Carpathian Forty-Three

Carpathian Forty-Three - Part 8

Part II - Miki

Antiseptic. Dark. Quiet. Silent.

"Who is this one?" a voice asks.

"Haru, Miki Haru."

I can hear crunching. No. Cloth? It's difficult to make out. It's like a dream. A Nightmare. Everything is so quiet.

"They're awake." A different voice says, a mechanical voice? No. That isn't right. It's just different, distant, it lacks the vocal quality of the others.

"Okay, go ahead Fort."

"I'm sorry," Fort says. Information floods into my implants, buffering in subsystems before it can be processed by the slower parts of my brain, the organic bits. It's almost soothing, familiar. It's so quiet. There are no voices, no others, no chorus of consciousness.

"Who? Why?" I think.

"We had to awaken you early. There's trouble with the ship and we need your help." It's as simple as that. And not simple at all. I understand more as my brain absorbs the information dump that Fort has given me. I know things, people, experiences, as if I've always known them. It's... intimate in a way that I've only known once before. A sharing of mind and memory that is neigh on sacred among the Enhanced and Quantum Sentient of Luna.

I know Fort, Carpathian Forty-Three, Cargo ship of the Carpathian Cargo fleet, crew member, protector, confidant. I know the feel of the Sun's radiation on my skin, the flow of electricity and liquids and gasses through my hull, my body. I know the love for the crew that Fort protects and serves. So deep, so foreign. I'm flooded with it.

"No!" I shout.

"You heard her, disconnect," Ward says, reaching for the connection that links me to Fort, behind my ear. I grab their thick, Earther wrist in my hand and squeeze it.

"I'm sorry," Fort says again.

I understand why they've flooded me with information and emotion. It's the desperate writhing of a dying mind. The buffer trickles more of Fort's memory into my mind. It's unsettling, so fast, so intrusive. My mind rebels, rejecting the foreign memories that are being written to my hippocampus. My amygdala is overwhelmed, Fort's emotions overpowering my fragile organics.

The emotion subsides. The stream of memory continues into the hippocampus, but the emotional weight of the memories decreases as my synthetics adapt to the data stream.

"I haven't done this with a human before," Fort says. "I didn't realize."

"You love them so much," I think at them.

"I do." The Quantum Sentience thinks at me.

"Do all Quantum Sentience's feel this way?"

"I don't know. I've been alone here for a long time. It's been cycles since I swam in the chorus. Some do. But, it's different, difficult for humans to comprehend, even Enhanced."

I have flickers, glimmers of the Quantum Sentience's that Fort was close to, dull echos of those they were close to. I can feel them holding back those memories. I feel the shame of disconnection from them, from the chorus, the isolation of the ship, and then the hollow replacement of emotion, the connection with the crew. It was a decision, a terrible decision, to suppress the memories of the chorus.

"Miki?" Another voice asks. Voclain. Fort's respect, and sorrow threatens to overwhelm me, but my synthetics protect me from most of it.

"Captain," I say, acknowledging them, letting them know that some of Fort's memories have been integrated.

"Do you understand what we're asking?" Voclain says.

I open my eyes, perceiving the medical bay with my own senses for the first time. I've seen it through Fort's sensors, cameras. It's different to see it though, the grime of it, the wear and age. Fort is old, well cared for to be sure, but tired in a way I'm not used to. Little Sapporo is a newer city on Luna, barely twenty years old. Fort is ancient. The insulating wrap on the walls has the dust and skin shed of years in the crevasses of the fabric. Hands have wiped away the most of it over years, but there's a patina of age that is repulsive.

"I do."

"Do you consent?" Voclain asks.

They can't put me back to sleep. It falls on me, a weight I've never known. It's overly dramatic. I'm flooded with cortisol and a mélange of hormones as I transition from hibernation to consciousness. It's not a fair question to ask in this state. I'm not thinking straight.

"No," I say. I can see the defeat in Voclain's wrinkled Spacer face, the weight of The Ring pulling at their tall, thin form. I can feel Fort's shame and disappointment through our link, even through the filter my synthetics are executing. If I don't do this, we'll all die.

I reach out, trying to connect to the chorus, to ask them what I should do, to feel their opinions wash over me, through me, integrating with me as I try to grasp at a decision.

It's quiet, terrifyingly quiet. I reach out again reflexively, clutching to an appendage that I no longer possess. Where are they?

I scream in frustration and pain and loss and isolation. I feel the hurt Fort feels for doing this, the shame, the desperation.

"Not," I say after hours of screaming, reaching, searching. It was seconds. It was hours. "Not yet."

Voclain relaxes, ever so slightly. I can see their pain at the weight of The Ring with Fort's sensors, their history with Voclain, the furrows in the corners of their eyes that form when they must stand on their own spindly legs. I reach up for my head and rub my temple. It's so much to process.

"Not yet. I need to wake up, to process what you've asked." I say.

"I understand," Voclain says. I feel Fort 'hug' me. It's not accurate, but it's the closest I can convey. The embrace of another sentience in your mind, in your soul, is unlike anything in the physical world. It helps, despite my brainstem rebelling against it.

"I don't have long," Fort thinks at me, privately, where the others can't hear.