Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Micro Fiction March Day 21

 


So, today's challenge was a title "Addicted To That Rush" (taken from a Mr. Big song) and it was another title that I didn't really have any real ideas about until I sat down and looked at the blank white screen. But, then a piece of science fiction suggested itself and I did my best to squeeze it into the 300 word limit...


Addicted To That Rush

I lie on my back, naked beneath a thin blue sheet on the surgical table; but it’s only when they disconnect me that I truly feel vulnerable.


I feel revolted by myself in that moment; just a lump of meat on a slab. Slow, useless wetware. Thoughts decelerating to something less than a crawl. Sensory information dropping away. Naked and partially blind, 


There was a time when this was all I was; just a norm with stock wetware. A nothing. A nobody. And for those few minutes I’m transported back to those horrific times as the surgeon readies the cerebral mesh for implantation. I’m not scared that I am lying here with my skull neatly bisected, I’m only scared that something goes wrong and I’m left like this.


But then I hear the surgeon telling me it’s in, and there’s a sensation like ice that creeps down the back of my neck as the carbon nanotube mesh begins to thread itself into the primary regions of my brain. I blink as the mesh commences its start-up routine and weaves itself deeper into my brain stem. 


My thoughts begin to pick up in pace, faster and faster until I am cycling through thoughts and sensations a thousand times quicker than my human brain could possibly have managed on its own. Once you’ve experienced the merge of wetware and hardware, it’s impossible to go back. Only forwards.


I’d believed my previous implant to be life changing, but it was something crude in comparison to the device I’ve just merged with. Already my thoughts are cascading at a speed far beyond anything I’d previously experienced. My sensations heightened and enhanced. I feel so far beyond the meatsack that previously defined me.


I revel in the sheer majesty. I’m addicted to that rush.


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