Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
First of all, I am inside the greatest piece of technology ever created. Second, I have control of her, as if she were my own body. I have been trained to pilot and control this mega-mech from the day I arrived on the asteroid. Third, I finally have something to take home. Something I don’t have to steal because it was bequeathed to me upon my untimely demise.
Arkon is going to be furious with Drak. And maybe with me. But I will burn that bridge when I come to it, because right now, I am going home.
They’re going to be so proud of me when I get back to Earth. I’ve taken tech that will slingshot humanity into a period of such discovery and pure technological triumph that we will never go back. I will take us from the last on the ladder to the first among all.
I just have to get there, which might take some time, on account of how space works and how far everything is, and quantum whatnots. But this mech has enough power for flight across lightyears. I’m going to turn the universe into a fuzzy blur once I calibrate my understanding of the location of the world I came from.
I know where Earth is. I know it the same way I know everything, because there are data files stored in my physical machine system that access all the knowledge in the universe, or at least a lot more than I used to be able to call up in my brain at any given time. I thought I was smart before. I’m so much smarter now. I know seventeen different recipes for macaroni and cheese. I can’t make any of them, because there are no stoves the size of asteroids, and not enough boxes of macaroni in existence, but I know them.
I notice that my feelings are oddly flat. I think that’s because I don’t have a human body giving feedback anymore. There’s just the solid and dependable processes of all things technological. That’s why I’m not freaking out, I have to assume. You have to have a lot of squishy bits producing adrenaline and other things to freak out.
I fly home. It takes some amount of time. I’m not sure how long. Time is another one of those things that is primarily moderated through squishy things. In this machine I don’t get hungry or tired. Whatever Drak did to hook my brain up to it, he clearly included enough nourishment for a long time. I suspect I’m filled with sacks of sugar that are getting broken down to feed my disembodied brain.
There’s enough of them to get me from one distant point of the galaxy to the other in a matter of what I am sure is probably days and is definitely no longer than weeks. The transporter I took from the moon didn’t take all that long, and that wasn’t a goddess robot put together by a madman with no regard for consequences.
Nothing feels entirely real. I have all my memories, and all my personality, but the lack of a feedback loop to my body creates a sense of unreality. I feel as though at any moment I might take off the VR set and be back in the room with Arkon. The fact that there is nothing to take off and that room is lightyears away does not matter. Perception is nine-tenths of the law, or however that saying goes.
I come into the orbit of Earth like an angel. I decide not to go screaming into the atmosphere because I am not sure how much of me would burn off in the process and it would be a pity to land as nothing but a brain in a jar.
“Earth, this is Evie Westport of the Alpha Core,” I transmit down on all available frequencies. “I’m here with some alien tech.”
I float around in a languid circle waiting for them to get back to me. The continents roll by beneath me, looking pleasant and calm. I think of an eighteenth potential recipe for mac and cheese. Then I wonder if I will ever get to eat such a delicacy again.
I have to assume the brain in machine-ing is reversible. I’d have to get back to my body, though, of course, but how hard can that be? I feel very much as though my energy reserves are good. They’re very possibly being charged by the sun, even.
I get no response, so I lower myself down, closer to Earth. Time passes. I feel little puffs and gusts of force against my feet from time to time, but they are tickles that mean very little.
It takes some time to realize that these are weapons being fired at me. Big ones.
“It’s me!” I shout out. “Evie!”
They’re afraid of me. They can’t comprehend me. They probably can’t hear me, because my head is sticking out of the atmosphere, so really, all they can actually see is my feet and my legs and arms and maybe my torso. My attempts to broadcast a message of peace, goodwill, and theft are failing.