Chapter 1 – who am I?

“Ughhh… What the hell happ-“

Abel grunted in pain before he was overwhelmed by a splitting head ache and everything went blank. At first, he figured it had to be the worst hang over he’d ever experienced, except he didn’t recall drinking the night before and now he couldn’t think at all.

This stillness lasted for what felt like a year, perhaps a lifetime but it was probably only a moment in reality. Then it all came back to him, or more accurately, the memories pieced themselves back together. It was an amalgamation of all of ‘his’ life’s memories, Abel Hawthorne. Or was it Xiang Xiaowen?

Xiang Xiaowen struggled to process what was going through ‘his’ mind, or more accurately, ‘his’ soul. He was just a 25 year old, heart broken young man waiting for death’s final embrace at his family’s ancestral home. He had been born into an average family in south eastern china but descended from a long line of talented blacksmith’s. Although modernization and technology made cold weapons irrelevant in the major wars and political struggles around the world, Xiang Xiaowen’s family never let up their honored tradition and satisfied the small niche that was this market.

Even little Xiang Xiaowen was forced to learn their family heritage every day after school, although his lessons and participation decreased after entering high-school and going off to university. But overall, he had led an average life beyond the extra tutelage at home- going to school, falling in love, going off to university and finally getting his fragile and weak heart utterly crushed before going back to his hometown. He had only realized how short a life he had when the doctor’s told him about his heart condition after suffering a heart attack, a congenital heart disease they said, but it somehow skipped the last 3 generations before landing on his young shoulders.

As the memories of this young man kept fusing with him, Xian Xiaowen was utterly terrified of losing himself. After all, he had many conversations about transmigration with his friends in the past, back when he was an avid novel-addict. Although he didn’t have much free time growing up, between school work and blacksmithing, he’d always make a little time at night to read his favorite novels. He’d had entire debates with friends about how a transmigrator couldn’t be considered the same person with the infusion of foreign memories. What constitutes one’s “self”? Was it their soul’s? their memories perhaps? It was a debate without an answer and every person believed their own theories.

Xiang Xiaowen slowly lost himself re-living Abel’s life, from birth to his current ‘death’ and Abel too slowly fused himself into this person that was affectionately named Xiao Hongshu. Their souls slowly merged, unbeknownst to them, as though they were 2 pieces of broken porcelain that were originally one whole in the first place.

BANG BANG BANG

“Ughhh..” It wasn’t until intense banging could be heard that Abel finally roused himself from his stupor, painfully grunting before holding onto the edge of of a futuristic looking pod and lifting himself up.

“Hey Abe, you alright? Answer me!!”

BANG BANG BANG

Abel shook his head trying to get rid of the massive migraine that was pounding his head, he slowly made his way to the door but it didn’t take him long seeing the tiny space within his room. He still didn’t have his wits about him, confused about what happened and who he even was. He just mechanically opened the creaking heavy door.

“I told you to wait before connecting the damn pod Abe. It’s not like it gunna run away or some-.. DAMN you fried yourself?!!” The voice behind the door was gloating at first till he laid his eyes on the poor young man. He looked like he’d taken the brunt of a lightning strike with several snaking minor burns on his arm, black soot covering the wound along with static hair that refused to go down. It would’ve looked comical to the young man standing on the other side of the door if it weren’t for his concern over his friend.

“Hang on, let me call a MediTech Responder for-“

“No..” Abel instinctively replied with an extra raspy voice. He quickly snapped out of his daze and cut off the young man before he could finish, the fear of paying for an MTR quickly poured cold water over his aching migraine, rousing Abel out of his stupor. He looked up with his newfound mental calm and finally realized who it was standing at his door. The man looked chubby at first glance but that was actually a misconception, he was just big boned and tall, along with chubby cheeks and not being slim, it gave him the appearance of a slightly chubby guy. He had light brown hair with thin eye brows that would wiggle whenever he got excited or animatedly talked about something of interest. ‘Frankie.. of course..’

“Come on, I’ll cover it this time and just pay me back when you make it b- “

“I said no Frankie..” Taking a deep breath, Abel rubbing his forehead but that only stretched the burns on his arm bringing with it a jolting fiery pain. The new-found sense of pain brought him further clarity from that soul splitting head ache, he quickly looked straight into the eyes of his oldest best friend. “I’ll be fine, trust me.. I’ll just put some of that old ointment Grandma Meng used to make. Don’t go calling the Rescue Nexus behind my back either, you’ll just waste your creds by making them come here for no reason.”

“What the hell do you mean by ~No Reason” Frankie imitated the last part with a voice of mockery but it was apparent to even a deaf person the concern behind his tone. “If Melly heard about this she’ll kick your ass and have me sleeping on the couch for the next 2 weeks!”

“It’s simple then isn’t it? Just don’t tell her..” Abel quickly replied but he knew they’d just get into the same old bickering spat like they always did so he knew he had to jump in quick to put an end to his incessant pressuring. The ‘old’ Abel would have just kept arguing weakly against his best friend but small subtle changes already starting taking place. “Look, I know you can’t lie to her so just tell her the truth. I hurt myself and I insisted on not calling the Medical Nexus because its just not worth it, Grandma Meng’s ointment will fix me up just fine. Please Frankie, instead of badgering me to waste creds on something I can heal up on my own just let me go and wash up so I can treat these wounds, they actually hurt.. a lot.”

“Oh so now you feel them hurting..” Frankie was going to instinctively start another bickering session but held himself back when he realized Abel was truly in pain “Fine fine, have it your way but know I can’t save you from Melly’s ass kicking when she hears about this. And don’t try setting up the pod again, just wait till the new sockets arrive tomorrow!”

“Alright alright, now let me go wash up, I’ll see you guys later” Abel quickly closed the door after sending Frankie off but he knew it wasn’t the end. Melly, or Melissa, his other oldest best friend and Frankie’s girlfriend was gentle most of the time except when those close to her got hurt. She was slim and had gentle facial features with ashy blonde hair and was quite tall for a girl, her head reaching up to Frankie’s shoulders and just slightly shorter than Abel himself who was average for a male, being 179 cm tall. Abel smiled to himself when he recalled all the times ‘Tigress Melly’ stuck up for him when they were kids but he quickly shelved these old memories to the side as he started thinking back to what just happened. He was trying to make use of the old socket ports for his “newly” purchased virtual reality pod and ended up nearly frying himself to an early grave. Just remembering that harrowing incident sent shivers coursing down his spine and slowly bringing his migraine back from the dead.

He crouched down on his wooden floor and took a few deep breaths till he dared to get in touch with ‘his’ memories. Xiang Xiaowen, or Xiao Hongshu as his loved ones used to call him, it definitely wasn’t some hallucination he had on the brink of death. It was truly a different life, in another world. It was a frighteningly similar planet to Abel’s own but it seemed to follow a different timeline and events. It was like a mirror to his own world but instead of reflecting itself, it diverged and followed a different pathway, even the continents broke up differently when Pangea was split apart some 200 million years ago. In Abel’s own world, the industrial revolution came ‘earlier’, around 2000 years ago but he wasn’t so sure because of the following dark age, besides he didn’t know the exact timeline that a world would follow. The war for resources and colonialism was much harsher in Abel’s “planet Earth” and in fact, it led to dark age for humanity- a global catastrophe. Nuclear weapons were fired like ballistic missiles and an entire continent sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Basin- what Xiao Hongshu referred to as the Atlantic Ocean.

Humanity bombed itself back to the stone age in a matter of months and they remained a barbaric society for centuries until a genius archeologist and scientist emerged around millennium ago – Doctor Octavia Vale. She uncovered many ruins of the ‘old world’ and was far ahead of her times, she slowly uncovered the world’s history while also healing a fractured society. Abel wasn’t so sure about this time period as it was so long ago but all the history books he’d read had all but proclaimed Doctor Octavia Vale as a Saint that had no equal in history. She had prepared the embryonic form of what later came to be the sole unified government on the planet – The Pax Novus Coalition. In an old script Doctor Octavia uncovered and translated, "Pax" was a term for peace and "Novus" meant new and so the government was named the Pax Novus Coalition, PNC or the coalition for short.

Even later generations of geniuses that propelled the PNC couldn’t quite reach the apex like Doctor Octavia. The only exception was Doctor Orion Matrix, an old scientist that was alive to this day. When he was in his 20’s he solved one world class problem after another and achieved controllable nuclear fusion, bringing cheap and clean energy to a once devasted planet and a weary society that didn’t want anything to do with nuclear fission.

After energy no longer became a problem to society, people were no longer needed as much in manual labor jobs like mining or offshore drilling, while there were still industries that required such a workforce, the demand was far shorter than the supply. Although there were major economic issues that cropped up in the short-term, it was an absolute boon for humanity in the long-term and even those repetitive menial jobs were soon taken up by AI’s and robotic assembly systems since electricity was so cheap. The reason Doctor Orion Matrix could reach the same level as Doctor Octavio Vale wasn’t because of his prior work in the energy sector and definitely not his disruption to the global economy but his absolute reversal of the Binary Eclipse incident nearly 20 years ago.

As robotics and AI’s became more commercialized and entered people’s households from the industrial factories, a chance was perceived by a misguided group of terrorists that wanted humans to remain “connected” to nature. They called themselves the Crimson Codebreakers, these boogeymen of the latest century corrupted the core codes of all robots, bringing forth a global robot rebellion that could have grown into a calamity not seen since humanity’s dark age. In fact, it was during this incident that Abel was orphaned alongside Frankie and Melly. They were all brought up by Grandma Meng, an old lady that had lost her own son and husband during that short but terrifying war for survival.

The world wasn’t really sure how Doctor Orion put an end to what was later termed “the Binary Eclipse”, perhaps the Pax Novus Coalition knew but even if it were explained, Abel doubted anyone but a handful of Doctor Orion’s own students would understand the science behind it all. To add to his ever-increasing accomplishments, in recent years Doctor Orion was working on a modem for neural signals in the hopes of curing paraplegics or amputees, especially those that suffered in the Binary Eclipse. Instead he ended up creating the first fully immersive virtual reality system. While he did eventually succeed in giving those disabled people a new method to control and even feel through their prosthetics, he had also introduced a revolutionary and fully immersive virtual reality system to the world – the NeuroNex.

It took quite a few years for the good old Doctor to verify the system was absolutely safe and wouldn’t instead bring harm to its user, it had actually been in the market for close to a year now without a single incident. Even Abel’s own mishap was a result of his own cheapness, hoping an old socket port was still useable when the old owner told him to change it before use. In fact, the only part that was created by Doctor Orion was the neural demodulator, the part that decoded and encoded a person’s brain signals to and from the virtual world. The pods themselves were created by other companies in the Virtual Reality industry that had been producing helmets or goggles that were nowhere near fully immersive. It had seemed like Doctor Orion had learned form his previous disruption to the economy, or perhaps some personnel from the coalition had briefed him about the need to spread the “cost” of the system. Either way, Doctor Orion had no need for further fame or wealth so he agreed and collaborated with many companies to create a universal “software” for the NeuroNex VR pod.

The old doctor insisted on making the design into a fully enclosed pod due to safety reasons, although a person would quickly disconnect from the virtual immersion under a subtle physical touch, such a quick disconnect would disorient them for a few seconds. The pods came in all shapes and size but the one unchanging factor between them all was the “NeuroNex” logo. It was an emblem featuring an intertwined neural circuitry pattern, forming an abstract representation of a brain in an electric blue color. While a much darker shade of blue neural pathways with the letters “N” and another “N” on its side subtly overlap within the brain to signify NeuroNex, while also looking like an hour glass and an overlapping infinity symbol.

Abel felt his breathing starting to hitch like he was suffering from a panic attack. He was absolutely sure he’d digested Xiang Xiaowen’s memories, he also understood from ‘him’ what he could be going through and his heart couldn’t help but shudder. To lose ones ‘self’ is a scary thought but to actually live through it is far more terrifying. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the entire ordeal and the more he thought about it, the more his head hurt. He put it to the side for a moment and he couldn’t help but feel a moment of enlightenment, it could’ve been the heavens taking pity on the poor orphaned boy or it could’ve been his vastly superior soul strength making the deductions but he realized in a moment that he literally couldn’t do anything about it. He could either take it one day at a time or drive himself crazy thinking about the ‘what ifs’ of what would happen as a result of this merger. Once he made this realization, he felt like the illusory mountain pressing on his shoulders disappear and actually felt comfortable in his own skin for the first time in forever.

Abel finally roused himself up from the ground and remembered the fiery pain coursing down his arm. He let out a weary smile and made his way to the bathroom to clean up and treat his burns with Grandma Mengs trusty ointment.

Half way across the world, the moment Xiang Xiawen’s soul started to fuse with Abel’s, a middle-aged man woke up from his mental deductions. He couldn’t help but look up as though he sensed something different in the world and wonder if the sign his revered master prophesized had shown itself or if it was just his eager anticipation.

*sigh*

The man let a small sigh and went back to his work, deep down he was hoping it would show itself soon if it really were the sign he was waiting for.