Minding Eternity pt. 3

3 – my very own universe

A grey television screen had more personality.  I was and I wasn’t.  Bathed in numbness and apathy, my very essence choked in loops of illogical confusion.   For exactly how long I spent in this traumatic condition I cannot say, my sense of time didn’t seem to be active without any sort of relativity.  I was my own universe. 

It wasn’t until the fusion of my cortex to the nanites that order first began to be restored.   Electromagnetic pulses sent in specific patterns to different areas of my brain started to balance the potentials in my neurons to the nanites themselves.  This synchronization allowed for adaptation and response to external signals thus paving the way for communication to the outside world.

Since my seemingly-eternal sleep, I had been alone.  Without any way to externalize my thoughts I was truly an island.  Without the rest of my body I was completely confused as to how communication would be possible. 

It was not unlike what I had imagined telepathy might have been.  The scientists responsible for the nanites had programmed a way to tap into my thought patterns using a map of the electrical potentials measured in relative 3D circuitry.  The nanites were able to collect the information of every signal and they developed a rudimentary, yet helpful, translation. 

It was like learning how to talk, except with already knowing everything about the language.  As this was the only thing for me to do I progressed, learning how to request certain information from the researchers such as the date, my location, and what I was.  The answers were equally simple but they were sufficient.  I knew then that the only thing I could do was to keep learning because I was no longer in my own universe.  The world had found its way back in.

Research continued, and new applications were being programmed into the nanites. For instance, a circadian rhythm was patched into the power cycle of the tiny robots which enabled me for the first time, in at least a century, to hold any sense of the passage of time.  This, it was hoped, was to encourage my sense of humanity although without the rest of my body it was difficult to comply.  A sense of idleness had begun to wash over me and left me feeling anxious to proceed with more advances with the nanites. 

Since it had now been long within production, artificial limbs and organs were being produced to replace their organic counterparts in lieu of old age or failure.  Due to this, the general population of the earth was achieving a much higher life span than ever, and the researchers at the institute believed that the same could have been applied to my most peculiar case.