Long walk to the beginning 4

[Bond] [Merge] [Fuse]

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Tom was jolted awake by this sudden voice in his head. All of a sudden his Head was aching with searing pain.

"Hey Clara, Is that you?"

[I don't understand the question]

Normally Tom would find this amusing but he was in severe pain. He had never experienced this kind of pain before and he had been through some stuff during the cold war. Tom asked while gritting his teeth.

"Urgh. . . The Voice in my head just now. Was it you?"

[Yes. That's how you perceive my responses. ]

"Fuck!! Run a diagnostic check on my body"

Tom pushed out these words while barely holding on to his consciousness. He raised both his hands and clenched his head tightly as if it would explode any second. It probably would've and his hands would not have been able to stop it but as soon as he raised his hands the pain was gone. Not all the pain was gone, There was still some but it was the type of pain you would get after putting your muscles to work at Gym for the first time after never using them much before. He almost couldn't feel this pain because he was so overwhelmed with intense pain before and he was still adjusting.

[Everything is normal except there was a massive spike in brain activity just a moment ago.]

Clara's response sobered him from the pain, He looked around where he was and realized what had happened.

"I knew the object was extraordinary in nature but this was beyond my expectations. I'll have the update the safety protocol so this does not happen again."

That was easier said than done, How could he restrict his own moment in his lab? It's not like there weren't any safety precautions in place already, He was just compelled to touch the object so he subconsciously bypassed all the safety precautions in his dazed state. He usually did something similar himself, Letting his subconscious mind do menial chores while he thought about his experiments kind of like an auto-pilot. So He was sure that his subconscious mind will bypass anything He himself set up and if let others or an AI dictate where he can and can't go, That could turn into a real nightmare scenario.

...

As he predicted, Despite the newly added safety precautions the same thing happened the next day and he was left with a massive headache. For a week He had tried various reasonable(Only in his mind) ideas he could think of but at the end of the week all he had gained was a little more endurance for headache.

In the end He gave up trying to hide from it. He knew he had to make a choice, It was fruitless trying to do anything to the object. For a week He had tried to figure out what those words meant and what would happen if he made a wrong choice but He couldn't say anything for certain. For starters the object was very mysterious and defied logic and all three options had a similar meaning.

He stopped thinking and decided to pick the first option And when he did something amazing happened. He could now, To some extent control the object. It was like they had formed an unbreakable connection but with this benefit came a huge drawback. His head was now in constant pain, It was only about 1/10th as bad as before but it was still very bad.

Despite the constant pain He was still very happy to get some results. Tom inherently didn't like things he couldn't control so the object was a constant source of frustration for him. He wouldn't worry about something if it was truly out of his control but all his life Tom had done things people said were impossible and for the longest time the object had proved to be completely impervious to anything he could do. Now that He could finally control it, He had a smug smile on his face.