After Felix had left, Chen Chen sat on the sofa and juggled the wine glass in his hand as his mind became occupied with thoughts.
“Sir Godfather, I’m afraid we’re unable to treat James Watsons’ condition currently.”
Chen Chen heard the voice of Little X coming from the table beside him, “During your conversation, I already went online to look for the hospital where James Watson is being housed. I went through the medical report and according to what I’ve read, there’s very little to be optimistic about.”
As she said this, a transparent display suddenly appeared out of thin air beside Chen Chen. On the screen was a CT image of a human brain. The image was projected using the environmental holographic simulator installed in the office.
Unlike regular CT images, countless red horizontal lines were splattered across the frontal section of the brain in irregular patterns. Additionally, a large section of the brain was completely ruined.
“This is the brain CT scan of James Watson’s brain.”
Little X explained, “It happened while he was on a private ferry. Just as the ferry approached the harbor, the assassin boarded the ferry as well. At the time, James Watson was on the second floor of the ferry by the balcony, looking off in the distance. The assassin shot him from the first floor.”
Another display appeared beside the CT brain scan. It showed the simulated image of a shooter holding a gun aiming at someone on the second floor with his head poked over the railing.
The bullet went straight through the right eye of the target and came out the other end of the target’s skull.
“According to analysis, James Watson’s anterior lobes were destroyed along with the end section of his brain. The damaged areas include the coordinated nerve movement cortex of the eyeball, the neural language cortex, the speech cortex, and the motor cortex.”
Little X summarized. “These afflicted areas have far exceeded what our current technology is capable of. Even the Medpod 3000 is unable to recover damage incurred to the brain, so we’re unable to address James Watson’s condition.”
“This is certainly tricky.”
Chen Chen nodded and shrugged. “But it’ll be a great shame for a scientist of this caliber to die like this. Even if such technology doesn’t exist in real life, we can at least try our luck with some movies. I think I can recall two movies that may help us cure James Watson’s injuries.”
“Which two movies will those be?”
Little X asked curiously.
“Robocop 2014 and Self/less.”
Chen Chen snapped his fingers as he said this. The virtual display in front of him echoed his thoughts and searched for the movie Robocop 2014.
The movie Robocop was set in the year 2028 in Detroit. The protagonist of the movie was Alex, who was a righteous cop who had a bomb planted under his car as an act of vengeance from his past enemies.
The story began when Omni, a company specializing in the development of firearms and robots revived Alex and put him in the body of a robocop with the most cutting-edge biotechnology…
After opening the movie, Chen Chen dragged the progress bar to the part when Alex Murphy first woke up and looked at himself in the mirror.
When the movie continued playing, Chen Chen watched as the movie framed Alex’s face full of despair watching himself slowly being replaced with mechanical parts. Within moments, all he had left was a hand, two lungs, and his original brain. The rest of his body was torn apart.
That was not the end of it. Under the transparent protective shell etched to his brain, there was a noticeable gap located in the right hemisphere of his brain. Three microchips the size of a fingernail could be spotted etched between those gaps.
When Alex saw the three microchips rooted in the exposed part of his brain, he expressed with his voice full of sorrow, “There’s nothing left, even my brain no longer belongs to me.”
In response to this, Professor Norton standing opposite only told him, “We only restored the damaged regions of your brain and didn’t alter your emotions and intelligence. You’re still in control here, do you understand?”
The movie was paused at this section.
“This part here.”
Chen Chen said, “The protagonist Alex sustained significant damage to his brain. However, according to Professor Norton’s claims, brain recovery technology isn’t only present in this world, but it’s also in its mature stages. If we can acquire this technology, I wouldn’t say all hope is lost yet when it comes to James Watson’s brain.
“There’s also another option, the movie Self/less.”
As Chen Chen said this, he swiped with a finger to discard the display with Robocop 2014 to the side. When he did this, a new display automatically appeared.
The display began playing the movie Self/less.
“The movie Self/less doesn’t clarify what timeline it’s set in. There’s no way to tell if the setting of the movie is based in the current world, the future or if it’s a parallel world. The plot of the movie is about the protagonist who was diagnosed with cancer and agreed to a consciousness transfer operation with an evil corporation. This technology utilized NMR to transfer his consciousness to a younger body. Although it was successful, the original host of the new body wasn’t pleased with this…”
Chen Chen explained while dragging the progress bar, “The movie’s setting is decent, but it’s ultimately crippled by the director’s incompetence. There’s also a jarring problem with questionable logic.
“First of all, the protagonist of this movie is a multi-billionaire. Although it’d be unfair that this makes him a despicable person, you still have to admit that to get to such a level, a certain degree of scheming and plotting is required. You can’t say this he’s evil, but he’s not exactly a saint either.”
Chen Chen elaborated, “But once the protagonist realizes the true nature of the body he’s residing in, he’s willing to risk his life to charge into the camp to rescue a pair of mother and daughter he hardly acquainted with. He also turned on the scientists because they lied to him… That’s where it got problematic.
“In the end, the protagonist decides to stop taking his medicine, which led to the death of his consciousness and the body being returned to the original host. This is where the entire story becomes perplexing because if the protagonist is such a noble man willing to sacrifice himself, why would he turn to an illegal and ethically questionable operation in the first place?
“Even if the protagonist is doing it out of goodwill, nothing is stopping him from transferring his consciousness again to another willing body. This way, he didn’t have to die and the body can be returned to its original owner. Wouldn’t it be the best of both worlds?
“To summarize this, the protagonist spends a fortune on this to swap his consciousness into the body of a stranger he has zero knowledge about. The protagonist also had his very own family that he’s reluctant to leave as well. Despite all that, he decides to sacrifice his consciousness along with his life for a group of strangers he doesn’t know anything about…”
Chen Chen shrugged and expressed frustratingly, “I admire his noble spirit, but I can’t understand why he would choose a self-destructive path when there were other completely viable options present as well.”
“This problem you stated is valid. To add to your point, I think there’s a problem with the technology itself as well.”
Little X contemplated on the subject. “I remember you once mentioned a subject concerning the continuity of consciousness. The reason a person can be defined as a singular entity is largely attributed to the continuity of his or her consciousness. This is where there’s a problem in the technology shown in the movie.
“First of all, the consciousness transfer technology shown in the movie doesn’t involve any physical replacement. This means no brain transfer operation of any sort conducted, only direct consciousness replacement where the protagonist’s original conscience was directly swapped into a new body. In this case, is this new ‘person’ still the protagonist?”
Little X raised a question. “What are the chances of these devices only copying the protagonist’s lifelong accumulated memories to another body, wherein the new body inherits all these memories and is placed under the false impression that it’s the protagonist?”
Chen Chen applauded Little X when he heard this. “You raise a great point and I have to say, there aren’t suitable ways for us to verify this fact. Is this new person the protagonist himself or just a brand new persona that inherited all of the protagonists’ memories?
“I find myself agreeing with the point you’ve made — what are the chances that the consciousness and spirit of the operated person perish in the process of the consciousness transferring procedure? The new body only presumes that it’s the new ‘person’ due to these inherited memories when in truth, the real ‘person’ had died in the process of the experiment.
“Due to the complexity of the human brain, I find it difficult to believe that consciousness can be individually separated from the brain itself as an independent entity. The way I see it, the so-called consciousness transfer in the movie is merely a memory duplication. It might as well be finding a new body and injecting a collection of memory into it. This may further explain why the protagonist has to regularly take drugs to fortify his persona to avoid his new body from losing these memories of his and slowly morphing into another person entirely…”
“In this case, are you still planning on using this consciousness transfer technique on James Watson?”
Little X asked.
“This is why I consider Self/less as a secondary option.”
Chen Chen nodded. “To be fair, we’re only looking for an elite world-class scientist. It doesn’t matter whether the person surviving is the real James Watson, isn’t it?”
“…”
Little X became speechless at this notion. It was true, all Chen Chen was looking for was a knowledgeable biological science scholar. It was inconsequential whether this person was authentic…
When Chen Chen thought of this, he got up from his seat and stepped right past the virtual display. He went to the elevator positioned at the end of his office.
Half an hour later, Chen Chen had arrived at the Spire Experimental Base.
After extracting the USB drive from the superconducting charging device, Chen Chen walked to the next room and inserted the USB drive into the computer set up there.
Little X already had the two movies downloaded and ready to go. Chen Chen used the keyboard shortcut [ctrl+c] to duplicate the movie and pasted it inside the USB drive storage with the keyboard shortcut [ctrl+v].
“Ding!”
To his surprise, the output was an obnoxious error notification.
Chen Chen quickly investigated the error. It appeared that Robocop 2014 was successfully inserted into the USB drive storage but the other movie, Self/less was rejected by the USB drive…
“I knew it, something like consciousness transfer is an inherently flawed theory!”
Little X exclaimed.
“No, the reason this movie was rejected by the USB drive is not a sign that ‘consciousness transfer’ technology doesn’t exist.”
Chen Chen shook his head. “The problem lies in how the movie expresses the concept. The method shown in the movie shouldn’t feasibly achieve a consciousness transfer effect, duplication of consciousness is a wrong approach. This is why the USB drive didn’t accept the movie.”
Chen Chen’s tone switched as he said this, “Since the second movie didn’t work out, we’re only left with one option and that’s to acquire the brain restoration technology in this world.
“The movie never expressed much detail concerning the technology. I’m afraid we’re going to have to dive into the world of the movie to extract the relevant technology.”
Little X immediately understood what Chen Chen was suggesting.
“Got it.”
Chen Chen nodded. “Apart from the three microchips shown in the protagonist Alex’s brain, there are no verifiable implementations concerning this brain restoration technology for us to extract. We’re going to need to enter the movie dimension to extract it, just like we did with Elysium previously.”
“Understood, I’ll gather the Black Knights.”
Little X left as she said this.
Only Chen Chen was left in the room. His expression was heavy with thoughts as he looked at the Robocop 2014 file inside the USB drive.
“I wonder what sort of catastrophic disaster would have come to mankind inside this movie dimension?”
Chen Chen muttered to himself. So far, each movie’s dimension accessed from the USB drive was left in destruction. This was an indisputable fact. It started with Chronicle, then Resident Evil, Elysium, Alien, and finally the most devastating of them all, Gantz. All of these worlds were left in ruins, each more devastating than its predecessor, each one of them more perplexing than the other.
Chen Chen was about to step into his sixth movie dimension so far.
While these thoughts glided across his mind, he suddenly heard urgent rounds of footsteps quickly approaching from behind him. Chen Chen did not turn around to inspect but instead use his Field to expand his visual range and saw everything behind him.
Using Field, he saw more than ten Black Knights fully-fitted with GS Combat Suit and PK Armor, each one of them holding pulse rifles. They filed into the room and formed a straight line formation, awaiting their next orders.
These Black Knights were nurtured using T-virus infected zygotes and boasted combat prowess greatly surpassing ordinary humans. With the additional GS Combat Suit, Predator Armor from Predator 2018, and superconductor thermal pulse rifles, they were easily Chen Chen’s most powerful combat force.
They were the only ones qualified enough to enter the movie dimension and face whatever threat lied behind it.
Seeing that Little X had completed the appropriate preparations, Chen Chen activated the movie. In an instant, a familiar black hole appeared on the display…
The passage to the world in Robocop was formed.
