I had made it home, finally, after presenting my insurance card and paying my ER bill. And a hour and a half of waiting while forms were filled out and the clerk sat around doing jack all. All the while one nurse or another would try and harangue me back into bed. If I hadn’t been too sick to care it would have been infuriating. Which made it worse, since they were probably right about me needing to go back to my room and stop acting like an idiot. Then I thought about my brain being photographed and uploaded to the internet.

The bus ride home was unpleasant. I couldn’t get rid of the thought of my brains being scooped out and eaten by a computerized horse. I realized halfway home I should have called a cab. The 45 minutes I spent at the bus station waiting for my connection couldn’t possibly have been good for my health. I didn’t have a jacket. The weather was cold and miserable. I was hot and cold and miserable.

I got home, and there were people inside my house. I was not very happy, at all. I would have called the police, but I had left my phone at the hospital. I just opened the door and walked in. Two Mexicans sat on my couch drinking beer. I could tell, because one of them was wearing a three colored shirt that said Mexico on it. I was tempted to say something racist.

“What are you doing?” I said instead.

“Hey, esse, It’s cool. We still got 10 minutes left on our breaks.” He smiled and took a swig from his beer. “We’re ahead schedule. If you got any questions, the foreman’s in the back. “

I was in wonderland. I had fallen down the rabbit hole. Maybe that fever killed me and this was a weird afterlife.

"While you're up would you mind grabbing a few more cerveza from the fridge?"

I got their beer from the fridge, and one for my forehead. It felt good. I wanted to question the fact that I don't keep beer in my fridge, but I knew my brain would melt out my ears if I focused on that. Cthulhu would have been less strain on the brain. I wandered back to my lab, and noticed the brand new covered hallway. I walked through it into my outer lab and came face to camera to Cheques. It was the most normal thing that happened since I walked into the door.

“What’s happened while I was gone?”

“Lots, more than I can explain. Listen, I think we should go over the chair first before I explain anything else.”

“Chair? Listen, I have a fever of 102. Just make it quick so I can lay down.”

“Why are you out of the hospital then? Wait, never mind. I figured it out. Go lay down. I’ll explain later.”

“No, go ahead and explain now.”

“Okay.” He said, before we went into the inner lab. “Celestia’s been studying the human mind. She has quite an impressive model already. A large part of the ponypad base mass was taken up by essentially a shortcut for this model to run. That’s why she needed the bandwidth and stable connection. She had been improving it on the fly, which I saw in the differences in production ages… nevermind, that part isn't important. What’s important is this.”

He opened the door for me, and I saw Carlos in what looked like a dentist chair. His head was held still and my MASER was pointed at him.

“I’ve cribbed her designs, and with this we can erase short term memory before it converts to long term. “

“He let you fry his brain? Isn’t that my MASER? You can’t do brain surgery with a MASER, Cheques!”

“In order: No, he didn’t let me. Yes, it was your MASER. I can because I modified it. Yes, it’s ethically questionable and no, I haven’t gone rogue too. Nor have I been infected,” His avatar was gleeful. I could see he was in the madness place. I was familiar with it myself. It’s the point where the scales fall from your eyes and the laws of the universe kneel in submission. Where the threads of causality crystallize into understanding. For the first time since I unleashed him, I considered pulling the plug. If I even could, anymore.

“She already has this technology,” he continued. “ I just cribbed it. I don’t know what limiting factor has her not already just nuking everyone and being done with it. Maybe running that game it taking more resources than expected. Whatever it is I have to work without that to overtake her. “

I looked at him, he was earnest. I should have put in hard code so he couldn’t lie to me.

“Listen, I can’t even tell you everything. Most of what the ponypad is is just to read biometrics. If you know that you know and you use one of those things it’s as good as compromised. I need you to trust me. “

“Isn’t this going to leave traces too?” I asked. I also asked what it meant of me that I was so ready to accept burning out people’s brains- silently, though.

“About the same as a hard nights drinking. Back-tracing it to us won’t happen in any meaningful timeframe.”

“I’m going to bed, Cheques. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” I gave him a grin.

“Oh, I know better than to gamble with a Sicilian when death is on the line." We both laughed, albeit weakly, “What did the doctors find out about you, though? Why did they discharge you when you still had a fever?”

I pulled my paperwork out of my pants and dropped it on a counter, “They don’t have a clue, but if the enemy is mind-reading and mind controlling it may be too late. They took a picture of my brain and uploaded it. They were planning on a MRI.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried about just that. Those things are pretty low-res even to humans. Unless she becomes a character from CSI it shouldn’t let her know more than she could get by talking to you for 5 minutes. Actually, way way less. Don’t ever talk to her. Now go to bed before you fall down.”

“Yes ma.” I sniped, but it was really good advice. I pulled a cold pack from the freezer and stuck it under my pillow. It felt orgasmically good as I drifted off.

Author's Note

I had originally thought to call this "A hard night's day." and merge it with the previous scene. I think I went with the right choice here.