Upload/Download - Part One

"So what is it this time?" I grumble as I head down the poorly lit stairs to the basement of my childhood home, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

My mother had called me a few days ago begging me to come over to see her latest invention. She was a teacher at her local community college, still living in the suburbs I had grown up in. While she was close to retirement, being well into her fifties, her thirst for invention had never really diminished and had continued to plague me even after moving out.

Every few months I would get a call from her, asking me for help in one way or another with her latest contraption. Most times I would refuse to drive all the way back home, and the few times that I did it usually ended with a call to the fire department. However, this time she had brought me here under false pretenses before asking for my help with this new invention.

Entering the basement I glance around at the cavalcade of loose wiring and sheet metal that littered the cold concrete room, every part of this new invention looking as though it was mere moments from some sort of catastrophic collapse.

I pace towards the old timeworn armchairs in the center of the room, carefully stepping over bunches for taped together colored cables. The chairs themselves were repurposed from our old living room set, the old sun bleached fabric bringing back memories of my childhood under this roof. Sitting in one of the seats is a tangle of cables linked to a series of electrodes and suctions, the kind I had seen on television being used for monitoring brain activity.

I'm pulled from my inspection as I hear footfalls on the stairs, the aged wood creaking under the weight of the person coming down. I turn around to see my mother waddling her way down the steps, her pudgy wrinkled hand gripping the handrail tightly as she guides her short chubby form down the narrow stairs.

"So...what do you think?" she asks from the staircase, her voice filled with excitement.

"It's...uh...what am I looking at?" I mutter, confused as I turn back to the mess that now filled the basement.

"It's for...let's say it's for high fidelity brain scans" my mother replies, panting a little as her lack of fitness catches up with her even after the short trip down the stairs.

Glancing away from the machine I'm met with the sight of my mother, her face reddened as she breathes heavily in an attempt to catch her breath. She looks up at me through her thick-rimmed glasses, the lenses magnifying the crow's feet around her eyes. Her dark brown hair is a complete mess, fraying at the ends and tangled after days or even weeks of neglect.

My mother waddles past me, causing me to step aside as I look down at her 5'8" frame. I had taken after my now-absent father in height, towering over her since I had entered my teens.

Without another word, she begins to hook cables together and boot up a large computer in the corner of the room. The old CRT screen crackles to life, the blinking white light of a command-line awaiting more inputs slowly creeps into the true black monitor. A loud whir begins to fill the room as a small army of hard drives and fans slowly begin to power on.

"So..." my mother begins, frantically plugging things in and tapping wires into place.

"So I was hoping you would be my first scan" she continues, turning to me and giving me a pleading look.

"No...no way this is going on my...you're not using this to look at my brain" I hastily respond, knowing how my mom's inventions had a tendency towards immolation.

"No no, it's perfectly safe...I shouldn't have said first" she explains, muttering the latter half to herself. "What I meant to say is the first human to be scanned, I've tested it on all sorts of other subjects before...well...you..." she continues, growing a little nervous as she tries to convince me.

"No...come on...you...you can't be serious" I retort, the disgust apparent on my face.

"Please...just one" she begs, her face twisting into a mixture of pain and disappointment. "I...I know you've never had much...trust in my inventions. You moved on to so much bigger and better things but...but please just one more? The last one, I promise" she continued, smiling weakly up at me in one last attempt to convince me.

I let out a sigh, dropping myself into the empty armchair. She was right, I had never thought much of her inventions and especially so after moving away to study and then work at far better institutions. "Okay, but this is the last one" I say, somewhat disappointed with myself in giving in.

I hear an ecstatic laugh behind me, a giddy giggle I had never thought possible from my mother as she quickly begins to work double time. The whirring grows louder as I hear the clacking of keys on a keyboard, my mother rapidly inputting things into the command line.

"And...ready" she mumbles, moving over to the armchairs and standing behind me. She quickly begins to gather up and untangle the electrodes in the neighboring seat, preparing them for my head. I hear a tearing of fabric behind me as suddenly a cool swab is dabbed across my forehead.

"Just something to help with the reading" she explains, sticking the suction cups one after another as she cleans the contact points.

As I sit and wait I notice a little green light on the other side of the room. However, before I can focus on what it is I'm brought back to the moment by the sound of my mother huffing and walking back to the computer.

"Don't think...real scientist...I'll show..." I hear her mutter, barely making out the words before I hear the loud slam of her pudgy hand against the keys.

The whirring grows louder and louder as the fans and hard drives work double time. I wince, feeling the electrodes tingle against my skin, the electrical charge and shocking sensations slowly growing more and more pronounced.

It barely takes thirty seconds before I go to rip them from my head, needing for the pain to stop. However, as I try to move my arm I just watch it spasm weakly against the armrest of the chair. My heart races as it slowly dawns on me that my stupid mother's latest invention was doing something horrible to me, my limbs twitching uselessly as I try to stand and run away.

"What are...oooo...mmmmm..." I begin to talk, the words escaping me as I try to speak and leaving me simply making noises.

My vision begins to tunnel, the sensations of my painfully convulsing limbs dying down as the terrifying darkness envelopes me.

What feels like an instant later I come to, the panic from before lingering but lacking any of the pain. My vision feels constrained and warped, the fuzzy unclear view locked in position as I find myself unable to move.

"M...Mom?" I call out, hearing my crackling voice coming out from someplace far away.

As I slowly come to my senses I notice I'm no longer in the seat, rather I'm by the staircase where I had seen the little green light. I feel...nothing, the lack of any sensation rapidly making me anxious.

"Well well well...look who's the smart one now" I hear a distant voice say, the sight of my mom confidently approaching me quickly consuming my field of vision.

"It looks like it worked, a very accurate brain scan if I've ever seen one" she continues with a chuckle, leaning in like a giant as she completely takes up my vision.

Suddenly my sight becomes shaky before I'm suddenly lifted to my mother's eye level, a look of anger covering her face. "So...how do you think of my inventions now? Still just a teacher who's over the hill huh?" she says with a scoff, walking with me across the room.

"What...what are you...what did you do...why am...am..." I begin to say, stammering as I find the disorienting situation impossible to talk through.

"Let's just say that I've captured your brain activity to a very precise level" she says with a laugh. My vision suddenly shifts again as I'm maneuvered to look at what my mother was laughing at. My heart would have stopped at the sight I'm met with, my body leaning forwards with a glazed expression as drool begins to drip from my mouth and pool on my right thigh.

"Emphasis on the capture" she continues with an even more hearty laugh, obviously taking pleasure in the shift in the power dynamic.

"What...how...PUT ME BACK!" I shriek, the electronic crackle of my voice causing whatever speakers I was speaking through to pop loudly.

My mother paces the room for a bit, humming to herself before placing me down on the desk alongside the computer as she appears to tower over me.

"And have an ungrateful son again...I don't think so" she says, a sly grin creeping across her thin lips as the light dances over her pale skin. "No, I think we'll trial someone else as my son. Maybe they'll treat me with respect, unlike a certain someone...I mean a certain compilation of code" she continues, laughing at her own joke.

Before I can muster a defense a loud knocking echos out from the front door, my mother immediately perking up. "That must be them" she says excitedly, leaving me as she heads back towards the stairs. "You see, all those times that you turned me down they stepped up...like a real son would have" she hisses, reaching the stairs and slowly climbing up and out of my view.

I try to think of what I can do, what to say once she gets back. Do I try to apologize? To beg for my body back? I watch in silence as my body slowly slumps more and more precariously in its seat, worrying that it may fall over and do permanent damage.

Suddenly I hear footsteps again, another set mirroring my mother's approaching the stairs and descending behind her. "See, I told you it would work. So...would you like to inspect what I'm offering?" my mother asks as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, turning back to look at...