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The vibration of my alarm radiating through my skull brought the sweaty twist of my bedsheets into sharper focus. Shallow frenzied sleep thankfully slips away into the grey dawn; taking with it the edges of sleek furniture I have never seen and the strains of familiar raised voices. It was just a dream, but I can’t shake the sense of sour betrayal sitting in the pit of my stomach. Unable to bear another moment in bed I pull myself upright.
The light flickers on as I enter the bathroom, no matter how dim the light setting, they still manage to burn my eyes. The dull ache in my temples sharpen. Eyes screwed shut, I grope for the basin and lean into it while waiting for the pain to pass. Looking into the mirror all I can see is the purple smudges beneath my eyes like wells sinking deeper every day. “You need to see a therapist,” seems to echo into the damp bathroom like some stranger’s voice filled with concern.
The sticky suck of the leather couch in the sun is somehow comforting. I look down at the seam that I’ve been worrying with my fingers, without this thin edge of material to hold onto I don’t think I could have gone on, don’t think I could have looked up again and kept talking. I knew she was sitting across the room, looking at me, judging me, whispering to her notebook about how crazy I am.
So many faces had flooded my brain when I walked in, a younger version of this woman swimming forward. The lines in her face now betraying the sadness of that car accident. The dizzying premonitions, or were they memories, of this stranger made me instinctively force my eyes shut; stupidly pushing myself into this now too-familiar nauseating drop into all the voices, all the images. It was her hand on my arm that had strangely brought me back to myself. It was warm and reassuring, so I had let myself be led forward to this couch.
I hold onto the leather between my fingers and breathe in, bracing myself to speak, I close my eyes for just a second. Her voice rang out, “… clinical psychosis…” I jerked my head up, she was sitting there, her mouth kindly curved. She cocked her head slightly, then looked down. “You were saying, that you are having difficulty sleeping at night, that you can’t ‘quiet your brain’, that you feel ‘overloaded’, to use your words.” Her smile confuses me. She looks back up from her pad of paper and says, “would you mind if I ask you some questions?” I nodd yes.
“When you say you can’t quiet your brain, do you mean you are thinking too much… or could you explain a bit more about what you mean by overloaded?”
“… lost touch with reality…” her voice reverberated loudly, around a room that sounded larger than this one, although her lips had not moved.
I stared, transfixed, was this a test? “I feel like I know more than I should,” I say hesitantly. “Sometimes I can’t tell if I’ve heard something somewhere before and I’m replaying it in my head, or if I’m…”
“… hearing voices, delusions, hallucinations. By definition…”
How is she doing it? I can’t go on.
We sit staring at each other across the room and I do not dare to close my eyes for a second. She finally asks, “have you been online recently? Bought anything or been browsing?” Browsing, this familiar word feeling so alien, I try to remember the last time I had gone online. “When was the last time you had your brain scan?” she asks after a while. I hesitate, my brain scan. “A few months ago,” I say.
“If you’d be willing to do one now, it will be state funded of course, then I think we might be able to get to the bottom of this.”
“How would a brain scan help me? I’m not due for my annual check-up for another few months.”
“A scan would show any unusually high brain activity associated with the implant.”
“Of course… but I’m just still so confused.”
“Don’t worry about that for now, since the latest release we have seen an upsurge in misattribution, but I have already said too much. One last house-keeping question, you have updated to 10.0.1 since your last scan, correct?”
“Yes,” I say. A strange sensation washes over me, I hadn’t thought about my implant for… well not since a I updated soon after Christmas.
“After the scan we will be able to offer you a roll-back to 9.0.0. Unfortunately we don’t have access to more recent releases, so it might be a jarring adjustment.”
“I’m sorry, I just, I’m feeling a bit disoriented. Could you explain what this has to do with…”
“I think it will be easier for us to talk after we have run the tests.”
“Please…”
She hesitates, stands up and walks towards me. She smiles her warm smile and offers me her hand. It looks soft and wrinkled, I take it, feeling the warmth through my skin and the firm pressure against my fingers as she helps me to my feet. Reassured by its solidity, I squeeze her hand and let myself be led out of the door and into the hallway.
Version 10.0.2
Release Notes
The Slim Interface concept is being re-investigated for future release. Ability to assign voice of a known person to Control AI put on indefinite hold pending further investigation by psychologists.
Rolled Back
- Re-introduced version 10.0.0 Minimal Interface.
- Reverted to version 9.9.8 use of graphical bounds for all synthetic content.
- Re-introduced the 9.0.0 simulated voice to the Control AI.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed: 10% of the population misattributing facial recognition searches to original memory.
- Fixed: Missatribution of auto-play of video and audio clips, auto-play has been disabled.
New Features
- Night Mode between the hours of 12AM and 6AM has been enforced in state legislature for all minors under the age of 16.