Chapter 15: Citizen ID
"So, did you actually report him?" Dante asked as they walked out of the former White House building.
"No, of course not." Beatrice shook her head.
Dante smiled in approval. "It's better that way. He will be grateful to you and now you have blackmail on him. You can get stuff like this done much easier next time."
Beatrice smirked and folded her arms. "Not only that, but he would be in a worse position and have nothing to lose if I did report him. I don't want someone like that having hatred towards us. Who knows what he can do?"
Dante shrugged. He doubted that even if the fellow went crazy, he could do any harm to Beatrice. As for him, Dante, there was no telling what could happen, so he obviously wouldn't complain.
When the duo sat in the car, Beatrice gestured to the tube with her chin. "Inject the stuff and familiarize yourself with your new identity. You'll need it since we're off to your potential villa right now."
Dante glanced at the injector and remembered when Beatrice stabbed his heart with the gene enhancer. His heart couldn't help but become cold and his resolve wavered.
Dante firmed his mind and brought the needle to his arm, ready to stick it in. Beatrice looked shocked and hurriedly stopped him.
"What do you think you're doing?!" She asked with a reprimand.
Dante stopped and glanced at her with confusion. "Is there a problem?"
"Of course there is! Where do you think you were about to inject yourself? Your arm?! Are you mad?!?" She shouted with increasing intensity, making Dante frown.
"Shouldn't it all be the same? The bloodstream is the bloodstream." Dante argued as he brought the injector away.
"No, not in this case. You are injecting foreign coded nanites into your body that are going to come together to form your AI chip, or in this case, upgrade your AI chip to the level 1 standard. You think this is something you can just do with ease?" Beatrice chided with a look of disapproval.
Dante looked down at the injector then up at the solemn Beatrice and his eyes narrowed. " I don't believe you. Why didn't Johnson inform me of this and why aren't there any instructions on the tube?"
Beatrice tilted her head like she couldn't believe this garbage. "You mean the guy you just offended and outed as a corrupt official, who thinks he's about to lose his job because of you, would tell you common information to us that we all know is actually crucial to you? Wow!"
Dante's lips twitched.
"Besides, he knows I am with you and there is no way I would make you take the wrong path. If you do, the blame falls on me, not him." Beatrice waved her hand and explained.
"Okay then, where am I supposed to inject?" Dante asked with exasperation.
Beatrice pointed to different spots on her head. "This is going directly to your brain and needs the best access, so anywhere on your head would do. Your neck, your cheeks, your nose, or even your ears."
Beatrice folded her arms coolly. "Personally, most people do it in their eyes. It's more direct and the safest, and there's no pain since- hey!"
Dante ignored her and stuck it in his arm, choosing a suitable vein and gritting his teeth from the short stab of pain. He then pushed the substance in slowly until the tube was empty and then removed it.
Beatrice's expression was ugly and she sulked as she leaned back into her seat. She glared at Dante with dissatisfaction and complained.
"You selfish guy, that was my last chance to trick you. After you get your citizen ID and your AI chip is updated, you can just search these things up."
Dante glanced at her, but his heart couldn't help but skip a beat. This woman loved to cause trouble too much, and he always had to calculate the meaning of her words as well as the likely truth behind them.
This, plus the unfamiliar environment, was why Dante was so cold, always frowning and acting wise. He felt like the moment he let up and showed his normal self, who was pretty above average in this regard, he would be played to death.
With his citizen ID and an upgraded chip, this should change!
Dante closed his eyes and felt a wave of coolness in his brain. He literally felt the insides of his scalp shift a little, but apart from feeling gross and weird, there was nothing else but the refreshing coolness.
Eventually, the shift came to an end and Dante felt like something new was in his mind, something far more present and potent.
[Greetings, user Dante. Since Ive have already registered your usership, I have attached your Citizen ID and automatically listed you in the pure human database. You already have a preliminary idea of my capabilities from when I was partially functional, but I will divulge the rest.]
[As you know, AI chips are only as good as their users. Our storage and computing power are based off of your own brain power. However, my computing abilities have been greatly optimized, and can do ten times what I could before while using ten times less of your brain's resources.]
[Also, I will always have a connection to the Etranet, but without a terminal, it would be sector-based and quadrant-limited. To access all of the Etranet with no lag or delay, you would need a quantum terminal like on The Inferno.]
[In times of emergency. I can take over your physical functions to ensure your survival at all costs. I can control everything you wish to control that is network/digital-based at any time.
[Some other functions are being uploaded to your mind; you can ratify them at your own pace.]
Dante was surprised. This communication within his mind was far faster than before, and only less than a picosecond passed in reality as he learned this.
He also noticed that the information uploaded to his mind was part of his memory and had already been processed. He only needed to casually access it to remember what it said.
That was exceedingly convenient. Dante opened his SDI to check.
｢User: Dante (ID Number: DANTE10998-03-15)
Age: 21 (Converted to Earth years)
Race: Pure Human (99.9% genetic perfection)
Strength Index: 2.3
Agility Index: 2.2
Dexterity Index: 2.3
Intelligence Index: 2.5
Constitution Index: 2.1
Vitality Index: 2.1
Bionic Level: 0
Psionic level: 0
AI Chip level: 1 (Civilian Category)
Superpowers: Quantum Entanglement.｣
Dante put that aside and finally got to what he was looking forward to all this while.
The Etranet!
The moment he accessed the Etranet, Dante felt the same wonder he did when he first logged into the internet, but this was grander since he was directly accessing with his mind.
He felt like his mind was sucked into a vortex and then appeared in a white room. In the white room, a terminal stood in the center that was glowing with a resplendent light.
Dante looked around and realized that he could control everything in this room, so he replicated his bedroom at home, and it was done to perfection.
Even the terminal melted and transformed into his laptop at his desk, so he sat down and accessed it.
When he did so, his eyes flashed with many weird symbols and signs unbeknownst to him.
Dante was fed information about the Etranet to his mind by the AI chip which was the intermediary for the connection. He was given the equivalent of a basic tutorial on how to use the Etranet for all newbies logging in with their citizen ID for the first time.
After he processed the information, he sighed and felt amazed. This kind of network had been theorized on Earth as many scientists and researchers strove day and night to complete it, but here it was.
And in the tutorial, the basic framework of this was easily explained, all the fundamentals that scientists on Earth lacked were common knowledge here.
There was no search engine for this kind of network, anything you could think of could be accessed by you at any time and at the speed of thought.
For example, Dante curiously searched for how to achieve Controllable Nuclear Fusion, and he was led to many sites for basic primary school science to help kids pass their 3rd-grade exam.
Dante was thoroughly speechless.
He almost had a breakdown on behalf of all the Nuclear Physicists of Earth. Something they strove for and were stumped by even to the modern day was something that children by the age of 8 were writing for their 3rd grade, third-semester exam.
Above that was Dark matter energy, Anti-matter energy, Psion energy, natural energies, and more, studied by kids all the way to 12th grade. The various forms of energy above this were for higher students and required specialization, like what we all experienced in Senior High ongoing.
That meant that these science-fiction and almost pseudo-science energies believed to be alien-tier tech on earth were 'general' knowledge things all beings of this universe were supposed to know.
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