Read Online Captain Cosette by R. Bruce Sundrud - Free Book Online Page A

The walls were painted a powder blue, and artificial flowers stood in a vase beside her bed.
    Time seemed disconnected, uneven.  Sometimes minutes passed slowly, sometimes hours would pass in the blink of an eye. 
    She liked it when people talked to her.  Sometimes they said a word that caused a bit of knowledge to fit, and every time that occurred, her burden lessened.  She remembered feeling crushed, obliterated, but now she could chew and swallow and observe the things around her.
    She blinked, time flickered, and a man in a lavender laboratory coat sat beside her.  “How are we doing today, young lady?”
    She focused on him, trying to understand.
    He picked up her hand.  “Can you squeeze my hand?”
    She liked him holding her hand.  He had brown eyes.
    The man looked past her.  “How long was she connected to that wretched machine?”
    A voice behind her said, “Maybe half an hour.  They were keeping Professor Roland alive, and no one thought to go look in the lab.”
    “ And it didn’t shut itself off?”
    “ He had all sorts of menus opened.  He said he didn’t know that all of the open menus would execute.  He knew how to run the machine, but he hadn’t been trained, he was just using the manuals.  Wouldn’t her brain stop receiving information after a while, anyway?  Just fill up?”
    The man reached out and put his hand on her head.  “There are a hundred billion neurons in the human brain, and it has ways to layer information that go beyond the numbers.  Ever see one of those paintings that looks like one thing, and then another?  Hidden pictures, three dimensional images.  A single neuron in her brain could be a part of many different bits of information.”
    He pulled his hand away.  “And the information from the machine was put down everywhere, not just in her memory lobes but the parts that see and hear and move.  She almost died because the part of her brain that tells her how to breathe was stuffed with information.
    “ Now her mind is rearranging it all, like unpacking after moving in to a house.  Only in her case, everything is still in boxes, she can’t move around, and there’s no room to unpack.”
    A tall man entered the room, a man with strong angles to his jaw and deep, dark eyes. 
    He looks familiar .  Have I seen him before ?
    “ How’s she doing?” he asked.
    “ Better every day,” said the doctor.  “Talk to her, Rasora.  It’s good for her.”
    “ Are you sure it’s safe to keep her here?”
    “ This spaceport is better guarded than your training camp was.  When there’s space on the shuttle, we’ll take her up.”
    “ Both of us.”
    “ Both of you.”
    Rasora nodded and sat down beside her.  “How are you feeling today, Cosette?”
    She had discovered how to smile.  His smile was comforting, so she smiled too.
     
    *
     
    They moved her to another room that shook and roared.  Then she felt light-headed and dizzy until they moved her to yet another room, and then she felt normal again.
    “No,” said the man in the pale lavender laboratory coat, “we don’t have a record of this happening before.  The Central Committee restricts the number of downloads per person for security reasons.  We have no idea how much progress she will make, or whether she’ll continue to make progress.” 
    “ In other words,” said the tall man with the dark eyes, “she could stay like this forever.”
    “ She feeds herself now, and takes care of her personal needs.  She doesn’t seem to remember us from day to day.”  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.  “Her vital signs are good; she’s healthy.  But we don’t have a clue how to help her along.”
    “ Maybe we shouldn’t try.  Let her exercise, let her walk around, read, maybe.  Her book was logged into romance novels.  Would she remember how to read?”
    “ I doubt it.  That would take a lot of free brain, to visualize what the words were saying.”
    “ But…”
    He