Chapter 4

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"Nurse," said Dr. Arora in faintly accented English, after scanning a number of holographic medical readouts projected in midair near the cot. "Let's remove the surgical dressing."

As the nurses approached, Nick Lal ran his hands over the strange bulges underneath the bandages that were wrapped around his skull. Before the operations, he'd gazed at diagrams explaining what those lumps were. But he still couldn't quite imagine what his head looked like now.

Nick's parents were sitting on benches about five feet above the operating room, watching the scene unfold below them from behind a reflection resistant Plexiglas barrier. Next to his parents sat Peggy. He was relieved that she had come. Before being put into a medically induced coma six weeks ago, he'd though she was leaving him.

One of the female nurses picked up a pair of scissors and Nick cringed at the coarse sound the blades made as they cut the outer layer of bandages. He noticed his mother, father and Peggy leaning forward, almost pressing their noses against the Plexiglas in anticipation.

One nurse began unwrapping the cotton bandages and spooling them to her colleague, who wound them around her hands neatly. Nick felt a strange sensation as if an unnoticed burden was being loosened and removed from his head. At the top of his field of vision, he could see layer after layer of pure white cotton gauze being unwound from his skull. His head felt unnaturally cool as the fabric that had covered it for weeks was removed.

Nick had wanted this brain implant since Dr. Arora had developed it a few years ago, and had spent months considering asking his parents about it. But the expense involved was breathtaking - equivalent to the cost of a Manhattan skyscraper - so Nick had never summoned the courage to broach the subject. Then, his father had announced the implants would be Nick's 17th birthday present.

That his parents had freely offered him the prohibitively expensive gift he secretly wanted was not happy news for Nick. Instead, it made him bitter. His parents' suggestion meant they weren't satisfied with him as he was. 

And not for the first time. Before Nick was born, his parents had decided they would not be content with a natural baby, one carrying the genetic imperfections of a normal human. So they had invested a significant part of their large fortune in genetic engineering. That was why Nick had fair skin and green eyes despite having a father from Amritsar and a mother from Rio de Janeiro. Why he stood more than a foot taller than his parents. Why his IQ was a couple of standard deviations higher than their genius level scores.

Their investments in creating a superhuman child were just facet of his parents' hypocritical lives. A few years before Nick's birth, they had prevented a global famine by developing super-efficient food factories. They sold the food cheaply, with a tiny profit margin, and soaked up public praise for doing so. They also made huge donations to charities ranging from wildlife preserves to orphanages. His father pointed to his Sikh religious obligation to contribute to communal meals as inspiration, and his mother to her Catholic belief in charity.

But his parents were no aesthetes. His mother lived a life of ultimate luxury and complete exclusivity. She ate the finest foods, travelled in the fanciest cars and planes, and lived in the grandest lodgings, all the while avoiding any contact with the masses she claimed to love. His father, who loved playing the role of self-sacrificing entrepreneur and philanthropist, was ruthless when it came to amassing and preserving power. Whenever the Lal family's near-monopoly on global food production was challenged by a new competitor, he used his immense financial resources and political influence to destroy the threat.

By now, the nurse had unraveled several coils of bandage and Nick could see that the dressings were no longer pure white. There were dark red spots of dried blood on them, and lighter stains that look like tea spilled on linen. He felt a tightening in his stomach as he realized the stains had been made by fluids that had seeped out of his skull.

Finally, he winced at a slight, stinging pull on the half-healed flesh around the back of his head, as the nurse carefully removed the last layer of bandages. The hair on his forearms stood up straight and he shivered.

He craned his neck impatiently, trying to get a clear view of his head. There were no good mirrored surfaces. Even the Plexiglas separating this room from the theater where his family and girlfriend sat was glare resistant.

"Surgical wounds in patient Vinicius Lal appear well healed and the MindWave implant appears to have been accepted by the subject," said Dr. Arora, as he leaned down to inspect the back of Nick's head.

The doctor walked around into Nick's field of vision. "It appears you have recovered very well from the surgeries. I'm going to recommend that you begin training with your MindWave as soon as it can be arranged."

Nick glanced around and saw his parents and girlfriend in the theater above and looked up with his eyebrows raised. "So?" he said, and tentatively felt around behind his head with his hands.

"You don't want to touch it now," said Dr. Arora. "There's still a small chance of infection."

In response to Nick's inquisitive glance, the doctor added. "Silly me. Let me show you your reflection." He turned to the nurses. "Please bring the mirrors."

As the nurses bustled, Nick's father stood up, his beaming smile visible through his full beard, and gave a double thumbs-up. "Looking good, son!" he called through the Plexiglas.

The nurses aligned two mirrors like barbers displaying their work, so that Nick could finally see the back of his head in the mirror.

The front three quarters of Nick's head were unchanged, except that his head only sported a short stubble of hair instead of the long, straight black locks he had always maintained before.

But the back of his head looked alien. There were three circular vents, about the size of bottle caps, just above the base of his skull. They were surrounded by pink, swollen flesh, and protruded enough out of his skull to make them impossible to miss even in profile, at least while he had a shaved head. Below the middle vent, there were a number of jacks and ports, as if Nick's head was meant to be plugged into something.

Nick swallowed back the bitterness he'd felt moments ago. Whatever his parents' motivations, he had just received augmentations that made him almost superhuman. His vision was now more acute than an eagle's, his hearing sharper than an owl's, and his reflexes faster than a gunslinger's.

The biggest benefit would come not from his enhanced physical senses but from the networked computer that was now grafted to his brain and which he could use to immerse himself in virtual worlds beyond the realm of physical senses. The MindWave.

He smiled and turned away from the mirrors and towards his family and Peggy. Behind his grinning father, he saw his mother sitting still, her face pale and her arm around Peggy's shoulders. Peggy was averting her gaze away from Nick, and held her hand over her mouth.

***

Six weeks had passed since Sarah had woken up in the crowded dormitory building at the ranch. This morning she only shared it with four other candidates. All of the others had been driven away in the white minivans to an unknown destination. They were probably just being sent back to their orphanages, Sarah had told herself innumerable times. But she wasn't quite sure.

There had been a series of physical challenges, like the race where Sarah had injured her foot. Then the challenges had become more intellectual, such as a session in which they had rushed to complete a series of abstract logical puzzles.  Every few days, one or two candidates would be sent to the minivans.

There were no scores posted. None of the orphans knew their place in the standings, or what it would take for them to be the next one beckoned over to a waiting minivan by an apologetic Willy or an impatient Rad.

At first, Sarah had lost a lot of sleep obsessing over how she was doing and how she could prevent herself from washing out. Gradually she had realized there was no benefit from worrying, and the best thing she could do at nightfall was blank her mind and get rest.

She had mixed feelings for the other remaining candidates. She couldn't help respecting Greg Silverstein. Greg compensated for his small, compact physique with a booming voice and decisive manner. He seemed like the kind of guy who would stay with you to the end - covering your back if you were an ally, or hunting you down if you were an enemy.

Olivia Freeman, a tall dark-skinned girl who followed rules precisely and mostly stuck to herself, was much less expressive. Sarah would have thought Olivia was emotionless, except for the fact that Olivia seemed to have a soft spot for Bob Eckers, the boy who had finished in second place between Michael and Sarah in the race on the first day. Sarah often saw the two murmuring together softly between drills or over meals in the canteen where the candidates ate.

Whatever Olivia found in Bob, Sarah couldn't see it. Bob was a physically powerful boy, sure, but the way he used his strength to intimidate and bully the other candidates was a turn off. Aside from Olivia, he didn't seem to get along with any of the other candidates.

Finally, there was Michael Kang. Now, as she prepared to change out of her pajamas into her daytime outfit of gray shirt and black pants, Sarah gave him a quick grin between the screens that separated the boys' side of the dormitory from the girls'. He smiled back, but quickly averted his eyes as she pulled her night shirt over her head, revealing her sports bra.

She cursed herself for being idiot - what was she doing flirting with a competitor? Yet she knew she wouldn't stop.

There was a loud rap on the wall of the dormitory. Sarah looked up to see Rad standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, and instinctively pulled her shirt quickly down over her torso.

"Last stage of the competition today. Today you win or you pack up and go home. Meet in the shed in five minutes," Rad announced into the room before striding away.

Sarah reached up to the cross around her neck and took a deep breath.

There was no time to waste on sentiment. If Rad had given the candidates five minutes then he would expect them lined up and ready to start the drill in exactly 300 seconds. She hurriedly finished changing and jogged across the orange dusty ground to the room called the shed.

The shed was not a building of its own, but a room in the same structure that housed the infirmary where Willy had patched up Sarah's foot. Instead of old fashioned medical devices, the shed held five virtual reality gaming pods all hooked up to a central server. Each gaming pod consisted of a deep chair upon which the user sat.  A headset descended over their head to provide immersive visual, aural, and olfactory input. Small probes extended from the headset into the ears to manipulate the user's sense of balance and velocity. Gloves and shoes provided detailed sensory input to the hands and feet, while a series of wire leads delivered cruder sensory input to the rest of the body. Users were strapped securely into the chairs for their own protection - the experience was so immersive that without restraining straps, users often fell out of the pods.

In the outside world, VR pods like these were used to enjoy video games, immersive holomovies, and other forms of entertainment. At the ranch, the devices were put to a more utilitarian purpose. In earlier stages of the competition, Sarah and the other candidates had used the pods to navigate virtual worlds using avatars, or projected bodies. None of those tests had been particularly demanding. She was sure today would be different.

Sarah and the other four candidates scampered into the shed at about the same time. Rad gave them a once over, curled his lip as if in disappointment, and made a curt gesture with his head towards the pods.

Sarah and the other candidates were arranging themselves in the chairs when Willy entered the shed and came around to help each person tighten their straps and test their connections. He would kneel down by each orphan and check their pod, while saying a few exhortative words.

Willy came to Sarah last. As he bent down beside her, he winked and said "Make sure you pay attention to the instructions for once, Fenton." Sarah shrugged back noncommittally in response. She didn't recall ignoring any instructions during earlier stages of the competition. And she had expected something a little more encouraging from Willy, with whom she'd built a friendly relationship since the day he'd cleaned her foot wound.

She didn't have much time to ponder his strange remark. A moment after he stood up, the glass visor at the front of her headset, which had been transparent while the VR Pod was offline, came to life.

Sarah found herself floating in a featureless pool of dark blue green liquid, with Willy's face floating in front of her. "Candidates, during this final stage of the competition we want you to manage multiple competing priorities in an unfamiliar virtual setting. You will be scuba diving under the ocean, with the objective of reaching the surface. On your left wrist you will have a watch that displays your depth and your points. Collecting jewels from the seabed will increase your points. Red jewels add one point. Blue jewels add three points. And yellow jewels add ten points. You can use the spear guns you'll be carrying to harpoon fish. For every green fish you reel in, you add five points. And for every silver fish, you add twelve points. You'll have rubber sacks you can use to carry the gems and fish you collect with you. If it's in your sack, you add the points; if it's not in your sack, you don't. Keep a look out for the jelly fish. Each one of them that touches you or your equipment subtracts fifty points from your total. By the way, if you run out of air, you'll die. Not for real of course, but it will feel extremely unpleasant. All right, starting in three... two... one!"

Willy's face disappeared and now Sarah could see that the blue green liquid was seawater. Above her, she could faintly see sunlight filtering down. Under her, the water was darker, but she could make out the seafloor about fifty feet below. She looked at her left wrist and found a watch with a large glowing display.

Depth: 250 feet. Points: 0.

Around her, she could see four other floating figures sizing up the situation just as she was. While she couldn't see faces, even in the dark waters she could tell whom each candidate was by the size and shape of their body. Bob was big and thick, almost lumpy where his muscles strained against his wetsuit. Greg was smaller, and seemingly made entirely of squares and rectangles. Michael was slender and athletic. The curves of Olivia's body contrasted sharply with the hard angles of the boys.

She could see Michael looking between her and Olivia a few times before figuring out who was whom. He swam towards her, making several hand gestures she didn't understand. In the meantime, Greg swam away into the distance, and Olivia edged toward Bob.

Bob reached around and unslung the spear gun that was slung over his shoulder and pointed it right at Sarah. She tried to dodge but, floating in the water there was nothing to push off of and no way to gain momentum quickly. She heard a sharp sudden hiss and saw a burst of frothy gas emerge from the gun's barrel.

Sarah looked down at her abdomen and saw a black string piercing her belly where Bob's harpoon had penetrated it. She let out a scream through her scuba breathing regulator, but it emerged from her mouth as a silent cascade of bubbles.

Michael unslung his own spear gun and pointed it in Bob's direction while swimming to Sarah's side.

Sarah grabbed at the harpoon string and yanked at it. All that came out of her abdomen was more string. The projectile must have completely passed through her and travelled on. She screamed again, and this time dislodged her regulator and took a mouthful of water that made her choke. She flailed around in the water, trying to dislodge the harpoon with one hand while grasping for her regulator with the other.

She felt a strong arm seizing her by the shoulders and tried to push away, but she was half suffocated and too weak to fight. Her eyes were dimming and instead of the ocean around her she saw an image of her mother lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, staring back at her in grief.

Something was thrust into her mouth and she could breathe again. She sucked in three huge lungfuls of air before she realized Michael had given her his scuba regulator. He was still holding her tightly so that she couldn't thrash around. Now that she was returning to her senses and calming down, he let go of her. The first thing he did was reach behind her, grab her abandoned regulator, and put it into his own mouth.

Then he yanked sideways on Bob's harpoon cord. It slid across her abdomen and through her hip until it was floating freely in the water. It took a moment for Sarah to realize that the harpoon had passed through her harmlessly. It seemed that in this virtual world, the candidates could not use their spear guns against each other.

She felt foolish at panicking when she hadn't even been hurt. She should have known all along - she'd never felt any pain. Her shame quickly turned to anger at Bob and she turned towards where he had been. But he and Olivia had disappeared into the murky waters.

As she peered into the ocean, she saw a glimpse of something silver heading down deeper towards the seabed. She tugged on Michael's arm. It was a school of the silver fish that could help them amass points. She began to swim towards them but stopped when her regulator was pulled out of her mouth.

She remembered that Michael had traded regulators with her while she was panicking. She turned towards him to trade. As they exchanged the breathing apparatuses, Michael was shaking his head and mouthing something, but even if she could have read lips, his mouth was hidden behind a stream of bubbles. He pointed up and Sarah raised her eyes towards the sunlit waters above her, but saw no fish or jewels.

Not knowing how else to communicate, Sarah turned back towards the school of fish and swam after them. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Michael swimming after her.

The fish were heading downwards so she followed. The display on her watch showed her depth increasing to 260, then 270, and then 280 feet. Just when she was getting close enough to line up a shot with her spear gun, she felt Michael tugging on her arm again. She turned to look and saw several translucent white jellyfish swimming upwards from the seabed towards her. Each jellyfish that touched her would reduce her points by fifty, she remembered.

The way Michael had pulled at her, he had pulled her closer to the jelly fish. Sometimes he was a big help, and other times he was a clumsy oaf. She gave him a dirty look that she hoped he could read through her scuba gear, and stroked hard with her hands and feet to guide her out of the path of the jellyfish just in time.

With the jellyfish floating safely above her, she turned back to the silver fish. Luckily, they had stopped near a

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