Winter Harvest

by Dawn Chapman

  “We don’t have a choice. I’m going to share some of our mission files with you now. See what you make of them, and then you can let me know?” Jai said, then seemed to push thin air at me.

  I heard a ping in my head, and a small file icon popped up. Wow, that was something I wasn’t expecting.

  When I clicked it, my internal computer system still went to work and sorted out all the files independently. I watched as it ordered and then reordered them. This was fascinating.

  “What’s going on?” Rei asked.

  “My internal is sorting through things.”

  “You’ve an internal?”

  “Yeah, was a gift from my college.”

  “What make?” Denn asked, her eyes twinkling.

  I frowned, I wasn’t sure. “Would I be able to see that info?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but maybe…”

  “Give Denn access. She’ll take a look.”

  Denn approached me. “I should be able to access remotely for a quick look.”

  Shit! What if that revealed more than I wanted her to know? What about my main mission? Hiroto? Fuck! I looked around to them all. Could I open myself up to them? Right now?

  When this invite came forwards, it had different connotations for me given this situation. If I denied them, would they trust me? I could easily end up dead again. I was so shit at decisions.

  CONNECT AI TECH 25151 TO INTERNAL?

  Y/N

  I was worried.

  I had no clue what these guys could do to my internal systems if they wanted to.

  I stayed true to myself, thinking that if they really wanted to hurt me or do something bad, they wouldn’t have helped my sorry ass off that cliff face. It would probably have been better that I’d died.

  This time when I clicked Yes, I heard a soft ping and felt something inside my mind. It was as if she was rooting about.

  “Sorry, if it feels weird,” she said. “It will push all your buttons and make me seem like an invader even if I’ve been accepted into the system. It’s a fight mechanism that I wouldn’t want anyone to lose.”

  “Really? Then how or why is an invite given out?”

  Jai standing at my side, laughed. “We won’t hurt you and she really won’t. She’s a momma bear.”

  Denn shot him a look, and Naylar patted her arm. “Go easy.”

  It did feel really weird as things were pushed and prodded in my head.

  It tickled too, and I let out a cackle.

  “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone with this before. I don’t actually know its classification. When did you get it, you say?”

  “On my birthday.” In flashes, I recalled the whole thing yet again, and she witnessed it with me.

  “Wait!” Denn said suddenly. “This is impossible, it isn’t tech at all. It’s all organic. I don’t understand at all.”

  “Upgrade,” I added. Organic?

  “You’ve something else in here,” she said, but I knew, Hiroto was special. Is special. “Top of the range for sure, and I’ve no doubt they’re watching your every move already.”

  “Heh,” I laughed, remembering back to the day I got out of the hospital. The day that Hiroto had actually recruited me. “No, they won’t be doing that?”

  “Why?” she asked and poked about some more. This time there was a little pain, and the internal view screen popped up, lines of code after code.

  “Because I broke their tracking codes as soon as I realised they were watching me. I had watched my dad trying to fix the lawnmower. He couldn’t, but later that night I saw advertising for local repairmen. I’d even checked my savings and our budget. Lo and behold, their services were in my price range, just to entice me and prove to them I was easily manipulated. There was no other way Arndale would know that kind of inside info without watching me.”

  “You broke their code?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, not feeling bad the truth was coming out now, and I remembered more and more of it. “I knew they were watching me, or at least someone in their advertising system was. I wasn’t going to put up with that.”

  “You really turned it off?”

  I shrugged and opened up my own internal AI’s box. I hadn’t looked that close recently with Hiroto being there to do everything. But yes, there it was. The code blinked in and out, then rushed past me at almost breakneck speed.

  “I’d watched it for days,” I admitted to them. “Before I figured out the code and managed to get in and pull out what I needed. I didn’t want them to know I’d managed it, either, so I fed them baseline stuff through it on a daily basis. I did good, right?”

  Denn’s giggle filled my mind. “Kyle, you have no idea. There’s only a few people who can do this, and no one admits to it.”

  “Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have done either,” I said. I tried to see something of her while she was poking around in me.

  ID SCAN – FAILED

  YOU CANNOT SEE THE STAT SHEETS OF A HIGHER UP, YOU KNOW THIS.

  Crap. What were their levels? I mean, they were calling me a newb, and I was I thought at a decent level considering I’d just gotten here. As the visions before me vanished, I was back to looking into the firelight of the cave.

  “Well,” Jai said. “I am glad you trusted Denn. That tells me a lot, and although you have Shade Brain, you’re worth our trust. For now.”

  “I have a lot to go through, here,” I said to Jai. “It might take me awhile. How long do we have?”

  Jai checked his watch again. “Sixteen hours.”

  Not much time. I swallowed. Cracking my knuckles, I pushed up. “I need to walk about and sort this out in my head. Can you guys give me a little space?”

  Jai looked to the others. “Sure. If you need us, we’ll be here, okay?”

  I nodded, and without looking at any of them, I moved away from the light of the fire and towards a spot where I could sit, back to the wall, with my eyes on them.

  I could hear their conversation start up. No way were they going to hide it, or the fact this was a big deal, but I was out of my depth. Totally.

  I was a noob still in a body that wasn’t mine. Everything about it was so fresh I could feel the cold down into my bones despite what they’d given me. I needed to get these clothes upgraded as soon as possible.

  My thoughts drifted to the soft flesh and feel of Saskia. She would have something else to keep me warm.

  I tried to focus on what I needed to do, not sex, but I actually couldn’t.

  Instead, my thoughts turned to my friends, overwhelming darkness tried to cloud my mind again. I missed my dad, my real friends. I missed Hiroto and Xirob arguing in my mind, and I wanted them back. I missed having Dylan to joke around with.

  I struggled this time only briefly. I would not let this beat me. I would get back to my friends. I would figure out what happened to Hiroto, too.

  AWESOME JOB

  YOU MANAGED TO BANISH DEPRESSION FOR GOOD, FUELLING IT WITH NOTHING BUT YOUR RESOLVE.

  At least the system snarkiness was still hanging around. That meant at least one thing hadn’t changed. I focussed again and forced myself to look over the files.

  My internal filing system had done a great job sorting the files; I just didn’t want to open the can of worms I felt was there.

  I didn’t have much of a choice in what I wanted to see. The faces around the campsite had already been watching my every move, and I hesitated just once more before I clicked open the files.

  I knew without a doubt there would be a massive amount of data coming my way. And I watched as it scrolled by. Nothing out of the ordinary, just basic code, one line then another and then another.

  Then something caught my eye. I stopped it, scrolled the text back to give it a second look.

  ACCESS DENIED

  Damn it. I couldn’t get into see the very thing I wanted.

  I looked to Jai and waved him over, but he couldn’t see me, so I shouted for him.

  He knelt before
me. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t have access to anything of importance yet. Access is denied.”

  He let out a sigh. “We need to get you somewhere near our levels. The systems won’t allow you to see any of it despite your background.”

  “What levels are you?” I asked, hoping he’d tell me if I couldn’t see any of it.

  He grinned. “I’m at level eighty-seven, if that’s any indication.”

  “Fuck, there’s no way I can catch up to you! I don’t know anything about this planet.”

  My tone had gotten the attention of the others.

  “Where was your first spawn?” Naylar’s questioning voice spoke from behind the fire, and she moved in close to us.

  “Tolsa,” I replied not wanting to lie now.

  “Damn, that’s not possible. Right, Denn?”

  “I don’t know,” Denn said. “I’ve never heard a newbie spawning anywhere else other than the home planet?”

  “Yeah, Tolsa. That’s a long, long way out.” Jai added. “What the hell?”

  “From what I’ve learned already,” I said, “the system is consistent planet to planet. But I spent a few months studying their coding and the way they did things on Tolsa.”

  “How much do you understand of the system?”

  “Well, some of this is only clicking into place now that I’ve seen some of your files. But you can pick skills from the nanites you were originally given, and then our bodies are altered so we can be extensions of each other.”

  “Correct. At least you understand how the nanites and the denti bodies we are in interact.”

  I looked down to what I had only just become accustomed to these last few months and felt sick remembering the face inside me and the person they’d stolen this body from.

  “No, you don’t understand.” I coughed. “You don’t understand at all. We’re all pawns just as much as the denti are the bodies we’ve stolen. And you know how they did that? They stole their birth planet.”

  “Stole?” Naylar asked.

  I caught the others’ shock. “You don’t know that they are real, do you?”

  Naylar’s hand covered her mouth as Denn sat cross-legged before me. “I suspected they were real creatures.”

  “Babe, you never said!” Naylar sat with her, and Denn wrapped her in a hug.

  “I didn’t want to ever worry anyone.”

  I sucked in a breath and told them my story of Xirob. At least if he had died, people would know what a hero he actually was. Telling the truth about him and how much he’d started to mean to me was so freeing. This massive weight was falling off my shoulders—it felt so good to get it out.

  Blood filled my veins, bursting through at speeds I couldn’t comprehend as my adrenaline spiked with the anger at the truths I was passing on. “I’d thought many things, and those many things just eluded me until now. You don’t know what Arndale does. To our hosts…” I paused trying to figure out where to go next. “The pictures of the war going on, the way things were portrayed back at home? Everything they gave us was false, everything. It was all a lie.”

  We hadn’t just died, I thought but didn’t voice, we’d died and gone to hell in more ways than the team before me could ever know.

  “We’re just pawns, something to stand on the battlefield for them. Something to fight and they take whatever the hell they want. They don’t care who suffers. The denti suffered. The denti that was inside this body—” I slapped the side of my head. “He suffered.”

  Jai looked to Naylar. They all were shocked at my words.

  “Arndale wants us to think our bodies are dead. They are not dead. We are not dead. We are just in storage. We can go home. I am sure of it. And I’m here to prove it.” That was the burgeoning question that all of us were going to ask at some point. Can we go home? “I don’t know how long you’ve been down here, but things are changing. Tolsa is changing.”

  Denn cursed under her breath.

  “I’m one of the oldest, hence the Momma Bear,” she said from the other side of the fire.

  “Then how long?” I asked her.

  “The war’s been going on for how long? As far as you know?” She returned the question.

  “Seventy years or so, I’m not sure.”

  “You’re close, but not that close.”

  I swallowed and looked to Denn, and her face crumpled.

  Naylar hugged her again, and I didn’t push it. I could only gather that she was a lot older than me, possibly than my whole family.

  I wanted to see their stats. I was so curious. The more I tried to look, though, the more I saw - Access Denied.

  Rei moved to the doorway. “I suggest we get some sleep and move out in the morning. We’ll be able to start to get him up some levels at least, give him access to some more of the data.”

  “Do any of you guys remember how it was for us?” Naylar asked. “Maybe if I dig deep into the recess of my mind,” Denn replied for her.

  “How did you guys start out?”

  Naylar patted the blankets now by the fire. “I’ll tell the story, if the others just want to settle in. It’s a long one, and they need rest before the dawn.”

  They seemed to turn their backs on us. I was sure they had their reasons.

  I settled nearer to the fire and watched as the others were soon asleep.

  That surprised me; they were snoring gently in no time.

  “They seem a nice bunch of people,” I said, trying more to relax myself than anything else.

  “They are, so let me tell you a few things,” Naylar said.

  “Any knowledge will help, thank you. I just feel so lost at the moment.”

  “And you will be. You’re really out of your depth. The newbies— sorry—don’t usually leave the camps for the first few years.”

  “I know. It’s all so odd.”

  “Yeah, they’ve trained up on many things that they’ll need out here, and a lot of that’s never going to be done in the field.”

  “I’m screwed, right?”

  “I don’t know. It seems you’ve gotten here for a reason, so I want to try and figure that out before I jump to any other conclusions.”

  “I respawned, I think. But my number’s not gone up. I was last floating in space. I died.”

  “You didn’t respawn. There’re no vats around here. I think someone wanted or needed you here. You were dropped off.”

  “I didn’t respawn...” It didn’t seem possible to be in one place and then in another with no recollection of in between. I slapped the side of my head. “Have I been injured? I mean, is there anything that shows? Brain injury, poison? Something, a virus?”

  “We can get you to a med unit inside the science facilities when we get there, but you don’t look like you’ve taken a knock or anything.”

  I sighed. I clearly had. Something wasn’t working. “Yeah, something isn’t right. I ruined your mission.”

  “Maybe we weren’t supposed to complete it,” Naylar fiddled with her hair, trying her best to finger comb knots out of it. “At least not yet, or maybe you’re supposed to help us in some way that I’m not sure of.”

  “So much to think on. I’m not sure I can help. I’m nowhere near your levels. I missed out on all the spawn-point training.”

  “It’s a lot. It was a lot for me back there.”

  “Was first training…” I paused. “Was it bad?”

  “You’ve no idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  I think I could have listened to her voice all night and her stories for a lot longer than that. The way she described everything was amazing, down to the details of the brutality, the people around her who weren’t scared of pushing them or breaking them. And that is what it was about.

  Their spirits and their souls were crushed. Most of the time, she said they went insane very quickly. There were drugs, tech, and other things used to try and sort that out, to bring them back from almost being too far gone to ever function out on the field. T
he only real thing that kept humans sane in this environment was the gaming system. It was easier and safer for us to think of it like that, like it wasn’t real. It was a cop-out.

  That was how they survived. The thought that they were playing games, that they could gain the skills and the knowledge to level, to improve, to do more, to be better.

  The more I thought about it, the easier that was to actually comprehend.

  We would go insane thinking we had no real body, being shoved into countless battles and being pushed beyond the limits of what we could ever imagine. So yeah, the fact they brought in the gaming system and how it all worked made perfect sense. It was so scary. So much so that of course I then had to ask, “So why do you accept it for what it is? You seem younger than the others?”

  “I’ve been in the system for twenty-eight years. I was born in a little town out of Nebraska. They told my parents I’d passed all their tests and this was the best life I could have. Teaching tech to others. At that point it wasn’t so much the war we have going on now. It was very much recon, and a few other systems were being hit, but nothing like this.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Just war. They seem to like to fight and fight for our tech and space. Pretty much what any alien species you’d think you’d find out here would want.”

  “That’s pretty bad that we don’t know what they want.”

  “Oh, they know. They just don’t want to tell us, the grunts.”

  “Nice to see politics don’t change no matter what world we are on.”

  She nodded and watched Denn sleeping. “Politics. That’s all I’m here for, that gal there.”

  “You love her?”

  “Yes, I do. I’ll love her every time I’m reborn and have to fight my way back, and I will do that again and again if I must. If I have to die to protect her or them, I will.”

  It was fair warning, and I could accept that. “What about Rei and Jai then, are they brothers?”

  “Only in war, not from the same family or anything like that, if that’s what you’re meaning.”

  “No, just their names being so similar. I wasn’t sure.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I guess they are. That’s probably something they should tell you, how that came about.”