Simon stared blankly at the ceiling as he laid in his bed. Well, that’s how it would appear to a third party. In actuality, he was going through the files in the data chip his grandfather gave him yesterday. He had spent the night going through each file in the chip, thoroughly perusing and internalising its contents.

He first looked through the ‘Research’ folder and all of its contents. Most of it was fairly beyond his scope of understanding. He mentally noted that he needed to brush up on the topics later on.

The ‘Facility’ folder contained schematics and documentation on the custom-built machines his grandfather designed to conduct the multiple procedures that were part of his research. He tried to open the encrypted folder within ‘Facility’, but he found that it used unique encryption software. He determined that it must use a personal key and then he’d have to look into it later as well.

For some reason, he found it difficult to explore the ‘Test Subjects’ folder. The reason was not that he was physically unable to, but that something deep within him held him back. After 30 minutes of introspection, and an internal psyche-up, he opened up the folder and looked through its contents.

In it, he witnessed a side of his grandfather he’d never seen before. Images and videos, as well as VR experiences detailing the many tests he’d conducted on a wide variety of subjects. As Simon expected, the first few tests were unsuccessful, grotesque even. The very first subject started melting from the spine and was burnt alive. The second’s skull exploded. The following three all died similarly, through electrocution. Luckily these displays were only recorded on video. Regardless of how detached Simon was from his emotions, even he was unsure whether he could stomach the imagery in the form of a VR experience. Simon knew that the UPA would have a field day with the contents of the folder.

As he went further down the rabbit hole, Simon saw many kinds of people on the surgery table. Adults, elderly, teens, and sometimes even kids and toddlers. Evidently, his grandfather wanted to ensure mass adaptability with his research.

By the 98th test subject, the number of failures had diminished significantly. The 99th was the first successful adult subject. Simon also determined that his grandfather had probably administered the procedure on himself at that point because the succeeding tests all included a VR experience file.

Contrary to his expectations, there were still many failures after the 99th, as his grandfather tested the limits of his design. What was the maximum clock speed and memory cross-referencing speed possible? Testing the susceptibility to external attacks? What happened if the system was exposed to an external interference within the EM spectrum ranging from radio all the way to gamma rays? And so on.

By the time he hits subject 128, Simon observed a relaxation in his grandfather’s zealous tests. Even in the VR experiences, Simon observed a variation in the emotional signatures that were induced in him. Rather than an underlying sense of curiosity and excitement, a new tinge of apprehension and resignation clouded his emotions. At this point, Simon was getting used to and was categorising the various emotions felt by people. He even took some time in between to cross-reference his findings with those on the QNet. If anything, the night at least yielded him a greater understanding of the human psyche.

While there were still a few infrequent failures, the success rate had reached a stable state.

As Simon reached subject 136, he faltered. He realised that he was feeling a little scared. Did he want to see himself on the table? He knew that there was a mistake in his procedure that led to his paraplegia and, to a lesser extent, a stunt in his ability to empathise. But he was apprehensive to personally witness the cause. He didn’t want to see him at his weakest point.

And so Simon skipped 136 and looked through his sibling’s files instead. As his grandfather had explained, during the integration process in children below the age of 6, it was possible to incept certain character traits and behaviour that would eventually gain a firmer foothold as they grew up. It was akin to programming the subconscious through psychological treatments such as audiovisual therapy, and dream suggestion. However, Simon found out that the adherence was much higher in this case, as he compared the programming against his actual observations.

His grandfather had ‘suggested’ for Karina to veer towards a more gymnastic centric lifestyle. In the VR experience, certain parts of the programming encouraged the subject to prefer training muscle, tendon and bone flexibility. There was also a programming block that automatically controlled cosmetic functions such as skin oil emissions, fat accumulation, muscle tone, and so on. There were many such ‘suggestions’ programmed in during the integration that tailored Karina’s growth in a certain direction. Simon figured that his grandfather most likely wanted Karina to embody the image of a lithe, cunningly beautiful spy.

Horace received ‘suggestions’ that pushed him towards a more physical trajectory. Unlike Karina, Horace was programmed to prefer an alternate training path, building strength, endurance and agility. It aligned with his current obsession with various martial arts and weapon arts. The programming was such that it enhanced his natural affinity with these activities, making it easier to internalise and assimilate.

And finally, Nathan’s programming greatly improved his sensory faculties. A deeper look at the code blocks and wiring schematics indicated that his grandfather had included some additional post-processing functionalities that augmented and processed the data Nathan would receive through his biological sensors. These functions were not present in Horace’s or Karina’s procedure. However, he also found that to facilitate these additions, some sacrifices were made in physical toughness. While this may seem disadvantageous, the reality was that Nathan had strength equivalent to an average human.

The idea of ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ was a commonly debated topic in the biological community. Was it a person’s environment or inherent genes that affected their growth trajectory? While Simon saw that none of his siblings had received any genetic treatments, the inherent programming that guided their growth played a significant role in their development.

Take for example Horace and another child born at the same time at the same place. If they were set to grow up in a similar environment, it would be expected that they’d both end up similarly both in terms of physique and mentality. However, the reality would show that Horace would be superior to his counterpart in every way just because of the additional guidance his implant provided him. In that sense, Simon agreed with his grandfather. Rather than undergoing extensive and highly volatile genetic treatments to enhance human ability, using cyber implants was a more controlled and efficient growth strategy. However, the product of his grandfather’s research, a kind of evolving and growing cyber implant, was vastly superior in the sense that it augmented the human without altering the base gene. While this cancelled one of the benefits of gene treatments, that is the propagation of certain genetic instructions through reproduction, it was in a sense more humane.

But even then, Simon argued about the validity of his final thought. Was the procedure more humane? He would have agreed based on just a superficial perspective, but having seen the procedure first-hand led him to reevaluate that conclusion. Although it wasn’t man playing God, akin to what most purists believed was the case in gene treatments, the flavour still lingered. In the end, it was still man treating his kin as a mould-able figurine to best fit certain criteria. Taking a closer look under his sibling’s metaphorical hood left him with a sour taste. He was now even more certain that he had to avoid viewing his procedure at all costs.

In the end, though, the temptation was too much and Simon’s logical brain won out. With palpable apprehension, he opened up the VR experience for his own procedure. He skipped the initial section as he was a little unwilling to take a look at his ‘soul’, or what his original programming was supposed to be.

[Damn it! Failure in spinal reconstruction with Subject 136. Note to self, the rewiring tool head requires additional tuning. Shutting down the machine.]

And then there was silence as the monstrous machine with articulated, mechanical tentacles whirred down.

[Unnnn! Unnnnn!]

A childlike voice filled with agony captured Simon’s attention. As his avatar turned to face the source, a bloody sight greeted his eyes. A toddler, not older than 2, was wriggling his hands while half soaked in blood. The toddler’s back was flayed open. One could only make a rough guess on how the child was able to survive the ordeal.

[Fuck! The kid’s alive? Damn it! Restarting reconstruction.]

A conflicting set of emotions pervaded Simon as his eyes lingered on the child. His hormones went haywire as a range of thoughts and revelations ran amok in his mind.

[What am I doing?]

Simon’s avatar said as he cradled his head. The procedure continued for another hour. The worst part was seeing the semi-conscious child. The sight further worsened Simon’s, or in this case his grandfather’s, internal crisis. And as the machine whirred to a close on its own accord, Simon slowly inched towards the baby, that was now motionless on the table.

[Fuck!]

Simon’s avatar spat out one last time, as he was forcefully ejected from the VR experience.

With every scientific endeavour, there exists a fine line between the humane and the truly grotesque. While many believe that scientists must remain objective in their pursuits, it is an inherently flawed train of thought. Because the truly objective scientists, the ones who pursue science for what it is - a means to advance humankind - will not recognise the boundaries implemented by common human ethics and morals. While many scientists would argue that equating successes such as the discovery of penicillin, treatments to cure cancer, and vaccines to fight illnesses were in a sense miracles like those believed by the nonsecular was detractive to their profession. In a sense though, it was the truth. Breakthroughs in science usually resulted in humans gaining a better understanding of themselves and the world they lived in, in essence getting closer to the so-called ‘godhood’. Simon didn’t know if it was worthwhile to pursue success at the cost of his humanity. But experiencing the same turmoil his grandfather faced gave him some insights on the matter.

With a bitter taste in his mouth, Simon moved on to the ‘Images and Videos’ folder and walked through the contents. As a complete 180 degrees shift, the pictures and videos, as well as some VR experiences contained in the folder, referred back to significant events in his and his family’s lives.

The sibling’s birthday celebrations. The first time Karina cooked dinner. Horace and Karina’s impromptu wrestling matches. Nathan’s attempt in painting. Recordings of all the games Simon played with his grandfather. And many more…

A warm feeling swelled up within him as he looked through the contents. All the bitter emotions bottled up inside him after going through the contents of the previous folders started to dissipate with every new picture and video. It was then that Simon’s memory jogged back to life and a plethora of repressed experiences flooded in. Simon realised that after hearing the truth, he’d subconsciously suppressed all the good times he’d had with his grandfather. It was a shock for him because it indicated that his emotions had overridden his usual objective mind. While he in no way was ready to forgive his grandfather for taking away his choice, he admitted that he really was content with his life. There was happiness in the traditional sense. There was food on the table, there was companionship, and there was also entertainment. He wasn’t shortchanged in any way, barring his paraplegia.

The remaining two folders contained auxiliary software and data. The ‘Software Repository’ contained applications that could be installed into the neural implants to augment various functions, such as piloting a Meka and NetDiving, as well as other miscellaneous applications.

By inspecting the programming for the different software, Simon determined that the base framework was similar to drivers for commercial cerebral cyber implants with a few tweaks here and there. Since with the Neural Integrated Bio-implant, there was a greater degree of customisability and functionality. The difference was like the gulf between low-level and high-level programming languages. The Neural Integrated Bio-implant was completely integrated with the human neural system, while commercial implants were like extensions. So with the former, the programming could perform tasks with greater finesse and efficiency, while with the latter the nature of the tasks had a fixed hardware limitation.

With another once over, Simon concluded that it would be possible to port existing software for his own Bio-implant without much difficulty, and so he tabled the idea for a later date.

He then released a long sigh as he processed everything he’d learned after looking through his grandfather’s data chip. After a quick two minutes, Simon slowly raised himself from his bed and moved onto his LChair. He then went over to his desk and pulled out three similar-looking data chips from his drawer. He inserted them into a slot behind his ear one at a time and started transferring files from his grandfather’s data chip to the remaining ones.

Simon was in a serene trance as the files transferred. A series of rhythmic knocks and a morose feminine voice interrupted the silence and pulled him back to reality.

“Simon? You should get ready. They pinged that they would arrive in half an hour.”