Hello World!

It takes a while for Bats to activate and calibrate everything to his specifications, the fact that most of it was in Chinese and needed to be translated first only elongated the process. Not to mention defaulting the entire system to remove previous Ripperdocs addons... There was a reason no 'qualified' Ripperdoc would even let someone else touch their setup, the Eddies weren't worth the time it'd take to put everything back into place.

Once the virus scans were completed Ori finally jacked in, inserting the chair's provided connector into the interface plug behind his ear.

"Alright, you ready?" Bats questions while pulling up his laptop and accessing all the equipment, causing the room to release a low buzz.

"Yeah. How's this gonna go?"

"To be honest Ori, I have no idea. I'll be running a scan up through your already-installed Interface at your brainstem, then integrate with your occipital lobe-, er, the 'sight' part of your brain." he taps near his eyes for emphasis. "The nanites already appear to be present there, which should allow you to see the same thing as 'them'... This is all theoretical on my part though, whether or not this works or the bots are even sentient is something else all together..."

He lets out a sigh and wets his lips, "We'll manually connect Wernicke's area of your brain which is responsible for speech comprehension which should, 'hopefully', give you the ability to speak with the bots."

...

"Yeah, I have no idea what any of that means. Look, does any of this have a chance of working? Or am I gonna turn into a vegetable at the end of this?" Ori tensely questions.

"Giving a chance percentage isn't really valid here, it either works or doesn't. I doubt anyone's ever done anything similar to this before either... People don't generally get infected by rogue sentient nanites, not without literally melting into a puddle of base protein and bone matter..." Bats looks up from his explanation and cringes, "Sorry..."

Ori shakes his head, "Whatever, just do it."

"Aight. See you on the other side, kid... Good luck." Bats softly says as he activates the thing, instantly causing Ori's vision to crackle and buzz with static. His body shakes and shudders, the ill-maintained machinery allowing wisps of energy through to other parts of his body, as if he were in an electric chair.

Unfortunately, the procedure couldn't be stopped now, the programme Bats had hastily written didn't allow for a safety switch, nor did he account for an unseen equipment failure during his rush to get everything done.

Regardless, Ori's eyes rolled to the backs of their sockets as the room seemed to get farther and farther away from him, eventually becoming a pinprick in the centre of his vision before disappearing entirely.

--------------------------

[Arasaka Prototype NMN System (Version 0.26-1)]

[H:\Host\SystemsBMST>Intrusion Detected]

[Error]

[Initiate Programme 258-CMW]

[Error]

[Initiate Programme 258-CMW]

[Error]

[Catastrophic System Failure Detected]

[Cascading System Failures Detected]

[Intiate Backup Routines KGH-2362]

[Error]

[Initiate Force Seizure]

[Error]

[System Anomallll-l-l-lly-y-y-y-y-deeee-teaje$")%*]

...

...

[01010111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101]

[Hello World]

-------------------------

Ori's brain restarts as he 'regains' his consciousness, his eyes were closed yet he could see everything around him... Except, everything around him was either completely black, or strange blue letters written in code that combined to make up the scenery.

He wasn't sure where it was supposed to represent, but he was currently inside some sort of room... The code jumped slightly and the familiarity hit him all that once, it was an almost exact copy of his family's house... The one that'd burnt to the ground.

"What is this supposed to be..." he mutters, moving his digitally generated body through the place. He picks up a rectangular-shaped object sitting on what was presumably supposed to be a table, the code comprising everything making it difficult to tell things apart from one another.

He knew its placement however, it should've been a photo of his parents holding him as a baby... The code flashed and superimposed the image atop it, causing him to throw it to the ground as a pinch of pain struck at the centre of his skull... Or whatever his 'skull' was.

Ignoring the shattered remnants of code, he steps through the doors and into the kitchen, his mouth going dry when he spots a digital facsimile of his sister, standing there in front of the oven...

"This is fucked... Really fucked..." he mutters to himself as his voice trails off into a growl, "I know you're fuckin' in here! You rat bot bastards! You dare fuckin' show me this after everything you did!? SHOW YOURSELF!"

...

His sister turns around, revealing her completely distorted and blank facial features, it looked as if someone had taken a picture of her, shredded it into a thousand pieces, and then tried to piece it back together with their feet.

"This a show of your intentions then?" he angrily asks, "Taunting me by puppeting my sister's body?"

The thing's form blurs and grows in size, now simulating his dad's form... It opens its mouth to speak but all that comes out is the sound of chittering, billions of tiny individuals chittering at once.

"We meet you." a modulated, artificially generated voice responds after some silence.

...

Holds by his instinctual reaction of just cursing the thing out, pausing as he stares at it. "We?"

"We. The collective. We greet host."

"Yeah, well, the 'host' has a name. As long as you're in my body, I'm the master here."

"We acknowledge."

...

"What's your name?" he asks now that he was certain the thing was sentient, to a degree at least.

"Design specifications... Arasaka NMN Prototype, previously Version 0.26-1, Not Applicable."

...

So it was some Arasaka tech, which makes that old crazy bastard an Arasaka scientist... No wonder he could afford all three gangs...

"What does 'NMN' stand for?"

"Neural Management Nanites."

...

Ori didn't really like how that sounded... To him it was like a polite way of saying 'Mind control device'...

"What were you designed for?"

"Integration and Sublimation of Individual Consciousness-Error, Programm Not Found..."

"...Like brainwashing?" he tentatively asks, getting goosebumps at the idea of having brainwashing robots literally inside his head.