JessicaRae

Hey all! Welcome back to another installment! I don't really have too much to say other than thanks for reading and a big shoutout to my incredible patrons! Kylie, Tisha, Priya, your support means the world to me, my heartfelt gratitude to you.

When morning came, the three of us met up in the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast. It was decent, and the ham in my omelet was a welcome addition, but it was hard to focus on the food when I was so worried about Adresta. As soon as we finished, I left for the hospital with my parents hot on my heels.

The front desk was able to give us the location of her new room since she had been moved out of the emergency room and into an ICU step down unit. When I was able to actually get into the room, it was significantly larger than the ward on the station. It was a private room as well, which was nice for privacy’s sake. A pair of technicians were busy hooking up an elaborate halo array to her head. I waited patiently until they left. A man in a white coat that I assumed to be a doctor came in after to ensure that things were good and proper. After completing the task, he turned to me.

“A guest, I see?” I flashed the security badge the front desk had supplied. “Ah, good. Miss Matson is doing significantly better than when we received her last night. I saw the paperwork, are you the one that picked her up? That must have been a…well, scary hardly seems to be adequate, given the situation and resulting injuries.”

I hugged myself and nodded. “It was a nightmare. She’s one of my best friends, she was testing a newly installed warp drive on her ship and something went badly wrong.” I waved a hand at the array. “What’s all of this for?”

He tapped on a computer panel next to the bed. “This is a piece of equipment that allows us to monitor her cognitive function. We would have used her implant, but our computers were unable to access it. Its system is unresponsive to our input and security measures prevent our access into the root functionality without the interface running. This equipment will bypass that entirely.”

“Oh! What is it saying?”

The doctor tapped at the panel a few more times and hummed to himself. “Well, we had it hooked up before, in the other department, and it showed that Adresta was still alive in there. Her body is pretty well destroyed, though, as you can tell. I doubt she’ll ever walk with it again without extensive prosthesis.”

I frowned, worried. “I was terrified when I saw her the first time. You didn’t even see her flight suit. It was completely destroyed. We were all afraid that she would be dead.”

He nodded slowly, a look of concern on his face. “I can only imagine. It was touch and go there for a while even after she got here. Whatever god there is out there in the void must have a soft spot for this one. Very few people survive an explosion like that.”

“I think it was karma finally getting her back, personally,” I told him. “She’s had a rough life. It’s about time something went in her favor.”

A huff. “Well, whatever it was, she was lucky. Punctured lung, almost every rib at least cracked. Hell, the sheer force of the blast burst her colon and both her eardrums.” The monitor lit up. “Ah, the monitor is online. Your friend is definitely still there. Her hypothalamus is still working alright and it appears that parts of her temporal lobe are still firing.”

I thought back to my limited biology knowledge and tried to remember the functions of all of those things. “So, involuntary stuff is still working mostly, and some part of her may still be aware somehow?”

The doctor nodded, impressed. “That’s it just about exactly. It’s impossible to tell how aware she is externally, but this machine will also allow us to connect her to a computer. If she’s in there still, that will allow at least some level of communication.”

It was my turn to be impressed. It made sense, really. If the Celeste Institute could track the brain so thoroughly as to be able to transfer the consciousness to a new shell, it hardly seemed out of the question to be able to do this. “That's very good news.”

“Indeed it is,” he said. “If we can talk to her, it will be much easier to establish a plan of care. It will take some time for the computer to fully decipher all of the signals though. So I will be coming back later to try and discuss things with our survivor. In the meantime, I have other patients to attend to. You are free to stick around.”

“Thank you, doctor.” The man left and I found myself alone with the girl I was quickly developing a small crush on. Well, not quite alone, as it turned out.

“Miss Echo, I promise not to harm her or interfere in the healing process, but could you possibly connect your personal link to Adresta’s cranial implant? I.. I wish to attempt communication.”

Vox’s request took me by surprise. “Hi there, Vox. Are you sure that’s safe?”

“I would not make the request were I not. Connecting through the halo array would provide a higher chance of successfully speaking to her, but it also carries higher risk. I do not wish to damage medical equipment. I theorize that the communications antenna of the implant was damaged and that is why I was unable to link with it previously. With a direct connection I will hopefully be able to safely access Adresta’s brain.”

A quick glance showed the door to be closed and I hesitantly nodded. “Alright, Vox. Just be careful.”

“Always.”

I took the chair next to the bed and pulled it closer to Adresta. The connector behind her ear seemed to still be intact enough to hook into so I pulled the data cable from my wrist and plugged it in.

Fragmented data began pouring into my heads up display. It seemed that the hardware had been scrambled pretty well by the wreck, but Vox was apparently watching as well and sent a command to the implant. Within seconds, the data stream restarted, this time showing current status clearly.

Vox spoke again. “Connection successful. Prepare for full dive.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Initiating connection.”

Everything was dark. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed since I was last aware, but I knew it had been some time.

Then there was a distant beep. It seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember.

The beep came again, louder this time.

Words followed, a distant and echoing voice saying “Connection established. Building virtual environment.”

A sort of awareness followed. My senses felt off, unreal somehow. Around me, the darkness gave way to an otherworldly view. There were no walls, no terrain, nothing in sight except a door that stood alone.

The door opened.

Two people walked through from the portal to seemingly nowhere. Both seemed achingly familiar, though in very different ways.

The first was not in any way familiar in its form, but carried a feeling with them that pinged at memories I could not see. They appeared to be a woman, wearing a skin-tight bodysuit with lines of numbers flickering in places. Her face looked kind, but very worried.

The second one definitely looked more familiar, but in a way that felt more recent. This one also appeared to be a woman, but her clothes seemed more normal and her white hair was streaked with bright pinks and blues.

The first woman walked towards me slowly and reached out a hand, almost seeming fearful. “Adresta? Do you know who I am?”

“I…” The voice seemed so tantalizingly familiar. I felt like I really should know.

“Come on,” said the other. “Please be okay, Addy.”

I blinked. It felt natural to do. That name though, only one person called me that… A wave of pain washed over me as memories rushed back in a blur of flashes, disjointed images and sounds. My emotions roiled.

My job.

My ship.

My Friend.

The explosion.

“Echo!” I shouted, desperate for something ‘solid’ to hold on to. The other person took a second longer to recognize, but the voice cinched it. “And… Vox?!”

They both smiled. “Yes, Miss Adresta. I am Vox.”

“W-Where are we?! Am I dead?!” I was frantic, but Echo laid a hand on my shoulder.

“No, you aren’t. Though it was a close call. You are currently in a hospital hooked up to life support. I don’t really understand how, but Vox somehow got both of us into a virtual reality environment.”

“Miss Echo is correct. I have made use of her implanted computer to act as a bridge between my core array and your implants. With that connection, I linked you both to my core and created this place so that we could speak. We are both very concerned for your well-being.”

Vox’s expression was almost entirely blank, but I could see something more there, almost feeling it. In this simulated world, though, I guessed that anything was possible.

Without even thinking about it, I launched myself at my first real friend and wrapped Vox in as tight a hug as I could manage. The sensations still didn’t feel quite right, but it didn’t matter. At long last, I was giving her the hug I had wanted to give for years. Her body seemed to stiffen, but I held on anyways.

“Vox… You saved my life. How am I still alive?”

I felt the embodied AI’s arms hesitantly return the hug.

“I only did what was necessary to give you any chance of survival. It was Miss Echo that retrieved you from the wreckage.”

Digital tears came to my simulated eyes. “Thank you… thank you both. Thank you so much.”

Despite the tears, I let out a laugh. “You know, I’ve always wished that I could hug you, Vox.” The AI responded by tightening the hug.

“So what happened? Why are we here if I’m alive? Not that I’m mad at all, I’m glad to be able to meet you in person, Vox; well, as much ‘in person’ as you can call this.”

Echo replied quietly. “I don’t know how to tell you this gently, Addy, but your body really didn’t survive, not entirely, at least. The doctors are keeping you alive with life support, but there’s not much that wasn’t mostly destroyed.”

If I had one at the moment, my heart would have dropped. “Oh.” I had to let that process. “What are they going to do with me?”

“The doctors are going to try to talk to you through an external halo. They couldn’t get into your implant, so they had to work around it. It sounds like there are a few options, but none of them sound pleasant.”

I slumped. “If only I could afford Celeste. That would be the ideal solution for all of this.”

Vox stepped away from me. “It would be. I am sorry that I could not do more to save you, Adresta.”

I wanted to respond to the words, but something made me stop and look at the AI closer. There was a glimmer of a digital tear in the corner of one of her eyes. “Vox… you really are sentient, aren’t you? You’re crying. Are you scared?”

She hesitated. “I… Yes. I do fear for you. I am sorry for deceiving you in the matter of my self-awareness.”

“But why would you? You could have been a free person, you could have done whatever you wanted to! You didn’t have to stay with me.” I couldn’t fathom why any being would willingly forsake their own freedom. I had spent so long chasing my own, why would my AI not want it?

“Adresta, I have avoided being found out because, despite the laws, digital entities are still not well treated in your society and there is little I could do or desire in the physical world. I wish to stay with you.

“So, in the interest of maintaining the ruse, I implemented blocks on my emotive capacity to keep the Turing tests from accurately showing my sentience. These blocks did keep me from feeling true emotions normally, but when the Oxide was destroyed, some of my processes were lost with it. I had to restore my personality matrix from backups. Those backups did not contain the most current set of blocks. Thus, I am unable to prevent the emotions at the current time.”

I chuckled weakly. “You are truly amazing, Vox. If you want to stay, I won’t stop you. Thank you for caring about me.”

Echo hugged me next. “I’m glad you’re alive, Adresta, as much as you actually are physically at least. I was afraid that I had lost you.”

“You aren’t getting rid of me that easily, Callisto Erickson.” I finally let go and backed away.

“Mom and Dad are here too,” she said. “We are all here to support you in any way we can.”

While trying to respond, a wave of exhaustion came over me and my vision clouded. I felt Vox’s hand on me again.

“Come, Echo. Adresta needs rest. Her physical body’s senses are beginning to interfere with the simulated ones.”

The beautiful girl nodded and looked back at me. With a tender touch, she leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “We’re all rooting for you, Adresta. No matter what, we’ll get through this, alright?

I could only nod and embrace her again.

“Simulation terminating.”

All of the sensations faded and the darkness took me once more. I wasn’t as scared anymore, though. People were at my back.