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Once the lights had become fully lit, Ken entered the room, looking around at the ancient looking equipment pushed against the walls and the large casket in the centre. Of a similar, cylindrical shape to the glass containers in the warehouse room, this one had only a glass porthole at one end with which Ken could see inside.
"Anna!" Without thinking, Ken began to scramble at the casket, searching for a way to open it.
Inside the casket, she could see the figure that she could only believe was Anna's real body. She had found her in the Real, only to see the tube erupting from her friend's throat and wires and tubes trailing from her arms and bald head.
The grey haired man stepped forward, closing a cover over the port hole, and laid a hand upon Ken's, stopping her search for a way in to the casket. She glanced at him and saw the sorrow filled shake of the head. She didn't want to stop, however, her first instinct was to free Anna and it took a lot to ignore that. For now.
"You know what she is, I trust?" The grey haired man ran a hand over the polished metal of the containment unit, a sense of pride emanating from him. "We thought this one was going to fail like all the others. A cascade failure that we could not compensate for and then you fell into her dreams."
"I'd never experienced a dream like it and it didn't come up on my media collections." Ken moved around the room examining the equipment. "All this tech, it's beyond old school. This is almost analogue."
"Correct. Even while in a deep REM sleep, the specimens showed an innate ability to connect with technology. It took several generations before we could construct a containment unit that could block their technopathy. Or, so we thought." The grey haired man joined Ken near a console, all switches and flashing lights and ticker-tape read-outs. "When three-zero-two-two, Anna, connected with you alarms everywhere, here, upstairs, rang. It simply could not happen. There is no Thought-Scape down here, no digital equipment within three hundred metres of this room. But you and she connected. Do you know how?"
"I'd say a combination of my over-modded implant and Anna's strength in this 'technopathy'." Ken hesitated to sit in the seat the grey haired man offered, beside one of the consoles.
"Partly. After your second incursion into Anna's dreams, we began a wide search for the culprit. We managed to get a hold of the results from your sister's tests. You're not the only one with skills." He sat upon the seat, adjusting his suit jacket. "It was easy for your sister to miss, but we have much more experience in the area. On your scans, you showed unusual activity in the same areas of the brain that we see when the specimens' technopathy is activated. In short, we believe you, and possibly your sister, too, are among humankind's first natural technopaths."
Ken's mind began to surge. She wasn't foolish enough to dismiss the grey haired man's conclusions, but she had to think it all through herself. She had to admit, she even surprised herself, sometimes, at the feats she had accomplished. Near field connections to tech that she had passed off as a side effect of her continued implant modifications. Her ability to dive into anyone's dreams, even when they had security against such things.
"Kontessa said that the implants were a therapeutic device for the aliens that built this place." Running a hand through her short mess of hair, she continued to work through the problem. "It's possible that, over the centuries, continued use of implants has switched on the ability. An evolution of the species not seen since, well, ever."
"Since that discovery, we've made a basic study of the population of the Tether. Using the data your sister gathered, we've managed to find similar mutations in zero-point-zero-zero-two percent of the population." The grey haired man seemed excited, proud of what he had discovered. "We are witnessing the emergence of a new sub-species of humanity, the possibilities of which are endless."
YOU ARE READING
Anna In The Garden
Science Fiction[Watty's 2021 Shortlister] Two girls. Separated. Connected. For Anna, her world is one of privilege and safety. A lonely prison. Ken lives with complete freedom, but her world is one of darkness and danger around every corner. When their worlds coll...