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The first thing I remember was a sword in my hand and a corpse in front of me.
The corpse looked human, but wasn’t. Judging strictly by outer appearance, it would have passed. Looking inside at the organs and genetic material, a star dragon was more closely related. At least a star dragon came from a three dimensional being. This corpse in front of me was from a different sort of place entirely. The body I was looking at was put together in a place of differing geometry. Fractal iterations within it said that it came from a place where the third spatial dimension wasn’t as developed as we’re used to.
My sword was real, but felt wrong. It was a standard charged bondsteel blade, a glossy dark gray in color. It should have been sparkling blue and silver, but it wasn’t. What had initially appeared to be blood dripping off it was now changing, reverting to its true state – a two toned ugly blue and blackish green – as the glamour faded.
How did I know these things?
Good question. I could not remember anything that had gone before. Not who I was, not what I was, not where I was, where I was from. Nothing. I couldn’t remember anything about how my dead opponent had gotten there, how I’d killed it, how or why we’d fought.
Logically, my memories should have been accessible to me through auros,even if I couldn’t remember normally. But they refused to come. I tried perception, hoping to read the molecules themselves, only to discover I didn’t have any. I wasn’t material at all; simply a self-perpetuating energy pattern.
That wasn’t right, or at least wasn’t the whole story. I thought of myself as human, I identified as human, my mind told me I was a loyal adherent of humanity and the Human Empire. I was, at some level, both human and somehow important within that Empire.
There had to be an explanation that made sense, I just didn’t know what it was at the moment. Knowledge filled me – all about the Human Empire, its history, cultures, and technology. I knew an uncountable number of facts about the universe and how it behaved in exhaustive mathematical detail. I had skills and abilities beyond the average human – I’d read the corpse in front of me with perception and compared it to a large number of other biologicals (the star dragon being a large predator of the interstellar depths and one of the most alien species humanity had encountered). I could even use those skills. I just couldn’t have told you who I was – or even what I was.
I wasn’t in custody, and was obviously considered a responsible adult, as I was armed not only with the sword, but also several other weapons, weapons that obviously belonged where I was wearing them. Nobody sane lets children or the insane wander about multiply armed. So the first hypothesis was that I had known who I was until the last few minutes at the very most. The second hypothesis was that my late adversary was somehow responsible for my loss of identity.
I couldn’t detect any alarms going off, so whatever our combat had been, it had evidently escaped notice somehow. Nor were there any further evident threats, so I put the sword away, in a pocket made by kored. Not that there was anything unusual about being armed in the Empire, but having it drawn would draw attention. To unaided vision, I would appear unarmed. Not that appearances meant much in the Empire.
The excitement of the moment passing, I suddenly realized how weak I was. It was bad. With normal human eyesight, I could see through my visual projection. That was a sign that collapse of the field was imminent. My power levels weren’t just low, they were practically empty.
This energy field couldn’t eat like normal people could. My only means of sustenance was using matrato pull energy from the environment around me. The trouble was that I was almost out of energy to make it happen. I let my image fade more, weakening the basic field that was me to free up enough power to draw. This area was heavily served by power; I could feel it coursing through conduits and machinery nearby. I wanted to find a siphon I could control to draw from, but I dared not delay. Instead I drew a trickle from a converter line I could reach, hoping the drain wouldn’t be noticed.
It was almost too late. At first, power intake was barely more than I was spending to keep the channel open and drawing, but I didn’t have any choice. In the first minute, I barely pulled a sixtieth more than I was using in order to keep the draw and myself going. Maybe two iprime – a couple shakes of seasoning worth. That might be enough energy to keep me going a quarter hour if I had no other demands.
Copyright 2018 Dan Melson. All Rights Reserved.
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