“He’s absolutely nuts. I can’t believe you’re arguing this,” yelled Talo as quietly as possible to Carli. They were both prepping the room for the experiment, but Talo still insisted he wouldn’t run the program.

“He’s not nuts. After the divorce, I really could use the money. That’s almost a whole year’s salary! The girls are a mess, and I would consider it a personal favor.” Carli's eyes couldn’t be more pleading. “Besides, he’s putting himself in the machine. I wouldn’t get in there for millions, but to flip the switch on him? $47,173 seems like the right price.”

Talo couldn’t help but note that she took the odd dollar from splitting $93,345 in two. “Being ethical includes preventing fools from harming themselves. We are in no way ready for humans. So we can transfer knowledge of a maze between mice, or joystick skills with monkeys? All of a sudden it’s a good idea to stick a human head in? Ask yourself this, if it was just some random guy off the street, and we offered $2,000, would it be ok to test on him?”

“Of course not. We probably couldn’t inform him enough to provide consent. But we’re not even talking an actual transfer today. Vic is just digitizing his full consciousness and trying to add knowledge of French.”

“Yeah, he’s just exposing his brain to intense and focused B-fields and gravity pulses. Never mind that the DOD is making huge strides in weaponizing gravity wave generators. This conversation is moot. I already called it into my buddy in the IRB.”

Carli dropped a wrench. “You can’t be serious…We’re ruined…They will shut down the whole lab…We’ll all be riffed…I need to work on my CV…I..I—”

“Carli wait. You’ll be fine. I trust Jason to handle this with discretion. A slap on the wrist is most likely; Vic has tenure. My ASS, however, is gonna be fired, so help me finish.”

“Then what are you doing? Did you tell Vic already? Why even bother if you’re going to have to find something else?”

“Because I care, Carli. Because I want to be able to work on a project till it’s finished. Because the rest of you will take another year to figure out how to continue from where I am. Now get over to the control panel, and let me know the voltage readings. I still need to fix the soldering on some of the new probes.”

Talo crawled into the machine, and Carli came in over the mic, “How am I supposed to know the probes are reading correctly if they’re not monitoring anything?”

“The connections on the helmet are fine, I’m just working on the connections from the helmet to the server. I’ll put it on, and you should just see base levels from there.” After adjusting the web of wires and gel over his own head, Talo crawled stomach down into the restraining chair to work on the wiring. “How is number three looking?” he called out.

Talo froze as an eerie laugh came through the com, “It’s looking just fine. You, however, are not!”

Pain. Intense, consuming pain. It felt as though someone ripped Talo’s spinal cord out and was flossing his teeth with it. He couldn’t even spare a thought of anger at Vic through the agony.

Suddenly the pain vanished. Talo opened his eyes and could see nothing but white. White out?

Then pain. Soul wrenching, horrible pain.

“VIC YOU CAN’T! HE’S—“

A rush of peace and tranquility came over Talo, and he opened his eyes again. Still white. Is this what brain damage is like? I heard Carli, maybe she can stop him. If I can move I will kill—

Burning. Burning as though combusting rods of thermite were being thrust through his eyes. Talo couldn’t tell if his eyes were open, and he couldn’t see anything or even tell if had control of his body at all.

“I pulled the alarm! Firemen will be here in moments, let me go in there to save—“

White again. Do I smell cookies? And lavender? Olfactory hallucinations?

Then something different happened. Talo felt as though he was accelerating across the white space, but couldn’t tell where or how. With no point of reference, he immediately became nauseated, and with fresh memories of pain like nothing he had experienced before, he was low on willpower.

“Megpróbál nem hányni,” a deep voice called out, but he couldn’t see anyone. “I won’t,” stammered out Talo. Even for a man of his caliber, this was a bit much. Wait, Hungarian? I don’t speak Hungarian? Don’t tell me he tried to load all the language packs.

“Oh English, I’m sorry. I’ve never met a human with such weird memories on language…and so many, did you really learn almost 7,000 languages? No, no that can’t be right; they only live hundreds of years…hmmm.” With a gag, Talo vomited up a little in his mouth.

“Oh gross. My dear, I’m sorry I forgot.” The voice seemed apologetic, but Talo wasn’t quite sure. Then a shiny blue pellet appeared in front of his mouth. “Here eat this, I promise it’s not poisonous.”

No, it’s just a radioactive ball of death being fed to me by my imagination.

“First, eat the pellet before you soil my realm. Second, be careful with those thoughts. Most deities consider it highly offensive to be thought of as imaginary.”

Deities? Oh man I’ve really gone—

“EAT the PILL already,” boomed the voice. This time it seemed to be in Talo’s mind directly. It was then that he noticed that the spit-up was hanging at the back of his mouth and his arms drooped down. Gravity. He began to orient himself and managed to force down the vomit. He resisted the urge to immediately throw up again, and slowly became less nauseated as he realized he was travelling ‘right’ in relation to his new down.

“This would all be easier if you just swallow the pill. And that sense of gravity? It’s fake. I only put it towards the back of your head so your fluids don’t spill out. Oh, and did I mention? TAKE the PILL!”

Well I suppose hearing voices shows I'm generally brain damaged already. Might as well take what my subconscious is feeding me.

Talo took a deep breath, and swallowed the pill.