CHAPTER 233: FIRST PATIENT

"What about my cancer?" asked Lars.

"If you accepted the soul bond today, then your manifestation here in my soul space would never be worse than your body is right now. Even if your body deteriorated significantly before you died, you can roll back your manifestation’s physical condition to this point in time."

"But you can’t cure his cancer?" asked Astrid.

"Not now, no. It is theoretically possible for us to create some kind of tailored treatment, but none of us have any actual experience doing that, so there’s no guarantee of success."

"What’s the worst that could happen?" asked Lars.

"You die earlier than you planned. We could probably validate the treatment before exporting the effects to your physical body, but there’s always the possibility that we missed something critical that only manifests after the export."

Astrid looked at her grandfather with pleading eyes.

Jack understood her feelings. If someone had offered him and Fran this kind of opportunity, he would have begged her to accept.

The look Lars gave him reminded him of the way Fran had sometimes looked at him near the end. Lars had resigned himself to his fate and was focused on trying to get Astrid to move past his pending death.

"My adoptive mother died of cancer, so I know how both of you feel. And I understand better than most what my offer means to you."

Lars looked at Astrid and said, "If we merge, you won’t have to deal with asinine government contracting bureaucracy anymore. And Phineas is a reasonable man."

She scrubbed her face with her hands, took a deep breath, then looked at her grandfather. He nodded.

She turned to Jack and said, "We accept."

Jack nodded. Then, looking at Lars, he said, "I’ll send the soul bond request to you first," then looking at Astrid, "then to you."

They nodded in assent. He removed the obedience modifications and sent a request to Lars.

[Soul Bond Accepted: Lars Jensen]

Lars accepted immediately, and Jack shaped his soul bond with Lars to be the same as he did with Phineas. No emotional connection, gated mental access for telepathy.

As soon as the bond was completed, Lars turned and smiled at Astrid. "It’s done."

"How does it feel?" she asked, sounding a touch nervous.

"It doesn’t feel like anything. I just know it’s there."

She turned and looked at Jack. "Okay, I’m ready."

He sent the request.

[Soul Bond Accepted: Astrid Jensen]

There was a brief pause before she accepted.

When their soul bond formation started, Jack sensed from her a deep desire to connect. Not necessarily with him, but with someone.

So, besides the now standard gated mental access, he also pulled her soul closer. Not too close, just close enough so that they could just barely sense each other’s emotions, but not so close that there would be a subconscious shift in how they felt about each other.

When their soul bond completed, she squinted her eyes at him.

"You did something?"

"I did. Your soul was craving connection, so I gave it just a little of what it wanted. If you focus on me through our connection, you should be able to sense my emotions."

He did the same, and could sense that her initial suspicion had faded and was replaced with begrudging acceptance and maybe a touch of contentment.

"Huh. I expected more lust," she said, almost absentmindedly.

"If a man is used to eating filet mignon, would you expect him to drool over prime rib?"

She squinted at him, like she wasn’t sure if she should be insulted, and he could sense some annoyance from her over their connection.

Lars tried to hide a smile, clearly amused at Astrid’s reaction.

Ignoring both of their reactions, he stood and said, "Follow me. I’ll get you set up with rooms and introduce you to my other business associates."

They had to pass through his white room to get to the separate space he was tentatively dubbing his business space.

Once they entered the hall and passed through the first security door, Astrid asked, "What was that room back there, and where do those other halls lead?"

Passing into the business common room, he said, "You’re not authorized to access that area, so there’s no point talking about it."

"Why not?" she asked, indignant.

"Because that’s my personal space, and only my girlfriends have access."

"Did you say girlfriends, plural?" asked Lars.

"Yep, I have seven, but only five are soul bonded so far."

Lars gave Jack a thumbs up behind Astrid’s back as she exclaimed, "Seven?!"

Jack checked his connection with Astrid and found that she was feeling surprise, but no jealousy or disgust.

He set up bedrooms and offices for each of them, and introduced them to Heidy and Cindy, who were hanging out in Phineas’ office chatting.

They all talked for a bit, then he left and headed to Madison’s office to let them know about his newest additions to the business team.

When he entered Madison’s office, he expected her to jump up to give him a hug, but instead she waved a hand at him, then returned to whatever she was doing.

Through their connection, he could sense that she already felt hugged and wasn’t desperate for connection anymore.

Rina wasn’t engrossed in something this time, so she did get up and give him a quick hug.

"I’ve soul bonded four new people today," he said. "The first two are Heidy Oakland and Cindy Larkin. They will be the CEO and VP of data center operations, respectively, for Radius 10K. The other two are Lars Jensen and his granddaughter Astrid. They are CEO and VP of operations for Jensen Manufacturing."

Then, turning to Rina, he said, "You might want to go talk to Astrid. She might have useful input on your fabricator designs. And you might also want to talk to Cindy about server infrastructure design, since she will be heading our data center operations."

She nodded, then turned and left the office.

To Nora he said, "Lars has pancreatic cancer. I told them that we would at least try to create a treatment for him, but that we make no promises."

"I’ve read about a few techniques that are potentially effective for pancreatic cancer, but they are stuck in the research phase because there are reliability issues. The gene-tailoring process is still too error-prone."

"With your advances in gene editing, do you think you could make a safe treatment for Lars?"

"Yes, actually. I think I might be able to do that."