A few hours of passed since your talk with Andrew. You lie on your back, staring up at the ceiling in what others might see as a fascination for the metal that hills over itself in binding that hold's the whole place together. To you, you're letting exhaustion over absolutely everything that has happened to you in the past day and however long catch up to you. Your mind is rushing at a million miles a moment trying to figure out everything and for once you wish it would just slow down and be like your body, completely motionless for just a few moments.

The thing is...thinking about that in some way only brings in new thoughts like how completely meta thinking about not thinking is and it only makes your mind move faster and thus you more tired. What doesn't help is that you're acutely aware of the feeling of your back against the hard seat. Cushions seem to be lost to the people of this time it seems.

Around you are some people that you do not know. Workers from below who came up and some others who you don't know where they have come from, probably just there for the same reason as you, looking for a chance to sit down and take a moment to themselves. You haven't looked out to them, but you've heard the shuffling of their footsteps as they've come in and left. Some heavier than others, those ones you think might belong to a Breeton considering the average weight of a normal one.

Part of you doesn't want to look, keep up some of the mystery of your little game of guessing how many are in the room with you now, you guess maybe ten.

It helps keep your mind off of your memories.

Remembering is so tiring, and you wish you could just remember everything and get it over with. Either that or just forget everything and know true bliss. Of course, you know you wouldn't enjoy not knowing anything. You've already gone through that once before and it was far from blissful. Ignorance is anything but bliss.

You hear the door to the medical wing open and you hear lighter footsteps clinking on the ground. Whatever is underneath you must be super hollow. Just then you see Jesse pop is head in real quick, he's holding back a grin. He must have been trying to scare you, but unfortunately you heard him coming. His blond hair is full of sweat and looks moppy. He looks moppy all over. He has been working so hard down there he must be exhausted, you kind of wish you let him scare you to give him the satisfaction.

“How'd it go?” You ask, stretching out fully on the seat, remaining staring at the ceiling.

“A lotta work. Storing hundreds of pounds worth of medicine and tools is one thing, unpacking it all and sorting it is an entirely different story. They're understaffed as it is down there so I helped out. Of course, I don't know where most of it goes so I had to move a lot of stuff a lot,” he leans against his elbow onto the frame of the chair and looks down to you.

“Definitely sounds like a lot of work.”

“A lotta. You gotta have the emphasis,” he says, accenting it with a flick of his hand. You laugh. He grabs your legs and swings them aside as he sits down beside you. You groan loudly, not caring that the others around you would be annoyed by it. You slide up and pull yourself to a normal sitting position. Around you there only seem to be another human, a dark skinned girl with long curly hair and bright eyes; next to her reading some kind of book is an Illith. She's almost the size of the dictionary sized tome, it's sprawled out in front of her on a table. It seems you were way off your guess. Damn. Whoever was the owner of the heavier footprints must have returned to where they came from.

“Sorry, sounds like a lotta work,” you say in return.

“How about you? Should I go get my pen and paper for the biography of Andrew Cress?”

“Would you believe me if I told you it was a long story?”

“Well I didn't think that he would have told you that he drank a magic potion and poof he's a million years old. That's not what happened, right?”

“You actually consider that a possibility?”

“Got to let a man dream, now.”

“Gotta,” you say.

“Okay okay, enough of the making fun of me. Spill the beans.”

“He's the reason Earth was destroyed. At least part of it. And his long lasting life is a side effect of being contaminated with this stuff called Omega Force which is apparently like really bad stuff.”

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“I was expecting more than really bad stuff,” he says.

“I don't know, like, antimatter or shit. Physical form of death. I don't know the specifics.”

“Well, that's not too far off from a magic potion.”

“You seem to be glossing over the tiny details that I mentioned about him being a part of Earth's destruction.”

“Eh, I figured he had something big like that considering how down he seems all the time.”

“No way, nuh-uh,” you say.

“What?”

“I'm so not letting you nonchalantly play off the “Oh, I guessed it was that” card.”

“Okay okay, let me rephrase—and by god if you correct that to lemme...”

You play off a smile. It feels good, a distraction of joy in the heart of darkness. “Okay, fine. Rephrase then, I'll stay quiet.”

“It makes sense, then, that he feels so depressed all the time because of something like that.

“There's something more, it deals less with Andrew and more with me.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“I've been remembering bits about my life. I told you before when we were going to the other bunker that I was dealing with some rather difficult memories.”

“I do recall you mentioning that.”

“I've been having difficulty understanding why I am remembering the things that I am. I recognize it as my own life, surely, but according to Andrew what's happening to me shouldn't be.”

“What do you mean shouldn't be?”

“According to him memories are a physical thing specific to the bodies that create them. Once a body gets used to certain reactions it stores them as memories. I'm horribly simplifying that, but that's the main point. If I'm here in this new body that's completely and wholly different to my old one I shouldn't be remembering anything of my life. If anything, I should be remembering Roland's life, considering he was the one living in this body.”

“I see, that is quite the puzzle.”

“There's all of that mess, and to add onto it I've been remembering a life I'm not proud of. I feel ashamed and confused and I just have a feeling it's somehow connected with why I'm here. I mean, it seems the answer is right in front of me, but just out of my reach, you get what I'm saying?”

He throws his head back and stares up at the ceiling, “Yeah, that's terribly annoying. I take it you still don't remember it all yet?”

You shake your head. “I want to so bad, but it doesn't come. That's why I want to test that Rembrall stuff Bartz was talking about.”

Jesse lets loose a sigh. “I should have told you about it, yes I know, but I at least wanted to wait until we got back and had a chance to breathe. Everything's been so hectic and I've basically done nothing but be your caretaker since you woke up in that prison cell.”

“I...I'm sorry. I know this must be difficult to deal with,” you say, but he shakes his head.

“I'm okay, I didn't mean to phrase it like that. I mean like, normally I feel like I'd have a plan for how things would go in a situation like this, and all this stuff with Cross coming out of left field. We need every body we can get and if you reacted poorly to the drug because of a miscalculation on my part then I'd be racked with grief.”

“I understand. I didn't really think of it like that.”

“There is a way that we can try it out, but it might hurt, a lot.”

“What's that?”

“Updating your entire system. If I'm certain that the Rembrall won't like, totally fry your system I'd be totally up for convincing one of those tech guys down there to help us out with the Rembrall.”

“Well, how do we do that? Is it like my language bank thingy that you updated back in the jail?”

“Unfortunately it won't be as easy as that. Some parts will be, like your reading ability. Others however, like immune system upgrades and any maintenance on your internal structure, like if you have any lung problems or anything like that will be much more difficult, especially considering how out of date Roland must be.”

“I want to do it,” you say, stretching and then finally standing up. It's definitely time to move around a bit.

He looks at you, something like pride shows in his eyes and you can see him nod his head up and down briskly as he stands. “Okay, we'll have to go find someone who isn't busy helping out any of the wounded. I think I know someone down on the lower level, she's a Psarcian, name's Hatta. She's one of the best I know at human updates. I just hope she's still around,” he says, nodding to the door at the end of the room. “Let's go check the lower level.”

“Why wouldn't she be down there?” you ask, cocking your head.

“She's kinda flaky with staying in one place too long, I hear her coworkers get upset with her often about it, always moving, that one.”

“Thought you said we were going to find someone who wasn't too terribly busy. She sounds like the opposite.”

“Moving around a lot doesn't always mean busy. She's got a bad habit of trying to keep busy to avoid actually becoming busy.”

“My mother was like that,” you say, remembering.

You don't remember much about your mother. You think your guilt over what happened shrouds most of your happy memories with her. The first thing that you remember is that you left her to die to cancer to join Devon in his crusade with that damn cult.

Your mother loved the smell of morning glories.