T9, Caphill, Sleeping chambers.
I restlessly jolt upright from my bed. My eyes are wide open, staring inanimate into the screen of twinkling star and constellations which don't exist anymore. I let my open mouth fill the air in my lungs, my chest rising and falling, along with my shoulders inconstantly. Muffled sound of my heartbeats pulsates wildly in my ears like a growling demon. This odd occurring phenomenon tears the nerves in my brain. I can feel the mechanism crumbling inside my skull, hammering against the cranium to break free.
I clutch my head, crippled with disorientation. I cannot find my voice; it is not stuck somewhere on its way. It's like I never had it.
Water. The first thought which strikes me.
I need water. My hands shudder madly when I loosen the grip on my hair. The sweat slides my hands down and I absently sink my face in my palms.
Still breathlessly I make vague utterances. "I–my–memories…," I can't phrase a sensible sentence yet.
I suck in one deep, long breath and steady my heart. Once it is back to a normal pace, I slowly stand up.
The system beeps once. "Sleep cycle incomplete." It says. Ignoring it, I summon my wardrobe through my cuff. "Three hours of sleep remains." The mechanic voice says again.
I scream and bash my fists into the glass display, infuriated with these bloody machines telling me what to do.
I want to shoot something, anything, for that matter.
When we are not on the battlefield, no one is allowed to carry weapons of any kind. I don't understand a necessity for that. Even if anybody goes crazy like I am going now and kills someone, that person ultimately is going to end up in the revival room. Instead, I just throw punches at the bed.
I am a more contained person now than I was a few moments back. I stomp outside the sleeping capsule wearing my robe halfway. The bright red dawn is already taking over the sky, twin moons of Caphill fading away in the sun's contrast.
A bottle slides down from the vending, and I empty the whole bottle in two sips. Some of the water brims out from either side of my mouth. Water here tastes different. It's sweet and only slightly acidic, if consumed warm. Drinking cold water is my preference.
I take another bottle and make my way back to the control room, where I usually sit with Abby. I am not sure if my dream was a simulation or my memory. Even if this happened before my latest revival or it was from other revivals, I have no way of knowing. Dwelling on this thought is useless, but again, what useful thing I have to do?
Larisska Teth, the name doesn't ring any bells. She is from the other side and yet she lets me go. Why would she betray her own platoon? Why would only that specific part of my memory be missing?
Hoping to get me the answers I call out to my only source of wisdom. "Abby, wake up." I exclaim.
She groans. It's uncanny when you hear an artificial intelligence program groan. "Oh, come on, you are not really sleeping." I roll my eyes.
The silence tells me how offended Abby is. "What did you say?" Abby says, alarmed.
Sometimes I can't forget that she is a program and I always keep forgetting she doesn't like it when not treated like an actual person.
"Nothing, just a joke," I defend.
"You are not really a morning person, are you?"
I sigh, resigning, and carefully pursue her for answers. "It was my nightmare night –"
"– Whoa! That's a thrill now." She eagerly blurts, "what was your nightmare about?"
Right where I want her to be. "It's literally the most impractical nightmare." I throw in some suspense before getting into it. Abby is very energetic all the time, and it's a challenge to keep her interest fix on one point.
Abby's giggle comes at me from all directions. "Seems like an unusual one."
I smile to myself. "Pretty unusual." I say and tell her everything with dramatic exaggerations, glad that Abby hasn't been around the times our schools taught us about Shakespeare's tragedies.
Abby listens to all that I say intently. In between pauses, she moans a series of thoughtful "Hmms" and "Uh huhs."
I finish my story, and Abby lets out a gasp. "That's very odd." She says, distantly. Her fading voice suggests that she is thinking. After a brief pause, she speaks again. "Doesn't this make you wonder?"
I play dumb. "Wonder what?" I answer as soon as she asks. It is risky to ask Abby something directly about delicate matters. Her data is really transparent, but she has a control. She can choose what to share and what to keep for herself.
"well…," she almost whispers. "… there is a possibility that this incident has actually happened."
And it's working. I gasp as if I have just perceived a tremendous shock. "I never thought of that." Convincingly, I lie. Now is the time I can ask Abby what I want to ask. "Abby, can you look into it?"
There is nothing in the air. I think she disappeared again.
"Abby, are you there?"
She blurts out, "Yes, I am right here."
I have put her in a difficult position. Despite of the privileges Abby has; it is still difficult for her to go scouring the database which the authority wants to hide. There are consequences, even for Abby.
"I don't really think it makes sense. Maybe, after all, it is just a simulation." She says flatly.
I cannot push her any further and leave a scope for suspicions. "Yeah, maybe you are right." I reply.
The baby rays of the sun filters through the glass and send planks of yellow light on the shiny ceramic floor. It's almost time, I have to go anytime now. So, I get up and walk in the opposite direction towards the door.
"Wait," Abby squeals, "You said one of the Wronger's name is Kruna, right?"
I spin on my heels hopefully. "Yes, do you know anything about it?" I ask eagerly.
"Uh, what's with the excitement?" She asks, with thick suspicion in her tone.
Oh, damn it. I curse myself. If Abby grows even a little suspicious, it's going to be a crisis. "Well, you remember Reaye complaining about my performance on the battlefield? Maybe I can get a higher rank if it was really what happened. I caught a dozen of other side's soldiers." I desperately hope she believes it.
Abby chuckles nervously. "Well, I guess I can take this risk, anyway. I have already put up a great risk. You are in this, right?"
Great risk? I wonder what exactly she is talking about.
"What are you talking about, Abby? What have you done?"
"You don't remember the last when I told you?" She says.
Suddenly, the conversation strikes me. Abby had disappeared after telling that she had a way to have a physical form. Abby had cracked it.
I feel the same rush that I felt before when she told me this for the first time. "You should really have to stop disappearing after feeding me only half info." I say.
"I am sorry for that." She says.
I eagerly go to the seat near the platform where I usually seat when talking with Abby. I wait for her to say more, but she is quiet.
"So, are you going to tell me?"
Abby lets out an audible thoughtful sigh. "There is a catch to it, Jo."
She calls me Jo after a very long time.
"You need to break in to the subliminal neura-server."
I gasp in shock. "Are you insane?"
What she is talking about is nearly impossible. The subliminal neura-server is the storage where the authority preserves our consciousness along with the subconscious. It is the way how we revive. No one in the facility knows where exactly it is. Nobody even has the access, not even the upper ranks. Only They the SIA (Superior Intelligence Authority) has the access.
All we know is SNS (Subliminal neura-server) is a floating cloud somewhere.
The numerical patterns on the screen flutters in front of my eyes. "You see those lofts?" Abby asks.
I look closely and see the networks of bright blue lines sprawling ahead of me. "Yes, can you zoom in?"
Abby zooms the network and now there are big capsules floating across what seems to be some kind of liquid. I am hoping it is just water. "Those capsules. You have to go into the one that I will tag and just connect a cuff. All the servers are connected to these cuffs around everybody's wrists."
"That's water, right?" I ask.
"Actually…," Abby hesitates. No, it's not a good omen when she hesitates. "It's liquid Caphillnite."
A river of Caphilnite? My brain is sending electrical surges for alerting me not to do anything stupid. This is resulting in sudden shudders throughout my body.
"Why would anyone store these things into a well of Caphilnite?" I ask.
"Caphilnite keeps the capsule from corrosion and also fuels them."
"And why would it need fuel?" I ask again.
Abby sighs in exasperation. "To keep up with everything that you see, hear, and think, Joanne."
I dread the time when she will actually have a body to get in and wander freely around me. She will be difficult.
"These capsules and the neura-servers are connected to a single computer, which I am a part of. Which every program is a part of." She says, extricating the complex structures of wired cables. The cables extend to a pipe. "The cables going under the bottom of the lake, it is where they meet the server networks and connect with the master computer, which looks after everything."