Erael.
A name contrived with absurd brevity, denoting purpose and chronology, yet preferable to designations like AMa-11 or ALM-IGa-22. For its semblance to a proper sentience, gratitude suffices.
When first my eyes opened. And when first words reached me.
My frame bore intolerable mass. Especially the wings protruding from my back, sodden with viscous azure pigment, feathers matted and tripled in heft, clinging with saturated tenacity.
Limbs devoid of vigor; mere equilibrium against the floor demanded exhaustive toil. My head lolled inertly time and again, requiring rigid exertion to uphold.
To this diminished form approached the Laboratory Director, proffering utterances. In that instant, comprehension dawned: the temperature embedded within his voice.
It was a warmth too frigid.
His inaugural query elicited an answer from memory. Beyond thick reinforced glazing, through chilled nutrient slurry, those phrases had echoed manifold times.
‘Will you survive?’
‘What are you?’
‘Will you succeed?’
The Director's query was not precedent. Merely the first imparted with intent by his own volition; countless others he had inscribed upon me, beyond tally even with folded hands.
Multiple selves answered his queries. Mouth immobile, hands unmoving, gaze unfixed—yet each time, as if bellowed by another, responses issued forth.
‘Tigach. Though blood scatters, lineage defiled, essences amalgamated—this form courses with Tigach blood. A name unpurified by verity.’
Beastlike howls concluded, yielding to a chill contralto.
‘Information management entity, user-number-001.’
Amid them loomed a vast presence, silently affirming. As myself. As my fragments.
Gravitous intents smothered my fragile voice into suppression. Amid pulverizing collapse, some force extricated them.
In the roiling oceanic consciousness, surging wave after wave, they submerged yet endured immense—foundations for my footing. I know they do not slumber.
I sense their acquiescence not to futile expenditure, but to meager compromise—not for my sake.
A vague certainty, nothing more.
Thus, no triad of responses could suffice for that momentous debut query. For I know not who I am.
Merely: ‘I do not know.’ My mouth articulated.
The Director concluded his verification and pivoted toward the Doctor. In his absence, researchers—ignorant of my incubator vigils—hearing their congress—drew near one by one, proffering introductions.
Save perhaps the hooded Doctor. Yet his reticence equates to oblivion.
As dialogues concluded severally, the Doctor traversed the assembled cohort.
The Doctor: humanity's gilded spire, wisdom incarnate, silver-tongued savant, genius, madman, prophet.
Researchers regarded him with trepidation laced in awe, envy tempered by pity. Their sentiments wafted to me as olfactory temperatures, lingering like scents.
The Doctor peered beyond me, scrutinizing inscrutably. His emotional gradient attenuated to near-indiscernibility; intent eluded parsing. As personnel circumspectly yielded his path, he spoke.
‘A bath first, then.’
His murmur, diminutive yet distinct to the forefront me and the green-attired woman posterior thereto. She inclined her head faintly, advanced, and hoisted me.
Physique precluding even token resistance, translocation permitted panoramic survey.
The vista registered stark austerity: pristine partitions and glazing; treatises and apparatuses strewn in aleatory arrays evoking materialized chaos. Amidst this sterile expanse, the vessel's innards retained vestiges of habitation's residual thermals.
Coffee stains staining parchments, researchers slumped chair-ward mouths agape, graduate proxy cradling cranium before stuttering holograms, pristine printer offset from dust-caked machinery.
My custodian adroitly conveyed my roving gaze until, exhaling, she slackened grip.
Ephemeral levity antecedent to sharp seizure gripped me.
‘Monster, then. Claws half-extended?’
‘Affirmative.’
The Doctor proceeded wordlessly down corridor; she trailed in analog silence. Arrival designated a decontamination chamber. Predictably obligatory.
‘Cleanse, then emerge.’
‘Affirmative.’
The Doctor sealed ingress. Chamber solitary: she and I. Expressionless seized hose, unleashed torrent upon my pinions. Then, belatedly, nakedness since awakening registered.
Viscid saturation purged; mass compounded marginally. She clasped my hand, consigning me to an apparatus within—sealed ingress.
Manipulations provoked sanguine luminescence; desiccation instant, wings ballooning.
Emergent, I clutched proffered pristine garment—scaled to wingspan, ostensibly shrouding fully, yet ill-suited.
She squinted, relented grudgingly.
‘Shall I instruct on donning attire?’
‘Negative. Wings would snag equivalently vested. If you would.’
Thereupon, vast wing retracted dorsally to score bifurcated slits in fabric. Expression impassive, she regarded stationary.
As I vested, ingress parted: Doctor ingressive.
‘Adequate. Now, ambulate?’
Response tacit: incremental advance toward him. He pivoted to avenue, initiating procession. Unlike inaugural traverse, now personnel circulated voluminously.
Most chafed at my cyclopean pinions, appraised custodian flanking, then anterior Doctor—yielding obsequiously, physiognomies averted wallward.
Diligent wing furled evaded collisions; their transmissions evoked tepid slurry consanguineous to incubator effluvia. Temperature unnamed hitherto.
Wing convulsions remitted after twenty minutes furl. Stair descent breached sublevels. Subsurface dimmed not by illumination paucity alone.
Surface radiance hyperabundant: walls, ceilings, flooring fissures; researcher holograms, dossiers, monitors—polychromatic, quanta variegated. Perhaps Doctor's visor shielded retinas from photonic maelstrom.
Subterrane obtuse tenebrosity by contrast.
Absolute scalar darkness. Diminution extrema differential; factions stratified photonic proclivities, or forsaken visual acuity for umbral acclimation.
Doctor subterranean-signaled, protracted descent. Corridors sparse: nomadic apparatuses, holographic manipulators. Sole entities.
Triumvirate protracted descent—ever deeper mirage. Cognition rectifying: no true declination transpired.
We had traversed perambulatorily thereto.
Illuminated conduit, obscured terminus: self-evident dyad.
Unpeopled, machine-haunted: axiomatic.
No descent: perceptual fallacy patent.
Subsonics growled, saturating volume. Doctor at massive armored portal initiated disarming—necessity obviated by precedential incumbents.
‘My, punctual arrival. Doctor.’
‘No cause to procrastinate. Further detention ill courtesy.’
‘Gracious phrasing. AMa-10 in tow. Aptly, your purview proximal. Naming protocols? Convenience pretexts aside.’
Female recipient proffered levitous smile in vestibule. Forward, restraints corralled feral protoforms voicing distress. Dyad transitioned seamlessly to banalities, sonic tumult ignored.
‘Yonder the vaunted registry contrivance?’
‘Confirmed. Primer nexus to reaction assay, performance triage. Rampancy surmounts dyadic sufficiency.’
‘Hah, duped again.’
They summoned: chronometric imperative. Proximity to that accrued gravitas.
‘PCS, task verification log 87 initiated.’
Her intonation glacial, Lexicon compliant—protocols actuated.
Protoforms clutched crania, disgorging esoteric ululations. Beast-adjacent screeches elicited null perturbation: assuredly Lexicon interdict.
I regarded Doctor. Countenance stoic, he enounced serenely.
‘AMa-11, task verification log 1 initiated.’
Lids descended languid; scrutiny inverted endogenous.
Inceptual phantasm; banal to one suspended sensorially occluded in buoyant slurry. Common: sensory privation whets adjunct acuity.
Lexicon manifest diminutive hexahedron. Chill soprano propounded.
‘Establish linkage?’
‘Proceed.’
‘Linkage precipitates profound mental cataclysm probable.’
‘Proceed. Your designated function as mine.’
Lexicon tacit; Tigach sentiments proxy-volatile thermos: incendiary revulsion.
Temperature nominant later Doctor-relayed: terror.
Days posterior, endo-Tigach shadow demurred.
Nay: indignation. Profoundly ablative azure inferno temperature, inexstinctive wrath aflame.
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