As you walk down the long corridor towards the room that houses the Fornax artifact, Avila refreshes your memory. "We've always known that this thing acts on the brain in some way. For a long time we thought its purpose was to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain in response to stimuli. Imagine your sensitivity to touch being increased threefold during sex."
You can imagine lots of things, and right now many of them involve this hot half-human scientist walking beside you. Suddenly glad you're wearing your baggy trousers, you clear your throat nervously and say, "But you don't think that's what it does?"
"No. We found a way of hooking it into a diagnostics computer, which gave us a more complete analysis. It seems to be a copying device."
You pause a moment. "You think it copies minds?"
"Yes."
"Well, we'd better think of a way of relating that to sex somehow or we'll have to turn it over to the military."
Avila thinks a moment. "OK. Say an elderly couple use it to copy themselves into younger bodies so they can regain some of the youthful passion."
You chuckle. "That's pretty flimsy, but I think I can make it fly."
Just then you arrive. The door opens and you see the Fornax artifact in front of you. It's a metallic sphere somewhat larger than a basketball, covered in intricate markings that look like circuit diagrams and glow a brilliant turquoise. The sphere is suspended in one of the lab's containment force field. Two thick cables are attached to it, running from the sphere to a large bank of computers.
You and Avila approach the force field to take a closer look. It seems to you that the bluish glow gets stronger. "Is this thing safe?" you ask.
Avila replies, "It's never shown any activity before, and besides, it's behind a force field." As she finishes speaking, the computer screens flare up with static. "What the..." you say. A bolt of brilliant blue light arcs from the sphere, through the force field, and strikes Avila on the forehead. Before you have a chance to react, another bolt hits you. There is no pain, but everything goes white and you feel yourself toppling to the ground... |