last-minute details before heading for the Vigil Proving Center?
But I should have known better than to get the growls. My family made me happy... not through festive inventiveness, but just companionship and gold-hearted loyalty. When the lager'n'biscuits ran out, the other women shooed the men away, declared it "Sleepover Night for the Fortyish Fraus," then took me jointly to bed.
And here I thought I'd have to act surprised.
Twenty-four hours later, my skull top was missing, and I had far too clear a view of my own pink brain. In a mirror. While surgeons planted a link-seed in my corpus callosum.
Müshor. My second birth.
This brain surgery, müshor, was the secret hinge of separation between the Vigil and others on Demoth. All those earlier years of training were skim-milk rehearsal for the real transition: Homo sapiens to Homo vigilans.
Becoming a different organism. Blessed near a different species.
Here's the thing: joining the Vigil rewired your brain.
Years ago, I'd wondered how Zillif could link to the datasphere when she was paralyzed. How did she work the keys on her access implant? Answer: there were no keys. The implant was a link-seed, embedded directly inside her head.
And now I had one too.
Over the two-week retreat of müshor, the seed would sprout faux-neural tendrils, nano-thin vines threading through my cerebellum like parietal ivy. The creepers were electrotropic, drawn by EM sparks; they'd infiltrate the regions of my gray matter where neurons fired most profusely. The LGN and visual cortex. Broca's and Wernicke's language centers. A smattering of sites in the so-called reptile brain, controlling my heart, lungs and digestion. Once those major roots were established, the link-seed would take its time spreading into areas of lesser activity.
My memory.
My muscular coordination.
My dreams.
Two weeks to a brand-new me. And the moment the surgeons closed my skull, a ruthless black clock started ticking. Tick took, tick lock, adapt or die.
They laid me in a room with cool blue walls. An electronic nurse clamped itself to my wrists and ankles—if something went wrong, mere human reflexes wouldn't be fast enough to save me.
Three times out of a hundred, electronic reflexes weren't fast enough either.
There's one brutal reason why few people on Demoth or elsewhere have direct brain-links to the datasphere. The technology is centuries-old, simple, inexpensive... but it takes granite-hard discipline to use without blowing out your frontal lobes.
Each year, for example, a handful of ambitious business execs bribe some less-than-scrupulous surgeon to plant link-seeds in their brains. The witless saps dream of getting an edge on the competition; they salivate at the thought of instant data access, with no risk of being overheard whispering to a wrist-implant. "And discipline?" they say. "I've got discipline. I didn't bludgeon my way to CEO of Vulture Incorporated without having discipline."
Believing a link-seed is just a faster, hookup-free method of direct braingrab.
Two days later, all blissful confidence, they try their first unfiltered download. A market quotation on some stock they think is important. Which drags along quotations on related stocks. Then the whole financial sector. Then the entire planetary market, and markets on other planets, and every corporation prospectus registered with the InHand Exchange, and quarterly economic statistics on every planet in the Technocracy, not to mention major trading partners and up-League envoys...
Like trying to sip from a firehose. Only in this case, the firehose sprays info-acid all over your hippocampus.
The condition is called "data tumor." A possibility I faced myself, lying in that cool blue room.
If I was lucky, the electronic nurse would raise a baffle field before it was too late. Block the incoming flood by broadcasting static—jam me into radio isolation from the datasphere till the surgeons could remove enough of the link-seed
But I should have known better than to get the growls. My family made me happy... not through festive inventiveness, but just companionship and gold-hearted loyalty. When the lager'n'biscuits ran out, the other women shooed the men away, declared it "Sleepover Night for the Fortyish Fraus," then took me jointly to bed.
And here I thought I'd have to act surprised.
Twenty-four hours later, my skull top was missing, and I had far too clear a view of my own pink brain. In a mirror. While surgeons planted a link-seed in my corpus callosum.
Müshor. My second birth.
This brain surgery, müshor, was the secret hinge of separation between the Vigil and others on Demoth. All those earlier years of training were skim-milk rehearsal for the real transition: Homo sapiens to Homo vigilans.
Becoming a different organism. Blessed near a different species.
Here's the thing: joining the Vigil rewired your brain.
Years ago, I'd wondered how Zillif could link to the datasphere when she was paralyzed. How did she work the keys on her access implant? Answer: there were no keys. The implant was a link-seed, embedded directly inside her head.
And now I had one too.
Over the two-week retreat of müshor, the seed would sprout faux-neural tendrils, nano-thin vines threading through my cerebellum like parietal ivy. The creepers were electrotropic, drawn by EM sparks; they'd infiltrate the regions of my gray matter where neurons fired most profusely. The LGN and visual cortex. Broca's and Wernicke's language centers. A smattering of sites in the so-called reptile brain, controlling my heart, lungs and digestion. Once those major roots were established, the link-seed would take its time spreading into areas of lesser activity.
My memory.
My muscular coordination.
My dreams.
Two weeks to a brand-new me. And the moment the surgeons closed my skull, a ruthless black clock started ticking. Tick took, tick lock, adapt or die.
They laid me in a room with cool blue walls. An electronic nurse clamped itself to my wrists and ankles—if something went wrong, mere human reflexes wouldn't be fast enough to save me.
Three times out of a hundred, electronic reflexes weren't fast enough either.
There's one brutal reason why few people on Demoth or elsewhere have direct brain-links to the datasphere. The technology is centuries-old, simple, inexpensive... but it takes granite-hard discipline to use without blowing out your frontal lobes.
Each year, for example, a handful of ambitious business execs bribe some less-than-scrupulous surgeon to plant link-seeds in their brains. The witless saps dream of getting an edge on the competition; they salivate at the thought of instant data access, with no risk of being overheard whispering to a wrist-implant. "And discipline?" they say. "I've got discipline. I didn't bludgeon my way to CEO of Vulture Incorporated without having discipline."
Believing a link-seed is just a faster, hookup-free method of direct braingrab.
Two days later, all blissful confidence, they try their first unfiltered download. A market quotation on some stock they think is important. Which drags along quotations on related stocks. Then the whole financial sector. Then the entire planetary market, and markets on other planets, and every corporation prospectus registered with the InHand Exchange, and quarterly economic statistics on every planet in the Technocracy, not to mention major trading partners and up-League envoys...
Like trying to sip from a firehose. Only in this case, the firehose sprays info-acid all over your hippocampus.
The condition is called "data tumor." A possibility I faced myself, lying in that cool blue room.
If I was lucky, the electronic nurse would raise a baffle field before it was too late. Block the incoming flood by broadcasting static—jam me into radio isolation from the datasphere till the surgeons could remove enough of the link-seed
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