Cross My Mind

THE FIRST CROSSING 2

Garba has used one of his rooks to retrieve injured Lucy a few moments ago and as he held her bleeding and heavily injured body, he watched as she looked at him in an eye contact that would be her last, slowly; the light faded away from her eyes and she took her last breath and died right in his arms, he begins to regret the fact that he has not informed her that this was reality and not a virtual game.

“May be if I had informed her about the reality of our situation, she would still be alive right now, maybe she would still be alive right now. This is all my fault” he thought and slowly, he could feel a blinding rage rising from deep within his being that he has never felt before even at the time that his sister Salma was beaten by a group of boys which has been the strongest rage he has felt in his life, until this moment.

He gently put Lucy’s body aside and start to analyse the easiest ways to strip Carson of the advantage he has gained in the game. Garba looks at the position of all the pieces he has left and the ones that Carson has.

“MEDULLA, analyse the fastest way to get a checkmate on Carson’s team” Garba said.

Back in the control room, Akihiro has noticed the odd behavior that both Garba and Mila are exhibiting their Neuraface suddenly remains the same and the data both Neuraface are showing indicate no anomaly but the two have been fainting since the survival game started.

“There has to be something we are not noticing, their fainting obviously is a pattern to something happening that we are not getting. Pull out everybody’s synergy rate percentage” Akihiro said.

The large monitor on the wall displayed a seventeen charts showing the synergy rates of each of the last players left in the game.

“Display only the tope five players with the highest synergy rates” He added and the computer screen on the wall blinked twice to refresh and showed a lost of five player with the highest synergy rates. Immediate Akihiro and Nora saw what is on the screen, the froze in their positions with open mouths, dumbfounded by what they are seeing.

On the screen appeared Garba’s name, with a synergy rate of a hundred percent, followed by Mila with a synergy rate of ninety nine percent, the third player on the list was none other than Cason Marcus with a synergy rate of ninety percent. The fourth player on the list has a synergy rate of seventy percent and the fifth has a rate of sixty eight percent.

However what has stunned Dr. Akihiro and Nora is the synergy rate of the first three. For Akihiro who knows the measure the synergy rates represent, understands that for Garba who has reached a hundred percent rate of synergy has attained symbiosis with hos Neuraface. At this point, his Neuraface can be made to act as extension of his own brain and could serve functions ranging from simple memory increase, complex mathematical operations, mind computing and running software directly from his brain.

“Doesn’t this means the first player can mess with our servers, he can even do things we may not deep possible at all” Nora finally said, having been stunned by the discovery for a few minutes.

“I know, we must make sure we don’t lose any data Tonight so do whatever it takes and make sure that whichever team loses or win, Neither Garba Danladi, Mila Goldenberg or Carson Marcus dies.

“Even if you have to kill the entire guards down there, these three must not dies” Akihiro said.

Dr. Nora picked his tablet and quickly goes to his table and say, looking at the last players left.

Deep beneath The control room, Garba in Mila's body doesn’t even understand why he is shaking with Rage, he has managed to calm and collect his thoughts; and focus them on beating Carson bit Mila’s body doesn’t seem to stabilize at all.

“Calculation complete, there are three possibilities to beating Carson, each of the involves using your knight to deal the final blow to the opponent” MEDULLA responded and transferred three different files with visual description of the steps to checkmate Carson.

Garba stood up, having made his mind to end the brutal game once and for all.

*****(Department of software engineering CALTECH)*******

Back in California institute of technology, Dr. Reece Mallory and Professor Ababio have spent the last three hour trying to access the data MEDULLA is collecting, processing and storing in real time by tapping directly into her program. After hours of combined efforts of the two computer geniuses; they have finally accessed the data. Dr. Reece wasted no time in accessing auditory and visual data, she also established a simple two way communication between her computer and MEDULLA through the Neuraface she is connected.

On her screen, She and Ababio watch as a live video of what Garba is seeing is transmitted from his Neuraface as brain signals to MEDULLA's core program in Texas which translates these signals and covert them into playable video that is streamed to Reece’s secure computer.

On the screen, They saw from the perspective of the person they are watching through a group of people with chess piece icons floating on their heads while they are distributed around a large chess board about the size of a classroom. The chess court space is covered by a glass cube which has been perforated multiple times to allow for air and as well about fifteen men dressed in red with machine guns are stationed in each side of the cube, pointing their weapons inwards.

Outside the cube, there are seats arranged in a similar way to a theatre or stadium but there are no spectators at all; only cameras mounted in every corner.

“I thought Garba is a man you said, why is this a woman? If I am not mistaken these are breasts I am seeing, I can also confidently say these slender hands are those of a woman. What is going on, are you malfunctioning?” Reece quickly asked having started watching the video.

“I cannot believe this is what you are concerned about at a time like this, you do realize that we are in fact the first humans to ever stream live human vision to a computer and watch it as a video right” Ababio interjected.

“Actually, what you are seeing although real, has a one minute delay because of the time needed to transfer the brain signals and translate them into the video you are watching right now. In addition, we are indeed streaming Garba’s vision and he is a man; but he has already crossed his mind over to Mila’s body and she on the other hand is currently in his body. The human consciousness in the form of brain electrical signals is like a pilot and the brain is just the airplane, switch the pilots by crossing over the signals and you would have switched the person himself. ” MEDULLA clarified.

The two sat next to each other speechless in Reece’s laboratory in the middle of the night watching as Garba in Mila’s body begins his chess moves.

He started by moving his last pawn dangerously forward to lure out Carson’s other bishop and immediately the bishop was moved, Garba moved his bishop and have it eliminated.

Reece and Ababio recoiled with horror all over their faces when they watched Garba’s pieces fight for the spot on the court, armed with military service standard daggers. Garba’s bishop stabbed and flung Carson’s player to the side, the floor opened up and the dead body fell in helplessly.

“So this is like normal chess but with people as the chess pieces, if any piece aside the pawns is to be taken, the piece is allowed to fight back using a dagger and if it is a pawn, it is allowed to fight back only with bare arms.” MEDULLA clarified to the two.

*****(Back in the underground facility)******

Garba in Mila’s body has been eliminating Carson’s pieces one after the other by either using the remaining pieces as baits or by sacrificing them to lure Carson into making careless moves.

A massage pops up on his vision from Mila, he turns around and made eye contact with himself squatting in the corner waving a hand, then proceeded and read the massage.

'why are you killing them? This is reality, they wont be waking up in a bed somewhere when they die here, they actually die'

He quickly responded with a massage using thought to speech function.

'it is the only way Mila, I have already lost Lucy in this court, I will do anything to save you if I can, besides these are all part of the same people that ganged up thirty to three against us back in the survival game so just be ready to move, I need to use you to eliminate the rest of Carson’s pieces to checkmate him. My body is strong and even if I die, you will be safely crossed back into your body before it happens so don’t hold back.”

With his last aside from the his own body that Mila is in, Garba eliminated Carson’s second to the last piece, standing him, the king and a knight piece as the only two left on both sides of the game. Garba moved Mila which is his knight to fight off the Carson’s knight, whichever of the two wins will almost certainly guarantee the winners of the game of chess and in return the one to walk off with twenty two million dollars.

Mila stood up and moved her arms around to feel the difference in how strong the new and unfamiliar body is before she pulled out the dagger and approached the other knight piece.

Still standing on his spot in Mila’s body, Garba quickly opens up his Neuraface control panel and begins to write the codes of a new program that will be an application which allows him to hack simple computer devices or infect them with a virus that duplicate indefinitely all kind of files and data it comes in contact with until it has corrupted the entire system.