at the door to the lab and led me in. The lab facilities had been transformed over the past winter. All the staff not involved in this fork of BCI development had been moved to a newer facility down on JCD's main campus. The ones who had stayed had worked tirelessly to restructure the lab. Most of the offices and cubicles had been cleared out, to be repurposed as animal enclosures, micro-fabs, observation chambers, surgery theatres and server rooms. I was led past workbenches, discarded computers, empty cages, stacks of files and medical equipment into the main theatre. Elijah had his back turned to me as I entered. He seemed busy, so I wandered over to one of the two sealed chambers which stood on one end of the monitoring room.

I peered into the cylindrical enclosure through the viewing glass. It was filled with a fluid of indeterminate composition. I couldn't actually tell if it was a fluid, gel or a suspension, its murkiness made it impossible to fathom anything. Presently, something floated up and hit the glass, right in front of my vision. I reeled back when I realised it was a human face. One that I had seen only twice before that time.

"Mr. Steinbeck is currently in a medically induced coma."

Elijah's voice came from behind me.

"He came in yesterday. We spent the past twenty-four hours prepping him for the procedure. We induced him into a coma at 7:30 PM this evening."

"I see."

It was still a bit unnerving to see the billionaire's body suspended in liquid inside a steel tube. I shuddered and turned back to Elijah.

"So what is the procedure going to look like?"

***

An hour later, I watched the procedure go down, just as Elijah had described. First on the agenda was a surgery. A tiny robotic apparatus -- ring-like in shape and with a dozen tiny instruments mounted on articulated arms along its circumference -- was lowered into the tank. The robot settled around Steinbeck's temple. Suspended in the tank, with a crown of pointy surgical instruments on his head, Richard Steinbeck presented a biblical image. The robot got to work, making an incision on the side of Steinbeck's skull, through which it inserted the BCI chip to implant onto the frontal lobe. Once the incision was sealed, the robot was pulled back out of the tank.

Then a set of double doors opened on the other end of the operating theatre, and another tank floated in, suspended on an overhead conveyor crane. I realised this was the other tank which had been standing next to Steinbeck's. Unlike Steinbeck's tank, this one had no windows or apertures to look in through. There weren't even any cameras mounted inside the tank. That was all for a very good reason.

Richard Steinbeck was going to swap consciousnesses with an anonymous donor. No one in the research team, not even Elijah, knew the identity of the donor. All they knew was that the donor was a male, between 25 and 45 years of age. They knew his body, in the sense that they had drawn up his bloodwork and ran all sorts of tests to make sure he was of a healthy physical composition and was likely to remain that way, which meant no genetic predisposition to diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer... all the nasty stuff. The subject had been made to understand that the chances of him surviving in Steinbeck's body after the swap were slim to none. After his consent, his family had been unconditionally compensated beyond most people's wildest dreams.

After the swap was over, both Steinbeck -- in his new body -- and the donor, would be monitored by a separate team for a few days to ensure the BCI had done its job. That team would never have any interaction with Elijah's researchers. They weren't a part of Nervosyn, nor were they even from the same country. They had only been briefed minimally about the surgical procedure and the convalescence protocol -- all in an effort to maintain Steinbeck's privacy. Ultimately, if all had went well, Steinbeck would get up off his hospital bed, and walk off into the sunset. With a giant opening balance in a new bank account, a sizeable monthly allowance and unlimited credit from the company -- all transactions anonymised on both ends -- he would live and build a new life the way he wanted, getting a second wind to enjoy his lifelong successes without the pressure of celebrity and responsibility.