Cthonia 3

In the year 2020 Primo Foglet was five years old. He lived with his mother Nadia in a modest two bedroom apartment in inner Sydney; not far from the harbour, but without a view. Views of the harbour were for the rich, and Primo and his mother were now anything but.

One year earlier, Primo’s father Ferrillo had died at the age of just 45. He had left behind a pile of money, but with some very specific instructions to his beloved wife Nadia on how he thought she should spend it. She had followed them to the letter...

The industries of cybernetics and artificial intelligence, soon to become the largest and most important in the world, were at the time only just beginning to move in the public perception from science fiction to practical reality. But as a neuroanatomist at the University of New South Wales, Ferrillo Foglet had seen the future of humanity – and it was no longer simply human.  He knew better than most what the recent advancements in nanotechnology and three-dimensional molecular computing might mean for medicine in general, and the augmentation of the human brain in particular. He wanted these advancements to be available to his only child, Primo.  And that would cost money.

The pancreas lies deep in the belly, in front of the spine. In the year 2019, a pancreatic tumour was still quite difficult to pick up early, and often it would only be revealed after pressing on nearby nerves, or the intestines.  In Ferrillo Foglet’s case, it was both. He was a big man, standing nearly two metres tall with broad shoulders and a large, stern-looking head. Loss of appetite was something he had never really experienced before to any great degree. It was followed by slight bouts of nausea, then weight loss – and two months later, after a few quick tests, came the news. By then, the cancer had metastasized to the liver, the lymph nodes and the lining of the abdomen. He had two weeks at the most, they said.

After the shock, reality set in. He had to make some arrangements – fast.

For the past four years, Ferrillo had been working on something that he had hoped would make the family their fortune. It was essentially a mind-altering medical procedure that, if it worked, virtually everyone on the planet would want to have.

Nanomachines or “nanobots”  would be inserted into the brain and interact directly with brain cells. Once it was fine-tuned, the nanobot technology would, Ferrillo and his colleagues had determined, allow an external, independent source almost total control of incoming and outgoing electrical brain signals.  Nerve pathways leading from the body to the brain could be deliberately and selectively blocked, leaving the user with a pure and very real “out of body” experience.

They called it Full Immersion Virtual Reality.

Problem was – it was just a theory. A blueprint for a machine that couldn’t be built yet. In 2019, the technology just wasn’t quite there. And now, Ferrillo Foglet did not have time to wait.

On a perfect Sydney autumn day, a day so sunny, crisp and beautiful it was almost impossible for Ferrillo to believe there was anything wrong in his life at all, he went to work for what he knew was the last time. He agreed to sell the blueprint to his business associates for a fraction of what he knew it was worth, and then went home to tell his wife and son that he was about to die.