Cross My Mind

SETTLING DOWN

CURRENT TIME

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****(Louisiana USA)****

It has been twenty minutes since Mila woke up from the most bizarre experience she has had in her life, she had woken up to find herself in the body of who she believes to be Garba, a fellow volunteer at the experiment that currently lives halfway across the world, all the way in Africa, Nigeria. At first she has dismissed her experience as a very realistic dream but when Her Boyfriend Jeremy told her that he heard her standing by the door and as he approached the door, she fell on the bed.

“When i came into the van, you were in a trance like state, with both eyes open but staring down at nothing. I was scared at first thinking you took some of my pink stuff in the drawer and Overdosed but realized all the caps were intact, so I checked if you were breathing and you were. I didn’t know you to have any medical conditions like that so I was confused. I was about to call an ambulance service when you suddenly woke up. I was scared to bits”. Jeremy said

After listening to Jeremy narrate what happened, Mila is sure that what she experienced was not a dream. ‘a hallucination maybe, but not a dream. She thought to herself but also realized that if she was hallucinating then why was she at the door and what could possibly have caused her to hallucinate? She could not figure out.

Mila has already tried calling Garba’s number that she collected back in the Mega Building but the number surprisingly does not exist and neither does anyone with his name. No matter how many times she calls the number or how many different phones she used to dial it, the results remain the same that the number and user does not exist.

“My head hurts, we should probably move to the next town and spend a couple of days there. O feel like I need a long rest”. She said to Jeremy.

“Seems appropriate to do” responded Jeremy in affirmation of Mila’s proposal. He left her to recuperate her strength as he starts to pack up the chairs and tables they have laid out the evening earlier, packing everything into the van and started driving towards the next town.

Three hours later, they arrived at a town called Shreveport, where they went straight to the central city and parked in the outskirts of a natural reserve. Mila’s head has cleared and she has come to terms with her recent bizzare experience, dismissing it as a stress induced hallucination. As such, she convinced herself that she needs to rest for a few days so as not to stress herself any more than she already is.

Mila convinced Jeremy to drive them into town and had him park his car in a commercial parking garage so that the two of them can go into town. Once they have parked the van and paid, Mila took Jeremy to the most expensive hotel in Shreveport and paid for them to spend the next two days in one of the hotel’s most luxurious and expensive presidential suite.

Jeremy was surprised at first on how Mila is going to pay for all the expenses, thinking that this mist be a well schemed prank that she is pulling on him. However he realised that she was not joking the moment she pulled a black colored Debit card out of her pocket.

Jeremy ok isn’t particularly a bright person, but he knows that the black debit card is only given to bank customers with a million dollars and above stored in their bank accounts. At that moment, he knew there is one thing he must do, having obtained a golden opportunity.

****(Suburban Kaduna Nigeria)****

Garba woke up to find himself back in his body, in his new apartment being built inside the family house he has recently bought from the bank. When he opened his eyes, he found himself on the floor rather than in his bed as he should be. Without any contemplation, Garba’s suspicion was confirmed. Somehow, he has switched bodies with Mila for a few minutes and switched back.

'I have to call Mila, but what will I tell her, what if she didn’t believe me?’ he thought to himself and walked Back to his bed, dressed it properly and walked out of the room into compound. He spent a few minutes analyzing where would be perfect for him to plant some ornamental plants and flowers before he walked his father’s living room which has been restored with new furniture with his help. His father Mr. Danladi and his sister Salma were seated watching the television.

“I am going out for a while, I will be back tomorrow, meanwhile, please make sure the laborers that are supposed to finish the work on my apartment do their jobs properly” Garba said to Mr. Danladi.

“I will make sure of that” His father replied.

Garba removed a bundle of cash from his pocket and placed it on the table in front of his father, then walked out of the house, headed straight to the market where he bought a new phone and tried to find Mila’s number or email address so he can contact her.

However Garba is experiencing yet another bizarre occurrence as he cannot find any information or contact with her name on his cloud storage. He remember saving the number himself and uploading it to his drive but for the life of him, he cannot locate the number. In the evening, he returned home and went to sleep.

****(Neuratechnologies headquarters Texas)****

Lockwood reached the top floor and the elevator doors slide open and standing before him is a line up of all the data scientists, programmers and coders working a twelve hour shift to maintain MEDULLA’S functions. They formed two opposing lines on both sides of the hallway, waving Lockwood in with a smile on Their faces.

At the end of the hallway comes Akihiro, with a smile on his face.

“You are just in time, we have finally succeeded in creating the perfect Gift for you, having just left the island. When I was cleared to return to the headquarters and you were kept there by Senator Baker, I was a little worried but it seems like there’s nothing to worry about” Akihiro said.

“This way please” he added, leading the way into the glass computer room.

“I am in a bit of a hurry Doctor Amida, we have achieved so much in the last few months so this would better be either an answer to give Baker on a new military application or a way to deal with Dr. Reece” Lockwood said impatiently.

Akihiro Amida stopped the work he was currently doing on the tablet computer in his hand and looked up at Jefferson Lockwood with a sinister smirk on his face.

“If this works exactly the way I want, it will be a solution to all of these problems at once. We can easily trace and find Reece, making her capture or elimination possible as well as weaponize both MEDULLA and the Neuraface altogether. I am talking about using the AI itself as a weapon.” Akihiro said.

“And what exactly is this breakthrough of yours?” Lockwood asked unenthusiastically

“You are not going to believe this, I used an advanced program to copy all of MEDULLA’S exact source codes as of a week ago. Since the program itself changes it’s source codes, it is impossible to copy it exactly but one can copy it as at a particular moment.” Akihiro said while placing a memory disk on Lockwood’s hands.

“This right here is an exact copy of Reece’s masterpiece as at the moment I copied it six days and ten hours ago. This wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish but I did it. However there’s a catch. Even if this manages to run, it will not evolve, I don’t know how she didn’t it but Reece actually made MEDULLA a program that cannot be recreated.

However I believe we don’t need the program to evolve. A few tweaks to what I have on this disk and I would have created the second most powerful Artificial intelligence in the entire world.”. Akihiro explained.

“How do you run it? I am aware that you would need………this to run such a program” Lockwood said, pointing to the supercomputer in the room. “I don’t suppose you expect me to spend another set of hundreds of millions of dollars to build you another supercomputer” he lashed out.

“That’s the most interesting part of my breakthrough, we don’t need a new Supercomputer to run the program, all we need are a set of firewalls that can block Reece’s MEDULLA from accessing the source codes of ours until we finish installation. With that, finding Reece shouldn’t be hard and more importantly, we can actually control this version, unlike MEDULLA.” Akihiro said