Strange to be alone, without the team. Preparation is not standard either. Strapped naked to the apparatus at an upright tilt of 110 degrees. Presumably this is how I exist when not on mission or entertainment leave, secured to a titanium slab, idling in an electronic stasis and intravenously pumped full of minerals and chemicals to fuel the technology. Main receptors and motor control are inoperative. Anatomy is weightless, but somehow not empty. Numb I suppose. Power to my eyes and consciousness. Certainly a mistake by the administrator in allowing me to perceive a lack of bodily function.
Danger value: 1.00
Never seen it reach the maximum. Potentially a false positive. Favoured response is to break free and massacre all forms of life in the vicinity, wreaking indiscriminate destruction until I’ve assured my own safety. Instinct feels paradoxical. I only want to escape because I can’t. Another reason for stasis perhaps: obedience through stupefaction. Wonder if I’ve ever experienced this kind of intentional dormancy before.
Console: Keyword {per_mem (filter: 1–10)}
Query: admin, helplessness, vulnerability
Searching personal memory ... done
Result: [null]
Elapsed: 1.61 ms
Examining storage health. Possible cube leakage or bandwidth fading. Can’t retrieve information saved after completing the last mission in Aprolla. No way of knowing how much time has passed. Details of why I’m here and where I am are missing. Don’t recall a briefing or an upload of intelligence. Need to conclude that a hole in the memory cache is not logical. In an unmanned medical pod of undetermined size.
Console: Dimensions {class_construct_int (filter: 0, 90, 270)}
Running axiomatic ... done
Result: [0 deg: 3.77 m] [90 deg: 1.64 m] [270 deg: 1.66 m]
Elapsed: 0.39 ms
Visual field is to the far periphery. Without the assembler I have the sight of a hawk though by default the neural display and fortified endoskeleton continue to provide a variety of cognitive and biomechanical improvements more significant than sensory output. Administrator is standing to the right of me, looking at a row of screens showing segments of my cybernetic interface. Data is mostly unfathomable junk written in an artificial language, apart from a graphic of my brain indicating a bloom of activity in the left cerebral hemisphere. Administrator should be Kayelin.
Console: Identify {personage_all (filter: 1–2)}
Pinging implant ... done
Echo reply: 0076701098-PQVN
Searching database ... done
Result: [Kayelin Keva: 1.00]
Running isometric ... failed
Running biometric ... done
Qualitative: [Gender: F] [Hair: Blonde] [Features: Lesion cervical vertebrae, braided bun]
Quantitative: [Hips: 87.69 cm] [Shoulders: 37.01 cm] [Height: 168.49 cm] [BMI: 20.0]
Searching database ... done
Result: [Kayelin Keva: 0.96] [Aurelia Emery: 0.65]
Elapsed: 1.86 ms
Expecting faster calculations. What a chore it must be for Kayelin to have to brush, wash and cut those wavy locks, not to mention the meticulous topiary involved in maintaining her preferred pubic style. Curious thoughts, apparently new and unjustified. She’s noticing the graphic. A screen is swiping to the deliberation log, a familiar tile of content fed by a translation program that scrapes signals from my frontal lobe and converts them to plaintext. Kayelin’s turning and glancing at me, squinting slightly, but saying nothing.
Console: Identify {personage_facrec (filter: best)}
Running isometric ... done
Creating facial model ... done
Running patternistic ... done
Searching database ... done
Result: [Kayelin Keva: 1.00]
Elapsed 5.53 ms
Tingling in the extremities and a faint whirring in the ears. Acquiring location. Error messages are flashing. Transceiver is working, but not connecting to the orbnet. Inspecting ambient properties. Fresh breeze blowing on to my ankles from a rotary device; ventilation implies a polluted atmosphere or hostile climate not consistent with the engineered environments of any certified partner of the Commonwealth. No audible signs of severe weather. Drought and dust could be viable. A metallic smell, mixed with the residual odour of PROP-65, the propellant type used for high-altitude vertical landings. Robotic pods can’t touch down in the amounts of magnetic interference that would disrupt orbnet communications. Discounting the presence of solar winds. Emergency military policy limits external passenger jumps to the colonial frontier. Committee of Defence has recently divided the region into two categories: unfriendly and ambiguous. Immigrant population is likely. Having Kayelin with me on mission is not unprecedented, dual enterprises are usually stealth reconnaissance. Undetected arrival, no evident threat to our position. Analysing cyclopaedia for unincorporated boundary worlds that fit the profile; forty-nine plausible matches. Confidence level too low to estimate a feasible scenario. Core components have restarted. Service is ready. Calibrating atomic clock. Thirty-six hours since Aprolla.781Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmnWQFTO3vI
