When he woke up, everything was too bright to comprehend. He tried to adjust his eyes but found he was only getting more disoriented as he did. He tried covering his eyes, but this only made things more confusing as his arms felt heavy and his actions disjointed. ‘I don’t understand,’ he thought to himself, trying to lift his arms again with some success, but he still couldn’t reach his straining eyes. He felt as if it had something hanging out of his arm. ‘What happened?’ He thought as he tried to remember. He tried lifting his arm again but overshot his aim, and his arm thumped onto his chest. ‘Did I crash?’ He wasn’t sure, but it sounded right.

At this point, his vision had begun to adjust, but the light still pained his eyes. It seemed like everything in the room reflected with piercing white light. He thought this must be an IV in his arm. He must have been in some accident, was now in a hospital room, but as the items came into focus among the light, it looked nothing like a hospital he had seen.

A panel in the wall shifted and a silhouette came through. When the figure drew close, blocking the light from the ceiling, his shaded face cleared. He tried to speak, but he felt choked, like he had lost his voice and had become mute, but upon trying again, he had managed to make a few sounds. ‘What kind of drug do they have me on?’ He asked himself as he slurred and attempted to speak. After a few more attempts, he would finally ask, “Where am I?”

The man sounded far away. He would have to focus tremendously, which felt like mental anguish. The man’s face would clear before Alen would understand his voice. He was a man in his later fifties; he wore a white suit but it didn’t look like something a doctor would wear. The strangest thing about him was his eyes. He had normal brown eyes upon first glance, but when you really looked, his left eye had an actual glow behind the iris. Despite this oddity, the man was familiar, though he looked nothing like anyone Alen remembered; He wouldn’t be surprised if whatever accident occurred knocked a few files loose. “Who are you?” Alen asked, forgetting his first question for the time being.

The first words still sounded far, but as he listened, it became more audible. His voice sounded so young compared to his face, and he looked surprised.

“You don’t remember me?” The man emphasized the word ‘me’ and gestured towards himself. “Ahh, I don’t take it personal—It has been some time.” His tone was apologetic, his eyes widened, and the corners of his mouth curled upward, then his hands gestured to his face. Alen could feel his own face shifting and showing his confusion. “It’s me, Morris. Morris Tap?” He said his full name like he was asking if it rang any bells and after some prodding around in his mushy head, he remembered, but this man had longer, older hair, worn grizzle on his cheeks, and not to mention the glowing left eye. He had said some time had passed, hadn’t he? “How long was I out?” He thought about asking if he was correct about his own name, but once the idea crossed his mind, he felt relatively confident in his own identity.

Morris’ expressive face became more crestfallen,

“Thirty years, give or take.” He couldn’t look him in the eyes, knowing this would be the hardest thing for Alen to swallow. Alen felt like he was pushed backward out of his body, while this explained shifting panels in the walls, Morris’ age gap, and why his body had been so out of sorts, it left him in a mass of uncertainty that weighed against his chest like a sack of bricks.

When Alen brought himself back, catching his breath, and his surroundings became clear once again.

“Where am I—again?” Morris raised an eyebrow but otherwise hadn’t mentioned what could seem like a lapse in memory to anyone other than Alen himself.

“You’re at Memento HQ, my man.” He looked as if this were his big reveal, but Alen was unaware of what he was talking about. He had never heard of a company called Memento. Morris thought for a moment, perplexed, before lightly slapping his palm to his forehead, “I forgot you weren’t there for this part; You’d be surprised what thirty years could do to the mind.” He tapped his temple with his index finger, “Memento used to be GenuTec before I took over and changed the name.—You know, where you used to work.” His smile slowly widened as he realized this was a far better reveal than he had initially planned. “C.I.P.S had made me enough money to buy the place out. A side effect of you being unable to be a part of the company anymore, but don’t worry, I had most of your cut set aside in an account that has a mighty fine interest rate on it.”

Alen didn’t care that Morris had clearly taken some of his share while he was out, but as Morris mentioned, he couldn’t be an active member of the company. Who knew if he would ever wake up in the first place? It didn’t matter much; he felt lucky to have anything to come back to after thirty years. “Once I was in command, I had you transferred out of that dingy hospital you were in and brought you here so you could comatose in style.” Alen found it endearing that Morris still spoke like an up-and-coming twenty-year-old.

“And what about that?” Alen asked, finding he had to strain to point towards Morris’ left eye.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Oh, that’s a fun one.” He said, “One of the recent discoveries of mankind. About five or six years ago, I can’t quite remember when exactly—we began integrating our tech into our bodies. Memento was one of the first companies to invest in the technology but BioGlow beat us to it. The owner of BioGlow knew I wanted a CyberEye and bet if he made it mainstream before us, he could personally give me the surgery.” Morris made a gesture that said, ‘so there you have it,’ making sure to leave out the fact that he was to undergo surgery without anesthetic as per the rules of the bet. “I’m not a fan of the glow, I think it’s tacky but what are you going to do. — There are more mods for the human body coming out every year and honestly, it’s hard to keep up.” Alen assumed this meant that Memento had been suffering lately.

“There is one more thing you’re gonna want to see.” Morris reached over to a counter, grabbing a mirror. He brought it in front of Alen’s face and he had the strangest sense of face blindness. The face in the frame looked like his own, almost exactly like he remembered it. While this would be normal for anyone else, Alen assumed he would have aged the same as Morris, but he looked like he hadn’t aged more than a few years. “When we took you in from the hospital, we had employed a product that can halt the aging process for people in a deep sleep state. It was meant for people sleeping in hibernation pods, but our team thought it could also apply to coma patients. You’ve only aged a few years since your accident; now that you’re awake, the product will lose its effect.” Alen did his best to digest this information; The world had gone through a more enormous tech boom than he could have ever imagined. When they conceived C.I.P.S, the idea that an AI that could integrate into any machine was far-fetched. Now humanity was merging technology into their bodies, something only sci-fi writers dreamed of back in his day. He strangely found himself wondering what the Sci-fi genre could do to wonder him anymore. After he collected his thoughts, he lacked the words to describe the feeling rushing through him, so he deflected the horror he was feeling with humor.

“Well, I still look better than you.” He forced out a laugh that felt and sounded unnatural. “What put me in this coma, anyway?” He couldn’t recall what happened. In fact, the last thing he remembered was leaving work with Morris to celebrate their recent success. He wasn’t surprised to hear alcohol was involved in his blur of memories, as they usually went out drinking after a hard day’s work anyway, let alone a day worth celebrating.

Morris shrank back and guilt rushed into his face; his eyes again darted away from Alen’s. After some very minor prodding, Morris explained how the Schall sports car he had given him malfunctioned and crashed full speed into another, larger vehicle. Apparently, they reached him while Alen was being rushed to the hospital. This checked out, Alen didn’t have any family and his only emergency contact, if any, was Morris.

“I’m so sorry—All this is my fault.” Morris ran one hand through his hair and the other pinched the bridge of his nose to relieve his stress.

“You were just trying to be nice.” He said in a comforting tone. “A top-of-the-line sports car—” The memory of the bright red car was slowly coming back into memory; He remembered not believing it was actually his. “Who could have known?”

“Their QC Team should have known.” Morris said, bitter. “They should have gone through its coding and hardware with a fine-tooth comb before releasing it to market.”

“How did CIPS take the impact?” Alen wondered if such a tragedy, especially one so close to GenuTec, had slowed or even halted their product sales.

“Came out practically without a scratch, I personally saw to that. I went to our higher-ups at the time and demanded their support in a lawsuit against Schall Auto.” This surprised Alen, but he didn’t know what else he had expected. Morris was always the type to get what he wanted, and he certainly seemed justified in a lawsuit. “We went after them for all they had—This was when the news stories went wild and was probably the toughest time for CIPS. Sales dipped and all the money was tied up in court, but after a few years, we finally came out victorious.” He looked proud, Alen thought this must have been his way of redeeming himself, of purging his guilt.

“Schall puttered around for a couple more years but never truly recovered. If you mentioned them today, most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about.” So much had changed in the time Alen had been asleep. He wasn’t sure how he would adapt to a world that had moved on, advancing significantly without him.

“What am I—” Alen started before Morris jumped in,

“We have that all taken care of. — now that you’re awake, we will monitor you here until we know you’re well. Then, it’s just a matter of giving you access to the accounts and living quarters I had set up for you.” He thought of asking about his original box of a home and thought better of it; A thirty-year-old dead man’s house that had probably been demolished decades prior. The glowing ring residing behind Morris’s eye tightened, then loosened to its original circumference, almost like it was focusing in on him for a moment. “Breakfast will come and afterward, I’ll be sending a team to help you take your first steps.” Morris stepped away as the thought of food brought pleasant reminders of home to Alen, but to his surprise, he didn’t feel an emptiness in his stomach.

“I’m actually not that hungry.” He didn’t outright admit that he wasn’t hungry in the slightest, but without stopping to turn around, Morris would offer an explanation.

“Not unusual among coma patients. We have been keeping you pumped with as many nutrients as you could fit. — You should try to eat.” The panel shifted in the wall again, seeing it clearly only made it more of a spectacle, and Morris left him to wait for his meal. Now that he was alone, though he was sure there was some sort of monitoring or supervision system, he strained to bring himself more upright into a sitting position. Then lifted his arms one at a time, alternating between them and occasionally focusing on his fingers to move them. It amazed him that only moments ago he was struggling even to block his own eyes, now he could move them without a problem, albeit adding weight was still an issue.