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Upgrade 01A; Part I, Version 1.1
Author: David Saxton Ullery
Note: Feel free to click on links within the story to gain greater understanding or to be entertained. You may find it convenient to read through the story first, then go back to click on one or more of the many many links. Some links are changed from time-to-time if a “better” or more interesting link is discovered. If you put your mouse over a link, you can often see enough to understand where the link will take you. Simply press the back arrow on your browser to return, or right click on the link to open in a new tab or a new window. Thanks! Please enjoy and leave comments!
Example link: nano-sized machine parts
Chapter 0.0: Upgrade 0000.0001.1010
[Earth Vision]
Jacobal Lectomen was nearly twenty four when he finally began to assert himself in life. He had, in a certain metaphorical sense, come of age so very recently, but that was not what was on his blurry, unfocused mind at this moment. Jacobal could not now remember why his mind was in such a daze, for he was just this instant coming to and could not quite manage to open his eyes no matter how hard he tried to do so.
… Two of the portable machines closest to his head made very tiny clicking noises as they self-adjusted to Jacobal’s subtle movements … one held a scanner over his forehead, then withdrew … then over the top of his head, then over his right temporal lobe and held it in place …
… moments later, the one on his left side made a very slight sound – a soothing whoosh of fresh oxygen, followed by a soft, breathy, organic-metalic “whooot” as a valve closed …
… the third machine was silently moving its multiple scanners over the patient’s torso and limbs … a few extremely tiny, barely visible blue lights were blinking at various rates, another was an amber light and not blinking …
It seemed to Jacobal that someone other than he was controlling his thoughts right now. From within his mind’s eye he could clearly visualize the vivid coloring and textures of the still amazing, gigantic artificial mega-structures of his highly-dynamic world … almost as if he were floating … first orbiting earth, and then orbiting The Station upon where Jacobal was often at work when his mind was functioning properly. Jacobal felt a bit like he was riding his space bike, but a tiny part of him knew that did not make any sense, because both the range and speed of his journey were well beyond the range and speed of his bike – not to mention the improbable locale. The feeling was at once very real, yet inconsistent with reality, and there was still this feeling that someone or some thing was gently tugging on the strings of his mind. Somehow, this not-in-control feeling was oddly pleasurable to him, on the other hand it made a part of him feel just a bit anxious.
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
… the machine closest to Jacobals head, on his right, used one of it’s many semi-organic-like appendages to insert what appeared to be a microscopically thin wire, about 5 millimeters long, into Jacobal’s right ear canal. Like a tiny pin worm, the “wire” device autonomously scurried off inside Jacobal’s ear and disappeared – only to wistfully reappear three seconds later, just above and to the left of his right ear, in about the center of his temple, but only a small tip (almost two millimeters long) of the wire-like device stuck out – it would not be visible to the naked human eye, were such an eye present, but the medical robot machine sensed it and the appendage withdrew back inside the medical device, as if the machine was satisfied that its last little task was a complete success …
…It was a success, for the other end of the device was firmly and completely attached to the artificial grid work subnet that lined Jacobal’s temporal bone at the appropriate connection – along side so many other devise connetions of various sizes, shapes; forming a myriad of … a virtual cornucopia of functionality …
While perceiving the earth vision, it appeared to him as if the planet earth was undergoing massive changes on its surface. Although his vision was somewhat exaggerated, this much was consistent with what Jacobal knew to be true in the real world. He knew there were many huge structures on earth that were rapidly being assembled. With each substructure pattern, from within yet another substructure, virtually self-assembling themselves; nearly 97% automated, with the latest nanobots, millibots, microbots, and androids doing the construction under the supervision of cyborgs and just a few humans. In truth though, very little actual supervision, human or otherwise, was required.
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
A large number of the millibots where in fact a kind of cyborg, a genetically engineered hybrid of domesticated ants (robants). Each robant type had specialized functions, similar to natural ants, except they moved around chemicals, installed various nano-sized machine parts, attended nanobots, cleaned up and recycled debris rather than carrying food, cutting up leaves, tending aphids, protecting the ant hill, and so on. The robants and other bots usually managed quite well on their own (just like an ordinary colony of ants), with only very rare non-self-correcting glitches that required the high-level cyborg or human intervention or investigation (only because this artificial system had not evolved for millions of years like the natural ant colonies had).
Only a handful of androids were normally deployed at job sites, mostly for the purpose of human contact with third party vendors, when required. People just were not available in most instances. Many people simply felt more comfortable interfacing with machines that at least looked and acted human, so the added expense of having them around was deemed worthwhile.
After the completion of the automated portion of a substructure, artists, engineers, carpenters, and other facilitators would swiftly move in to add the final human touch, but even they would utilize much modern technology:
Doing the heavy lifting, assisting with sawing and lathing the fine woods, and even the forming of statues to the artist often last-minute specifications. Often technology was incorporated in to the art work, but more classical techniques were still very much employed and appreciated.
Just a few decades ago, even Jacobal would have been thought of as a cyborg, as were about 83% of The Station’s population, but the term cyborg, like so many terms often do, seemed to constantly adjust and readjust to the times. Jacobal was a full-fledged human being! At least he and most others considered him so. He merely had many more artificial implants than did the average Earth-bound human inhabitant. Some implants were necessary for one’s long-term survival in the variable environments that were present on The Station itself, as well as on board the scores of relatively puny space stations that were orbiting much closer to the earth, and the relatively dangerous outposts that were much further away.
Jacobal had the ability to enhance (or indeed even reduce), at will any of his five natural senses and his twenty nine artificial senses including, among many others, an enhanced sense of time, space, and motion.
Under ordinary circumstances, among his many other artificial talents, Jacobal had the ability to sense exactly when and where he was. He was, in fact, precisely on floor 23U (U = underground), room 2713A (alone), bed 3 (facing east, perfectly level), at the Evergreen Bio-Medouse clinic, in New Los Angeles, now: May 2, 2137 11:31:31.793 AM, at rest, in a blue walled room (23.7 degrees C, at about one atmosphere [0.997 atm]), with soft white floors and ceiling, attended only by a few biomonitors. In his current condition, with his eyes closed shut, his hearing still nearly shut down; and with the majority of his artificial senses still either shut down, in standby, or in idol mode, he could of course not sense much of this now.
Jacobal’s feeling that he was riding on his space bike now began to grow much stronger, and he had to fight this feeling by reminding himself thusly:
-
He could sense from deep within his mind ( his mind was still more than a bit blurry and fuzzy), that he was in fact both on his back and not in relative motion, although he still could be anywhere (Earth, The Station, a large-class cruiser ship, or just about anywhere).
- It is not realistic to suppose that his space bike could
(a) travel so fast through space
(b) travel so far from the Station. His bike was docked on the Station, and could never get as far as the earth, and no space bike could ever take off from the earth,…
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
… Jacobal was beginning to remember now, and slowly regaining control of his thoughts. He was back on earth for his four-day weekend! He was back at Evergreen! … but then … No … He was definitely riding his space bike! Jacobal’s mind was vacillating.
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
It was so nice these days that most employees worked three-by-seven weeks. Many companies, like Jacobal’s current and recent employer, were allowing their workers to take Fridays and Mondays off every week, and most of the time there was no need for him to commute anywhere to do his work. In fact, most of his work tasks did not require him to physically be anywhere in particular; except that he did need to be on The Station for some of his special duties, and he felt more alive and productive when he could see the actual outcome or results of his work directly – with his own two natural eyes. Jacobal normally did not travel to Earth all that often, it took time, and the round trip was not cheap, but this weekend was special.
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
Suddenly, Jacobal’s mind went off on a rather steep tangent from his current space touring thoughts. Jacobal was beginning to remember once again what was really going on, or at least what was most likely going on. He was being adjusted once again. Jacobal “needed” an upgrade on a couple of his integrated devices located in and around his brain. One of his “needed” upgrades would be akin to his ancestors of a century prior believing they “needed” to replace their ultra-thin televisions with the new Paintvision that had finally allowed for ultra-high resolution televisions that were as thin as paint (hence the clever marketing name for the devise) – an early technouse of nanotechnology.
However, his other upgrade was a different matter entirely. Jacobal believed it would prove to be very useful for his new job. It would greatly facilitate his reasoning skills in new insightful ways. Jacobal was proud to be the first human with this new technological breakthrough. He did indeed enjoy possessing bleeding edge wetware technology a great deal.
[technouse – refers to technology ordinarily associated with devices and gadgets designed for use outside of the body; whereas medouse refers to internalized medical usage. Jacobal was sometimes annoyed by this new speak, but he was slowly getting used to it – an indication that the faddish terminology would surely be changing again soon, Jacobal thought… ].
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
Chapter 0.1: Upgrade 0000.0001.1010
[Strange Dream Wakeup Call]
Jacobal, still laying down on his back, was somehow grateful (to whom or what?) that he was not only alive and well, but that he was witnessing the greatest advances, since The Great Tipping Point, for the technologies and sciences that had been occurring over the last two decades or so. It was a good time to be alive, he thought. Jacobal could remember well his seventh birthday, when he and his friend Jenny had received their first medouse sensors together (now long since upgraded twice – It was very common to have basic mentalmark nanoneural transceiver sensor implants on one’s seventh birthday, after the early child’s brain development with a friend or classmate having the same or similar birthday, so one could try it out with the trusted friend…).
His mind went on drifting and reminiscing…
It was the Great Tipping Point that led very quickly to allow for the building of very large structures using self-assembling nano-engineering techniques. It was estimated by some that the new technology advances had accelerated to a staggering pace of more than four orders of magnitude in just over a decade and a half. The new machines could now build structures at more than ten thousand times the speed of their predecessors of just seventeen years ago! In addition, because of similar accelerations in the advances of biotechnology, and the newer medouse devices, there were very few truly stupid people left on the planet. Yes, there were still the Luddite-Primitivists, and the Exodites (accepted external technouse technology but rejected the internal, medouse devices.), but they mostly lived in small isolated pockets and were relatively harmless to the rest of mankind, Jacobal reasoned (as did most of Jacobal’s associates and rather elitist friends).
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click …
Just as Jacobal was nearly positive that he would soon completely awaken, open his eyes, and get on with his weekend on Earth, he instead strangely delivered himself into his own weird dream algorithm morph:
1) have the dream
2) repeat as often as possible
3) rest for a bit, or go to work, or both.
4) “‘Twas Bothness that Prevails”, said he that hast shiniest remarks!
5) Wow! What a rush! Talk about water flowing and mountains rising! Holly shit man!
… whoosh … … loading files … patient’s upgrade 0000.0001.1010 complete …
… whoosh … fwhoooooot … click … shwish …
Jacobal woke up! His mind very quickly discarded the meaningless dream. Yes, he was definitely at Evergreen! Feeling unusually refreshed, he opened his eyes and his ears and slowly sat up with a big smile on his face. Noticing the sudden alertness and movements of the human, the biomonitors cleanly and efficiently unhooked themselves from patient Lectomen’s head, arms, chest, and legs, then gracefully backed away in seemingly perfect unison, leaving a single tiny disposable, portable monitor attached to the right side of his head – just above his ear.
Still feeling just a tiny bit groggy, Jacobal got out of the bed, walked out of the room, and exited Evergreen. No need to see the Doctor (there were of course no longer any human receptionists anywhere. Naturally, everything having to do with his visit was automatically logged, recorded, billed, and paid).
The Grand Opening of the New Los Angeles Center for the Modern Arts, Western III would commence in just five hours from now. Jacobal most definitely did not want to miss this! Nearly his entire weekend had been taken up by the two upgrade procedures at Evergreen, and yearned for something fun before it was time to check in at the port for his return flight to The Station.
It was Jacobal’s team that had been largely responsible for many of the highly-technical substructures that were integrated throughout the Western III, and he was very proud of the achievement. There were a considerable number of new innovations that he and his team had either come up with or had incorporated into their models and made improvements on. The structures self-assembled faster and with less glitches than any previous undertaking. The technologies were largely state-of-the-art, yet they managed to keep costs within budget.
At the opening ceremony, VIP guests would likely notice him and appreciate his attendance. Jacobal was not famous, but word was spreading among the very wealthy.
In addition, Jacobal was friends with one of, among a trio of the musicians that were to perform toward the end of the celebration. He was looking forward to listening to their new interpretations of Goldberg Variations: numbers two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, 23, 29, and ending on something completely new (yet still within the Bach tradition, or so Jacobal was assured by his good friend). The composer was calling it Variations on 31!
Jacobal met up with his musician friend, Laura Lagerly after the performance.
Laura (glancing at Jacobal’s head, just above the ear):
Jacobal! So glad you can make it! … I see you had your upgrade. How was it?
Jacobal (glancing at Laura’s beautiful eyes and cute, petite breasts):
Your concert was magnificent! Much more pleasant than laying down on that nasty bed for nearly two days! And the dreams… more bizarre than usual, I must say. But I am glad for it.
Variations on 31 was … very interesting.
Laura chuckled, while taking a bite of a carrot stick.
What? You didn’t like it?
Jacobal:
Of course, I loved it! I meant it was interesting in a good way. Anyway, you know that new stuff grows on me… over time. I especially loved your work on Variatio 19! I felt like dancing with … well, with you.
Laura (slightly blushing as she notices her reflection in Jacobal’s eyes)
Thank you so much. I am glad you could attend. I miss you so much! What’s it like up there anyway?
Jacobal:
Well, you know, always busy. Not much time for social life lately with my new job….
…he glanced over to his left then back at Laura. Laura looked so lovely tonight! And her cello performance! Jacobal had never heard Goldberg performed live before, and never any way other than solo keyboard – piano, or harpsichord. He had really enjoyed himself tonight… at least he now had all the music and Laura to remember this evening.
Just then, a VIP noticed Jacobal and called him over for a chat. Laura was clearly hungry and wanting something more substantial to eat and of course drink (don’t all musicians? – Jacobal always thought as much). They politely exchanged goodbyes and parted company. Jacobal wished they had more time together and he did not have to talk shop with this man.
Chapter 0.2: Upgrade 0000.0001.1010
[Hyper Programs Analyst – Bot AI]
…These hyper-programs map networks with computers with bots and humans and all of mankind’s machines…
Synthetic DNA computers control synthetic RNA …, another fascinating tangential field to Jacobal’s; but it was only one of hundreds upon hundreds of which he was only partially familiar with.
Anyway, the thing is, is that Jacobal had completed his few days off on earth, and was returning back to the terminal to board on a freighter flight. Jacobal Lectomen and Morris Hampton would be the only human passengers. The gigantic freighter was already loaded up and carrying huge quantities of water – taken from the “extra” water in the ocean that began to accumulate in the mid twenty first and continued into the early twenty second centuries, due to global warming.
…Thanks to polar meltdown, the world’s oceans had supplied all of the water needed to make the Station both necessary and possible! Large amounts of water were required for the huge space station’s completion. The station was ideally located for both military and civilian needs, but it still required vast quantities of water to make it livable for most humans. Meanwhile, the space station was largely populated by androids and certain cyborgs. Other cyborgs and humans were for the most part confined to certain areas already protected, but they could venture out to other sectors if they were willing to wear rather heavy coveralls, and a heavy duty space helmet. Even with all the protection, visits to unprotected areas were limited to a maximum of five hours. Still, the current status was looking pretty good, already 13.31% of the Station was completed with virtually zero cosmic ray bombardment.
Fortunately, wetware had largely solved the bothersome cosmic ray problem, but not completely. The Station still needed several layers of various materials separating layers of water: purified water, saline water, and even natural ocean water (complete with marine life). The materials were the new super ultralight, ultra-strong, meta-metallic nano-hybrid transparent and translucent composites. Each layer was extremely thick and blocked a significant percentage of the harmful cosmic rays, but the water was still required to complete the job as well as to supply the huge space station with drinking water, protein (from fish), fuel production, waste management, and so on…
Jacobal’s job was a kind of programmer-architect; utilizing nanobots all the way up to macrobots “objects”, creating physical systems as the final output of the hyper-compiler.
Still, within this field, the basic low-level primitives existed and were utilized: “assignment”, “if”,”loop”, …, “object”, …, “pattern composite group“, … “hyperbolic knot biadjacency matrix“, and so on up the latter; but also integrated with actual physical objects in the the real world, such that the robots would build the final output – a designed project.
Projects were integrated and assembled with the help of standardized project-system templates. Bots of all sizes were linked together in fast moving dynamic network structures following each hyper-instruction set; looking somewhat like a series of odd-sized dominoes lined up into highly-intricate, often fractal-like patterns., quickly being knocked down and reset into a brand new pattern within a pattern within a pattern. These patterns extended down to the microscopic level all the way up to the completed macroscopic objects, then systems, then networks of systems, linked all together with a neural-synaptic-like complexity.
In some sense, humans could be considered devices, thought Jacobal.
Of course, Jacobal did not “do it all”. His staff consisted of a mixture of machines, humans, and cyborgs. If androids and cyborgs counted, then Jacobal had a team of 243 – including twenty-nine humans, seventeen androids, and 197 cyborgs.
Yes, Jacobal’s latest upgrade will enhance his work performance greatly!
Jacobal knows he will have bizarre dreams again for the next two or three nights, but with his last couple of upgrades his “side effect” dreams were actually quite enjoyable and he was confident that this time would be no different. In any event, the small inconvenience will be well worth it, he speculated.
Chapter 0.3: Upgrade 0000.0001.1010
[Unprotected Cargo]
Time to return to The Station; therefore Lectomen boards the tiny passenger cabin of the huge old Freighter FRT.STN03. Hampton was already seated and had strapped himself in place. Jacobal Lectomen seldom tires on these trips, even less so now with so many interesting new work assignments in his head, or so he reasoned. He sat down next to Hampton in seat three, not noticing the containers holding three pairs of protective coveralls and three helmets stashed in a small bin just behind seat one. Neither Hampton nor Lectomen were used to flying these older-class freighters, and, as was typical for private freighters, safety instructions were no where to be seen.
“Various phases of man kind have realized how magical the Universe appears.”, said Morris Hampton to Lectomen.
Jacobal giddily replied in a fake old-British accent, “’tis but ’tis not, please kind sir give me some more; or whatever.” He then promptly fell asleep once more. Jacobal slept very well indeed!
Morris tittered, then sighed. Morris never seemed to grow weary of their seemingly nonsensical inside joke. He loved it, because he knew that Jacobal was so annoyed by it. He remembered Jacobal’s oft repeated remarks:
Every damn time I go through with another upgrade … you have to drag that old incident up …
… and Morris knew that lately, Jacobal was merely pretending to enjoy the joke …
Jacobal’s dream mind began visualizing a stunningly beautiful fractal-like geometry, almost organic in appearance, sprouting branches and sub-branches like a rapidly growing highly intricate semi-artificial, glimmering alien plant with thousands of neuro-synaptic-like leaves constantly forming, then disappearing, then reappearing at the tips. Almost as if synchronized with the growth of the glowing tips of the fractal branches, with a Fugue–Counterpoint-like quality, he mentally began to rhythmically oratorize an odd, long forgotten mentalmark memory trail: Nothingness and its relationship to the Universe almost verbatim.
Just then, a cosmic ray whizzed through the freighter’s limited shielding and into Jacobal’s head, nearly striking one of his new upgrade implants (UG.01A) , partially damaging an extremely tiny cluster of neurons nearby, causing one of the neurons to form a very unusual new synaptic connection to the new technology.
An interesting fact is that UG.01A represents a new, huge leap forward in medouse technology. It is the world’s first upgrade with an internalized quantum computer. It is designed specifically for controlled, deeply recursive, and highly complex “what if scenario” problem solving.
Unbeknownst to Jacobal, the newly formed synaptic connection, combined with the tiny energy flux from the near miss of UG.01A, caused UG.01A to alter the states of three of its mere 2048 qbits in a seemingly random way. The electrons in several nearby atoms located in Jacobal’s gray matter jumped wildly from one state to another as they absorbed the remaining quantum packets from the ray.
A fraction of a second later, Morris noticed Lectomen’s left hand and left cheek just under his left eye twitch slightly, but he paid little attention to the matter, although he did involuntarily and unconsciously smile a quick nervous smile.
Morris turned his head away from Jacobal and began thinking about the infamous John and Jerry Incident of long ago for reasons he did not quite understand. The thought seemed so totally unrelated to his long journey back to The Station, his current projects and plans, his past weekend, his close relationships, but still it made him a feel slightly uncomfortable, and he wondered why the thought had just now entered his mind. Morris moved around in his seat in an attempt make himself relax, but he could not seem to find the ideal position.
He became restless.
“Damn Cargo Freighter! If, only I had a flexchair!”, Morris muttered with discontent under his breath, wishing he had someone to talk to…
“humph”, Jacobal’s once colorful and vivid fractal vision first splintered, and then slowly faded away into near nothingness as his sleep deepened. His peaceful and entangled mind finally settled down into quiet, comfortable rest …
Momentarily, Morris Hampton received a high-priority mentalmark with the heading: “Urgent!”, just as he was picking up and contemplating playing with an old, yet sophisticated child’s toy. The rectangular, palm-sized toy was very thin, with very slick blue metallic trim, and with nicely designed, very attractive, nearly transparent touch and voice-activated controls – all integrated on the bottom-edge surface of the toy’s ultra-high resolution display (resolution at about that of the human retina). The toy had apparently been lying there on the floor, just under Jacobal’s seat for quite a few years now. It of course was not covered in dust, but he could tell the technology was nearly a decade old just by looking at it. He surmised that the toy had been there since the freighter’s maiden voyage nearly eight years prior. As he picked up the toy, the toy’s shape shifted a bit to fit perfectly into the curvature of his palm, and turned itself on.
As Morris read the content of the short, simple, but encrypted and highly classified note, he sat up sharply, and dropped the toy into his lap. The toy became flat once again and turned itself off.
“The General!“, he thought.
Morris wiggled around more in his seat, in a futile attempt to make himself comfortable and relaxed. He felt a lump swelling up in his throat, and swallowed. A single warm tear began to run down his cheek, but it stopped just under his left eye. He wiped it with his left hand. His hand and his cheek twitched ever so slightly.
Morris reviewed the note for the details after line three:
__________________________________________________
URGENT!
The General is seriously ill.
Suspect SD.0111 Assemblers in the heart, but could be natural.
Remember: only face-to-face is binding.
JL must first join the 13
Convince JL to investigate the 13, the 7, and the 47
Ask JL about: UG.0000.0001.1010 dream 3 @ t23.439-t29.761
___________________________________________________
“Wow!” was the only remaining thought on Morris Hampton’s mind for several long moments.
Morris looked over again at Jacobal and saw that he was still sleeping. He decided that he had better let him continue to sleep given that he had no clue as to whether or not Jacobal was somehow gaining important information though a dream! Morris wondered about so much:
What the hell could a dream have to do with anything? How would anyone from The Three know about it, and why did they not mention that The Three should be investigated?
Morris picked up the Child’s toy. The toy turned itself on as it formed nicely into his palm once again. Morris read the text on the display:
__________________________________________________
It has been 11 minutes since I was last picked up,
and 1237 days since I was last asked to do anything for you.
Please tell me what you want me to do…
Compose Music?
Write a Poem?
Help you to Compose Music?
Help you to Write a Poem?
Would you like to do something completely different today?
It has been quite a long time since you played with me!
__________________________________________________
Morris chuckled to himself as he touched “Write a Poem?”. Morris quietly spoke, so as not to disturb Jacobal:
Please make the poem about hope.
He waited for forty one seconds as the child’s toy thought and worked on its poem. The device displayed the poem I Was Hoping. Morris read the poem, gently touched the word loping with his left index finger, and watched the horse and rider. Morris smiled as he watched and contemplated the multi-layered meanings behind this unusual hyperpoem. One by one, he touched the other hyperlinked words on the screen – each word seemed to add new meaning and provoke new thoughts within Morris Hampton’s ever puzzling mind. Morris hopingly thought:
Hmmm, I too must be but a strange looping entwinement of patterns within an entwinement of countably infinite fractals. With Jacobal’s help
… perhaps there is …
Hope!
Morris waited for another hour and Jacobal had not yet awoken. He touched the Child’s toy once again, but this time he selected: Compose Music?
Please make for me a very simple piano jazz solo
This time he enabled communication between his tiny ear-brain translation implants and the device, waited for 73 seconds as the child’s toy thought and worked on its music. The device displayed the title of the piano solo: Improvisation In C Major For Piano, so he touched the title and it began to play, seemingly directly into his head…
Jacobal continued having his strange dreams for hours and hours, ever since shortly after they had emerged from the 31 minute ride in the accelerator rail tube and the last hydrogen plasma strobe bursts that followed, but Morris did not dare bother him. Too much at stake to be impatient, he thought.
…Having successfully served its only function, the tiny monitoring device next to Jacobal’s ear had slowly disolved away like a scab. The nano-wire worm-like attachment promptly withdrew from Jacobol’s skin, connected itself to another spot on the temporal bone network, and self-reconfigured itself into a redundant relay, adding additional fault tolerance to Jacobal’s skullular network …
…to be continued… (if I receive some feedback either positive or negative…maybe it is starting out too slow?????????????????????????????).
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Upgrade01A 
