To Be Alive Is To... - 04

I did my survey and the station is big as I am fucked. In other words… Very. I don’t know what happened to the solar panels but I can see even from here in low level light that they won’t be working… At all. I do suspect there is a hanger somewhere on this. I think half the station was embedded in an asteroid while this half reached off it like a spire and was broken off in an explosion. I pull myself back into the station, solar panels are a no go but if this place was a mining station they should have tool stations and engines, even replacement solar panels. I glanced at my map and seen a lot of it filling up now, it looks like I don’t physically have to walk every corridor for it to map.

I slowly start drifting down the hallway, gently pushing myself from wall to wall zig-zagging my way across. Travelling in 0 Gs is an art form in itself, I’m lucky in the way they seemed to think having protruding lights are cool, makes travelling easier. What doesn’t make it easier is the inky darkness that is everywhere, being in empty space with no direct sunlight or power just makes seeing almost impossible, the light from my helmet light is extremely low level and red. I float slowly through the space, debris and station breaches everywhere. I imagine that I’ll have to create my own airlock where I can get down and really put some work together, these gloves don’t do much for dexterity.

The area I’m in right now looks like the cryogenic sleeper area, not a lot are being used and even less have suits on. Some with suits on appear to be dead as well, I cannot open their capsules yet. Maybe it was a random power surge or one of the solar panels had a spark of life that generated my character waking up. I would like to wake up some of these astronauts but I need power and a supply of air.

After fifteen minutes or so I reach a halfway that denotes other areas of the station and a small map on a wall. Aegis Station. An official borderlands research facility right on the edge of known space. Inside the asteroid anchor was a hydroponics lab, they were investigating alien plant life and how it acts in space. Boring stuff if you’re not a botanist. It looked like it had it’s own water processing plant, it was semi-self sufficient meaning that it grew some of it’s own food, made it’s own water and air but for stuff that were more technical was resupplied. So ignore everything below where my stasis pod is the rooms and resources I do have to work with include.

• Docking and loading bay,
• Medical outpost,
• Guardroom,
• Kitchen and mess hall,
• A few dozen trashed solar panels and antennas,
• Customs,
• Radar post,
• A couple of EVA stations.

To Be Alive Is To... - 03

Gunfire erupts in my ears, screams and shouts everywhere. “Shit! Get down!” An even larger explosion creates static over the tape. “We are activating-” Another deafening boom destroys the audio “Get to any pods, T-minus.” The next explosion cuts all audio and the tape ends.

“What the fuck?” I question, I look around and try my best I can to gain information from my surroundings and take stock of items I have.

• A digital map (Most of which has corrupted)
• Body condition, it shows my entire body with my heart rate behind it, it glows green.
• Fuel/Power which is already dropping into the orange at around 75%.
• O2 is currently resting at 99%.

Oh, oh fuck. That’s an O2 meter, I’m on a sealed oxygen supply which could possibly mean outside this door is a fucking void. I feel a cold rise over me, isn’t this opening too hard for me? This game needs to be balanced more! I feel around the pod for anything else and I grip ahold of a large pistol. It’s a space survival pistol, or so I’m told by my database. Not directly designed for combat because the trigger guard is so large to accommodate space suits, holding six rounds if one is in the chamber. Most likely to be used to commit suicide if you get spaced without a way back to the station. I have nothing to keep it on me so I keep it in my left hand. Is there a way to… Save the oxygen in this capsule? My helmet flashing and drags my attention to a button next to the capsule door, I hit it with a fist.

“Draining Oxygen... Equalising pressure.” I hear soon after that, a low hiss starts but then fades to inaudibility. I scan around my seat some more and click a red button that is highlighted to exit the pod. The pod slowly slides open and in front of me is a dark hallway, but intact. ‘This doesn’t look so bad…’ I think to myself as my suit helmet light flickers to life automatically.

I grab a hold of the edge and slowly pull myself out of the pod, getting adjusted to the free range of movement that is Zero Gravity. Looking right I see a pitch black corridor with more pods within my immediate distance and the I look left. The station ends abruptly around fifteen meters down that way, torn from whatever location anchored it into position. I watch the stars spin as the station flies rotates freely around in space. I turn around and face inwards to where I was seated, hoping for anything else that would make it easier. My eyes glance under the seat and I spot a bag, reaching underneath I find rope, batteries, knife, water and food.

I secure it to my back and throw myself to the next pod, empty and has no power so I can’t access that one’s survival kit yet. I follow down the hallway drifting silently, I wait until I can’t see anymore and then turn on the flashlight. There’s so much to do and I have no idea how to do it.

“Menu.”

Two options appear, one to close the menu the other to logout. I press logout.

Warning!!! You must be in a safe, habitable area to logout!

I frown at the notification, close the menu and make my way back to the pod.

“Hey Dom…?” I call out.

‘Yeah?’ A message pops onto my helmet’s display

“I think I need some tac-advice on this game.”

‘What’s troubling you?’

“It’s a survival game right now.”

‘I can see that.’ The writing looks sarcastic but I truly know he’s interested.

“Any help then?”

‘Get a good view of the station, take inventory. I’ll google shit for you.’

Seemed like a plan to me, thinking something along the lines of ‘Google, saving virtual lives since creation.’

Rather than searching through the entire station for a storage room that may or may not have spare solar panels I decided to tie my rope against the capsule and throw myself out into the massive tear on the left of the corridor to give myself an outside view of what I’m working with. I make sure to tie my rope extra securely because I don’t want to waste the limited fuel I have in my EVA suit which could be necessary to kick start a different engine if I need to cannibalize it.

I slowly drift out and away from the station, I have around fifty meters of rope to work with, It’s kinda hard to see everything but I appear to be in deep space. The solar system is shagged, no planetary bodies or other things, currently in an empty void of space. Just the station and I, me, myself and the station and holy shit.

That’s a lot of station.

To Be Alive Is To... - 02

I give my avatar body one last look over, it is the spitting image of me. The pod must provide a full body scan and etcetera to allow for this amount of detail, I don’t particularly think I’m bad looking, but I’m not Tom Cruise.

“Can you remove the scarring?” In a blink all the little white and surgical scars disappeared and I nod to myself. “Right I’m finished, load my into the game.”

“There are several dozen spawn points ranging from easy to hard, would you like to select one?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Easy spawns usually spawn you in a wide safe area such as a colony or ship to be awoken from cryogenic sleep. Medium spawns put you in an area that has conflict over territory through rampant native beasts or war. Hard spawns put you in an environment where you’re only objective is to survive, and perhaps even thrive. The system is modular and adaptive, if circumstances change the system will adjust to make things easier, or harder for you.”

“Okay… What’s the benefit of going for harder spawns then?”

“By selecting a harder spawn area there is a significant higher chance of acquiring rare and unique items both in the area you spawn in… And permanently in the Galaxy. To make this balanced however, all characters can only experience one life in the Galaxy and upon death you will have to recreate a character. This bonus is only character bound and not account bound.”

“Let’s do hard mode then, if I die I can just respawn and keep trying again.” I grin.

“Death penalty is one full day until you can respawn again, thank you for selecting your spawn mode, I shall select your spawn randomly.”

“FU-!”

⚶

“-CK!”

‘Damn fucking computer.’ I cursed in my head.

I’m back in the pod, all the screens are exactly the way they were before but something feels off, like a subtle stillness that quiets everything around it then I come to realise I’m not wearing my clothes. It feels like a sort of soft gel around my entire body, looking at it from the outside I’m wearing a luminescent orange space suit and what else feels like multiple layers in between. I blink a couple of times and realise I’m wearing some sort of mask as well, not like the helmet in the real pod but a complete different one altogether.

Systems booting up…

Those words appear on the lower view of my vision.

Initialising…

Then my previously darkened vision explodes with colours and status updates, it has taken a compressed version of all the screens around me and connected them to my vision.

“Audio log detected on station mainframe. Playing...” A dehumanised voice plays in my ears, I’m unable to discern of its male or female.

To Be Alive Is To... - 01

“Life isn’t always about fixing something broken. Sometimes, it’s about starting over and creating something better.” Anonymous

I can feel the cool air-conditioned wind on the back of my neck as I try to get comfy in the capsule, there are numerous screens facing me, telling me my body’s core temperature, my heart rate, blood pressure, lung speed cycle, state of sleep and many more that I suspect a doctor would have a wet dream over.

Then slowly from a passage from above the seat, a helmet came down, it was half face, covering everything but my mouth and nose. I put it on and I feel the gel fitting fit snugly to the base of my neck and all the way around. I could see a black light in my obscured vision, it must have got some VR properties, it slowly boots up not becoming too bright for my eyes before three dimensionally showing the menu and the loading screen.

• Start
• Options
• Quit

It had only those three selections, reminding myself that I’m not holding any interactive equipment I say it aloud. “Start.” My vision tunnels as if I’m racing through a pitch black slide before jolting still. I take a look around and at myself, I’m wearing exactly what I was wearing when I entered the pod to the exact detail of the dirt under my nails.

“Welcome to Vigil Until Dawn, I’ll be guiding you to help you create….” I zone out effectively jamming what she had to say to me as I swiped around my hands to play with the options. As soon as I changed something by a minor degree another me appeared, completely naked apart from what looked like skin tight speedos.

Looking at the menus there is a lot of creation choice, I can even change species to alien races. Or I can play as a human with a wide array of genetic, cybernetic, and even neural modifications. It does say that some options are only available while is character customization but most can be bought for using in-game credits in various places.

“Pardon, however you may want to listen to what I am saying.”

My eyes race around the never ending whiteness of the character creation room before locking eyes with the what I thought was just a dumb NPC.

“Excuse me?”

“You may want to listen to what I have to say, it may pertain information about the game you wish to play.”

I examine what I believe before to be a non-sentient existence, what was shown to me was a female avatar dressed formally for business, long brown hair, and glasses.

“Sorry…?” It was more of a question than a statement that I am.

“I am an Artificial Intelligence tasked with helping players create their characters for maximum customer satisfaction.”

“Okay, I’m Eric.” I raised my hand to offer a handshake, she did the same offering a more dejected hand with confusion etched on her avatar’s face. “Grasp the hand like this” I hold her hand and shake it.

“What is that?”

“A handshake, but grasp more firmly next time.”

“Stored in memory banks.” We continue staring at each other, perhaps trying to assert dominance over who is the smarter person here. Obviously, I am not, however, I can put in a complaint and get her memory wiped. “Is there something wrong?” She asks staring at my face.

“Nope!”

“You can change your character into several different kinds of biological races and three types of machine type, would you like to choose any?”

“No, just leave me human.”

“You can also perform several types of modifications to humans, ranging from; genetic, cybernetic, neural and general body enhancements. Would you like to receive any changes?”

I look at her again, most of those words went way over my head but I can sort of understanding the jargon, they sound interesting enough. But I’d like to think I can also acquire most of these in-game as well. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Would you like to change your character appearance?”

When It Begins To Fester - 03

“Look, I get why you’re here. You’re hoping that somewhere, deep down inside me I haven’t forgotten about you.” He said the entire thing quietly.

“No that’s not it.” But he gives me stern look.

“My mum, dad, Dominic, and all my army buddies all thought the same. They all came thinking ‘surely he’ll remember me, we were so close’. A week later they’re all gone apart from Dom, but he gets it, he’s a smart lad which is why he’s still here, helping me feel normal.” He emphasizes that last part.

“I-I know.” I choke up a little once more, he sighs and gives me a hug. “Stupid asshole,” I mutter and he chuckles sadly as well. I try to take a deep breath but everything just smells of him, a deep musky, rich wood smell. We break away and I take another glance at his face, it isn’t unblemished. He’s starting to get a dark shadow across his jawline and neck, he probably keeps it there to hide all the little scars that appear to dot him now. I see him for what he is now, probably not for the months of surgery, healing and rehab it took him to get him walking and talking.

“How did you get injured?” I say it so quietly I almost don’t hear it, be Eric bobs his head, nodding like it’s one of the most natural

questions in the world. He pauses and takes a large gulp of his sweet tea and sighs.

“I got caught in the blast radius of an RPG-7…” He paused and looked at my face then elaborated, “A rocket propelled grenade launcher, the thing they use to take out armored vehicles.”

My jaw dropped, how the fuck did he survive that. “I-I’m sorry Eric, I didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it, I am technically alive.” I watch his lips curl into a mirthless smile as he depreciates himself and stares into his drink trying to work out if will predict his future.

I feel my lips tremble as words flow out “What do you mean ‘technically’, you are alive.”

“I feel like a shell, a husk, empty.” He pauses wanting to say more but he catches himself before he truly falls, “Sorry, I’m just being melodramatic.” He looks at me with that same fake smile.

“No Eric, you’re not. You cannot downplay this as being a fuckin’ teenage drama, you got blown up for Christ’s sake!” My voice rising in volume and pitch, it’s subtle but I see tremors of emotion in his hand, he is barely keeping himself together.

“Amelia, I think you should leave.” I open my mouth to defend myself, he has never kicked me out before. I give him a hard stare to show my unwillingness to leave, I wouldn’t leave normally if I was being asked like this. But he needs his space and Dominic is here with him.

“Fine” It comes out as a little growl, I make a point of finishing my drink before I leave but then I soon hear the door softly click behind me and I release a breath. Putting my hands to my head I wonder what I can do.

‘I suppose I’ll have to come back then.’ I aimlessly give out a coffee bean bitter smile.

When It Begins To Fester - 02

Knocking on the door twice, more gently than last time a younger version of Eric opens it. His blonde hair lighter and longer than Eric’s, maybe cuter but the older one is definitely more handsome. Glancing over to the sofa I see Eric struggling to master the controls of Dominic’s game. Before Eric would beat Dominic every time, but the student has become the master.

“Hey, Amelia.” Dominic says very loudly for Eric to hear, he rotates his head around and squints at me.

‘Not as cute as Dom, but definitely more handsome.’ I think to myself.

“Dom come over here, I’m sick of dying.” He quickly excuses himself and passes the controller over to his brother, I enter the apartment and shut the door behind me. It's too neat and tidy for one man and a teenager, with a number of houses I’ve been too I’d expect boxers on the floor and dishes in the sink but Eric manages quite well. Instead of walking over to me he walks to the kitchen and I meet him over there. “I didn’t expect you to be over here so soon, I thought you’d give it a couple days.” He genuinely sounded surprised, half leaning on the counter with his arm the other hand on his waist.

“I did say I’d be back.” I flicked the kettle on for myself.

“Already making yourself at home?” He breathed through his teeth, “My brother laughed when I told him what you said.” He changed the subject quickly, obviously just teasing me with the first part of the sentence.

“Oh?”

“You quoted Terminator apparently,” he pauses “I need to rewatch it but apparently that’s a big part of the movie and I should laugh.” I couldn’t help but laugh at that, I did accidentally quote it. But it was even funnier because he was speaking like a robot! I watch him take a few cups of the drying board and distribute teas and coffees.

“I never asked what you like to drink.” He raises an eyebrow at me.

“Coffee, milky with two sugars please.” I reply watching his eyebrow.

“Awesome a normal person like me.” My entire body came over with a cold pinprick sensation, he used to make this joke all the time. “My brother is a complete weirdo taking five sugars with no milk.” He shuddered, he looks back at me after filling up the cups. “What?”

“Y-you used to say that all the time.” His eyes widen in surprise but then become sad again.

“Really huh, I guess no matter where you go…” He pauses and says the next bit loudly “Dominic is a freak!”

“Shut the fuck up Eric!” Dominic harshly shouts back without blinking away from the screen while Eric chuckles. He slides the coffee over to me and I take a sip, damn he makes the best damn coffee anywhere. I take in his features again, comparing him to how he was before he went on tour. He still has the same dainty curved nose, dirty blonde hair, slim body build. Much slimmer than Fred, his skin looked like Casper’s buttcheeks. Compared to suntan from before, his eyes didn’t carry the strong confident gaze but the gaze of a hurt animal.

“You know, you may not have your memories but you still do act like your old self,” I comment smiling slightly, he clenches his jaw a little and flares his nostrils. He only does that when he is holding himself back from saying something, that should have been a good thing it’s part the way to remembering, isn’t it?