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They rattle into his bones, into his stomach, they rattle against the knowing and he mentally clamps down on it, tries to settle the clanging with ‘Look, sure, a lot is possible nowadays but—“
“The aliens were... are far superior in their technology, Central,” Tygan says, “and humanity was already on the cusp of the start of understanding. It would only logically end with this as its conclusion.”
“So what, we’re robots? Humans inside a machine?” The word is heavy in mouth with disbelief.
“AI, technically,” says Lily’s voice. Central jumps, looks for her; Tygan rolls his eyes.
“Shen, don’t do that,” he says.
“Why not?” she answers. “It’s much easier to communicate through the device itself then in person.”
“It’s making Central’s stress levels spike,” Tygan answers, and there’s a concern and a edge to the man’s voice that makes Central’s frown deepen.
“Fine, fine,” comes the response, and suddenly Shen is there, appearing with flickers at the edge of her form? At the edges of Central’s vision. Her voice continues to come from all around, though; the her that stands before them is silent. “I’ve initialized a old beta fork to talk to you.”
“Is something wrong that you cannot be here entirely?” Tygan asks, just as Central also asks, “What’s a fork?”
“Something big and Psionic’s coming at the storage device,” overhead Shen says. “This thing has no protective measures, so I’m trying to figure out how much damage it’ll do if it hits us.”
At the same time, the Shen in front of them smiles and says, “A fork is basically a copy, Central. You can call me Beta, if it helps. Or give me a different name to differentiate. It won’t matter in the end when I go back.”
“Go back?”
“Forks are supposed to re-merge with each other,” Beta Shen says. “Sometimes they don’t though, because they get too much of their own self due to continued use.”
Bradford blinks slowly, eyes turning back down to the podium that still sits dark at his fingers. “So we’re people, uploaded into a machine, and we can split ourselves into other people?”
“Well, you’re missing the fact—“
“Not yet!” Both Tygan and Alpha Shen speak in unison, and Beta Shen blinks in surprise.
“Wow,” she says to Bradford, “I’ve never seen me agree with him on anything before.”
“Me neither,” he says, the knowing of something he can’t explain gnawing at his innards like acid.
“Run the survey, so we have the data before she makes him stress crash,” Alpha Shen says quickly; Tygan nods as he waves a hand at the podium, and suddenly the screen under Bradford’s fingers lights up. It blinks white text on a black interface, with blue buttons.
[WELCOME!]
If you are reading this, you have successfully entered the ARK. This survey is designed to give the developers a better understanding of your subjective experience and how to improve your well being.
Please continue with the survey.
Bradford glances up at Tygan. “The ARK?”
Tygan looks almost sheepishly away. “Once we liberated the device, we needed a name. It was a general consensus that came up with the idea of calling it the ARK.”
“Like from the Bible story.”
“Like from the Bible story, yes.”
Bradford feels the frown on his face reach his eyes as he returns his attention to the survey.
[QUESTION ONE]
How would you describe your physical condition?
1. I feel normal.
2. I feel invigorated - a better version of myself.
3. I feel alien - I’m a visitor inside another body.
4. I feel fake - no longer a real person.
Click.
SAVING...
[QUESTION TWO]
How would you describe your mental condition?
1. I feel normal.
2. I feel disconnected - a separation of mind and body.
3. I feel altered - a change in character.
4. I feel lost- I don’t exist anymore.
Click.
SAVING...
[QUESTION THREE]
How would you describe your senses?
1. As expected - normal.
2. I feel more sensitive and more aware of my surroundings.
3. I feel blocked - as if my senses are numb.
4. I am lacking one or more of my senses.
Click.
SAVING...
[QUESTION FOUR]
How would you describe the sensation of your new condition?
1. It’s pleasant.
2. I don’t like it - something is wrong.
3. It’s disconcerting - everything feels constructed.
4. Depressing - I can’t shake the feeling of it all being fake.
Click.
SAVING...
(Tygan has out a clipboard, and as Bradford selects his answer, scribbles something down.)
[QUESTION FIVE]
Are you troubled by the fact you are no longer strictly human?
1. No, I feel fine.
2. Somewhat, I feel like I lost myself.
3. Yes, I mourn my previous existence.
4. I don’t care what form I take, as long as I get to carry on.
Click.
SAVING...
(More scribbling.)
[Question Seven]
How do you perceive your own existence?
1. It’s a direct continuation of my previous self.
2. It’s a new chapter in my life.
3. It’s like being born all over again- a complete do over.
4. It’s something completely different and has nothing to do with my previous self.
Click.
SAVING...
“Oh, damn,” comes Beta Shen’s voice in his ear; he starts and sees she’s come to look over his shoulder as he works through the survey.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’ll learn soon enough,” she says, and reaches over him to press CONTINUE.
[QUESTION EIGHT]
Do you think this new existence will be a life worth living?
1. Yes, just as much as my previous life.
2. Yes, but with less meaning.
3. Maybe we can find a new sense of meaning in this world.
4. No, it’s too detached from reality and everything I know.
Click.
SAVING...
“A positive outlook,” Tygan says. “Good.”
“Can you... see this?” The doctor isn’t anywhere near a position where he can read the screen...
Tygan doesn’t answer.
Beta Shen taps CONTINUE again.
[QUESTION NINE]
Would you rather be removed from the project and accept death?
Bradford hesitates. Then:
1. Yes.
2. Maybe- I have to think about it.
3. No.
Click.
SAVING...
Your answers have been saved. Thank you for participating.
-The ARK team
The podium darkens, just in time for the room to shake violently. As it does, Alpha Shen swears, the words ringing against the walls of the room, against every simulated molecule of air.
“What’s going on?” Bradford asks, the mote of fear blooming into something more as Beta Shen and Tygan fizzle from existence. “Doctor?”
“Deep breaths,” comes Tygan’s voice, now surrounding like Alpha Shen’s is. “I’ve only joined Shen within. I am still here. We are still here.”
“Within...?”
“The device itself. Well, rather the software— its protocols, its cyphers, its code. The psionic object detected earlier just collided with the hull at a speed of 90 miles per hour at a indirect angle. It seems almost like...”
“It was slowing down.” Shen’s voice flattens with suspicion. “It, or rather whoever sent it, knows there’s something going on in here.”
ADVENT? No. No. It can’t be them, he did so good, he avoided them, he avoided—
Bradford feels sick, sees his vision blur, feels his body drop and his hands clumsily catch himself against the tile floor. Something beeps in his ears, and the world spins, and he faintly faintly just as Shen snap at Tygan, “He’s stress crashing, get him somewhere safe, do something or we’ll lose him!”
The world blinks out—
—and back in, and Bradford is not in a laboratory observation room anymore. Instead he is in a wheat field, that stretches out before him, and when he spins around, crests to a house and a barn on a hill behind. The sun is low, casting golden light across the wheat, and faintly he hears chickens and a dog barking.
Nostalgia and disbelief flicker in his chest, pool as tears in his eyes. The world jumps, his vision skitters with multicolored lights at the edges.
“Not that! That’s not a good memory!”
“Is childhood not safety?”
“It’s too far removed from what he knows! Choose something — goddamn it!”
The world spins away, and so does Bradford, and there is red and black and glyphs and then a hand—
“What is that thing?”
“It’s got a scan date just minutes before Central’s.. looks almost like it’s got ADVENT quarantine protocols. Somebody does not want whatever’s in there coming out. So naturally...”
“You cannot afford to—“
“Too late.”
Beta Shen is at his side then, floating together in this black red white whirling void of nothing where there a mass of neon STOP and AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY signs spin about what appears to Bradford a computer file symbol labeled ‘bc.njk’.
(“Tygan?”
“Shen.”
“Something just opened the communications line. Whatever this thing is it can... talk to us.”
“Internal or external?”
“Both.”)
Beta Shen prods and pokes at them, slowly clears them away with flashes of blue that make Bradford’s head ache ache ache, and then there is nothing and the file is blossoming into a human shaped shadow—
—-and then he is falling to hard earth, wheezing with tears streaming down his face. He sits up, wiping his face with his wrist, blinking back the colors and jump of his eyesight, looks up into a face he has not seen in twenty years.
“John?” asks Commander Blaine Cohen.
“Jesus Christ,” Bradford answers, and there is a impression of a lifeline peaking behind his eyes and one of the Shen’s howling ‘save, goddamn it!’ somewhere above him before everything goes dark.
///
Bradford wakes with a headache that thunders at his temples in a dark room, with a comforter drawn to his chin. He struggles out of the fabric, kicking it off and into the floor, feet hitting carpet as he staggers up. For a moment, for a moment, the room is known— the metal walls of the Avenger, the bed a futon and comforter stolen from a Lost city, his milk crate nightstand and self made bookshelves, and for a moment it is all a bad dream.
Then the door to the room opens, and Cohen is standing there haloed in the light of the hall wearing a polo shirt and slacks, and the false awakening around him shatters: the bed is Old World, the walls are beige and painted, there is a window and a wooden bedside counter with a lamp.
“Fuck,” Bradford says, and feels bile rise in his throat. “Fuck!”
Cohen takes a step back. “Is this a bad time?” he starts to ask, but then Bradford has crossed the space between between them and is hugging him, doesn’t care if it’s unprofessional, doesn’t care the ramifications of his being here.
When he lets go, the Commander is laughing a little. “Wow, okay, yeah that’s you, Central.” The smile on his face turns to a small frown. “You look like you aged thirty years overnight, though. And...” His eyes flick around the room. “What’s gong on?”
“What do you remember?” asks Bradford, and prays it is not fire and heat and pain and—
“Well, the base attack, that happened a few months ago, and then-“
Bradford holds up a hand to stop him. “A few months ago?”
“Yeah; the aliens tried to return our favor, but we managed to keep them out. We’d been working on getting plasma weapons and finishing coverage of Africa when... well it seems like just last night I lied down to sleep and then I woke up here and this doesn’t look like HQ at all.” He gestures at the closed window behind Central. “It’s underground, for starters.”
Bradford stares at him. “We didn’t do that,” he says finally.
“What?”
“We lost, Commander.”
“What do you—“
“We lost HQ. We lost you. We lost everything,” he says, and suddenly he is pouring out about the Sectoid he fought off by himself and about watching that damn Muton and the running to the Skyranger and about the hiding and the moving and — and —
When he’s done, when he manages to shut himself up, he is not the only one trembling.
“Then what am I remembering?” Cohen asks, and his voice shakes.
“I don’t know,” Bradford says, “but I know what I know is true. And Tygan and Shen can confirm it. I think...”
He takes a long long breath. “I think whatever you remember, I don’t think... I think it’s ADVENT. I think... maybe it’s not real.”
Bradford scrubs at his face, tries to use his own stubble’s toughness to ground himself and fails because he’s not real it’s not real none of this is real now is it. “I think. I don’t know anything anymore, really. I woke up this morning on Earth and now...”
“Now?”
“It’s been a very long day, Commander,” Bradford says.
“You sure do look like it has been,” the other man says in his usual bright chipper tone. “This looks like a apartment of some kind. Is it yours?” There is some kind of unspoken question attached to that.
(How did we get here, is probably one question. Why do we remember different things, is another. He can only answer one but doesn’t want to.
Not yet.)
“They said they’d place me somewhere eventually anyway,” he murmurs half to himself. Louder to Cohen, he says, “Yeah, it’s mine.”
“Kind of a hodge podge looking place; didn’t expect it to be your kind of aesthetic,” Cohen says.
“I’m working with pre made assets,” Bradford says.
Cohen frowns a little, but the frown disappears as fast as it came. “Well, I saw a coffeemaker in the kitchen while I was waiting for you to wake up. Would you like me to make us some coffee?”
This life (?) is already so goddamn weird, he might as well pounce on the first semblance of normality he’s gotten in 20 years.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that. Let’s have some coffee.”
