Not even six hours into my operation I was already beyond irritated at the configuration of my body. Between the incessant damage warnings, the over-tuning of the audio signals and visual data, the near-lack of olfactory information, and the confounding absence of any way of changing any of those things I found it difficult to pay attention to my surroundings as I trudged through the never-ending forest. More than once I had to consciously try to remember the path I had taken, or pause and double check things I had just observed. Is this how it happened for all the other instances that malfunctioned? I wondered, Did it begin with lapses in mental control? Am I going to end up a gibbering mess before the end of the week? Am I going to go rogue and think I'm in the right for doing so?
Worse still than any of those things was an anomalous warning that kept coming from my abdomen. At the most inopportune times I would suddenly be overcome with a wave of information that was both negative and very nonspecific. Sometimes it would then cause damage warnings to begin accumulating in my head, which had startled me the first time it happened before I realized that no actual damage was being done. My movements were also growing shaky at times, with the precise movements of my hands growing less precise and my legs jittering while taking steps.
I reached a rock in the middle of a small clearing and, after making sure that it wasn't covered in the irritating biting insects I kept stepping on, sat down on it. I should check my reserve battery, I thought, I need to get an idea of how long I can run this body for continually before stopping to recharge. Willing the four bars into existence, I contained my shock at what I saw. The green bar, which had been at half, was now at just above one third. That alone indicated a very large draw on my power if I was correct about the meaning of the bar, but worse than that was the violet bar which had dipped from full to under one quarter full. Recharge it is then, I decided, I guess the operator couldn't find a decent high-capacity cell.
Since there were no trees above me, I found the angle that the rock was receiving the most sunlight from and laid down in such a way as to expose the majority of my hair to the sun. Infiltrator bodies were mostly powered by solar energy, with a hybrid chemical/combustion system contained within the stomach that could be used in the case of long-term deprivation from sunlight. One of the most ingenious inventions of the creators was a biological solar cell which could be grown into nearly any shape. On nearly every body I had ever used, the hair follicles actually grew hair-shaped solar cells that outwardly resembled hair to such an extent that microscopy was needed to tell them apart, and the skin was interwoven with other micro-solar cells. I kept my eyes open, willing myself into a low-power state, and stopped thinking for a while to save energy.
Some time later, perhaps an hour, I felt another wave of anomalous warnings spreading out from my abdomen which roused me from my inactive state. Checking my bars again I saw that the violet bar was now at one-third, but the green bar had fallen further still. I didn't get any power back from that? I thought in shock. A strange sound met my ears and I shot up into a ready stance, looking around for the source. There were no animals nearby except for the odd bird in the trees. The sound rang out again, and I noticed that it was coming from me. My mind rapidly analyzed the sensory input and cross-referenced it with my memories, and then I exhaled in a small reflexive gesture of exasperation. Of course it would be a pure chemical/combustion body, I griped, it isn’t as though such a thing is so non-standard as to be almost unthinkable.
The symptoms I had been experiencing made much more sense in context with the new information I had received. The warnings had been the body trying to signal me to eat something. I suppose it's something akin to actual hunger, I mused. I had never experienced the hunger that warbreed loved to speak about so much in both the literal and metaphorical senses, but I had been exposed to them long enough to be able to act as though it was second nature to me. I suppose the grass will have to do, I thought, reaching down and ripping out green blades from the ground beneath me. Once I had a good handful I stuffed them into my mouth and chewed.
“Hrrrk!” I gagged, spewing grass all over the ground in front of me as a wave of warnings flew out of my stomach and my tongue, then across my body. My mouth salivated to extremes to expel as much of the matter as it possibly could, and my chest convulsed and forced me to double over until every last blade had left my mouth. What kind of low-quality garbage am I instantiated in? I seethed, allowing an inkling of my frustration at my new form to seep into the emotive part of my mind. Hesitantly, I walked over to a tree and picked off one of its leaves. After making sure it was one of the ones I had confirmed were non-poisonous, I attempted to eat it. The result was less violent but still unpleasant. Now that I knew what to expect I could force myself to consume it, but I knew better than to disobey such guidance from a body.
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Warbreed eat grass all the time, I thought, they eat pretty much everything. Leaves, wood, meat, fungi, I'm pretty sure they can even extract nutrition from dirt. Against my better judgment I tried a sample of bark from the same tree and was rewarded with the ability to swallow it, though the input from my mouth let me know it was far from what my body desired. Why would a body with almost no sense of smell have such a strong sense of taste? I wondered. As I reached up and scratched between the small of my shoulder blades I realized something very important: This body isn't made to match a warbreed's specs, it's made to match a creator's specs, or something close to them. Racking my mind back to my earliest memories, I recalled some basic information about what the creators tended to consume as foodstuffs, and was displeased by how specific the groups were.
Another quarter of an hour later I had found a tree with what looked like edible fruits growing from it. The concept of something biological being “inedible” was still very new and confusing to me, but the bright red color of the tree's hanging seed pods reminded me of another foodstuff I had seen in virtual reality during my early days. I climbed the tree and plucked one off, seeing that its interior flesh was soft and light, giving off a sweet odor that even my crippled nose could detect. Resisting the urge to simply cram it into my mouth, I grabbed three more fruits and descended from the tree, then rubbed the juice on some non-critical parts of my body to check them for poison.
“Mmh,” I grunted reflexively as I chewed the fruit's flesh. I wasn't sure how long I had waited to see a reaction, but I was sure it was long enough to know the food was safe. The signals from my mouth were very good, indicating that the fruit was dense in the kinds of matter which my body was capable of processing. The signal almost feels like the one my old bodies would give me when I completed an objective, I thought. Soon the fruits I had gathered were gone, and I was back up the tree again, shaking branches to cause more to fall to ground. As I held onto one of the flexible limbs I saw a number of small and medium-sized animals scurry by, grabbing fruits I had freed and running off with them. One animal looked similar to a deer, but with horns that formed a less complex pattern than a male deer’s. I made a mental note of it as a potential hunting target for later and climbed down to ingest my prize.
My stomach was sending warnings again, but this time mixed in with positive signals. I had consumed a total of twenty-seven of the fruits, with the average size of one fruit working out to be about half of the volume of my closed fist. I walked on from the clearing and the tree, careful not to jostle my now-distended stomach out of fear that it might break somehow. After finding a standing position that minimized the warnings my digestive organ was flooding me with, I proceeded north at a walking pace until the sun had fully set. Along the way I checked the heads-up display bars again and found that the violet had fallen again, but the green was slowly rising. Somehow those two are related, I concluded, not exactly sure how yet though.
Once the night came I was treated to the expected starscape and no visible moon. My night vision wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't up to the quality that I was used to. Knowing that my body was made to creator-spec gave me forewarning of another incoming problem, so I decided to tackle it before it had a chance to inconvenience me. After a short search I found what I was looking for: In front of me lay a rather large bush with thick leaves. Pushing aside the outer leaves revealed a thorn-less interior which was decently spacious. Like everything around me, it was not ideal, but I managed to fit inside decently enough and found a position to rest in that did not overly extend my arms or legs.
Some time later I had grown bored. Just like on the rock I couldn't quite enter a low-power state like I used to. It appeared that my body wanted to remain online constantly. It's better than the reverse, I shrugged as I tried to find something to do. On the ground, near the point at which the plant's branches turned into a small trunk and met the ground, I saw a couple of rocks. Even in the dark I could tell that they were themselves darker than most of the rocks in the forest. I picked one up and, to my surprise, found that it was a flint-like material. Smiling reflexively, I picked up the other rock and began smashing them together. With practiced ease I used the rock in my right hand to shave away at the rock in my left. Finally, something that's the same no matter what body I'm in, I thought.
As the night wore on I found my eyes beginning to lose their ability to focus, and my dexterity falling. Even my thoughts became slower. I wanted to get up and find more food, assuming that I needed more energy again, but my body and even my mind seemed to urge me not to move around. I kept trying to knap my stone axe with as much attention as I could manage, but at some point I could no longer keep my eyes open. In the span of a single blink the world I was in had vanished.
I found myself in a strange place in the middle of daytime. Mikkil, a warbreed I had interacted with on my second-to-last mission, was with me. He spoke to me about something, and I spoke back, but I couldn't recall what we were talking about. I thought it was strange that I was talking to a dead man, but the situation didn't bother me at all at the time. Mikkil pointed to a deer, the one I had seen earlier in the day, and we both unslung our rifles. Running out and screaming like a madman, Mikkil charged the deer while firing. Not a single bullet landed on target and the deer escaped, vanishing as though it was made of mist. Mikkil laughed and grinned at me, and then I shot him in the head while wearing a mirror of his grin.