Remembering

J collapsed into bed exhausted. It had been a long day of Jackie riding her ragged with bitch job after bitch job. Fixing appliances, doing car repairs and coding for T-bug and her mind was still racing from the encounter in the car park. The migraine had faded into a dull buzz of pressure in the back of her skull which finally faded as she fell asleep.

As she slept images began to flash through her mind, memories she never had before slowly began to slot themselves into her head. She remembered the games she loved both tabletop and video, the classes she took, the music she listened to, the shows she watched, her hopes, her dreams, everything that made her who she used to be. It came flooding back with perfect clarity indelibly staining her psyche.She remembered everything, everything except her personal connections or her name. She didn’t inherit those, she would have lost who she was otherwise, her personality completely overwritten by that shy introverted girl she had been in her otherlife. Instead it slotted into place like the final piece to a complex 3d puzzle adding itself to the whole to finally reveal the picture, replacing the migraine with a lingering slight ache… she could almost ignore it, like a small cut on your hand, you know it’s there but it’s easy enough to forget it.

Waking up the next morning, she made her way groggily to the bathroom but was arrested when her smart mirror activated and she saw herself in its reflection and her mind began to race.

Cyberpunk 2077, shit this is Cyberpunk 2077! I’m the streetkid! Wait I can’t be the streetkid, I J not V. I know V she’s that bitch corpo that Jackie sometimes hangs out with. Fuck dodged a bullet there. Fuck having an engram in my head, even if it is Silverhand. Also fuck you Jackie you are so full of shit when you die from stealing from Arasaka, Fuck, fuck, FUCK! Jackie is going to die if I don’t intervene. Can I intervene, is the future I know set in f’n stone I gotta find out and see if I can fix it.

Shit, is this real? No stupid question. Never doubt reality is real. It’s pointless, like worrying if you’re a simulation. For me it makes no difference. I don’t really feel any different than before though. Maybe a little more myself but not different. I’m still J. I just know a lot of strange shit now, I can’t really remember anything personal. My only family is still Haru. I do feel more mature though and I know what should happen in a couple of years. Especially what happened in the game and the anime, the anime… shit. That is messed up. Executive decision let’s somehow prevent that shit. Seems easy enough, I’ve got about two years to plan for that.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Shit I’m going off on tangents. I need to set down and write out what I know while it’s still fresh. Anything new could be important. J’s mind began to shut down with stress slowly switching to autopilot.

Several hours later she awoke from a fugue state at her decks terminal. She had written a hundred pages in a blur and fitted it all into an encrypted file with text alerts scheduled to ping to her about upcoming events, and her fingers ached.

How the fuck did I do that? I don’t even remember writing half of this. Flexing and stretching her cramping fingers.

Shit I need to get a cyberdeck. Getting carpal tunnel at 15 is just strange. Finally old enough to get myself chipped and convince doc to do it too. What's that?...

J focused on a small dot in her vision. Only to swear as it expanded into a full blown text alert.

System Initialization complete

**Error:System locked, due to Ego damage**

Programming has increase +1

**Error:System locked, due to Ego damage**

Programming increase has been halted until damage is resolved

… shit. She mentally went through a list of different commands to attempt to access her user interface which she should not have because she was completely ‘ganic. A mental command for Log brought up a long string of event logs starting while she was still asleep, most of which was jiberish and unreadable. Until it reached the final lines of the log she had read.

Finally ending with a mental Profile, and for the second time today her life took a strange twist and changed forever.