Episode 18

Reloaded

A pinpoint of light pierced the blackness. It hovered precisely in the center of my vision and stubbornly remained there, no matter where I turned my gaze.

I watched listlessly as a dense pattern of numbers, words, and indecipherable symbols began rapidly scrolling up, flowing to somewhere beyond the limit of my vision. A reverse waterfall of information which produced severe vertigo. I had the sensation I was falling from a great height.

As I plunged into an abyss, seemingly random images emerged into my consciousness. A green ocean of windswept grass, a tortured battlefield landscape, a woman's hand firmly grasping my wrist.

I searched for something solid to focus on, but everything was in motion. Each image flickered briefly and then vanished. The reel of unrelated scenes streamed before my eyes, an incomprehensible chaos.

Then the frantic slideshow came to a jarring halt, and a single word appeared.

Thankfully, it was stationary.

Soon, my field of view transformed from a black rectangle, into something more familiar. It was a slightly blurry heads-up display. Even though I recognized the configuration and the system data now streaming across my vision, I was still struggling with the context. I couldn’t figure out where I was, or what was happening.

It was clear my mind was suffering from multiple cognitive faults. My reasoning felt fragmented. A chain of logical threads unspooled in my mind, each one ending without reaching any conclusion.

Out of nowhere, someone asked a question. “Do you recognize my voice?

I couldn’t say whether I actually heard the question, or if I became aware of it by some other means. Regardless, no memory of the voice surfaced in my consciousness.

When I tried to communicate this to my unseen questioner, I discovered that I couldn’t verbalize a response. I was mute. Unable to respond, communication was strictly a one-way affair. I attempted to devise an alternative, but my thinking was still too disorganized.

Thoughts continued to percolate aimlessly as I overheard some kind of technical discussion.

“Some of the files didn’t load. I think his audio is disabled.”

“Yeah. It looks like the boot code is corrupted. Let me clean it up and load it again. Try texting him in the meantime.”

Words began scrolling across the bottom of my HUD. They read, “Hey McCann, if you can read this, try texting me back. Lucy. ” It was quickly followed by another brief text. “In case you’ve forgotten how to use thought to text, double blink on my text to respond!”

I recognized the name Lucy. As reassuring as this was, I was still struggling to find any memories from my recent past. Then, as if by accident, I stumbled across another name, Cherri. It was closely followed by a stream of intense memories.

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“What the hell happened?”, I texted.

“We reloaded your consciousness. We’re still troubleshooting some problems."

“Is Cherri with you?” I probably should have been asking about the ‘problems’, but I was more curious about her, at the moment.

“No, she’s in the sim.”

The fact that she was unavailable was an unexpected disappointment, but I wasn’t certain why. My thinking immediately took off on a tangent. I began plowing through every memory of her, up to the point where we joined hands, and she started searching my CPU for memory fragments. That was where my memories abruptly ended.

I texted, “Something happened during her search for my memory fragments, didn’t it?” I wondered if Cherri was somehow responsible for my current problems.

“Well, something definitely happened, but not during her search.”

It was a mildly evasive response that only partially answered my question. I tried to ignore a growing paranoia as I asked for clarification. “What do you mean, not during her search?”

Lucy quickly texted back. “The last memory you have is of you and her holding hands. Right?”

With my mental acuity beginning to improve, I was able to organize my memories into a rough chronological order. Rolling the memories forward, I slowed them to a crawl as they approached the final moments. I felt the connection with Cherri, we were holding hands, data was flowing between us, then nothing. It was just as Lucy described it. I wondered how he could possibly know anything about my memories.

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

He texted, “I reviewed the backup copy of your consciousness. It included your last moments, holding hands with Cherri.”

My last moments? It sounded like I was deceased. I asked, “Does everyone have a backup here?”

Instead of answering my question, Lucy replied, “Listen, we’re going to try the audio again. Standby.”

As I waited for the audio, I pondered my current ‘reloaded’ status. They had probably used the backup to reload my consciousness, but where did they get a copy of me? I didn’t recall being copied at any point since I arrived here in troopship land. Even if the system routinely copied UCCs for backup purposes, how did they get their hands on one of those copies? I wanted answers.

Just then, I began to hear some background noise. It was a high frequency ringing, like I was suffering from tinnitus.

Someone began speaking. “Hey McCann, how do you copy?” It was an unfamiliar voice, only just audible through the interference.

“I can hear you … but just barely. Who is this?” There was no reply, but I overheard the voice talking in the background.

“Okay, we’ve got a link but it’s not very clean. You’ll have to speak up.”

Then I heard Lucy’s voice through the clutter. “How are you doing?

Although his tone seemed oddly casual, considering the circumstances, I was focused on getting answers. “I feel like I’ve been patched together with zip ties and duct tape.”

Lucy chuckled. “We’re still working on some cleanup. Things are going to feel a little weird for a while.”

That was a massive understatement in my opinion. “What the hell happened to me?”

“Well, based on what Cherri told me, you went rogue and became fixated on an original memory. You started looping. Before she could pull the plug, you had generated a few million memories of that experience. Memories of a memory, so to speak. And then you crashed.”

“Crashed!? How bad?” I wasn’t sure how much damage crashing could cause, but judging by how bad I felt, I must have been severely affected.

“Bad. We couldn’t recover very much. So, we decided to reload you from a backup.”

I was curious about how a copy could exist without me having any recollection of being copied. “Where did you get a backup copy?”

Lucy hesitated briefly before answering. “Cherri backed you up, while you two were connected.” Then he added, “As a precaution.”

I didn’t recall her mentioning the need for any precautions. Backing up someone without their knowledge or consent seemed arrogant, if not blatantly deceptive. I was instantly suspicious.

“Tell me, is it common for people to secretly copy each other here?”

“Uh … no it’s not. It’s not common at all. But only because the My Wizard code to make copies of UCCs is incredibly expensive. Cherri is one of the few who could afford the luxury of copying another UCC. The fact that she chose to copy you, with or without your consent, shows that she thinks you’re pretty special.”

“So, what are you saying? I should consider it a compliment?” Special or not, his explanation did little to quell my outrage at being deceived by her.

“I think some gratitude is in order. After all, if she hadn’t copied you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You are very … fucking lucky.”

Now that I thought about it, I was indeed lucky. Luckier than I had a right to be, considering I had ignored Cherri’s instructions and selected the wrong file. I felt like I should let go of my resentment and focus on being a little more grateful. I decided that when I next saw Cherri, I would simply thank her.

Attempting a measure of contrition, I said, “I guess she did, sort of, save my life.”

Lucy scoffed. “Honestly, I don’t know what she sees in you.”

It was a fair point.