Chapter 9

Randi led Mia to the basement of the Salvation Army Booth Center in lower Manhattan. She would be one of the first to get the brain enhancing procedures.

The first few had been highly successful and Mia, once hearing the more grandiose plans of the system, had in fact gone willingly.

Randi was too old to have her brain manipulated, drugged, and energized for maximum learning, but Mia was the perfect age.

“We are grooming you and the rest of the recruits for the next phase,” Randi said to Mia.

“I am ready,” responded Mia bravely.

The two scurried down the dark and dank Salvation Army hallway past a lot of machinery and vials of various sorts and reached the main operating theater.

There were about five people waiting there, looking like a makeshift medical/scientific team of some sort.

Mia softly asked Randi again what was going to be the result.

“Your learning will accelerate beyond recognition. You will not tire. You will be able to concentrate for 24 hours at a time. Your success rate on the system will skyrocket.”

You see Jim knew that this was the plan from before he had received Mia’s message, and once he did, he thought it all but inevitable that she would end up being enhanced.

There was simply no way to keep up with the pace of the system’s curriculum without the special procedures the coop had come up with.

And once these souped-up learners were let loose against the commercial internet, Jim knew his system would inevitably reign as the winner for a long time to come as there was no other network factions to worry about, all were rapt-up with his vision of a decentralized-blockchain-based serverless web where all players were on an equal footing.

Of course with this new internet all was not equal – things were more concentrated with the new crypto-currencies than before, especially with EduCoin, but that is reaching just a bit ahead.

Right now, Mia is taking her first tentative steps with her new molded brain honed to suck in and digest as much information as physically possible, and these limits were being pushed everyday.