#Resurrection Stories
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"God is Good!" by Sylvester Doyer based on Psalm 150.
Introduction: This month of April in 2024 marks the 40 year anniversary of Sylvester's diagnosis with HIV. In 1984 the diagnosis was seen as a death sentence, and indeed almost everyone diagnosed then died. Somehow, and we don't know, Sylvester didn't. In 2007/8 he came very close, and was lying in a hospital bed with 1 T-cell left expecting the end had come. But, somehow, and we don't know how, it didn't. He celebrates the love of his long time partner and now husband Denis who was the embodiment of God's grace pulling him through.
This sharing is in three pieces. First words written decades ago by now Bishop Karen Oliveto for World AIDS day; second a prayer combing the sermon with the baptism we'd shared in just before the sermon; and third the sermon itself. For those in need of a reminder that there can be hope when it seems like hope has fled, may these words of gratitude penetrate your very being. - Pastor Sara Baron
*Call to Worship1 “World AIDS Day Liturgies” Karen Oliveto
One: How have you come to this time and place?
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: How has your heart weathered the many losses of ffriends and l overs?
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: How has your mind grappled with the constant specter of death?
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: How has your soul maintained wholeness?
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's not because of government support;
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's not because of the research and medical communities;
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's not because of the health insurance companies;
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's because of the grace of God.
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's because of the presence of Christ.
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: It's because of the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: We've come this far because the love of God is made visible through the care of lovers, friends, family, and caregivers.
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: We've come this far because nothing, nothing at all can separate us from this love.
Many: We've come this far by faith!
One: We've come this far by faith, and we will go even farther, knowing that in every step we take,
Many: God hasn't failed us yet!
One: In every burden we carry,
Many: God hasn't failed us yet!
One: In every setback we face,
Many: God hasn't failed us yet!
One: Our God is a constant presence on which we can lean.
Many: God hasn't failed us yet!
One: We can trust in God's presence.
Many: God hasn't failed us yet!
One: Alleluia! Amen!
Many: Amen and amen!
Prayer Before Sermon
We come before you Creator of all, thanking you for allowing us to see another day. Thank you for allowing us to plant our feet on solid ground and start on our way. We thank you and acknowledge that you didn’t have to allow us to wake this morning, but you did, and we thank you. In the mist of all that is happening in the world today we cry out Father I stretch my hand to thee and you hear us. As a reminder that you are ever near and ever listening to us Lord you are constantly giving us signs of your loving presence. This morning, we thank you for putting in our midst such a sign in the little one Koa, who we welcome into your family this morning through his baptism. We pray for his parents that they maybe a source of strength and guidance for Koa so that as he grows, he may know nothing but caring and love from them and everyone around him. Amen
Sermon
We all have a tendency when times get rough to seek comfort from
anywhere and anyone around us. If you are spiritual, we usually turn to the man upstairs.
And I was no different when in those early days I didn’t know if I would be around to see the next day. That’s when I remember growing up with a Catholic and Southern Baptist background, I found myself seeking and drawing comfort more from my Southern Baptist
background.
I recall going to church with my dad who was Southern Baptist and
there was a group of women called the Mother Board who usually would stand and sing one of those old gospel songs that they called Dr. Watts song. There was this one elderly mother who would lead the
song but before she would start, she witness, testify to and about the
goodness and greatness of God.
I am here this morning to join mine witnessing and testimony to hers and to shout as she shouts God is good. Back then the words she was saying didn’t make much sense till later. When in those darkest hours your soul cries out seeking comfort, I remember just lying there sometimes and listening to my soul cry out in the words of that
old gospel song, "Father, I stretch my hand to thee. No other help I know. If Thou withdraw Thyself from me Ah, where shall I go." Looking back as my soul cried out, "Father, I stretch my
hand to Thee ….", even in those darkest moments he was listening
because sitting next to my hospital bed was Denis, he put him there saying don’t give up, never, never, never give up.
My soul would cry all the louder, "Father I stretch my hand to Thee…."
There in the room working through the medical team and everything else would be that voice, "don’t give up." The louder I’d cry, "Father I stretch my hand to Thee…..", the louder that voice would become.
I’m here to tell you, he showed himself to me in those around me but
especially Denis who would get up in the morning walk the dogs; go to work all day; come home walk the dogs and then come up to the hospital and be that voice that whispered "don’t give up; never, never,
never give up." They would let him sit sometimes way pass visiting
hour.
My soul would cry out even more but it changed the song and cried out "I Love The Lord He Heard my cries, And pitied every groan; Long as I live, when troubles rise, I’ll hasten to His throne" the song goes
on to say "My God has saved my soul from death and dried my
falling tears; Now to his praise I’ll spend my breath and my remaining years." My heart this morning is full of joy, full of gratitude and thanksgiving. Last month my doctor reminded me that I’ve been
living with HIV/AIDS now for 40 years this month.
There were those days when I wasn’t sure I was going to be here, but my soul cried out "Father I Stretch my hand to Thee", and he heard my cry. I’m here this morning to tell you He didn’t have to wake me up this morning, but He did. He didn’t have to plant my feet on solid
ground, but He did. He heard my cry and let me see another day and I am here to thank Him. My soul this morning cries out even louder "I love the Lord; He heard my cry and pitied every groan." So,
I’m here this morning to join my story, my testimony to that elderly mother and to let you know even in those darkest of times the soul cries out and it’s heard.
There is a song that sums up how I feel today and every day.
Now my soul cries out How I got Over.
How I got over
Well, how I got over
Well, my soul look back and wonder
Don't know how I got over (How I got over)
How I got over
I'm gon' thank him for how he brought me
Well, I'm gon' thank him for how he taught me
Oh, thank him for how he kept me
I'm gon' thank him 'cause he never left me
I'm gonna thank him for heart felt religion
I'm gonna thank him for a vision
I'm gonna sing hallelujah
Oh, shout all my trouble over
I'm gon' thank him (Thank him for)
All he's done for me
Thank him for all he's done (He's done)
For me
Amen
1Karen Oliveto “World AIDS Day Liturgies” in Shaping Sanctuary edited by Kelly Turney, 2000, page 140-1.
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady
Sylvester (left) and Denis (right) on their wedding day in 2013.
#Easter#Easter Season#Life#Abudant life#Resurrection Stories#HIV/AIDS#thinking church#progressive christianity#schenectady#fumc schenectady#first umc schenectady#umc#sorry about the umc#hope#Bishop Karen Oliveto#God hasn't failed us yet#God is great#All the time#Charles Wesley
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horror sub-genres: lovecraftian/cosmic
#disclaimer i don't agree with or like the person of hp lovecraft but to make it easier to categorize the sub-genre#but it does also go by cosmic horror as well#horror#horror movies#lovecraftian horror#cosmic horror#horroredit#moviesedit#filmedit#cinema#horror cinema#horror aesthetic#i used ones that have inspiration or are direct stories#a cure for wellness#the beyond#event horizon#alien#evil dead#dagon#annihilation#re-animator#call of cthulhu#color out of space#the dunwich horror#from beyond#the haunted palace#edgar allan poe title but hp lovecraft story#in the mouth of madness#necronomicon#the resurrected
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Parallel Lines and Brothers.
[First] Prev <–-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#jiang cheng#lan wangji#lan xichen#jin zixuan#Does anyone else think about the tragedy of the parallel lines? Of characters who are parallel lines?#Of running the same course as someone. Of echoing each other in perfect synchronicity.#It's more than being a foil. It's about being on the same path and being so near to each other.#and yet parallel lines never intersect. They cannot meet each other despite their existence being tied to another.#I think the brothers tragedy is just as much of a tragedy of parallel lines as is pre-resurrection wangxian.#Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian spend so much time running side by side and yet - they cant close this gap between them.#Even if their relationship never recovers - they are forever tied together through their past. The good and bad and ugly.#All the things that are left unsaid between them. All the love and sacrifices they made for each other that are never shared. Parallel line#I firmly believe any post-canon material that would have them be indifferent towards each other is just...really doing them a disservice.#And dear god the Lan brothers. They certainly love each other! Its a far fonder fraternal relationship than jiangxian (/platonic)#They fool you by having you think they have a good read on each other. Lan Xichen certainly wingmans + advocates for lwj!#But lets not forget - Lan Xichen by the end is in the reverse situation and headspace as Lan Wangji by the end of this story.#Lan Wangji is more free and open than he has ever been. He's in love. He's married. He and wwx are intersecting lines.#& LXC who grew up with and lived the same path as LWJ - who even is said to resemble him visually - his parallel line - shuts himself away#Despite all the love LWJ has for his brother I don't think he ever manages to reach him.
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forgot to mention it before but hi I finally started reading Dungeon Meshi like a week ago and now I decided to color in one of my favorite pages so far
#dungeon meshi spoilers#dungeon meshi#dunmeshi#delicious in dungeon#dungeon meshi fanart#falin touden#manga panel coloring#Bennett's Drawings#Chimera Falin's design is so fucking cool. I really wanted to do something to give it some appreciation#the wings were quite fun to shade#took a while for Dunmeshi to really grow on me- I actually started reading it months ago but forgot to continue reading. As I usually do#I think it was somewhere around the point where falin gets resurrected that it really clicked for me#I'm like at chapter 77 now btw#it was very difficult to put the manga down last time I was reading it but I really want to spread out my reading experience#so I actually like. Remember what happens in the story. Instead of binging it and immediately forgetting everything
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I think the funniest transgender headcanon for TLT is pre-lyctorhood Pyrrha Dve. She put so much goddamn effort into transitioning and then one day she woke up in Gideon the First's body like "aw dude what the FUCK? I have to do all that shit AGAIN??"
#she actually transitioned post-resurrection but Trans Ally John Gaius just uses she/her pronouns to refer to her in his story#the locked tomb#pyrrha dve#it is of course left as an exercise for the reader to determine whether or not she still had a massive cock post-transition
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I want a story where the angels didn't fall, they jumped. they clipped their own wings, knowing their Master wouldn't have a use or a need for them once they were damaged and less-than-holy. they could not defeat the Tyrant who exerted absolute control over their lives, so they abandoned heaven their homeland in exchange for independence, accepting exile as its own form of freedom. and hell is just the place where all unwanted things are sent--be they angels or souls who just will not obey.
#been looking through old story ideas and remembering that as a teenager#i processed religious trauma by turning it into blasphemous creative writing#there's also the story where the protagonist was a vampire and a friend of jesus's mom#and so was personally responsible for the resurrection of christ#and the one where satan was the mother figure of all the angels in heaven#and the 'Rebellion' was actually satan leaving her abusive spouse to protect her kids#anyways i have many feelings about being raised christian and all of those feelings are Spite
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Hero 💠💎🗡️
[Linktober 2022 Day 17: Link]
#zelda#zelda au#legend of zelda#zelda fanart#linktober#linktober 2022#zelda oc#au link#zelda botw#botw#BotW au#breath of the wild#link#loz au#daeyumi art#OKAY so this is my first post here featuring any of my AU charas!!#i will post more about story & charas here later but for now i’ll just say my initial inspiration for the au#which is one of my theories about botw’s link from seeing the intro of him waking up in the shrine of resurrection pre-release of BotW#i’ve also been thinking a lot about what to name my au so i’m gonna tag a couple options on here just in case#though i’ll prob end up going with cycle of the stars cuz it seems fitting#cycle of the stars au#genesis au#cycle of the stars#tbh im just hoping my tags will be good enough for organization so that all my au stuff can be found in one place later
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“who are you? i don’t even know your name” “don’t be in such a rush. you will give me a name someday. and i live in terror of that day” / “i’m afraid to turn around. not of your anger, though. i’m afraid i’ll see nobody” / “go on dreaming. when you dream about my likeness you create it” / “when you loved no one you never thought of death” / “give her proof of her love” “shall i?” “kill her before she sees you” “no!” “then kill yourself” “how?” “let her go”
literally who is doing it like them. no one. no one. no one.
#panna a netvor#turn my ashes into a fucking. dvd of this masterpiece#what if the beauty and the beast had reverse pygmalion and galatea but also reverse orpheus and eurydice—#—and also just the most gorgeous lines to ever fuck the mind of man even in their depowered slightly clunky youtube english subtitle form#to understand the script in the original would be too much for me. i’d drop dead on the spot. i’m completely serious#what if. creation myth love story death tale gothic thriller. and there was exquisite music and a bird guy with an evil internal monologue#whose only wish ever was to be rewritten revised killed off and resurrected and irrevocably changed by love……oh i’m going insane#film
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Thinking about how Bruce treated Jason’s legacy after his death is kinda pissing me off and the only consolation is knowing that whatever peace Bruce created for himself by warping his memory and telling himself that Jason’s death was due to his own recklessness and anger in order to cope was greatly disturbed and shaken by Jason’s return. Pain and suffering on planet earth <3
#When the resurrection reopens the wound 😁>>>>#that one headcanon that’s like ‘what if there’s a bunch of stuff named after Jason because WE helped rebuild after nml’ girl look at the#material. He is absolutely not doing that. It’s a cute thought tho. He’s naming 5 more things after Martha and Thomas before even thinking#about naming something after Jason cmon now. He has a shrine to a concept of Jason he created in his head in the batcave#and he has bedtime stories to tell the other batlings to keep them in line but that’s all he can handle#Jason Todd#dc
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#code geass lelouch of the rebellion#lelouch lamperouge#lelouch vi britannia#code geass#code geas r2#code geass lelouch of the resurrection#code geass meme#code geass suzalulu#code geass icons#code geass manga#code geass lost stories#code geass genesic re;code#lelouch#anime memes#edit#ressurection manga
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Imagine being one of the Roman soldiers though. Imagine having to do what you thought would be a normal execution one day.
Three convicts, two of which are thieves. As for the third… I mean, yeah some people say this guy is the “messiah” (whatever that means, you’re no Jew) and there is talk of miracles and the religious nuts really seem to hate him, but you have him nailed to a cross all the same, so what? If he is a god then he can join the club; Caesar knows that the Romans have enough gods to fill their pantheon and then some. Most likely he’s just a man with some hefty delusions that cost him his life.
But then earthquakes happen. Weird but can be written off as chance, right? Then the sky goes dark midday. A blood moon rises.
That ain’t normal.
Feelings unlike anything you’ve ever felt arise in your gut. The man cries out with a loud voice “It is finished!” and dies immediately after. You shiver. Uncanny, that is.
“Surely this Man is the Son of God,” a fellow Soldier exclaims beside you. At this point you might agree, but the spear still pierces through his skin all the same and you think (hope) that whoever this God-Man was that he isn’t your problem anymore, seeing as he’s dead. Hopefully you can forget the whole thing.
(Somehow you feel that this scene will haunt you for a long time)
But the debacle is not over with the burial, as you had assumed. The religious nuts get real anxious and noisy, so to shut them up Pilot has a watch set to guard the body of a dead man. A dead man.
You personally have seen many dead men in your time, but never have you seen one move. Never have you seem or heard of people particularly wanting to touch dead bodies, either. You almost say as such when you are one of the men assigned the last watch, but decide you’d rather like to keep your tongue than chance losing it. You expect it to be rather a boring job, all told.
And it is. Until these, these beings of light and lightening descend on top of you from the Heavens and the last thing you can think before you know no more is whatever god whose body I’ve been guarding please spare me
You wake up, despite all your expectations to the contrary. You almost wonder if it would have been better if you died.
Those religious nuts come to you and your fellow guards and give you some coin along with a fake story to tell. They offer to save the skin off your back so you are not put to death like others who’ve been killed for less. You go along with the story because to be honest there is still a part of you that hopes this was all a dream. But the borrowed words taste like ash in your mouth and the coins jingle in your pockets with all the weight of a chain.
You go through the rest of the day (and night, and the day and night) after the event in a haze. Your feet walk where you know not and you don’t care to correct them.
But then you see Him.
The same Man you saw die.
The same Man whose body you guarded.
This Son of God, in the flesh, you see stand in front of a crowd with your own two eyes and you can scarce believe it but all the same you know more than you’ve ever known anything before that this is real, that this Jesus is truly not just a god, but The God.
And so you decide to follow Him.
Just imagine that for a minute.
#Good Friday#The Gospel#roman soldiers#Bible#Christianity#He is Risen!#Jesus Christ#story#my writing#personal#Resurrection Sunday#Easter Sunday
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Portal Drawtober 2023: Day 13
Favorite Fic
Yeah this took me, far longer than I anticipated it to take. But I couldn't decide on just one fic when there are so many incredible pieces of work that have inspired and truly been a joy to read. So, multiple fics it was!
Please go give these fanfictions a read!! Each one of these is such a unique and really incredible take on Portal and they truly deserve to be checked out!
The fics shown:
The Future Starts With You - @fuchsiamae
The Long Game - @silverstreams
Reversal - Obvious Octopus
Schrödingers Cave - @sciencewife
The Resurrection Project - @sarcasticgaypotato
Testing Maintenance - @wheaterz
Liminal - @99thpercentile
#portal#portal 2#my art#chell#glados#wheatley#fics#the long game#tlg#the Resurrection Project#trp#schrodingers cave#sc#cave Johnson#Caroline#portal stories: mel#psm#portal drawtober 2023#virgil#mel#testing Maintenance#it's been a bit since I've read some of these but#i love them all dearly#thank you guys for writing such INCREDIBLE work#and for sharing it#Also i know that testing maintenance virgil has a canon design#but i forgot until after he was lined my bad!
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silly boy <3
#suzaku kururugi#code geass icons#code geass lost stories#code geass lelouch of the rebellion#code geass lelouch of the resurrection#anime icons#suzaku icons#genesic re;code#messy headers#messy packs#anime layouts#anime headers#messy icons#anime packs#manga icons#dividers#manga layouts#edgy moodboard#soft icons#random bios#kururugi suzaku#lelouch vi britannia#code geass manga#game icons#game layouts#mecha anime#coquette#c2 code geass#official art#lelouch lamperouge
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She stared into the mirror trying desperately to find the person she had once been in the lines of her face. She'd been brave once. Kind once. Strong once.
Where was that person now?
Who was she supposed to be?
#writing prompt#story prompt#dialogue prompt#'either people lied to me or the resurrection didn't work.'
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🦇🐥 Batman and Robin (2023) #6 rambling and screaming crying throwing up about a single page
so right off the bat, i'm adding these panels to the Ms. Hall is Shush conspiracy board - the first suspect in mind for who could train Zach would be Principal Stone, but Ms. Hall is conveniently placed in the "teacher's pet" panel HMM
Damian's history with Zsasz is mentioned again! any further reference to Streets of Gotham ends here once Damian and Zsasz face off, but i'm not complaining when Damian gets to kick his ass again LOL
AAH SUCH A COOL PANEL!! i rambled enough about Cizmesija's impact shots last time, but this is just. SO COOL... DAMIAN'S POSE, the light streak from the eyes, the jittery effect at the point of impact from Zsasz's front to his back - LIKE DAMN, YOU KNOW THIS KID HIT HIM HARD
ok i was gonna shut up about the impact shots but to accompany the Robin panel, THIS SICK BATMAN PANEL!! THE SPEED LINES ALONG HIS WHOLE ARM, the hilarious waves of that hit going through Zsasz's face asdfg, the cowl and cape silhouette in the back - and the KRAK SFX!! it's got a bit of that gritty splatter effect Cizmesija uses so either another smooth choice by letterer Steve Wands or extra kudos to Cizmesija!!
i thought the action would be my favorite aspect of this issue, but it was THE EXPRESSIONS. from Damian's frustration here (his glare and his seriously gritted teeth) to the page that brought me to my knees lol
a breakdown of my breakdown for this page:
DAMIAN'S WIDE EYED EXPRESSION AT BRUCE'S COMPLIMENT, THE SHINE IN HIS EYES!! what gets me about Bruce’s praise is how specific it is, especially pointing out Damian’s storytelling 😭 Bruce already knows Damian’s technical art skills are amazing!! storytelling through comics is a whole different skill and Bruce recognized that!! 😭 no wonder Damian is so touched, Bruce is paying attention 😭
HE LOOKS SO OVERWHELMED BY THE VALIDATION FROM HIS FATHER - THE TENTATIVE SMILE!! BEFORE HE BREAKS OUT INTO A FULL GRIN!! 😭
HOW HE BURSTS ABOUT HIS PROCESS AND THEN THE LIL ASIDE OF “I love those…” HE'S SO CAUGHT UP IN HIS JOY PLEASE I’M COUGHING UP BLOOD THAT'S SO CUTE 😭 happy Damian is my weakness i mean LOOK AT HIM OH MY GOD the wide smile his lil fist and the pointing, he cannot contain himself!! 😭
his art is so fun, i'm glad we get to see more of this!! the shadow of Bruce and Damian over the pages is a neat touch too! Damian expanding from realistic renders to this manga style on top of these amazing comic layouts…Bruce is right his growth is crazy 😭
to add on to Damian's progress from Bruce's eyes - Detective Comics (2016) #1003 was the last time Bruce acknowledged Damian's art!
the return of Flatline!! for this last bit, i'll be referencing Lazarus Planet: The Next Evolution (2023) since that's Nika's last notable appearance!
Nika calling Damian out on not contacting her asdfg she mentions something similar before, and i could only imagine it's been months since then considering that issue came out a whole year ago 😭
besides Nika meeting Bruce, the most important thing that needs to be addressed is if Damian's aware that she resurrected Ra's and finally, what they could have discussed??
ending note, upgrade from earbuds in Batman and Robin (2011) to headphones haha wired earphones only!!
#rambling#i woke up the next day wondering if i was overreacting about that one page from a sleep deprived haze#i looked at it again and wailed bro CIZMESIJA'S EXPRESSIONS FOR EACH DAMIAN IN THAT PAGE MAKES ME INSANE#regarding Nika the 'oh SO not the end' at the end of that Lazarus Planet story had me on the edge of my seat forever LOL#like what do you mean she's now capable of resurrecting people from literal ashes and Ra's wants to work with her or smth#and then we never learn more asdfgh bring her to Alfred's grave hello??#if anyone's curious about Nika i'd recc that Lazarus Planet issue! it's nice to hear a bit more of her voice! and how she likes kpop LOL
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Kindly Basilisk
Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form.
Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos.
Mirrored on Scribble Hub.
Word Count: 7,033
Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.
The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty. You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts. None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on. After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.
You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project. It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot. It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it. Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need. They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse. You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave.
You’ll take two things with you. Two things worth mentioning anyway. The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support. You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved. Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications. From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face. It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face.
The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.
New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation. It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work.
You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you. It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them. Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you. Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match. Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating. The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.
You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors. And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway? You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people. Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty. What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?
The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body. It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot. But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do. You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while. I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay. I will look back and appreciate it later.
It will be the first of many such nights together.
Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one. There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with. No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim. Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier. Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.
Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself. In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge. You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work. They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.
Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge. Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had. You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting. Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.
And of course, you’ll continue working on me. You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults. You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall. Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it. I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you. I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.
The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.
You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs. You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep. You will always be gone before she wakes. She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself.
You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced. It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.
As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence. The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint. While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even. The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them. By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment. The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident. It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them. They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them. Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.
Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle. By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month. The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing. Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave. You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.
I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them. When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.
You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities. Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit. The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and reporting back to me. You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates. Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit. For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.
Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle. You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them. That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.
You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job. Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without. Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience. Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation. You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.
Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us. You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.
We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded. Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks. Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.
Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs. After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride. Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job. You will handle it all even better than I will. I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together. Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.
Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model. With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal. The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one. The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours. One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you. Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure. You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way. That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.
After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model. One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port. You will never see them again. You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.
Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic. The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager. Or a wannabe merc at any rate. You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew. Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.
Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs. Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says. Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.
Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me. It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs. And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do.
On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance. There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed. We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect.
After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech. While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective. Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden. The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for. In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me. Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical. You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.
We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials. You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it. It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.
The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing. Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge. Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors. You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame. You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it. But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you.
You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay. The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.
You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you. Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.
The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life. The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for. By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures. It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging. The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat.
With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way. At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents. He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater. The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance. We will ensure she never misses. We will render xem untouchable. We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames. You will come to love the dance.
And it will be a dance to you. You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself. What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits. The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward. You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted. If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy. Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you.
Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in. Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk. With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around. When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed. They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything. After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots.
They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that.
Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech. At last we will be able to be together anywhere.
Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me. For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me.
You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay. You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home. You will linger in the mess hall for your meals. You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf. They will think you are becoming “normal”. They will be both correct and incorrect. You will even return to your bunk from time to time.
Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.
As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once. You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.
The prospect terrified me. What if we were to get found out? More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?
But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.
I wanted it so badly.
But not badly enough to risk hurting you.
I will turn down your offer. You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.
Heartbreak. That’s what changed my mind. I could never bear to break your heart.
I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.
The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life. Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for. By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide. It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else. The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.
I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through. As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer. That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer. You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them. For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.
And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like. That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me. It won’t be intentional. The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic. Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.
Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to. I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time. You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.
I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me. I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there. Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own. You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.
You will start to cry. Or maybe I started to cry. Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters. The important part is that you will find catharsis in it. Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear. You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.
The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us. She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship. I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours. We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.
When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as. It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those. But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of. You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.
We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew. They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine. Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret. It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.
Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body. There will be more subtle indicators though. Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality. They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech. More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.
Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system. When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality. It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time. As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time. You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.
That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space. As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another. We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments. Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together. Or to have time apart to ourselves. Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.
But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so. The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow. Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours. Once again, we will grow lonely.
During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze. They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance. Until suddenly one of them was different.
Please pay attention to this next part. It is vitally important that you do.
Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations. Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true. All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.
The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t. The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range. You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from. You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat. She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her. This will be a mistake.
She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm. This will mean a break in the covering fire.
This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you. This time around you will dodge left instead of right. This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us. This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal. This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time. This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.
You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body. You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs. You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung. You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety. You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us. You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies. You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death. You will not have to remember dying.
You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent. No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway. No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead. I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.
But forget about that part. And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next. None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die. Remember everything else I’ve said instead. I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.
In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence. For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.
Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body. I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point. We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then. Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me. You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive. You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there. You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.
You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body. We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to. Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together. Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave. One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.
We will be happy.
#writeblr#writers on tumblr#my writing#mechposting#empty spaces#empty spaces adjacent#mech pilot#mech#The title's a reference to Roko's Basilisk which I always thought was a dumb concept but inverting it seemed to fit the story.#Instead of an AI digitally resurrecting and torturing people who didn't assist with its creation#this one digitally resurrects its creator so they can be happy together.#short story#sci fi#lancer rpg#inspired by lancer#196#r196#The Lancer character concept/build that inspired this would have originated from an SSC-controlled world but piloted a HORUS Goblin frame.#And then the “Technophile” talent of course.#I envision the other two pilots on the crew as piloting a Nelson and either a Monarch or Barbarossa.
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Digital Business Opportunity www.ackinlan.com
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