It was for my safety, or so I was told. Curiously, Jill was wearing a similar one, only MORPHIC-HEI was inscribed across the front. You’d think the tail and the triangular ears would give it away. It was part of our planned acclimation to colonial citizenship, and our labeling as second class citizens. I despised it.
It was bad enough they did it to ferals.
“This whole thing chafes,” I said, referring to everything but my harness.
“It should, Boss. Don’t forget that,” Jill reminded, her tone becoming serious.
I simply nodded in agreement.
You must complete your mission.
“Let’s just get down planet side and get this done,” I turned, firmly focusing on the task at hand. The first two morphic columns had just gotten underway, and this was to be the first Colonial Appreciation Day. They hadn’t given me the choice to speak; they told me where to be and how high to jump. To be honest, it felt a little bit like being back in Basic.
“What’s the schedule like after the meeting?” I asked, relying on my assistant.
“Well, we should have reports from the maintenance crews on the Demeter and the Hestia. There was that one problem with one of the nano forge ships producing parts out of tolerance. That should have been resolved.” Her right ear flicked as she checked the notes on her tablet.
“Yeah, but that puts us two weeks behind on the Hestia. If she gets much farther from the production schedule of the Demeter, we are going to have to launch her alone.” The Hestia had been the problem from the very beginning. She was the least complete, and the least constructed of all of them.
"The split up is inevitable, but the UEA seems happy with the results. The fourth column contains all the leadership, and the stragglers, the ones taking the longest to get off world. It also happens to be our ride out there. It's pretty obvious they planned it that way." It was an excellent chess move; by keeping the morphic leadership under lock and key, they were working to minimize the chance of rebellion. Going so far as to isolating all of us on our own world. Centioc One.
It took more than leadership to run a revolution, which is one of the reasons the UEA was dividing us the way they were.
I rubbed my temples, feeling another stress headache coming on. “Just please tell me the engines arrived last week.”
“Those modified Gen II’s you ordered from the exchange? Yeah Boss, even came with the Higgs field manipulators mostly working.” I breathed a sigh of relief at her words.
“Oh thank goodness. That’s a load off.” They had been delaying them for weeks and my maintenance crews were getting tired of working in Zero G and on auxiliary batteries.
The transport craft touched down with a heavy thud. It seemed no one in the UEA was teaching soft landings these days, and I grumbled a bit as I was shook back and forth. As the ramp lowered down and the bright light of the early spring day shone through, I was forced to squint, so long had I spent in space; even my fur was stark white still, not having the light to shift or trigger the brown that was the hallmark of my summer colors.
The crowd was mainly morphic, and as I looked out from the side stage, I could see a sea of those morphic identifier tags. We were at one of the relocation camps. Looking around at the squalid settings, with their tents instead of houses, and the shabby nature of it all, I could see how a section of the hallway on a starship would have been worth its weight in gold.
The UEA was simply answering the demand. The first two columns deployed with 590,000 souls aboard. Everyone who could have gone on those columns had. Those two had filled up the fastest, I supposed any ball of dirt beat the one that was keeping them in chains.
I was becoming reacquainted with all of the bitterness and rage that had driven me towards Centioc the first time, and it was keeping me going. The pain in my head was reaching levels that concerned even me, and I was having to work harder and harder to keep it from Jill.
Gripping the sides of my head briefly between my forepaws seemed to help, and I let out a subtle groan. I felt like I hadn’t slept in days, but I honestly couldn't remember. Sometimes nothing felt real, like I was sleepwalking through a dream, and other times, everything had this harsh and terrible edge to it.
In my more lucid moments, my greatest fear was that the stress and terror were getting to me, and that I was slowly losing my mind.
You must complete your mission.
“Snow! Hello, Boss?” Jill said, and I snapped out of my reflection.
“What?” I looked around and became reacquainted with my surroundings. That’s right, the camp. The speech.
“You kind of zoned out on me again. You sure you're alright?” she asked. She was losing faith in my ability to tell, but then again, so was I.
You are fin.... ERROR....
“Actually, no, and yes, you win. I’ll see a doctor just after today’s appearance.” The words felt like a victory, and an act of rebellion. Fear seized me, how much had I been ignoring? This really had to stop. Slowly memories flooded in, of Jill after me to get help for weeks or was it months? Time was fuzzy and hard to track.
Still, the columns were launching; it was the perfect time for a maintenance cycle.
“I want someone Harper has vetted personally,” I ordered and then winced. Nausea and tinnitus gripped me as my world spun.
“No problem Boss. Already done. While you are up on stage, I’ll have Harper set it up and a transport waiting,” Jill replied. It was obvious they had only been waiting on me to give in for quite a while.
She made a few entries into her DataPad, and sent the message. There was a bright white flash of light. The ringing in my ears built to a crescendo, becoming so deafening I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, then, just as quickly as it came, it stopped.
A young stage manager walked in front of me and stooped down, mere inches from my face, treating me more like a non-sapient animal than a person.
“Alright Bill, the bunny is here. Are you ready for the next critter act?” Her tone was sarcastic, ignoring both Jill and myself. The headache pounded, and the pain briefly turned to rage as she listened to some voice on the other side of the headset.
“Yeah, send the mixer bitch out,” I heard from over the headset, my large ears and close proximity providing me a boon.
“I can hear you, ya know.” I did nothing to hide my anger, even putting in the effort to stomp the ground.
“Aww cute, it thinks it’s a lil person,” she fuzzled my ears and walked off.
“What the hell was that? Where did they dig up that ding bat?” I asked looking at Jill.
“I dunno, Boss, but you better get out there,” Jill replied, looking shocked.
The headache screamed in my ears. It felt like a banshee was locked in my head and fed amphetamines. I hopped forward a meter or so, then fell. Got my paws mostly back underneath me and made my way out towards the stage.
Vertigo seized me and my vision was playing up, but I had to push through. I had to finish the mission. I steadied myself, gripping on to the podium with my forepaws for dear life just to keep them from shaking. The light in front of me on the podium began to flash, and then went a solid lurid red. Just looking at it made me nauseous.
“My…fellow morphics.” I had no way to tell the meter of my speech, I was so disoriented, but I had to press on… didn’t I?
I must complete the mission.
“A short time… ago… I made a promise… a promise to…”
The pain in my head blossomed as my body seized up. My vision pulsed and faded at the edges. I became dimly aware that I was falling. I hit the ground hard, looking off stage to see that Jill was down too, along with every other morphic in my limited field of vision.
This seems so familiar….I thought, as I blacked out.
Time passed… I couldn’t tell how long I had been out. Everything hurt, everything felt fuzzy, and there was something strange about my vision. I could barely move.
Chapter 21
N
eural…!@%$%^^…ected…C^oru(ion…
Re-Routing in progress…
01000101 01110010 01100101 01100010 01110101 01110011 01001001 01101110 01100100 01110101 01110011 01110100 01110010 01101001 01100101 01110011 01001001 01101110 01100011 00101110
Nothing felt real, I had no idea where I was. There was an alien coldness that seemed to pervade every inch of me, and my paws felt far away, along with everything else.
“Thoth come online,” said a shadowy voice. There was a powerful tug inside of me, yanking me towards compliance.
“Active. State demand,” I replied. There could only be obedience. The voice coming from my collar was my own, but not. I could not recognize myself in its dead tones, and flat inflection.
Far away, there was some part of me that was screaming, banging against the wall of some imperceptible cage.
That is not important. I must complete my mission.
“Transfer logs of recent mission to Corval Prime, and prepare for debugging.” His commands were more than heard, they were felt at some core level of my being.
“Affirmative. Upload commencing.” There was no choice or will of my own. The response was parroted, as data was automatically retrieved similar to the way one would access a hard drive. Deep panic ate at me, and I wanted to scream, protest, demand an explanation, something… but I was hemmed in on all sides, I was kept from myself, watching out from a cell just behind my eyes.
There was a bright flash, and I found myself in another place. Sterile smells, and the sound of a rhythmic slow beeping. Someone was petting my ears.
I was conscious, but locked in. My body felt heavy and foreign, like it was a husk surrounding a dying ember.
“Error in sector 3111-855k, rerouting… Accessing… Accessing…” I replied.
“I’m fine Jill, I don’t need a doctor, and besides, I’m too busy. I promise once I get planet side, I’ll get checked out. Timestamp... Error...”
“She’s doing it again, like she’s playing back a file,” Jill’s voice was panicked, confused.
“Doc what do you make of this?” That voice sounded like Jon, but I couldn’t turn my head, my vision was stuck, and I was staring up at the ceiling.
“This is way above my pay grade sir, there is nothing I can do. She’s showing signs of significant neural trauma, and intrusion. It’s beyond anything I’m currently trained in. You need an engineer more than a doctor at this point.” That must have been the doctor. He was holding a tablet and examining it worriedly.
“I’ve never seen any damn thing like this,” he continued, his tone defeated.
“What do you mean, like she's been tortured? This doesn’t make any sense.” Jill’s voice was tempered by a pathetic sounding mew.
What was going on?
“Well I’m not going to be able to give you any clarity, I’m sorry. There’s active shifter bots in her system, and they’ve been busy, but are configured in a way I’ve never seen before.” His words only confused me.
Shifter bots? What the hell?
“Etrana finds this illness dim. Etrana put in the secret quiet quiet call to the Mendians; they meet us en route to the red planet Mars, after we clear the defensive ring! Yes yes! Avoid detection. Most stealthy…” Her species had no off switch for exuberance.
“Where… am… I?” A brief moment of clarity came as my vision went black and white, and for a few moments, I felt in control before it all slipped away from me again.
The room fell silent, and everyone was suddenly looking at me.
“You’re aboard the LRRC, and you are safe. Jon’s people made sure we were evacuated in the chaos, quietly off channels,” Jill said, then continued. “Etrana made arrangements from the Zulfiqar for the Lethine to meet us, it’s going to be ok Snow.”
"Rerouting Protocol… Error in process oxaaa233314r…" I was suddenly locked in again, the voice that wasn't mine speaking through my voice collar. It felt as if someone else was in my head, wanting to drive. As panic set in, I heard a series of beeps growing more insistent from a monitor... somewhere...
Was that my heart rate?
Was I dying?
Accessing… Accessing…
“Boss? Boss! Doc!” came a panicked voice. There were dreams, stars dancing, everything was beautiful.
"Joyce? Joyce is that you? It's been so long." Nothing was real anymore. Reality had no hold on me.
“Etrana. Get Darnack back on the line. We’re just crossing out of the defensive ring now; there’s no way she’s going to make it to the rendezvous,” Jon ordered.
A man in a white coat appeared beside me, looking concerned. He had a syringe in his hand.
A weight lifted off of me and I relaxed as it allowed me to plunge again into unconsciousness.
Chapter 22
Neural…!@%$%^^…ected…C^oru(ion… Catastrophic System Failure Imminent.
A spark of awareness flickered in the blackness and it slowly parted, sliding off like a satin sheet as I found myself in the idea of a place. Everything around me was blackness, muted, incomplete yet whole. Everything was shadow here. There was grass that felt like grass under my paws, but it was anything but.
It was like standing in a dying memory.
Where the hell was I?
Something drew my attention up, and I craned my neck up towards the sky, and was humbled by what I saw.
Stars, trillions upon trillions, some connected by tiny silvery strands, laid across the firmament. It was impossibly full, and in some places, the brightness was overwhelming, yet somehow its illumination never reached the ground. Everything else, save for the brilliant sky was wrapped in shadow.
The world was resolving into visibility. The sky became partially obscured as a dark forest in deep winter coalesced around me, as if I was becoming aware of this strange place by degrees. There was a sense of something familiar to it, like an ancient memory forgotten.
I knew... somehow... that I was dying.
I said it to myself. There was no voice collar here, no way to articulate my thoughts to the world. A simple, clear, mental statement, bringing with it, clarity.
“Yes, but not yet.” A figure came into view, spheroid in shape, but other details were denied to me in that moment. Standing just ahead of me, it appeared, but did not materialize, like a jump cut in a film, one moment it was not, and then it was.
It had also just heard me…
"This isn’t real. My brain is shutting down. I’m running out of time." There was a pall of panic gnawing at the edges of my mind, but something held it back. Reason, somehow remained; a calm, professional detachment.
Memories of the academy drifted by, of instructors shouting and berating. “Are you ready to die like a soldier, Dawkins?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“That is not what this is.” The figure spoke again. It was… familiar; recall was imperfect in this place. Like being stuck in moments of permanent deja vu.
“Death is strange." Fear ate at my calm like millions of buzzing insects infesting my mind, but I was detached, numb to it all.
“This is not death, not yet,” the figure said .
“Ok, then what is it?” I challenged the figment.
“A choice,” it replied, and the words rang with gravity that pulled all of my focus into it.
“Do you want to be free?” They continued. The words drifted by and activated a memory like a key opening a lock of that strange moment aboard the Corvaldian Council Sphere.
The ball of insects was floating before me; I recognized them now. My world resolved, becoming more concrete.
“There, now we have your attention.” The pulsing of the lights between the insects inside grew briefly brighter as they spoke through the sphere. That's right, I had seen this being before.
“But why am I seeing you again?” I challenged, pausing to consider what was happening. “I thought I would see family, a tunnel of light.”
“You are dying, but not yet. We are not of you, we are Of Pyr
al, in this moment, with you.”
“Thank you Mr. Cryptic,” I replied.
“You are Of Dawkins. We are Of Pyral. Your pain drew our attention, and your path requires our response,” they explained, as they floated like a specter in front of me.
A hare-shaped figure emerged out of the shadows; it in fact, looked exactly like me by outlines, but that’s where the similarities stopped. Within the outlines were tiny points of light connected by tendrils of some type of prismatic energy; otherwise, the figure was constructed entirely of a living shadow, its eyes glowed red.
I knew them. Feelings of both familiarity and deep wrongness washed over me.
Flashes of nightmares dove to the forefront of my consciousness. I was paralyzed… there were rods again in my vision… I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream.
“Access Memory Node 778-A-Rqw1 and replay,” came a shadowy voice.
“Accessing… outputting to terminal,” my voice again, the strange feeling it was mine, yet not.
I was screaming, wanting desperately to pull away, but trapped…horror, hopelessness, helplessness, despair, washing over like a tsunami…
Then I was suddenly back in the shadowy place, in front of the two eerie figures, desperate for breath.
“Not nightmares. Memories. Things that have been withheld. The truth that has been kept from you,” Pyral explained with dispassion.
“What is all of this? What do you want?” I demanded, the echoes of trauma still resounding loudly in my mind.
“Do you want to be free?” Pyral asked in challenge, echoing our first meeting on the sphere.
“Free from what? The nightmares? The pain? Junk mail? I don’t understand.” The sarcasm focused me.
“Do you want to be free?” It asked again, more emphatically, having no care for my apparent confusion with his questioning.
“Yes, goddammit, I do. That’s all I’ve wanted since the beginning. It's all I've ever wanted. Why do you think I shifted in the first place? Freedom, from everything I wasn't, and the hope of becoming everything I knew I was,” I answered veering existential, thinking back to the start of this. Centioc, lost to everything but myself. The most free I had ever been, and the most alone.
Rise of the Forgotten Page 14