Her shadowed eyes spoke trouble. Body again nauseous, tired and tight, yet she denied the worry of her health. The blissful experiment of knowledge had been a year of exhilarating mental progress. The dragging fatigue was recent, which ruled the experiment out as cause, she was confident. Terina knew her method of mental stimulation worked. She was proof, the successful lab rat. She did not want the testing to end, but he pressured, and she secretly feared his nagging taunts might be correct. Her private research on the brain was precarious, but the raging power of the vanquishing knowledge gave her the high of a star hopping junkie, and the junkie's trembling fear of withdrawal. Her eyes sank, wondering of the next journey.

"You promised you would stop! You told me over two months ago you would stop, and here you are getting ready to push those things in your ears again!" he yelled. His sticky, thick, accented voice retold the mantra, while pointing his manicure violently about, avoiding her determined eyes.

"I said I'd stop before the wedding," she answered in quiet, condescending monotone routine, while reclining with her passion into the plush green chair. "The probes won't hurt you," she smiled. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"Now!" the angry lover demanded in knowing futility. "Now! I don't want you playing with your life like this! My life!"

"Tomorrow," she said calmly, closing her eyes and touching the access switch lying next to the jar of gray jelly-like slime wired into the computer. The trials of the moment, and the pursuits of life drained from her hosting flesh as her mind spotted the bountiful emptiness of nirvana. She was gone. He knew he could not follow.

A research biologist by trade, Terina had been given free reign in her own lab as reward for a grossly profitable patent on a micro-machine organism that hung around the blood stream and chewed up large blood clots. She had earned her keep forever, so the company secured its best mind by letting her go wild in private. She did. She played, wondered and learned in the stale white lab. She flowed in open-minded tangents from one curiosity to another. It was a moment's wonder when she stumbled upon the idea of how a computer could map the entire of the brain, properly recording the synapses of knowledge. She saw no use for the technique, until she was updating her computer one day. She hooked a portable to her desktop, and hit REPLICATE. The information that had been modified in each computer was merged together to bring each system up-to-date with the fullest, most current information. "What if I could hit REPLICATE in the mind?" she wondered in passing, then pondered the possibility.

It had taken years of the isolated, lonely research she loved, but she figured out how to turn the mind's knowledge into a map, accessible to the computer through a hardwired jar of malleable morphogenic gel. She developed simple hunting probes, which dropped into her ears and actively mapped the knowledge of the mind. Information in the computer could also be mapped. The two files of knowledge could then be merged into a new map of the mind, which the probes would load as instant education - "Reeducation" was her private project's name. The new map became her brain, with the dark viscous gel becoming a backup, and the working model for another day's addition.

After the initial tests worked on one of her few friends - a pet monkey named Tutter - she began to map knowledge for herself. The computers mind map was reconfigured each day with translations of the files she had selected, while she continued to learn in her lab through experience. The first months she worked in her lab normally while her computer generated new knowledge maps, which included the classic literature she had always known about but had never had time to fully read. She still would not experience the read, but she owned the knowledge, and each night a bit more. A few months into the experiment she encountered a lab problem with the design of a micro-machine organism that would automatically repair thinning blood vessels. She loaded information from the classic and bizarre works in biology into the computer. The information was mapped, then merged and loaded into her questioning mind. It worked. Her company was allowed to proclaim another major breakthrough. Her confidence pushed a dream.

Her love of science had left her sensual touch and taste wanting. She longed for a fruitful tryst before the tick of time had tocked past the laws of nature she respected. The "How to Catch a Man" magazine articles and books she chose were translated, mapped and merged. She proclaimed success with the bronze firmness and thick accent of the detailed Nick, but nothing she mapped taught her how to please his ranting passion.

It was now time for the experiment to end. The wedding was only a couple of weeks away. Her voracious appetite for this instant knowledge panicked, and she began to map as much knowledge as she could. The pull of knowledge's power led a dance of desperation, so she continued the mind loading at home when she slept. Nick made it clear he was not going to let her self-experiment when they were married, and she had conceded. She knew of no way to bring him into the world of instant information he resisted as unnatural. She began arriving home early to avoid confrontation, knowing the end was near. She wanted, needed, Nick, physically, but the seduction of knowledge's power and adulation lasted longer than his moment's passion. Nick was her necessary anchor to the world of the body. She accelerated the loadings of the remapped mind, desperate, afraid she had only begun.

"Enough!" Nick ordered in ignorance, seeing his wife-to-be on the chair again, with the wedding only three days away. Terina looking like she needed a month of rest, eyes closed in tranquil subconscious quest. He would put a stop to her working until failure in fatigue. He walked over and turned the machine off. She did not move. He poked. He shook her body, yelling, demanding she get up. She did not move. He waited, but there was no sign of the living, and the sweet gentle breath started to lose its purpose. Her graceful state of floating tranquility was replaced by pale emptiness. In a panic he switched the machine back on, prayed to his god for forgiveness, and begged Him not to punish the innocent beauty he loved. He sat on the couch and watched, in guilt and fear. Her god answered.

The morning sun pierced the dusty window and cracked his eyes. Nick was alone on the couch. Terina was alone in bed, with a greatly expanded knowledge of architectural design and history, as well as the engineering required to create the alters of man.

That evening, Nick made sure he was home when his lovely arrived - he never left the lair. She arrived early, hoping he was gone, but tried to hide the disappointment of his perseverance with the gift of a kiss.

"Hi. What are you doing here so early?" she smiled, eyes sunken, aura aglow.

"I wanted to stop you before you do that, that thing. It's evil! You look sick, ghostly, weak!"

"Thanks for the compliment," she smiled. "I'm tired. I've decided this is my last class. Something strange happened last night. It seemed to take a couple hours longer than normal, then, after I went to bed, I had this dream that the machine was turned off when the remapping was about start and my mind, conscious mind I think, was left blank. It really scared me. I think it was my subconscious telling me I haven't prepared for everything," she paused, and smiled him an affirmation. "I've been lucky."

He wanted to tell her, but was afraid. He justified. She said it would be her last night. "Please, don't," he begged in practice.

"It's for you, a wedding gift." She went right to the comfort of the plush worn chair to avoid another routine confrontation, and set herself in position. He moved towards her to plead, but she turned to him and whispered, "It's the Kama Sutra." He stopped, envisioned the possibilities and smiled, just long enough for her to hit the switch.

Nick awoke from his patience on the uncomfortable couch the next morning. She was still at peace in her chair. He looked at the computer. The display showed what he had seen many times before when replication was complete, but she had not moved. He tried to remain calm as he hesitantly lifted her eyelids with his thumb and whispered into her ear, "Come on, Beauty, wake up." It took no more than a few seconds to reach panic and dial emergency in desperation. Not thirty minutes after he had yanked the probes from her ears, she lay motionless in the hospital. It took a couple of days, but on their wedding day he had his answer.

"Come with me, please." A heavyset nurse, sans plastic smile, guided him to a small stale, white office, where a doctor was waiting, sullen in repose.

"How are you holding up?" the doctor asked in practice.

"Fine!" he snapped, tapping his polished nails.

"I'll be honest with you. She is not in good shape, but the baby is fine."

"Baby?"

"Fetus."

"Baby."

"I'm sorry, did you not know she was pregnant? I assumed..."

"No, we were to marry today and..."

"I'm sorry. I thought you knew," she offered in gentle remorse, hoping the news might cheer.

He shook his head in search of a moment's focus. "Is she going to be alright?"

"I can't say. It's weird. Her brain scan shows a very low level of development." She paused in quandary. "She's not brain dead, but it's like the brain has not yet really developed. I know of her incredible work. She was a brilliant woman."

"Is!" he corrected quickly, dark eyes sinking with fear and frustration. "Will she be all right? Will she come out of it? How have others done in this condition? How..."

"There are no records that I can find of a condition like this, at least in an adult," the doctor answered calmly. "The imagery of the brain matches the development of a newborn, which is strange because the fetus shows a very, very high level of brain development. Very high."

Nick threw his head back against the coarse wall, trying to knock away the nonsense of what he now knew. "That baby knows everything," he whispered, eyes closed in focus of her lost smile.

"What?"

"I have her mind," he smiled in hope. "I know where it is. Do you know anything about replication?"

"Cloning? We don't do that here. The baby will be close, it is a girl," she offered, worried about the steps a hurt and desperate man might undertake.

"No, computers. Computerized brain replication, or something, I think she called it," he tried to clarify, pleading, hoping to find understanding. "It's a girl?" he added, pausing with a smile of selfish pleasure and pride. "Wow," he chuckled. "I don't really understand it, but I have this jar that's a map of her mind... She said it was all there. I don't understand it," he apologized, hoping, desperate. "Please, I have it in a jar."

The doctor did not ponder the distraught man's ramblings, as they made no sense. She motioned to an assistant to get some help, a counselor, security. It was not the first time the doctor had seen someone lose their mind when a loved on was lost.