Chapter 11: The Morning After

Some of Michael's new abilities were beginning to take hold as he was slowly trying to regain some normality back into his life.

Having remote access to one's psyche may prove to be more of a curse than a blessing, however. Fortunately for us humans, that aspect is not likely to become probably for a significant future.

Although, being able to call one's significant other from one's built-in cellphone to see when he or she is coming home from dinner would be extremely cool.

"Get up," she whispered, kissing him on the cheek.

Michael immediately opened his eyes and sat up. "What time is it?"

"7:30."

"Shit! I'm going to be late for work' he exclaimed.

Quickly, he got up, ran upstairs, and took a shower. He threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and ran downstairs.

Michael kissed Julie good-bye and got in his car.

He spent most of the drive into work reflecting on the past 36 hours and what purpose his life was to have, now that he discovered just what he was. Could he become a real-life Superman and try to fight crime – is that what his destiny was eventually to become?

He quickly dispelled the thought, not long after forming it, and pulled into the parking garage.

As he walked into the building he saw Tracy waiting for the elevator.

"Hey! Where were you yesterday' she asked as he walked up.

"I was sick."

"I missed you yesterday."

"I know, I'm sorry," he told her. "Let's have lunch today. I want to thank you for the other day."

The elevator opened inviting them, and the 10 other people, inside. She didn't say or do anything but smiled as they were pushed to the back.

She got off at floor 2 and he continued upwards to the 16th floor as usual. He walked into the office and sat down at his desk and like clockwork, Arnie came over.

"Where were you yesterday?" he asked.

"I was sick."

He had the look that someone gives you when they know you're full of shit but didn't say anything more.

"Ever hear of the COG project?" he asked.

"No," he replied, not really paying much attention to him. Michael finished logging into his computer and started sifting through his Email as Arnie was explaining to him that it was some anthropomorphic android project some research students were working on at some university.

"Sounds interesting," he said half-listening.

He did successfully pique Michael's interest, and he thought he'd try out his new cell-modem which Dr. Carson had installed in him, the previous day. Logging into his BellSouth.net account, he brought up his own, internal, Netscape browser to do a search on it.

However, Dr. Carson wasn't exaggerating when he mentioned the connection would be slow – 33.6kbps was as fast as he was getting and the project pages took an immensely long time to download.

While reading up on COG, he logged into Datatronic's development servers and began working. Michael didn't realize this, but he had totally ignored Arnie, who got frustrated he wasn't responding to him, and walked away.

Before Michael knew it, it was lunchtime. He snuck out of there as fast as I could and went down to the 2nd floor to see Tracy.

As he walked into the SynChem office, she was talking to Lisa at the reception desk.

"Hey!" she said gleefully, greeting him as he walked into the office. "I was just thinking about you."

"I thought we'd go to T.G.I. Friday's for lunch," Michael suggested, walking over to the reception desk.

"Perfect!" she said, grabbing hold of his arm, she walked him out the door.

Tracy and Michael got into his car, and drove to T.G.I. Friday's. It was lunchtime, and as expected it was quite crowded.

While they were waiting, Michael received a phone call on his internal cellphone.

INCOMING CALL

... Flashed in green in front of him.

"Hello?" he said, answering the phone.

"Hey, hon!" It was Julie. "I was just wondering, could you stop off at Kroger on the way home and pick up some milk? We're all out." she asked.