Annabelle hadn’t suddenly died. Except for a light dust allergy, she lived a healthy life with no medical issues.
She also couldn’t have fallen asleep. She might have been tired and exhausted from the previous night, but only a narcoleptic could fall asleep in that situation.
However, there also hadn’t been any bright lights, no loud sounds, absolutely no indicators or preludes to what had happened.
One moment, her mother was being an ass, and then, she got cut off in the middle of her sentence, replaced by… Annabelle wasn’t actually sure. Calling it “darkness“ or “black” didn’t seem right. It was something more, or less. It was almost as if she saw nothing. As if she… She couldn’t see, anything, at all. As if she was blind.
“Mom!? What is going on?” she called out, just a little scared now. Immediately she got angry at herself, she refused to go to her mother after what that woman had just done.
But then, she got scared again. She couldn’t hear anyone answering her call for help. Rather, she couldn’t even hear her call herself. She couldn’t feel her mouth moving to form the words. The shock of the realization gave her just enough focus to comprehend the full extend of her circumstances
She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything either. Nor could she smell, or feel, or taste.
For the first time in her life, Annabelle’s mind was freed from the persistent nagging of her body's various needs. In a way, it was freeing, her thoughts had never before been this clear. And yet, for the same reason, it was even more so terrifying. She was alone with nothing but her thoughts, without even the smallest sensation to use as a distraction. Only her thoughts.
Once, she had read a story. A webcomic about a woman with amnesia who Satan had then given the powers of a demon. In her quest to regain her memories, at some point, the woman confronted Satan himself. She lost, and as punishment was thrown into the ninth circle of hell. The reason she could remember that scene especially well was the rather interesting take the story had on the circle reserved for the greatest of sinners. There was no fire, the way popular media tended to depict it. Neither was it ice and frost as Dante had claimed. No, in that story, the ninth layer had been a hole of nothingness. A place where a person would be trapped with nothing but their own thoughts for all of eternity. They would lose their sense of time first, centuries could pass in what felt like minutes, and minutes could pass in what felt like centuries. They would never know. And inevitably, they would go crazy, start hallucinating, and lose their grip on reality.
Back then, she had found it funny and stopped reading the story not long after. But now? Now she realized. She had let her mind wander just a little, and already she couldn’t tell whether seconds or hours had passed. She could feel the loneliness creeping up on her. The fear of not knowing when, if at all, she would wake up. If she could wake up at all. She wasn’t asleep after all. Her thoughts were far too clear for this to be a dream.
But before the fear could set in and turn into panic, Annabelle felt something. With the desperation of a person drowning, drowning in her own thoughts, she held onto that single feeling. A pounding and throbbing she could feel somewhere in her… somewhere. For a moment, the fear returned, fear that she was already starting to hallucinate, that years might have passed and she couldn’t remember. Still, she held onto the feeling with all her mental might. It was a strange feeling. Not quite pain, but close. Not a sign of danger, but it told her that something was missing.
The fact that she hated br0c—
Or that her fami1y's dog Bernard was a ———
That every m0rning she w0uld wake up at —
Her memories. Parts of who she was had simply disappeared, she realized in horror.
For now, it didn’t seem like anything truly important had gone missing. At most, tiny snippets she should be able to reconstruct from context.
She still knew that she couldn’t stand the vile green abomination of a vegetable not just for it’s taste, but for the texture it had inside her mouth. She simply couldn’t quite recall its name. And she still knew that Bernard was big, cuddly, and the bestest boy in the world. What did it matter if she couldn’t quite recall what the dogs race was, as long as she remembered him?
The problem was, she didn’t know how or why it had happened, or even when. For all she knew, her memories were eroding by the second whenever she wasn’t looking.
Bringing the entirety of her mental focus, however, she shifted her thoughts away from that train of thought, instead focusing on something less terrifying and far more puzzling.
Even if the missing background noise of her body had cleared up her thoughts like this, it was strange how she could interact with her own mind in this state. Not only had she been able to somehow feel that parts of her memories were missing. Much stranger was the accuracy with which she could identify those memories, and the precise detail she could recall them in. And it didn’t just apply to those memories in particular. It didn’t take her long to bring up even the most hidden memories about different dog breeds she had and then cross reference them with her still pristine memories of Berny’s appearance, quickly allowing her to identify him as a labrador. She didn’t bother with the vegetable, she wouldn’t mind having its entire existence scrubbed from her mind.
It was truly strange. In the current freedom of her mind, she could easily recall memories she thought long lost, call them up, sort them, recombine them, and make connections before putting them away. It was almost like her memories were books inside a library, and for the first time in her life, the light had been turned on, allowing her to actually see the books names on their spines instead of making her find them through memory and feel alone.
However, there was more. The more she opened up her mind to the idea, looked around her mind, and just tried things out, the more she realized she could feel. More and more, she felt where she was missing pieces of her memories. No, she realized. Saying that she was just missing pieces didn’t seem quite appropriate. If she were to look at the pieces she was missing and their, for a lack of a better word, location in the topography of her mind, there was a kind of pattern to it. The only way she could describe it was as “cracks” in her mind.
Thankfully, that meant that very few things were truly missing. Most of it just seemed temporarily disconnected until she recreated the connections, like pieces of a puzzle she simply had to stick together, only the rare piece having gone completely missing. Still the few that were, she could replace with a blank which was then easy to paint the right colors by comparing it to the bigger picture.
And thus, she began searching, sifting through her memories and remembering, starting from the most important facts, just to make sure she didn’t miss anything.
Her name was Annabelle Cartwright. Her friends called her either Annie or Be1le. She was 18 years old.
She had a little brother, Jacob, one year younger than herself who was obsessed with videogames and fantasy. The favored younger child who was allowed to play videogames all day long just because he somehow managed to earn some money with it.
Her mother, Madelin Cartwright, a witch who was either busy a1l the time. And when she wasn’t, she seemed to have nothing better to do than to get on Annabelle’s case. In general, she was a strict and pushy woman, always claiming that it was “for Annabelle’s own good”.
She could even remember her father, the piece of shit that had left them the moment it came out that her mother as pregnant a second time. Annabelle could only remember seeing him a single time, and that was in while she was still young. The occasion hadn’t been a happy one either, but a court case that had drawn on for far too long regarding the fact that he didn’t just leave, but emptied their entire savings into a private account beforehand. 0f course, he won the case because what he did was an absolute dick-move, but not actually illegal. Also, he actually had the money to get a lawyer.
Despite having little money, they actually lived in a surprisingly large house. Her mother had got it for cheap, mostly because it had been more safety hazard than liveable space. 1t had taken years of patch jobs before it actually lo0ked nice, though most of that was only on the surface.
They lived on earth, USA, Texas, Houston, TX 77051, 01101100 01101111 01100011 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110101 01101110 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 01101110
01100101 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100101 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110010
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
01110101 01101110 01100001 01110101 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110010 01101001 01111010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110100 01100001 01100011 01110100 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110100 01100101 01100011 01110100 01100101 01100100
01100100 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101101 01101001 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110000 01110010 01101001 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110000 01101111 01101110 01110011 01100101
Instantly, Annabelle’s mind was paralyzed as the thoughts incompatible with her mind suddenly overwhelmed her, drowning out everything else.
She didn’t know whether it was seconds, hours or years, but eventually she managed to formulate a single clear thought, mentally flinching back, running for the safety of her own mind.
She was shocked and scared for a while, but surprisingly, she quickly calmed down. At least she thought so. Who could tell how much time had actually passed?
No, actually, somehow she could tell. Somehow she knew that exactly 12.725 increments of time had passed between breaking contact and having this realization. Increments of what, she had no clue, it didn’t feel like seconds, or any other unit of time she was familiar with. Rather, the entire thing was was very off. It had a distinct… flavor, of mechanical precision. The same, she realized in fear, as the thoughts that had overwhelmed her own.
Frantically, she redoubled the speed of her search through her memories, wary and keeping away from the foreign thoughts invading her own.
But the more familiar she became with it, the more she noticed small incongruities. Memories that suddenly switched between the blurry, organic curves of emotions and external influences of her own memories into crisp straight lines of hard numbers, mathematics, and facts, before reconnecting with her own.
Somehow, for some reason, it hadn’t just been herself who had been repairing her memories, but also the machine-like mind intersecting her own.
By all rights, the realization that some foreign, barely understandable entity was actively changing her mind should have sent her panicking once again. However despite that, the more she looked at the repaired parts and pieces, the calmer she became. And she was even reasonably sure that she wasn’t being mind controlled.
She purposefully ignored the fact that that is what someone who mind controlled her would want to make her think. That particular rabbit hole was one she was in the mood to crawl down just yet.
No, the reason for her calm was that she could instinctively determine the personality of the foreign mind. And she somehow knew that it wasn’t evil. Not that it was particularly “good” either. It was a being of logic and little else.
She calmed herself down out of both, respect and a little bit of fear. Who knew how much longer she would be stuck here with nothing but this foreign mind as company? She couldn’t feel any malice in any of it’s work, so the most reasonable thing seemed to be to try and make peace, so long as it didn’t give her a reason to start conflict.
And so far, while invasive, the only thing it had done was to help her, at least as far as Annabelle could tell.
With her fear replaced by a healthy dose of wariness, Annabelle carefully approached the area in her mind where it had splintered apart the most and was intersecting with the mechanical mind of straight lines and numbers. She measured out the borders carefully for about 25.000 units, and then began to watch for about thrice as long. And for the moment, she managed to confirm that the foreign mind wasn’t a threat. No matter how long she watched, it didn’t seem like the border was changing in any way.
As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any damage done, no changes made, and no corruption had occurred.
However, before she had any chance to make a decision on whether or not she should try and make contact with the other mind again, the situation changed. Change brought on by another intruder in her mind.
[System connection: temporarily stable]
[Unusual circumstances detected]
[Analyzing…]
As those words rang through the entirety of her mind, Annabelle suddenly felt… well, not quite violated. It missed the brutality for her to call it that. Still, it felt like mental harassment as this newest entity began to methodically poke, prod, and stroke her mind.
[Soul damage detected]
[Attempting repair…]
She wasn’t quite sure what to think of what the “System”, she assumed at least, was saying. Apparently, those cracks in her mind, not all of which had been repaired yet by either the mechanical mind or herself, were damage to her Soul. In that case, if she could feel those cracks, was it reasonable to assume that she was currently just a Soul? And that the mechanical mind was, well not a mind, but a Soul too? A mechanical Soul? Well, not that she could think about it much longer as she was moments later assaulted by a very uncomfortable feeling of the System squishing, pushing, and pulling her soul around. Sure, the cracks seemed to repair themselves in the process, and much more cleanly than the mechanical Soul or herself had done, but the process was everything but comfortable. Every time a memory was restored, it was called up in full detail for Annie to experience. It hadn’t been a problem before, as she had been repairing them one by one. But now, memories resurfaced at incredible speeds, fighting for her attention in a disconnected storm of thoughts.
Until, it seemed, the System detected a problem.
[Error! Multiple Souls detected!]
[Re-Analyzing…]
And suddenly, the storm came to an end. It took Annie a few moments to gather herself, but once she did, she realized why it had stopped. Most of her Soul had been repaired. All that was left now was the splintered part of her soul overlapping and fused with the other one.
[Soul-fusion detected]
[Attempt to separate Souls…]
Once again, she could feel the prodding and poking, this time focused on the connection she had with the other Soul.
[Error! Risk is of Soul separation unjustifiable.]
[Searching for alternative solutions…]
Finally, the System stopped, even if only for only a few moments as it tried to find a solution, giving her at least a bit of a breather. Still, it continued soon enough with another announcement.
[New parameter detected: One organic Soul and one artificial Soul detected. Organic Soul has absolute priority!]
[Searching for alternative solutions under new parameters…]
She really wasn’t sure what to think off this. Either the fact that the other soul was considered artificial, or the fact that hers had “absolute priority”. On their own, these statements were concerning enough, but together, Annabelle had a bad feeling about whatever alternative solution this “System” would come up with.
[Solution found!]
[Attempting Soul-integration according to priorities…]
Before she had a chance to worry any further however, her thoughts were once again drowned out. Not by the memories from earlier, and not by the numbers, mathematics, and pure logic of when she first made contact with the other Soul. Instead, it was with a strange and completely nonsensical mix of both. She could feel her mind, her Soul, grow. Like the plant roots growing at ten thousand times the speed, she could feel her Soul expand, and stretch into thin, feeler like extensions, burying deep into the other Soul, each little movement or touch evoking combinations of thoughts that were both organic and mechanical, and made absolutely no sense.
This feeling was very different from the previous analyzing touch of the System upon her Soul. If it had been light harassment before, then this went far beyond even the greatest violation Annabelle could have imagined.
It wasn’t just a simple change in shape that induced some strange thoughts, it was her very self that was being changed. It was a disgusting feeling she could do absolutely nothing about besides try to endure as she slowly felt her Souls feeler like extensions dig their way through their victim. And when she finally thought it was over, it only became worse.
Having finished extending, the extensions of her Soul grew thicker, causing pressure from the inside like a tree root slowly growing through a crevice inside a rock, until finally, it burst apart.
It was a thoroughly unsettling experience to have a first row view on the innermost thoughts of a being whose soul was being ruptured from the inside out by your own. And she wasn’t at all sure if the fact that the Soul was thoroughly alien, apparently artificial, and its thoughts entirely mechanical and emotionless made it any better.
This was the ego-death of a living, in a sense, and clearly intelligent being. And yet, it wouldn’t, couldn’t feel anything about it.
Or maybe, it was terrified, scared to death and beyond. But if it was, Annabelle couldn’t tell.
But even then, it still wasn’t over yet. The feelers that had grown into veritable tentacles didn’t crush the other Soul completely, but neither did they let it go.
No, instead, they pulled the broken pieces in, smashing some up further before putting them back together, slotting them into place like pieces of a puzzle. A puzzle that Annabelle’s Soul was a part of. The largest part.
Bit by bit, her tentacles settled the chunks of Soul into their locations, leaving almost no gaps. And the few gaps they left, they settled into themselves, clicking into place as each seemed to connect with little buttons, switches, and sliders she could instinctively tell would let her control the foreign pieces of Soul. Or rather, what was now but a part of her own Soul, now forever inseparable from Annabelle in a horrifying amalgamation of brain, computer, and tentacles.
[Integration successful!]
[Reroute pathways to give full priority to organic Soul…]
And just as she thought it had finally come to an end, it was now the other Souls turn to expand and stretch out its feeler, little wire-like extensions snaking in and through her mind, winding through the smallest of gaps in her Soul before finally connecting to a set of seemingly dead spaces.
Spaces she quickly figured out the purpose of as the wires connected. Her senses.
[Rerouting successful!]
Once again, her mind was overwhelmed with information. But this time, not by foreign thoughts, nor by her own memories. No, it was colors and sounds, colors she didn’t know, sounds she couldn’t understand. Information that was sometimes too much, sometimes too little, and always distorted in ways that made it clear it wasn’t meant for an organic mind to comprehend.
On mere instinct, she pushed a series of buttons, immediately shutting off her senses. She didn’t mind though. Knowing that she could end her isolation with just a single mental press of a button was comforting. Though, the idea of accessing the senses of the very being whose Soul she had subsumed just earlier, even if against her will, was not at all. Even more so since she was rather sure of the fact that it would be the senses of a body that wouldn’t be her own.
[Re-Analyzing…]
Once again, she could feel the touch of the System on her Soul, the possible implications now making her even more uncomfortable then before. They were testing whether everything was as it should be before prodding at a few more places. Finally, it came to its conclusion.
[Transmigrator Identified]
[Initiating Transmigrator Protocols]
[Initiating Transmigrator System Tutorial]
[Warning! The Tutorial will disclose information only once it becomes relevant]
Transmigrator. A single word that explained far more than Annie liked. From the beginning, she had been sure that none of the things happening were dreams or illusions. She wasn’t sure how exactly she could tell, but somehow she could. Though part of it was definitely that her thoughts were far too clear and crisp for it to be a dream. It just… felt too real to not be.
However, if she chose to believe that everything was real, that one word had made her entire situation much more complicated. Not that it hadn’t been complicated already, but there was a pretty big difference between losing some memories while having her Soul fused with another and having to go through all that on her own, while stranded in an entirely different world, apart from her friends. Her found family she may never see again.
At the very least, she could be hopeful to get some explanations from that tutorial she was promised. Not that she expected too much, considering the warning flashing in bright red. Or how untrustworthy this System had made itself with its previous actions.
[Establishing System connection…]
[System connection: permanent]
[Welcome to The End!]