Posted by Night Manager on September 13, 2008 at 12:39am
This is 1st part of the short story I WAS going to enter into the BSFS Anthology but the whole story got too long and another Idea sparked to me anyway.REBIRTH OF SLICKp100…… 01……10101001100100110101……100001YES01100NO0YESNONO……YESNOYESYESNONOYESNONONO…Oblivion isn’t nothingness. It’s a great weight that presses upon you from everywhere at once. Oblivion isn’t blackness. It’s a stark white light that falls away from you, pulls at you from every direction. It’s maddening. Your thoughts run away from you into the distant nothing and become nothing.…YESNONONOYES……FIRE!One tiny spark in the void that was his entire universe fired. Being the only sensation his mind had been aware of for what must have been an eternity it raked across his being like fire and lightning. The void, he realized as his mind burned, had been peaceful. The weight had been a loving caress and the vast white nothing had been a protective blanket. Now the blanket had been pierce by a spark that struck at him from the distance.…:\?He could not turn away from it. Just as the nothingness had pressed upon him from everywhere so the fire railed against him from every direction. Still somehow the spark was just a spark, only a minute pinpoint paling against the infinite stark white. The second disruption of oblivion was a full conflagration compared to the spark. In an instant the quiet oblivion became fire and he burned. If he could see he would have closed his eyes… if he had eyes or even eyelids.He ached to move but he found that he was just as much nothing as had been oblivion. Nothing… he could feel nothing save the burning. His skin did not burn because he had none. His arms were not on fire because they did not exist.No legs… no voice to scream, no breath… no body… and yet he burned.Was this hell?...:\OPEN:X:The fire burned hotter and yet seemed, thankfully, to grow smaller as he became aware that the vast oblivion was still there. It sat just outside the heat of the fire. Was it shrinking or was he growing?Neither. The spark still burned. His awareness slid from one to the other. He could return to the oblivion or he could burn in the fire. He could decide.…PASSWORD:The spark was ever shifting, he sensed. It rolled and boiled like a sea. It became difficult not to focus on it and he burned again. Why was this happening to him?…*******.The sea of fire rolled out around him and became a horizon. The vast white was split in half; fire on one side of him and stark white oblivion on the other. If he had a body he would have trembled in fear of what could possibly be about to happen to him. In a panic he sought the vast white emptiness but the fire below would not be ignored.…C:\REM [PROJECT LANCER]……X:\EMERGENCYSTARTUP.EXE……LOADING PROGRAM…He retreated but the sea of fire continued to bloom, spreading farther than he could sense. What had he done to deserve this?… LOADING PARSON INTERFACE MATRIX……25%...Now came pain; real pain. A stabbing, throbbing right in the back of his skull. It dwarfed the pain of the fire… but at least he knew that he had a skull.… MAPPING NEUROLOGICAL LINKS……46%...Tiny pricks of pain stabbed at him in a million places inside of his new found skull threatening to drive him mad. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t bite his lip. He could only pray for it to stop.…ASSOCIATING INTUIT POINTS……53%...The tiny pricks of pain flared then lanced outward from the base of his skull becoming hot lines of fire running down his spine. Again he could do nothing save endure it, not clench his jaw or ball his hands into fists or even writhe in agony. He had no body. He was nothing and he could not even remember who he had been.…HARMONIZING DATA STREAM……73%...A memory, visual. A face… feminine… dark hair… thick black glasses… pretty eyes wide with rage. She was mouthing something but he could not hear her. Then she smiled and raised a gloved hand bearing a knife that dripped with blood. His blood.…RETICULATING LANCER UNIT……77%...More pain and the memory was gone just as quickly as it had come. Only the image of the knife remained. She had killed him… he was dead… this was hell.…IMPORTING UPGRADES……91%...The pain got worse. His spine felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand tiny white hot needles. Then a canon went off. It was the first sound he had heard in… maybe since the woman killed him. It echoed all about him and then… laughter. It was an idiot’s laugh, grunt like and mocking. The canon went off again followed by the laughter again… the exact same laughter. The sound repeated over and over until finally he realized it was not happening now. It was another memory; the sound of someone being shot.…99%...The glow of the fire changed as he changed. The heat that once burned him now radiated against his mind softly, almost coolly. It pulsed now, like a beacon. It seemed to be waiting.…PRIMARY POWER ONLINE…The pain in his spine became a warm strong current of pressure, throbbing in time with the sea of cool fire. The pain in his skull waned until the pulsing pressure rising from his spine was all he could feel.…SERVO CHECK COMPLETE……COOLING UNIT ONLINE…The pulse in his head speed up to a smooth vibration. The cool fire remained steady and still pulsed. He had no eyes but he could almost see it.…HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS ONLINE… SYSTEM LOCKED……PRESURE SENSORS…ONLINE…Walls slammed up against him from all sides, hitting his arms (He had arms!) and his knees (He had knees!). Gravity had finally found him and pulled him down onto a hard……TEMPERATURE SENSORS… ONLINE……cold surface.…GYROSCOPIC SENSORS ONLINE……AUDIO SENSOR SUIT ONLINE…Sounds! Collisions echoing in the distance in a quickening cadence they were… footsteps!…VIDEO SENSOR SUITE ONLINE…They seemed to be stars at first he thought, gleaming points of neon blue light hovering against the white nothing. Then he realized that they were letters and symbols and most of all he realized that he was actually seeing them. Dancing, spinning and scrolling across his universe they were words he recognized:…ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL…A small dark two dimensional void opened up and as his focused on it, the void drew closer, grew larger until it sat behind the neon lettering nearly blocking out everything else. There was lettering inside the void but not neon, hovering, dancing or spinning kind. This lettering was simply black lettering on a dirty wooden surface. It read: PROPERTY OF KNOX CO.He knew that name. Knox was… important.The footsteps drew closer and then stopped. Angry voices replaced them, guttural and harsh. One of them sounded very much like the voice in his memory. The one that laugh mockingly after the canon had gone off. Anger and fear surged through his mind.…HYDRAULIC SYSTEM UNLOCKED…When he told his thigh muscles to push, he felt a surge of pressure where they should have been. Colors rolled across the face of the void floating before him. The dirty white wall with the lettering on it slid out of sight and a dark room moved into its place.…ACTIVATING TRI-D VISUAL SUITE…Two more visual boxes winked into existence one of each side of the original. Then slowly they merged and the objects in side it seemed to bloom to life. The room was suddenly three dimensional.…WELCOME USER 001……CLICK NEXT TO CONTINUE…
Comments