Chapter 10: Upgrades

As mentioned earlier, being an android does have its advantages. One of the prime advantages is being able to be made better if the opportunity should afford itself.

Dr. Carson wanted to do just that for his eldest child, and Michael would soon discover that he's been given even more unique and special abilities as a result of it.

However, would these new-found abilities end up being a blessing or a curse? Only time will tell.

Michael awoke to find himself standing upright and naked, next to the work table. He saw Julie, sitting at her keyboard. It was daylight outside, and Dr. Carson was standing behind him; his hands in Michael's back.

"What happened?" Michael asked, but his voice was scrambled, high pitched, and extremely oscillated.

"Good afternoon!" he said, poking his head around from behind his back. "Let me make some adjustments before you try to speak again, okay?"

Michael nodded, and simply looked forward. A minute later, Dr. Carson finished with the adjustments. "There we go," he said. "Much better!"

"What time is it?" he asked.

"It's 4:14PM."

"Fuck! What about work?"

"Shhhh," Julie said. "I called you in sick with the flu."

"How long have I been out?"

"For about 14 hours," Dr. Carson told him.

"What did you do to me?" he asked.

"We gave you some upgrades," Julie said pushing herself towards him.

"I thought you went to sleep," he asked her.

She walked up to Michael and ran her hands down his arms. "I tried to," she said. "But I couldn't sleep. I walked downstairs looking for you and noticed Dr. Carson here working on you so I offered to help."

"You've got a wonderful woman here, Michael." Dr. Carson said, closing the access panel in his back.

"Wanna see all that we've given you?" Julie asked gleefully.

"Sure."

She sat back down at her computer, and plugged in a small box with a flexible antenna to the hub for their home network.

She pressed some keys then all of a sudden he was able to move.

"Wow!" he said, surprised. "How did you do that?"

"I've fitted you with a wireless Ethernet transceiver," Dr. Carson said. "Pull up your diagnostics window and look at the dmesg boot history."

Michael did as he suggested and found the logfile. He hadn't noticed it before, but it revealed many wondrous things!

"I'm looking at it now," he said. "It looks complicated."

"You're a complicated being," Dr. Carson told him.

"Some things failed." he said, noticing the several FAILED lines in the file.

"I know. I removed the combat personality," Dr. Carson said.

"You've also upgraded my CPUs," he said.

"Yes, tripling your processing power. That's why your speech was messed up, I needed to compensate for the increased clock speed; your audio subsystems were getting data too fast. But, the CPUs upgraded were just in your core. Your subsystems still have their originals."

"What's the cel0 device for?"

"Ah!" Julie said. "That's my favorite! Watch."

She picked up their phone and dialed a number.

INCOMING VOICE CALL

... Flashed in green in front of him.

"Woah," he said out loud. "How do I answer it?"

"Just think about answering the phone and it should stop ringing."

Michael did as Dr. Carson suggested.

"Hello," he said out loud.

"You don't need to speak out loud to answer your phone," she told him. "Your audio input, output, and speech control subsystems are tied into the phone."

Julie hung up the phone, and hooked up an old Sportster modem.

"Now, check this out," she said with a grin, as he heard the modem dial.

INCOMING DATA CALL

... Flashed in green, in his field of view.

A small terminal window appeared in front of him:

Julie entered some keystrokes and logged in.

He could see everything she was typing. It was fantastic! Then, before he knew it, Julie had accessed his maintenance and diagnostic systems and without warning, he was standing on one leg.

"Hey!" Michael said, disgruntled. "I don't think I like this."

"You can set it not to auto-answer if you wish," Dr. Carson said. "In fact, I recommend that. Also, be careful what you use it for; it is a cellphone, and you will receive the bill. It's more designed for emergency communications."

"Wanna surf the Internet," Dr. Carson asked Michael.

"How?"

"Well, your cell-modem will give you a 33.6kbps PPP connection to your ISP; but your built-in Ethernet transceiver is connecting you to your home LAN here, too. Think about surfing the Internet and watch what happens."

Michael did as instructed and mentally thought about surfing the Internet. A window appeared, somewhat blocking his vision.

"Netscape Navigator!" he said cheerfully. "But how?"

"It's open-source now," he said. "I compiled it for your architecture and added the necessary interface hooks to its API. Go to an address'

Michael thought about going to Yahoo!. Almost immediately the webpage loaded.

"That was fast," he said.

"Yeah, you're tied into your cable modem here at the house."

"Awesome! Any other surprises' Michael asked; closing the window.

"In due time," Dr. Carson replied.

Michael reached for his pants which were set on the table, put them on, and walked upstairs. Julie and Dr. Carson weren't far behind as they followed him up the stairs.

"Can I fix you something Doctor," Michael asked as he and Julie entered the kitchen.

"A ham and cheese sandwich would be fine, thank you."

"Julie?" he inquired, turning to face her.

"Nothing for me, hon." she replied.

He prepared Dr. Carson's meal, and brought it into the living room where he and Julie were talking. As he handed him his plate, he sat down on his chair and listened.

Dr. Carson was explaining to Julie the principals of his design.

While still listening to them, he got up to look out the backdoor into the yard. There were squirrels chasing each other over a fresh layer of lightly packed snow.