It felt better.
But those dastardly metallic and sharp additions confused her.
“Opposable thumbs,” Wool said, rubbing her finger underneath them. She turned the other way to grab something from the surgery bench.
Jelly looked up and managed to make her “thumbs’ move, but didn’t have a clue what to do with them, or how to use them.
Wool produced a squishy rubber ball in her hand. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger. “See?”
“Meow,” Jelly tilted her head and observed Wool squeezing the ball in her hand.
“Catch,” Wool dropped the ball on the bed. Jelly went for it. Instead of catching it in her paw, she accidentally batted it away.
“No, no,” Wool caught it as it rolled off the edge of the bench. “Try again. Here…”
Wool rolled the ball gently toward Jelly. She pressed her stomach to the surface of the bed and eyed it with intent.
Waiting for the right moment to pounce.
Then, she launched forward and grabbed the ball with both paws, the thumb cuticles going largely to waste.
The pads on her paws kept the ball in place as Jelly sniffed around, ensuring it wouldn’t strike back.
“This is going to take some time to get used to, isn’t it?”
“Meow,” Jelly opened her mouth and sunk her fangs into the ball, playing with it.
Katz’s voice appeared in Wool’s ear. “Wool, are we ready, yet?”
“Yes,” she held her finger to her ear, “She’s awake and relatively sedentary.”
“Glad to hear it. Can we proceed?”
“I think so,” Wool held out her hand for the ball. Jelly played with it, reticent to let it go so soon. “Give me the ball, Jelly.”
The cat whined and covered it with her paw. She wasn’t done with it just yet.
“Jelly, don’t make me ask twice.”
“Wool?” Katz asked, “What are you doing? Are you talking to Anderson?”
“I’m waiting for her to stop playing the fool,” Wool shot Jelly a stern look and clicked her fingers. “Now, please.”
“Meow,” Jelly scanned the ball and decided to let it go. Quite by accident, she clutched the ball using her new thumbs and rolled it back to Wool.
“Good girl,” Wool pocketed it and held out her arms, beckoning Jelly into them. “Let’s go and do some work.”
Pure Genius is a super-computer. Invented by USARIC, it became a revolutionary communication device which changed the course of the future and, in some cases, even the past.
Shortly before his death, Pascal D’Souza worked with USARIC to develop a logical system of interpretation. The result was Pure Genius, a room that harnessed every emotion, physicality and attribute of the being in question.
First to use Pure Genius was D’souza himself. He and his team invented the Genius Drive that harnessed one of the twenty-first century’s greatest findings – The Speed of Thought – a speed several times faster than the commonly regarded Speed of Light.
The Speed of Thought’s speed is approximately 788,501,118 miles per second.
Until October of 2110, humans believed that nothing could travel faster than light. Saturn Cry changed all this when it was decoded by D’Souza. Light, being a physical utility was limited because of its tangibility. The first clue that “things’ could travel faster than the speed of light was a concept developed by USARIC.
To understand this concept better, it is useful to conduct the following experiment:
1: Imagine a picture of a black cat. Do you see it?
2: The image you thought of took approximately 0.2478 seconds to appear, which is ten times faster than the speed of light.
3: The ability to transmit said image to another location is just as fast.
The intangible – electronic messages, for example – and hyper-connectivity with the Outernet were sent at a rate way faster than 186, 282 miles per hour; the approximate speed of light. The ability to transmit data through space and time became the exemplar for The Speed of Thought.
The discovery was the backbone of Pure Genius during its conception. It devised the concept of travel along ripples through the fabric of space and time. A wholly remarkable discovery, and one that would set a precedent for scientific discovery hence.
It was little surprise that USARIC, under the guidance of D’Souza, named this facility Pure Genius.
Not only did it change space exploration, it also improved commercial flights and communication in general. The International Moon Station was able to detect Saturn Cry because of it…
Wool carried Jelly into Pure Genius. A cylinder-shaped room with several fluorescent tiles lit up on the floor, cylindrical wall and ceiling.
Apart from an almost indecipherable low-emission hum, the place was immaculate and completely devoid of sound.
In truth, it was a little eerie.
Wool stood in the middle and looked around, trying to figure out where the door she had walked through was. The tiles seemed to blend into each other. It was quite typical for a person entering Pure Genius to become quickly disoriented.
The chilling effect of the light and pure silence disturbed Jelly. It was possibly the first time either she, or Wool, had been in such a place of sheer tranquility.
“Tor?” Wool scanned the surrounding tiles. “We’re here.”
One of the tiles on the ceiling slid open, releasing the hum of Space Opera Beta into the room for a short time.
“Yes, I know. I’m here, too.”
“Where are you? This place is freaking me out. I don’t want to be in here any longer than necessary.”
“I’m up here,” Tor climbed into the cylinder from the open tile in the ceiling. “Whatever you do, don’t jump. Stay out of dead-center or you’ll get pulled apart.”
“I don’t intend to move, Tor.”
Gravity didn’t behave in the way people are accustomed to within Pure Genius. Each surface had its own pull, which served to exacerbate the feeling of unease.
Tor walked down the curvature of the wall and stepped onto what Wool knew to be the ground.
“Glad you could make it,” Tor took out a screen and stretched it from his hand. “We’re going to have to leave Jelly in here by herself while we conduct the decoding.
“Okay.”
“Can you set her down, please?”
Wool squatted to the ten by ten floor tile and released Jelly onto it. She looked at her tail and followed it around for a few seconds, trying to attack it with her infinity claws.
Tor chuckled as he looked at his screen. “How’s she getting on with her new toy?”
“She’s taken to Infinity Claws remarkably well. No allergies, no reactions.”
“Did she figure out how to use her thumbs, yet?”
“Not yet,” Wool puckered her lips at Jelly as she trailed around, meowing at her own behind.
“Okay, let’s start,” Tor looked up at the ceiling and barked out a command. “Pure Genius. Cuboid, twelve-eight-six.”