Control Room, T9, Caphill.
"Really this again?" I look at the mushed potatoes and beans swimming in soup - which is basically orange liquid - served on my plate. My stomach contorts in revulsion and my tongue rebels against my will. It tastes like water and spices poorly mixed–although it smells so good. One time when I expect something good to eat when I am off the battlefield. Usually, as on the battlefield, all we have at our dispense is a bottle of multivitamin and protein shake.
But my complaints all go unheard. The blank AI screen stares at me vacantly and I get a glitch in response.
"Thank you, Jaxx." I say to the screen.
A smile pops on its digital face and eyes appearing as big white spot on the screen.
"Okay… bubye." I say and leave.
The control room is where we have all of our hi–tech stuff like the advance coffee maker, which makes really shitty coffee, tastes like the ground of earth. Which is good and nostalgic, but coffee is something I only get on the revival process. Like any other rooms here in the revival station, this one is ominously white, brightened with luminous lights. There's a table with just a CPU in the shape of what used to be the keyboard in my time, and everything just floats in the air, basically.
Once you get out in the war, you get nothing, just unlimited drinks, which I am really grateful for. It saves a lot of troubles, spares the long minutes you need to finish your dinner, also they utilise a lot of energy because liquid doesn't need much of it for digestion.
The biggest luxury we have is the foreverly mundane revival chambers. If I leave my room, I could see other people's rooms there but I've seen no one walk out of their room, or even heard a knock on my door since a century I suppose.
"Abby?" I speak to my screen. Who is an AI as well, it offend her when it is not treated like a living person.
"Oh…, what's up girl!" She whoops.
The whole room lights up when she speaks. Her voice is like songs in the party, this description only limits here on the Caphill's utterly silent and lifeless chambers.
No, I am not surprised by her approach, although it is strange that you are friends with almost nothing. She is nothing, but she is everywhere. She doesn't have shape or body or anything, but she in everything. Basically, like a ghost, or even more exotically God. "Just the usual, you say?"
"No, what?" she sounds disappointed, "… didn't shoot the guts out of the Wrongers?"
"Got shot, if that's uplifting."
"Aww…," And there she goes, "… you could have asked for me, girl." She says, her tone glittering with a frown.
I can't read her, but her tone is very expressive. "And what you could've done? Haunted the shooter?" I laugh and later on she joins.
"Want to take a stare down?" She asks.
Down. She meant home, my home earth. I can't see my family. I tried but I could find them. I am hundred and twenty-three years ahead of them. What are the chances they might have survived? Who knows? Being basically an immortal has its own hindrances, like outliving your loved once and what else could be worse than this? Living a lonely life, staying forever seventeen. Your memory is filled with blood and bullets, and anger is the only emotion you feel. Your body never changes, neither do the clothes you wear.
NOTHING CHANGES.
I look at the empty air next to me from where Abby's voice echoed - basically her voice seems omnipresent, but that's what a person does when someone is next to them talking. Or at least I hoped so. I always hope that one day Abby will get her own clone and will emerge from her program.
"Wait, I am familiar with that look." Abby notices.
I try to hide my face tentatively. "Uh—huh, it's nothing. Alright."
"So, looking down isn't something you want to do?" Abby asks.
That is something I ever want to do. "No, Abby. No, tell me if you have got something more."
"Well… actually….," Abby hesitates.
This is weird. Abby never hesitates. "I'm listening Abby." I try to sound casual, but persuasive.
"You remember the experiment you wanted me to perform?"
My mind submerges in a shock and the slide in my memory clips in front of me. I know what she is exactly referring to.
"What about it?" I ask carefully.
"I might have manipulated the data, and…," she pauses.
Oh god Abby, come on. "–And," I spat impatiently, "… tell me it is possible, please tell me."
"Just like how you are always revived. I can use the same process to do that." Abby says.
What is this rush? I wonder.
It feels very familiar. It is not the usual rush that I have, and it makes everything slow and dizzy. This kind of rush I never felt in decades, or probably never since I got here. So, what is this? It makes me shout and scream and dance. This rush is compelling me to lose the ground beneath my feet and jump up in the air, as high as I could.
That's excitement.
I breathe sharply and try to hide it. I don't want to come out so easy going. "That sound good. So, we are making progress.?"
"It appears so. Just a little transfer and encryption of the data. I can build a pathway to move around–" She pauses suddenly.
"What?" I sense the nervousness in the air.
"But it is a tad complicated." Abby's voice comes out almost in whispers.
I raise my eyebrows and walk up to the glass window which projects the hill around the Caphill. I stare far, trying to fathom what is behind the hill?
"They?"
Abby's voice tunes in despair. "I am afraid. We can't let the They know."
I sigh and simply moan in disappointment. "Umm, alright."
After a brief pause, Abby interrupts the disappointment, just as when I mentally dig up a grave for my hopes. "But there is a way." She speaks.
Of course, Abby. "What do I have to do?"
"It is highly not recommended, but that's the only way it could happen. I can't guarantee though. I am just a program." Abby's voice is closer than it was.
Everything here is a risk. What worse could happen? Am I going to die? Been there, done that. If the death is a forever option, then I would happily embrace it. They might throw me in the prison. I am basically living in the prison.
"I will do it. Just point me in the directions." I decided hopeful again.
The air in the room disappears, and I feel a sudden aloneness. I don't feel Abby around anymore. "Abby?"
Nothing. Just silence.
She's disconnected. Well, I am definitely habitual to this. It is not the first time Abby has disappeared. She has a habit of going offline, leaving people disoriented in the middle of the conversation.
I wonder where she goes to?
I fold my hands across my chest and continue looking at over the hills of the Caphill. It is not a big planet. Like any other planet, it was compiled of collision and explosion and all the star dust kind of tales. But the uniqueness of this planet is its atmosphere. A comet explosion gave it its atmosphere. In the night the sky doesn't go black it goes dark blue or pink. The mornings are the same. The oxygen outside is a little thin, same level as when you climb the Everest on the earth.
No water, no life. But it is all artificial. No plants, just desert. After all, it is just used to protect the other planet in the solar system. This planet has got its name from the hills that I adore so much. And I wonder what lies behind them. No one has ever been there. I've heard my colleagues talking about it while in the training.
"The lights which fill T9 Caphill coming from the other side. It is where the They lived." one cadet had said.
But like every other planet, we have our myths. Lack of knowledge inspires humans to believe rumours. I am not doing so. Maybe someday I might find myself beyond those hills.
Maybe someday.
I see the light fading behind the hills, the sun sinking low but no darkness, rather there are brilliant colours coming from beyond. Consuming me whole like an ethereal bliss. But this isn't the most satisfying experience in my revival chamber. It is staring down when I am looking at my home. What was once a peaceful place brimming with heavenly bliss. We always sought the heavens up above, rather than appreciating what we have. Above was hell, an excruciating time of relentless battles and wars.
"Good evening, Joanne…," the artificial voice interrupts my bliss.
I sigh the disappointment out for I am certain this is not good news. "Reporting." I answer.
"You are scheduled to deploy on the field tomorrow. You should rest and regain your strength. As usual, you have to give a fitness test and report to your captain for the new mission. You are directed to your commanding officer." The voice instructs and ceases.
After a brief moment I get a ring in my head, 'Reaye Loseu, comm. Third gen squad.' Flashes in front of my eyes.
"Greetings, ma'am…," I try to sound firm.
"Alright cadet." She says, "… your performance on the field is noted as significantly careless. Are you aware of that?"
Of course, I am. "I assure this wouldn't happen the next time – "
"—you better not." She snaps, and continue to assert the dominance upon me, "you have been asked not to company the battle force but operate from the camp as a volunteer and rescue team for a brief time as the situation has worsened and you didn't prove to be very helpful as a soldier." She takes a pause.
This where I am supposed to affirm the orders, instead I am just paced out wondering how am I going to rescue the soldiers trapped on the other side of the war, if I am not good at fighting. Her voice feels like coming from underwater and hazy.
"Flair, are you with me?" She asks.
"Uh–yes, ma'am I follow." I answer, gathering all the attentiveness in my voice.
"If you have any queries, you shall inform your captain in the morning after your fitness exam, do you copy?"
Do I though? "Yes, ma'am."
"And I hope you don't see the revival chamber any sooner. You are now dismissed." She disconnects the call and leaves me wondering about my eligibilities.
I have proven myself for multiple times, but this time I don't really remember what happened on the battlefield. I try to dig into my memory, but all I see is an empty space. It is all blank and dry like a white plain paper.
I drag a virtual screen in front of me from my cuff. It is the access to the telescope which is actually moving around like a satellite orbiting the home solar system. This view has just become a decorative, people just look at it like a past and relive it in the virtual room. No one looks at like a home. The humans born here in this galaxy are oblivious to what a planet earth was once?
Surrounded by the world of illusion, they find pleasure virtually. The birds are fake; the trees are artificial. Even the air that they breathe is unnatural.
I glance at my home once before I end my day. It is, as always, a bright blue planet with a veil of mist around it. Although it is magnificent, like the clouds of heaven, but trust me it's the remnant of what once was beautiful.