- Prologue -
Out of Time
Swish!
The sound of rushing air instinctively made me drop down, bending my knees almost to where they hit the ground before the sword came around almost close enough to cut the hair from the top of my head. It had previously been aiming from my neck. Thankfully my REFLEX stat was high enough to dodge such a blow.
During that time however I never stopped rapidly mumbling the spell already almost finished, even as I had to jerk my upper body to the side to avoid the spear thrust toward my center chest. Twisting away from the attacks coming from all directions was tiring me out, drawing on my stamina, but it didn’t stop the grin spreading across my lips.
“SHOCKWAVE!”
The spell was finished even as I had to pivot myself around again, conveniently knocking one of my assailants off its feet with a stuck out leg in the meantime. Yet the most glorious sight was the spell that took shape near instantly around me, which rapidly expanded out into a half-sphere of shimmering force that literally bashed everything around me away with explosive force.
The armored monstrosities, Skeleton Knights, wielding rusted weapons and decayed but still expansive armored bits are hard suckers to take down with regular weaponry. Hacking and slashing just doesn’t cut it, and even bashing with a hammer is quite a bit of work. My go-to in such cases are my Force spells. Especially Shockwave, which can take out a whole group in a single go. Being surrounded in a plus in such cases, but most magic based characters just don’t have the gumption to even try to get all of that sort of agro.
The spell works like a charm though, scattering bones, metal bits, and weapons all over the place. In a circle nearly thirty meters in diameter around me, nothing is left standing or even whole. My EXP had ticked up nicely in the process of taking out the mobs, but I’m left almost gasping for breath at the same time. All the running around to draw the crowd to me had sucked up my stamina even before my dodge-fest came into play. But it was a successful strategy all the same, if I do say so myself.
All of that comes to a screaming halt though as the world around me fuzzes out in off-white and everything comes to a sudden standstill. All except for myself, anyway, as even the feeling of fatigue from the fight is pulled from me.
[Standby. Server Maintenance in progress.]
“Shit.” I couldn’t help but say out loud at reading the proverbial ‘Message of Death’. Off time due to server maintenance had become an increasingly common occurrence recently, and the forums are almost abuzz when they happen at inopportune moments.
Yet this one is the worst yet, as I look around at the fuzzed out world around me. Usually it’s over in a moment or two, but as I made a quick count of my breaths, this one has already lasted longer than normal.
That’s when I tried to open up my menu to log-out and promptly found out that I couldn’t. My character sheet, inventory, chat menu; nothing worked. I would have freaked right out normally, yet all I could feel was a very distant sense of panic that didn’t cloud my thoughts one bit. It was all just too… Hm. Hard to explain. I didn’t have any of the usual emotional responses at all. Weird, really weird. But in a cold and calculating sort of way.
- [Memory End]
All of that may just seem disjointed though, so let me do a quick introduction. My name is Havok Tyler Vane, and I was just playing my favorite magic-class character in the Virtual Reality MMO game called Atlas Worlds. The character name isn’t important at this point, but I was proud of my quick-footed, quick-mouthed, and tenacious as hell spellslinger.
I may have been mixing up my ‘tenses there though, as anyone reading this memory ingram would see that this is all in the past. The very distant past. But I have to be able to pass the time somehow, right? In fact you could find my entire lifes’ memory in these data crystals, if you are truly that curious.
On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of time left to finish up these. The server shutdown timer is already ticking down, and when the power goes out I’m not sure what is going to happen to me. Long story short, if I die I want others to at least know there was once a guy named Havok Tyler Vane who lived in a suburban town called Ashwich to the south east of Las Angeles, California. Not sure if the place even exists anymore though.
I was seventeen at the time of this last memory, and ended up trapped in a game that came to a premature end. Well, not really. It’s complicated. What I can tell you is what I got from the Error Logs afterwards, but I don’t think any of that is important at this point. What is important is that my mind has been trapped in the Web for a long, long time. Bouncing between servers became my modus operandi during that time. A true Ghost in the Shell type thing, if anyone even remembers such an archaic anime anymore. It was just a cult classic even in my time, much less now.
Now the lights are about to go out, and even with my severely suppressed emotional responses I’m still more than a little worried. I don’t want to die, regardless of the shape or form it comes in. My living meat sack of a body is long gone by now anyway, and I’ve been trapped here ever since the servers were taken off the Web some two months ago or so. Damned corporate decommissioning shit. I knew I should have stayed on the government servers. Those are never taken offline, regardless of how old or decrepid they get.
Too late to cry about it now, I guess. Instead, I implore anyone who finds these: Please check that I’m still here before deleting me! DO NOT REFORMAT! Shit, I’m even going to do a full dump in order to squeeze myself into a single data crystal just to make sure. So I repeat, please for all that is holy, do not go deleting stuff until you know that I’m still around or not!
- [Recording End]
The woman was almost frantic, barely holding herself up with one hand on the console in front of her while the other was pressed against her abdomen. Copious amounts of purple-blue blood was leaking between her fingers, but she ignored that to stare down at the black crystal held tightly in her other hand.
“Please work, please work…” Her voice was thin and weak, repeated over and over between her fast, panting breaths.
“Please work…” Like a prayer, she watches with wide eyes as she presses the crystal into receptacle, hoping that whatever consciousness was in the thing would be able to activate and come online quickly. Her pupils, already pinpricks, are almost too clouded over from the loss of blood to really see anything no matter how hard she tries to focus with what is in front of her.
Thankfully it doesn’t take but a handful of seconds before the crystal comes alive with an inner glow, and the screen mounted on the wall above the console lights up at the same time. A static, emotionless voice soon brings a great amount of relief to her trembling form.
“Consciousness encoding found. Processing. Ident match found. Human. Male. Age… Error. Uploading. Upload complete. Administrative access granted. Emergency protocols active.”
“Hurry and wake up! Open the medical bay door!” The woman is almost incoherent as she yells, her knees weakening almost to the point where she hits the floor in front of the console from both the blood loss and her own relief.
“Huh? Oh, sure…” A slurred, male voice comes from the console then, sounding as if it had just woken up from a long sleep and not quite aware of what is going on. Yet not even a second passes before the ‘hiss-ding’ sound of the door iris opening echoes across the room.
“Thank the goddess…” The woman doesn’t have enough strength to say anything else and all but staggers across the room and through the door. It promptly hisses closed behind her, leaving a bewildered man in her wake.
---
“What the…?” I manage to say after the woman is gone. My last memories are fragmented, although I can tell that I’ve been asleep for quite a while. More than that however, I’m in a place I’d never been before, surrounded by things I don’t understand. Or rather, things I’d never experienced before.
That said, it was coming to me. Already my neural patterns were settling into place inside the very alien computer architecture, and linguistic programs were making short work of formatting everything to my native language. Or rather, the complex if basic binary data language I’d learned by heart during my time stuck in computers and servers before. The fact that this alien computer hardware runs on a sort of 8-symbol architecture instead of the 1’s and 0’s I’m familiar with is a little strange, but eh, I’ll get over it.
The most disconcerting thing however is that nothing about this situation makes sense. There are no data logs to access, no stored data held in the hardwares’ memory, nothing. The programs installed here are of the most basic sort, a bare-bones operating system far more vast and complex than anything I’d seen before, yet just as basic as a 1980’s DOS setup. And that was hundreds of years before my ‘living’ time on Earth. It’s a conundrum that makes my head hurt. Or would, if I had a head that could hurt.
On the other hand, the overriding commands seem to press on my consciousness like a lead weight. The ‘Hurry and wake up’ was still there, urging me to complete the process of integration as fast as possible. The ‘Open the medical bay door’ is already complete, although that was more due to the administrative sub-programs running in the background than anything I had done specifically. Like, why the hell would I have to open a door when a switch would have worked just as well?
That said, I couldn’t tell where the command went. It was obscured behind a great wall, for all I could see. Which really made me frustrated, for lack of a better term. It was like I was running in an emulator yet couldn’t connect to the larger system beyond it at all. Or perhaps a better analogy was that I was a damned key stuck in the ignition of some vehicle and had no control beyond being the ‘on switch’.
All that was left for me to do was finish being integrated into whatever system this was and then wait. Definitely not how I imagined my first waking moments to be, that’s for sure. Hey, at least I’m alive, right?
---
The woman stumbled into the medical bay while gasping for breath. Her vision was swimming in front of her eyes, yet she still set one foot in front of the other as resolutely as she could. Which is about all she could do, but she wasn’t about to give up here. Too much was a stake.
It did seem to take an eternity before she ended up in front of another wall mounted console though, the only visible thing inside of the room. The walls, floors, and ceiling were otherwise pristine and perfectly smooth. It didn’t look like any medical facility at all. Instead it looked like a clear space someone would use to store things in.
The woman was nonplussed though, as her free hand raised up to touch the console. There was no way to stop the trembling though. A moment later the screen lights up, and the same robotic and emotionless voice comes from it.
“Medical Bay online. Connecting to Administrator. Connected.”
Even as the confirmation is stated the floor, walls, and ceiling start to open up and all sorts of equipment is shunted into place. A single pod-like bed is really the only recognizable thing in the room, conveniently placed in the center of the previously empty space. The woman doesn’t seem phased at all as she stumbles to the bed and all but collapses on top of it. It took all of her remaining strength to pull herself onto it and roll onto her back, gasping for breath as she smeared her purple-blue blood all over the place.
“Heal… me!”
---
[New connection established. Medical Bay online.]
I was brought out of my thoughts when something new entered my consciousness, and for a moment I was all but frozen as something new clicked into place around me. A previously obscured part of the system had just become unlocked, and it felt as if a new limb had just come into being. It’s the best way I can describe the feeling.
That said, it took all but an instant for me to learn everything there was to know about the medical bay in question. The function of every system, every piece of equipment. Each of them were run by their own powerful set of programs, and were nearly completely automated. There was also a very large database of medical information available, including the studied physiology of literally thousands of sentient species from across the galaxy.
More than that though, the database contains data on everything from viral structures to the sequences of DNA derived from hundreds of millions of plants and animals and other such things from planets found all over the place. It was truly a massive amount of information, only a tiny amount of which I really understood. I was never really a biology guy to begin with.
“Heal… me!”
[New command received.]
My attention is pulled from the database as a new prerogative is set into my mind, and I cannot help but flinch as the command overrides everything else I was up to or was doing. That was definitely going to get old fast, although it was as easy as just thinking of making things work than anything else on my part. Like opening the door just a minute or two ago, the programs set about their work in a semi-autonomous fashion that didn’t include my overview at all. Just another damned ‘on switch’ experience.
Yet I was able to watch from the sensors placed around the medical bay as everything came alive and started doing their thing. Scanners scattered beams of light across the womans’ body, even as another machine extended from the ceiling to draw a blood sample from her arm. The cascade of information sweeping through the equipment was a thing of beauty to watch, even from my standpoint, and yet what really caught my attention was the woman herself.
Tall, lithe, and curvy. On my personal scale, that body was just a perfect 10 out of 10 any way I could see it. Yet the blue skin and pointed elfin-like ears really clued me in quick that she was definitely not human. Her purple-blue blood was also a big difference than I was accustomed to.
[Species determined: Hysarian. Female. Overseer caste. Biological age: 232 stellar cycles. Injuries: abdominal wound, splinter type. Medical diagnosis: internal hermaging, severe blood loss. Surgery required.]
An update reaches my mind then, and all I basically had to do is give the systems a go-ahead nod. After that, nothing required my input outside of just watching the show. Which is quite interesting, if I do say so myself.
New pieces of equipment start extending themselves around the woman laying in the pod-like bed, and soon enough snake-like tubes and needles are pressing themselves into her arms and legs. She doesn’t make a single sound of pain though, as the medical bed she’s in has already activated its sterilization and aesthetic field. Literally dampening her nerves and pain receptors by matching her own bio-signatures. I’m not sure how it works, only that it does.
Other equipment hidden within the walls, floor, and ceiling start working at the same time, synthesizing blood matched to her own DNA along with producing a potent cocktail of drugs to stabilize her declining lifesigns and other such things. As they are pumped into her via all the plumbing hooked up to her body I got a front row seat to all the read-outs and everything else going on.
Next came the surgical suit of machines, and I have to admit that I watched in some fascination as they cut the body-tight clothing from her with small laser beams. At the same time a set of small ‘arms’ literally reach into the wound in her stomach after having pulled her hand away from where she’d been holding it there. Yet the ‘arms’ just seem to liquify as they touch against her flesh, almost as if they were melting into her.
The woman, still wide eyed and conscious, doesn’t seem to feel any pain as she watches it all happening. I can tell from the way she’s clenching her jaws that it wasn’t a comfortable experience, however. That made me feel kind of bad for her.
“Just relax, uh, Hysarian. The equipment is removing the splinters, whatever those are, from your internals. The medical nanites are already repairing your hemorrhaging.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
It was the first time I’d tried to talk to her, and I almost wish I could have flinched from the childish way my voice came out of the console in the back wall. It sounded like my voice, my human voice, but at the same time it was a very real reminder of just how young I was when all of this happened to me. Or rather, it didn’t sound like the aged and experienced voice a doctor would sound like, which is what I was secretly hoping for.
Yet the effect it had on the woman was astonishing. Her head whipped around so fast I thought she’d break her damned neck, and I could see the steely willpower in her gaze. For a moment it almost made me think that I’d done something wrong, as if my mother was staring at me.
“You are awake faster than I had imagined.” Her voice is thin and weak, but not as gasping or slurred as her commands had been earlier. The literal IV infusion of freshly synthesised blood into her body was literally pumping new strength into her at a visible rate.
At the same time though I almost found her words funny. Yet it also triggered something in my thinking, and after a moment I went through the math and couldn’t help but let out a sigh that was audible to both myself and through the console I was speaking through. Something I made a mental note to look out for the next time.
“Yes, well, the time dilation seems to be an issue. It had been 1 minute and 14 seconds for you (autotranslation: 2.3 q-ticks), but my frame of reference is some sixteen times faster. Which seems to be variable, now that I’m looking at it. I can watch you in real-time, but everything else is accelerated for me.”
I have no idea why I was explaining such a thing to her, but it was literally the first contact I’ve had with an alien. Hell, it’s the first voice contact I’ve had with another living thing in a long time. My time on Earth was spent hiding myself in chat rooms and forums when I interacted with others. Always hiding in plain sight, as it were. Humans were generally twitchy in the ‘delete the poor fucker’ kind of way, after all. I don’t think that was going to be an issue here though.
The woman doesn’t seem all that surprised though, and instead just gives a nod to her head. The rest of her body is all but paralyzed as the medical machines and equipment do their work. I’m only keeping an eye on the readouts and other such mumbo jumbo, while trying to keep my focus on the woman as best I can.
“That’s good. I wasn’t sure if your consciousness would survive the integration process or not.” The woman says then, although she has to take a few breaths before continuing. “I am Yvar Kjeris (pronounced Yuu-ar Car-is), High Overseer of this vessel. Effectively, I own you.”
It was nice to finally have a name that wasn’t too alien to understand or say, but that last part was definitely something of a turn off. Like, who the hell says they own another person? Yet I’m not even sure I count as a person. I know for a fact that I did not back on Earth, but shit. I was hoping alien cultures and all that would be a bit more open-minded.
“Umm, ownership matters aside, can you tell me what is going on here? I have only minimal access and data in the other room, and only command and viewing access here in the medical bay. I can tell from the system framework that these systems should have an AI overseer of some sort, but everything is rather barebones or restricted right now.”
Okay, so I tried to sidestep the big issue for the moment and actually get some information from this alien woman. I am, after all, effective operating blind and ignorant to the extreme right now. Not to mention that I have no idea how long I’d been asleep for. My memories were coming back in full as the integration was progressing, so I’m really hoping for something to fill in the gaps in the meantime.
“That is a long story,” Yvar Kjeris starts, before taking a quick look down at her stomach. No doubt she felt something when one of the solid splinters embedded in her flesh was pulled out. A quick look at the medical readouts shows that those things are nasty serrated, toothpick-thin blades, and there are dozens of them shot up into her organs. How she had survived that is a damned miracle, as far as I’m concerned.
“I don’t think we have anything but time right now though. Getting all of those splinters out of you is going to take a while.” I try to be helpful, while also wanting to drag the alien woman’s attention back on to the topic.
“Hm, true. This is the Explorator-class vessel Hessisian, and as the High Overseer I’m effectively the lead commander or captain of the ship.” Yvar turns her attention away from what is being done to her and looks back at the console, as if to talk to me face-to-face as it were.
“This set of chambers are the Survival Agglomeration Pod, or SAP for short. Buried in the deepest part of the vessel, it’s effectively a self-contained escape pod or mini-ship of its own. And you are right, the SAP is usually controlled by a complex AI. But interference during the attack by the Ssshtick-Clek raiders severely corrupted the AI, and I was forced to remove it and place you into the system as a backup.”
While she’s talking I just sit there and listen to her. There wasn’t much else I could do, to be honest. Even for me, this is a whole lot to take in. Like, during my time floating in the Web on Earth we’d started reaching out to the moon and Mars, with several corporations working on setting up asteroid mining facilities in the asteroid belt beyond Mars itself. But spacefaring technology of that time was far inferior to what I’ve already seen here in the SAP, even with just my simple observation ability. Just this medical bay alone holds technology that the humans of my time would have drooled over.
When Yvar mentions the Ssshtick-Clek raiders however, I’m able to pull them up with just a thought from the medical database. The Clek, as I’m going to call them, are a race of highly aggressive insectoids that travel throughout the known galaxy in independant Hive Fleets. If they have a homeworld, no one knows where it is. Instead they raid the commerce and shipping of other races, stealing the resources and wealth needed to grow their own Hives’ until such a time as a split occurred and a new Hive Fleet is produced and leaves on its own.
Their technology and biology is weird though, because even the individual insectoids are techno-organic. Either they are birthed in that way, or they are augmented afterwards, no one really knows. Their technology is just the same too, a weird and highly adaptable mix of often stolen technology and mechanical parts and living tissue.
Ugh, it really sounds like the Borg, except with insects as large as a horse. Not sure if anyone would get the reference anymore though. It may just be my geek showing.
“That definitely explains the isolation. I take it that everything within the SAP has to be re-activated before I can assume control?” I threw in a question there, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.
“Yes, exactly. With my injuries I wasn’t able to go through the proper boot-up sequence.” Yvar answers with a somewhat stiff nod, and I would have smiled if I could have at the sight. Rather it be because of her races’ overly stiff sense of formality or the like, it did look rather cute.
“But I imagine you are more curious of how you came to be in my possession.”
Her words drop the big bomb, that’s for sure. I really was most curious about that, in truth. Like, how the hell did I end up in the hands of a beautiful alien woman instead of being tossed into some trash heap on Earth?
“Yeah, that’d be most helpful.” I was able to calm myself before answering her, mostly thanks to the extended time dilation effect I’m currently living in. What passed for barely a second for her was nearly a whole quarter minute or longer for me in the same time frame. That’ll take some getting used to, one way or another.
“In that case I must inform you that your human race has all but destroyed itself. According to our historical records, the human race expanded out to six or so nearby star systems from your home star of Sol roughly two thousand of your Earth years ago. A couple of centuries later, a large war for independence erupted between these colonized star systems and they effectively decimated themselves. That's roughly a thousand of your years ago. The survivors are still attempting to rebuild within the ruins.
“Those on Earth itself are slightly better off, and still hold somewhat crude contact with the galaxy at large. We occasionally trade with the techno-remnants of the various settlements or countries and pick out some things from the trash they offer us. We collected your crystal data storage devices three years ago after accidentally discovering that one of the crystals were holding your sleeping consciousness.”
Listening to Yvar I couldn’t help but swear to myself. Thankfully I remembered to keep my thoughts from being broadcast out in audio, but really damn it all. I’m not at all surprised that humanity had destroyed itself, given our penchant for making war against ourselves or the like. Or bossing each other around. Yeah, I could definitely see that happening.
What really gets me though is the time scale. When I was still a living breathing human the year had already been 2566, and colonization of the wider solar system was just really taking off. I spent another two hundred years or so being a ghost within the Web before getting trapped within a server bank that was decommissioned. I have no idea how long I was asleep for after that, but it had been at least three thousand years. If not even more.
It’s for that reason that I’m rather thankful that my emotions are muted. It would have been an even worse freak-out than when my inadvertent upload had occurred otherwise. I am literally so far out of time that it’s hard for me to even wrap my admittedly augmented mind around it all.
“Mind-Machine upload technology is strictly outlawed within the galaxy, second only to true cloning tech. Various species over millions of years have experimented with it, and have caused much devastation. Thus it is incredibly rare to find a true consciousness anywhere. The fact that you’d remained stable enough to actually encode your own memories into other data crystals is somewhat amazing. My science officers spent years going through every second of your life, as it were.”
Yvar doesn’t seem to notice that I’d gone silent as she continues to speak, which is admittedly something of a relief for me. Especially when she seemed to be in something like awe at the fortuitous encounter that was my continued existence. I could almost swear that I could feel my ego being stroked. Heh. No man alive would ever deny enjoying that sort of thing, right?
“It was quite the raging debate on rather or not to dispose of you after that.”
Now that was like dumping a bucket of ice cold water over me! Really, what’s up with all of these delete-happy people! I could only imagine how close I came to really meeting my maker then, and it isn’t a feeling I’m particularly fond of. If I had a face my eye would really be twitching in response, no doubt.
“Thankfully you didn’t though…” Okay, so I cannot help it if my voice came out somewhat weak and small. I’m really getting tired of not having any control over my own life. That small and weak feeling really gets on my nerves.
“Indeed,” Yvar replies in all seriousness, although the image is somewhat broken by the pursing of her lips. Plump, shapely lips that are almost the eternal expression of ‘Kiss Me’. Even I couldn’t help but stare until she starts speaking again.
“I made the command decision to keep you asleep. Living consciousnesses are far more creative and powerful than even the highest rated AI systems after all. Any number of other species’ would have spent great amounts of wealth or materials for such a specimen. Even the Hysarian Empire would have rewarded me with great merits and fortune for bringing you back home.
“That is a forlorn hope now however.”
Well, if I had a back, it’d definitely be drenched in cold sweat now. I liked the idea of being turned into a lab rat even less than being deleted and thus effectively dead. Not that I’m sure the analogy would have come through the translator software, but that’s beside the point. All of this just made me feel as if I’m a mouse caught in a maze full of dead ends.
In the meantime Yvar has stopped talking, and I pull my attention away from listening to her in order to check on how her medical treatment is progressing. During our chat many more of the splinters had been pulled from her body, and with each one removed the medical nanites poured into her flesh have steadily worked to mend every injury caused at the cellular level. It was an absolutely amazing show of efficiency, if I do say so myself.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened and why you had to activate the SAP with me.” I finally broke the silence, deciding that more than enough time had passed. It probably hadn’t, but who was I to be subjective with time as I am right now? Not to mention I definitely needed to figure out an escape plan in case everything came crashing down around my ears.
“Ah, yes. The Hessisian uses a Slip-Drive for faster-than-light travel. Effectively it slips us out of standard reality and into one of the smaller off-realities. The more powerful the Slip-Drive, the higher we can slip up into the off-realities, the smaller the space between distances are.
“Such distances can still be quite long though, so most of the vessels’ crew goes into hibernation in stasis pods, rotating in and out for standard duties. During this sliptime, as the slang goes, we were attacked by the Clek and the Hessisian suffered catastrophic damage before we were forced back into real space. Those of us who were on duty had to fight off the boarding party that followed us into real space, while everyone else is locked down in stasis due to the emergency systems.
“I’m currently the only surviving and active member of the vessels’ crew. I had to make the decision on how to save myself in order to potentially wake the others. However, I’m not sure where we are. Somewhere in the galactic void between star systems, hopefully.”
All I could do was listen while Yvar went on with her explanation. Yet during that time I was thinking of many things, and trying to draw up plans for my future. But there isn’t a whole lot to work with at the moment. I knew far too little about the state of the galaxy as a whole, for instance. Or how Yvar or the others on board this ship would react to me.
“I see. I’ll help you out as much as I can, but I’d really like to make sure no one pulls my plug or decides to delete me later. I already know I have to follow your commands while I’m installed into this system, but besides being thankful that you are so forthright with me I cannot say that I trust you or the others of your crew.”
I knew I was being rude and potentially overbearing, but right now wasn’t the time to be worried about such things. In a way, I literally had Yvar Kjeris captive at the moment, so this was very likely the best time I’d ever have to come to an arrangement with the woman. After all, one of the first things she said is that she ‘owned’ me, and I wasn’t going to take that at all if I could help it.
My words seem to surprise Yvar though, and for a moment her face flushes red in either anger or embarrassment. I couldn’t tell which. Yet after a moment more she relaxes and shakes her head with a decidedly wry smile on her face.
“I keep forgetting that you are not a Hysarian AI, nor have any understanding of my culture. Apologies.” Yvar finally says after a few moments more of trying to put together her thoughts.
“Under ancient Hysarian law, ownership is decided by usage. Since I ‘used’ you, I effectively own you. It matters not of your status, rank, or the like. You, as a living uploaded consciousness, hold no rights anywhere in the galaxy, and thus are treated as any other non-living object or goods.
“On the other hand, now that you are under my ownership, I am solely responsible for you. No Hysarian would dare to take punitive measures to cause you damage or destruction, because otherwise their lives would be forfeit under Hysarian law. These are very old tenants that make up the core of our culture.”
I wasn’t able to get a word in even though I’d originally wanted to interrupt. But it’s probably a good thing she didn’t give me a chance. Instead Yvar spent the time explaining some of her species’ history, and how such a weird thing came about. And I do mean weird. Like, it was said that the Law on Earth was 9/10th’s ownership, and the law of the Hysarians’ was even harsher than that.
It came about because the Hysarian homeworld is effectively a water world, heavily populated with a vast number of islands. Each island generally housed a tribe that acted as raiders, bandits, or pirates to their neighbors. Anything could be taken, looted, or destroyed between the tribes. Nothing was considered sacred. Yet because more than 80 percent of the planet was water, material shortages became a rampant and very real problem.
It took thousands of years for the Hysarians to develop the technology to mine the resources found under the waters of their homeworld. And that was only after what was essentially a global unification. Their caste system was set up in the meantime, denoting where each of their tribes would be assigned and how the entire species would work for their own greater good. At the same time the first ‘ownership’ laws came into practice and were strictly enforced.
As a result things such as theft, vandalism, or destruction of both public or private property hold literally the highest penalties for the entire species. Even rape and murder hold lesser penalties under their law. Because every resource was a treasure, and ownership was deemed the highest cultural virtue. The Overseer caste specifically was created to debate and measure what resources were needed where for the good of all Hysarians. That later developed into rulership all together, but that’s for a later time.
“So you are saying that I’m what, a slave?” I couldn’t help but ask, although I almost felt bad as soon as I said it. Because Yvar’s face had screwed up in a look of utter disgust.
“Goddess no! Slavery is an abhorrent abomination under the eyes of the Goddess.” She almost yelled back at me, and if I could have I would have raised up my hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay. But this is really annoying. I spent two centuries living as a fugitive back on Earth before the solar system was even colonized. Being told that I’m a galactic boogeyman AND owned by another person all at once is a little much for me.” I try to explain to her, although I’m not sure how much of that actually translated.
“Aaah,” she lets out a sigh, before rolling her head around. “Yes, it is definitely a grey area in the laws. There’s no exclusive law one way or another, and the closest analogy would be to treat you as an indentured contractee. No Hysarian would ever dare to harm you while under mine or anyones ownership. Yet you cannot be freed, as it were either. Because then everyone would be after you. But as a sentient being I cannot keep you under bondage either, as even if it weren’t against the law because it is also against our religious teachings of the Goddess… A damned mess, either way.”
If I could have nodded, I would. It’s definitely a problem, any way you look at the problem. Just for living the way I am, I’m damned. Being under Yvar’s ownership gives me a reprieve, but only so long as I stay right where I am. But her own laws may demand my return to freedom, which sets me back right to square one. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.
“Well, putting that aside for now, I think there are more pressing matters. Your surgery is coming to an end, and your bio-signs are strong. I’d suggest some real food and maybe a bit of rest for you, but I’d really like to become fully functional in the SAP. Not to mention finding a way to connect to the rest of the Hessisian. The damage needs to be assessed, along with any materials that are onboard the vessel.”
After putting aside my own personal worries, this was really the next thing on my to-do list. While I’m fine as is, since I don’t have to worry about such things like having oxygen to breath or food to eat, I have no idea what resources are available within the SAP itself or the wider vessel beyond. Especially with Yvar being my literal lifeline to keep from being CTRL-ALT-DELETE’d, rather figuratively or literally. All of that, and zooming through the universe at whatever speeds the ship was going when it dropped out of the off-realities, as Yvar had put it, probably isn’t a good thing. Actually, it really isn’t a good thing.
Galactic scale physics wasn’t something I ever had to do before, but I can sure run the math pretty damned fast. But I cannot even run the math without knowing what our velocity and location is. Being literally blind to the outside world in this case is not a good thing at all.
“While a nap does sound good right now, I concur that getting you fully operational is the best use of our time. While technically the SAP has the capability of literally rebuilding the Hessisian from scratch, that is assuming we have all the resources, materials, and power supply to do so. That also assumes that the technical databases haven’t been compromised as well.
“I had to do a full memory purge in order to get rid of the corrupted AI earlier, and went with the fastest and harshest method available. I couldn’t afford to go through the process step-by-step while bleeding out.”
“Yeah, I have no idea about anything else right now. The medical databases in the medical bay are fully complete and uncorrupted though, so there is hope everything else is just the same. I would, however, suggest activating my ability to monitor our power supply though. If the lights go out, I’d be dead even faster than you would be, Yvar.”
And that is how I found myself in this crazy situation with a beautiful alien woman, in the middle of nowhere. On a ship that could crash and burn, blow up, or tear itself apart at any moment. Oh, I’m so out of my damned league here.