I open my eyes and see Gogi looming over me, all geared up.
It’s that time.
“You ready?” he asks and hands me a mess of harnesses, polypropylene-knit undergarments, warm clothes, and a slew of other gear.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say, forcing the tremor from my voice.
To my right, Joe’s already begun his prep, while Nadejda is as ready to go as Gogi.
Hands trembling, I let Gogi help me put all this crap on. He then examines and adjusts every belt and harness on my body and rewards me with a satisfied grunt.
In a panicked daze, I let him lead me toward the airlock.
“Breathe through this.” He gives me one of those mask-hat things I’ve seen jet pilots wear in movies, and I put the contraption on.
As I breathe the slightly sweet air, I realize this must be pure oxygen. Just like after my car crash, I don’t feel the high promised by Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Quite the contrary, this time around, I’m lightheaded and borderline dizzy.
The others also put on oxygen masks, and the atmosphere in the plane turns somber.
To distract myself from gloomy imaginings, I mentally research the purpose of this step. In the context of high-altitude parachuting, breathing pure oxygen for a half an hour flushes out the nitrogen from your bloodstream, helping to prevent decompression sickness.
“So, I guess I’ll be nitrogen free as I plummet to my death,” I mentally type into the chat. “Great.”
“Don’t be a wuss,” Mitya writes back. “You’re about to do a tandem HALO jump. I paid four thousand dollars for mine a couple of years back.”
“Right, but you’re crazy,” Ada says out loud, her voice soothing. “Mike isn’t.”
“And you should be working on the piggybacking app anyway,” I mentally chime in.
Since no one replies after that, I sigh and masochistically read more about HALO—high altitude low opening—jumps.
The more I learn, the more I question why I insisted on participating in this part of the plan. Gogi originally suggested I help Muhomor and Lyuba in their separate efforts and that only he, Nadejda, and Joe do the dangerous part. But no, I wanted to be there in person to make sure Mom’s rescue went as smoothly as humanly possible. Now, thanks to my damn bravery and initiative, I’m thirty thousand feet in the air, mentally preparing for something completely insane.
When Gogi gets enough pure oxygen, he walks up to the airlock, mask still on, and opens it.
The noise is beyond deafening, and the cold air hits us like an icy sledgehammer. It must be negative fifty outside, and I’m unpleasantly reminded of that winter trip to Yakutsk—a visit that made me realize the most biting Krasnodar winters are like a trip to the banya in comparison to the weather near Siberia.
“Take deep breaths,” Ada says from somewhere. “Don’t panic.”
“You’ll be fine,” Mitya echoes. “Once you’re in free fall, the fun will begin.”
I ignore their chatter. Every part of my body is frozen in terror, especially my amygdala, the region of the brain responsible for fear.
“Can Brainocytes de-stimulate someone’s amygdala?” I mentally type into the chat, more so as a distraction. “Can we use them to make someone less afraid?”
“In theory, yes,” Ada replies out loud. “In practice, though, it would be very tricky, and I haven’t tried it on the rats.”
“But that sort of brain stimulation is something I’ve been thinking about,” Mitya says, his devil avatar shaking with pent-up enthusiasm. “Fear is small potatoes compared to figuring out how to increase attention span or trigger neurogenesis.”
The implications of this train of thought would usually excite me, but under the current circumstances, they barely distract me from my overwhelming apprehension.
Gogi waves his head toward the black void that’s our destination.
I nod, but my feet don’t move.
As though leading me through icy molasses, Gogi drags me closer to the airlock. When he deems the distance right, he attaches us together for the tandem part of the jump.
I know I shouldn’t, but I look into the dark night outside the plane, and my adrenal glands manage to produce another tsunami of adrenaline.
Before I even realize how it happened, I’m flying through the air.
At first, I do my best to suck my heart back into my chest, along with copious amounts of oxygen; then I can’t help screaming into the oxygen mask.
If my Brainocytes hadn’t disconnected from the plane’s Wi-Fi, I would’ve told Mitya where to shove his promise of fun during free fall. If I survive this, I vow to tell him that people like him, who do this for fun, are insane.
Going from hypoventilation to hyperventilation, I begin feeling fainter than before and wonder—possibly with hope—whether I’m on the verge of passing out. The welcome blackout doesn’t arrive, though, and we just keep plummeting.
The altitude meter on my wrist reminds me of a digital countdown clock in a movie, when the big explosion is only seconds away. Below me, the darkness is so complete I can barely make out the tiny specks of light that must be Gogi’s destination.
Rationally, I know our free fall will last about a minute, but as often happens in near-death experiences, it feels like I’m falling a hundred times longer than that, reminding me of the time I got my teeth drilled by a Krasnodar dentist back in the no-Novocain Soviet days.
Suddenly, I’m violently jolted.
Scenes from my life flit before my eyes, and I’m in the middle of saying farewell to the world when I realize the jolt was due to Gogi deploying his parachute.
Now that the chute is open, the speed of our descent reduces about a millionfold, and I get a chance to figuratively pull myself back together.
The distant lights grow bigger, and I stare at them as I practice every relaxation technique I’ve ever learned. Below us is the whole compound, as well as our impossibly small destination—a meadow inside a park/forest reserve in the center of the compound.
Despite my efforts to calm down, the next few moments of the jump happen in a haze of anxiety.
The forest gets nearer and nearer.
The treetops are almost under our feet, and I fully expect a branch to impale us.
In the last second, Gogi corrects our descent, and we glide toward the edge of the meadow. When we’re just a few feet off the ground, he pulls on the parachute with a conductor-like gesture.
I brace for the pain of impact, but it doesn’t come.
Gogi’s feet expertly anchor us to the ground, and my feet touch the grass with about as much force as if I simply jumped up and down. Still, my knees feel weak, and I have to lock them to stop myself from sinking to the ground.
When I recover a little, I look around the meadow. This greenery is probably meant to look pleasing for the scientists and goons who work here, but right now, in the middle of the night, the place looks like an enchanted forest from a grisly Russian fairy tale—an effect enhanced by the pale moonlight that provides the only illumination.
Gogi takes charge and helps me remove all the equipment. He then ransacks his backpack for Mr. Spock’s specially oxygenated cage, as well as our mission clothes and gadgets.
I’m halfway to having everything on when Nadejda and Joe land on the other side of the meadow. She must not be as good at landing as Gogi, or had bad luck, because their parachute is tangled up. The Georgian has to go over and cut them loose.
As the new arrivals join us in suiting up, I use the credentials Muhomor provided to get onto the compound’s Wi-Fi.
The instant I connect, what feels like a surge of soothing, focusing energy spreads through my mind. It must be how my brain is learning to react to the presence of its cloud extension. The feeling is stronger because I now have more resources and a higher bandwidth than on the cellular network. If we survive this, I can totally imagine becoming a sort of techno-hermit—someone who has to be within reach of the fastest connections at all times.
“Hey all,” I type into the chat, and as I wait for my friends to answer, I check on Mr. Spock to make sure he’s feeling good after our ordeal.
The rat starts off amber, for nervous, but as soon as I pet his dyed fur, he moves onto happier green and blue hues, though not all the way to violet. When I think he’s calm enough, I pull out the night-vision camera and put it on him.
“See,” Mitya types in the chat. “Isn’t skydiving fun?”
I don’t dignify his question with a response. Instead, I ask, “Is everything ready for the recon part of the mission?”
“Yep,” Ada says from my right, and when I glance at her, I see that her avatar looks like her normal self. She’s wearing a t-shirt with a red anarchy symbol, and this time, her jeans are tucked into Converse sneakers instead of boots. I guess she thought this situation was too dire for the angel avatar. “All set. Just press the icon.”
I make the AROS interface visible and locate the new icon, which looks like a rat wearing spy-like goggles.
After the app loads, three big screens show up in my field of vision. One shows what the camera sees, the second what Mr. Spock sees with his own eyes, and the third one looks surreal, so I ask Ada about it.
“It’s my best attempt at displaying whisking—the way rats use their whiskers to navigate in the dark,” Ada explains. “As you can see, it’s a work in progress.”
I put Mr. Spock on the grass and let him run around. The whisker screen looks like something out of Daredevil. I can see 3D outlines of the grass Mr. Spock’s whiskers touch and a map of the world he thus develops, but it’s really disorienting. I have to agree that Ada needs to develop this part of the app some more before it becomes useful. What’s more interesting is that I see yet another potential for Brainocyte technology—providing people with brand-new senses. It wouldn’t be that hard to give someone a bunch of instruments to wear or carry and get the Brainocytes to feed their inputs to the brain, mimicking something like the echolocation of bats, or the sense for electricity sharks have, or heat vision, and so on.
Speaking of sensory expansion, though Mr. Spock’s vision is poor even in the bright moonlight, he can see some things we humans can’t, such as the ultraviolet spectrum. That allows him to spot an otherwise invisible puddle of something, most likely the urine of a small creature, possibly another rat or a squirrel.
The night-vision camera is the most useful view of the three and looks just like one would expect, green hues and all.
“You can send this URL to everyone,” Mitya says. Copying Ada, he also looks like his usual hoodie-wearing self. “This way, they can see through the night-vision camera as well.”
I do as he says, and shortly after, Joe, Gogi, and Nadejda are staring at their phones with varying degrees of curiosity.
“Are you sure you can control where your pet runs?” Gogi asks after a few moments. “If the guards see a rat with a camera stuck to its back, they’ll raise an alarm.”
“Absolutely,” I say out loud, feigning confidence. Mentally, I ask Ada, “Are you sure you can do this?”
Mr. Spock springs into action and runs circles first around me, then Gogi, then Joe. Nadejda cringes, so Ada doesn’t have Mr. Spock approach the big woman, highlighting the control she can exert over Mr. Spock.
The rat’s movements are so precise, the circles so perfect, that Gogi raises his unibrow and says, “We could’ve used this kind of rat in Ossetia.”
On my end, in the screen that shows Mr. Spock’s vision—or more correctly, an interpretation based on the activity of his visual center neurons—I see how Ada is accomplishing this. As she explained before, virtual walls show up in Mr. Spock’s vision in a makeshift maze. These illusory walls are what prompts him to run, which tells me she conditioned him via mazes and treats. What’s really odd is what I see when Mr. Spock looks up at me. Through his blurry vision, I can sort of make out my face, only I look eerily ratty.
“He must see you as the alpha rat,” Ada explains when I point this out. “I’ve noticed this quirk as well. My guess is it’s a bit like when humans anthropomorphize other animals by seeing grins on dogs and stuff like that.”
“He’s rattumorphizing me?” I type and add a smiley face emoticon.
“No,” Mitya says. “Anthropo in the word anthropomorphize is based on the Greek word meaning man, not Latin, since that would be homomorphize. Since rat in Greek is arouraíos, the term should be arouramorphize.”
“I think you guys need to tweak Mitya’s Brainocytes for pedantic side effects,” I reply.
“I don’t care what we call it,” Ada says. “But when my babies look at my face, it usually appears even more like a rat’s.”
“Start the recon.” My cousin’s stern voice brings me out of the virtual chat window, precluding further wonderment about rat vision.
“We’re on the clock,” Gogi says, just as sternly.
“Should we get through some of these trees first?” I ask. “Then Mr. Spock can scope out the rest of the area.”
As one, they start walking. Taking that as a yes, I pick up Mr. Spock and cautiously lead the team toward the edge of the reserve.
The others walk so quietly I have to turn a few times to make sure I didn’t lose them.
Eventually, Gogi places a hand on my shoulder, silently telling me to stop.
I put the rat down, pet him, and whisper, “Go.”
“Got it,” Ada says and does whatever she needs to do to make Mr. Spock scurry forward.
As soon as Mr. Spock is a few feet away from me, I can no longer see him with my naked eye—a good thing since that means the guards won’t see him either.
I can, however, see his digital mood aura, and a few moments later, it turns the blackest color of anxiety I’ve seen so far.
Scanning the screen, I see what he’s frightened of, and I get scared both with him and for him.
On the rat-vision screen, the source of our angst looks like a true monster, a mountainous blur of teeth, fur, and muscles.
In the night-vision screen, I see the obstacle for what it truly is—two hundred pounds of running dog.