Neuroplasticity - noun - / n(j)ərowˈplæstɪsitē /
The capacity of the brain to reorganize and form new neural connections, enabling it to adapt in response to injury, trauma, or changes in behavior, environment, or cognitive demands. Example: In blind patients, neuroplasticity allows the brain to compensate for its visual deprivation through an increased sensitivity to touch, smell and hearing.
Layla's Ship, Al Saqr HQ, Abu Dhabi, AU
Portugal had been a struggle from the very start, with sharp, throbbing pains, and controls that just seemed off. 'Noisy signal over the neural link,' her race engineer had said, and that she should try not to mind it too much. So Layla didn’t give in, and kept at it with determination.
The Al-Saqr crew had done the same back at HQ since then. Their medical doctor had laid down the hammer: the overheating was getting too dangerous. There
had to be another solution to the endless processing to wrangle and force the data into Layla's mind. Ceaselessly, they had tinkered on the interlinked A.I. systems that laid at the root of the neural link, made them explore their own optimal mapping. The adaptive neural limiter had become fully adaptive.
The migraines reached their apex then, like sandpaper grinding across her mind. But with every wasted simulator run, Layla pressured the system more. And in her wanting, the ship’s network of digital neural networks obliged, altering its linkages, expanding, searching, clawing, desperate to connect. Every run, Layla felt the knocking on her skull, the noise getting louder. And, like when she played with the old staticky radio’s in her childhood, she turned up the volume more, and more, and
more, until eventually,
she could hear the signal that was hidden in the noise. And as soon as she heard it, things… clicked in place…
broke througȟ̴̪̀. She felt her mind, honed by being run through the grinder so many times, focus
in on the new signal, accommodate it into itself.
The radio had been tuned, and Layla’s ship, finally, sang to her like a nightingale.
For the first time in months, the ice baths had become less necessary to deal with the overclocking of her systems, and even Kais had noticed the regained pep in her step, the familiar optimism in her voice, how her ship danced in their tests and simulations. But all good things come to an end̶̝̤͑͊… Every time her neural link's status indicator went from green to red when she plugged out of the ship’s systems, the disconnect felt more abrupt than usual. Normally, the simulated sensations were transposed on top of her existing senses, and disconnecting felt like taking off a layer of clothing or a set of holovision goggles. But now…?
Layla stared at her reflection in her ship, dragged her fingers through the vacant air around her, across the ship’s hull. It wasn't the same. It felt dull, like a limb having gone numb from the lack of blood, like missing space. Except it wasn't just a limb.
It had felt
alive.
And Layla had felt alive with it.
Conference Room 'Medina', Al Saqr HQ, Abu Dhabi, AU
The meeting room had fallen silent as the holo-screen projected a time-lapse of a brain's activity. “Look at that…” Layla said under her breath. The timeline neared current date, and Remi Tewe jumped to action, pointing out several brain areas that suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. “There it is, look! Marked changes in several areas in the limbic system, mostly associated with pain signaling and certain autonomous body functions, motor coordination, motivation, those kinds of things,” he said. And Layla turned to Kais and said, her voice hushed, “good thing I have additional mods for that,” and Salma Nasri MD barely contained herself from rolling her eyes as she overheard, though Kais swore he heard a hint of doubt in Layla's voice. “But what's more,” the neural engineer continued, “some of Layla's neuronal changes seem to be directly correlated with changes in the
ship's digital neural networks. It seems the two are in the process of rewiring themselves to
become a better conduit for each other. That would explain the sudden leap in performance: a
direct connection from Layla's mind into the ship's systems has developed.”
“And what about the reverse?” their doctor proposed. “Considering the laws regarding putting A.I. into people's brains, I assume you are familiar with the risks?” “Except that we're not replacing parts of Layla's brain with A.I. systems at all,” Remi replied, “we're simply allowing them to communicate. Any defaulting of specialized mental processes to the ship's A.I., and associated adaptations in the wetware -sorry Layla- are to be expected and quite natural. As natural as how you outsource some of your processing to your logs and apps. Does your smart-textbook control you too, doctor?”
“What about personality?” Layla asked out of the blue, and Kais' ears perked up. His conversation with Ava came back to mind, and that question -what people wouldn't give to extract the skills of someone like them... Layla continued her question. “If the ship's neural networks are adapting to mine, will they become so similar one day that my personality will also get encoded into them?”
“Well,
some would say, personality is just an extension of the
survival instinct, no?” And their doctor whispered under her breath
'How reductive,' but Remi continued his line of thought unfazed. “How sensitive one is to threats, the care for social inclusion, one's interests and specializations, all so as to maximally thrive in the world... And I do not believe the ship's A.I. is wired in that same way as we are. It has one very defined goal, and that goal is to race well, and to facilitate you in that. Perhaps its circuitry will come to align implicitly to the degree where it can predict what you might find useful in the moment, so as to better filter and optimize the data for the neural link. But all of this is still very philosophical. We're going into territory where...
few people have gone before, have
dared go before, so it's definitely something we'll monitor. We will keep Doctor Nasri very involved in the process.” He nodded towards the doctor, who returned a slow nod of her own that said
oh, you better.
Then they went over Kais’ own scans for comparison, but these didn’t show any of the neural adaptation that they had found in Layla's. With so many mods and augmentations, Layla's mind simply seemed to be more open and receptive to the changes. And while Kais' adaptive neural link also seemed to have found a better alignment with his brain activity than before, as his migraines had similarly disappeared, there had been none of this 'repurposing' business in his brain, something which made Kais breathe a sigh of relief, and which Layla found a source of much amusement. “Must be that damn stubbornness of yours, huh?” she whispered as she patted him across the chest in jest.
And at the meeting's closing, Al-Saqr's Team Principal Omar Hayawi, who had stayed silent during most of the meeting, merely stroking his beard in the deepest depths of thought anyone had ever seen him, spoke up. “Needless to say, this is what our NDA's are made for. Keep this out of the public's ears. And keep me up to date. On
every development. That is all.”
Then, slowly, but with an undeniable energy, the group left the meeting room, but Kais stayed behind with Layla, who started pacing back and forth. “I never thought we’d get there this fast, if I’m being honest,” she said, her voice tense, exasperated, on the edge of fear and excitement. Kais crossed his arms, and beckoned Nadia to come in as well. She had stayed behind, silent and hesitant, and seemed to have the exact same thoughts as him. “We need to talk,” Kais finally said, and Layla stopped in her tracks. “It’s about last race, about Amy, about the glitch,” and Layla's eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What about it?” Kais sighed, and steeled himself for how mad he was going to sound. “We think it wasn't just
her ship's neural link that spiked last race. We think that was
you, or rather your ship's A.I. that did it.” Layla blinked, her mouth opened, stumbling for the words. “I didn’t, that's absurd!”
“We’re not saying you did it on purpose,” Nadia quickly added, “We think your subconscious triggered...
something in your systems, a spike, that propagated through the site's network. We went through the race telemetry and everything, we
saw it, there seemed to be a direct link there, though we only found out 'cause we knew where to look, I suppose,” and Nadia looked at her feet, their going behind Layla's back still weighing on her conscience. Kais nodded, a pained look on his face. “We couldn't believe it at first either. But the connection between you and your ship has changed. There's no telling what that might mean. How...
dangerous that might make you.” He said, shaking his head. “We can only hope the glitch has been solved with the upgrade, and that you have control over it now. But...” And Kais hesitated, thousands of possible threats racing through his mind.
Making a better weapon out of you. “If there comes a time where you absolutely
have to go there...” He paused. “Make it
count.”
Remote Meeting Space, Hamad International Spaceport, Qatar, AU
A week later, in a small isolated meeting space in the depths of Hamad International Spaceport's high-security corridors, Layla and a pair of the most highest-ups from her oldest tech partners came together to talk. The done-up suits, holo's or no, stuck out like a sore thumb here in this barebones space, little more than connected cuboids of geo-polymer cement with uncovered pipes and ventilation shafts, a sight far removed from the inspirational splendor of the public and office areas of the spaceport. Cold and sterile, it was the perfect place for a clandestine meeting with Cryo-Digital and the Lunaspace Engineering Company -and Layla's previous employer-, and there was a buzz in the air.
“What you’re describing, Ms. Al-Nadir,” the L.E.C. rep said, her voice modulated, clinical, and thick with a lunar accent, “a digital extraction of the human mind, a merging of mind and machine? It's nothing short of revolutionary. An actual mechanism for transferring a mental image into a machine and back? A digital representation of the mind, capable of being stably stored through even the most extreme conditions of space travel, then re-sleevable into programmable androids, or geno-mods? This could
solve the human factor in extra-planetary colonization!”
“Not just colonization,” Layla continued, her fingers tapping the table in excitement. “Our
continuity, in all its forms. Memory preservation for Alzheimer's patients, backups of brain areas, keeping alive the legacy of lost loved ones, mental extensions sharded into the cloud, bridging the cognitive degradation during cryo-sleep. This isn’t just
some improvement, it opens the way to the
athanasia of human consciousness itself.” She kept her voice steady, but her thoughts raced at hundreds of km per hour. The possibilities were unbelievable. But the risks...?
The Cryo-Digital representative leaned forward, his holographic avatar flickering slightly. “This research will require very careful management, but if Al-Saqr agrees to it, we would consider jointly funding an accelerated Phase Three pilot study. If we can understand how your mind interfaces with your ship’s digital intelligence, we could try to replicate it, continue it, adapt it.” “Al-Saqr might not approve of this,” Layla said, cautiously. “Not yet, anyway. We're still working things out ourselves, and the whole project is under a lot of scrutiny, I have management breathing down my neck nearly 24/7.” “We’re not looking for mere approval, Ms. Al-Nadir,” the L.E.C. rep said. “We’re asking for a partnership. Surely you understand the value of what this could mean, if we can make this a reality? But...” And the rep leaned back. “This is a risky business, and we would want more numbers, metrics...
results, before committing.” And Layla felt the stakes for Luna got higher.
“And what about the...
ethical considerations?” Layla asked, her mouth tightened.
The rep shrugged. “That will depend on who writes history.”
Kais Zenix @ASZenix:
[Image of a spaceplane in the distance, with Al-Saqr fans lining up to watch its departure, and Nadia secretly photobombing in the back]
"It's been LUNAcy here at Hamad Int. Spaceport. Here's to you all, see you in a few days. We'll show you some absolute fireworks of a race!"
#AlSaqrRacing #DeltaHyper #FormulaAG #🚀 #🌔
Training Division, Hamad International Spaceport, Qatar, AU
“Suit looking good on you, Kais,” Layla's voice called out over the comms in his helmet. Kais grunted an acknowledgment, but his mind was somewhere else, and dreading what came next. With the instructor's “3, 2, 1,” he involuntarily sucked in air as the weight on his shoulder suddenly lightened. The AG-tech in the micro-gravity training room had turned on, and he started floating as he had done in his ship so many times. This time, however, it was different. With no mag-strips or guardrails, his body was free to orient itself, as well as
disorient itself, as it unfortunately turned out.
“Low and zero-gravity can be difficult to navigate for us humans, accustomed to Earth. There's no fixed reference point, no resistance, and every twitch carries through, so you can't brute force your way through it like you might in a swimming pool. You have to let yourself adapt to that, become comfortable in that.” And Kais nodded, but it didn't help him feel much more comfortable. It wasn’t exactly an instinct that came natural to him, not like his drive, want for control, and, well... brute forcefulness did. He looked at Layla effortlessly gliding through the air, cat-like. Once she made herself drift in towards Kais, called for “Hands!”, then grabbed him by them, spun him around as if in a dance, and let go, after which Layla regained control almost instantly, and Kais was left spinning and cursing through his instructor's instructions and Layla's laughter.
Yet, after some time, their instructor stopped the sim. “Doing great, you two. Next round of practice is in 15, go grab a drink, and then we'll look at how added mass changes your handling,” he said as the AG-pack settled them down with gravity. Kais felt the weight of the heavy-duty racing-suit come to sit on him again. And it didn’t take many more rounds of practice after that for the feeling of armor to bring back ways of carrying himself, ones he thought he had left behind. For a brief moment, the reflection in his visor caught him off-guard. He was surprised he looked older -the feeling might as well have been years ago. Preparing for a drop, for the unknown dangers that lay ahead. But the Luna race wasn’t a battlefield, he thought. Or rather, he
hoped.
The memorial park was quiet at this time of day. The day’s sweat still lingered on him, but he wasn’t to go back to his accommodations, not quite yet. There was still work to be done. Raincoat’s hood up, privacy-glasses on, he wandered down the paths until he came at last to a set of four large holo-tablets. And on them scrolled names. Many, many names. A lot of places in the Union had memorial sites like this. For those who didn't make it through
those times. The times of starvation, droughts, pandemics, natural disasters. And the Middle Eastern Water Wars. They were truly dreadful years. The world's population had steadily declined to close to four billion, half of what it used to be, give or take. And Kais could imagine only few people then would have remained unaffected when one of the four horsemen came knocking on their doors. Possibly one of
him, Kais thought, and he felt the pit in his stomach grow deeper.
So,
so many names.
But none of
his, of course.
Behind him gravel cracked and a voice eerily similar to his own spoke up, and Kais immediately knew who it was. A small lisp betrayed the scar running across his face. It always did strike him as a bit theatrical, as if frag drones had a penchant for drama. Yes, I.O.N.-2-02. Who else could it have been…
“You’ve been busy, Z.” He spoke. “Been a long time, Inan.” Kais responded, then admitted, “didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Didn't think you'd answer my call.” “And yet here we are,” Inan replied, and asked, “Still trying to get away from it all?” Kais shrugged. “There’s nowhere else to go.” “Some people try to make peace with their past, Z.,” and Kais snickered in insult. “Shrink-speak for giving up, I know them all... How’s that worked out for you?” The man chuckled in return. Bullseye. “Been doing security gigs mostly. People stop bothering you when you're just a night-shifter who keeps his head down. It’s a peaceful life.” “What of the others?” “You know that yourself, Z. Don’t make me say it.” “Of the ones that remain?” “Laying low, mostly. Some bought off by organizations, criminal gangs, probably still some cells around waiting for the right moment,” Inan shrugged, “hard to tell, sometimes. Who can be trusted…”, and Kais thought back to Khaled, who had given him one name. He nodded. “Hard to tell who’s legit…”
“Inan?” A short moment of hesitation went by. “Have you ever wondered about what it all was for? Fighting a fight we were never going to win?” “What’s all this about, Z.?” “I have gotten a drop. Information, about us. What they did to us. Not everything makes sense yet. Some of it is encrypted, yet to be analyzed, corrupted, proprietary formats. I need some trusted eyes to dig into it. And to keep it safe, if something were to…
happen to me.” “Hmm…” Inan said, crossing his arms. “I bet there're a lot of people in the market for some of this. And I always did dream about owning a yacht. What makes you think I won’t turn this into my ticket out of all...
this?” And he gestured to the tablets. “Because if you sell out, you’ll be selling out more than just me.” Kais said, his gaze fixed, then turned his eyes towards the names as well. “You reckon our names'll ever get mentioned as anything more than a dark page in the history books?”
Then Inan was silent. “The more you try to bury it, the more it all just keep coming back to haunt you, huh…?” He sighed. “You ever wonder if there's anything good on the other end of questions like this?” And Kais said “Every damned day. But wondering doesn’t get you anywhere. Neither does dreaming. Only
fighting for it does.” He turned towards his counterpart, took his shoulder, then his neck, and slid the data shard into his rudimentary neural connector. “Stay still. Let the diagnostics run.” The sweep came back clean, no suspicious security or monitoring detected, and the biometrically-sandboxed data environment copied itself over onto the neural stack’s storage. Then, eyes hardened.
“You up for one final mission?”
“Always.”
The Runway, Hamad Spaceport, Qatar, AU
The energy of the crowd was electric. For the obvious lack of real-life stands and fan areas at Luna, instead Al-Saqr's ticketed fans had been invited to the spaceplane's takeoff. VR and holovision can take you quite a way, but for a fan-favorite such as Luna, Al-Saqr had prepared a worthy send-off. Stands of merchandise from their sponsors kept the crowd busy before the main event: from Layla's
Cryo-Digital (offering a highly rudimentary neuro-vid as a demo), and
Silver Line Cybernetics (showing off their upscale synthetic skincare products and cybernetics that were as much art and jewelry as they were functional), to Kais'
Nomad Nutrition (at which Kais made sure to sip his favorite artificial strawberry-flavored nutri-paste and send a cheers at the cameras), and
Jackals & Co. (the apparel brand long-since bought-up by ASSC, known for being so edgy it went far beyond self-aware irony at this point). Holo-projectors showed the ultra-ultra-luxury hover-yachts of
Durrat Gliders Celestial against the sunset backdrop, and even
Monster Stims had decided to join the party, after the post-Tokyo viral social media memeage.
In that crowd, behind the security fences they saw Nadia wave at them, and the two made their way up to her. As soon as they were in range, Nadia reached out. First to Layla, whom she hugged with an impatient tremble to her frame, and wished “good luck, and look after yourselves!” And then she turned to Kais, whom, to some of his shock, she hugged as well, and wished “good luck, and look after yourselves!” before waving goodbye, and turning back to talking and laughing with her friends -exchanging interested glances- that she had invited to the event.
Layla and Kais walked on and made their way through the clamor of the crowd, onto the bus that took them and their skeleton crew of pit and race engineers to the runway, then to the small area that had been marked private amongst the last-minute check-ups, fueling and loading, just before the embarking ramp, where Layla had invited her parents to, and she excused herself to join them.
There, Layla and her parents stood with each other, and the three spoke in soft, yet short sentences for a while. Then the mood became sombre and her mother, with a hesitant tremble, caressed her face and placed her hand on Layla’s heart, artificial though it was. And when the words she seemed to struggled for came, Layla stopped her, and beckoned Kais to come closer too. He stepped up to them, staying a bit off, but nodded a greeting, and her mother continued. Her eyes closed, solemn, but Kais heard a shimmer in her voice.
“
Allah, Greatest and Most High, we ask for Your mercy and protection.
Be to us a faithful companion in every step we take.
Send us a path from Your heavenly light,
And send us peace wherever we may go.
A way out from every hardship,
A light from every darkness.
And grant us goodness in this life,
And goodness Hereafter,
And give us refuge from the torment of the Fire.
Ameen, O Most Merciful of the merciful.”
And Layla shone gold in that setting sun. But the stars beckoned, and so they went, with one last wave to all they knew. The H2 engines fired before long, the spaceplane shook with tremendous controlled violence… and they were off.
The holovision montage would have shown them embark, with Layla issuing a pat on the ship's hull for good luck. Click into their seats. Being checked once, twice, three times over by the plane’s stewards, with Kais brushing off the last one. Then getting kicked back by the G forces before, finally, the G forces… went away, and the night sky was all there was. And on the ground, people cheered, and people cried.
But the reality was that of silence and of mundane chatter. About the spaceplane rolling this or that many degrees, about the mist plumes they made behind them, and about racing tactics. Anything to distract themselves from what they were getting themselves into, if only for a short while.
“I never told you where my last name comes from did I? The people you saw just now? They’re my fosters, of sorts. My biologicals didn't make it through the end of the Water Wars, and my nation brought me up, like so many others I guess. Got my placement with Amina and Mohamad, and they gifted it to me: al-Nadir, ‘precious and dear’. I rarely tell people this, very few know. But now so do you.”
Kais felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and said “I’m sorry, Layla,” but Layla cut him off before he could say anything else. “No need to apologize, Kais, I don’t blame you, not anymore. And I don’t think they’re gone, not really. They’re still out there, in memory, in the water we drink, in the sands of Wadi Rum.” She said, turning to face him. “And so will we be, someday. Or… maybe…” And her gaze went to the deep, speckled, dark.
“There’s no going back, Kais. Only forwards. Ever onwards.”
And Layla turned to him, and smiled. “The future is bright!”
DELTΔ HYPER
Episode 6: The Dark Side of the Moon
“Kais, welcome to the sofa.”
The bright yellow couch stood out against the monochrome gray and black, with camera equipment so specialized it would’ve made even Kubrick blush. Kais had stumbled his way up to it, and nearly bounced past it as gravity, what little there was here, pulled him down at its weird, different rate. No matter how much he had prepared at Hamad Spaceport, it probably hadn’t been enough.
“Thanks, Aurora. It’s been an… experience.”
“Layla certainly talks a lot about Luna, it seems like a home race to her and I bet you've heard no end of it! Now we're here, do you think she's right to hype it up so much?”
“We’ve had our disagreements over it,” Kais started. “Layla’s passionate about it, for sure, she’s been talking about this place from the moment I joined Al-Saqr. To her, Luna’s not just a race. It’s the unknown, a proving ground, a triumph. I say it’s [
CENSORED] cold here, it’s harsh, and it's unforgiving.” He said. “And while I like a challenge as much as the next one up, I'm made more for the... down to earth, I suppose.” He added.
“But man, you get through all this…? You've earned your stars.” And his throat closed up and quickly turned to the pale blue dot on the horizon, stretched out one of his arms, his fingers splayed like a picture frame, and scoped it up - looked about a fingernail in size from here. “What a way we’ve come, huh?”
Helo
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