(I Swallowed Hard, Like I Understood) Chapter Two: Reunion

[companionwolf]

 

There is a burst of blue as the machinery whirs, and then the blue is replaced by staticky white, and then there is searing heat and pain and —

— and then the headset lifts, the strange white stacicky electricity crackling about his ears, and Central finds he is still seated in the strange chair but that the chair is somewhere entirely different.

It’s the interior of a cave, actually, walls slick with water drippings and shadows cast from a mouth he can just barely see only a few paces away around a bend. When he stands up, and inspects the chair, he sees no indication of what it’s getting its power.

(He also sees no indication of the Commander.)

He chalks it up to some kind of internal Psionic mechanism; damn space magic is too weird and he doesn’t want to poke around with it.

Especially because he doesn’t quite know where he is.

(He doesn’t want to get hurt here. Die here. But then...)

Central walks the few couple of meters of cave to the mouth, and blinks in the bright sunlight, eyes squinting as he raises a hand to block it. The gleaming rays fall onto lush green grass, gently swaying oak trees, and a river that babbles gently somewhere nearby through the brush. In the distance, more forest, and faintly on the blue horizon he can see peeking through the branches and leaves is something silver and shiny.

Under his feet, gravel crunches and slopes downward into the wood— this is definitely a path, and with nothing else to do, he might as well... follow it.

(Especially since faintly, faintly, he sees footprints already tracked in it.)

Central warily begins down the gravel path, aware of how too loud his boots are, aware of being unarmed, but mostly aware of how there is bird song in the world and how creatures rustle in the undergrowth. That’s not right. That’s not right. A gnawing uneasiness comes over him as the path begins to rise over a hill.

The trees spread out, and soon he leaves them behind, and he can see in full glory the shiny silvery thing hidden before. It’s a city, remarkably Old World in design, and lacking any of ADVENT’s signature color. It glitters against the blue sky, and casts long shimmering shapes onto the ...

The...

Is that the sea?

Central stops. The gravel path has put him at a sort of cliff, high above the water. In front of him, beyond the small sandy area scattered with rocks and the leaves form the forest behind, a bridge. A simple wooden bridge, stretching impossibly to the city.

This is not right.

This is not—

“Central?!”

He snaps to reality. Someone is running at him from on the bridge, bare footed so that every footstep is amplified against the wood. They are so fast that he cannot tell who they are until they have grabbed him and hugged him in such a fashion that he knows, he knows.

“Shen?” he asks. “What are you...?” His breath leaves him as she lets go of her embrace, and looks at him with the saddest eyes he has seen since her father’s death.

“I guess Gatecrasher didn’t go as well as planned,” she says. “You should have let me help.”

“I had it under control,” he says. “Some... weird stuff just happened is all. Why are you here? Why aren’t you with the Avenger? What ...is this? Where is this?” He motions at the impossible trees behind him, at the impossible city and the impossible bridge. “I would have thought we know about something like this by now, if it managed to survive this long.”

“Tygan will want to see you,” Shen says as she steps away back toward the bridge, and he notes she’s ignoring his questions. “He gets antsy about acclimation
after arrival.”

“What does any of that mean?”

She looks at him over her shoulder: sad, crushed even. “You’ll find out soon. Just c’mon.”

“Shen-“

“Don’t question it,” she says, and her voice is suddenly harsh. “If you question it too early, you’ll throw it all off balance. Just come with me to Tygan’s lab. He’s pretty happy with it, all things considered...”

She goes on about the doctor having staff now, and her new staff, and about how she misses the soldiers as they walk across the bridge for what seems like ages. She does not give him a chance to ask anything else.

(She does not give him a chance to ask about the Commander.)

It’s only as they step off the bridge onto a street that Central realizes something big.
Well, two somethings. One is ROV-R is absent. Two is that there are no cars. There are no sounds of city life at all.

Before he can ask about either of this, Shen has gotten him by the arm and practically drag sprinted him down the streets, and all he can do is stumble to keep up with her and watch the world pass in wide mouthed amazement - the buildings and shops and streetlights, they are not just Old World Style, they are Old World; names and brands and models and construction he has not seen for twenty years.

Shen brings him around a corner to two very large concrete buildings. One is simply labeled Engineering, the other Laboratory Alpha. She notices his gaze on the words.

“We’re still working on official names,” she says as she brings him up the tall steps to the sliding glass doors. “Everything is from premade assets that only had temporary placeholders, and we haven’t had the time or the collective mind to be creative yet.”

“Pre-made assets? It was here already, just... sitting?”

Shen frowns at this, biting her bottom lip. “That seems like a good explanation as any. C’mon, hurry, before it catches up to you.”

“Before what—“

He stops his words dead. Inside the first level lobby is a receptionist desk (strangely vacant) and what he can only describe as a waiting room- it’s got seats, some end and coffee tables, and what he thinks are magazines; Shen snatches the one he tries to look at right from his hands.

“Later!” She says in a almost commanding tone, and pulls him along with her into a elevator. The floor of the elevator are beige, and the walls mirror, reflecting countless instances of him and Shen back at them.

They stand in silence for a moment, and Central realizes his hands are shaking. Shen glances down at them as he notices. “You’ll know soon enough,” she says. “That’s what the acclimation labs are for.”

“Shen, what the hell—“

“Look, I’m sorry! I’d be open about it if I could but we learned that’s really bad for new arrivals! Plus I’ve got to make sure you coded into the system right and didn’t accidentally trip any of the old software.”

“The old—“

“Repurposed ADVENT tech,” she says, waving a hand as the elevator opens. “After you visit Tygan, and get your new address, come to System Control in Engineering and I’ll explain everything that isn’t in your datapad.”

Shen brings him down a few more hall before stopping at a room labeled ACCLIMATION LABORATORY ONE. She knocks on it, and after a moment, Dr. Richard Tygan appears, looking grave.

“Shen, Central,” he says.

“Doctor,” Central answers, alarms in his head at the man’s somber tones, at how it matches Shen’s sad eyes.

“I would be lying if I said I was not pleased to see you, I just wish it was not in this state,” Tygan days after a moment. He looks to Shen. “Standard acclimation?”

“As far as I can tell,” she answers. “I can double check if you want; I was going to head to System Control anyway to make sure he didn’t mess up anything getting here.”

“Good,” Tygan says. “That would be good

“Ok, then, I’ll see you after your labs,” Shen says, and disappears back around the hall corner before Central can say anything. Central watches her go with his jaw slightly agape. He looks at Tygan, slowly shaking his head, but the doctor does not say anything, just opens the door and gestures for Central to enter.

It’s a bare white tiled room, with a window looking out to the hallway. In the center is a chair and a platform that looks almost like a podium, except it is chest level. Tygan nods to it. “I will communicate with you via intercom,” he says. “It is... better to be isolated when acclimation occurs, since it can be... slightly unpleasant for others if they’re in the same room.”

Central rubs his thumb against the side of his pointer finger, a nervous habit he’s never quite kicked. “Alright,” he says finally, and steps into the room; behind him, Tygan locks the door, and then takes up a watching position at the window.

“Go on and sit down at the podium,” he says. “I will ask a few basic questions, explain a few basic concepts, and then have you complete the survey.”

“Survey?”

“Do Not think about it too much yet.” Tygan pulls a datapad from inside of his coat, and studies it, tapping at it a few times before he looks up at Central.

“You are John Bradford, correct?”

“...Right.”

“Born November 17, 1979?”

“Right.”

“Scan date ... oh today was Unification Day, wasn’t ...”

Through the glass, Central sees Tygan’s face fall even further somehow then where it already was. “I had hoped this was not the case,” he says quietly, and then shakes his head and says in normal tones, “Scan date March 1st, 2035.”

“Right.”

“Good. Everything appears to be in order. You did a Namajika scan... better than Shen’s and my legacy files anyway...you’ll adjust faster then we did just based on your file type. Of course, our scans were a rush job...”

Tygan goes quiet for a moment, staring at Central.

“Everything ok, doctor?” Central rubs his fingers against each other again. The podium at his chest is actually fitted with a screen inside its top, which gleans glassy dark, reflecting a ghostly image of his own frowning face back.

“Everything is fine,” Tygan answers finally, and looks back to his datapad. “Central, how much do you know about what technology the aliens have?”

“I’ve seen their cities,” he says. “The clinics. The vehicles and the ID chips. Their weapons, obviously.”

“Mmm.” Tygan studies him for a moment. “What would be outside the realm of possibility?”

“What?”

“What can the aliens not do?”

Central wants to knee jerk answer ‘bring back the dead’, but he’s seen people, the blood still pouring from mortal wounds with glassy eyes and soiled clothes rise from the earth with purple clinging to their form. He wants to say ‘ do magic’, but what else is Psionics if not that?

“Time... travel?” he says, hesitant now, concerned there’s a gotcha.

“Hm. No one has answered that before,” Tygan says, and he almost sounds amused. “You are eight; they haven’t discovered that, and god forbid they do. What else?”

“Uh...”

They have space travel covered, laser weapons, plasma weapons...

“Is there a point to this, doctor?”

“Mind mapping.”

“What.”

“How close was your era to digital immortality? What did they always say? A few decades, maybe?”

Central feels cold knowing in his stomach. “Basically, yeah. I never paused much to listen, always thought it was stupid. You can’t upload someone’s brain on a server.”

“Humans, no. Aliens...” Tygan smiles, but there’s no mirth. “ADVENT had an idea after a few years of fighting. I know of it because I...” His shoulder slump. “I helped design some of it. The machinery of the Pilot Seats, mostly, and the physical storage of the scans.”

“Are you saying the aliens can... put people into computers?”

“At a fundamental level, yes,” Tygan says. “And they have been doing so for a long time. Better to kill your resistance and save its self for your own purpose then throw away perfectly good brains.”

“I’m not following.”

(He is. He is and the cold has reached his spine, is making every hair stand on end.)

“There is a device orbiting earth, set into motion in 2033, that holds these scans ADVENT makes. They thought it safer to store them off planet.” Another smile, and this one is warmer then the first. “The scans are supposed to be dormant, waiting. But not every Upload is easy or every scanned person... willing, and sometimes lucidity makes it along with them.”

He sighs. “What I’m saying is this is the device.” He gestures about the room, vaguely encompassing the building, the city, the world.

“This is the device, and we are the scans.”