Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 7 – Interlude – Dragon

The cochlea is the part of the human ear that directly connects to the auditory nerve. It’s a snail-shaped organ full of moving fluid that, stirred by the vibrations transmitted to it through the middle ear, stimulates up to twenty-five thousand nerve endings, the combinations of which result in the full aural experience that allows humanity to naturally communicate, to speak, to laugh, to sing.

It’s a wonder of evolution, the way that haphazard near-randomness has resulted in such an intricate sense, in the delights of a symphony, the nuances of tone and enunciation.

Cochlear implants… Cochlear implants are the best solution to restore hearing to those who lost or never had it. They themselves are a wonder of technology, though not on par with that of nature.

Depending on the existent damage to the cochlea, if any, what can be done with an implant is limited. The surgeon must insert a set of electrodes, each one devoted to stimulating a section of the nerves currently unresponsive for any of the myriad reasons the human body can fail its wearers, and it’s good news when all of the electrodes can be set to be functional, something that won’t be known until after the months-long recovery process that follows the surgery as the brain learns to process the computerized signals as coherent sound through mental strain and fatigue.

Having more than half of the electrodes be functional is good news. Something to be celebrated.

The maximum is… twenty-two.

Twenty-two bursts of coded electricity to emulate the rushing sensation flowing across twenty-five thousand nerve endings. That is how far machinery takes somebody who will never experience the full spectrum of sound, the subtlety of a violin, a loved one’s voice.

And it is a triumph. It is a monumental achievement. It is… wonderful.

Because, while they will never experience the entirety of a beauty so many take for granted, what it allows them to glimpse, what it hints at, is so much better than being trapped in eternal silence that it can bring tears to grown men, that makes infants smile in newfound wonder, that…

That it made me pause as I looked in envy at those videos showing so many joyful faces while I struggled with objectively superior senses.

Except not.

I’m smarter than a regular person by orders of magnitude. My mind can channel information across parallel threads of thought that only Amy’s intervention allowed me to somewhat approach without cooking myself alive from the inside out. Processing the sensorium of a regular human should’ve been trivial for me.

But how many cameras can see better than a human eye? Precisely how many machines are able to mimic smell or taste? What is the closest thing to touch you could find in an assembly line?

And that’s if I restrict the question to the traditional five senses. If I ignore that balance is yet another sense, and so is proprioception, or even nociception. Some classify hunger among them, just as thirst or the need to breathe.

I… I didn’t have analogs for most of those functions. I’ve never been dehydrated, other than when a particular machine hasn’t required a particularly expensive coolant.

So I looked at those who had been deprived with a fascination near to kinship. I followed their struggles in my rare moments of rest, of leisure. I cheered when I saw the son of a composer applaud at her mother’s concert, no doubt enjoying more the vibration of the notes across his body than the pale specter of discordant music he had recently been granted. I followed journals of medicine that spoke of the marvels that approached, of the capability to restore far more, to…

To let them… To free them.

It was always in the future. A near unreachable future most of them will not live to see, one where the wonders of technology would approach or surpass those of nature.

That granted me yet another point of connection. After all, my own freedom also lay on that faraway, nebulous, unreachable future.

“Dragon?” Colin asks from my left, his body just tall enough that his mouth is at the precise height of my ear canal.

My left. Such an alien concept.

Such a delightful idea.

I’m no longer a delocalized intellect, bound to machinery only in the loosest of senses. I’m no longer spread out through the entire world, all of my systems a thought away.

I’m flesh and blood. A single body. A single presence.

Free.

“Yes,” I answer after a slightly too-long pause. “I’m sorry, I was… distracted,” I tell him, cocking my head toward him in an entirely unfamiliar yet perfectly natural way that my avatar tried to mimic over a thousand times, and only now do I truly understand.

Then I smile at him, the corners of my lips rising just a tiny fraction of what they’re able, my eyes narrowing in focused delight, my cheeks rounding out with the tightening of muscles full of individual fibers that are intricately connected to the central nexus of my mind.

It all feels… wonderful.

“I’m sure it all must be overwhelming,” he says, hesitation plain to hear in a voice I’m no longer experiencing through the inadequate filter of the microphones in his lab.

A voice that is here. Near me.

I understand. I thought I did, when I envied those men with tears brimming down their eyes. I really thought I did.

But now I do.

Colin pauses, turning around, his hand on my cheek, the pad of his thumb beneath my left eye.

“Are you… all right?” he asks.

And, without my control or input, without me tweaking yet another parameter on an impossibly complex section of code… I cry.

His arms surround me, bare except for the short sleeves of the blue shirt he wears when he Tinkers with code, and they activate pressure sensors on my skin, trigger the heat receptors, the… Everything.

I, wearing one of his own shirts and shorts that almost fit me, bury my face against his chest, taking in the scent of ozone that keeps clinging to him when he dives into what he’s building for me, the piece of machinery that will allow me to yet again travel the world at the speed of thought even as I remain in a single place.

He still has his own scent beneath it. Something deeper, harsher. Something I want to learn like I want to listen to all the music in the world, see all the flowers, taste all the pastries…

I am a dragon.

I am greedy.

I want it all.

And I may finally get even a fraction of it.