Time escaped it’s constraints as I lay in the dark. I existed, and that was all. No past, no future. Just this never ending peace in the dark. Nothing felt worth anything.

Should I move? No. There was no need to. Drifting in and out of this darkness. Why was I here. Where was here? Did that matter?

No?

Maybe?

I wasn’t really certain as I drifted. Was I asleep or awake? Did that actually matter? There was no need for me to do anything.

Or was there?

There was a person I longed for. A man I wished to see again.

I had seen him, hadn’t I? Recently.

The bright lights. I was awake before when the lights shone down on me. The inability to move. The man telling me I would never walk again. The constant mentions of my borg.

I turned my head to see if I could see anything in the darkness I was lying in. I could move! I had moved without thinking!

I lifted my arms, and let them fall back. I tried to lift my feet, but there was nothing. Oh, yeah. He had said I would never walk again.

“A-Anyone,” I croaked out the word. “There?”

“I am here.” That was Dan’s voice coming from my right! But it was so lackluster it didn’t really sound like him.

“Dan, is it really you?” It seemed so much like him, but at the same time not quite.

“Yes.”

“They told me you were dead,” My eyes itched and burned as tears poured out.

“I am not - quite.” He stopped.

I wasn’t certain what he was trying to say, but I was so grateful he was alive. He had saved me at the last minute and he was here, next to me now. I wished he would reach over and touch me so I could feel his hands again. “Can you,” I paused, uncertain if I should finish, but then decided to be brave, “hold my hand?”

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Cold fingers gently wrapped themselves into my right hand. “Your fingers are so cold,” I told him.

“I did not warm them up, so that is natural with my hand being metal,” His voice had the same tone as his cold hands.

I moved my fingers, feeling the smooth metal and the strangely shaped joints wrapped in my hand. “What did they do to you?”

“I was turned into a cyborg.” His statement was so direct it took a moment to process.

It included that word I kept hearing. The word borg. “What does that mean?”

“You heard it called cyberman in the past. I am now like Lok.”

Like Lok. Memories of the cold and efficient Lok came back. The man who had facilitated my rehabilitation on my last stay in the Wall. No. No. Not Dan. My Dan. I gripped his metal fingers tightly with my hand, “What does that mean for you? What happened? How…?” I didn’t even know how to finish my last question.

“I will tell you the full story to answer your questions. I will begin with after I had already been brought into the Wall as it seems you were told the story up till that point. I was very close to death. The doctors hooked my body up to a number of machines to keep it alive, but my body would not last indefinitely, so they woke me up enough to speak with me. It was explained to me that the process they used to do this used the section of the brain that controls emotions to connect all the computer chips into. They write a program into the chips in cyborgs to help regulate behavior since the emotional section of the brain cannot process emotions anymore. Because this process removes who you once were, the elders require spoken consent to being turned into a borg. I gave consent and asked for my program to be dedicated to you,” His words came out steadily and with pausing in perfect succession until he came to the end of what he was saying and stopped.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Removes who you once were rattled in my head.

“I did desire to say something to you at the time. It is nonsensical, but since the Dan at that time made sure to record it, I will repeat what was said, “Liv, I’m sorry. I wana see this to the end with ya, but I’m hooked up to all these things, and this is the only way. I’m sort of with ya, I think. I don’t quite understand what they’re telling me, but I wana do everything I can to protect ya and help ya. I begged them to make sure that if I wasn’t myself, I would still be there for ya in whatever way I can. I love ya Liv. I love ya.” His words sounded so desperate, and the end sounded choked with the wine of someone holding up a stack worth of feelings and trying not to collapse.

It was my Dan’s voice in that rushed and hurried message. It was his intonation and his mix of falling back into village speech and city speech. He was here. The tears poured down my face, and I pulled him close to me until I could hear his breathing. “Thank you,” I whispered through my silent sobbing. He had done so much for me. When I had given up on him, he had given away his very being to be with me. He wasn’t waiting for me in some dream of death. He was here with me now.

A dim and faint light came on from above, and I could see his face above me looking down at me. The emotion that I’d heard in that message was gone, and his face was blank and cold. It was Dan’s face. It was so clearly him. Whatever they had done to him, and whatever they had filled his brain with, he had Dan’s memories and he was still clearly him, just without expression. This was Dan.

I pushed myself with my left arm onto my right side, and then reached out with that arm to touch his face that was so close to me. “You are Dan. No matter what the Wall did to you, I know you are still Dan.”