by Carl Derham
*
“Now Oli,” the voice said, “you must have a million questions you want to ask me. We can either sit here for a few days while I explain everything to you or I can simply transfer the relevant data to your brain. It’s up to you.”
“Can you…Can I…is it…you know, safe? Have you…you know, done it before?”
Oli was burbling quite badly now. He was generally game for anything, but this situation had gone seriously off-road.
“It’s perfectly safe Oli,” reassured the voice without a single indication of; actually I’ve never tried it before. “You won’t feel a thing.”
Oli thought about it for a few seconds and then agreed. With that, a small flap slid open on the control panel, and it was replaced from beneath with a tray containing a pair of snazzy-looking headphones. They were made of shiny silver metal with soft white pads on either end.
“I’ll need you to put these on Oli,” the voice said as the tray extended out from the panel towards Oli’s hand. He reached out and picked them up. They were impossibly light. They felt as though they would float away from his hand if he were to relax his grip for a second. He slipped them over his long matted hair and placed the white pads in his ears. Ok, he thought, so they probably were not designed with human ears in mind.
“Perfect fit,” Oli said with his hands outstretched, open palmed, as if admiring a new shirt.
“Almost perfect Oli,” said the voice. “The pads locate on your temples just in front of your ears.”
“Oh.”
Oli made the necessary adjustments and sat back in the chair. As he did so, he felt the back of the chair moving. In an instant it had formed an exact match to the shape of his back. Imagine if the beds are like this as well, he thought.
“They are Oli,” the ship offered by way of a response to the question that he’d never asked.
“Hold on,” exclaimed Oli, sounding slightly perturbed, “can you hear what I’m thinking!?”
Oli was a bit disgruntled by this. After all, it was his head and whatever went on in there was his business. Quite often, even he didn’t fully understand what was going on in there.
“I can get a rough outline of your thoughts from the room sensors, but when you wear the Neural Feed Set, I hear everything. I’m sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable Oli, but it’s only for a short time. I’ll try not to listen.”
“Now, are you sure this isn’t gonna hurt, ‘cause I’m not very good with things that…Woaw!”
Suddenly Oli knew everything, as though the memories had been in his head for a lifetime. He leant forward in the chair and slid the NFS headset out through the tangle of hair and placed it back on the control panel. He flopped back into the chair and sighed.
“Woaw,” he repeated.
