Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 14
‘What kind of doctor are you?’ she gasped, glaring at him. Doctor Lee had remained remarkably impassive throughout the entire episode, though the slight glimmer in his eye suggested that he was perhaps regretting his conversational tack.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, clearing his throat. She looked up to see him cleaning his spectacles. He didn’t seem particularly contrite. ‘In my line of work it is sometimes easy to become a little… mechanical about these things, if you see them often enough. Being an army doctor, traumatic amputations are sadly commonplace. Perhaps you will take comfort from the fact that your injuries are actually reasonably trivial by modern medical standards?’
Lyra remained staring at the bed sheets. Actually, that was rather comforting, but she wasn’t going to let this tactless shit of a doctor know it. ‘So my body is rotten, is that what you are telling me?’ she said, bitterly.
Doctor Lee cleared his throat again – an obvious tick, when one honed in on it. ‘It was in the early onset of decomposition, yes,’ he replied. ‘We were compelled to destroy it for reasons of sanitation, though I have the physiological records from your helmet. Your new body won’t be exactly the same, but it will be very similar. In fact, while I think about it, if there is anything you did not like about yourself – cosmetically, that is – we can change it now while we finalise the genesis?’
Lyra exhaled angrily. She liked her body. It hadn’t escaped her that this comfortable setting – a wide, plush bed in a lavishly decorated room overlooking an ocean of some sort – was cushioning the impact of what would otherwise be a severe psychological trauma. In short, she just didn’t believe that she currently existed only as a head on a hospital bed somewhere outside of the simulation, which was, on reflection, precisely the point of the whole setup.
‘No, I’m sure the new body is fine,’ she said resignedly. ‘You’re not going to make me a man, are you?’
Doctor Lee raised his eyebrows. ‘We can certainly do that, if you would like?’
‘No!’ she said and could not help but laugh. Doctor Lee beamed. Clearly, insofar as he was concerned, he had negotiated this initial conversation quite expertly.
‘Now you are faced with a small number of options, really,’ he said, studying the walls. ‘You can remain conscious within the VR sync until we are ready to begin testing your nervous control. That won’t be for at least five days.’
Lyra nodded. ‘Fine. Is there anything to do here? I can’t hurt myself can I?’
Doctor Lee shook his head in a patriarchal manner. ‘Heavens no, it’s just like any other VR sync. There is a library of programs to access, although you’ll have to wait until we reconnect your IHD. That won’t be for another few hours I’m afraid. The other option is to remain unconscious for the duration of your reconstruction.’
Lyra thought about this as well. It certainly had its benefits, though as tempting as it was to remain blissfully ignorant of the whole grisly process, she could utilise the time well.
‘Can you link me to my helmet once you have restored my IHD access?’ she asked.
Doctor Lee wrinkled his mouth. ‘Your head is actually still within the helmet. At the moment it is the best place for it. Everything we need to do – blood, nerve stimulus, oxygen – can be done through the gorget interface much more efficiently than the equipment we have on base.’
‘Oh,’ she said and offered a smile, trying to ignore how horribly macabre it all was. ‘Well, presumably I’ll have access then?’
‘Yes, I should imagine so, unless it was damaged in some way.’ Doctor Lee replied.
Lyra smiled inwardly. It was practically impossible to destroy the near-microscopic memory elements of a UNIS-issue Mantix helmet. ‘Excellent. In which case, I think that’s everything for now,’ she said.
‘Uh, right,’ Doctor Lee replied, having clearly expected to end the conversation on his own terms. ‘Well, yes. Good.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘I can be reached at any time via your IHD, and if for any reason you can’t reach me, my personality construct is available around the clock. Hopefully all the business with the provar will blow over and you will be my only patient!’
He had obviously intended his last remark to be a jovial one, but it had the effect of jolting Lyra’s memory as if someone had smacked her on the back of the head with a shock baton. Her mind swam with images and blurts of conversation like someone playing a holo on fast forward – the provar, a kaygryn corvette, Iyadi, images of Vos’Shan’i militia, a rail strike. It was so overwhelming that, had she been in reality, her IHD would have intervened in some way, in all likelihood by knocking her unconscious. It was all she could do not to scream.
‘Miss Staerck? Is everything all right?’ Doctor Lee said, frowning with concern. He was on the verge of leaning forward.
Lyra covered her eyes with one hand, grimacing. She felt as though her mind itself should have been in physical pain. A deep feeling of adrenaline-fuelled nausea emanated from the pit of her stomach, and she began to rock back and forth with the sheer… suddenness of it. Data, information and intelligence filled her head: hundreds of dead kaygryn, obliterated; Karris Haig in the Anternis Mission Station; drones, so many drones and robots, enhanced optics spying, tracking; Iyadi, drunk, stupid Iyadi, outsmarting them.
‘Christ,’ she said, bringing her other hand up and rubbing her face. It was like trying to piece together a jigsaw in a hurricane ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said, feeling dizzy and sick. She wanted to vomit again. She felt like she had just been locked in a centrifuge. ‘I’m fine.’
She breathed deeply – pointless in the VR sync, but it carried with it a potent psychological impact. Doctor Lee eyed her warily. ‘Would you like anything? Perhaps a short spell of sleep?’
‘No,’ she exhaled. ‘No. Honestly, just a little bout of dizziness.’ It did not seem prudent to inform him that, apparently, her memories were beginning to return. While he did not present an obvious threat, the carefully nurtured conspiracy theorist in her knew that this man, this ‘Doctor Lee’, could have been anybody – or anything – irrespective of whether he said he wasn’t a personality construct or not. And without her IHD or any other kind of independent verification, she could have been anywhere. It was better to be cautious; it was always better to be cautious. She had to carefully go back through every memory and reconstruct it from the ground up, filling in all the details she could. Her IHD could assist her to some extent, and her psychological and physiological conditioning would make the task considerably easier. But until that process was complete, she decided it was best to keep any improvement in her mental condition to herself.
Doctor Lee nodded, outwardly relieved. ‘All right. I’ll sign off now, and give you some time to think. As I said, your IHD will be back online in a few hours of real time.’
She smiled inoffensively, trying not to blink too much. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’
The man vanished into thin air. Lyra put her head into her hands and wept.
*
She spent a good ten minutes crying. In her head, a large, detached part of her knew that she just needed an outlet. She needed to cry away the initial shock, to get it out of her system. So she bawled and sobbed and wailed, ensuring she felt very sorry for herself as she clutched at the sheets and rolled around on the bed, her face turning red and her eyes and nose streaming. That same, rational part of her mind thought about how ridiculous she must look, chastised her for this folly like a mother would a child. That was the part of her mind, the strong, logical part, that she would eventually tap into.
UNIS psychological conditioning was, at its core, a compartmentalising exercise. Just as blood loss after a traumatic amputation could be controlled by sealing in the blood supply, as her Mantix helmet had done, so could a psychological trauma by sealing off the memory. It took many months of intense mental exercise to become proficient at controlling one’s mind in such a way, but the relevant UNIS experts agreed – rare in itself – that, initially at least, pretending that something had not happened at all was actually rather a useful tool.
Crying was a good way to clear the initial stress, psychologically speaking, but beyond that placebo effect it was useless and time-consuming. The second phase involved identifying the source of her stress – in this case, her own decapitation – singling out the exact memories surrounding that one event and compartmentalising them. In doing so, one could control their exposure to the trauma and come to accept it incrementally and therefore much more quickly.
Concordant with that process, she finished crying, rolled on to her back and closed her eyes. It was important to get her breathing right. A good trick, she had been taught, was to imagine the lazy, rhythmic wash of waves breaking against a beach. It took about thirty minutes to activate the relevant parts of her mind to become fully calm and focussed. Once she had done this, she imagined a wall. The wall in her mind was tall, maybe three metres high, stretching down the length of a beach. The face of the wall was featureless white stone, arranged in large rectangular blocks. Above, the sky was brilliant blue, and the air was filled with that steady, rhythmic boom and wash of the waves.
She studied the wall. On the other side of it were the memories of her decapitation, physically obstructed from her view. At the moment, having her head removed was an abstract concept. It had not happened to her. Not yet. Theoretically she could make it so that it never happened, at least as far as she was concerned. Provided she utilised her UNIS training and kept the memories at bay, locked away behind the wall, then she could potentially erase the thoughts from her mind altogether.
But that was pointless. Her beheading was in itself important intelligence. She needed to find out exactly how and why it had happened, and for that, she needed to envisage the precise circumstances and carefully, methodically, work backwards until she had the full picture.
The wall had a door now. The door was blue, like the sky. It had a metal handle on it, halfway up on the right-hand side. She reached out and opened it.
Snap.
She yanked the door closed with a stab of adrenaline and took a moment to calm herself, breathing deeply. She looked up at the sky and behind her at the sea. She imagined the warmth of the sun on her face. She was conscious of not going into too much detail, since they had been warned of the dangers of overusing the compartmentalising exercise and trapping themselves inside their own heads. But for the moment, she was fine.
Her last memory was the sound of her spine snapping in two.
She mulled this over. The act itself of having her head ripped off had presumably lasted only a handful of split seconds, and it was difficult to remember the exact moment anyway as she had passed out. Clearly, whenever she had fallen unconscious, it was not until after her spine had been severed. It was not in itself a particularly useful piece of information, but recognising the most gruesome part of her death and immersing herself in it was the best way to become detached (ha!). The sooner it no longer bothered her, the sooner she could concentrate on more important things.
She took a deep breath and opened the door again.
Snap.
A sound like the skin being ripped off an orange.
A tree branch, dark brown, slightly lichenous, slicked with rain, slicing towards her neck.
Tropical forest, clinging to the mountainside like a fungus, sagging under the monsoonal rain.
Flying through the hot, humid air. Freefall. UNIS-issue Mantix has no descent-arrestor hardware. Intense, pervasive frustration and terror, irrespective of sedation.
Arms flailing, legs pistoning. Estimated chances of survival nosediving.
Sedation. Impact-trauma protocols initiated.
Lift off.
Nanogel matrix force-impact distribution. External conditions hostile.
Shockwave, supersonic impact detonation. Velocity: ten thousand metres per second.
Kinetic impact, source orbital. Heart rate spike.
Light.
Running, heavy footfalls on regolith. Sweating, screaming, high blood pressure.
A wave of vertigo overcame her, and she took a break.
*
She had opened thirteen doors in relatively quick succession. UNIS recommended a cautious approach, but once she had moved past the decapitation, the rest was actually not that bad. It was quite surprising how quickly the memories had returned – although perhaps not, when she thought about it, since it had been her neck, rather than her head, which had been struck with the full force of the blow.
She continued to control her breathing and slowly brought herself back from the compartmentalisation exercise, like surfacing from the bottom of an ocean. Once she was fully free of it, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a while, letting the memories sink in. She went over them again and again, this time not in the dream world but by simple conscious recall. It was phase three – reinforcement.
After a while she began to feel slightly exhausted. It took a lot of brain power, after all, to compartmentalise, immerse and reinforce. She decided she would get up and explore for a bit while she waited for Doctor Lee to reconnect her IHD, so she climbed out of the bed.
The room she was in was one of many, she soon discovered. She was actually in some kind of mansion, with long, ornately carpeted corridors, large, luxurious state rooms and beautiful gardens that surrounded the house and ran all the way down to the seafront. She spent what must have been a few hours going through all the rooms. The entire mansion was deserted, though richly decorated and obviously modelled on a real building. No VR architect would have spent that long imagining all the detail from scratch. Outside, the air smelled of saltwater and the wash of the waves reminded her of her psychological exercises. She felt soft grass beneath her feet and relished in the false breeze, though as she drew closer to the ocean, she could see that a lot of it was actually static, and the wave effects were poorly rendered in places. Even the grass, on closer inspection, was obviously pixelated. It had the unwelcome effect of reminding her of the fact that it was all just a simulation, a computer program hosted by the medical bay’s central computer.
She made for a paved area that was surrounded by an overgrown trellis and sat on a bench flanked by a pair of stone lions. Despite the fact that none of it was real, it was relaxing, and she soon found herself dozing in the warm sun, listening to the waves. When she woke up, the sun had dipped to sea level, and the sky was reddening. She had not meant to fall asleep, but felt quite rested, and so decided it probably was not a bad thing. She sat up to discover Doctor Lee sitting on the bench opposite her.
‘Hello, Miss Staerck,’ he said. ‘I am Doctor Lee’s personality construct.’
She was surprised at how unsurprised she was – almost as if the virtual representation of a doctor appearing out of thin air was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Hello,’ she said, never really sure how to talk to these things. In Ultraporn it was easy, since there you could be almost manically abusive with no consequence. This was different, like she had to be more… civilised. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Doctor Lee’s personality construct smiled. ‘I’m just here to inform you that the connection to your IHD has been restored. You should be able to access it immediately.’
‘Oh. Thank you,’ she said.
‘My pleasure,’ the personality construct replied. ‘Any luck with your memory? Given your conditioning, Doctor Lee said that he expected to see improvements relatively quickly.’
‘Nothing yet,’ she said, pulling a slightly zany face as though it were all very unfortunate indeed.
Doctor Lee’s personality construct nodded unnaturally. ‘Okay. Make sure you get plenty of rest. Sleeping in this sync will have the same effect on your brain as it would in real life.’
She knew that, of course. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’
The personality construct offered an alarming impression of a smile and winked out of existence.
She sat on the bench for a while longer, enjoying the solitude. An IHD was a connection to everything and everyone, and she had never felt alone while hers had been active. Now that she had had a taste of what it was like without one, she wanted to prolong that feeling of privacy – however false it was – for a little while longer. So she enjoyed the sunset for a while and walked around the estate, relishing the warm breeze and unrealistically perfect gardens. Once more, she found herself slipping into a calm, detached mood, becoming so engrossed in the tranquil surroundings that she almost forgot how she had come to be there. Eventually the memories began to reassert themselves.
It was slow at first, a gradual retrospective that was initially free of emotion, simply a dispassionate chain of events that culminated in her death – much like watching the news. The more she thought about it, however, the angrier she became. The provar may not have killed her deliberately, but they had killed her. Her death had not been some accident: a weapon had been fired, and she had died, and in a particularly horrible manner to boot. Affront was not an emotion that sat comfortably with her naturally calm and incisive personality, but now it was pervading her. The fucking provar for Christ’s sake! A bunch of aggressive, murderous aliens, so used to getting their way that they had slain her along with four hundred kaygryn with what they no doubt considered to be impunity. The thought was so galling she wanted to scream.
She knew that she was still nowhere near ready to tackle what would be an incredibly difficult and dynamic intelligence investigation, but her fury was suddenly at the fore, smashing through her judgement like a tornado annihilating a city. She strode back to the mansion in a blind rage and burst into her bedroom, snarling ‘fucking aliens’ as she slammed the door and threw herself on to the bed. She hated this false, computer-generated body. She wanted to be out of the whole simulation, back in reality, back in her own body. The pure technology of it sickened her. Claustrophobia, like a stifling blanket, enveloped her, and adrenaline, fuelled by her anger and frustration, coursed through her bloodstream.
