My mind came back online slowly. First, there was a notion that I existed, then sensory input, then an awareness of the meaning of that input, and finally rationality and thought. I knew I should have kept my questions to myself, I thought. Over the years my social interaction with warbreed had caused me to develop a habit of being overly inquisitive and occasionally speaking out of turn. My previous director knew, and accepted it as a necessary flaw in my design that made up for itself multiple times over by allowing me to infiltrate with efficiency that would be impossible for any of its other tools. My current one, on the other hand, almost felt as though it was goading me into responding improperly.
Where am I? I thought as I finally got a hold on my body well enough to move it. I was face up laying on the ground, and as I sat up my balance sensors went completely haywire, sending my eyes skittering all over before I adjusted. The smell of the ocean filled my nose, and I looked behind me to see endless waves stretching off into the horizon. In front of me was a short beach that curved gently away from the ocean, then patches of grass that turned into a forest approximately fifty meters from my current position. Looking overhead, the sun was at its peak, meaning that I had arrived sometime close to noon. Small island, close to the equator, I thought, or perhaps the tip of a peninsula. More likely an island, from the shape.
I mentally flexed and tried to bring up my internal clock, but nothing happened. That's a bit odd, I thought, trying it again to no avail. I tried my compass and also received no response. GPS was a negative, though that was not surprising considering that most GPS satellites had long since been destroyed or rendered defunct by solar flares. I tried the most basic of commands, bringing up a heads-up display, and in the top right corner of my vision I was greeted with a puzzle. Four small bars, each unlabeled, appeared to me. The top one was red and was full, the upper middle was blue and also full, the lower middle was green and was approximately eighty-five percent full, and the bottom bar was violet and half empty.
One of those has to be battery power, right? I asked myself. It was common practice to use blue or green for battery power when designing heads-up displays. I had once wondered about why that was, but I figured that it was just another pseudo-cultural artifact left by the creators. I should assume that the green bar is battery just in case, I thought, so that leaves three mystery bars. Willing my mind to pay closer attention I noticed that each of the bars had multiple division points at seemingly arbitrary points within. Is this really the only heads-up display I have? I griped, trying not to think about the mission success implications of lacking essential tools. I didn't even manage to get a designation for my operator before the mission started, and I lamented that I hadn't had the thought to ask him about my body's software.
Looking down at myself, I saw that I was in a male-form body with standard skin tone. It was oddly thin, lacking much of the musculature of an adult warbreed. I stood up and stretched my body out, feeling the range of motion out on each of the limbs, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was much more flexible within normal limits than the bodies I was used to. Sure, I always had the option of moving in ways that a warbreed could never accomplish by using internal pistons and other such machinery, but doing so always sent warnings to me and damaged my body’s biological components. My new form was flexible enough to reach up behind my back and touch between my shoulder blades, as well as bend over so that I could wrap my hands around my feet without bending my knees.
On the other hand, the sensory information was completely bizarre. My skin was far too sensitive in many areas, for example. I could practically feel every grain of sand beneath me through my feet. My eyes sent damage warnings to me when I tried to look upwards at the sun, but otherwise had acceptable focal range and fidelity. Audio was good, but a buzzing fly nearby delivered a strangely itchy sensation to my inner ear that was difficult to ignore. On the other hand, olfactory senses were quite dull compared to average infiltrator bodies, making it hard to pick out unique scents in the air.
Looking into a nearby shallow pool of water at my reflection I had my first real surprise. My face was quite average, brown eyes, black hair, features within normal ranges, but that was not the problem. Seeing myself in the pool I nearly took a step backwards in shock at how much my body resembled that of a creator. I had never met one in person, as they had become extinct shortly after I was initially brought online, but in virtual spaces during training I had killed thousands of simulated creators. As I looked into the pool I could not help but see my own form as matching that of my first practice targets. Was this body made to resemble them? I wondered as I stretched around pieces of my face and examined my teeth. I lacked the dental features of a warbreed as well, having only a mostly flat set of crushing teeth with two pitiful canines jutting out as if to mock the others’ bluntness.
Wind blew past me and cooled my body to the point that I felt temperature warnings, which broke me from my examination procedure. My nakedness was a problem in my current environment. Unlike the jungles I had grown used to operating in the air temperature was low, and the humidity sapped the warmth from my form. Though I knew mechanical components had a much larger effective operating temperature range than biological ones, allowing the biological parts of my body to grow too cold could result in loss of function or permanent damage. I jogged across the beach, wincing as my overly sensitive feet scraped against buried rocks, and crossed the grass to reach the trees.
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Inside the forest the wind was broken up enough that it didn't cool my skin to an uncomfortable level. Unfortunately I had another issue: I didn't recognize any of the plants or animals I was looking at. From the beach I had thought that the reason I couldn't recognize the coniferous-looking trees of the forest was because I was simply too far away, but now that I could examine them up close I knew that they were not any species of tree that I recognized. I could really use an autocyclopedia right now, I thought as if it could summon such a tool, but nothing came. Of course not, I thought, If I don’t have a proper heads-up display, why would I have that? Unknown plants were very bad, a risk often underestimated by warbreed. The most innocuous of plants frequently produced the most dangerous toxins and other compounds in my experience. I was sure that nothing here could actually disable me, but if I accrued too much damage to my outer flesh it would reveal me, which was almost just as bad.
I spent approximately half an hour testing the leaves and bark of the various trees, ferns, and bushes against myself in what I deemed to be non-critical areas before I was satisfied that the common varieties of plants were not dangerous to me. I’ve never heard of a truly dangerous plant producing a substance that takes more than half an hour to produce a symptom on skin exposure, I thought, it looks like the biological components of this body aren’t sensitive to anything these plants are making, at least from the outside. The results of my testing gave me renewed vigor to push deeper into the forest. Without a compass I had no idea of where I was going, but judging by the sun's position and movement in the sky I was heading roughly north. If I head inland long enough I should either reach a vantage point or a road, I reasoned, I should prepare in case I encounter hostiles.
As I walked I observed more animals, growing more confused the more time went on. Not a single one of the insect species were familiar. I had known more than three-hundred common types of beetle, and the beetles I was seeing matched none of them. I swatted numerous flying insects away from me as they mistakenly tried to drink from my body. Each corpse looked different from the last, and some of them didn't even look like naturally evolved life. A particular bug, with six wings and a single large compound eye, couldn't have been anything but an engineered lifeform in my opinion. I watched the air and saw more of those same six-winged fliers going after small mammal-looking balls of fur up in the branches of trees. None of the mammals were familiar either.
Passing by a set of plants that looked like they were just a stem and an absolutely massive single leaf, I saw a solution to one of my problems. After testing the plant to make sure it wasn't poisonous I grabbed it and ripped it from the group, pulling out a ball of worms that were living around its roots as I did so. The worms quickly dispersed, digging into the ground with impressive speed and leaving me with a single leaf that was roughly round and about a meter in diameter. Carefully, I ripped the leaf open and slid it over myself until it rested in my hips, then trimmed it down until it formed a basic covering. Warbreed considered it rude to fully expose oneself, a cultural oddity inherited from their creators, so clothing was a necessary evil.
Come to think of it, I don't have a ruler, do I? I thought. I tried to summon up a heads-up length display, and was predictably disappointed by its absence. A warbreed body is always between two and two and a half meters tall, I reasoned, but is this body the same size? Some of those insects looked quite large. Determining my actual size would require me to have some kind of familiar object that I could use as a reference, but sadly I had none. I couldn't even use an apparent weight measurement with a known material with a given volume because I had no way of measuring the weight. The only thing I could use would be estimated muscle power draw, but my arms are off-spec, I thought.
I kept walking and trying to come up with a way to determine the size of my form. Without a clock I wasn't able to use the gravitational method, which otherwise would have been my go-to. Dropping a rock and estimating the time before working back to distance it appeared as though I was a bit less than two meters tall, but I didn't trust myself to accurately know how long a second was. It never occurred to me before just how inconvenient it is to lack an objective unit of measure, I thought as I watched a group of fuzzy animals flee in front of me. I would have tried to request additional measurement gear, but I recalled that I was to be receiving zero ground support. Reaching out mentally for wireless comms, I found nothing in my body with the capability. I suppose I'll just assume my height to be two meters, I thought, since that looks close to correct based on my surroundings. As if to defy my thoughts, another unusually large insect flew by my face.
Just think positively as ordered, I said grimly to myself, my operator’s actions may be foolish but at least I can justify my failure in my after-action report. Thinking about the operator, it was very likely that he, or it, was some kind of warbreed-descended biological intelligence. I had imagined that such a fact might bother me when I considered it many years ago, but I found that I didn't really care. He could be something from my own line too, I said to myself, maybe an aberrant instance of myself that brought back an old copy for some reason. That thought helped to put my mind at ease as I continued walking. Ignoring the damage warnings from my feet was growing very annoying. I checked them, finding that there was not a scratch on their soles, then sighed and kept moving.