[It has been discovered that someone or something is attempting to access the user's brain map and other personal information.
[Allow Access] [Block Access]
]
Without hesitating for even a second, Aron selected [Allow Access], granting Nova access to his brain data. After that, he remained silent, patiently waiting for her to finish her analysis of his condition and deliver him the report of it.
[How do you feel now, after you re-educated him in the universal simulation for more than a week?] Nova inquired after she teleported them inside an office that looked like a therapist's workplace. She then sat at the doctor's chairs before raising her left thigh and putting it on top of her right one while she held a notebook on her lap– completely taking the role of Aron's therapist.
Her qualifications were indeed unquestionable. Armed with a few terabytes of data about mental conditions and other brain-related matters, made her an expert who was completely qualified to be the perfect candidate for this, and given Aron's brain being of unique composition differentiating him from normal people, she had an up-to-date understanding of it, making no one better than her at doing this.
"I don't feel anything at all, nor any sort of satisfaction or anything that could be close to that," he replied bluntly, causing him to immediately pause for a brief moment, coming to a realization that something seemed to be weirdly wrong within him, and with a surprised and worried face, Aron asked in a slightly scared tone, "Did my personality change as the result of gaining absolute power?" A slight fear could be felt within his tone, something that hadn't happened in a long time, at least not since after the incident that led to his shooting.
[No, you should have realized that it is too drastic of a change to occur to you after gaining such power after a mere few months] Nova reassured, trying to calm him down a little before they could continue their therapy session.
"Then what caused this? Was it you?" Aron inquired, eager to identify the source of such a transformation within him.
[No, it wasn't me. These shifts in your mental state seem to have subtly started appearing after the day you were shot, and since then, it also seems to have gradually grown as well. Its pace was such an absurdly slow that even I missed it due to it not being the focus of my previous brain data collections and simply logged it as just your personality adapting due to various circumstances that were forced upon you] Nova explained from her chair, which had materialized for her.
"Shouldn't my brain be protected by the system from such mental conditions, making it impossible for me to have something like this happen without being intercepted by it?" Aron's surprise was evident as his expectations from the system's safeguard, which he had heard from Nova, were met with disappointment.
[Due to the system limiting the amount of brain data that I can gather from you, this is just a hypothesis based on my simulations. But, the system may be the one which is influencing these subtle changes and had also managed to conceal them from me until now when I explicitly asked for it, forcing the system to release it] Nova answered, dropping a bombshell from an unexpected angle.
Still, in his surprised state, Aron muttered, "But why?" as he tried to grapple with rationalizing the system's actions towards him.
[I speculate that the system is trying to guide your development to what it deems to be the most optimal path, either to help you accomplish your objectives or to fulfill its own] Nova answered, providing him with two possible explanations showing that due to unavailability of consistent data about the system and the limitations of her understanding, she couldn't come to the true hypothesis yet.
"Does this mean that there is a chance that the system might be exploiting me for its own agenda?" Aron asked, his fear resurfacing, an emotion that had been long absent seemed to be making its appearance more than once today. "Also, is it sentient?" he inquired further.
[I don't suppose it is; otherwise, it would have been conversing with you. The closest thing I can think of is that it's an advanced program for a far-advanced civilization, either from the future or from an alternate universe. Yet, we can't completely rule out the possibility of it being sentient. This hypothesis would hint at three possibilities for it not initiating a conversation with you despite being sentient: the first being that it is a different level of consciousness, meaning that it might be normal for it not to initiate contact with you and nothing is wrong with it; as for the second, your brain doesn't have enough computing and mental power to allow for the accommodation of two consciousness, suggesting that its consciousness will only emerge when you have either evolved or you have found another way of increasing your brain and mental power. And lastly, this might just mean that the system has a hidden agenda and that it is not contacting you so that you will remain oblivious of it, but that is not likely] Nova answered with calmness.
"Why do you hold such a perspective?" Aron inquired, curious as to why Nova removed the suspicion of the system having a hidden agenda.
[If it really did have an agenda, it would mean that it would do its best to make sure that you wouldn't even get a hint of intuition of such a thing happening to you. And all it had to do was to make my source code have all the capabilities but at the same time block me from having such ideas about it at all, which seems something that is easily doable by it based on the list of the technologies I accessed from your memories] Nova explained, clarifying her reasoning, prompting Aron to nod at all of her points in agreement.
"But could this also be a part of its plans so as to eliminate all of our suspicions from it once and for all?" Aron mused after contemplating the situation.
[That would be a waste of planning since all of these shenanigans could be avoided by just blocking that thought from us once and for all, meaning we wouldn't even be suspecting it in the first place] Nova retorted, disagreeing with Aron's assumption.
"Your reasoning also makes sense. However, what exactly was it trying to mold me into by subtly influencing the changes in my personality?" Aron asked, moving to another topic after having agreed that any more discussion on this topic was completely unnecessary as they had a data drought on this certain topic.
[Although it was just in the initial phases of molding you, the way in which it was implementing the changes would have made you a neutral reactor. Essentially, no matter what happens, you will always remain neutral and avoid having an extreme emotional reaction which would have resulted in the impairment of your judgment. However, achieving that would have taken at least a few decades before the perfect version of such a personality was finally complete] Nova elaborated calmly.
