Tem woke in a miasma of confusion as if he had been having a particularly convincing dream and was slow to return from it. Opening his eyes, he brought the world into focus except there was nothing to focus on. He was somewhere surrounded by a thick fog, impenetrable to his eyes. How did he get here? He wondered. In fact, where was here? All good questions and unfortunately he had no ready answers…
He pondered the situation, it was of course possible that he was sent on a covert mission and had his memory wiped in order to disavow his handlers of any responsibility in case of capture. This was of course a plausible scenario given what he was. Tem rejected the idea for why would the conclave have left him with the memory of the particulars of what he was for that matter why leave him with memories of them in the first place? No that couldn’t be it. Perhaps he sustained some head trauma that gave him a case of short term amnesia? He couldn’t be sure but until he had more information to analyze any more hypotheticals would be just conjecture.
Looking around dejectedly at the thick rolling fog all around him, he decided forward was as good as any direction to move toward. Getting up he walked cautiously forward while doing an internal diagnostic on his body. Determining that no damage had been done he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as softly as possible mitigate the sound of his footfalls in case of any hostiles that were nearby. Slowly Tem made his way thru the fog till he bumped into something solid.
Feeling the surface of the barrier he became confused. What was this substance? Clearly it was not some kind of stone, not rough enough for that. The barrier felt solid and yet distinctly yielding. He knew just by touching it that this was no substance that he could readily identify… The lab rats in the employ of the Technologists must have been working on something that our infiltrators missed… Interesting… Hoping this didn’t cover much area he continued feeling to the left for ten minutes and went back the way he came. When he judged he was relatively close to his original spot, roughly since it was hard to tell. He went on to the right for another ten minutes before he gave up on this barrier being a small one and returned to his original spot. He then jumped up hoping he would catch on to a ledge with his grasping fingers at the apex of his jump. With an exasperated sigh he decided to try brute force, after all it worked for his cave dwelling ancestors perhaps it’ll work now.
Carefully Tem increased the pressure on the substance. The barrier did not yield, it seemed to grow more “solid” the more he pressed upon it. “Must be reacting to the increase of force.” He mumbled to himself. Seeing as there was just an impenetrable curtain of fog all around him he decided that this way was his best bet to getting somewhere. Pushing against the barrier with his hands he noticed that it seemed to get even more “solid” if that was even possible. Leaning into it with his whole body only increased the, perhaps density would be the appropriate word for it? “Let the egg heads back at HQ worry about it when he made his report” he said.
With a loud sigh of frustration, he turned his back to the barrier and leaned against it. With no other ideas he thought about what he knew. He was a conclave hybrid operative; he was at home in the thick of battle as he was in the congested cities of technologist controlled planets as an infiltrator. He had no memory of what he was doing here, wherever that is. What was his objective? Could he have been captured? Placed inside some new devious containment environment meant to break him down? No that was unlikely he bore none of the physical signs that he was anything but a regular human, nothing to give the synthetic police any cause to suspect him. Even if they did take him in for a “random” inspection their instruments would only see an ordinary human, unremarkable genetically speaking. Of course that was the whole idea, for instead of altering DNA to “improve” humanity, his cells were quite different. Oh they would appear to be the run of the mill human cells but with a breakthrough in their advanced genetics labs the Conclave learned to create human cells that could communicate in a sense. They could be told to do any number of things from flushing poisons from the body to slowly changing his DNA to adapt to foreign environments, in short he was a perfect long term operative.
Tem was thinking about his life outside of his work for the Conclave but worryingly he couldn’t recall anything… Nothing! He knew his name but who were his parents, did he have brothers, sisters, friends?! Panic seized him then. What the hell was happening?! Just then he fell backwards an inch but when he felt the barrier again it was as solid as ever. Did he imagine this or did he actually make some headway through?
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Tem puzzled over what just happened. He was farther along than he was, granted that it was only one inch but it was progress! What did he do differently here? Was it because he was leaning on the barrier? He doubted it but just to be sure he got back in the exact same position he was in, leaning his back on the barrier. He applied a little more pressure on the barrier with no results. He just let the force of gravity do the work, no dice. He tried applying as little pressure as possible without actually standing. After a couple of minutes of this with no results to show for it he swore in irritation.
How did he make it that inch, it clearly wasn’t the position he was in. He had already determined that the force he applied did nothing but increase the density of the barrier. So how? How did he do it? He frowned trying to remember the details of what he was doing when he made that inch of progress. Physically he was just leaning on the barrier and he had recreated that. Unless it was the angle that he was lying on it. Worth a try. He started by attempting to recreate the angle exactly. He was at it for a good twenty minutes, adjusting his angles every which way trying to finagle himself into the correct position. Nothing he tried worked. Tem gave up with a frustrated growl and sat on the ground using the barrier as a back rest.
Tem banged the back of his head against the barrier rhythmically trying to dislodge an idea from his brain. Maybe if he could just clear his head and relax something would come to him. He sat up straight and tried to clear his mind which was a difficult to do. The Chinese Buddhists or perhaps it was Taoists say that the mind is like a monkey, flittering about here and there so easily distracted. Tem had to agree with them, his monkey was currently flinging his feces everywhere making a mess of things. He couldn’t calm the damn simian down and was getting angry with all the randomness of his thoughts when it happened. He slid another inch past the barrier!
Tem had a hypothesis, something he thought farfetched but he was gonna test his idea out. He started walking away from the barrier and turned around when he was ten feet out. He started slowly walking back towards the barrier. He thought about what he needed to do to get into a more advantageous situation. Tem thought it prudent to increase his close quarters combat abilities as he thought it likely that he would need to corner some damned Technologist information broker when he got to the nearest city. Of course his body defaulted to purging most toxins, though he thought it best to include the more exotic poisons that frontier planets tended to use. He closed his eyes and “spoke” to his cellular medium.
He entered his mind. A serious man stood there in a butler’s outfit, he was in his fifties with a bald pate and a clean shaven face. “Sir, may I be of some assistance to you?” George asked. “Yes George, code ALPHA and TAU please.” ALPHA was code for increasing his bone density, muscle strength, and stamina. Tem often used this build for close quarters combat and he often needed to when dealing with cybernetics with their mechanically enhanced strength. TAU was not used as often because this build had no utility in the kinds of situations he most found himself in. The build was only of use if you found yourself dealing with the many faces of the Technologist’s information brokers where poison would frequently be on the menu. “Of course sir, are you expecting contact imminently?” “No George, not right away but let’s make it sooner rather than later, hmm?” “I will see it done sir.” said George. “Oh and George before I forget, make that extended TAU.” said Tem. “Ah, expecting a run in with information brokers, sir?” “Possibly, better to be prepared when dealing with that lot.” “Very well sir, the changes are being processed.” “Thank you George.” “As always sir, good hunting.” Said George.
Tem opened his eyes and found himself in the middle of a clearing. He did it! His hypothesis worked, simply not thinking about trying to pass was the key to bypassing the barrier! I don’t know how the hell they could read minds but if this was indicative of the next gen tech they were going to deploy, Tem’s life just became infinitely more difficult…
After processing that thought Tem was surprised to see a pop up enter his field of view to the bottom right. What the hell is going on here? “I’m not wearing any tech that overlays onto my field of view.” he mumbled. In fact, Tem wasn’t wearing anything but his jumpsuit that he used to impersonate a civilian electrician tasked with working on high voltage lines. The suit was pretty flimsy but offered great protection against electrocution, and as it happens energy weapons.
Tem eyed the pop up suspiciously. Some kind of ploy to uplink spyware to my tech? He didn’t have any tech on him as far as he was aware so that wouldn’t be the problem. Pulling the screen up with a thought the message read:
ERROR! OBJECT NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!
Tem didn’t know what the hell that was referring to so he dismissed it and was about to take a look around when another pop up appeared. Focusing on it, it read:
NEW PLAYER ADDED!
ERROR! PLAYER DOES NOT CONFORM!
NEW NPC ADDED!
ERROR NPC DOES NOT CONFORM!
NEW HUMANOID ADDED!
Tem thought the pop ups were odd. He would have to get a full body scanner when he got to the nearest city and check for any tech implanted into his person. He wouldn’t discount that possibility until he knew more.