Part 774: MindCore v4

January 29th, 2021. Aevum.

Daisy stepped inside the surgery room inside Aevum, the very same one where Nadia and Catherine previously both had their MindCores installed. As she stepped inside, the anxiety and excitement on her face mixed into an indeterminate blob of both, causing her to oscillate between both at the same time, constantly. She was anxious due to all the side effects that could happen, and had happened, to Nadia and Catherine both. She was excited because both of them had clearly demonstrated the value of their MindCores, to say nothing of her own father.

Jason and Nadia were already inside the surgery room. Unlike ‘real’ doctors on Earth, they weren’t wearing surgical garb, but instead, their normal clothes. Nadia looked a little apprehensive, but Jason was all smiles. Daisy wasn’t sure if he was confident the surgery was sure to be a success after all his new improvements, or if he simply didn’t want her to be afraid of the potential screw-ups that could happen inside her head soon.

"Hey, sweetie." Jason said, as he walked over and kissed his daughter’s cheek. "Don’t worry. Nadia helped me iron out a lot of kinks. This is going to be the smoothest surgery ever."

Daisy bobbed her head, but her stomach was in knots. "I… I really hope so, dad."

She looked at Nadia for reassurance, but the anxiety on Nadia’s face didn’t make Daisy feel any better.

After a long moment of hesitation, Daisy sat down in the surgery chair, and Jason reclined it backward, giving him full access to Daisy’s head. For several seconds, he simply stood there, resting his hand on Daisy’s shoulder.

"Honey, at Nadia’s request, I’m going to give you a choice today." Jason said.

"A choice?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah. Basically, you pick from one of two types of MindCores. They’re both going to be the v4 QuantumReflex you chose, but they come in different levels of ‘potency’ and installation difficulty."

Jason was standing on Daisy’s left side. Nadia stepped over to her right.

"Basically, it’s the choice between a MindCore and a MindCore Lite." Nadia explained. "The reason there’s so much pain in the MindCore installation process is because we’re trying to maximize every available piece of your Mind Realm to squeeze out performance and optimization. Your father, Catherine, and I all have ‘full’ MindCores. It made our MindCores painful to install, to say the least."

"But today, I helped your father design a pared-down version." Nadia continued. "Effectively, the v4 QuantumReflex Lite will have about the same performance level as the v1, albeit slightly superior, but it will be a lot smaller and more efficient, leaving 20% of your Mind Realm unused. That extra capacity means we won’t be ‘cramming’ a full model in your head. The installation process will be, effectively, painless. You’ll get a massive upgrade in your cognitive capabilities and it won’t hurt at all."

Daisy looked at her dad. He smiled excitedly, seemingly wanting his daughter to pick the painless option. Then she looked back at Nadia.

"So… it won’t hurt to install. But how much better is the full model?" Daisy inquired.

"The full model has a bit more than twice the power." Nadia admitted. "The 20% decrease in Mind Realm utilization also cuts the capabilities of the Lite Model in half. Naturally, this means someone with a Full model will think and react two times faster than someone with a Lite model."

Daisy’s eyes immediately lost their shine. "I’m a Trueborn. I won’t sacrifice my future capabilities just to endure a little less pain now. No pain, no gain. Give me the Full model, even if it hurts."

Jason squeezed Daisy’s shoulder. "Honey, are you sure?"

"Dad, will the installation of the v4 Quantum Reflex Full model hurt as much as Nadia’s v3 did?" Daisy asked, looking her father in the eye.

"No." Jason admitted. "We’ve done everything we could to make it a lot less painful."

"If you, Catherine, and Nadia could all endure the pain, then so can I." Daisy said, firming her resolve. "I won’t accept less."

That ended the discussion. Daisy had made up her mind. Jason sighed. "Alright."

His smile faded a bit. As expected, his daughter was a lot like her mother. Phoebe wouldn’t give up an opportunity to strengthen herself, and she wasn’t afraid of enduring pain either. It made Jason proud, but it also scared him. He didn’t want to hurt his little girl and make her cry. What father would?

Several minutes passed. Jason and Nadia took turns explaining the installation process to Daisy, with Jason explaining how the old one worked while Nadia focused on the improved system. Even though Daisy initially had no idea what was involved in a MindCore installation, she became shocked out of her mind when she compared her father’s original methods to the new and improved ones.

"Dad, you ripped apart Catherine’s Mind Realm and rebuilt it from scratch?" Daisy asked in shock. "You’re lucky you didn’t turn her into a cripple!"

"Yeah…" Jason said, averting his gaze. "And you wouldn’t believe how much more painful it would have been if I were trying to install my v1 into her Mind Realm. The v2 and v3 were lightyears more advanced, and the v4 even beyond those. It will definitely be a lot less painful."

With the explanations out of the way, Jason got to work. Nadia attached the PepScan to the side of her head. It immediately started providing her with detailed readouts of Daisy’s physiology, but her strong spirituality repelled it from reading her innermost thoughts and desires.

At the very least, Nadia could see the state of Daisy’s Mind Realm, or the lack of it, for that matter.

Jason dove into Daisy’s brain. When he arrived, he was extremely surprised. "Whoa… the spiritual energy in your undeveloped Mind Realm is richer than mine! This… this is crazy. I didn’t know my little girl was so formidable."

"Yeah, yeah." Daisy said, feeling discomforted by the tingling sensations in her head, as well as her father poking around in there. "Just… get it over with, dad."

"Okay." Jason said.

After validating the amount of space he had available in Daisy’s Mind Realm, Jason immediately got to work tilling the latent energy within her. He spoke Words of Power one after another, causing the unfocused mana within her body to spring to life. It was at this point that, silently, Jason started to realize something.

Daisy’s soul is rainbow-colored, like mine. Is that why she has such a vast array of powers at her disposal? If I’m not careful, I could taint her energy and lock down her powers, reducing the diversity of options available to her.

Jason started work on Daisy’s MindCore. Her QuantumReflex was based on monster physiology, and its main purpose was to give her enhanced reflexes, among other monstrous mental capabilities. Jason wasn’t actually entirely sure what the effects would be, as ridiculous as that sounded. In the same way he didn’t originally know exactly what it would ‘be like’ to have a GenesisFrame, or all the other minor drawbacks and benefits of such a thing, Jason wasn’t entirely certain what abilities Daisy would obtain.

The RealitySim was relatively straightforward compared to the QuantumReflex. Jason used the power of Titan minds to create a MindCore that could simulate worlds. He hadn’t anticipated accidentally locking Nadia into a 72-year torture simulator, but in the end, the RealitySim did about what he expected it to do. It was effectively a fully manipulable Holodeck inside Nadia and Catherine’s minds.

But the QuantumReflex? It was a mish-mash of hundreds of different animal and monster brain simulations. Jason had picked and chosen from many different Earth and extra-terrestrial creatures to create v4 of the QuantumReflex, but aside from ‘improved reflexes’ and ‘animal instincts’, he just didn’t know what it would do to Daisy.

This was, without a doubt, his biggest fear. What if he turned his daughter into a snarling bloodthirsty predator? Jason tried not to dwell on that possibility.

Minutes passed. Daisy squirmed a little, but otherwise laid still in the chair, her eyes closed. Jason operated smoothly and efficiently on her brain. By the point when Nadia and Catherine had started experiencing severe agonizing pain or pleasure, Daisy wasn’t even gritting her teeth all that hard. Certainly, she was in pain. It felt like someone was slowly tracing a knife across her chest, back, and throat. But… it wasn’t to the point she’d rather die.

Jason started to perspire. Before he could even think about it, Nadia had already grabbed a cloth and dabbed his forehead. Jason glanced at her for a split second, then returned his gaze to Daisy.

Nadia’s move had been rather… intimate. The way she moved was as if she were his wife, lovingly dabbing his forehead so he wouldn’t sweat all over his daughter.

Jason tried not to think about the implications of her actions. Now simply wasn’t the time.

Just as Jason was starting to get into the mid-stages of Daisy’s operation, his face spasmed. A jolt of pain just under his eyes made him wince.

What the hell was that? Jason thought. He felt like someone had slapped him across the face.

He blinked three times to clear his vision. Strange white spots danced in his vision.

After a moment, they went away. Jason frowned. This had never happened during the previous surgeries. Was he about to encounter another awful situation with his daughter?

He hesitated for a few seconds. He didn’t want to hurt Daisy, but she didn’t look to be in a lot of pain. If Nadia had been at a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale by this point of the surgery, Daisy was barely cresting a 4.

The surgery was going smoothly. Jason didn’t dare to delay. He continued with the original plan.

Jason started melding bits and pieces of animal knowledge and instincts into Daisy’s MindCore. As it slowly started to take shape, another jolt of pain shot into Jason’s irises. He quickly squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.

"No, stop!" Daisy shouted. Jason gasped. Her voice sounded… child-like. Not like her current self.

He opened his eyes again. Nothing was amiss. Daisy continued to lay in the chair, obviously in pain, but not that much.

"Did… you… say something?" Jason asked through gritted teeth.

Daisy wheezed. "No, dad. Just… keep going."

Jason inhaled and exhaled. What the hell had he just heard? He was sure Daisy had said something. But the words didn’t seem to actually come from her mouth?

He continued the surgery. This time, he melted part of an eagle’s instincts into her. All at once, something struck his face with violent force, making his head snap backward. Jason felt his vision go white as he heard his daughter crying again.

"No, please… it hurts…" Daisy whimpered. "I want… my daddy…"

"You don’t have a daddy. You’re an orphan." A male voice said. The voice vaguely had a Russian accent to it. "If you want food, then do as I say. Lift the ball."

"I’m scared. I’m scared…" Daisy cried. "Please don’t hurt me… I want my mommy…"

"Another injection." The man ordered. "The activity in her hippocampus is still underutilized. Too much activity in her limbic system. Her emotions are causing too many distractions."

A woman’s voice spoke. "Doctor, it’s been four hours… we should let her rest a while. She’s only a child."

"A child with the power of a Hero!" The man snapped. "Get out of my sight! You’re too soft!"

Jason felt as if a massive hand had grabbed his throat. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel a powerful hand pinning him in a chair, holding him down.

"Lift the ball. Lift it." The man ordered.

"I’m huck- huck… scared…" Daisy cried, as she struggled to breathe under the man’s crushing grip. "Kah… helll-help…"

"You think you’re scared now? You’ll be pissing yourself once the Director approves the next round of stimulants. Now lift the ball or suffer the consequences."

The world came slightly into focus. Jason could just barely make out the shape of a face close to his. A masculine face. Jason felt that there was a blindfold covering his eyes. It was not as if Jason was seeing the face with his eyes, but some other sense. He could not only sense the scary face, monstrous like that of a demon, but also a hand and arm squeezing him by the throat.

An upright palm came into view with a small ball resting atop it. The man brought the palm closer.

"Lift. The ball." The man ordered.

"Nnn… c-can’t… breathe…" Daisy gasped. She tried to move her arms, but they were strapped to the chair, along with her little legs. She was completely helpless, and terrified out of her mind.

"You’ll BREATHE when you lift the BALL!" The man roared.

Daisy’s vision faded. She passed out from lack of oxygen, and all at once, Jason’s mind jolted back to the real world.

He inadvertently took two steps backward. His chest rose and fell with uncontrollable rhythm. He felt as if an anvil were crushing down on top of him.

It was Daisy’s memory. He had experienced a flicker of a scene from her past.

He, a two hundred year old man, had been utterly terrified by the cruelty he just endured.

How would a six or seven year old girl, alone and helpless, have felt?!

"Jason?" Nadia asked with a frown.

Jason’s eyes flicked over to her. His pupils were shrunken with fear. He was gasping quietly for breath like a man who’d barely survived an encounter with a raging tiger. From Nadia’s point of view, he’d suddenly recoiled out of nowhere and started looking around like a madman.

Jason took a few seconds to collect himself. He wiped his arm across his brow. "It’s… it’s nothing. I just… the surgery is a little… intense."

Jason’s fear and panic was already starting to turn into a form of fatherly rage. He’d heard from Daisy that her childhood was miserable. He’d suffered guilt over it, despair at his failure as a father to protect her.

But this was different.

Seeing it, experiencing it, feeling it from her point of view. He understood on an intimate level just how traumatizing that part of her life had been. She had ‘only’ gone through it from the ages of six to eight, before Vasily Sokolov adopted her.

Two of her formative years, her most vulnerable, were spent doing whatever powerful men had ordered her to do. They’d beaten her, abused her, treated her like a monkey in a cage. More than that, they had hurt her physically and psychologically. They’d molded her into a compliant ‘good little girl’ who did as she was told out of fear of getting punished.

In this moment, Jason understood, truly understood, why she craved power. She’d been made to feel completely weak and defenseless, and now she wanted to rid herself of that feeling.

Pain? What Jason was doing to her now could hardly even be called that. What was a light stabbing or tingling from the Father who loved her compared to the nonstop choking, slapping, and punching of violent men who abused her?

Jason wanted to cry, but now was not the time. He couldn’t leave her in a half-finished state. The longer she sat with an incomplete MindCore, the likelier she would suffer a catastrophic breakdown or loss of mental function.

So Jason quickly got back to work. He ignored Nadia’s probing stares. She didn’t speak a question, but he could feel one in her gaze.

Jason worked quickly. Every so often, a memory of Daisy’s would force its way into his mind. Each one was worse than the last.

A sensation of being pricked in the neck. Lava flowing into Daisy’s body. Shrieks of begging, crying, asking the bad man to stop.

A slap sent her flying. She crashed against the wall. Then came loud demands to use her telepathy to kill the calico cat in the cell with her. Daisy did as she was told. The cat let out a shriek of pain before it fell to the ground, spasming as it died. Daisy cried.

Another orphan child, a little girl, was put in the cell with Daisy. She was told to kill the other girl. Break the orphan’s neck, but also keep her alive for exactly five minutes, only allowing her to die when the timer ran out. Daisy did as she was told. She was a good girl. She never disobeyed the bad man. It was just the orphan girl’s bad luck to end up with her.

They were taking her blood again. Daisy could hear them through the walls, talking about ‘higher concentrations’ and ‘successful experiments’. She tried not to listen. If she performed poorly, they would beat her. If she performed well, they would demand more from her. She was so scared, she had begun to forget what a world without fear even was.

The surgery continued. Tears slid down from Jason’s eyes. He didn’t even notice when Nadia dabbed them dry. He gritted his teeth and continued to operate on his daughter. The rage he felt was rising to a breaking point. He didn’t even know what he was capable of doing right now. His face was red from all the repressed feelings he was trying to keep inside.

And then, all at once, it was over.

The surgery ended. Jason put the last piece of Daisy’s MindCore into place, then he sagged where he stood. He looked like he’d aged ten years in two hours.

It had taken a quarter of the time needed to create Daisy’s MindCore compared to Nadia or Catherine’s, and less than a tenth the time it took to install Jason’s v1 GenesisFrame.

But for Jason, suffering the torture Daisy had experienced during her childhood, it felt like he’d spent years installing it. His emotions were in total disarray. He looked as if he’d stepped into a hurricane and crawled back inside after a gang of men beat the shit out of him. His eyes were baggy and haggard. His hair was weirdly unkempt. Even he had no idea what had happened to his appearance… nor did he care. His physical presentation was the last thing on his mind.

Daisy’s eyes fluttered open. The pain from the operation had already faded into background noise.

"Uhhhnn… it’s over, dad?" Daisy asked, looking blankly up at the ceiling. "I don’t… feel… any different."

She hadn’t noticed her father’s appearance yet. Jason had taken several steps backward to try and collect himself, but he wasn’t having much success. "It… um… it…"

"The MindCore isn’t active yet." Nadia jumped in, seeing the look on Jason’s face. She drew Daisy’s attention to herself, giving Jason a moment to turn around and quietly use Wordsmithing to clean himself up. "Part of the v4 installation procedure is making sure it remains inert until we turn it on. Otherwise, what if what happened to me happened to you? We’d prefer not to trap you in a multi-decade simulation."

"Oh… that makes sense." Daisy said quietly. She slowly blinked her eyes, feeling quite fatigued. "Is it safe, then? Safe to turn on…?"

Nadia looked back at Jason, behind Daisy’s operation chair. He turned around, looking refreshed. With the power of Wordsmithing, he’d quickly cleaned himself up, but Nadia could tell there was a jerkiness to his movements that wasn’t there before.

"We can turn it on… sweetheart." Jason said gently.

He stepped toward Daisy, then leaned over her head. He looked down into his daughter’s eyes, and she looked up at him for the first time.

"Dad? Are you okay?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah… it was a tiring procedure." Jason said through gritted teeth. "What was it like for you?"

Daisy pondered the question. "I don’t know. I felt this pain… and warmth… it went back and forth. I could feel something happening… but then it was all over. I don’t know why I’m so tired. You had to do all the work."

Jason quietly exhaled in relief. It was possible Daisy was lying, but he felt she was telling the truth.

What he’d witnessed… only he had seen. She hadn’t been forced to relive her worst traumas.

"That’s good, baby." Jason said, leaning over to kiss Daisy’s forehead. "I’m glad you ended up okay, honey."

Daisy squinted. Her dad seemed softer and more loving now, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. "You sure you’re okay, dad? You can rest if you need to."

"I’ll rest when I’m dead." Jason joked. He rustled Daisy’s hair playfully, but Daisy felt the action was rather forced.

She could tell something was bothering her father, but she was too tired from the surgery to give it much thought. On top of that, her heart had butterflies now that she was thinking about the inevitable activation of her new MindCore.

Nadia helped Daisy stand up. Daisy rose to her feet shakily, feeling quite weak compared to her usual self.

"The new operation procedures reduce a lot of the pain and risk by making sure the MindCore is inert and deactivated during and after the surgery." Nadia explained. "We’re not going to activate your new MindCore just yet. Instead, I’ll take you back home, and you get some rest first. A good eight hours of sleep should do."

"But…" Daisy started to protest.

"No ‘buts’, young lady." Nadia chided. "Sleep first, fun new toy later."

"Yes, mom." Daisy said, sticking her tongue out at Nadia playfully.

Nadia smiled, but the fact Daisy referred to her as a mother also made her heart skip a beat for some indiscernible reason.

She led Daisy home and helped her into bed. Then she made her way back to the operation room where she found Jason laying on a couch in the back of the room. He was flopped onto his back, a cold washrag covering his face.

Nadia approached. She stopped a short distance away and crossed her arms.

"What did you see?" Nadia asked.

"Nothing." Jason mumbled.

"Don’t lie to me. I observed several telepathic activity spikes during the surgery. Daisy must have been sending you mental images." Nadia said.

Neither person said anything for a short while. Jason eventually reached up and pulled the washrag off his face. He turned his eyes to the right to look at Nadia.

"It was her childhood." Jason said quietly. "I saw… terrible things."

"I thought so." Nadia said with a nod. "It’s not too different from what happened with you and I, except instead of me downloading your memory-copy, you accidentally received telepathic images of Daisy’s youth. The feedback loop was reversed due to the structural differences between v3 and v4."

"Cool." Jason grumbled, putting the washcloth back over his face.

Another long silence followed. Nadia sat down in front of the couch, facing Jason as she looked up at him from her spot on the floor.

"Do you want to talk about what you saw?" Nadia asked.

Jason didn’t answer immediately.

He thought for a while, debating what exactly he wanted to do with this new information.

He couldn’t just let it go. As a father and a man, he could have simply played stupid before, merely comforting his little girl if she mentioned her past. But now that he had the closest equivalent to firsthand experience with it, he felt he couldn’t just sit idly by and do nothing. He had to be proactive. He wanted to be.

"I want…" Jason said softly. "…I want you… to go to the Spynet… and use all Aevum’s resources to find the names and locations of several men and women. I only have visual images of them. I don’t know their identities."

"Show me." Nadia said.

And so he did. Jason reached out a finger without looking, and Nadia touched her finger to his. Jason transmitted the faces of several Russian scientists to her. She crinkled her nose a few times.

"I don’t know any of them. But I can find out who they are. Are they still alive?"

"No idea." Jason said. "They’d better hope they’re not. I pray they are."

"Alright." Nadia said.

She stood up. She created facsimiles of the faces and appearances of the people Jason had given her, rebuilding them inside her RealitySim. Thankfully, Jason’s memories, taken from Daisy, had also included representations of their manner of speech, their voices, their actions, and their personalities.

That would make it far easier to uncover who they were.

"You rest. I’ll get to work." Nadia said, as she turned and left the room.

The door slammed shut behind her, and the medical facility fell silent, leaving Jason alone with his thoughts.

"…This place is so fucking cursed." Jason grumbled, as he realized three people had now been traumatized inside the surgery room.

Maybe MindCores were more of a pain than they were worth.