Cross My Mind

MILA'S TRUTH PART 2: AWAKENING

With tears rolling down his cheeks, Garba turned to MEDULLA to see if she would show any emotion.

“unfortunately, I am not a human, I may project myself as one to you by how I look but that is only to make interacting with you easier. I am incapable of showing facial expressions or shedding tears and don’t be so surprised that i know your thoughts, Mila is not the only one whose Neuraface I am connected to.” MEDULLA said.

Little Mila sat next to her mother’s dangling dead body crying for over an hour within which she could hear the moaning noise being made by Mr. Goldenberg having s*x with a woman half his age on the lower floor of the house.

Every time Mila hears the moaning sounds her father and the woman downstairs are making, her heart burns with itching pain, she watched her mother hang herself and her father is busy sleeping with another woman downstairs, not caring at all.

For the little girl, there is no moment of her life more sad than that, she kept crying and crying for hours until she could no longer cry.

Hours later, Mr. Goldenberg called the police and reported the case. Little Mila watched the lifeless body of her mother being cut from the chandelier of the bedroom and carried out of the room.

At this point, MEDULLA waved her hand and Garba finds himself standing in a golf course that spans very widely with rivers and lakes.

“this is a week after” MEDULLA said and waved her hands to the right once more and Garba can now see little Mila seated on the well kept grass of the golf course staring blankly in a particular direction. he raised his head to look at the direction and found himself staring at Mr. Goldenberg, Mila’s father seated in a golf cart with the same woman he was having s*x with on the day Mila’s mother committed suicide, Lola.

When Mr. Goldenberg was not looking, the woman turned to Mila and waved her hand indicating Mila should go away. The ten years old child stood up quietly and started walking along the golf course until she was out of their sight completely.

With no one to talk to or look after her, little Mila roamed around the facility for hours and finally saw a lake. She quickly waked there and dipped her legs in the shallow water, unknowingly for her, the lake is infested with alligators and has not been cleared since no one uses it for anything.

The ten years old girl sat splashing the water and staring into blank space with the thought of her mother occupying her mind. An alligator slowly approaches her from deep inside the lake, being drawn by the splashes she is making and without warning, it surfaced, grabbed her right leg and started dragging her into the lake.

By the time Mila realizes what was happening, the water around her has already been dyed red with her blood and the although the alligator is not large enough to overpower her, it has certainly injured her leg well enough to incapacitate her and stop her from running.

Luckily for Mila, a Golfer passing by in his cart saw the water splashes and heard Mila’s screams. He immediately turned his cart around and drove it to the edge of the water and he could not believe what he was seeing. A little girl being dragged into the lake by an alligator. The man wasted no time and immediately jumped into the lake, punching and hitting the alligator until it let go of Mila who has already fainted from loss of blood.

The man quickly carried Mila out of the lake, put her on his cart, started driving out of the course as fast as he could while calling 911 for immediate help with an ambulance to the nearest hospital.

Mr. Goldenberg on the other hand had to be reminded when he was leaving the facility by the young woman he was with that he came with his daughter to the golf course. The woman excused herself and left without him and the man just stood in the open field with a smoke in his hands cursing his ten years old daughter.

His phone begins to ring and he picks it,

“this is Youngsville general hospital, we have a ten years old girl named Mila in the ICU, based on the ID card we found on her, You should be her father Mr. Goldenberg; please come to the hospital as soon as possible, your daughter needs immediate surgery” a woman said on the phone.

“Yes, this is her guardian. I will be on my way soon”. Mr. Goldenberg responded.

Just at this moment, MEDULLA snapped her finger and the entire view disappears, returning them to where Mila was standing frozen.

“Mila has just accepted the challenge to open the door, I will initiate her most painful memories and make her experience them again so we can unlock her brain to accommodate my presence” MEDULLA said.

“was that why you made me experience that moment with my father?” Garba asked and MEDULLA turned around to look at Garba. “Precisely!” she said.

MEDULLA led the way to yet another door and opened it. Garba stepped in and found himself staring at the entrance of a facility with the name ‘state of Louisiana reserve’

Mr. Goldenberg has just arrived in his latest edition Lamborghini with twelve years old Mila and parked near the entrance. Just behind them came charging the same lady he was with on the night Mila’s mother died, his mistress Lola. She drove her limited edition Ferrari and parked it behind Goldenberg ‘s Lamborghini.

“Are you sure that you are not just bringing me here because your daughter likes watching the animals? She seems so excited that I am beginning to think this little outing is for her and not for me.” Lola said, pointing at Mila who is super excited.

“Oh honey, although she really likes it here, you are also going to love the accommodation, the sun sets here are one of a kind because you also get to watch the wild animals as well” he responded and Lola placed her arms around his shoulders.

“Sounds fun” she whispers and the three walked into the reserve.

MEDULLA clapped her hands twice and the entire view froze, as if a video has been paused.

“a few hours after this, Mila will pass through the third traumatic event of her life” she said

Then Proceeded to clap twice again and the scenery forwarded itself to a few hours later.

Mila, Mr. Goldenberg and Lola were in the zoo section watching the animals. Mila was busy enjoying watching the apes, she particularly loves watching the gorillas.

Her father and Lola don’t particularly like watching the apes, rather that watching, they were busy getting intimate with one another; kissing passionately, forgetting that Mila even exist. Right at that moment when Lola was enjoying the intimacy, Mr. Goldenberg's phone rang. He picked it out and was about to pick it up when Lola held his hands.

“Who is it honey, don’t pick it” she said.

“I have to, it is child care services, it is about Mila” he said and walked away while talking on the phone.

Lola, now left alone with Mila for the first time since she left her acting career and started dating Mila’s father. She looked at Mila with visible disgust on her face and hissed.

“if not of your petty existence, I could have had all I wanted from your father” Lola said to Mila.

Mila turned around and said “is that why you had made my mother die?”

Lola, was enraged by this statement, she bent down so that she can be face to face with Mila, the said

“Your mother, that b***h died all by herself, in this world the weak are bound to die. Only the strong like me survive”

Mila bent down and packed a bit of sand and dirt in her hands, then threw it at Lola’s pretty face, putting some of the sand and dirt right into her eyes.

Lola screamed in pain and pushed Mila to the fence of the gorilla enclosure, unluckily for little Mila, a large angry gorilla was near the fence and it quickly grabbed her shirt. Mr. Goldenberg was just returning to the scene to see Lola rubbing her eyes with dirt all over her face. Behind her, he saw Mila leaning by the wire fence screaming at the top of her lungs.

The gorilla pulled Mila’s shirt in very hard, tearing the shirt and making her to turn around, standing face to face with it. Mila was paralyzed by fear at first but as soon as the ape started pulling her closer and closer to the fence while making loud noises, Mila continues to scream even louder.

Mr. Goldenberg sighed after helping Lola on her feet, then hesitantly walked to Mila and pulled her shirt hard, tearing it into two. All of a sudden without MEDULLA clapping, Garba finds himself back in the glitchy space and then back in the cave where he was initially laying down next to unconscious Mila.

“I am sorry but she just connected with me and asked me to kick you out. It is her mind after all, no one likes their secrets being looked at” MEDULLA said to Garba.

To Garba’s surprise, two bodies covered in blood also lay down next to where Lucy was standing and his body was full of cuts. And blood.

“what the hell happened here” he asked and Luc Lucy at him surprised

“you saved us Garba, if you had not woken up and killed those seven bastards, we would have been logged out of the game soon. Lucy said while pointing at the inner side of the cave where four more bodies were layed on the floor. “unfortunately, Fred is dead. He died protecting Mila and you before you woke up. The first one is by the cave entrance” she added.

Before Garba could respond to the shocking revelation not he is jus hearing, MEDULLA interrupted.

“I am sorry Garba, I moved your body a bit while you were unconscious in the mind space, you may feel a little tired afterwards” she said and a confusing dread feeling enveloped Garba, he felt nauseated and begins to vomit out the avocado he took earlier.

He later got to understand that while he was in Mila’s mind space learning about her past, they were attacked by a group of other players who accidentally discovered the cave while washing up in the river and apparently Fred was killed protecting the two of them while Lucy was handling one of them but MEDULLA somehow borrowed his body and killed the players.

(DEPARTMENT OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING CALTECH)

Reece has been up all night together with the Vice Chancellor of California institute of technology, one of the only three persons in the world with the technical knowledge able to help her and the only one she can trust.

She has written a secret program she made Named ‘Back Door’ for all of the last one week, now all she has to do is wait for it to finish loading and connect her directly to the only thing in the world a woman of her caliber loves even more than fame and money, she even goes al the way and call it her child.

“so, this child of yours that Lockwood is keeping custody of is the first true artificial intelligence right” the vice chancellor asks.

“you can say that again and again. My child learns from every human it meets and uses the traits it obtains from the human to rewrite its own code, it is not far from the truth to say I have created an entirely new kind of life form, a species of artificial humans that can think, feel and evolve just like any other living thing” Reece said.

Just as the two are getting into frenzy of explanations beyond lay people’s understanding, the five active computer screens she had booted with the program all beeped twice, each showing a massage that reads

“connected successfully”