Living a Human Life (Luna 3, Part 3)
What happened so far:
Nora, a human working on the colony Luna 3, a moon that orbits Jupiter, has been abducted by the Cephalopods, Cephis for short, which are the highly evolved descendants of octopuses, cuttlefish, and squids. They replaced her brain with the neural network of one of the Cephi's arms, which has its own personality. The newly created human-Cephi hybrid Nora-Ceph was then sent back to live her host's life and infiltrate the human society.
”And you didn’t think to inform anyone that you’d be taking a vacation? In the middle of the week? Not even your employer? Your mother?” The policeman looked at Nora-Ceph in disbelief. She sighed. It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. None of the other hosts had been missed. Why did Nora have to work in a governmental agency?
”I was burned out”, Nora-Ceph tried to explain, for the fourth time. ”I wasn’t myself. It just … overcame me. I’m sorry that I worried people. But I’m back now and it won’t happen again.”
For the first time in three hours, the policeman questioning her nodded.
”I guess I will have to accept this”, he said. ”But I’m required to send you to a psychologist for an assessment. I’m afraid that you will have to wait until Monday for that though, I doubt anyone will have time for you before that. It’s already Thursday after all.”
”That’s fine”, Nora-Ceph said. ”I can wait.”
”Not so fast. This means you’re required to stay on this moon over the weekend. We can’t let you return to Luna 2, you need to stay in your apartment here.” Nora-Ceph had expected that even hoped for it. This would give her additional time to prepare before meeting Nora’s family. The family of a host was always a delicate matter. If someone would pick up changes, it’d be them.
”I guess I have not much of a choice”, Nora-Ceph replied and tried to look sad. She wasn’t sure if she had succeeded, human emotions were so hard to read and even harder to reproduce. How had a species like this been able to evolve without the ability to change color? Humans were weird.
”I will need your passport, to guarantee you won’t leave”, the policeman said and stretched out his hand. Nora-Ceph reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out Nora’s passport. @suesa
”There you go”, she said. ”Can I leave now?”
”You’re free to go. Just come back on Monday, so we can introduce you to our psychologist.”
With the end of his sentence, he immediately seemed to lose interest in Nora-Ceph, turned away and totally ignored her presence. Nora-Ceph stood up, closed her coat and headed for the door. For some reason, she felt like someone might stop her, any moment now. Call out for her to come back and demand an explanation, proclaim that she wasn’t the real Nora.
But nobody did.
The street outside the police station was empty, which wasn’t unusual for a Thursday afternoon. People were still at work for at least one or two more hours. Her host would normally be working too at this time. But with the psychologist appointment on Monday, nobody would expect her to come in this day or even the day after. Four days to try and perfect her act. That should be plenty.
It had been one of the biggest problems they had faced with the host project, even bigger than the surgery itself. How was a Cephalopod supposed to take over a human’s life, without having any of their memories? They would have been spotted in no time and everything would have been lost.
After years of secret research, slowed by limited resources and the need for secrecy, the solution had been discovered.
They had developed a machine that was able to map the connections between synapses and interpret the patterns in ways that allowed a complete recollection of any stored long-term memory. The result was a more detailed memory than any human could ever possess, as even things that were seemingly “forgotten” by the host could be pieced together.
The only challenge that had been left was to feed this info into the neural network of the arm, that was supposed to replace the human’s brain. But even that, they eventually managed to do.
Nora-Ceph was still sorting through all these memories. It wasn’t easy to actively remember something she didn’t actually experience. It was a little bit confusing, especially when it came to the part of Nora meeting Quelz, the Cephalopod Nora-Ceph had been a part of all her life.
She had been told it would become easier, that the memories would start feeling like her own and that her access to them would become faster and faster over time. She hadn’t told anyone that she feared that, and what consequences it might bring. There were tales of host-Ceph systems, that had gone mad because the host’s memories had started to fight the Ceph.
They had to be … terminated.
Nora-Ceph finally arrived at the door of her small apartment. She searched for her keys, looked through them to find the right one, then put it in the keyhole and unlocked the door.
Or not. The door wasn’t unlocked, only closed. Nora-Ceph was slightly confused and tried to recall if Nora had been in the habit of not locking her door when she left for the weekend. The fact that she even double checked worried Nora-Ceph.
Her heart beating at a rate that was way too high to be healthy. Nora-Ceph felt the human fight-or-flight response kicking in but suppressed it. As quietly as possible, she opened the front door and quickly closed it again behind her. The room was dark, but she could see light coming through the cracked door of the bedroom.
Slowly, slowly, she approached it, her hands shaking, her breathing irregular. She braced herself, pushed the door open and saw …
A naked, human male lying on her bed.
”Nora!” He called out. ”Finally! I almost feared you had forgotten our appointment today after you didn’t answer my calls all week!”
Nora-Ceph stayed silent. She couldn’t … she didn’t … she had no idea what to say.
”I’m glad you’re here now and hope you don’t mind I let myself in, after all, you were the one who gave me the key. Made me feel special. I mean, how many men can say they have access to their call girl’s home anytime they want?”
Reference:
How Are Memories Stored in the Brain?
Picture taken from pixabay.com
I just got back to steemit. Finally, the third part! I could just imagine the “agony” of adjusting to the new body. I wish there’s also that machine that could help humans have that “more detailed memory.” (I’m sometimes forgetful😂)
I like the “surprise” in the ending when Nora-ceph saw the naked man when she went home. I wonder what will happen next. This is getting more exciting! Going to part 4 now😀
This reminds me of 'The Host' movie and one book I read about time travel and soul-transfer.
Your story is so detailed and captivating 👏 👏
You're the second person to tell me that it reminds them of "The Host" ._. I swear I wasn't inspired by it!
But glad you like it anyway :P
You're welcome, you're an intriguing writer. Please, visit my blog and check out my posts. Steemit.com/@seunnla
Upvote too 😁
Nora-Ceph in for a shock. I was expecting a boyfriend or even fiance but a customer/client, I didn't see that coming. Again, your story seems to surprise me.
"Nora-Ceph felt the human fight-or-flight response kicking in but suppressed it"- this sentence makes it look as if the fight-or-flight response is native only to the human species whereas it is present in all animals..... just my humble opinion though.
Another great episode, I would like to see how Nora-Ceph handles this one.
The human fight or flight response requires adrenaline. Octopuses have kidney "sacks" and no adrenal gland. I can't find anything about octopuses producing adrenaline. If you do, let me know and I'll change this part :P
I too haven't seen anything about octopi having adrenal glands but I don't think the fight-or-flight response is totally absent in them. They have a similar response. Have a look -
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-smallest-organism-capable-of-a-fight-or-flight-response
Well, I was referring to the fact that the response works differently. Sure, they react to a threat! But it's different from humans. That's what I meant with that line.
LOL! I like the unexpected turn you threw in there at the end.
Can't just write stuff everybody expects :P
Of course not. In fact, I get annoyed when stuff is too predictable.
When I saw Star Wars in the theatre not too long ago I could predict multiple lines. It wasn't necessarily a bad movie, but it was very predictable.
Nora, a space scientist has been turned into a new individual to infiltrate the human society and this person calling her call girl is there to play games with her. Great story @suesa. I like your style of writing be it scientific blogs or fictional series.
I'd always welcome a naked form on my bed than a murderous villain armed with AK 47 or worse :)
This work could be adapted into a short SciFi mini series. I'd love to see the characters as my imagination paints them all sorts of colors and physique. It'd be nice to see the TV adaptation and see if the creators were able to match my very weird imagination. Bravo.
If you know someone at Netflix, send them my way. I'd be all in.
Hehe :) . Exactly my question in the last part. The answer the story gives is very much satisfactory, more scientific development.
I really enjoy how you paint every scenario. You make it so believable. More like swapping brains with a cephi is something that happens all the time. Or does it, in Luna 3 ,yeah :)
The pace at which Nora-Ceph is adapting, that i like too. Not too fast, not too slow. Again, very convincing
Aarghh, i wished he was her spouse, boyfriend but a client? That was unexpected. How is she gonna react? Is she really a call girl?
Is the guy from the agency? Is he a spy sent to watch her?
Else why didn't she recall being a call girl, at least she could tell from the memory atches, that Nora always double checked that her door was locked.
Okay, i'm being paranoid :(
:3
This could go into a lot of different directions. You're supplying suspense and surprise deftly.
Forgive me for mentioning a matter only tangential to the story, but there's a typographical error, probably due to autocorrection. in an early paragraph of this post that wraps up the "story so far" — cephis, not chepis, should be the abbreviated form of cephalopod.
For some reason, that happens all the time while writing this story. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll correct it.
In many cases, you can type a word correctly only to have some kind of autocorrect function change your typing to something incorrect. Watch out for that. If you post before you set it straight, I'm told each later correction will consume as much of your "bandwidth"as the original posting for 7 days.
Brushing aside these technicalities, I'm impressed by your ongoing story. The educational references at the end of each installment are a nice touch, reminiscent of afterwords by Greg Egan or Stephen Baxter, yet yours are episode-specific.
I don't really worry about my bandwidth, I'm not even close to running out of it. But thanks for your concern :)
Hahahaha, what an unexpected end, what awaits the octopus. You know I like the way you tell, it's hard to illustrate a story without videos or images, only with texts, but you have that touch to do it, you put the words so that the imagination does the rest. As for the story, I think it's still too early to judge, so I'm going for the other one. :P
From a suspicious policeman to sifting through memories to a naked man waiting in the dark! Rereading shit is awesome :)