Chapter — 1
「Samurai System:
Initializing…
Initialization Complete」
「Notice:
Welcome Player to demo#1 of the {ERROR}...」
「Samurai System:
Running Diagnostics…
Diagnostics Complete」
「Samurai System:
Reconfiguring…
Reconfiguration Complete」
「System Notice:
The designation 'Player' has been switched to 'Host.'」
「System Notice:
Incongruity has been found between the Host's physical vessel and consciousness; the Host's estimated neural pathways and self-image are not reflected.」
「Samurai System:
Searching for solutions…
Perfect solution found but not currently viable: Cannot adapt physical vessel perfectly to host.
Calculating acceptable compromise…
Calculations Complete
Reconfiguring physical vessel's neural pathways to accommodate Host…
{ERROR: Memory fragments found}
Calculating…
Calculations Complete
Retrieving memory fragments…
Retrieval Complete
Decoding memory fragments…
…
Decoding shunted to subroutine#54 to be reinstated into Host as applicable
Reconfiguring physical vessel's neural pathways to accommodate Host…
Reconfiguration Complete
Adapting Host to physical vessel…
Adaptation Complete.
Host consciousness transferred successfully」
「Samurai System:
Decoding and transferal of memory fragments in progress...」
As she rose from unconsciousness, what first registered to Agnes was neither the rhythmic noise of the cardiac monitors nor the scents of antiseptic reagents. No, what she first noticed as her brain woke up fully for the first time was an alien sort of information that had seemingly been imprinted directly into her mind.
The information was segmented into blocks of text, reminding her of how video games often displayed information for the player.
What was peculiar was that she knew she'd never actually seen these textboxes, yet she could still remember how they looked. The text and borders were a brilliant neon orange overlaid on silver.
An odd choice of colors. They do look kind of nice, though.
After her random thoughts on UI design, her mind grasped some more strands of lucidity, making her take another look, for lack of a better term, at what the information displayed actually hinted at. It was somewhat terrifying and confusing, yet more than anything: Liberating.
Brain, now fully awake, she opened her eyes.
What met her vision was a white ceiling. Shifting her eyes to the side, she saw a multitude of machinery. Terminals either shut off or with a screensaver pulsing slowly with an unfamiliar logo, various monitors displaying graphs and data, boxes of tech with tiny lights in their casings twinkling randomly, and so much more.
Even if she didn't recognize most of the machinery in the room with her, she knew enough to recognize where she must be. There was no doubt in her mind that she was currently lying in a hospital bed.
Even without seeing, the smells and noise all but screamed of where she was. There was something universal about how hospitals smelled or sounded, after all.
Agnes tried shifting in her bed, only to freeze a moment later when realizing how pathetically weak she felt.
This can't be normal, right? I know I've been inhabiting a digital avatar for who knows how long, but even so, all my memories from before contradict this being a normal level of strength.
She was quite perplexed.
Thinking about what isn't normal: How come I feel so... fine? Mentally, that is. I should be freaking out.
It wasn't just that she had, somehow, miraculously regained a body, nor the ludicrous implications that the game system that had killed her somehow saved her now.
The most stark difference was, in fact, that she thought like a human would; her mind was so slow and inefficient compared to her days as a digital being.
Her mental prowess had been all that stood between her and oblivion for a long time. It had been her pride and bane equally, yet it was all gone — her mind made mortal once more.
The total loss of such mental might should have terrified her or, at the very least, made her uneasy.
Why doesn't it bother me?
Her mind searched aimlessly for answers until it eventually returned to the 'Samurai System' notifications she still remembered in perfect clarity.
It clearly states that it was unable to perfectly adapt my new physical vessel to my consciousness and 'self-image,' whatever that means.
Instead, it seems to have reconfigured my brain to fit my consciousness perfectly and then adapted me to fit the physical vessel. What does that even mean?
She thought about this for a while, eventually reaching what she suspected was the most logical explanation.
The system couldn't adapt this body to fit a digital consciousness many times more potent than a normal brain. It probably couldn't alter the body so much that it took on the appearance of my digital avatar, either. How would it have made my eyes pure luminescent orbs of light instead of eyeballs? It just wasn't feasible.
Instead, it adapted my consciousness to work under the usual constraints of a biological processing unit like the brain. It also could have adapted my mind to readily accept this body as "mine," eliminating the need to overly change the body.
That a program that evolved from a mere video game system could grow to rewrite her own consciousness and identity was terrifying, Agnes knew logically. Yet paradoxically, it didn't scare her.
Is that yet another "adaptation"? Making me unable to feel threatened by its seeming omnipotence in altering my very being, both physical and mental?
It was thoughts for a later time, however, as the single entry point of the room she was currently lying in suddenly opened with a hiss — the polished, white door sliding sideways.
In the doorway stood a person — a doctor if Agnes had to guess — but their appearance took her aback.
It was an older man. His hair was gray but looked neat and well-kept beneath a hairnet. Above the disposable face mask shone two cybernetic eyes, both a backlit gray that seemed as placid as they were intimidating.
The man's arms were entirely chrome, both in color and form. His left arm was quite normal in shape, mimicking the movements of joints and fingers effortlessly.
The other, not so much.
Sure, it had fingers, but there was so much more to it. Cables, scissors, scalpels, and other tools of medical and technological origin were interwoven into the whole arm, making it more of a portable toolkit than an appendage.
The hiss of the door closing sounded as he stepped into her room, his eyes staring unerringly and creepily down at Agnes where she lay. She saw some of the implements on his right arm twitch as if alive.
What the fuck? Was all Agnes could think as the silent stare-off continued for a couple of seconds longer.
"Rei Takeda, you are in the public hospital of Megabuilding G3. My name is Dr. Holson. You've just woken from a two-year coma." His gaze swept over her body as if he could see through the blanket hiding her from view, "How are you feeling?"
Agnes blinked at him, uncomprehending. Her mind had seemingly frozen after hearing him call her name.
It's Takeda Rei, not Rei Takeda. Her mind had protested upon his utterance.
Then, confusion on why she cared, or why it mattered, had bloomed into a total mental jam as a torrent of new memories and feelings crammed themselves into her psyche.
Fragmented snippets of Takeda Rei's life flashed through her at the speed of thought. They were broken. Incomplete. But an ingrained understanding of the world lay hidden beneath their fractured nature.
Of her, Takeda Rei's place in it.
The memory fragments were nothing compared to the quantity of complete memories she had as Agnes Torstensson. Yet, a tiny shink in her ego grew as they flooded through her synapses.
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Who was she, really? Was she Agnes? Or Rei? Both? Neither?
The flood of emotions that came with all the memories of hardship, grief, loss, happiness, bliss, and all in between, coupled with her internal conflict, became too much. Rei — Agnes — collapsed back in bed as she fainted.
***
As she slowly woke that day for the second time, Agnes heard hushed voices speaking beside her bed. One voice seemed to be the doctor who'd spoken to her previously.
Dr. Holson, wasn't it?
The other voice was even more familiar. It was feminine and smooth, with a pitch lower than expected based on the speaker's appearance.
"It has already been over an hour since she fainted! Are you sure we can't wake her using stimulants?"
"As I've already told you, Ms. Takeda, she will most likely wake up again soon, and administering something to force that reaction may have unintended consequences."
"But-" Takeda Miyo began but got interrupted by the doctor before any more protests could be made.
"Can you afford for her to fall back into a coma? We know of your financial situation," He put a delicate stress upon the word.
Miyo tsked at the doctor and turned around to look at where Agnes lay, only to gasp in shock at seeing her little sister staring back at her, eyes cloudy with sleep and confusion.
"Imouto! Rei-chan!"
Tears streaming down her face, Miyo leaped at Agnes and crushed her frail body in a tight hug, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.
Dr. Holson, after making a remark about being careful of the patient's frail state, a comment that went wholly ignored, walked out of the room.
"Oh, Imouto, Rei, I'm so glad you're awake," Miyo got out between silent sobs, her tears staining Agnes' hospital gown, "We've been so worried!"
While Miyo cried, Agnes felt her own tears streaming down her face.
Miyo's heartfelt words and actions had opened Agnes' mind to facts she'd subconsciously suppressed. Just as Miyo saw her broken family mend, Agnes saw her family of AIs shatter into a million pieces, forever lost in the void.
Tenios, Selfad, Liame, Xero, Wiola, Fujmoni... everyone... Everyone but me is gone. Agnes thought, a soul-wrenching pain making her want to scream her misery but at the same time rooting her to the spot.
Then, like a lightning bolt, Miyo's voice reached her soul: "I'm so glad you're alive, Rei. So glad."
As Agnes' previous family shattered, new memories filled in the gaps — memories of Rei's family, both the deceased parents and her two elder siblings — of all the good and bad they'd shared in the dystopian future that was now her present.
Agnes, no, Rei, felt her soul and mind mending.
What is the point of remaining fixated on my old life? What is the point of remaining Agnes? Even in my millennia upon millennia of being a digital god, I never really let go of my past, did I?
She'd kept her name and even parts of her original appearance. She'd never truly let go.
Here, I've got a future ahead of me. A future with endless possibilities. Should I cling to the past and set out into this world alone? Or should I embrace the new parts of me that were once Takeda Rei?
Of course, each path had practical and moral implications. She could either feign complete amnesia and build upon that to distance herself from anyone who might have once known Rei, or she could embrace Takeda Rei's identity as her own, integrate herself fully with her old life, and claim partial amnesia to explain the loss of memories.
I need to move forward, no matter what.
The thought resonated with both Agnes and Rei's personalities, making the answer to her future path evident.
Having been a digital consciousness for so long, Agnes had no problems doing the mental gymnastics she needed, even with her now organic brain.
She mentally shifted her perspective and, for the first time, entirely accepted Rei's memories and feelings as her own. Much was missing as they were only fragments, but Agnes' old personality, memories, and feelings filled the gaps.
It was a sort of self-delusion, a trick to mold her personality. But she knew that with time, the delusion in the equation would fade, and only her new self would remain, reforged.
Deep down, she would never stop being Agnes, but she wouldn't limit herself to that identity either. She had now accepted a new name, a new identity that she would grow towards, and with the head start gained from the fragmented memories, she found it surprisingly easy to do.
Rei, tears still streaming down her cheeks, looked down upon her Onee-san, her elder sister, and new tears started gushing forth. The previously stiff shoulders began to shake as she, too, began to sob silently into her elder sister's hair.
"I'm so sorry I worried you." Rei croaked, her throat parched.
"No, don't worry about us, Imouto," Miyo said as she extracted herself from the tight embrace to cup Rei's sunken cheeks in her hands, "I've already messaged Ichiro, and he'll come by when his work is done. We're both just relieved that you've woken up."
New tears blossomed in Miyo's emerald-green cybernetic eyes and trailed down her cheeks. Rei noticed that she was clad in her typical bartending attire, the synthetic cloth straining to contain her bust as usual.
Miyo really is beautiful, even with her makeup slightly ruined. Did she run straight to the hospital from work?
Much had changed about Miyo from Rei's point of view. Her hair, for example, was now an implant and ran in long, curly locks down her back. Each glossy strand cycled slowly between reds, blues, and browns in a mesmerizing pattern. It was very different from the organic, black, shoulder-length hair she'd had the last time Rei saw her, and she couldn't help but stare.
Miyo, noticing her little sister's mesmerized look, smiled, "Whatcha think?"
"It's beautiful." Rei croaked, honestly.
Before she could ask when Miyo had gotten her hair changed, she broke into a coughing fit. Her throat was like a desert, and speaking had made it itch something awful.
***
The sisters spent the following quarter-hour chatting about everything and nothing, which led to Rei having to come clean about her partial amnesia. When Miyo started talking about something Rei had no memory of, she just stared at her elder sister in confusion.
"What?" Miyo asked, confused by her sister's confusion.
"We have a pet? Or is Sally an actual person living in our apartment?"
Rei remembered vaguely that she and Miyo lived together in an apartment complex operated by the Cyber Fangs. She also recalled that Ichiro lived in the same complex, just not in the same apartment.
He'd moved out when the flow of credits from his work as an enforcer for the gang became sufficient, and he could no longer stand living cramped up with two other girls. So, who was Sally? The way Miyo talked about them sounded more like an impish pet than anything.
"Sally's a cat! How can you not remember?!" Miyo squawked in surprise, "I know it's been a couple of years, but it should not be possible for you to forget something like that while asleep."
The door to the room opened with a hiss, and Dr. Holson stepped in, his eyes on a pad made entirely of what looked like glass, various information displayed in glowing, azure letters upon it.
He didn't even look up from the pad as he spoke, the door closing behind him, "It would not be a surprise if Ms. Takeda's missing a few memories. That she is conscious at all is quite the miracle, as you know."
Rei looked between her elder sister's suddenly stricken expression and the doctor's placid face as he read something on the pad.
What am I missing? Do they know something about the cause of my condition? Could they even suspect that I'm not wholly Rei but more parts Agnes than not? It was a troubling thought, and Rei felt herself start sweating under the suddenly too-hot blankets.
"I feel like I'm missing a lot of memories with only vague impressions left behind, but what aren't you telling me? What happened to even land me in this coma?" Rei finally queried, her nerves tingling from the suspense and fear that grew with every silent second that passed.
Dr. Holson finally looked up from his pad and glanced at Miyo, whose eyes had fallen to the floor, hands clenched in either anger or worry. He then looked straight at Rei and told her what had happened to her.
"From what we can gather, you were infected by a virus of some sort. Not a biological one, mind you, but a digital one. From what your family has told us, you were attempting to decrypt a storage device and got infected by whatever nasty ICE protected it.
"The virus infected both your cyberware and medical nanites. We aren't sure what the virus was doing to your cyberware, but those implants were removed to prevent mishaps. The real issue lay with the medical nanites."
I have some ideas about what might be wrong with those nanites...
"The virus-infected nanites moved throughout your body without any clear directive from your HealthChip, and nothing we tried worked to stop them.
"When interfacing with them through our machines didn't work, we tried injecting you with a new dose of nanites, which were programmed to search for the infected nanites and destroy them.
"That was an error on our part, as even though those nanites had ICE believed sufficient to counteract the virus, we were wrong. The new nanites quickly got infected as well." Dr. Holson's brows scrunched in irritation, the first real emotion Rei had seen on his face.
"We were preparing to use some area-focused electromagnetic discharges as a last effort to disable the nanites when they all suddenly moved to your nerve clusters. Most went to your brain, but many settled down in your spine and other delicate places.
"The nanites were causing serious damage to your brain and nervous system, and there was some debate of using the area-focused electromagnetic discharges even with their new location-"
"Don't sugarcoat it!" Miyo interrupted, suddenly glaring at the doctor, "You were planning on detonating localized EMPs into her brain, effectively frying it."
Dr. Holson looked annoyed for a second before his face returned to placidity, and he continued, "As you say, Ms. Takeda. Other than the terminology used, it is, in effect, the same. There were also some concerns, as those voiced by Ms. and Mr. Takeda, that the procedure would cause more harm than whatever the nanites were doing."
Miyo scoffed before returning to scowl at the floor.
Rei could understand. To overcome whatever shielding the nanites had and disable them would require a lot of energy. That energy might have done negligible harm if it was concentrated on any other part of her body but not the sensitive brain and spine.
It was more than likely that the procedure would have killed her had it even worked to disable the nanites.
She couldn't help but send a thankful smile at Miyo, even though Miyo wouldn't see it.
If those doctors had their way, I would probably be dead. Only thanks to my siblings did I not die.
Rei looked away from Miyo's cute, scowling face and refocused on the doctor as he continued to speak, "As everything we could do had been done and any other solutions rejected by the family of the unconscious patient, there was nothing to be done other than wait and see.
"You were placed in a recovery room, and your health was monitored. After about a week of wreaking havoc on your nervous system, the infected nanites eventually settled down. Then they disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Rei couldn't help but echo, actually surprised.
"Yes," Dr. Holson said gravely, nodding, "Disappeared. One moment, they showed up on our scanners; the next, they didn't. Ignoring the mystery of how we could no longer scan for them, they didn't seem to be doing anything else either. No tissues in your body showed new damage, leading us to believe that they simply shut down."
Rei's mind whirled at the implications. The nanites might have simply shut down after altering this body to fit the 'Agnes' part of her consciousness, but she somehow didn't think so.
Isn't this what happened when I tried inspecting the mystery code when I first combed through my digital consciousness? It grew harder and harder to do until the code eventually disappeared from sight. Did the Samurai System learn to shield the nanites from medical scanning tech?
New tears had started to leak from Miyo's eyes, but she tried wiping them away as she spoke, "After that, you fell into a coma. We were worried about you and wanted you to wake as soon as possible, but the doctors worried that any forced attempt to wake you might aggravate whatever damage the nanites had done."
Dr. Holson nodded almost imperceptibly and looked back at his pad, "Ms. Takeda speaks the truth. It was decided that the best chance of you waking with minimal brain damage was to let you heal with time and wake naturally, if ever.
"It was also mentioned that should the cost of keeping you here ever get too much, we could try to forcefully wake you before any talks about various disposal alternatives were had."
So if I didn't wake either naturally or through whatever method they had to force it, they would have just disposed of my body and sent Miyo the bill, huh?
Rei knew that the 23rd century was harsh, but the memories she had of Agnes' youth made it seem almost unreal.
Wait... If I've been unconscious for about two years, then it should now be either year 2283 or 2284?
Remembering her age and calculating the current year based on being in a coma for two years was relatively easy. The implications of that realization weren't quite as easy to handle.
The last time I was alive as Agnes was almost 244 years ago?!
Rei almost fainted again.