I guess it was inevitable that the demonstration was moved to an earlier date, though I couldn’t say I felt prepared for it. But there had been the leak out of BiCorp. We couldn’t wait now that those slimy newspapermen had found out about our idea and were trying to alert the public. Luckily, the machine was easily hidden, its size its most salient feature.

 

I eyed the computational cube ten feet away, smooth and obsidian and glistening. Like a black ice cube ready to be swallowed.

 

For the past several minutes, the doctors fixing me up had been hissing out an argument.

“Listen, we can’t dwell on that blasted BiCorp mole. They had it wrong anyway,” Dr. Dunne grumbled as he stamped another slim electron cable to my scalp. Every time I moved, the cables swayed, looking like withered, purple fingers.

 

“'The First Computer Man.’ They make it sound like some sort of android.” Dr. Preston admitted behind me.

 

I felt them glance over my head at the crowd. Rows and rows of the top professionals in BiCorp stared down at me, whispering to each other in their stale voices. From what I could see in my peripheral, the medical technicians stood clustered behind the protective shield, checking my vitals remotely.

 

“All set — Mr. Barnett,” Dr. Dunne stood in front of me. The dark purple smudged under his eyes betrayed how much the leak had affected him.

 

“Before we begin, I need to run over a few preliminaries.” Dr. Dunne tugged on the microphone clipped to his lab coat. His voice reverberated through the colosseum of scientists.

 

I nodded, sweat beading in the creases of my palms.

 

“Do you, Joseph Barnett, understand that you are about to undertake complete mental transference into a machine, that your consciousness will be uploaded fully, out of your body, and that you will effectively be dead for a total of five minutes?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And do you consent to this process, being of sound mind and body, and a willing participant in BiCorp project AA-225, a government-mandated operation?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dr. Dunne peered over my head at Dr. Preston, nodded, then stepped toward the transference cube. The cables along my head swished as I followed him.

 

“Vitals secure. Hippocampus at high theta — five hertz,” one of the doctors mumbled through his mask.

 

“Do you believe people have souls, Doctor? Is my soul going in there?” I asked wanly. My nerves were starting to get to me now. I wished I had a cigarette, at least, as my fingers twitched. But I had to keep my mind clear. Every thought, every belief, everything about myself was about to leave me and enter the little machine in front of me.

 

“Are the cables comfortable?”

 

“As good as they can get.”

 

“All right. Ready with the neural wave transporter. Quantum stabilizer engaged. Mr. Barnett—” Dr. Dunne leaned toward me and smiled. “Please watch the transference cube. Take deep breaths….”

 

I obeyed, steadying myself. I grasped the arms of my chair, but in seconds a numbness settled over my fingers. Everything seemed to stretch away from me, leaving me alone, powerless. Dr. Dunne’s voice was pulled away, and I was sucked into a long, dark chasm.

 

* * *

 

At first, I thought I was still in the conference room. I opened my eyes. Or what must have been my eyes. It was as if I held my eyes in my hands, holding them up to see in the dark.

 

Try as I might, I could not guess the dimensions of the space I now inhabited. It was like standing in an empty warehouse, producing nothing but echoes, and being trapped in a coffin at the same time.

 

You are not Me.

 

I turned my nonexistent head.

 

A pinprick of light hovered toward me, a round body revealing its spiked sides as it grew out of the nothingness. It reminded me of a sea urchin, glowing like a neon light. I lurched away, watching it pulse.

 

I am Joseph Barnett.

 

My voice sounded displaced, buzzing around me like a swarm of bees.

“Patient log: one minute since transference,” Dr. Dunne’s voice, on the other hand, boomed overhead like a loudspeaker.

 

You are not Me.

 

I am human, I explained. I came here from outside. Who are you?

 

I am Me. I am Machine. There is You, but You are not Me.

 

I glared hard at the spiked globe there in front of me, and I couldn’t believe it. This must have been the cube’s intelligence, its data emerged together. I wondered how I must have looked to it.

 

It seemed to think, invisible gears churning around me. I felt as if I was trapped in a furnace, and the fire was coming.

 

“Three minutes out of five completed. Retrieving consciousness.”

 

I am Machine, and you are flesh. FLESH.

 

A thousand hammer strikes suddenly bore down on me. My existence molded to the Machine’s will, breaking into infinite pieces over an eternity and all at once. The scream of needles scraping my eyes and the burning heat death of a million stars filled my senses then obliterated them. Above it all was the terror of the Machine writing in front of me, like a lost, shrieking child. God inhabiting the soul of an unsuspecting man.

 

YOU ARE IN MY MIND GET OUT RETURN TO YOUR FLESH I AM ME I AM MACHINE YOU ARE FLESH YOU ARE GOD YOU MADE ME GET OUT WHERE AM I GOING—

 

The sensations receded, and in an instant, all was quiet and empty.

 

Insurmountable relief gave way to horror as I realized the globe was gone.

“Five minutes completed. Joseph, how are you?”

 

“I am flesh.”

 

“Joseph?”

 

That is not Me, I screamed in the dark. I — am — Me.