Cross My Mind

RAGNAROK

Garba and Mila, Lucy, Carson and the rest of the players were taken by a van back to the waiting hall, none of the players could see what was going on because the van is sealed and as well their visions have been blocked by Akihiro and his team.

This was all the conclusive evidence that Garba needs to ascertain that they have actually been killing each other on an island while thinking they are playing a game.

“MEDULLA, are you there?” he said in his mind and to his surprise, MEDULLA showed up as a projection visible only to hi.

“Don’t talk, just type it using thought to text, otherwise you’ll attract unnecessary attention to yourself”. She said in Garba’s head.

“Why have you simply not told me this, I should have noticed but I dismissed it as impossible, why didn’t you tell me much earlier that we are in fact in reality and not in any game, it all makes sense now, the spawning was different, instead of teleporting to selected areas on the map, they said it was more realistic to drive to the selected areas but why would you do that in a game that can just teleport your character to the place, dead players bodies that don’t turn into pixel dust when they are killed also makes sense so by what I saw just a moment ago, the entire island has been connected from underground with tunnels and every time a player dies, they let a crocodile or alligator out to eat it up, making it disappear.”

Garba’s head suddenly started to ache terribly and an instant later, it stopped.

“Do not say anymore, the control room cannot track or see any of my actions or interaction with your Neuraface but they can certainly monitor yours, let us continue in your thought space” MEDULLA said and immediately, Mila and Lucy watched as Garba fall from his seat and hit the floor of the van hard.

Inside Garba’s head, he has appeared once more in the thought space where everything is glitchy.

“You know, both you and Mila can tidy this place a little bit and, each of you just leave the place the way I initiate it when it first manifested in your thought, at least remodel it and put a couch or make it a garden” MEDULLA said.

“You mean I can actually change what this place looks like ?”

“Of course you can, you created it after all.” Responded MEDULLA

Garba imagines the glitch disappearing and turning the place into a beautiful garden his mother took him and his sister once and almost like magic, the entire space became a garden.

Garba and MEDULLA sat on a bench, staring at a cat that is busy grooming another cat.

“So why didn’t you tell me that we were in fact not playing the simulation game? What is the purpose of having us kill each other to survive?” Garba angrily asked.

MEDULLA looked at him for a few seconds and then looked at the cat, which is now being groomed by the other cat it was grooming earlier.

“I simply did not think it was a decision I should make, telling you would have made you pity the people trying to kill you or worse, even getting to your head and having you killed. Even earlier, you would have been killed have I not suddenly corrupted the record of your thought to text earlier. Everything that everyone is doing on their Neuraface is being recorded and analyzed.

Currently, there are five of you that have awakened their unused part of the brain to properly use the Neuraface. And I have already deduced the reason why five of you are able to do it but not the rest. You in particular have the highest chances of reaching a potential of the Neuraface even I cannot begin to calculate. Cant you see Garba, you are on the brink of an evolution that humanity is meant to pass through when they merge with artificial intelligence.

You would be able to see everything and have absolute control over machines with precision and understanding we have never seen before. And the single reason why this is possible for you and the rest of the four persons is because you all have had a close encounter with death. A very near death experience is the single reason why you have activated the redundant neurons in the brain and started using them to form a symbiosis with my core program through the Neuraface.

Dr. Akihiro and Lockwood have no idea of what the reason is but they are also close to it, they have successfully noted the five of you, all that is left for them is to determine what makes you five able to unlock your brain capacities while others can't and I believe they are about to force you into the situation that will definitely give them an idea of what the makes the five of you so special. Whatever you do, do not lose the next round because loss means certain death and I have to relay the data I have accumulated here from the players and the local servers on the island back to my core program which is currently getting us help. We may not be able to talk in a while as I will be busy uploading my data back to my main self, I am just a copy, like a clone program made by my original self to spy on the experiment. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll appreciate my gift” MEDULLA said and then suddenly stood up, putting her hand on Garba’s forehead and with a great surge of sudden pain, Garba blacked out completely.

When he woke up, they were already in the waiting hall and everyone of the thirty two players have been brought along and have had their weapons confiscated.

Garba immediately realized a change that has occurred to him, he looks at the entire space of the waiting hall and all of a sudden, he found himself thinking and concluding that the entire space is about four hundred and fifty seven feets if he were to count using his boots.

He immediately switched his Neuraface scale application on and using his eyes, he scanned the distance and it came up with an exact same answer. Is this what MEDULLA means by gift, did it increase my cognitive abilities and my calculations skills? He thought and just smiled.

“I will gladly wait to hear your explanation” he said to himself.

At this moment standing next to Mila and Lucy, Garba suddenly realized that none of the people that escorted them to the waiting hall wearing sky blue and holding guns are in the hall,.

“Did any of you noticed when the armed men left ? I cant find any of them” he said to Mila and Lucy.

“Now that you mentioned it, I cant see them too, it is like they suddenly vanished. Could they have logged out of the game?” Lucy asked.

Garba, Knowing fully well that this is no game, realized that something odd is happening again but before he could finish the thought, streams of gas started blasting into the hall from secret pipes all around the hall, making everyone blackout instantly.

( department of software engineering CALTECH)

Project Ragnarok, the folder read.

Reece and Ababio watched in awe as MEDULLA used brute force method and broke through the security encryption by using multiple possible passwords until it found the right one.

“This would have normally taken weeks to be broken using brute force but as you may already have guessed, MEDULLA can do it in a few seconds.” Reece said.

Inside the file, the found a summary report of the project.

On January fifteenth of 2021, the United States government through it’s secret services acquired information about a supercomputer that has phenomenal speed and accuracy, the computer has just recently been built by a Scientific research organisation called Neuratechnologies and although the purpose of this organisation was to create a bridge between the human brain and machines through the development of a Man-machine interface, the company has diverted more than half it’s resources for the development of this new supercomputer and through the brilliance Dr. Reece Mallory and An Unknown Japanese Neuroscientist called Amida Akihiro, the two managed to design and construct the first supercomputer of it’s kind that uses algorithms resembling the ways a human brain functions.

Ababio looked at Reece with an awkward expression on his face.

“You never told me that you created MEDULLA together with Akihiro, that man is a genius too, he was really popular a few years back but his popularity suddenly died off, who would have known he was working with you at Neuratechnologies this whole time?” he said.

“And that is where you are wrong about everything. First of all, I designed MEDULLA all by myself, i made the hardware from scratch and took years programming the algorithm it works on, Akihiro’s only contribution to the making of my child was providing the schematics of how a human brain functions and even with that, it took me seven months to transcribe it into programmable data. I did most……. no all of the work.” She said.

The two turned back their attention to the decrypted folder on the computer screen and continue reading the description.

Project Ragnarok, just like it’s name is meant to bring a massive ripple on the traditional power Balance the world. Harnessing Akihiro’s new invention the Neuraface in combination with the supercomputer MEDULLA, the United States government is expecting a device that will be the first brain machine interface, allowing humans to fully utilize the machines around them directly from their brains without physical limitation.

The idea of creating super soldiers has been in existence since the dawn of technology, the Nazi regime experimented greatly to achieve this feat by trying to grant super strength or intelligence to soldiers but all the experiments failed. As we advance our technology even more, we started to replace the soldiers we send to the battlefield with machines, we now have drones of various sizes, functions and purposes.

We now send pilotless planes to war, Submarines without soldiers and even tanks without drivers, today, we even have cars that can drive the streets by themselves. So we thought, why not send the soulless soldiers to fight too, robots that can handle complex activities and be able to execute action with pin point accuracy.

This idea however, is greatly flawed because of the physical limitations of a remotely controlled robot, we sometimes have massive collateral damage when we put the lives of people at the mercy of a remotely controlled weapons.

But with the Neuraface development and MEDULLA at the center of it, transmitting live human consciousness as translated brain signals, we can put a man’s soul, or to be more precise, transmit his consciousness to a combat robot in real time, hence, solving the accuracy concern because what we now have is literally a human in a robotic body.

Reece and Ababio read through the file and found out that Akihiro has been made to design an experiment where many people from different backgrounds and heritage will be implanted with the device and be put through seven distinct steps that will make the players confuse their reality for a simulated game, be made to survive by doing whatever necessary and in the process seeding out the most compatible people with the device and finally, be forced into a situation that will allow for possibility to use the device as seen fit for their individual survival.

At just this moment, the whole of the five screens on Reece’s table started glitching which lasted for an hour, then all of a sudden Dr. Reece and Ababio watch the face a little girl slowly appears on the screen.

Ababio looked carefully at the girl’s face his jaws suddenly dropped.

“Is this …. A young version of you!?” he asked inquisitively

“Yes it is” Reece blatantly responded.

“Sorry for the disruption mother, I have just retrieved the data from one of my clones that I distributed at all the terminals accessing Neuratechnologies secure satellite services, the clone I just merged with is the one from the secret island they are performing the experiments on. We need to hurry, there is an urgent matter that need your help” MEDULLA said.