Silas was drifting through darkness, drifting in and out of consciousness. Awareness came to him, but he couldn't find his arms or legs, lacking senses of touch and smell. He was a spirit, a soul in the nether, and this was his journey through the afterlife. Damn. He had always known there was an afterlife. He was grudgingly ready for a permanent slumber, forcing his eyes shut.
Time passed. Hours, days, weeks? He didn't know, but he was now at peace, and he had no regrets anymore. He had lived his days to the fullest as if every hour had been his last. Here, the turbulent emotions of flesh and blood did not plague him. He simply existed, and he was fine with just existing. He did not ask for more.
Up ahead, a spot of light was radiating a loving sort of warmth, which should've been appealing but wasn't. Maybe this was the god of this universe beckoning before the gates of Heaven, all loving, all merciful in judgment of an ex-Olympian turned astronaut, knowing Silas had not sinned or transgressed his fellow man or woman or creatures roaming Earth's forests and oceans. Uncaring, he let himself be taken.
The light consumed his spirit.
Reality fuzzed into clarity—fluorescent neon lines in between hexagonal panes. He was alive. And where the neon met the black resided a border of polished gold that he knew was around a hundred microns thick. On the center pane, English words in an Arial white font appeared.
**Welcome back, Silas Creedy.
That was his name, Silas Creedy, though he didn't feel exactly like Silas Creedy. All of his memories were available in pristine first-person clarity: sounds, colors, shapes, smells, and, more notably, emotions. All the turbulent emotions—all his past successes, grievances, and monotony—during his life on Earth now felt greatly overblown in hindsight.
The words faded away, replaced by others.
**Interfacing with Ingenuity…
He blinked. The words were inside his eyeballs. In his mind. And when the three dots of the ellipsis stopped animating, lines, circles, and minimalistic icons were drawn: a star chart, a list of crafting materials in storage, and a wire frame of ingenuity above a list of her important devices. The augmented reality of the exosuit was part of his brain.
There was more. A wire frame of his body was drawn at the bottom-right, all green—healthy. By the left hand stacked a list of attributes. Descriptions appeared in brackets as he focused on each.
**Intelligence: 317 (Your brain's overall computational speed and complexity)
**Might: 382 (Kinetic force that your body can produce and withstand)
**Perception: 829 (Sharpness of your senses)
**Power: 500 (Total usable energy stored in your body. Consciousness is disabled at 0)
**Regeneration: 82 (Rate of wound-healing)
Next to the right hand was a single entry.
**Mk-1 Argenci Hybridization (Irremovable and irreversible)
He understood, exhaling. Air smelled of earth and something that he didn't have a name for, almost musky, oily, bland. The smell was coming from himself, his naked body. He looked Human except lacking a belly-button. His skin was paler with a smooth plastic texture, wrinkle-free. His veins were fainter. His hairs were white. His heart beat slower… and much quieter.
Tracey's face appeared next to his attributes. Her expression was slightly apprehensive. "Silas, can you hear me?"
"Am I even Silas at this point?" His voice was softer but clearer. The scratchiness of his old throat was gone—fixed.
"You look similar," she said lightly, "and you should have your memories. Your brain wasn't damaged."
He flexed his fingers, toes, and arms, then palmed to sit up. Not a single bone clicked. Not a single muscle was stiff or sore. Eyes rapidly adjusting, he saw he was in an oval bed of sorts with an open glass lid. A readout appeared.
**Mk-1 Hybridization Pod (Also used to install and remove modules)
The readout vanished in the instant he willed so. He said, "This is what you wanted, yeah? I'm now part of the fold whether I like it or not."
"Do you like it, Captain Creedy?"
He still liked that name. "Can't you read my mind?"
"You haven't decided for yourself."
A smirk slanted his lips. The feeling of amusement was there, just dulled. "I have to say I kind of do, but my new mind was designed to like this, yeah? The state of liking is, after all, mostly emotional. I like that I still have a semblance of emotion."
"But logically?" Her eyebrows shrugged. "You still have your own free will, your own pocket of consciousness."
"It's… difficult to say." He stood and walked for the doorway. This body felt ten times lighter. Pressure against his soles and joints barely registered. His center of mass was higher up closer to his heart, but his balance was just as good if not better. "It's different, and I don't know in what ways exactly."
She answered unasked questions: "Yes, you are considered a carbon-silicon life form now. Your genetics have been re-written and re-expressed. You are the first Argenci-Human. The game-like attribute system was tailored to you individually. For your diet, you were lucky; you may eat all the foods you could as a Human in addition to several nutrients that that the hybridization pod formulated. However, you can no longer reproduce with Human women."
More or less what he guessed. A deep breath calmed traces of unpleasant emotions. "Anything else? What does mark-one hybridization exactly mean?"
"It is the first and minimally acceptable stage where you retain most features from your original species. It allows for up to five mark-one modules to be installed."
He crouched in front of his bonsai tree. He could see tiny veins on its leaves as though looking through a microscope. These new eyes weren't bad. "Modules such as?"
She chuckled. "You won't have hideous guns sewn to your skin at mark-one. All are minor utility, such as improved Perception or Intelligence. You will need a module fabricator."
He cut her a surprised look with his eyeballs. "The 3D printer can't craft them?"
"No, and I can't find the words to explain why."
Fair enough. He glanced at the star chart. Ingenuity was mining from an asteroid in orbit around a dwarf star. The mark-two sensor had been installed as well as a mark-two shield generator and cloaking field. He slowly asked, "How long had I been out?"
"Almost two days." She offered a comforting expression, which wasn't necessary.
"Any run-ins?"
"Nearly twice."
Thanks to the upgraded sensor, he added. "How are we on indexing?"
"I had to allocate all computational resource on recovering the hybridization pod data, then lend full capacity to the pod."
Something didn't add up there. "What? You found its index before finding anything else?"
Her head shook. "I already had its index beforehand. I didn't mention it to you."
"You lied again."
"Silas, I—"
He sighed. "I understand you'd leave something like that out, but now that I'm one of you, I want total honesty now, yeah? You and the Argenci are all I have now."
She was quiet for three seconds. "The Argenci typically don't forcibly bring species into the fold, because it is seen as a great honor. All those who refuse their rule are simply removed from existence. One lesser faction of the Elraeed had already been wiped out before I was sent on the scouting mission. Your home system was dangerously close to destruction. There wasn't anything particularly special bout your species, biologically or otherwise, that would justify an offer."
So they were on a genocidal crusade. By Human standards, they were the bad guys. An evil empire. A revelation like this probably would've greatly angered his past primitive brain. Now, he was able to take it in quite heartlessly. "Lucky Earth."
"Is there anyone you would like go back for?" She was asking about his family.
"Sure, why not? I'd bring everyone into the fold if I could. I'm not an evil man. But can I?"
"You will soon find out." She smiled coldly.
"Okay." He grabbed a fresh set of undergarments. His socks were ill-fitting. "So anything else you haven't told me?"
She hummed cutely. "Not really. Oh, I'm planning to make myself a real body. I kind of understated my intentions. I'll need a mainframe and printer upgrade for that."
He grunted, "Thought so."
"And you're also immortal now, ageless. Mark-one hybridization fixes that flaw."
He whistled until he was out of breath, and his lung capacity was about twenty percent great. "I am liking this very much. Thank you again, Tracey."
"You're very welcome, Captain Creedy."
He sensed this was only the beginnings of a beautiful, beautiful relationship.