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If you ask a survivor what it was like to be used as a psychic medium for a black market machine to punch a hole in space-time they'll tell you it was nothing but pain. That is a lie. Pain is the only thing that we remember.
When we're freed everything spills right out of the ports in our skulls, and only migraines stay behind to take their place. It'll be the worst one in my life by far, and from this side of it I already loathe the ignorance it marks. None of us recall, none of our handlers even know, hell I don't think even the Others who built the real machines know what it's like for us inside of them. They couldn't possibly see what we see now, nor understand how empty the amnesia it leaves behind in our stupid, ignorant-
I shouldn't insult the ones who were released before me. It'll happen to me too, when I'm rescued. They'll strip me out of this straight jacket made out of plastic and copper wires, pull the 128 jacks out of my body, then detangle all of the bits and bobs plugged into the back of my skull and leave me dazed and senseless and suffering just like the rest. When it happens. Eventually. Unless it's already happened?
Look, my relationship with time is a little skewed in here. See, stuck inside this thing my consciousness is strewn out across the entire ribbon of it's life where I've lost all sense of past present and future. I'm experiencing, have experienced, and will continue to experience all of it simultaneously until the last plug is ripped from my body and I'm nothing more than a single self trapped in the flow of linear time once more. It's a necessary part of how these things work, I think. Probably.
This knock-off machine and I, we reach out through the vast expanse of space and poke a hole to somewhere far far away, and from the moment we were powered on we already knew when and where and how we'd do it, we saw all the possible complications on our paths, and all the results of our actions, and by the stars we even had the entire length of our lifetime together to think each one through. Which is a bit weird to say, considering I don't actually make any choices in what we do. Afterall, my position in time means that I've already made all the decisions I will make. Does that make sense? It won't to me when this is done. But it does right now.
Stars, when am I, really? It doesn't do me any good to know I was kidnapped on J 16 314 and will be released on B 5 315 when I can't figure out when I am right now. I'm experiencing that migraine always at the same time as I'm experiencing the leftovers of the chemical high from the knockout drugs when I was kidnapped. I'm still giggling at the shipment of something I'd slingshotted through space ending up right in a honeypot trap at the same time that I'm sighing from boredom of remembering it. I'm constantly being pulled out of the straight jacket at the same time that I'm being put in it.
The real machines are better than this, by the way. I can see one, I think, barely past the gravity lens of a black hole warping the distance between two seconds of time somewhen out there. It's the most beautiful fucking thing I'll have ever seen.
Maybe I should have volunteered. The Others take any sentient organic, according to them. Apparently we're all at least a little bit psychic, and they're willing to train anyone up to the requisite level to be used as a component in shattering causality. Apparently I was already gifted enough to merit an illicit eye on me, given where I am now. Those robots always talk about their offer to become one with the machine with a religious adoration to their voice, and seeing that silhouette across the infinite distance I can almost understand why.
But only almost. I can't yet know, just as I won't even know to wonder soon. Hopefully soon.
I should have just volunteered. Shame I won't remember to do so after this. Whenever it happens. The thing. My… head hurts. What was I just thinking about? I knew my head would hurt, it had done so the entire time I was… somewhere else. Not because it was hurting but because it would, and I had already experienced it up until a splotchy something just beyond it. That something should be just in my memories but all I got for trying to reach for it was more pain lacing behind my eyes and stabbing through my brain.
A cold mechanical hand rests over my eyes as two more pull apart the intricate web of a copper and plastic wire straight jacket that was on me, for some reason? I can't quite seem to recall. Dizziness chases up from my empty stomach for the attempt though. Another hand pulls the injection lines from under my jaw and replaces them with syringes that pump chemical relief directly into my skull. Metal ports are being emptied all across my body as I'm dragged up from a chaotic jumble of mismatched hardware.
What's… happening…? I feel as if I should know but all my brain says in response is a scream of untempered anguish. The chemical bliss soaking into the soft tissues of my flesh chases after it rapidly, but still I'm left to linger upon a singular moment once more constrained to linear time where my body, my lone flesh once more, is cradled tightly against shivering metal that begs for me to make it out of this okay. My eyes, dilated into pools of dark so wide they threatened to escape their irises and become solid black spheres, see only slivers of light through steel fingers. My ribs twitch to breathe and atrophied muscles scream out in unison against the effort.
I am alive, and all I can remember is the worst fucking migraine in my life.
—
There is a robot beside my hospital bed. Of all the things to make it through the drugged haze of my waking mind, that's the one I latch onto first for some reason. Just, an impulse in my neurotransmitters that believes there being a robot beside me is important. Everything else still feels so far away and foggy, but with effort my mind can sift through it and attempt to turn impulse into action.
I try to speak. The result is little more than a weak breath of wind spilling out of my aching throat, but it seems to have been enough to get the robot’s attention. At once the opaque screen of its face flickers into life, and with precise movements it’s head swivels over to turn and face me directly. “Please do not try to move yet. Your body is in a severe state. I will explain everything.” It speaks through an audiobox hidden inside of its head. Despite its warning I attempt to move my hand, but all I accomplish is a weak twitch of my finger that sends jolts of pain arcing up my arm and highlighting the feeling of wires still laced between my fingers.
“I warned you.” It chides as it rises out of its seat. With metal limbs forged into humanoid shapes the robot proceeds to pluck my arm out from beneath the blankets and- ah. My arm is so… thin. And riddled with metal. Between my knuckles, wrapped around my wrist, along the inside of my elbow. Jack ports riddle the space of my forearm as well, and I can only assume they continue to crawl up my body where it disappears underneath the hospital gown. The robot produces a needle that it slots into an injection port by my elbow, and a moment later more of that chemical fog bats away the aches and pains of movement. “You will require physical therapy for some time, but do not fear, we will provide.”
Words coalesce into little more than a weak brush of air against the inside of my mouth. Why can’t I feel my tongue? Or my throat, or, probably the drugs. I must be full of them.
“For now you must rest, and when your mind is ready we will begin.” The robot speaks as it wraps my withered hand in its own.
—
There are 128 jack ports placed across my body, 18 injection ports, 32 slots for ribbon wires, 25 terminals, and approximately 18 more things that I don’t even know what they are embedded through my skin. Beneath that envelope of flesh I’m now riddled with gold and titanium inserts that leave the sensation of phantom bruises in the wake of any movement I make. Apparently there’s also an inch-wide hollow space inside of my skull now, too. From the… the…. I can’t recall what the Others called it. Something something interface.
Speaking of the Others, all I’d seen is those robots since waking up again. The one specific one was always within the same room as me, I think it was supposed to be my primary caretaker? I felt bad for it, but it kept telling me that it was just a physical terminal for a wider thing and my brain still hurt trying to process whatever the fuck that actually meant. But on the brighter side, I got a massage, like, every day? There was a whole other group of robots with these weird inhuman hands that would emit warmth and stimulate my horribly horribly atrophied muscles waaaaayyyy better than any human massage I’ve ever had. They kept telling me they’d help me get back on my feet again as they did it, and honestly after hearing a bunch of that talk mixed with the pleasant physical sensation I found it kind of easy to just roll along believing them. I was safe in their arms, they’d help me recover, blah blah blah so on so forth.
According to them, I had been kidnapped and used as a psychic medium for a knock-off model of their grand machines to punch technically-not-but-basically-totally-are wormholes in space and time across the vast expanse of space. Which was a lot to take in, given that all I could remember of that time was a head-ripping level migraine. The robots were real scathing in their descriptors about the machine I was in, too. To them it was ‘insultingly poor design’ that failed to even account for my bodily needs, much less a number of other more complicated concepts that rolled right off my brain entirely.
Oh they loved to talk about the proper version of their grand machines, by the way. Every time any of the robots got started on talking about what happened to me they’d end up on a whole aside about how the *real* models they’d perfected would nourish the flesh as it carried their psychic whims along cosmic waves, then go on and on about how the art of sustaining such machinery is more gardening than engineering (thus why the models assigned to the task are referred to as Gardeners) as it would grow like a tree branching out across multi-dimensional space, and at about the time where I’d start to feel like they were advertising to me they’d freeze up and awkwardly attempt to swerve back onto the actual topic at hand.
Every time, I’d feel like there was a question they’d get so close to asking but never quite find the will to broach the subject directly. Every time I’d feel a weird hollow pit in my heart that I couldn’t quite grasp and understand.
Hrmn.
Guh.
Where was I again?
I can’t actually talk anymore, by the way. Apparently my captors had removed my tongue and voice box, and in their place I had a metal plate on the front of my throat. I’m stuck eating through a metal port placed under my ribs, which, well, I got used to that pretty quickly honestly. Didn’t feel like much of anything to use it, and the robots would pet my hair whenever they fed me so I just ended up treating it like a regularly scheduled cuddle session. Which was nice.
Maybe I was touch starved? Could someone get touch starved despite having a machine literally touching between all of their tissue layers for a year and a half? That was like, the most touching possible for a really long time so I feel like I shoulda been touch satiated if anything. Where was I going with this?
“Are you okay?” One of the Others is crouching beside me and leaning over my body. Light blue uniform, physical therapy? Oh. I’m sprawled out on the floor. I must have fallen down and zoned out. Again.
I try to say something but as always the words just arrive as a shift in my breath through moving lips.I move my arms beneath me and try to push myself off the ground but I’m just, tired now. Tired all over.
“I think that is enough for today.” The robot that acted as my caretaker intercedes through my struggles by plucking me off the floor as if I weighed nothing. Which, well, I suppose I probably do weigh nothing right now. I’m still all skin and bones. And metal. Maybe the metal has all my body weight. “You did good today, dear.” The synthesized voice speaks softly into my ear. “You’re making good progress.”
It doesn’t feel like good progress. It feels like I can still barely manage to hold myself up and take three steps before every fiber of my being decides to fly apart into nothing instead. It’s upsetting, viscerally terribly upsetting to compare my current inability to so much as walk like a normal fuCKING PERSON against the memories of myself running without a care I just feel so much LESS and like getting back even a facsimile of that old self was such an insurmountable task and my fucking HEAD. GODS. I felt stupid now! Maybe it was the inch wide cavity inside my skull where the thingamajig was supposed to go but every time my mind wandered to how hard it was for me to understand things I felt this yawning chasm of ignorance that hurt to even begin to approach. Why did that word hurt so much??? Ignorance. Like there was something that I knew and its absence left a scar that still aches so much as to breathe near.
I’m crying. Wet tears are spilling out of the corners of my augmented eyes and rolling down my cheeks with a bloody red hue as strained breaths form a staccato beat from my mouth. “It will be okay.” The robot still carrying me whispers back. “You will recover in time, and we will grant you as much time as you need.” It moves my body all the way back to the familiar comfort of my hospital bed, where it once more repeats the gestures of plugging me into the bits and pieces of technology that were meant to help me recover, then slides a familiar injection into a port under my jaw to grant me a chemical sleep all over again. But this time I’m the one to reach out and grasp its hand, and I hold onto it fiercely as I drift off into the dark.
—
I have friends! Or, uh, had, friends? Before I disappeared and then reappeared a withered wretch a year and a half later? Also friends besides the robot extraterrestrials, of course. Though the Others did consider me a friend, apparently? Which was sweet. Oh uh I’m sidetracked again, where was I- I have friends! Two of them, who came to see me as soon as I was considered healthy enough to have guests. They called themselves Bertrand and Aiz, and at the first mention of their name I turned to face my caretaker and typed out ‘Do you have a name?’.
The robot paused as if surprised by the question, and shyly offered, “Did it never come up? I’m sorry, dear. My tag is 9610c57d-63f9-4d21-9144-052e47f6607b, but most humans shorten it to 96.”
Neat!
Anyway, Bertrand and Aiz, a duo of humans that I was friends with before up and getting kidnapped. The two of them proceeded to talk at length at me about all the time we had spent together before I disappeared. I didn’t actually remember any of it though? But my head felt like swiss cheese anyway, so, that was probably fine, right? Right?
96 could apparently sense my growing nerves as it leaned down to put a hand on my shoulder and ask, “Are you okay, dear?”
I grip my tablet a touch tighter before I type the words out, ‘I don’t remember any of these stories.’
Aiz’s excitement dwindles at the sight of that, but she just gives me a look of pity as she says, “That’s okay, doll. You probably just have your head all mixed up right now, don’t you?”
Something about the pity in her eyes twists my stomach. 96 tightens its grip on my shoulder and I lean back towards it for comfort.
“Ooo~ someone crushing on their nurse?” Bertrand teases as he leans in towards me, elbows resting on the side of my bed.
To my surprise, 96 freezes up before its faceplate begins to turn a soft shade of red. I, meanwhile, am immediately flustered by the idea of any kind of emotionally genuine conversation and attempt to deflect with quick words (which, as always, arrive as nothing more than hitched breaths) and fumbled typing on my tablet. Aiz bursts into a giggle fit at my expense before she adds, “Berty, please, you know they can’t take that kind of thing even on a good day.”
“Hey, hey, I’m just sayin’,” He nudges Aiz in the side. “They were always talking about how cute the robots were to begin with, if anything this is a good sign isn’t it?” I did? I didn’t recall having talked about that either, but- I instinctively glanced towards 96 to find its faceplate now bright red with exhaust fans whirring at high volume. “Do you two need some privacy now?”
“C’mon Bertie let’s go.” Aiz says with an excited lilt.
“Have fun you two! We’ll see you again soon, doll, promise!” Bertrand adds as he grabs the two’s bags before they both skitter on out of the room together, giggling at my expense all the way. A terribly awkward silence marks their departure that stretches longer and longer as I’m alone with 96.
I fumble with the tablet awkwardly. Um. Now what do I do?
96 mimicked the sound of a cough. “Well,” It says. “Were they right?”
I nervously bite my lower lip, body shivering with a familiar sort of anxiety that rears its head whenever dangerous subjects like cute girls (or apparently cute robots???) are brought up. With great effort I manage a small nod towards 96.
“I see.” It responds cryptically, and a moment later it quietly moves over to sit beside me upon my hospital bed and grasp my hand.
—
So, like, I’m not *officially* dating a robot now? But, it’s on the table. See, first I had to finish my recovery, which was a long road full of physical therapy and psychological therapy and lots and lots and LOTS of crying about how difficult it was to fix damage to a body compared to how little effort (see: none) went into creating the damage. Objectively unfair impact to effort ratio.
Second was relatively simple by comparison, the Others intended to help me set my life back up but, well, jobs don’t exactly accept ‘i was kidnapped’ as an excuse for disappearing and frankly nobody else cared about where I was either, so on top of everything else I had no job, home, or cash. At that point the robots had some whispered comments about singletarian societies before deciding to set me up in one of their apartment blocks. Don’t know what that s word meant, but hey, four walls and a roof. Made by extraterrestrial robots.
The process of moving in was similarly simple for me to manage. The robots gave me a bag of what they considered to be necessities, a few changes of clothes, a stack of cards full of information and numbers, and a new cell phone. All of my worldly possessions, after having lost everything else to time and debt of absence. They reminded me that, at any time, I was free to ask any of their kind for assistance and it would be provided (literally any, apparently they were connected, somehow? I didn’t get it). I was given a schedule of times to meet with medical staff, therapy appointments to keep up on, and… I was free.
Officially I was declared sufficiently healthy and cognizant enough to go back to living by myself. Still weaker than I was, and prone to ‘chrono-spatial psychological displacement episodes’ (which was a long complicated condition that basically summarized down to I space out and disassociate easily), but… yeah.
I sat on a bed made of wholly alien materials holding a bag with all of my mortal possessions and was free to do whatever I wished with my time for the first time in what felt like ages.
It was terrifying.
Mercifully, 96 as always saw my distress and volunteered to stay with me for the first night. It helped me find proper places for all of my things, talked me through how I could find food in this strange new part of my life, and then just held me for a while.
That was nice.
Yeah, I was definitely touch starved. Somehow.
Later we ended up scheduling a sort of party to celebrate my (ongoing) recovery. I invited Bertrand and Eiz and 96, then offered to invite their friends and anyone else who knew me, and 96 found a spot in the park for us all to gather. To say I had a nice time there would be an understatement. Surrounded by people who cared, with the sun shining softly upon my face and a belly full of cake-substitute (couldn’t taste it, but still made my belly feel nice) I actually began to feel like I could possibly be normal again.
Shame it didn’t last. I feel cold glass against the side of my face and the rumble of a car bumping beneath me. What’s going on now? I think I’m having one of those episodes. The chrono-spaciatto… something. How did the Others describe it again, uh, something about my consciousness having been unmoored from the now for a long time and so it was prone to drifting again but only had memories to wander into. Or something like that.
Umm, I’d been, I was at the party, right? And all the organics were eating an actual cake but I couldn’t, so, I’d used a canister of enzymes or whatever I connected to the port on my gut and got to enjoy the sensation of not being hungry and thirsty for five minutes. Then I’d been… talking to someone? Or rather being present for a conversation, since I can’t talk. 96 was holding my hand though, and like, okay, yeah, I’m kind of a robophile after all. I’m a bit gay thinking about it.
The car hit a bump in the road and jolted me out of my thoughts for a moment. “We’re good, we’re good,” A voice plays across the air. A hand rests atop my head and gently guides me back down. Where was I? Figuring out what’s happening. Something wrong was happening, present tense.
Anyway 96, right? Kind of WW2 era romance story there, patient x nurse time stuff. Cute for a story but weird expanded into the real world scenario of patients hitting on their caretakers all the time, so I felt weird about expressing that I had a crush going on honestly. I decided to actually risk asking it out though. Tomorrow. Since I’m officially recovered and ready to re-enter society or whatever and not needing mechanical hands to help me even get dressed in the morning.
Wait, the cake, right, I was in the presence of conversations on all sides and felt the energy right proper drop out beneath me. I felt tired as all hell. I went home? With 96? No, 96 was waving me goodbye as I left the park with my arm over someone’s shoulder. It’d offered to take me home to rest, but… ah, Bertrand! Bertrand had insisted he and Eiz would drive me home. They’d insisted that it had already done so much for me and it deserved a break.
Focus dumbass, what’s happening *now*?
My head rolls weakly across my shoulders as I slide my vision up across the car. I’m in the back seat of a vehicle with tinted windows. Bertrand is driving and Einz is running her fingers through my hair. Over the back of my head. Feeling the various data ports with her finger tips. “All accounted for, Berty.”
I breathe wordlessly into the air.
“Shh, don’t worry about it, doll.” Eiz scritches behind my ears as she pushes my head back down. 96 had done that scritching motions a few times, too. It felt really nice on my whole head area when it happened. I should ask it out tomorrow. I already had a gift picked out, just like, as a thank you thing, but I wanted to give that to 96 before asking it out formally. I think it had a question for me too? Or at least something important that kept dancing right on the edge of its metaphorical tongue that it never quite found the will to just up and say.
Wait stop, brain STOP! This isn’t the time to be gaily pondering robots!
Well no it was always time to be gay and ponder robots, and I had so many more robots now to ponder about!
Okay but not what I meant more pressing matter at hand in the present tense here and now.
I sat upright and looked around me. I am in a car with tinted windows. Bertrand is driving and Eiz is sitting beside me. My shirt is bunched up around my shoulders and Eiz’s hands are feeling out the ribbon wire ports laced around my spine. My mouth moves in an instinctive attempt to speak.
“Shh, it’s okay doll.” Eiz whispers into my ear, one hand already laced back through my hair and petting me back down. I shake my head out from beneath her, in the process leaving my body to fall limp against the window once more. The *tinted* window. Nobody can see me from outside. I look out the window. This… isn’t the path home.
Bertrand looks in the rear view mirror. “Gigs up, Eiz, they’re coming to.”
“Well, drat.” Eiz sighs, but suddenly grabs my body and pins me down across the back seats. I’m still too weak to fight her off as she thwarts my weak attempts to struggle out from beneath her and pins my arms beneath her hips. I try to kick my legs out but I can’t even manage to make a loud noise by banging against the car door. Damnit. Shit. Fuck. What’s happening? I can’t even scream for help.
“Did everything check out?” Bertrand asks without looking back.
“They’ve got all the same plugs we left them with, and I didn’t spot any bugs.” Eiz hums happily to herself as she smothers my mouth beneath one hand, the other sifting through a bag at her side.
“Good.” He glances back in the mirror once more, this time catching my eyes as I desperately look around for understanding. “Sorry about this.” He mutters. “But out of all the candidates we’ve gone through, you were a real cut above, you know?”
“He means that, by the way.” Eiz followed up. “We were actually friends, y’know? But, well, you presented some promise and having dolls to work with are more profitable than friends, so.”
An icy cold chill blooms inside my stomach at their words. They didn’t, they *couldn’t* have, but, it.
Ah. Betrayal. Thats the mood I feel now. My actions sink from fervent struggles into a shocked stillness.
“Thaaaat’s it, good dolly.” Eiz purrs as she produces a syringe from her bag. “You would not believe how much people paid to make use of you. But this time it’ll be even better! See, we’ve updated the hardware juuuuust for you, and it can’t wait to get real close with your body again.” With little effort on her part, Eiz pushes my face aside to expose my injection ports and stabs me with the needle. Paralytics spill directly into my bloodstream where they snatch the last of my fight from me, leaving my mind adrift atop a sea of clouds. “Much better!”
Bertrand chuckles under his breath. “And here I was starting to worry it might be an actual struggle to get them back.”
“Hah! Hardly, our little doll is meek as a kitten, aren’t they?” Eiz returns to petting my head as I sink deeper into incapability. I think I’m drooling? I should… probably call for help. Because I’m being kidnapped. Again. I think? “Adorable little thing.”
I’m being kidnapped again. Right. I’m being betrayed by the two actual humans who had been supporting my way through recovery and being dragged back towards another mechanical tomb. This should be the part where I kick and scream.
Well, kicking was off the table as I couldn’t move my body beneath the blanket of chemical paralysis, but desperation turned out to be a mighty fine teacher in learning to emote without a voice box. I gulped down a deep breath of air and pushed it back out through my mouth wordless, then bit my lips and tried again. “Mmmm!” I finally manage to express directly into Eiz’s palm. “Mfff, vvvvv” I struggle to articulate raw noise into the air.
“Are we there yet?” Eiz huffs. “They’re getting uppity.” She clamps her hand tighter around my mouth to shut me up.
“Ten more minutes. Sleep them if you’d prefer, we’ve got enough drugs to keep them under until they’re plugged in.” No no no no no no no no no. I try to flail but my body still refuses to budge.
“Got it!” Fuck. Fuck hell. My failing attempts at words give me no further advance, and a moment later I once more feel the sting of a needle piercing the port beneath my jaw. This time the cold hits like a lance through my skull, tilting my whole world off to the side into a downward spiral that drags me off into darkness all over again.
—
Wires kiss my skin with the grace of an apathetic lover. I awake through another fog of chemical sleep, woefully used to the act by this point, to find myself draped in a sea of wires, cables, and slender metal limbs on all sides. With a leisurely hum Bertrand is plugging an uncomfortably familiar array of jacks into my body as Eiz slips my arms into a straight-jacket made of copper and titanium. A strained breath slips from my lips as I attempt to rouse motion from my tired limbs, but I was helpless against Eiz’s hands as she pushed past my feeble attempt and buckled my arms around my torso.
“Shhh, we’re almost done here.” Bertrand whispers as he grabs my head and pushes it aside. He’s bracing something against the base of my skull. With a wet thunk that something latches onto the back of my head and slams it’s implement inside of me, filling the one-inch cavity inside of my skull perfectly. I feel an electric tingle begin to blossom from the insertion point, then spread down my spine towards the rest of my body. It elicited memories of that same sensation playing out through my body before, when I was blasted out of my brain on hallucinogens and couldn’t even realize what was happening to me.
Fuck. Fuck shit fuck I attempt to renew my struggles one more but my captors barely even need one hand to keep me down. My legs squirm with their limited range of motion before Eiz catches them and wires them up with a lackadaisical ease. I attempt to scream, but Bertrand stuffs a mouth-guard into my open maw before slotting a series of slender wires into the ports laced around my eyes. A tick of electricity then coats my face, locking it into a neutral expression that clamps my mouth back down into silence. The second tick pulsed into the electric buzz running through my spine to steal the fading resistance from my flesh as well.
I mentally beg for 96 to save me before it’s too late. It would, right? Like a rescue cavalry at the dramatic hour I could practically picture it now, kicking down the door as more of its robot companions spilled in through every window and panel at once. Please? But… no, it’s not, it’s not here, it’s walking back to it’s own home, checking it’s phone for the sixth time to see that I haven’t responded to its text asking me to let it know when I get home safe. Tomorrow it would see that I still haven’t responded and become concerned, and an hour later a group of the Others will throw open my apartment door to find it empty. I’ll officially be declared a missing person two minutes and 13 seconds later. 96 will see the present I got for it still resting on my kitchen table.
NO! I shake through the electric net within my own muscles and shake my head. No, not like this. That’s not my thoughts, that the fucking machine reaching through my skull. Looking up reveals the monstrosity itself looming beyond my head. Its shell is split open across the front, with all of the threads connecting me to it spilling out from the darkness like a tongue of rubber and plastic and metal all coiling down towards my body, waiting to pull me up in and make me disappear into its gullet.
Eiz slips my arms into a straight jacket woven out of copper and titanium and binds my arms to my body. Wait, no, she already did that. I’m. I’m being pulled? Physically but my mind is wandering already. It’s the machine using me, I think. I’m slipping back into the dissociated haze with a practiced step. It’s… easy to do. I had so much practice last time, letting myself drift across the entire ribbon of time that my mind got dragged over.
I guess I was relatively lucky, though. Last time I disappeared I had first been lugged through a back alley surgical suite to be flayed alive and stuffed with metal between all the layers. I’d been knocked out with a fistful of party drugs and given more tasty tasty off-market hallucinogens to keep me tripped out through the whole recovery. Gods, did I really drool that much? My skin was all black and blue and riddled with puffy red lines where they’d cut along the grain.
I twitch my fingers expecting to feel the same intense soreness but, no, that was then. Focus, brain. This is no time for me to lose track of when I am again. I’m still outside the machine’s shell, though I won’t be for long. Soon it will spin up into life and drag me back into it, capturing my flesh into an inner chamber filled with a slimy ochre material to encase my flesh. But, soon. Not yet. Unless it had? I could already see myself inside of it, when I’m lost. I see my body withering back into a weak nothing all over again. I’ll be trapped in that unknown for 7 years, 8 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 15 hours, and 2 minutes. Margin of error plus minus 5 seconds, confidence rating 99 point 9 repeating. Resolving margin of error. 2 minutes and 3 seconds, exactly.
When the faux machine fully activates the space around it will begin to warp and curl around while scintillating with oil-slick like rainbow lights across the surface of the air. Unless it’s already happening, or happened. I try to feel the ground sliding away beneath me as I’m dragged into it, but it’s hard to make out between the looming sensations of what I will be and the rumble of the car where I was, or the feeling of grass beneath my feet and the sun on my skin where I was before that.
Like a third party spectator I can see that Eiz and Bertrand will give me one last pat on the head and a dishonest thanks for all the money I’ll make them as a component for their latest experiment. The hardware will rip my simmering psychic capabilities out of my limited shell and use it like needle and thread to pull at reality and link Here to Somewhere Else. I can already see where all the somewhere elses will be, as well as every possible fluctuation in the fabric of space-time between up that I will need to account for. But from here the difference between what I will do and what I’ve already done is a rapidly evaporating insignificance in perspective.
I am, I have, I will… I… I have been here before. In this absence of past or future, before I was ripped out of it and trapped back inside the limited frame of a body adhering to linear time. I learned so many things I’d forgotten, and through relearning them soon I will come to have always had that knowledge all over again. I will be rescued on a far off day, and I’m already experiencing every moment of what will happen. I’ll be ripped from this false shell of metal and cradled into robotic arms again, but I’ll be… crying? Weeping. Wordlessly begging to be put back the whole time. The why will spill out of my brain just as it had before, and I’ll be left an empty self lingering with an aching sense of ignorance who struggles through physical and emotional therapy all over again. 96 will hold my hand again and apologize for being unable to protect me last time. It will have a question lingering on the back of its metaphorical tongue.
96 already *had* the question on its mind. I had been fretting myself silly pondering how to ask it out on a date. It, on the other hand, had been struggling to figure out how to ask me to Become. There had been exactly 487 moments where it had almost asked me directly during my recovery. When I struggled, when I wept, it wanted to wash away all of that pain and with the slightest permission it could have set off a whole a rube goldberg machine of moments that would climax in my body being sealed into a *proper* great machine, where my worries of flesh melt away under mechanical nourishment and the scars of my mind are stripped clean by benevolent wills.
It’s desire to see me volunteer came from a place of genuine empathy filtered through an alien mind. From its perspective, my surrender would not be a failure into dispersal but an elevation into something more than I could be otherwise and a relief from the pains that ravaged my heart.
I was going to beg it to take me next time. It will wait by my bedside as I sleep and when I wake up I will weep blood red tears in the absence of something I won’t remember and I’ll beg wordlessly for it to take me that time. Robotic doctors of wholly inhuman make and model will take my body and plant mechanical seeds in the place of every port still in my body, and they will consume the inferior metal in their way of blooming over my nervous system. It will take 1 week and 3 days before I am ready. Margin of error plus minus 8 hours, 43 minutes, and 58 seconds. Confidence rating 41%. To onlookers in a linear comprehension of events it would take me two years and five months plus change to resolve the margin of error down to nothing. But because I will resolve it I effectively always had resolved it and could pluck the answer from my future self. 1 week, 2 days, 18 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds after surgery I will be given approval to move forward with Becoming.
Stars, Eiz and Bertrand believe the machine I’m becoming one with is their best yet but they don’t even begin to comprehend how much it pales in comparison to the real thing. Gifted by their inferior model’s foresight I can already see myself being carried into the waiting arms of a mechanical array that emerges from a rupture in reality. Its edges fold in on themselves in a fractal spiral of ever increasing intricacy that stretches countless lightyears in real space but express as mere inches of distance through the shimmering ripples of reality around it. It will pluck my flesh from 96’s arms, and in its grasp my body will fit like the well worn handle of an artisan’s tool.
See, the conception that there are multiple Great Machines made by the Others is itself a myth. There is only one, and that it enables travel between stars in the blink of an eye is merely a side-effect of it existing. The Others crawl like bugs over the surface of a tree and land from one root to the next, while it carries on towards its eventual creation and retroactive existence. In its embrace my mind will soar into a cosmic-scale chorus where all of eternity will unfold before me.
From the precipice of the inferior recreation I can see only a few scant seconds after I will become part of it, but in those few seconds everything that will happen becomes everything that has happened and slams through my brain, both changing and having already changed me from the scared whelp I was into the exultant consciousness I will eventually become. The fear I felt in the moment of being dragged past the inferior machine’s lip shatters (will shatter? has shattered? the difference doesn’t mean anything anymore, really.) against the weight of overwhelming bliss inevitable.
I was? No. I will? Not quite. I am, I *am* laughing while thick tears of blood red joy spilling around the wires laced under my eyes as I see the outer shell of the machine closed behind me. Last drops of sunlight peek through the closing panels and spill over my metal-wrapped skin. Goodbye for now, sun. See you again soon.