Post by acclue lockheart on Mar 18, 2008 20:39:59 GMT -5
This one is longer than usual, and introduces the last three main characters (I promise 
), of which one will be major.
I think I made the transition in the middle a little too abrupt... tell me what you think...
These two are thoroughly gone... psychologically anyway...
------------------------------
Chapter VI: Fana and Luna
Tommy opened his eyes slowly, seeing he wasn't in Vega's office, he shut them in a hurry. Questions immediately wracked his mind, wondering where he was.
He heard a clicking noise in the other room, clattering in a panic. He froze as he recognized it. It was the noise the Pheder soldiers made when they communicated with each other. He opened his eyes a crack to examine his surroundings.
It looked like the same structure as Vega's place, but there was more than one room. Tommy could see another room on the other side of an archway, an obvious source of the noise. There was no other exit.
The room seemed strangely hospitable. He was lying on an extremely hard bed, but it was odd that the Pheder would bother if they'd recaptured him.
Feeling confident in his ability to move quietly and finding no presence of malicious forces, Tommy got to his feet. He slowly moved toward the wall by the arch, and pressed against it.
The clicking came to a sudden stop, and was replaced by a brief stint of radio feedback. An electronic voice quickly took over "You bastards! Oh... oh my God! My voice?! What the hell!"
"It worked Fana!" a female voice I didn't recognize exclaimed.
"Wow! That's amazing! I didn't know they used things like these!" that was Gaea. Tommy breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't sound like she was in danger, and she would really give herself away if she was.
"Put me back the way I was this instant!" the electronic voice shouted, creating feedback again just by being loud "I've already signalled them here! Turn me back and I'll make sure you die fast and painlessly!"
Tommy peeked around the corner to see a room-sized monitor set up in the back. it was populated by what looked like a pixelated Pheder soldier. Tommy was perplexed at this image. He had never seen a computer before, and he didn't even know what it was for.
Besides the complaining program, he saw Gaea and Vega, and two women, slightly younger than Vega, that looked exactly the same. Tommy had to pull a double take to make sure there wasn't a mirror behind the first one.
"You signaled yourself, we disabled that stuff, right Luna? one of the women said.
"Right Fana." the other girl said.
"Okay, now you're just getting annoying. Let me go!"
"Can't." Fana said "We've got plans for you."
"Huh?" it looked at Tommy. Everyone's attention turned to him as well.
"Ah, you're up." Vega spoke "You're a freaking heavy sleeper. Gaea even got up before you." Tommy looked and saw Gaea looked happy now. She was still heavily bandaged with bloodstains on her whitened arms. She was sitting in her usual way, as a feral would, even though she appeared to be holding her left arm up from the ground.
Tommy turned the corner to finally reveal himself. He couldn't help but stare at the monitor again.
"What?!" it complained "Say something!"
"And that's what we need you for." Vega said "He can't say anything. We need you to tell us what he's thinking."
"What?" it said "You're kidding... You steal me from my kind just to make me babysit some kid?!"
"You don't have a kind." Luna said "You're just an A.I."
"Regardless... Why?!"
"Because it's safer than linking another human to his brain." Fana said... at least Tommy thought it was Fana, he'd lost track at that point.
The A.I.'s jaw dropped "Huh?" Tommy seemed to feel the same way.
"We're going to directly link you to his mind so you can tell us what he's thinking."
The A.I. said "No!" right away.
"Then we don't need you." one of the girls said, and began to type something on a console. The word 'Delete? Confirm.' appeared next to the A.I.
"Wait!" it yelled. The woman looked up with a smile on her face. It hesitated, then gave a defeated "Fine."
"Good, now let's get you ready for surgery." the other girl turned to Tommy.
Tommy was suddenly a bit scared. He thought he was done with surgeries and intense physical changes to his body, but he guessed it was out of the question. Of course, this meant that he could finally convey his thoughts again.
Tommy noticed that the woman at the console was staring silently at Gaea, the same smile on her face. He wondered what she was thinking of, and feared for Gaea's sanity if they made her go through even more.
-----
Tommy awoke once again with a sharp pain throbbing through his mind. He couldn't remember leaving that room. He couldn't remember being taken from the room to a much larger form of Vega's office. All he saw when he awoke was one of the minds standing over him, holding a blade and slicing into his neck. He let out what he could of a scream, closing his eyes and reopening them to see one of the twins standing over him.
"Whoa, what's wrong kid?" she asked, then she put her hand on his head and said in a soothing voice "Relax, relax, it was just a nightmare."
"All done." the other girl said from behind him "And just in time, I guess. We need to get a new case of sedatives."
Tommy's first thought was why they didn't use such things on prisoners, he hadn't even been aware of entering the room. Of course then he remembered his mother's untimely death and realized that they just didn't care.
"Eh!" Tommy covered his mouth as if surprised that he couldn't speak.
"The A.I.'s not in yet." one of the girls said.
"His name is Wolfy!" the other chimed in.
"Yeah, Wolfy. Wolfy's not in yet."
Tommy was beginning to question the stability of the two girls, and he wasn't very comfortable with the fact that they had just performed brain surgery on him.
"Alright, here's what we did." one of them said.
The other continued "We set up an electronic device in your brain that will allow you to see into digital subspace, and to allow direct access to your mind."
And they switched again "Don't worry, Wolfy can only send words, he can't do any damage."
"We'll just download him into this," she held in her hand what looked like a bracelet with a small glass screen on it. She took Tommy's wrist in her hand and snapped the bracelet tight over the front of his forearm.
Tommy pulled his arm back hard. The device was digging into his skin, not just the interior of the loop, but it was boring straight into his skin with something under the screen. In a moment, it was gone. The pain was just a sharp jolt that sedated iself as quickly as it came.
"You're all set." she said "Let's go see your voice. He should be done installing his new interface soon."
One of them opened the door. It led outside but there was no blinding light. It must have been daytime.
Vega and Gaea awaited on the other side, ready to walk back to the other building with Tommy.
The two girls walked ahead of the other three, excited to return to the large computer room, and unintentionally left time for them to talk.
"You've been out for a couple days now y'know? You can tell by when the sun's up." Vega pointed to the thin circle of sun peeking out from the Pheder satellite. It was never enough to illuminate anything, but it was there and it was awe-inspiring to Tommy and Gaea.
"It's beautiful..." Gaea smiled.
"A lot of newly freed humans think so," Vega said "but it's just another big star that they're trying to hide."
"How come they don't hide the moon?"
"It's not like sunlight, the whole point of blocking the sun was to kill all the plants on the planet. Moonlight doesn't grow them."
"Hmm..." a short silence soon grew between them, Gaea looking to Tommy again for reasons unknown to him. "Who were those two?" Gaea whispered quietly to Vega "They're kinda scary..."
"They have a linked mind. Two brains connected, I don't know how. Things tend to get mixed up between them, so they come off as a little strange."
"But why do they have to look the same? That's just confusing."
Vega shrugged "There's only one difference between them, and you've gotta watch it. Luna is left-handed."
"That's not much help." Gaea sighed.
-----
'DONE' appeared in large bold letters on the previously blank screen. Several seconds of silence were followed by an ear-shattering scream, backed up by electrical feedback.
The front door to the place opened "I think he's awake Fana."
"You... bitch!" it screamed "What the hell did you do to me?! Do you think this is funny?!"
Luna shrugged "I thought it'd help you fit in better."
"Fit-?! What?!"
Tommy walked in cautiously behind the twins, looking to the screen while Gaea and Vega stood behind him, peeking in with the expectation of scientists watching a nuclear test.
On the screen was what looked like a furious, crying digital manifestation of Gaea, but as a male. The A.I.'s voice even sounded younger, which didn't bother it since it was still angry about having to speak like a human. It fell back to sitting, in which it copied Gaea by accident, and began to weep loudly "I look like you- you filthy abominations!"
Gaea looked at her feet in disappointment.
"Now that wasn't nice!" Fana said "You apologize to her!"
"You change me back! You can't do this to me!" it began to cry again, lying down on its stomach away from the screen.
Tommy thought it was amazing how emotional a computer program could get. It must have been very advanced to do anything like this.
"We can't change you back, we trashed the old skin." Luna somehow sounded proud of this "Thought it might get tracked if we left it idle on the network."
"You-!" it was cut off as anything it said was suddenly blocked. It seemed aware of this and looked like it was complaining.
"Mute button," one of the girls said, Tommy had lost track again "we put one on your's too." she smiled.
The other spoke up "He just needs a night to get used to this. I don't think we should make too many changes too fast, he might hit delete himself."
"Hopefully he's too upset to think of it now." she looked up to see the figure weeping profusely in the corner of the screen "Don't worry, we'll stop him if he tries."
Tommy and Gaea glanced to each other with looks of slight anger toward the others. They knew exactly how the A.I. felt. And they were both convinced that it could feel things just like them, despite being made of computer programming.
They were the same. An innocent soul, trying to live as their kind did, and torn from that to serve some purpose for the other. It wasn't right, in the children's minds, to act as they had been acted on.
Yet there was nothing they could do. Neither cared about its function for Tommy, they just thought of how it felt for the situation.
They both went to sleep on the floor of the room that night, keeping a watch on the A.I. crying itself to sleep, and wondered just how this program could feel so emotional yet still not see humanity's suffering... They knew the next morning they would find out.
), of which one will be major.I think I made the transition in the middle a little too abrupt... tell me what you think...
These two are thoroughly gone... psychologically anyway...
------------------------------
Chapter VI: Fana and Luna
Tommy opened his eyes slowly, seeing he wasn't in Vega's office, he shut them in a hurry. Questions immediately wracked his mind, wondering where he was.
He heard a clicking noise in the other room, clattering in a panic. He froze as he recognized it. It was the noise the Pheder soldiers made when they communicated with each other. He opened his eyes a crack to examine his surroundings.
It looked like the same structure as Vega's place, but there was more than one room. Tommy could see another room on the other side of an archway, an obvious source of the noise. There was no other exit.
The room seemed strangely hospitable. He was lying on an extremely hard bed, but it was odd that the Pheder would bother if they'd recaptured him.
Feeling confident in his ability to move quietly and finding no presence of malicious forces, Tommy got to his feet. He slowly moved toward the wall by the arch, and pressed against it.
The clicking came to a sudden stop, and was replaced by a brief stint of radio feedback. An electronic voice quickly took over "You bastards! Oh... oh my God! My voice?! What the hell!"
"It worked Fana!" a female voice I didn't recognize exclaimed.
"Wow! That's amazing! I didn't know they used things like these!" that was Gaea. Tommy breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't sound like she was in danger, and she would really give herself away if she was.
"Put me back the way I was this instant!" the electronic voice shouted, creating feedback again just by being loud "I've already signalled them here! Turn me back and I'll make sure you die fast and painlessly!"
Tommy peeked around the corner to see a room-sized monitor set up in the back. it was populated by what looked like a pixelated Pheder soldier. Tommy was perplexed at this image. He had never seen a computer before, and he didn't even know what it was for.
Besides the complaining program, he saw Gaea and Vega, and two women, slightly younger than Vega, that looked exactly the same. Tommy had to pull a double take to make sure there wasn't a mirror behind the first one.
"You signaled yourself, we disabled that stuff, right Luna? one of the women said.
"Right Fana." the other girl said.
"Okay, now you're just getting annoying. Let me go!"
"Can't." Fana said "We've got plans for you."
"Huh?" it looked at Tommy. Everyone's attention turned to him as well.
"Ah, you're up." Vega spoke "You're a freaking heavy sleeper. Gaea even got up before you." Tommy looked and saw Gaea looked happy now. She was still heavily bandaged with bloodstains on her whitened arms. She was sitting in her usual way, as a feral would, even though she appeared to be holding her left arm up from the ground.
Tommy turned the corner to finally reveal himself. He couldn't help but stare at the monitor again.
"What?!" it complained "Say something!"
"And that's what we need you for." Vega said "He can't say anything. We need you to tell us what he's thinking."
"What?" it said "You're kidding... You steal me from my kind just to make me babysit some kid?!"
"You don't have a kind." Luna said "You're just an A.I."
"Regardless... Why?!"
"Because it's safer than linking another human to his brain." Fana said... at least Tommy thought it was Fana, he'd lost track at that point.
The A.I.'s jaw dropped "Huh?" Tommy seemed to feel the same way.
"We're going to directly link you to his mind so you can tell us what he's thinking."
The A.I. said "No!" right away.
"Then we don't need you." one of the girls said, and began to type something on a console. The word 'Delete? Confirm.' appeared next to the A.I.
"Wait!" it yelled. The woman looked up with a smile on her face. It hesitated, then gave a defeated "Fine."
"Good, now let's get you ready for surgery." the other girl turned to Tommy.
Tommy was suddenly a bit scared. He thought he was done with surgeries and intense physical changes to his body, but he guessed it was out of the question. Of course, this meant that he could finally convey his thoughts again.
Tommy noticed that the woman at the console was staring silently at Gaea, the same smile on her face. He wondered what she was thinking of, and feared for Gaea's sanity if they made her go through even more.
-----
Tommy awoke once again with a sharp pain throbbing through his mind. He couldn't remember leaving that room. He couldn't remember being taken from the room to a much larger form of Vega's office. All he saw when he awoke was one of the minds standing over him, holding a blade and slicing into his neck. He let out what he could of a scream, closing his eyes and reopening them to see one of the twins standing over him.
"Whoa, what's wrong kid?" she asked, then she put her hand on his head and said in a soothing voice "Relax, relax, it was just a nightmare."
"All done." the other girl said from behind him "And just in time, I guess. We need to get a new case of sedatives."
Tommy's first thought was why they didn't use such things on prisoners, he hadn't even been aware of entering the room. Of course then he remembered his mother's untimely death and realized that they just didn't care.
"Eh!" Tommy covered his mouth as if surprised that he couldn't speak.
"The A.I.'s not in yet." one of the girls said.
"His name is Wolfy!" the other chimed in.
"Yeah, Wolfy. Wolfy's not in yet."
Tommy was beginning to question the stability of the two girls, and he wasn't very comfortable with the fact that they had just performed brain surgery on him.
"Alright, here's what we did." one of them said.
The other continued "We set up an electronic device in your brain that will allow you to see into digital subspace, and to allow direct access to your mind."
And they switched again "Don't worry, Wolfy can only send words, he can't do any damage."
"We'll just download him into this," she held in her hand what looked like a bracelet with a small glass screen on it. She took Tommy's wrist in her hand and snapped the bracelet tight over the front of his forearm.
Tommy pulled his arm back hard. The device was digging into his skin, not just the interior of the loop, but it was boring straight into his skin with something under the screen. In a moment, it was gone. The pain was just a sharp jolt that sedated iself as quickly as it came.
"You're all set." she said "Let's go see your voice. He should be done installing his new interface soon."
One of them opened the door. It led outside but there was no blinding light. It must have been daytime.
Vega and Gaea awaited on the other side, ready to walk back to the other building with Tommy.
The two girls walked ahead of the other three, excited to return to the large computer room, and unintentionally left time for them to talk.
"You've been out for a couple days now y'know? You can tell by when the sun's up." Vega pointed to the thin circle of sun peeking out from the Pheder satellite. It was never enough to illuminate anything, but it was there and it was awe-inspiring to Tommy and Gaea.
"It's beautiful..." Gaea smiled.
"A lot of newly freed humans think so," Vega said "but it's just another big star that they're trying to hide."
"How come they don't hide the moon?"
"It's not like sunlight, the whole point of blocking the sun was to kill all the plants on the planet. Moonlight doesn't grow them."
"Hmm..." a short silence soon grew between them, Gaea looking to Tommy again for reasons unknown to him. "Who were those two?" Gaea whispered quietly to Vega "They're kinda scary..."
"They have a linked mind. Two brains connected, I don't know how. Things tend to get mixed up between them, so they come off as a little strange."
"But why do they have to look the same? That's just confusing."
Vega shrugged "There's only one difference between them, and you've gotta watch it. Luna is left-handed."
"That's not much help." Gaea sighed.
-----
'DONE' appeared in large bold letters on the previously blank screen. Several seconds of silence were followed by an ear-shattering scream, backed up by electrical feedback.
The front door to the place opened "I think he's awake Fana."
"You... bitch!" it screamed "What the hell did you do to me?! Do you think this is funny?!"
Luna shrugged "I thought it'd help you fit in better."
"Fit-?! What?!"
Tommy walked in cautiously behind the twins, looking to the screen while Gaea and Vega stood behind him, peeking in with the expectation of scientists watching a nuclear test.
On the screen was what looked like a furious, crying digital manifestation of Gaea, but as a male. The A.I.'s voice even sounded younger, which didn't bother it since it was still angry about having to speak like a human. It fell back to sitting, in which it copied Gaea by accident, and began to weep loudly "I look like you- you filthy abominations!"
Gaea looked at her feet in disappointment.
"Now that wasn't nice!" Fana said "You apologize to her!"
"You change me back! You can't do this to me!" it began to cry again, lying down on its stomach away from the screen.
Tommy thought it was amazing how emotional a computer program could get. It must have been very advanced to do anything like this.
"We can't change you back, we trashed the old skin." Luna somehow sounded proud of this "Thought it might get tracked if we left it idle on the network."
"You-!" it was cut off as anything it said was suddenly blocked. It seemed aware of this and looked like it was complaining.
"Mute button," one of the girls said, Tommy had lost track again "we put one on your's too." she smiled.
The other spoke up "He just needs a night to get used to this. I don't think we should make too many changes too fast, he might hit delete himself."
"Hopefully he's too upset to think of it now." she looked up to see the figure weeping profusely in the corner of the screen "Don't worry, we'll stop him if he tries."
Tommy and Gaea glanced to each other with looks of slight anger toward the others. They knew exactly how the A.I. felt. And they were both convinced that it could feel things just like them, despite being made of computer programming.
They were the same. An innocent soul, trying to live as their kind did, and torn from that to serve some purpose for the other. It wasn't right, in the children's minds, to act as they had been acted on.
Yet there was nothing they could do. Neither cared about its function for Tommy, they just thought of how it felt for the situation.
They both went to sleep on the floor of the room that night, keeping a watch on the A.I. crying itself to sleep, and wondered just how this program could feel so emotional yet still not see humanity's suffering... They knew the next morning they would find out.
