When he became aware of anything at all his body was somehow absent. He was in a featureless white space lit from above. When he tried he was unable to see what was causing it. The white light kind of made sense he supposed, you move towards it according to most Hollywood films but what were you to do when you were already in the middle of it?
Name? The sound was not loud or overwhelming but it filled his world. That was when he noticed strange blinking geometric symbols floating in front of him. They had not been there moments earlier. Pushing back confusion he thought and tried to whirl around searching for the source of the sound. The symbols stayed exactly in the middle of his field of vision and he assumed he had failed. Blinking back tears as he thought of his life now lost he asked “don’t you know? Isn’t this heaven” and then with a shudder “or hell”.
Help functions not available at this time
Name? Before replying Morgan looked round at what was essentially nothing. The white space contained nothing except himself, the glowing symbols and a voice he could not locate. No clues, no directions, just that. After an unknown time he concluded that nothing else was going to happen without him doing something. Picking a direction to look whilst setting his shoulders back he stated “Morgan William Oxbridge” then relaxing added I answer to just Morgan. Only after he had done that did he wonder what that meant without a body.
Initialising function log. Entering interrogation mode.
What do you need?
Clearly heaven needed personalising. Well he supposed that made more sense than clouds and angels so started to think seriously. The question repeated twice more before he finally asked the voice what can you do?
Help functions not available at this time. What do you need?
Unsettled by how disturbingly like a chatbot this was going he noticed that the symbols in front of him had morphed into a readable form. The words Function log initialisation were now floating in the middle of his field of vision. Morgan hated chatbots and had over the years worked out various strategies for breaking them and getting referred to a human who he could actually explain things to. Game on he thought, and then used his first strategy, answers too vague to be parsed.
“I would like to be better, in all the unmeasurable ways” and waited for the inevitable request for clarification rehearsing the next gibberish in his mind.
Synergies are unpredictable from general augmentation. Outcomes will be dependent on input and this course is not recommended. Please restate desired outcomes.
Ok well this was at least feedback. “I want to be perfect, I want all I can do to be things I can do, I want to have the time to master them all, I want to be as smart, sane, healthy and vigorous as possible”. Hey if this was heaven no point in thinking small. Smugly he waited for an error watching the symbols in front of him change colour. He watched as they went through several different shades and then settled on one he could not name.
This course is not productive and inefficient. Capacities would have to be augmented gradually. Function would not be consistent or reliable, training time would be unpredictable.
Change path : new question – what do you want to do?
Ok, a bit more robust than phone companies automated switchboard but he was only starting. Smirking slightly “Everything – with eternity to consider I want to do everything. I don’t mind being bad at things, in a few millennia I can improve”
Taking a quick breath he added “as long as I can improve and have both the time and ability to practice then why choose? Give me everything you can. So I can do everything I can”
The pause was shorter this time.
Help functions not available at this time. This has high probability it would result in dangerous and unstable system. Unacceptable outcome. Would you like to restart?
Ok getting close to an error that will require admin intervention here so Morgan kept it up. “No thanks I like this, if it was predictable that would be boring”. Pausing a moment he said “unless specific feedback or guidance can be issued then this is what I want”
Help functions not available at this time.
Query host integrity – Process will take time to form, initiate, integrate and then to achieve functionality. Can host integrity be assumed?
You let me worry about that - you just do your bit. He wished there was a chair to sit on, this was getting boring. A bunch of prompts appeared before him and waving through he just repeated his demand that he got everything. Not really paying attention one thing bothered him though.
He had always made a point of reading commercial agreements and warnings on products. Even with computer forms it was worth reading if only to know what was happening. Looking over what he had already agreed he picked two floating tabs and decided to read them in detail.
The first was called overview and described the formation of a “core suite” apparently he was agreeing to having core suites placed in him to control unspecified things. These cores were apparently four dedicated assemblers – a functional assembler, a library function, a power source and a battery. Frankly the whole thing read like the technical manual. He only got halfway through that document before moving to the next.
This one was initially more promising as its title had his name on it “Installation proposals – Morgan William Oxbridge 0000000” so it was at least tailored to him. The form seemed to be filled with maths about power ratios and calculations on feedback loops. He recognised a standard bell curve at one point but the only number that he stuck in his mind was 2 to the power 22 assemblers required to achieve maximal options. He had done enough maths to get a feel for that as a big number but that was all.
Ok this level of techno babble was just too much and he resumed flicking stuff through without reading.
A few prompts later a big yes or no was floating in front of him.
Please note this decision is final. Help functions not available at this time. Do you wish to proceed Y/N?
He paused for a moment staring at that prompt, it looked like he’d failed there was no customer help. He was going to have to deal with this new reality. Was he going to screw up heaven because being a jerk usually broke chatbots? The prompt flashed in front of him while he thought and thought. His mind wandering he realised that his life had not flashed in front of his eyes, some of that shit had been worth reliving. A fear, a nagging worm of self doubt oozed into his mind.
He had not been shown his life and maybe that just meant there was a merciful god after all. How after all had he lived his life? Always the safe path, always playing the odds just so he could be beaten to death by a maniac on the roadside. Joanne would not be joining him her life would be better without him and Annie would find someone else to taxi her. Really a life of caution and calculation ended by a chance encounter, not even the chance encounter to be fair. He could have learnt self defence. He could have gone to the gym. He could have been better.
And now here he was in a featureless void too scared to say yes to a prompt. “Yes do it, get it over with just don’t bother me. No more tedium not in my heaven or hell”
Process initiation commencing. Please note that due to large volume of interfaces system integration will be automated for each function suite. This will cause considerable delay to the process. Host will be immobilised and rendered unconscious to avoid “tedium” during procedure. Help functions will be available after completion. Morgan William Oxbridge your profile is being prepared.
“Wait immobilised what do you mean?”
Help functions not available at this time
It all faded to grey while the frustrating message filled his view.
He was just uncomfortable, for some reason he could not seem to move. There was a beeping noise that had changed tone and he just felt sticky. He tried moving his arms and then his legs but they were flopping wildly like he had forgotten how to use them. His eyes wouldn’t work – no his eyelids were stuck together like he had been asleep and a crust too thick for him had formed over them. Normally a quick wipe of his hand and he would be sorted but he just couldn’t coordinate. Overwhelmed by frustration at his inability to work out what was going on he focused his ire at his arm to no effect.
Outside he heard voices, someone arguing about the alarms on the winkle in seven. He tried to work out what he was hearing then a door opened and a male brummie accent asked “so how’d you get your arms off mate” and then someone or something was moving his arm. Morgan tried to snatch his arm away and complain. Both attempts were laughable being too feeble to give much resistance and his attempts at speech coming out as halfway between a burp and a groan. Nevertheless the effect was noticed as the attempt to move the arm stopped and he heard “Jesus mate what was that. You’re one of the quiet ones”.
Morgan tried to get his attention, to shout and scream, to flail and jump. What he managed was a moan and to shift his legs slightly. He felt the man withdraw hearing him step back. “ Look mate dunno what’s happening let me get a nurse ok?” and then the sound of a door closing. Morgan realised a nurse seemed reasonable, he had just taken a beating and maybe he was in hospital. Thinking he was getting a handle on what was happening perhaps just waiting to see who came to help was reasonable.
Having worked through that he heard a lady berating someone called Jason for wasting her time coming closer. Give Jason a break he thought. Something about the sound of the door opening made him think that someone rather large had entered.
“Patient 8328 Moran Oxbridge long term care, Responsiveness test due to staff getting willies up them” Ignoring the protests in the background she continued “Mr Moran do you consent to a consciousness test using the Glasgow scale at this time?”
Ok this was pissing him off get my bloody name right why don’t you he shouted. Well he tried, a low groan nevertheless startled everyone in the room. “Mr Moran are you responding to me?” groan. “Say that again please?” Groan groan. Suddenly the tone changed in her voice “Jason stay with him while I get the locum, I think this is actually happening” and there was a sound of waddling footsteps. The Brummie voice he assumed was Jason sounded just a little bit smug “well you put a rocket up her alright. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her fat arse move that fast”.
Very little changed in the next 15 minutes. Firstly, Jason prattled for a while about trivia in the hospital and the latest goings on with the TV soaps’. Whilst Jason did that Morgan just got himself under control slowly testing the limits and strengths of his movements. He had just managed to crack his eyes open and croak for water at the young boy who he supposed was Jason when a young lady in a shell suit arrived her only concession to clinical expectations being a stethoscope wrapped around her neck.
Grabbing a clip board at the base of his bed she looked at him and noted the open eyes. Pulling an uncomfortably bright penlight out of her pocket she waved it around in his face. The young man who Morgan deduced was Jason said “he asked for water, can I give it?”
“Mr Moran did you just ask for water?” she asked again in a brummie accent. Finally getting himself under control he croaked a few times and then said “Yes. Morgan” collapsing back after the effort. Despite her apparel the young lady took charge of the room turning to Jason and instructing him “get him some water and leave a message for admin – not going to process him but we can check his vitals and make him comfortable”. He faded out this time into a much more natural sleep.
His rest was interrupted by the lady in the tracksuit opening his left eye and shining a torch into it. “Good pupil response but apparent intermittent response to verbal stimuli” she intoned into a microphone. “AArgh just ask” Morgan grumbled while his arms twitched and to his delight heard the words not just in his head but also in his ears. He assumed it was his voice but it sounded horrible. The effect on the room was sudden and as he opened his other eye and focused on the lady he saw a fleeting moment of shock quickly replaced by a professional veneer.
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“Mr Moran can you hear what I am saying? You can respond by blinking if speech is difficult but it is important you respond if able so that I can perform a baseline evaluation of your recovery” Her spiel was rushed out as if by rote. Her face was probably quite plain but she filled his view and he found himself not focusing for a second. “Yes I can speak but my throat is sore, my name is Morgan. MORGAN there’s a G in it.” She smiled and it seemed the first genuine expression he had seen, “apologies Mr Morgan I will make sure that’s corrected before I leave today. Mr Morgan I need to do some tests to establish your current condition and to document level of responsiveness”. A slight pause and a muttered comment about some of them being a bit redundant.
Wait where’s Joanne? Did that thug harm her? Is she ok? How’s Annie? Suddenly his priorities changed. How could he have spent so long worrying about himself. What had that little bastard done after dealing with him. He tried to move again and this time he was much more coordinated managing to fall all the way out of bed.
Jason and the doctor (her name was Marie according to the name badge) hauled him back into bed untangling tubes that should probably have hurt more being moved, it occurred to him whilst that was happening that there must be a lot less of him than he recalled, he was almost stick thin now. Unaware of his musings Marie interrupted that line of thought by telling him to calm down, she only had medical details on him, presumably NOK details including contact information are at the main offices.
Staring down she said “you have had the misfortune of regaining consciousness both suddenly and on a Saturday morning. Its currently 03:42 and nobody is going to be getting at those records right now. Nobody. Your presentation is unusual. People recovering from long term non responsiveness normally show signs of increasing awareness and responsiveness several days before verifiable cognition. That gives us time to get everything in place including NOK contact details. Its noted that you showed the first signs 22 minutes ago and are already engaging in cogent verbal interaction. That’s beyond weird so I advise you to concentrate on yourself right now. Your NOK will be contacted as soon as possible as we get the full file. Now whatever happened it was a long time ago and rushing to fix things now is just pointless. Lie back and rest, let me do my job”. That speech probably contained a lot of useful information. He only focused on one thing not really hearing the rest.
“Doctor how long ago did this all happen? How long did.. wait winkles? Rip van winkle? How long have I been here?” For some reason whilst he was asking this the whole Rip Van Winkle story flashed through his head as if it was being read to him at insane speeds and yet somehow he was able to hear and comprehend the whole story instantly. The distraction that provided was shattered by the doctor’s next slow careful words “you have been in the William Grove long term facility for ten years, eight months and eleven days. If my notes are accurate the incident occurred just over eleven years ago. There is no record of any visitors, family or friends. I don’t know anything about your family.” The enormity of that statement washed over him, in shock he wanted to complain that the dates were wrong, that his family and friends must have been here in a constant vigil, that people would have missed him and the world could not move smoothly on without him. “Huh?” he said.
The next two hours left Morgan confused. He looked where he was told, reacted to poking and prodding, answered questions about current/past events, failed to laugh at some poorly told jokes and finally read from some flashcards. Eventually he asked Marie if she had run out of tests which got a chuckle.
Marie flipped her hair and smiled at him saying, “A doctor never runs out of tests or diagnoses” she eventually replied when her laughter ended, “it’s called defensive medicine. Look more seriously we want to know that we are doing the right thing”. Though she continued talking her voice took on a sing song tone like this was a rote speech for her. “Most of the time we know fairly quickly but if we get a non standard presentation we get nervous, we get nervous we get cautious, we get cautious and we start scanning stabbing and prodding. Get used to it.”
Eventually even Marie despite her earlier assertions ran out of things to do to him and he lay alone in bed and thought about the time that he had missed. His planned retirement at 65 had come and gone a year ago. Annie would be an adult and Joanne had probably moved on. This time when he slept he managed to wake normally.
He was absolutely the most exciting thing the morning shift had seen in a long time. Perhaps the thing that really stood out was the staff member who came in and took his fingerprints as the doctor in charge just refused to believe that he had been patient room7 yesterday.
He went through the same rigmarole as he had the night before but at the end of it he was surprised to be told that he was a conman, there was no way he could have recovered this fast and be feeding himself solids less than 24hrs after coming round. Lacking either the energy or the will to fight, he kept chewing his toast. Ignoring the abuse because he had no rebuttal the doctor gave up.
With nothing else to do but listen he had managed to eavesdrop on quite a lot of gossip and banter amongst the staff. Apparently they were the lowest of the low on the medical hierarchy basically doing little more than looking after warm bags of meat and his revival started up several discussions about euthanasia amongst the more vocal. Those had the feel of rehearsed arguments done with the familiarity of practice not expecting or producing any changes in anyone’s position.
The desk got a phone call that seemed to be about him most of it related to obscure funding issues that he filed away for later but he was inexplicably smug to be confirmed as who he had always thought he was. It was after this call that the staff started to treat him with a little more respect and less caution.
The nursing senior (his eavesdropping had revealed that she was called Pam complained of sore legs, had two kids and a special needs brother which for some reason made her colleagues envious) came in after midday and apologised for the fuss. Then she got to the bad news.
“You made a request that we contact your family so we called someone to come in even though it’s the weekend. Well they looked but your NOK details appear to have not been updated since a hard landing. I am sorry to say that they appear to be out of date and we have had no response.” With a hint of resignation she continued. “Presumably its old information and our social work department will try to track them down Monday for you so don’t worry it’ll just take longer to give them the good news”. There was no reason why that should have relieved him but he felt a huge sense of relief that just maybe neither his wife or daughter would have to see him immobile in bed. When he murmured something about getting fit enough to impress them with a dad bod Pam pursed her lips.
“Mr Moran – sorry Mr Morgan its not my place to discuss your plan of care with you but you might want to reset your expectations. We will help you recover and you will get Physio but I don’t know how much of your former function you will regain. Whilst you are recovering faster than any case history I recall there is a rule of thumb for immobilisation – for every day immobilised you need two and a half days rehabilitation to regain full function. We are testing for muscle wastage, bone loss, spastic gastric function and a hundred other things but you have been down for over ten years. That means a normal expectation of at least 25 years to reach full recovery. Obviously you will cooperate with your rehabilitation, I am not sure how you will do your part but you will leave hospital in a wheelchair and I do not expect that to be this year. Its possible you might beat the odds but it would not be ,be ... sensible to hope for it”. Presumably to allow him to process the speech privately she quickly left promising to come back.
Head reeling and in serious danger of emotional collapse his perceptive hearing suddenly picked out Pam talking to the asshole doctor from before “well I’ve started in on expectation management with him, you can do the follow up in a couple of hours”
The doctor grunted “oh great – so I get to tell him the bad news eh?”
Morgan went still for a second and suddenly hearing nothing but a roaring hiss in his ears and the vision slowly turning white he realised that he had just been told that nobody could find his family, that he had lost eleven years of his life, that he was going to be crippled for the foreseeable future – realistically until he died but that they were trying to avoid telling him the bad news. He lapsed into depression wondering what he was going to hear next. If there were any tears of self pity he had enough dignity to ensure they were wiped away before anyone saw them. He lost consciousness a mix between exhaustion and despair closing his eyes.
He woke about an hour later according to the clock on the wall and when he stirred more beeps and alarms went off bringing asshole doctor in again. Paying attention to him he saw that his badge identified him as junior Dr L Mac Ford. The doctor busied himself with taking measurements but Morgan had had enough, doing his best to give a hard stare he asked “Ok what’s the bad news Doc?”.
The doctor smiled in what was presumably meant to be a reassuring way “Oh no problems I mean fainting is almost reassuring given your rapid recovery so far, you know makes me feel like my trainings useful after all”. Irritated by the reply and realising that the answer given technically was an answer to his question he tried to be more explicit.
“Thank you but that’s not what I was asking. No. I was asking about your conversation with Pam earlier – the one where she claimed to have started my expectation management and you moaned about having to tell me the bad news. Lets just get it over with. What is the bad news Doc”.
The doctor to his credit recovered quickly and did not bother to deny it. He turned round then reached round for a chair and sat down leaning back. Without any further rigmarole he started talking “Mr Morgan the world has changed. Literally the world has changed and while you have slept through the changes since hard landing they are important and some of them are urgent. You dropped this on me and I’ve not had time to prioritise the list for you so my apologies if stuff seems out of order. Hard landings presaged a change in our government, we are now only nominally a democracy – The police turned out to be too incompetent to manage a police state so we have active military participation in most levels of civil society though its referred to as MACA, military aid to civilian authority. What that means for you is that at some point you’re going to be asked to “do your bit”.
The doctors hands made air quotes as he said it. “For you that means that you probably are not going to be allowed sufficient time to recover before you are expected to contribute. I cannot honestly imagine how you will “do your bit” and that’s just bad. How bad depends on the assessing magistrate but they have broad leeway and I’ve never heard of an appeal being even allowed. Secondly The records got scrambled in hard landing so finding out anything about your life previous to it is going to be a tall task. You might get lucky but we are doctors, luck is something to be avoided.
Morgan grunted, distressing but he assumed he would find a way to deal with it but the doctor was being vague and behaving as if Morgan should already know what he was referring to ‘ look you keep mentioning hard landing. You say it like its something definite and it explains things. Not to me. What do you mean by hard landing?”
Settling back in the uncomfortable green plastic chair the doctor gave a short bitter laugh. “Well I guess that is the thing that started the mess. Ok. Ok we are not alone Mr Morgan – I understand that you used to say the truth is out there you just need to find it or some such. The people who said that deserve to be shot. Ignorance was bliss. The first contact with an ET was in Canada and I think it was just over a decade ago. You were lucky enough to be injured in the idyllic days when we were alone.” He paused and took a deep breath, a grimace flashed across his expression while he organised his thoughts.
“The media dubbed it as a hard landing for some reason but it essentially was a combat drop on Ottawa. It started with a pretty light show first thought to be shooting stars but when they reached ground, well it was an artillery bombardment of some kind. We thought it was some type of exotic non nuclear explosive but eventually the forensic types said they were just some odd metal shafts with steering vanes on doing damage from just the raw kinetic energy of falling from orbit.”
Morgan interjected “an extreme example of that old canard about if you throw a penny off the empire state building it would kill someone if it landed on them?”
The doctor frowned “Surely terminal velocity would, oh you know what, maybe. Anyway Ottowa.”
“After that a landing craft arrived in the centre of the rubble and some armoured metal forms came out and started killing indiscriminately. It was also fairly random, they would kill everyone in some place and then half the people in another room. No rhyme or reason that we can tell and a lot of people spend a lot of time making guesses.
That lasted for about 2 hours, Canada’s army was at the time more of a concept than a reality so nobody was surprised that they did nothing. Some form of Bio-Weapon was used on the survivors. The death toll was debated but more than 30 thousand died. To be fair that’s high and these days we have drills and facilities for dealing without panic. A lot of people died from each other rather than the aliens to be fair.
Though terrible it was just the first landing and since then we have had plenty of opportunities to get used to that sort of death toll. There were three more landings across the world that day in population centres with again 30 to 40% casualties. To be fair most people died in the initial bombardments or the Bio Weapons. To be frank the landings and slaughter seems trivial but always happen. Its kind of a worldwide hobby trying to make sense of this. Some of the theories are pretty insane but given how many have died its not right to criticise”.
Morgan nodded along then interjected “Ok so how many people were killed. I mean if three hundred thousand in one city is a start how bad is it”.
Scratching his ribcage the doctor replied “The UN has few actual functions anymore but it collates data well and they estimate that 17% of the planetary population has died, roughly one and a quarter billion. The split between deaths due to hard landings and the consequences of those landings – famine, useless roads, riots etc. The political ramifications, well I mean there are speculations and conspiracy theories but what’s certain is no one and I mean no one is under the same form of government. Dictatorships have fallen to be replaced by communes, republics or different dictators. Democracies have become republics or dictatorships. Essentially everywhere has changed. Luckily we are in the United Kingdom not anywhere else. We had the constitutional monarchy to fall back on. What had seemed to be a historical anachronism showed its value in suppressing chaos.
When the riots started the police responded to our politicians and made things worse by enforcing whatever political hobby horse they had. The Monarch, god love him, had the ear of the armed forces and ultimately won enough battles that people stopped fighting. It helped that he really did not seem competent to rule just fight so he had to bring people in. Technically we still have a parliament as a debating chamber but votes can only be called by black rod. Its still a work in progress and nobody knows how its going to settle. Don’t know if we are waiting for a Cromwell or a Henry but it will change.
Until it does the country is peppered with small scale military camps and a massive recruitment drive into national service is artificially depressing unemployment. Service is mainly but not only armed forces and the camps are forward deployed rapid reaction in theory against another UK hard landing. In practice boredom induced suicide is not unknown so there’s that.”
The room was silent for a while and then Morgan just leaned back shaking his head. After a time he stared at the doctor then still shaking his head asked “what’s the effect on me. I mean, I’m sorry, but it’s too big for me so how does this affect me. What do I need to know about me”