LIGHTNOVELONLINE 40. From The Ashes
Time lost all meaning pretty quickly. Without any sensations feeding from my body, it was difficult to really discern much of anything except for the feeling of air entering my lungs and then leaving.
Unlike most other medical procedures, the continuity of consciousness vessel transfer left the patient fully awake and aware. Every twitch of a muscle, every movement of the eyes, each impulse in the nervous system was being tracked and recorded by the Institute computers. Though I couldn’t at all feel it, I knew that the myriad of sensors and probes attached to my skull were reading the neurons in my brain and beginning the transfer.
Through an insanely complex system involving quantum entanglement and incredibly precise electrostimulation, the system would match brain waves in my old shell and stimulate them within the various cortexes of the new shell’s brain tissue.
Much like computers, the Institute process was forcing all of the software that made up my being to run in parallel on both pieces of hardware and slowly migrating each process to solely operate on the new system.
Within the sensory deprivation tank, I really couldn’t even keep track of the progress. There were no sensations I could really point to that differentiated between the two. The first I realized that things were actually working was when I felt the ghostly sensation of a very slightly different feeling from my lungs. It was difficult to point out, but I could somewhat tell that there was a difference in the amount of air coming in.
The whole thing was bizarre to experience. Time had become malleable, my senses were almost useless and everything felt just plain off. A point came when I was able to twitch my fingers and even though I was only trying to move a single digit, I felt two moving in response. Both of the responding fingers seemed to be the pointer of the left hand, despite the strangeness of that being even remotely possible. For a brief period of time, I could feel two left arms and a right with fifteen fingers between them.
My entire perception seemed to fuzz slightly as my mind was literally pulled across two bodies. For every little thing I could feel throughout my body, it was doubled. Dissociation had long been a coping mechanism for me, but this was a very different experience for me. I felt like I was being torn apart in an unthinkably painless manner.
It didn’t last long though. Soon after, one of the sets of input began to fade, nerve by nerve. The incredible and unnerving sense of duality finally, painstakingly compressed into only a singular head once more.
There was no way to know how long I was in that tank (those tanks?). Without any way of experiencing anything outside, the machine became my world. Nothing else existed for me. Echo, Doctor Hayes, Vox, they all existed in another world, but in this one I was alone. In a way, I likened it to a second trip through the womb, the death of one life and reincarnation into another.
When I was young and just getting used to living in the foster home, my caretaker had set me in front of a screen for schooling. There weren’t enough children around to justify a proper class. At first, I was good at staying on task and completing my assignments. I was a model student for the first decade of my time around MacNair Gateway. By the time I started my teenage years, I was beginning to finally learn exactly what kind of world I had been born into.
Money ruled everything, that much was abundantly clear. If you had enough of it, you got to tell people what to do, even if that meant you just told them to screw off. Without it, you were the one that got told what to do. For even just a hope for survival, you had to follow the whims of those with the biggest bank accounts. Everything in your life was dictated by them. After finally convincing the old puritan in charge of the bunkhouse to tell me what had become of my parents, I also learned that nobody really cared about me and if anyone pretended to, it was only because I had some use to them.
At first, that resulted in me trying to prove myself valuable to my caretakers. I helped clean, I helped move things. For them though, I was just doing what was expected of me, and nothing changed. So then I stopped helping. If being what they wanted wasn’t going to get me further in life, what was the point?
My fourteen year old self became a problem after that. I got into trouble, I got into fights, I got into places I had no business being. If it got me away from my supposed home, I would do it.
It was during this time that I began exploring the corners of the galactic net that had always been forbidden to me because of the den-mother. I had known I wasn’t like the other boys I roomed with, but the net taught me what there was beyond my caretaker’s archaic views. My mind opened to new possibilities and became filled with dreams of what could be.
Research and my hours in the VR suites became the only times I wasn’t getting into trouble for a while, right up until Madame Klein found out what kinds of supposedly perverted knowledge I was learning. Shoved out of the bunkhouse, I would end up causing trouble again before being pushed back into the Kleins’ foster house so that I would be out of the way. Then I would end up in the suites again. It became a cycle.
After one particular instance of me escaping into the forbidden sections of the station, I ended up in the spaceport. Cargo was being moved all over, passengers and pilots alike milled about, ships of all shapes and sizes flew around, and beyond all of them, I caught my first glimpses into the infinite expanse of space beyond. My world had grown and I didn’t want to be stuck in the same box anymore.
By being an absolute menace, I finally got one of the small logistics companies to take me on as an apprentice, if only to keep me out of trouble. Finally I became a semi-functional addition to the world around me. I started in the warehouse, lugging crates. Eventually I graduated on to ferrying empty shuttles between docks. Taking the stick for the first time saw my world expand just a little bit more as it occurred to me that I could someday be away from the station, just like all of the ships that I helped load.
My world grew by leaps and bounds when the IRS Forge warped in with a stranded transport in tow. Having reached the ripe age of sixteen, I bullied my way into a job with the captain of that ship. To my utter surprise, Jay Blackburn proved to be very different from the other adults I’d known in my life. He seemed to care about me as a person rather than a source of labor. I never truly believed it would last, though. We had our arguments, but we always made up after. The man that was supposed to be my ticket away from Macnair Gateway became a mentor, a true teacher.
It still wasn’t enough for me, though. In my mind, to the captain and all of the crew, I would never be more than the stupid kid that had come aboard begging for a job all those years ago. Besides, they would never understand my real goals. I had to be my own person. I had to reach for the stars by my own power.
A ship belonging to the mighty Torgal Corporation sent out a distress call when I was twenty-two. We rescued the crew and the broken ship and set off towards the nearest Torgal outpost in an outer-rim system by the name of Telemachus. During the days-long warp cruise, I talked to some of the rescued crew and learned about the operations in that system, about the treasure trove of scrap and debris that was free for the taking to anyone with the smarts and equipment to do so.
My first doubts of being wrong about the true nature of people began there, looking into the eyes of Captain Blackburn when I told him my new plans. There was a sadness in his eyes that I wasn’t entirely certain was only because he was losing a worker.
The captain wasn’t thrilled with my idea, of course, but I was an adult and I knew better. Experience had shown that I couldn’t rely on the old man forever, and I needed to make my own way in life before he abandoned me like everyone else had. So I ignored my doubts and pushed on. The man at least did me the singular kindness of giving me one friend I would never have to doubt. Vox was a machine, after all, and could never betray me.
I thought I had struck gold when the Oxide began coming together. I was finally going to be my own person. I was going to have the power to say what I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it. There was even one of the Torgal bosses willing to give me a loan so that I could get to work. I was useful to him, but I also had the power to dictate terms for the first time ever.
Harvey Kruger, as I learned was the manager’s name, was a greedy snake with no care for anyone other than himself. That wasn’t a surprise though. He was using me to achieve his goals just as much as I was using him to achieve my own. This was the way of things. I didn’t like the man, but that was to be expected.
Two years later I watched as the manifestation of all of my dreams and work disintegrated around me. I thought I was dead. When I woke up, I almost wished I had been. Everything was ruined and I was left with nothing. I’d burned every bridge I’d ever crossed on the altar of progress and now I had lost it all. Perhaps I really was just doomed to a life of nothing. The flames of my youth had been reduced to ashes.
Yet, despite all of that, a hand was still offered. Not out of spite, not out of a perverted sense of duty, but because of simple kindness. I had no possible use to them in my broken state, but the hand was still offered. It was proof that my experience on the Forge hadn’t been just a fluke. Some people really did care. The Ericksons, Echo in particular, willingly gave me a new future to look forward to. There was fresh fuel for me to burn.
Then the real truth of my ‘accident’ came out. It hadn’t been my own fault. In my climb to independence, I had become a threat to one of the people I once thought were untouchable. I was not just a cog in the machine anymore. Harvey Kruger’s revenge became the spark that rekindled my soul.
Now, with the help of my friends, much like the mythical phoenix from old Earth tales, I was being reborn from the ashes. I was going to be stronger, better, nothing was going to beat me down like I had been before.
My inner world suddenly shattered. The sound of a hiss pounded in my ears. It seemed painfully loud and yet incredibly quiet at the same time. The light of the old world greeted the new me and I winced at the burning sensation in my fresh eyes.
The lid of my pod slid open and two faces looked down at me. Doctor Hayes carefully lifted the halo from my forehead and set it aside. She looked pleased to see me. At that moment I couldn’t have cared less about the doctor though, because the other face was a much more welcome sight.
Light shining through the blue and pink streaks in her radiant white hair, Echo looked down at me with a broad smile.
“Hey there, gorgeous. Welcome back.”