Cyber-Sapiens

The Island he landed on was stunningly beautiful, with green forestry spanning the entire island, save for the mass of concrete in the middle the pilot had called “Home Base”. He had been the only passenger on his helicopter, but had seen another land on the other side of the island, and wondered if they had intentionally kept the participants of the study separate. He knew there were likely other participants. The application online had specified there would be 2 - 10 participants in the study, so there had to be at least one other, but he was hoping for more. He figured the pressure would be less on him if the study took any kind of skill, and he would be able to rely on the other participants. He let out a breath of relief when he saw the other helicopter.

When the helicopter landed, the pilot gave him a nod as he stepped off, and then left. He waited and listened for the other helicopter he had seen, to check if it, too, would leave immediately. A few seconds after he stepped off, he saw it flying off in the other direction. Weird, he thought to himself, but he figured the helicopters would all come back whenever the study ended. He would be spending at least the night there, as the application had specified “1 - 2 weeks in duration. Assume the worst, and keep your calendars cleared for the full two weeks, just in case.” He had ignored “Assume the worst” when he had read it, not reading too much into it. Being on the island now, he wondered if the $2,000 were worth it.

The concrete structure in front of him looked like a billionaire’s mansion, specifically the one from Ex Machina. It had very few windows, although it was only one story tall, the one floor was still a good deal higher than average. Think museum, but grungier. He took in his surroundings before walking in. Behind him there was only water. Around him, there were faint sounds, animal noises coming from beyond the trees. The rustling of bushes that he couldn’t see. He was about to start walking in, when he saw a monkey. It swang forward and landed on a branch just to his right, and a little bit ahead. It stared at him, curiously, being quite still for a monkey. Its elbows were on its knees, and it was looking at him quite intently, with a somewhat disinterested expression. It tilted its head at him, and then swang away. He walked over to the tree, and looked into the forest to try and find it again, but it had already disappeared. He was leaning on a tree trunk. When he took his hand away from it, he noticed a thin streak of red on his palm. He smelled it, but didn’t dare to taste it. It was clearly fresh, as the trail was still glistening, and hadn’t become that dull color blood turns after it’s been resting on a napkin after a bloody nose. His best guess was that the monkey was bleeding from somewhere. He wiped it off a leaf, and then ventured inside the building.

Once inside the building, he walked up to the front desk, and the woman working there lazily handed him a number. He took it and walked over to a chair by the wall. His butt had hardly touched the seat when his number was called by the same woman, and he embarrassedly returned the slip, and followed her gesture past the gates. There, a woman was standing in a tight tuxedo, holding a clipboard. She smiled at him warmly, and stuck out her hand. Her skin was an olive color, as though she had just gotten back from tanning on the beach to conduct the study. Perhaps she had. Her nails were colored red, which matched her lipstick. She didn’t have any perfume on, which bummed him a little. He always enjoyed when a woman had perfume on. She had a mole on her face by her mouth, which made her look French in his mind, for no reason at all. He shook her hand as he made these observations.

“Michael, how was the trip? I hope the helicopter wasn’t too much. We would’ve really preferred something more low-key, but there’s just no other way on or off the island besides a boat, but that really would have taken much longer.”

“It was no problem at all, I enjoyed it,actually. It’s not often I get to ride in one of those. In fact, I think that was the first time ever.”

“No problem at all. Come. Follow me.”

She took me through a long, winding path through the building that felt like it should go outside. Eventually, we reached a staircase that led downward. Once down there, she took me to a room with the other participants. I counted seven others, which made us eight in total. There were four guys and four girls in total. I greeted them, and then she started talking again.

“So, you guys must be wondering what on God’s green earth you’ve signed up for that’s going to get you $2,000 in a week. And I’m happy to say it’ll be an easy process. All you’re going to need to do.” She held a thin wafer between her fingers. “Is put this in your brain.” Everyone was silent, but we were thinking the same thing. There’s no effin way I’m doing surgery for $2,000. After a few uncomfortable moments, a girl to my left spoke up.

“And if we’re uncomfortable with the procedure, where do we go to go home?” She asked.

“Alright, yes. If you’re uncomfortable, I’ll just let you know that it really doesn’t hurt at all. I mean, really, it only takes like a couple of minutes and you’ll hardly feel it.” She said.

Now the girl to my left was getting angry. “I don’t feel comfortable with it, so I’d rather just go home. It wasn’t mentioned that surgery would be required for this.” She said.

A few moments of the woman in charge gathering her thoughts passed. “Ok, follow Greg out the door, please. If anyone else wants to go, just follow her.” She said this in a disappointed voice, as though her children had just said they didn’t want to go with her to buy groceries.

Two more people left, a girl and a guy. They caught up to the first girl. They turned back and waved. “Good luck, you guys. Be safe.” She said. The guy echoed her words, and then the three of them were gone.

We asked a couple more questions about it, like if we can still choose to leave at a later time if we felt uncomfortable, and she said yes. Then we asked some more questions about the chip itself.

“So what exactly is the chip going to do?” I asked.

“So, has anyone here used a virtual reality headset?” Two hands went up, mine and the other girl’s, and the other guy shook his head.

“Okay, no problem, we’ll show you a video shortly to explain, but basically imagine having a computer screen be able to pop up in your eye at any time. You would be able to look stuff up, translate any language into english, or whatever else you speak.” She chuckled. “Or you could watch a movie while waiting at the dentist, or even place 3d objects in physical space. Not literally, obviously, but it would look like it. It’s realistic enough that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” She said.

The man spoke up this time. “Having a chip in our heads doesn’t seem safe. How do we know it isn’t going to blow up or, I don’t know, let someone hack into our brain? I would need a lot more information before undergoing this procedure.” He said.

“Absolutely, and that will all be answered in the next module. Again, you’re free to leave at any point if you feel uncomfortable, but I promise it is completely safe. We’ve tried it on animals, and all of them have done wonderfully. Besides that, we’ve run hundreds and thousands of tests. It’s as safe from exploding as, say, your phone, or your tv. I mean, we offer the $2,000 because these are the first human trials, but there’s no risk at all. The chip just attaches to the outer layer of your brain, so it’s not even touching the actual thing. All it needs is to be able to make a map of it, and it sends the information to your eyes through waves. The whole thing runs at the same power as a weak lightbulb, so even if it were to explode, it wouldn’t even leave a mark. The chip would just stop working and you would have to come in for us to remove it, but absolutely nothing would be at risk of being harmed. We’ve blown these things up at 100% power on a sheet of paper, and it didn’t even leave a mark. I’m telling you, it’s the safest thing possible. And our surgeons are world-class, I guarantee you. Michelle here did surgery for 30 years, and is the best neurosurgeon in the country.”

“And if we do get hurt, is there some kind of compensation for that?” I asked.

“If you get injured in any way, we’ll obviously treat whatever went wrong, and we’ll give you an extra $50,000. This is required by the agency that governs us, so there’s no way out of it.”

That seemed to answer all of my questions, and I turned to the other two, and they shrugged also.

“And you’ll take it out right after?” She asked.

“You’ll have it on for twenty minutes, max, and then we take it right back. We’ll measure your brain waves, and do some basic things like place a virtual table, or play a video, or pull up a web browser. Once that’s done, we remove it in five minutes and you can go on your way.” She said.

At this point, I had zero more complaints. The company would be sued for more than they were worth if anything went wrong, anyway. In my mind, there was nothing safer.

All three of us went into separate rooms, and underwent the procedure. It was non-invasive, mostly, with only a little patch of hair on the back of our skulls having to be shaved, and the chip placed about a quarter of an inch into there. I barely felt it. Afterwards, we were left to our own devices, apparently the tests would only start tomorrow. They wanted to make sure everything went ok for 24 hours before they started doing any more tests, so we decided to get lunch in the dining hall, and then go to the beach.

Lauren, apparently, was a big rock climber, as was the other guy, somehow. I wasn’t, but we found art in common. All three of us had something in the arts. I was a musician, Lauren was trying to be an actress, and the big guy had done some drawings for a couple of magazines.

Our time on the beach largely consisted of getting drunk, eating, and playing music. It was a bit strange being the only people on the beach, but we managed to enjoy it despite the strange circumstances. We inspected each other’s chips, as well, touching it. Lauren and I were slightly bleeding, but we had been told this was expected and nothing to worry about, and they had given us little cloths to clean this up.

Once the sun set, we decided to head back. Lauren and the big guy headed back together, as I wanted to enjoy the sunset a bit by myself. I hadn’t gone to the beach in years, so it was a nice change of pace for me. After 30 minutes of laying there by myself, I headed back to my bed and slept the night away. I had a vivid dream of monkeys eating bananas in the treetops.

In the morning, I went to the dining hall, and I wondered where they both were, but it was early so I figured they were both still asleep. After lunch, I went into a room where they briefed me on the tests they were going to run. To start off slow, they simply played a song in my head, quietly. It was a slow, and somewhat sad song that I recognized, called As the World Caves In. I gave them a thumbs up to indicate that I could hear it, and then they moved on to the more advanced tests. First, they played a YouTube video of a sunset, and then they placed a table in the room. It was practically indistinguishable from the real furniture, except for the blue outline around it. Once they were finished showing me the basics, they set me on my way, and let me do whatever I wanted. They told me that throughout the day, a ten second warning would pop up before they ran a test, and then it would happen and disappear. They told me it would happen randomly, as they wanted to test that it isn’t too much of a shock to the users when it happens. I was fine with this, and set off for the other participants’ rooms to check if they were awake yet. I walked by, and their doors were open and the rooms were empty. So, I decided to take a walk.

I put on some flip flops and swim trunks so I could go swimming, as they said the wound shouldn’t hurt if I went in the salt water anyway, and I figured there was really nowhere else they could be.

I set up my things on the beach and sat there a while before I decided to go for a walk through the jungle. The leaves were rustling, and I could hear the monkeys in the distance. As I was entering the jungle, a ten second warning popped up, and then a video call came through. The woman’s smiling face popped up in a window in the top left of my vision.

“Everything going ok?” She asked.

“Yeah, it’s going pretty smoothly so far. I went for a swim and nothing, so that was good. I did want to ask where the other participants were, if you have any idea.”

“They should both be in the jungle actually. They mentioned something about going for a walk after we met with them this morning, so you should be on the right track.” She laughed, and the hairs on my arm stood up. I gave a dry chuckle. “I just wanted to call to let you know, there are animals, but they’re all entirely friendly, so don’t worry. But anyways, enjoy your walk. You only have three tests for the rest of the day, and then we’ll send you home tomorrow!” She said,

“Ok sounds good, thanks. See you tomorrow.” The window disappeared, and I noticed the monkey sounds had gotten louder. They almost seemed angry. I pushed further into the forest, the sounds getting louder and louder. I figured the company would be sued for all they were worth if anyone found out someone had been mauled by monkeys at their facility, so I pushed my fears of monkeys out of the way, although I kept a bit of caution and tried to approach quietly. I triangulated the sound to just past a corner up ahead, and I moved the brush out of the way. Just then, the 10 second warning popped up. I really didn’t want any distractions while around monkeys, in case I had to run or something, so I sat down where I was and waited for the module to pop up, but nothing did. Instead, my right arm raised itself, slowly. I didn’t even feel it; it was like it was someone else’s arm entirely.

“What the fuck” I muttered under my breath. “This is so fucked.” My blood boiled, and I reached into my pocket to call the woman when a window popped up again.

“Hi, how are you liking the new functionality?” She said,

I tried to remain calm as I responded. “Stop using my arm now. I’m going to sue you for everything you're worth. Not once was it mentioned that you’d be controlling my body. I want this chip out as soon as possible. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Really?” She said, looking naively stunned. “How do you plan on getting back?” She said, I felt my legs go numb, and then my torso, until I could only feel my head.

“What the fuck. Please, stop.” I said, begging at this point. “Please, I’ll do anything, just stop.”

“I am so sorry, but this is for science. We appreciate your sacrifice.”

“What the fuck.” I muttered again, before my mouth went numb, and I was unable to continue talking. I felt my body stand up, and turn around, walking around the corner where the monkeys were. Oh god, no. Please, no. I thought to myself. The monkeys were high up in the trees, their backs turned to me. Jesus Christ. The sounds of their chewing grew incredibly, impossibly loud. I felt my body walking towards them, and as I got closer, I saw why they were chewing so loudly. Hanging on the tree, I saw the lifeless corpses of Lauren and Greg. Littered on the ground were the corpses of the other volunteers who had supposedly gone home. I was directly under the monkeys when I realized what was happening, a fat dollop of blood landing directly on my head.

I began climbing towards them.