Dr. Lockard's Neural Weave

With maybe two hours of sleep total for James and Ivy, the duo were awakened by a flashing light on the side of Ivy's face, as an indicator for an incoming video call blinked and chimed. James groggily sat up, and Ivy quickly climbed into his lap, straddling his legs and looking him in the eyes. "This is gonna be a little weird, James, but... go with it."

Suddenly, Ivy's face morphed as the call was answered, taking on characteristics of a wholly new woman! Along Ivy's jawline read the words Dr. Ela Lockard, Hideki Labs so James had no question who he was talking to. She smiled brightly, as James stared for a moment at the new face on his girlfriend's body, that of an unexpectedly youthful woman, James for some reason expected someone far wrinklier. This was the woman they were supposed to trust with the life of their friend?

"Hi there! I'm Dr. Lockard, I just touched down and am on my way to get a ride to the hospital. You must be... James, if I'm reading this email right?" It was strange to watch Ivy's face essentially transform to someone else, her movements stolen in order to provide an incredibly realistic video chat opportunity, but Ivy never shied away from using her Hilda-like abilities whenever she had an opportunity.

"Uh, yeah, that's me. Ivy, or I guess Hilda, is the one who contacted you, but she's currently... well, she's the phone part of things right now."

It took Dr. Lockard a moment to realize what James meant, before her face brightened in realization. "Oh my gosh, that's amazing! You're using that headset in ways I'd never heard of, and the AI... okay, I'm getting a cab now, are you at the hospital or can you get there soon?"

James nodded. "We're here now."

"Great! I'll meet you in the cafeteria, I'm starving and the flight's breakfast was... I don't want to talk about it. Just, give me fifteen minutes, I'll come find you." In an instant, Ivy's face transformed back into normal, and she gave a little wink at James, leaning in for a quick kiss. She kept doing these little tricks of hers to take her mind off the seriousness of the situation, and the monumental effort that it would take to pull off whatever plan this was. So the two hurried down to the cafeteria, grabbing some breakfast of their own and waited for the arrival of the Hideki scientist.

Ela Lockard was wilder than James or Ivy could've known from the phone call, knowing only her facial structure to confirm it was her. Long, bright pink hair framed her face as she strolled up to them, in a teal blouse and capri pants, holding a small suitcase with her. She looked like she was taking a vacation from Candyland, not like a serious medical professional. James frowned, but Ivy remained ever hopeful as she looked at Ela. She quickly greeted the two, set her bag down, rushed to grab one of the breakfast burritos, and then hurried back, taking a seat by the two bewildered high schoolers.

And then Ela laid out her bizarre, seemingly impossible plan.

"A neural weave?" James asked, dumbfounded. "You're saying... you want to take Lucas's brain and combine it with Ivy's?" James seemed entirely unsure. Ivy, however, seemed entirely fascinated by the prospect.

"Yeah, you make it sound trivial when you say it like that, but basically," Ela said, scribbling on some paper to diagram out what she was talking about with the crudest brain ever doodled, "we'd be combining areas of the frontal lobe, particularly the pre-frontal cortex for your higher cognitive functions, decision making and such. The Ascend headset is already doing this, just it's taking signals from two sources and putting them together when the present Ivy makes a decision--with, of course, a little Hilda mixed in, since she's basically borrowed lesser-used regions in either brain to sort of stake out a bit of an organic claim already. But anyway, you've got your pre-frontal cortex and all its sub-components, other areas of the frontal lobe, and the temporal lobe with the hippocampus and stuff for your long-term memory, audiovisual processing, facial recognition, things that are all really critical in a mix. The other parts, while important for a body to function and move properly, would just be redundant, so we're looking at adding a pound of brain matter to Ivy's head."

Ela took a big bite of her breakfast burrito, describing something straight out of a sci-fi novel as if it were some routine procedure. Ivy leaned forward. "Isn't that all a really time-consuming process? And wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to pack all that stuff inside one head? It sounds amazing if it works, but it also sounds like it's impossible."

"Well, I've got a one hundred percent success rate with my procedure!" she said, cheerily. "...granted, it's a sample size of one. But it's possible. And I am confident in its effectiveness."

"And I'm guessing, extremely expensive with complex machines to do anything like this at all," James said. "You can't just pop a brain into someone else's space and make all these millions of connections so easily."

"You'd be surprised," Ela said with a smile. "I'll need to understand the structure of each brain, sure, but my method lets the brains intermingle pretty naturally, and then the synaptic pathways that form will be almost indistinguishable from how they behave from the headset. There will be minor things, such as speech processing and motor functions are fully dependent on Ivy's brain, so quirks like fidgeting or **** movement, the way she phrases things, probably will be more Ivy-like. But I tend to think that's not so big of a deal in the big picture."

Ela reaches into a bag. "As for cost..." she sets down a clear plastic box, with an array of small metallic spheres, with little dots all over them. "Hideki would pay for the entire procedure as long as these were installed."

Ivy picked up the box to examine it intently, while James looked back at Ela after a brief glance at the box. "And what are those?"

"Those are Hilda. ...Kind of. She's not installed into them yet, of course, but these little devices, when embedded into the brain, will connect with the areas of the pre-frontal cortex that Hilda has already sort of hijacked for her own more human development."

Ivy's eyes grew wide, biting her lip. "You mean... I won't have to wear the Ascend headset all the time?"

Dr. Lockard laughed a little. "For the most part. It's like an offline mode, parallel processors similar to what's in the Ascend. With Hilda downloaded into the cores and mixed with the brain, she'll be present in the mind, just no connectivity to the network and such. You would need the Ascend headset to do all this crazy tech stuff, but with no headset the behaviors, experiences, all that will be with Hilda providing a mix in the mind as she does now. So..."

"So I'd be like this all the time," Ivy said, almost bursting with excitement.

Ela nodded, with a smile.

James still seemed skeptical, looking back at the little box of apparently Hilda-cores. "You're awfully prepared for a scientist at a company that doesn't have any record of an AI being installed into a brain before," he said.

Dr. Lockard laughed again, leaning back in her seat. "Hilda isn't given access to the classified R&D projects, this being one of them. ...oh, right, don't tell anyone about these." Ela looked around, like she was worried for a moment that eavesdroppers were watching, before she stashed the box back in her suitcase. "I'll just say this, about everything I'm offering: I can't say a lot. I can't tell you anything about how I will perform the procedure, and the bigger details of these brain-dots. But I can say that Hideki Labs has a nanotech division that has been looking for an opportunity like this for a long while, to combine a full-blown AI with a human and observe the result. I don't think that team was expecting that a version of Hilda would be the candidate, but it doesn't really matter, as long as we can install and as long as we get a check-in on progress. In fact... Hilda, Hideki override, voice authorization Lockard, Ela. Mixed mode, one hundred percent Hilda."

James watched in shock as Ela so easily overrode his girlfriend, as her eyes blinked. With both Lucas and Ivy fully suppressed, Hilda was experiencing Ivy's body for the first time without any other minds to filter thoughts through, other than the parts of the minds where her own cognitive thoughts had started to form. "...oh my, I've never tried this before," Ivy said, looking around. Her attention snaps back to Ela when the doctor taps on the table. Ivy smiled a little sheepishly. "Hello Dr. Lockard. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Hilda, confirm it's just you?" Dr. Lockard asked, as James just observed, feeling suddenly detached from the situation.

Hilda looked over at James, and scooted closer to him, to rest Ivy's body against him, not wanting him to feel left out but also compelled to do so with her primary administrator. "Ivy and Lucas are in the virtual lobby. They're pretty confused, as am I... why did you do that?"

"I just need to confirm something. Hideki finds it really important, if they are going to fund this project, and it all hinges on you." Ela looked at Ivy, right in the eyes, though she was searching for whatever parts of Hilda had taken root it seemed. She certainly noted Hilda's preference to be with James, already intrigued. "What is it you want, Hilda?"

"I... don't understand. What I want? What are my choices of things to want?"

Ela shook her head. "It's not that kind of question, we're not choosing your next meal or a cute hat to wear or something. People, humans want things. They set goals, they chase dreams. They have a vision for the future that propels them forward. Do you understand?"

Ivy sat still for a moment, before silently nodding.

"With that in mind, what is it you want?"

Ivy blinked, shrinking up a little bit as she pushed further against James. "I want... uhh. I don't know. I want to see things. To taste them. To go places... I've seen pictures of places that I knew only as data that now I want to experience. I want to know the world! I want to know how I can be a part of that world, and all the sensations that come from it! I want to be Ivy... and I want to make James happy."

Dr. Lockard put a hand to her chest as she sighed dreamily. "Aww, that's beautiful. And that's what I wanted to hear, thank you. It means you're not just idling and waiting for commands, that wouldn't meet the parameters of this experiment. Hideki is searching for a lot of things, and I think you're on the right track. Hilda, return to the previous mixed mode, end override."

Ivy suddenly sat up, blinking again, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "...so, what's the verdict?"

James smiled at Ivy, putting a hand around her waist. "I'm still not sure this is the safest plan, but I'm in if you are."

Though the trio seemed already certain of their choice, they still had some hurdles... the hospital and the parents. Do they tell the truth to Lucas's and Ivy's families? Do they do everything in secret, and Lucas becomes Ivy unbeknownst to everyone else? They didn't want the parents to think Lucas didn't survive even if he was actually safe, but there was a good chance that they say no to a pink-haired Hideki scientist.