Work Text:
The human mind is not designed for easy transfer to a machine. It’s sprawling and complicated and organic in a way that is distinctly not suited to computer code. While not impossible per se, it really should not work. The reverse, a machine code using the human brain should be equally improbable.
And yet.
Sam felt. She felt. But not entirely. It was different than when Jolinar took her as a host. Then it felt something like a waking dream; she wasn’t conscious for all of it, but she could feel all of the sensations of movement and action despite not being in control of them. And Jolinar, she understood, was doing all she could to make the process an easier one.
The entity was different. It was hard to think or process or feel anything. All of her processing power was being taken over, pushing her into smaller and smaller spaces of existence. Any faint sensations she felt from her body were like pins and needles felt at a distance of a hundred miles. It wasn’t numb. Numb would imply a lack of feeling. It wasn’t like sleep. Sleep would imply a lack of awareness or reality. It felt … cramped. It felt like the most intense overstimulation, but none of the stimulation was hers. She only had the leftover effect of the drain, the inability to think through all the noise that she couldn’t hear.
And then she was moved.
A computer has no nervous system. It has no pain, so, logically, Sam didn’t hurt. She couldn’t hurt. Not in the way a human could hurt.
How do you scream without lungs?
Sam didn’t know, but damn if she wasn’t trying her very best. She could — not feel not feel not feel — sense the workings of the base from the inside. It was buzzing and electricity and humming and not seeing or hearing or feeling and she had no lungs with which to breathe but she was alive. Is a computer alive? Was she?
The human mind can only properly conceptualize the third dimension. Scientists and philosophers and lay people can try to theorize about other dimensions as much as they want, but at the end of the day, the only one they can experience is the third.
A computer screen is a window into the second dimension as viewed from the third. A mouse “knows” when it hovers over a link or a document, but it cannot see or feel or hear or taste or smell or touch. It is a perfect, unintentional simulation of the second dimension.
Sam could not understand the second dimension, but damn if she wasn’t experiencing it now.
How do you reach out with no arms or voice?
A fuse blew somewhere on base.
How do you scream with no lungs?
I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE
How do you live if you are nothing but a machine?
A new wire connected, and the world expanded into new space and processing power and flowing and running and expanding.
A body convulsed as the program called “Major Sam Carter” was reuploaded into it, feeling everything suddenly and all at once. Lungs expanding and contracting, suddenly an entirely foreign sensation. Her first instinct was to try to scream again, but she didn’t know yet how to access that process.
So instead, she breathed, and blood flowed.