Creation by Greg Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

computer’s fully functional.”

4
    D r. Shot’s warning echoed in Sam’s mind as he stared at the unblinking woman before him. Thinking of the builder’s pod as a coffin was one thing, but having that become a potential reality wasn’t something he’d wanted spelled out.
    He needed to get to work. But he also needed a distraction from his fears. Being restrained in the builder’s pod didn’t leave many options, however. With every breath, the woman on the view screen heaved her breasts slightly, revealing cleavage behind the otherwise proper white blouse. Her words had been scripted and her actions restrained to a minimum, but that one minor act of self-expression left Sam assuming the model, now long dead, would have welcomed his closer inspection. Her thin face was a little too strict for Sam’s taste. She had straight brown hair cut just below the chin and angling up sharply toward the back of her head. Bangs teased at her eyebrows. She could have served as the archetype for the sexually repressed professional businesswoman of a hundred years ago.
    The image of the woman seldom blinked, but eye movements lifted the bangs as she spoke. Had they expressed any emotion, her brown eyes would have been quite lovely. As it was, they almost appeared to be made of glass. The model’s video session must’ve been grueling, because certain words made her look exhausted.
    He closed his eyes for a moment. Those recordings dated back to sometime before his grandparents had been conceived. He’d had given anything to talk to a real woman, someone he could connect to, someone who might understand his fears. “Explain the process. How do we do this thing Dr. Shot proposed?”
    The face on the view screen snapped to the side then re-centered. Perfect—a glitchy computer was going to map his brain. “First I’ll put you into a coma. I have access to all of Earth’s information. I’ll load what we need into your brain. From there, electronic impulses will be fired through that data to help us both come up with answers.”
    Sam grimaced. “So I’ll be the computer, and you’ll be the user? Wouldn’t it be easier if you just loaded the information into your data banks?”
    The woman’s eyes moved with her head as she shook her negative response. “It’s not just the information we need. Once I know how your brain functions, what synapses perform what jobs, then I can repair the central core.”
    He let out a slow breath. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple. “And I imagine there will be some risks?” An understatement if there ever was one.
    The image of the woman bit her lip then snapped back to her cold stare. At least they’d tried to give her some personality, inappropriately timed though it was. “It will be a surreal dream state for you, but one I can access. I can’t say it will be enjoyable, but you won’t be alone. The risks are: it may not work, I may not be able to pull you out of the coma, or I may get pulled into your dream.”
    The first two risks were what Sam had expected. Strapped in a tin can floating inside another tin can at the outer edge of the solar system, all alone except for a computer someone had programmed over a hundred years ago, held all the appeal of a horror story.
    He took five deep, calming breaths. Lud was still out there. The Leviathan ’s crew would do what they could to rescue him. But XG’s last warning did bother him. “How would you get pulled into my dream?”
    “Humans have the ability to differentiate between themselves and other humans. I do not have that level of awareness. It isn’t difficult for me to tell the difference between the one operating controls and me performing the task. But this will be a melding of the two of us. I will be repairing my systems, using you as a template while you tell me what to do.”
    Sam struggled to remember some long-forgotten joke about do-it-yourself brain surgery. “I don’t expect we have much choice. But I’d kick