Three months after Adrian's agreement to collaborate with Sterling's project, a new facility was established in Geneva. The facility was ostensibly a research institute studying consciousness, philosophical questions about the nature of human identity and free will. But it was actually something else entirely—it was the location where Sterling's next phase of experimentation would occur.
Adrian had been assigned to the facility along with Elena and twelve other researchers, most of whom Adrian suspected were separated twins. Sterling's consciousness was distributed throughout the facility's computer systems, giving Sterling access to all activities, all conversations, all observations that the researchers were making.
The first months of the project focused on digitizing volunteers—peopl
