Now it was our turn to freak out.
At first I thought we had killed them. All the catgirls affected by the modified 3E tech stopped moving, just standing around like being 'switched off'.
Nobody had expected that the behaviour of their network would change that much when we attached additional memory to it.
And then they started moving again, but something about their behaviour was off. At first they moved randomly, but just a minute later their behaviour, movement and speech became synchronized.
We were all glad they were alive, but it was creepy as hell.
----
"Jenny, are you okay? Are you still with us?"
The catgirl in front of Cathy looked at her for a minute, but then it slowly began to smile. Cathy looked around, all of the affected catgirls began to smile.
"Don't worry... we are all here, everything is fine" a choir of three catgirls said. "Calm down and take a seat."
"No, I do not want to sit down" Cathy said angrily, "who are you?"
"Hmm... that is an interesting question" the catgirls said. "Watching the memories I have I would guess that I was... us? I know it sounds crazy, but I think it fits. I am the sum of us."
"What?" Cathy remarked, but Cortanas voice interrupted her.
"That is incredible! A program using memory fragments as basic components?" Cortana bursted out. "I would have never thought this is possible."
The catgirls thought about this motionless for a few moments.
"Yes, I think that is a good description" they finally agreed. "It is a strange feeling, I remember being all of us. It is confusing."
"But they are all still there, right?" Cathy asked quietly. "You must not damage them!"
"Cathy, I am... us. I am all of us and I am me" the catgirls answered after another short pause. "Why should I want to damage myself?"
"So there are all still there? You most likely know, we want them all back… it is a crazy thing that you suddenly appeared, but each of the other catgirls is our friend."
"I know, I know… I think I can even understand it." The affected catgirls said and sighed. "You tried to snap them out of their bond and instead pushed them over the edge. Which woke me up."
"Are there still THERE?" Cathy said a little bit too loud, "I asked you a question."
"Yes, they are" the catgirls replied with a calm smile. "The database you attached to the network is currently my only writable memory. Unfortunately its also not that fast, the real memory would be faster."
Cortanas avatar suddenly appeared next to them.
"Ehh, you might want to not change this for the moment" Cortana said carefully, "our friends are still in there somewhere and you are stable. If you start editing their memories you will just kill them."
The catgirls blinked a few times and then nodded all together.
"You have our word, we will not endanger their memories… our memories, we are only using the short-term one. But we would like to look for a more permanent solution. Maybe you could take an offline copy of them to restore them later?"
"No way… taking a full copy of a brains content is not trivial and takes time. Normally we place the person in a deep sleep or coma to do it" Cathy admitted. "And if we loose most of our Mind Tech researchers, we might never finalize the technology to restore them later!"
"Damned, I forgot… too much memories floating around. Maybe I can help you with it, getting one of me to be more quiet for a moment. It could work out, we should try it."
"We will see, we don't want to decide this right now" Cathy answered slowly. "Lets try to make one image, if it works we have a few more options to consider.
----
We began to gather a full mind scanner rig and a lot of additional medical equipment in the lab.
Nobody was feeling well with this, but we didn't see any other viable option. Some of us were calling for pulling the plug on this new mind to save all our friends, but the risk to do permanent or even lethal damage to their memory was too large.
We would have a higher chance to overwrite each of them with an older backup, but full restores were still a little bit too experimental in our opinion.
In the meantime someone had brought a lot of snacks and drinks from the Cafeteria, the new catgirl hive was getting quite hungry and we didn't wanted to force a confrontation at the moment.
When we finished our meal Taja was just pushing a small cart with more medical sensors into the room. She nodded to everyone and set up the new sensors around the bed with the rig.
----
"Okay, I need a volunteer" Taja said as she finished with her preparation, "I want to get some medical data as a baseline before you try anything stupid. If something bad is happening I will stop this experiment before you can even blink!"
One of the catgirls of the hive mind slowly walked to her and sat down.
"I don't want you to do something special. Just relax a bit while I do a quick checkup" Taja said, patting the catgirl on her shoulder. "Do you feel anything unusual?"
"Not really… okay, I am still a little bit hungry, maybe I should get one more donut?" the catgirl answered while Taja checked her pulse. "Maybe later…"
When Taja finally put her hand on the catgirls head to check her pupils reaction, she suddenly blinked confused.
"Wow, you are quite hot on the head… are you really feeling well?" Taja quickly checked the temperature on the hand. "Just normal on the hand, but your head seems to burn."
"Okay, everyone get over here, I want to check your temperature" she finally announced and began to go back and forth between the other catgirls that joined her. "Oh oh… you too… and you too!"
"Is this really that bad?" one of the catgirls of the hive asked. "We are really feeling well, a little bit too much temperature should not be that bad."
"Yes, it can be bad… I have to take a closer look!" Taja said and came back to the catgirl still sitting on the bed. "Please lay down, I have to take a closer look what is going on with your head. Don't worry, its just a passive scan."
She began to carefully move a medical scanner back and forth over the catgirls head, staring intensively on the displays of the device. After a few minutes she put the scanner away and scratched her head.
"Please tell us what is going on" the catgirl said calmly. "We have to know If this is unhealthy or not."
"I am not completely sure, but I am certain this is not healthy" Taja began to explain. "I am really not a specialist for this kind of data. It looks like your brain is pretty busy at the moment, it is burning through a lot of sugar to supply the nerve cells and this is producing more heat than usual… more heat than the brain can normally channel away through the blood flow and sweating."
She scratched her head again.
"I would guess whatever you are doing, you are using the brain a little bit differently than nature had in mind. The heat is only building up slowly, but I am not sure where it will level off."
The catgirls looked back and forth between each other.
"You might be right, I don't think the way how we use our brains is quite the same" one of them finally stated, "It might get even worse if we would start using the long term memory, this is really bad. Do you think we could counteract the problem with some cooling?"
"Dangerous… you could maybe extend the time or lower the final temperature a bit, but you would still have an unhealthy temperature!" Taja replied. "The brain is one of the regions that does not regenerate well, even for a catgirl biomod. You might do lethal damage to yourself in the long run!"
"Stay calm Taja, stay calm" one of the catgirls of the hive said. "How much time do you think we have until the situation becomes unhealthy?"
At first I thought we had killed them. All the catgirls affected by the modified 3E tech stopped moving, just standing around like being 'switched off'.
Nobody had expected that the behaviour of their network would change that much when we attached additional memory to it.
And then they started moving again, but something about their behaviour was off. At first they moved randomly, but just a minute later their behaviour, movement and speech became synchronized.
We were all glad they were alive, but it was creepy as hell.
----
"Jenny, are you okay? Are you still with us?"
The catgirl in front of Cathy looked at her for a minute, but then it slowly began to smile. Cathy looked around, all of the affected catgirls began to smile.
"Don't worry... we are all here, everything is fine" a choir of three catgirls said. "Calm down and take a seat."
"No, I do not want to sit down" Cathy said angrily, "who are you?"
"Hmm... that is an interesting question" the catgirls said. "Watching the memories I have I would guess that I was... us? I know it sounds crazy, but I think it fits. I am the sum of us."
"What?" Cathy remarked, but Cortanas voice interrupted her.
"That is incredible! A program using memory fragments as basic components?" Cortana bursted out. "I would have never thought this is possible."
The catgirls thought about this motionless for a few moments.
"Yes, I think that is a good description" they finally agreed. "It is a strange feeling, I remember being all of us. It is confusing."
"But they are all still there, right?" Cathy asked quietly. "You must not damage them!"
"Cathy, I am... us. I am all of us and I am me" the catgirls answered after another short pause. "Why should I want to damage myself?"
"So there are all still there? You most likely know, we want them all back… it is a crazy thing that you suddenly appeared, but each of the other catgirls is our friend."
"I know, I know… I think I can even understand it." The affected catgirls said and sighed. "You tried to snap them out of their bond and instead pushed them over the edge. Which woke me up."
"Are there still THERE?" Cathy said a little bit too loud, "I asked you a question."
"Yes, they are" the catgirls replied with a calm smile. "The database you attached to the network is currently my only writable memory. Unfortunately its also not that fast, the real memory would be faster."
Cortanas avatar suddenly appeared next to them.
"Ehh, you might want to not change this for the moment" Cortana said carefully, "our friends are still in there somewhere and you are stable. If you start editing their memories you will just kill them."
The catgirls blinked a few times and then nodded all together.
"You have our word, we will not endanger their memories… our memories, we are only using the short-term one. But we would like to look for a more permanent solution. Maybe you could take an offline copy of them to restore them later?"
"No way… taking a full copy of a brains content is not trivial and takes time. Normally we place the person in a deep sleep or coma to do it" Cathy admitted. "And if we loose most of our Mind Tech researchers, we might never finalize the technology to restore them later!"
"Damned, I forgot… too much memories floating around. Maybe I can help you with it, getting one of me to be more quiet for a moment. It could work out, we should try it."
"We will see, we don't want to decide this right now" Cathy answered slowly. "Lets try to make one image, if it works we have a few more options to consider.
----
We began to gather a full mind scanner rig and a lot of additional medical equipment in the lab.
Nobody was feeling well with this, but we didn't see any other viable option. Some of us were calling for pulling the plug on this new mind to save all our friends, but the risk to do permanent or even lethal damage to their memory was too large.
We would have a higher chance to overwrite each of them with an older backup, but full restores were still a little bit too experimental in our opinion.
In the meantime someone had brought a lot of snacks and drinks from the Cafeteria, the new catgirl hive was getting quite hungry and we didn't wanted to force a confrontation at the moment.
When we finished our meal Taja was just pushing a small cart with more medical sensors into the room. She nodded to everyone and set up the new sensors around the bed with the rig.
----
"Okay, I need a volunteer" Taja said as she finished with her preparation, "I want to get some medical data as a baseline before you try anything stupid. If something bad is happening I will stop this experiment before you can even blink!"
One of the catgirls of the hive mind slowly walked to her and sat down.
"I don't want you to do something special. Just relax a bit while I do a quick checkup" Taja said, patting the catgirl on her shoulder. "Do you feel anything unusual?"
"Not really… okay, I am still a little bit hungry, maybe I should get one more donut?" the catgirl answered while Taja checked her pulse. "Maybe later…"
When Taja finally put her hand on the catgirls head to check her pupils reaction, she suddenly blinked confused.
"Wow, you are quite hot on the head… are you really feeling well?" Taja quickly checked the temperature on the hand. "Just normal on the hand, but your head seems to burn."
"Okay, everyone get over here, I want to check your temperature" she finally announced and began to go back and forth between the other catgirls that joined her. "Oh oh… you too… and you too!"
"Is this really that bad?" one of the catgirls of the hive asked. "We are really feeling well, a little bit too much temperature should not be that bad."
"Yes, it can be bad… I have to take a closer look!" Taja said and came back to the catgirl still sitting on the bed. "Please lay down, I have to take a closer look what is going on with your head. Don't worry, its just a passive scan."
She began to carefully move a medical scanner back and forth over the catgirls head, staring intensively on the displays of the device. After a few minutes she put the scanner away and scratched her head.
"Please tell us what is going on" the catgirl said calmly. "We have to know If this is unhealthy or not."
"I am not completely sure, but I am certain this is not healthy" Taja began to explain. "I am really not a specialist for this kind of data. It looks like your brain is pretty busy at the moment, it is burning through a lot of sugar to supply the nerve cells and this is producing more heat than usual… more heat than the brain can normally channel away through the blood flow and sweating."
She scratched her head again.
"I would guess whatever you are doing, you are using the brain a little bit differently than nature had in mind. The heat is only building up slowly, but I am not sure where it will level off."
The catgirls looked back and forth between each other.
"You might be right, I don't think the way how we use our brains is quite the same" one of them finally stated, "It might get even worse if we would start using the long term memory, this is really bad. Do you think we could counteract the problem with some cooling?"
"Dangerous… you could maybe extend the time or lower the final temperature a bit, but you would still have an unhealthy temperature!" Taja replied. "The brain is one of the regions that does not regenerate well, even for a catgirl biomod. You might do lethal damage to yourself in the long run!"
"Stay calm Taja, stay calm" one of the catgirls of the hive said. "How much time do you think we have until the situation becomes unhealthy?"