The Black Box - Part One

Walking around my kitchen, watching the rain pelt down outside the window, I slowly make myself a pot of herbal tea. My phone rests on the nearby counter, a long line slowly filling as my internet chugs to download the large file to my freshly cleaned-out device. The kettle whines, plumes of steam erupting from the dinged red appliance as I quickly race to shut it off.

My head feels a little fuzzy as I hear the squealing of the whistle, a slight side effect of the poorly implemented implant at the base of my skull. The visual snow builds as I shut off the kettle, my vision rapidly returning as the noise subsides.

"Fucking..." I hiss, reaching up to the back of my head and running my hands through my short hair. "Hope this works" I huff, shaking my head, grabbing the kettle and pouring its contents into the teapot and over the various leaves and flowers I had placed within.

It had been months since I had this thing installed, months of subtle buzzing and the occasional headrush as it tested itself and the gray matter it monitored.

"Shouldn't have bothered getting an archive" I grumble, taking my teapot to the sofa to pour myself a cup. "My memory was fine, and now I can't even drink coffee without feeling weird."

The first real wetware on the market, beyond those making wild claims about the merging of man and machine and internal computing, was the NeuralArchive.

It originally had extremely niche usage, being prohibitively expensive and really only marketed to a very specific demographic. The small implant would latch to the brain, a complex mixture of wires and programming transcribing new memories to code. It had been originally designed to help those with degenerative neurological issues, but instead was largely bought and used by those with a family history of such mental decline in the hopes of staving off the loss of memory in later years.

The user could re-watch the saved memories, feeling them as though they were really happening over with just the slight prompting of the NeuralArchive, though the real-time reliving of memories had limited usage beyond reinforcing those memories that may otherwise slip away in the aging mind.

As the technology advanced it began to expand functionality, developing systems to read already existing neural networks and eventually to write these transcoded connections straight back to the brain through various unintrusive means.

Soon not only were those who the device had been originally intended for having it implanted, those at the cusp of mental decline, but more and more regular consumers were seeking it out. Doctors being able to remember entire textbooks or builders knowing the entire building plan back to front soon became more and more commonplace as people began to purchase these helpful little devices.

Numerous apps came out to improve functionality, from giving people a truly photographic memory by overclocking the NeuralArchive or adding minor memories like a roller coaster experience.

One such app was The Black Box, an oft-used program that pushed the device to its absolute limit. The app claimed to allow the transfer of the "Mind and Soul" between two people. Through intense compression beyond that even the NeuralArchive was using the entire saved data of a mind could be sent and downloaded to a new NeuralArchive, though the process would also wipe the mind if the person to prevent double up. The minds would then be transferred between NeuralArchives, the minds being written back into the brain or so the company claimed.

Really, rewriting after that level of compression was dangerous and difficult that would often leave the NeuralArchive inoperable afterward. Unless actively ordered to do so, the Black Box program would instead 'pilot' the body at the behest of the uploaded mind with proper uploads only occurring upon permanent deletion of the app or where stimuli was too overwhelming for the NeuralArchive to accurately interpret

The app was split in two parts, the giver and receiver. Once registered as one or the other the app would invasively read the stored data in the NeuralArchive, generating a profile and prompts based on what was stored within.

Receivers would see next to nothing on their app unless a giver sent them a request, a blank white screen telling them little to nothing about the app or what was about to happen.

Givers on the other hand saw a sea of jostling bubbles, growing and shrinking in size based on the proximity to the giver. Each bubble was a person, or more accurately their wishes.

"I want to have a family"

"I wish I was skinny"

"I wish I had a better job"

"I just want some time to myself"

All these and more would bounce around the screen, fighting for position despite their relative sizes in the hopes of getting selected by the giver. All that was needed was a single tap, popping the bubble and alerting the receiver they were about to get a very big gift.

Once selected the receiver would get a notification, their blank screen now containing at least one little black gift box with a tag hanging from the top.

"Housewife"

"Jogger"

"Executive Assistant"

"Student"

These tags, formed from the element of the giver that fulfilled the wish, would be the only guidance the receiver would have in making a selection, though once a selection was made there was no real way to go back.

Both sides would find themselves with a warning, demanding they find a place safe to rest for a few minutes as their brain tissue is wiped and 'rebuilt' but the NeuralArchive. Before long they would each be waking up in a new body, seeing the world through new eyes. The process was not perfect however, deeper ingrained thoughts and feelings being too difficult to scrub and therefore were often left behind before soon becoming traps and compulsions for the freshly swapped.

Not many people used the app however, the very niche application only really being used by fetishists, those desperate for an escape, thrill seekers, or those making a drunken or poorly thought out mistake. It did have users however, with swaps happening around the world everyday.

However, despite the good intentions of those behind the Black Box app and the heavy protections they put in it cracked was soon and modified. While most were found and destroyed one still manages to pop up on the internet every now and then.

The Black Plague was an insidious modification, unloading small barebones version of Black Box to nearby NeuralArchives just through being in close enough proximity to connect to their phones Bluetooth. These versions did not appear on their phone, leaving no sign they had been uploaded without performing a full status check of the NeuralArchive itself.

This barebones version of the app generated a similar profile to those as Givers and Receivers, using their stored mental selves to show their desires and their lives in simple words or sentences.

The user of the Black Plague could simply select any of the profiles, forcing a swap without warning. The app itself would piggyback in the upload, deleting itself from the phone before reinstalling at the target destination. However, a real exchange would never occur. The Black Plague would not transfer the target out of their own body, rather it would compress them even further to the point of potential damage while merely leaving a copy in the old body minus any memory of the cracked and modified app and swap itself.

The user would be left in their new stolen body, their old one wondering about none the wiser. This could occur time after time, swapping into new bodies one after another. Upon leaving a stolen body the old mind would become uncompressed, the memories of the intervening time becoming co-mingled in a manner that they felt like they had made all those actions of their own free will.

However, this was not without risk. The NeuralArchive was not built to hold that much information, leading to two possible faults arising.

• Firstly, the app may be forced to uncompress the trapped and subdued mind, melding thoughts and feelings permanently with the user in a manner they are aware of but unable to remove.

• Secondly, in more extreme cases of stress on the NeuralArchive the device could simply trigger it's failsafe. In these rare cases it would write the saved data straight to the brain, searing the saved mind straight to the body. In these cases the user would be unable to escape, their burnt ut NeuralArchive refusing to do any more uploads out of an abundance of caution. Where this happened the Black Plague, registering the trapped mind, would merely delete itself from the NeuralArchive and phone of the user to prevent being caught and leaving them trapped.

As I sip at my tea, letting out a soothing sigh as I taste the delicious lavender and feel the delightful warmth spread through me, I look over at my phone on the counter.

I had been trying to fix my NeuralArchive for quite a while, going to doctors appointments and computer specialists for months. Since I had it installed I'd been experiencing light-headedness and mental fuzz, my thoughts filling with static whenever the new implant sought to update or rewrite parts of my brain no matter how minor.

Medically it was fine, the connections and the installation as a whole being done perfectly and unintrusively. It had been described as either a software problem or a problem with my body itself, my body rejecting the constant interference of the tiny device.

To that end I had been recommended downloading a direct interfacing app by one of the software experts, something that could check for issues and repair them. The Black Box had been that which was recommended, the hefty compression requiring the software to force updates to the NeuralArchive and to ensure the integrity of the device as a whole.

I had tracked down the app last night, another sleepless evening as the visual snow became worse and worse while the NeuralArchive tried to save and backup my mind at the end of a long day.

Suddenly, my phone dings and the screen grows bright. My head pulses as the app begins to interface with my implant, the static I my head building and building before suddenly dissipating.

Standing up I walk over on tired and unsteady legs, my head aching a little but the weird buzzing inside my skull feeling almost unnoticeable after months of having to deal with it.

I quickly snatch up my phone, looking down to the thing that had seemed to fix my implant as I see the front page of...