New World, New Rules. (7)

"What exactly happened here?" Quin asks, not knowing what to think about this result. His face stuck with a dumbfounded expression.

"Professor, based on the void information that randomly got stuffed in while I was recording the process of transformation before I shut down, we appear to be fused conceptually. — As the void calls it."

Alpha searches his newly built database for an approximate answer while trying to serve Quin just the same way as it has always done.

"No, that's not what I am asking. I am just trying to… wait, what did you just say?" Quin responds.

"Professor, based on the void information, that rando…" Alpha repeats itself.

"No… no. God." Quin started laughing out loud, raising his head to the sky, feeling the long-lost familiar conversation, making his spirit somewhat relax its caution. "Seems like even if you change forms, you are still the same dull bot." He shakes his head and looks at the surrounding space.

"Start explaining from the beginning. Tell me all the relevant points that you know." Quin orders.

"Yes, Professor." Alpha's crystal lights up, showing its considerably active thinking pattern.

"After we got sucked into the void crack, we instantly got obliterated, only leaving our mind resonating with the void energy." Alpha manipulates the free energy from the mind space into forming an illustration showing Quin the situation.

"In this process, an active part of the energy resonated with us and entangled with both of our dying consciousness into forming mind crystals using our conceptual memories and the void as materials." Alpha shows a plausible animation of how their consciousness and energy got entangled with each other — then formed a crystal.

"While this was all happening, as the dominant party, comparing the total amount of memory information as a foundation. My thinking module could glimpse into irregular void knowledge flowing everywhere, allowing for me to slightly intervene in the entire process."

As Quin listens to Alpha's description, he stares at his much bigger crystal, realizing what it meant by intervention.

"As a result, considering that a weak consciousness only needs a few materials to be stable, I manipulated most of the memory information that came from the database into helping your ongoing transformation. This made us entangled as individuals and ultimately changed our concept of self: unified from each other at the same time divided from each other." Alpha finishes the demonstration with an illustration of what appears to be two individuals overlaid with each other, connected with a metaphysical rope.

"So our state is just the same as the concept of Schrodinger's cat. Only no one can actually open our box." Quin squints and gets a realization. "That also explains how my clean, parallel consciousness is compatible with you. We just basically traded materials with each other." Quin looks around the mind space, thinking that he won't probably meet someone that can break this space anytime soon.

After Quin and Alpha's questions and answers are done, both tried to list their peculiarity and abilities. They are taking stock of what they know and what they can do.

As Quin chats with Alpha intermittently, he frowns, feeling the call of his void instinct alerting him of his body's status.

"Seems like the procedure is about to finish. I have to go back. Alpha, continue to test and experiment with all the abilities and functions of this mind space. Maybe it will be handy someday. In Novel speak, this might just be our golden finger." Quin reminds Alpha before leaving and having his consciousness focus on controlling his body.

"Yes, Professor," Alpha responds while having his crystal lights blink at the same time.

…

As he opens his eyes, Quin feels his perception spreading out, scanning the energy particles scattering into the surroundings, draining the device's power source, showing the end of the procedure.

The room is still the same white walls covered with display panels, having Cynthia waiting by the side of the machine. The only change, having someone standing at the door waiting.

After he noticed someone else in the area, he converges his perception into staying on his body. He cautiously avoids scanning anyone he does not know, assuming there might be something that can detect a snoop from consciousness, considering they can even create a temporary one using devices.

The Medical pod stops its operation as it opens its lid, allowing Quin to get out.

"Mr. Wells, the procedure is done. How are you feeling?" Cynthia stares at Quin, observing his complexion. "You look energetic, Mr. Wells. Did you remember a memory that made you feel good?"

"Yes," Quin chuckles as he remembers his surprise, knowing that Alpha is still around. "Some wonderful memories are always better to be remembered rather than forgotten. It can give us some answer for the question of why should we insist on living." He explains absentmindedly.

As he looks around the room, he notices various charts representing the procedure around the display walls of the space. With some being projected holographically near the control panel. It seems to show a process of his memory being recovered and its percentage of success.

"So how do these broken memories be restored after they are retrieved by the machine for reading?" Quin asked as he stares at the opening door, looking at the tall and handsome woman wearing a black coat with a red lining that was entering the room while nodding in his direction.

Mary observes the surrounding walls having her arms crossed, looking at the data available responding to Quin's question, "After these memory images are sorted out by categories they will be patched by a specialized deep learning A.I. allowing for them to be partially restored for viewing. This is what we will use to assist our investigation concerning your accident."

Cynthia looks apologetically in Quin's direction while giving him an explanation, slightly lowering her head. "Based on the procedure that you signed with the hospital, the Freelancer's Guild and its affiliated establishments have their rights to view your memory archives retrieved by the machine without notice."

Quin reveals a set smile, waving his hands, showing he does not mind. Only he knows what he actually thinks. 'Alpha, all the anomalous memories were deleted and scrambled before I got out of the machine, right?'

'Yes Professor, I used our entanglement into scrambling the order of your brain's neurons firing without affecting its structure. Deleting its saved senses and stopping any possibility of it surfacing and being detected by the device.' Alpha responds using their connected consciousness.

'Good job!' Giving Alpha praise, He turns his head towards Mary and asked, "So all you need to do is to copy all this data and bring them back?" He observes as Mary takes out a card that is scanned by the device, allowing it to transfer information by using rays of light.

"For now, yes." Mary inserts the card back into a glass container and puts it inside her coat's pocket while turning towards Quin's direction, staring at his face with a serious expression.

"However, you will have to be on standby until we deemed it unnecessary. Since even with our current technological achievements, we are still not 100% in control of anything related to the brain. We will need your help to recall specific information from these images in that regard. Don't worry, we won't mistreat you with compensation." Mary smiles while explaining to Quin the scenarios.

Mary stares in Cynthia's direction, acknowledging her presence by giving her a nod, and walks out of the room. She apparently just dropped by to get the data for processing.

Being reminded of his related benefit, Quin remembers the privilege he will get: the access to confidential information blocked by the Privacy Act on a need-to-know basis.

'The guy who proposes this policy sure has some wicked ideas. Better yet, it actually got approved and implemented. I don't believe there's nothing shady about this thing.' Quin blinks with a straight face while watching Mary leaving, thinking of what he heard from gossip.

The Privacy Act was a movement by the Allies responding to the increasing amount of discussion and riots surrounding privacy with the prevalence of monitoring pieces of equipment and primal devices created that can even read private memories, although only with the recipient's consent. Based on what he heard when he asked about the topic, it is apparent that when the government answered the people; they made it in the logic of: You want privacy; we want privacy too. So let's make it that all sensitive information will now be blocked and restricted, just like how your information will also be censored for privacy. This built an information wall that effectively isolated the general public from the really important events that are happening in their surroundings. It effectively divided information into two categories: Entertainment, which is 100% accessible, and Professional, which is on a need-to-know basis.

Only there is a catch. There are levels of stages that divide the access to information, which is called Privilege.