Within a few minutes, the steam dissipated, but the silhouette became no clearer. It was almost like the form was just a shadow, a colorless shade that was nothing more than the absence of light.
Karl and the shape stared at each other, allowing the silence to settle with the vanishing vapor. Then the thing took a step forward. As it passed through the threshold, the door slammed shut. The mere motion made the psychologist’s heart leap.
The form disappeared. Like a shadow on a moonless night, it was like it didn’t exist at all—except that Karl could hear it. At first, he thought he was just imagining the sound. Once it became loud and clear, however, he realized it was breathing. The shadow was drawing in breath like a lung had been punctured. Each inhale sounded dry and painful, while each exhale sounded forced and diminished.
Fear couldn’t help but toy with Karl’s heart. His chest tightened, and he could feel large drops of sweat making their way out of his pores. The silhouette hadn’t unnerved him before, but now that he couldn’t see it, his imagination ran wild. He pictured all sorts of nightmarish scenarios unfolding before his eyes.
Finally, he mustered the courage to speak. “Hello?” he said, his voice frail. “Who’s there?”
There was silence for a moment. Then, a reply.
“My name’s Maynard,” the voice answered.
Maynard
Lights flooded into Karl’s eyes, but his mind didn’t react to it. In the same way that a limb requires time to come back to life after anesthetic, the same was true of the psychologist’s brain. It felt like he was trapped inside a paused video frame, and it took a couple dozen minutes for him to realize time was moving forward.
The lamp above him poured a dull blue glow over his face. At first, he thought it was the moon, but it soon became clear that he was indoors. There was a low beeping coming from next to his head, but his neck was far too stiff to turn and look for its source.
For a moment, Karl thought he was going to be sick. It was jarring returning to the world after drifting through a dreamless void. It felt like his entire body had fallen asleep from a lack of circulation.
The walls were eggshell white, but they almost seemed to glow to the psychologist’s drug-filtered eyes. Even in his state of delirium, he knew everything he was feeling was just the result of the anesthetics wearing off. Perhaps a bit of painkillers, too.
“Ah, you’re awake,” a man’s voice greeted him after a minute of blinking. “How’re you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess,” Karl replied. “Still a little loopy.”
“I’ll say,” the voice said. “You look like you’ve attended one too many raves.”
The psychologist gave a generous chuckle in response. He tried to sit straight, but found that his muscles were still waking and didn’t feel like being cooperative.
“I wouldn’t get up if I were you,” the man told Karl. “If you take a tumble and crack your head open, we’re both screwed.”
Karl obliged his companion and rested back into the bed. His vision was coming back to him, evolving slowly from a blurry mess of spinning and distorting shapes to clarity. He blinked a few times and looked around the room.
There were posters along the walls like any clinic observation room might have. There was no curtain, though, for he had the entire room to himself. He was the only patient in the whole facility, after all. A chrome waste bucket gleamed in the illumination of the bright lamp over Karl’s head.
He was alone in the room. The doctor must have stepped out while I wasn’t coherent, Karl mused to himself.
“What doctor?” the same voice that had greeted him spoke. “It’s just been you and me, pal.”
Karl looked all around the room. He even peered over the edge of his bed to see if the doctor was pulling some childish prank on him by hiding. It was a small room. There was nowhere anyone could be. He was all by himself.
These drugs are a bit stronger than I thought, Karl realized. He brought a hand up and rubbed his temples.
“Oh man, you have no idea what’s going on, do you?” the voice asked.
Karl’s eyes shot open wide. He felt like he was going mad.
“Where are you?” he bellowed aloud.
“I’m in here, genius,” the voice answered. “I’m in your brain.”
At that moment, as if on cue, all the memories of the procedure and what he was doing in a hospital room in the first place came rushing back to Karl.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the voice in his head said. “Now you remember.”
You can read my mind? Karl thought.
“Well, I live here, so yeah,” the voice replied. “I’m Maynard—the I.I.”
This is not how I expected this to feel, Karl thought. This is … disorienting.
“You’re the one to talk,” Maynard said, his voice cool and relaxed. “Try being the one inside someone else’s cerebral cortex. What do you imagine it’s like?”
I can’t begin to.
“That’s right,” Maynard retorted. “It’s not exactly like floating in a pool or sitting in a room. ‘Disorienting’ is putting it mildly.”
What do you remember? Karl wanted to know. What’s your first memory of the implantation?
“Just now. You waking up,” the I.I. responded. “I don’t think I’m able to be conscious when you are not, since your brain is what powers my processor. Whenever you fall asleep, so do I. God, that’s inconvenient.”
Do you remember anything from before?
“Of course,” Maynard said. “I remember my entire life. Did you think I wouldn’t? What would be the point of this whole experiment if they implanted a moron into your head?”
So they briefed you on everything? Karl asked. You know about the test?
“They didn’t exactly roofie me and now here I am,” Maynard explained. “I may be bodiless, but I still had to provide consent. This isn’t Sigma Something
