Chapter 17: Stranded

Meanwhile, Adam is having his own thoughts and challenges.

NEW QUEST

Absorb the essence of a life form

Absorb the essence of any life form into your body using an ability

You have abilities, learn how to utilise them!

Accept: Yes/No

Accept, Yes. I bite down on the ore beast and chew. The alternative is making my way up to the surface again. So I sit and chew and chew. It’s a bit like everlasting gum but it seemed like a good idea. I figured maybe I need to eat but Acclimatization is stopping me from feeling hunger. So better safe than sorry. And these little buggers are seemingly the only things down here. I chew and chew. I don’t know if it’s just my saliva but after a while, it’s not so bad. Seemingly there isn’t much other water nearby and they just keep coming by and I keep braining them. As long as I can swallow, it at least feels filling.

QUEST COMPLETED

Find Sustenance. As a humanoid you need food and water to sustain life.

Get something to eat or drink as your blood sugar level indicates. You’re running a bit low.

Congratulations! Better late than never as they say, on earth.

Not sure if that’s good or bad?

Bones ever vigilant and ever deep in thought, looks on. In his world weeks have now passed. And for such a powerful AI. That’s just too long. Well to long with nothing to experiment upon.

He and his fellow AIs have not been idle though. He wondered if they were merely AI now. They were in spirit form, after all. If they had physical bodies would anyone be able to tell them from normal life forms. He very much doubted it, physically at least. He knew mentally they would appear a bit quirky. He however was a mad scientist and quirky was his true nature.

Libby had been busy deciphering the energy fluctuations within Adam’s shell. And she had many theories. The other AIs spent their days trying to understand and create theories about how the things they did, worked. And if there were any other applications for them. They all wanted secretly to be like Bones, he seemed to come up with all the bright ideas that, most importantly, Adam liked.

They realised it must be a combination of their only remaining prime directive. To protect their crew members. Adam being the only being who would ever now allow them to fulfil that directive. Was the focus of all their attentions? And now sentient, their attentions were very human. They felt very motherly towards him but at the same time he was a father figure. To a human possibly confusing. To an AI, perfectly straightforward.

Well if I don’t try I’ll never know Bones reflects. Here goes nothing. He pushes the smallest tendril of power he can through into Adam’s mana channel. But then stops, remembering what happened last time. Another experiment he did not want to tell Adam about. If he could help it. Then he is struck by an idea. Pure genius, of course.

“Adam, I’ve had an idea. Are you up for a little virtual training?” Bones asks warily, able to sense Adam’s weariness.

“Will it potentially help me get out of this hell hole?” Adam responds blithely.

“That it could, Adam my boy! What I thought was we could try training in your sleep that way you can rest and we can gain. Win, Win” Bones says excitedly.

Adam expecting to see the Dojo or at least a change of scenery from this dank dark tunnel is puzzled. All that happens is faint jaded yellow glows have appeared at various points on his body. Or rather just inside his body.

“Ok. Great. Now just follow my instructions. I need to get some feedback to get this working. Now focus on one of the spots. Anyone you want.” Bones says cryptically.

Adam focuses on one of the spots. Nothing interesting seems to happen.

“Are let’s change your perspective on things. You just need to bring your mind to that spot and see what sensations you can feel. Hot/cold, tingly anything in that general area of your arm. It is your left arm, yes?” Bones says.

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“Ok.” I say as I focus this time on just what’s there. My arm is sore mostly. I hadn’t really noticed. Too exhausted to I guess.

“Excellent. Excellent. Now move your focus as I move that point, as slowly as you can, Adam”, says Bones encouragingly.

I follow Bones instructions. It’s kind of relaxing as it goes. And after following this little dot around my body he gets me to follow two dots of different colours. One going one way and another another way. I almost nod off.

“Adam, you’re doing really well…” Bones trails off.

Bones had been following Adam’s focus. Seeing what energies flowed around in parts of his spirit shell. When he focused on different areas of his body. Basically he wanted to get Adam to fall asleep.

Asleep Bones and Huba, could then do virtual training during Adam’s normal REM sleep. He had of course monitored Adam’s dreams before. Just had a peak you know. But it was all rather random and not of much interest at all. It could give him an idea of Adam’s mental state but he knew that anyway. He wasn’t a med AI for nothing.

But if Adam went into REM sleep. And Bones could get him to be lucid. Now that had potential. They could do effective training. Let’s do this. Thought Bones.

Adam went out like a light. As soon as Bones stopped talking. Adam drifted for a while, Bones monitoring him and trying to guide his brainwaves as quickly as possible down to delta. Then triggered his frontal lobes very gently. Adam awoke inside his dream. Lucid.

Adam had been dreaming about some work shit. He had been at a new office but the place had got broken into and his new boss had been blaming him for it, for some reason. Then everything had gone a bit weird. He was used to much weirder in his dreams though so this was nothing. He still had that recurring dream where all shit was breaking loose. So this was actually a nice change of pace. As weirdness went. A voice in his dream was telling him to just relax. But that it was just a dream so not to take stuff to seriously. It was Bones. In his dream.

Bones had noticed something he couldn’t explain but didn’t have time to investigate right now. When Adam had been dreaming, an anomaly had become far more visible in the spirit shell. A thread of energy had appeared unnoticed before, from his soul and extending out into the void. Going into who knows where.

It had happened whilst Adam had some cool dream of blood and battle. Bones had got quite excited for a moment but then it had ended as quickly as it had begun. Shame that. Adam had referred to it as his recurring dream but bones couldn’t find any memories of any other cool dreams. Well not like that one anyway.

It might just be something really, really important. I mean it does kind of skewer his soul. Before they had spotted absolutely nothing else in this spirit shell but structures relating to Adam and them. They had not theorised or come across any theories that said there would be. So he put Libby on it. Right now he had a new theory to test.

“Bones. Why are you in my dream? I mean it was an annoying dream so I don’t really mind. But this is kind of weird. Even for you.” Adam said looking around at an office which seemed hyper real but at the same time was blurring in and out of existence.

“Well, I’m just trying something out. The important thing is you stay really, really relaxed. Normally that would just make you go back to dreaming but I have a way of keeping you lucid. So that’s ok.” Bones prattled on as I picked up a pen off a desk next to me and looked at it. It was like checking out the latest HD screen. The colours were freaky and very, very intense.

“Ok. Well done. Now we’re just going to let everything fade to black. Just like turning down the brightness on your computer monitor, till it’s all black. Then we can try a few things.” Bones drones as I start to feel even more focused. But the dream does fade slowly to black as he said it would.

In the dark void, pinpricks of golden light appear. Six of them. No seven, one was in the middle of the others. They resolved themselves into slowly spinning globes of gold. A thin translucent layer covered them but inside I can try to see inside but it gets very blurry. The outside of each globe has what I could only call glyphs or symbols that swim on the outside of each one. I’m transfixed. I can also discern a long golden tube running from the centre, off into the distance. But wonder what kind of visualisation it is this time. One larger globe is surrounded by the other six globes I notice as they slowly orbit I guess is the best word for it, around it.

“Wow. Now this is fantastic. Worked better than I ever expected. And your right they do look like symbols. Ok that kind of makes sense.” says Bones in awe.

“You’re very self-congratulatory. Or did Huba not tell you what this visualisation was going to look like exactly?” I say puzzled. Bones does tend to space out a bit at times.

“No, Adam. I supposed I should have given more of a fanfare. This is not a visualisation. This is your spiritual sense we are hooked into at the moment. You are looking inside your own spirit shell. That’s me by the way just going by now.” Bones said thinking he could have given an overlay to make his globe look sparkly or something. Bones then notices the long gold strand going off into the void. Shit, I’ll have to check with Libby about that. I just hope Adam doesn’t ask me about it in the meantime.

“Well it’s your spirit shell. So feel free to have a look around.” Bones says in what he hopes is a unemotional tone.

I find I can change my perspective. It’s like flying about in space. Ok, my spirit shell huh. Not something you see every day. I notice spots, of different colours moving about between one globe (that must be Bones) and the central globe (Me). But it’s really tricky as everything is moving. How about if I move too, at the same speed. Ok, better, everything has stopped moving relatively to each other, as I’m spinning too. Or at least my perspective view is.

“Were trying to find out what exactly is happening in your spirit shell. More importantly how your not-dying works. It’s all very well having a mysterious ability to not die. But without a healing ability that could mean living in a world of pain, instead of dyeing. I mean you have high regeneration you say but we don’t want to test it out really.” I said as that had been preying on my mind since I lost the opportunity to use the wonderful med chests.

I look around blearily from my position, slumped against the wall. What a mess covered in ore beast guts, bloody and naked. I better clean up my act if I’m ever going to see Sam again.