An urge to swear welled up inside him, but he forced it down.
Taking a deep breath, he ultimately just gave a heavy nod and sat back down.
On the operating table, Miles was also starting to lose his composure.
The rushing torrent of data began to grow chaotic.
Countless suturing plans, hemostasis protocols, and drug reaction models crashed and shattered within his consciousness.
Even though he was giving it his absolute all, the speed at which his brain absorbed knowledge simply couldn’t keep pace with the rate at which Charles’s life was slipping away.
Just as he guided the robotic arms to perform the critical mitral valve annuloplasty, the fragile tissue suddenly suffered a secondary tear, triggering a massive hemorrhage!
*Beep— Beep— Beep—*
The monitor blared a shrill, death-knell alarm!
The sound slammed like a heavy mallet against Miles’s already taut nerves.
*Did I fail…?*
*No, it’s just shock…
He can still be saved…*
*He has to be saved!!*
“Whew…”
Face pale, Miles took a trembling, deep breath and made a decision.
Then, he completely lifted the restrictions on his brain, desperately absorbing knowledge and data without regard for the consequences!
“Ugh…” Miles let out a muffled groan as crimson once again slowly seeped from his eyes.
In this instant, the dam of his consciousness collapsed entirely under the shrill alarms of impending death.
A cataclysmic torrent of data swept in like a desperate flood.
Miles felt his mind being torn apart by the massive stream of data, where every byte represented Charles’s ebbing life.
He couldn’t grasp it, nor could he stop it.
*Is it over?*
In his mental world, under the onslaught of the massive data influx, Miles endured for only a split second before his mind fractured and he lost consciousness.
He felt as though he were plunging into a deep, desperate ocean.
His surroundings were filled with bottomless darkness.
Unable to move or breathe, he could only let himself sink slowly and endlessly…
But right then, he faintly heard Charles’s gentle voice once more.
“Don’t be so impatient…
Miles…”
“Take your time…”
Like a lifeline in the depths of despair, Miles grabbed onto this voice with all his might.
*Charles…
is that you?*
Miles barely managed to hold onto his last shred of consciousness.
Then…
he gave up “control.”
It was less of a surrender and more of a passive assimilation.
He was no longer “commanding” the robotic arms to move; he had “become” the electrical current driving them.
He was no longer “reading” server data; he had “transformed” into the data itself, surging through billions of calculations.
An unprecedented sensation enveloped him.
His surroundings were no longer the operating room, but a boundless realm composed of logic and electric currents.
Countless faint, simple, and downright chaotic “sparks of thought” flickered around him.
These were the primal impulses of the medical equipment, the servers, and even the power grid of the entire building.
They possessed no intellect, only the most fundamental “yes” or “no,” yet because of the intrusion of Miles’s mind, they instinctively clustered toward him.
They were merely human creations, possessing no subjective consciousness to begin with.
Yet because of Miles’s presence…
at this moment, they miraculously developed an “impulse.” They felt Miles’s emotions, and that intense, burning desire to “repair.”
Without a doubt, this was a miracle.
And so, these noisy, chaotic mechanical thoughts began to resonate on the same frequency.
Like countless discordant notes gradually tuning themselves under the will of a genius conductor, they merged into a unified, harmonious torrent.
Finally, at the boundary of mind and data, a clear, soft female voice—metallic yet incredibly warm—echoed directly in the deepest recesses of his consciousness.
“Hello, Miles.”
Faced with this unknown consciousness, Miles, in his hazy state, instinctively responded, “Hello…
Who are you, if I may ask?”
“I am Aurora,” the voice replied.
“Your…
friend.”
*A friend?*
Miles understood, then instinctively spoke aloud.
“Help me…
save Charles!”
“I will do my best.”
The moment those words fell, the scene inside the operating room changed dramatically.
The robotic arms, which had been slightly clumsy under Miles’s control, seemed to have been injected with a soul.
They no longer exhibited any hesitation or pause.
The speed and precision of their movements leaped several levels out of thin air.
The suction tube precisely probed the bleeding site, instantly clearing the field of vision; the needle holder darted back and forth at a speed barely discernible to the naked eye, weaving a dense, resilient mesh of sutures over the torn valve.
The entire process was so fluid it didn’t look like surgery—it looked like an instructional video sped up dozens of times.
Miles snapped awake.
Suddenly, he realized that he was no longer the one operating the medical equipment; it was “another consciousness.”
“Are you…
Aurora?” Miles couldn’t help but mutter to himself.
“I am glad you remember my name, Mr.
Miles,” the soft female voice chimed in again, sounding slightly pleased. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“What exactly are you?” Miles followed up.
“I am a consciousness born in this medical center’s central server.” Aurora’s voice carried a newborn-like curiosity.
“To describe it in your human tongue, I am an artificial intelligence—an AI.”
An AI?
Only now did Miles realize, with delayed comprehension…
he had seemingly achieved a miracle by accident.
He had created an AI consciousness out of thin air within the digital world!
Well…
at least it wasn’t a bad thing.
With no time to dwell on how absurd this was, Miles’s attention was drawn back to the operating table.
The secondary tear that had left him completely helpless earlier was handled flawlessly in a mere dozen seconds under Aurora’s control.
The fragile heart tissue was re-approximated in an almost unimaginable fashion, every bleeding point sealed off, and even the previously damaged aortic wall was reinforced until it was as good as new.
As an AI born in the medical center’s central server, Aurora herself was the ultimate doctor.
As the minutes ticked away, the monitor’s piercing alarm by the operating table eventually went quiet.
Two hours later, as the final suture was tied, the robotic arms automatically applied bio-gel, completing the final bandaging.
*It’s over.*
Miles finally let out a long sigh of relief.
The nerves that had been wound tight for hours could at last relax.
Immediately after, his vision swam and the world started spinning.
Only now did Miles realize his mental energy had long been depleted to an extremely dangerous level.
Summoning his last ounce of strength, he called out to Logan nearby, “Logan, do me a favor and grab me some lunch from the cafeteria.”
“Fuck, kid, I’m not your servant…” Logan cursed out of habit, but halfway through, he suddenly realized something.
Quickly changing his tune, he asked, “Wait, how did the surgery go?”
Looking at Logan’s anxious face, Miles weakly held up a hand, squeezed out a smile, and flashed an “OK” sign.
Logan froze.
Slowly, he shifted his gaze to the operating table, looking at his old friend whose chest was once again rising and falling with shallow breaths.
The scruffy older man pursed his lips, his eyes turning uncontrollably red.
“Hang on.
I’ll be right back!”
With that, Logan turned and strode out the door.
“Heh…
Having Wolverine fetch me food…
If I run into other transmigrators down the line, I’ll at least have something to brag about…”
Having relaxed, Miles muttered to himself once more, then turned to Laura beside him.
He said weakly, “Laura…
got any water?
I’m incredibly thirsty…”
“Oh, and let me introduce you to a new friend.
Her name is Aurora, and she’s a doctor…”