Prologue 1, Awakening
Alexander feels himself floating in an unguided dream. The lack of direction in his dream lets Alexander know that something is seriously wrong. How long had it been since Alexander had a dream in which he had neither direction nor any discernible learning? Somewhere at the back of his mind, in a place that has long since lost the ability for truly unguided sleep, he takes stock of what little he remembers and finally allows himself to scream.
His still sleeping body jolts, his mental scream bringing with it sharp and much needed clarity, the sort of clarity that a dream would usually lack. Distantly, he remembers a voice: deep, grinding, and unnatural. But what had that unnatural voice said to him? He is sure that it was important.
Alexander attempts to focus his still sleeping mind, instinctively reaching out to the ever present cyberware that would allow him truly conscious thought even while his mind rests. And yet his mental reach finds nothing but a void; there is no cyberware to steady him; instead, his questing mind finds nothing but a disturbingly empty gap where his network connection used to be.
His slowly reforming consciousness flinches at the abrupt change to his life, at the loss of something that had been part of him since his youngest day.
Alexander scours his mind for an explanation and remembers the unnatural voice again. He forces himself to focus, knowing that he is forgetting something important, and instead his mind feeds him a flash of memory, one that he immediately flinches away from.
The voice is grinding and terrible.
An unknown man who felt like a giant.
A twisted glowing blade buried in his heart.
BA-THUMP.
Alexander wakes abruptly, his body flinching at the feeling of his bones rattling, his now conscious mind feeling momentary relief as the disturbing memories are banished.
BA-THUMP.
Desperate to distract himself from the horrible reality implied by his memories, Alexander rushes to focus on the feeling of a steady and worryingly familiar rhythm, while his body continues to twitch and flinch in sync with the beat of thunderous drums. Slowly, Alexander begins to realise that the drum beat is literally cascading through him.
‘What? Where am I?’ Alexander asks himself, still refusing to consciously acknowledge the terrible reality he suspects.
He attempts to grimace in confusion as his body comes into sharp focus; distantly, he recognises the trouble his facial muscles are having with such a simple gesture. Dismissing his struggling muscles for now, Alexander instead focuses on the worrying feeling of being fully submerged in water.
He has experienced this feeling of liquid warmth surrounding him before, in a number of virtual water worlds, and for a moment he hopes that he has entered one such world.
BA-THUMP.
But then he once again feels the physical waves created by the relentless beat smashing into his body, the intensity no doubt enhanced by the waves of water breaking on his skin. Alexander finds himself becoming hyper-aware of the beat that is now echoing straight passed his bones, straight into his core.
Alexander tries to physically shake the drowsiness that is even now clouding his thoughts from his mind and is rewarded with a brief memory, the feeling of despair as he falls to his knees in a dark room. Now more aware, Alexander attempts to pursue the memory further, intent on finding answers about how he found himself trapped here.
BA-THUMP.
But the feeling of his bones shaking scatters the memory before he can properly grasp it.
With the malformed memory interrupted and with a mounting feeling of dread, Alexander switches his focus to the drums, his mind clawing for understanding. His first futile attempt to figure out what he is experiencing brings forth memories of being near a large base speaker, and yet the familiar beat doesn’t fit with any virtual concert he has ever attended.
The only time I’ve felt this sound was at virtual concerts, but what else could it be?
BA-THUMP.
He feels his mind tremble in confusion, the beat of the drums assaulting the now empty spaces where his cyberware used to be.
Instead, he turns his attention to his body, and the thundering cascade forces him to finally acknowledge something that he had been ignoring. Alexander had been flailing so much that he had not properly noticed that his body was now small and unfamiliar.
He feels his small and apparently infantile skeleton shuddering in time with a worryingly familiar and now fully disturbing beat.
‘Is that... a heartbeat?’
BA-THUMP.
Alexander concentrates on his barely cooperating facial muscles, and this time he forces his eyes to open; immediately he does a full body flinch as the water he only now remembers he is submerged in crashes passed his no longer closed eyelids.
He tries to rapidly blink away the stinging in his eyes while simultaneously shaking his lead-heavy head, and after what feels like hours of deafening thunder battering his body and mind, though it was likely only minutes, his vision finally starts to somewhat clear.
BA-THUMP.
He grimaces and cannot help but feel confusion as he beholds a baffling paradox of nearly blinding brightness and yet all encompassing murky darkness; his vision flickers and jumps as he tries to understand the reality that he is seeing.
‘I don’t remember full diving. And I’ve never seen a virtual environment act like this before.’ Alexander thinks to himself, actively shying away from the answer some part of him knows is true.
BA-THUMP.
He looks again at the multicoloured, incandescent wall of light that now surrounds him; with his flickering vision, he catches the worrying organic curves. They, much like his flesh, seem to ripple and bend in time with the thundering drums.
'No, I didn’t enter VR. I remember that I had finished with my final appointment at the gene clinic and was on my way home.' Alexander reluctantly remembered his time at the clinic; it had gone well, and nothing had gone wrong with the procedure. Even so, his mind still shied away from what had occurred before and after his visit. ‘Did they slip me something they weren’t meant to?’
He looks at the surrounding wall that is still simultaneously blindingly bright and pitch black. Some part of Alexander suspects he knows where he is, but that would beg the question: what is the blinding light? Increasingly desperate for rational answers, Alexander instead focuses on the liquid that he is floating in. Like the walls that surround him, the fluid is overflowing with lights of its own; blindingly bright rivers of [Water]-blue and [Life]-green light flow around him.
Alexander pauses as he frowns at the information boxes that hover right in front of his eyes, reminiscent of the augmented reality he is so used to. His worry intensifies as he realises that the information box has been imprinted in his mind and is now lingering as an intrusive thought.
‘Water blue and life green? What? My AR settings wouldn’t describe colours like that; nobody has settings that would name colours like that!’ Alexander thinks to himself in confusion before reluctantly adding, ‘And my cyberware connection is missing.’
BA-THUMP.
Before he can focus more on that thought, his attention is stolen by the writhing pillar apparently attached to what he assumes is his navel from the bright/dark fleshy wall above him; it pulsates in time with the thunderous drums that continue to shake his bones.
‘No.’ He thinks to himself in horror as he is finally forced to properly acknowledge the fleeting memory of a bloody knife in a dark room.
‘Did I… die?’
BA-THUMP.
Alexander shakes his head again and attempts to ignore the drums; instead, he focuses on the shapes that he is increasingly sure are his new body. The wall above him bulges, confronting him with further proof of his situation. A handprint starts to force itself on the organic curves that are currently holding him prisoner.
He jerks in shocked disbelief, instinctively kicking out at the hand, and his vision abruptly flickers again; the colourful streams of energy that had been present in everything around him instead begin to move and flow towards the one place that is a dead zone of that energy – him.
Immediately he understands that while the life around him might be inundated with the colourful energy, his own body seems to have no energy at all. Alexander, desperate for a distraction from the possible reality of his rebirth, cannot help but wonder if that is normal or something unique to him.
BA-THUMP.
Before he can follow that terrible train of thought further, he instead concentrates on watching the streams continue to flow into him in a torrent of colour and energy; for a moment his vision goes white as the torrent becomes truly blinding.
Suddenly he is horrifyingly aware of an emptiness in what he can only call his soul, and his previous thoughts on the uniqueness of his situation return.
‘My soul existing and apparently being empty of… something? That can’t be normal. What is this?’ Alexander asks himself, horrified by the possibility of his soul not only existing but also missing something potentially vital.
With the energy still flowing through him, Alexander can now truly feel what he is increasingly certain of: his soul. And as his soul fills with this mysterious energy, ‘Soul energy? Soul stuff? Life something?’ He finds that instead of merely seeing it, he can now feel it as well.
Alexander finds himself mystified as he can feel the energy around him and immediately notices that the flows do truly surround him. Somewhere at the back of his mind he can now register that this energy is flowing behind him as well as in front of him.
More aware than ever, Alexander feels the hole in his soul still being filled. And even as the energy continues to surge into and fill that hole in his core, he can also now feel his own soul stuff radiate from his spiritual core and begin to integrate with his physical body.
BA-THUMP. BA-THUMP. BA-THUMP.
Time passes, and eventually the swirling energy begins to calm down; slowly it returns to the previous flow patterns. His soul is no longer drinking at the energy like a man dying of thirst; the flows instead surround him in bright rivers, tiny strands still entering him from the umbilical cord, which Alexander guesses is the natural energy flow of a healthy pregnant body.
With his soul no longer acting like an insatiable black hole, Alexander takes stock of his situation and cannot help but have the bizarre feeling that for the first time in his life he is truly whole. Instead, he watches as his newly brightened soul continues to feed his energy into his flesh, integrating with the parts of his biology that he can see and feel.
The biologist in him desperately wants to know what changes this energy is bringing to his new body, but he fails to notice any significant physical differences resulting from the energy's integration with his physical form. Alexander instead focuses on his now steadier vision; what was once flickering between a dark void and blinding light is now a far more steady stream of soothing lights.
Alexander instantly understands that his body, which was once a dark and lifeless void, has significantly brightened after the ordeal; his brightness, he notes, is noticeably dimmer than the surrounding wall. But he cannot help but notice that there is a similarity between his new energy and the energy present within what might be a mother's womb that is now impossible to ignore.
Something in the back of his mind, which he has already started to consider his energy sense, cannot help but note that the feeling of the energy between him and his surroundings feels... familial.
He attempts to grit his teeth, and he immediately realises that they are missing.
‘So, I really have become a baby then.’
BA-THUMP.
Alexander turns his attention away from his new being and instead watches as the writhing pillar attached to his stomach pulsates again, repeating to himself what he’s already realised.
‘It’s attached to my navel.’
Now that he has fully registered that he is looking at an umbilical cord, he tries to breathe in a deep calming breath, only to realise that his mouth and lungs are already filled with water that he is submerged in. Despite his mouth being filled with fluid, Alexander still feels his mouth turn dry; the horror that had been building up in his being is finally too overwhelming to ignore. He tries to swallow, and his throat shudders; the terrible idea that had been lingering at the back of his mind finally solidifies itself.
‘This is a dream; it has to be.’
BA-THUMP.
He tries to look at his body, the wrong proportions, and the too-small arms and legs and can only come to terms with the fact that he is somehow now a baby.
‘I can’t be a baby again; I just can’t be. But it can’t be VR; there are rules.’
His vision sweeps across his body, inevitably drawing his focus to something truly dreadful. Alexander finds himself denying what he is looking at – ‘No, no, no.' – but no matter how much Alexander tries to deny the truth in front of him, his reality does not change, and he is forced to acknowledge the one thing that no man ever wants to see.
No matter how much Alexander seeks to deny it, what truly catches his attention in that moment is not that he is once more a baby; it’s not that he is clearly still unborn and thus still in the womb. It’s not even the horrifying knowledge that he is going to start this new life with the traumatic memory of being born. No, it is his groin and what is missing there.
Alexander feels himself tearing up and learns an answer to a question that nobody in their right mind had ever thought to ask.
Apparently future generations can be relieved, as it turns out that even an unborn fetus can cry.
‘Please no.’
His vision goes dark as he blacks out.