By David C. Daoust
Major was finally coming to terms with this strange new reality. Really, everyone was. Once the ‘Arklight Accord’ had been devised— all conflict, throughout the city-station, came to an end. The ‘true scions of Ergos’ had stopped the Wraiths from attacking, long enough, for the other parties involved to suss through the mess. All thanks, Major had been informed, to the actions of one wise little boy.
For Major, this whole world was new; he just had to wrap his head around the idea that, that centipede, was actually there to help him. Yet, for everyone else, well, they had to make little changes. The kids living in the middle of the city, previously known as Wraith’s– they were called ‘Wards’ now. And the strange being he’d met, in that dark building, was being referred to as a ‘Hollow’; or maybe, ‘the hollow’, Major wasn’t sure. Most importantly- these ‘natives’ of the Lost Ark, weren’t the enemy. They were just more people in the same boat as the rest of them. The same boat lost in a stark white abyss of nothingness, known as the Everywhere, which could, at any moment, collapse… or so he was told.
Everyone was looking to Dr. Sun to get them out.
Major had strange feelings for Dakota- confusing to say the least. There was this nagging echo at the back of his mind. Like an absence, he couldn’t really explain. No matter what he was doing, Major found himself preoccupied with thoughts of her (even when eluding a giant metal centipede through a ghost city). He’d thought, for a while there, that he was in love with her. It didn’t quite feel the same as it had in the past, but there were plenty of poets, throughout the ages, that claimed it was different every time. For a brief time, when he first found out she was alive and well, he had accepted the idea, could not wait to see where it may go. This was before he found out the whole of it. The fact that every human that was ‘installed’ in the Uber-Brain, had had this same experience. Everyone, man or woman, was preoccupied with thoughts of one, Dakota Sun, since the moment they were freed. Major didn’t like it. It was like he was tricked. Tricked into feeling something, and then finding out… it was nothing- a side effect. A side effect of something he did not understand.
Strange new reality, indeed– living alongside Wards, Red Faction bots, and what passed for human around here (That is to say, one eared people, with cybernetic sockets embedded in their skulls, all suffering from a broken heart, and a strange ‘absence’ which they could not quite explain). Even Suzanne, who had avoided being strapped into the one mind herself, seemed changed by the experience of the strange new dimension. Never would Major have imagined Suzanne Otomo working alongside communist robots, that were hell bent on fixing all the worlds, and all their problems, asked or no… Finding out they were the centipede, the whole time, was almost comical.
Major made his way, through the long twisting corridors of the Red Faction ship, to the laboratory. He really had no interest in seeing Dakota. More than that, he had no interest in feeding that little part of his brain that wondered where she may be, or what she may be doing. It was annoying, It was not real; There was no relationship there.
Entering the lab, he could not help but hide a scowl as she stepped down out of the Holostage.
“Major?” Dakota said from behind a suddenly, bright red face.
Why she had blushed, was beyond him.
“Dr. Sun,” Major stoically acknowledged her from behind a firm jaw and grim face.
Why she studied his face so closely, was beyond him as well. He could almost feel her sink a bit with what she read there.
“You too, huh?” Dakota asked. It was clear she was seeing the same reaction as every other human she had come across, since they had been freed.
Major’s façade crumbled with the question. When he was sent to the lab, he had summoned up quite a bit of will power to hide his faux feelings from her. All of which, he knew, with that one question, was unfair to the woman. She had not been put in that situation by choice. She did not put them in the situation either. She could not know, what they all felt.
Truth was, the liberated, were more forgiving of the Wards, that actually delivered them to the droids, that did the deed for Ergos, than Dakota. A victim as well.
The good doctor had not come through the experience without damage of her own. Becoming that singular controlling entity, of so many minds, networked together, had left her… messed up. This insight hit him at once. Thus, that crumbled façade led to a shift in attitude.
“How are you?” Major asked, softly, seeing the woman at last, and not the image of some villainous brainwasher; an image that had taken root in his mind as he puzzled through the experience.
“I…” Dakota stopped and reread his face, jaw went solid as she dismissed him, “I have too much to do.”
With that she walked over to one of the work stations, started click-clacking at keys.
Major studied her back for a moment, wondering what was going on in her mind… did he have a right to? It did not make sense. He could not get a grip, if he cared for her, or if he just… suffered from some weird side effect.
Strange new reality strikes again– A being of solid light sidled up next to him. It murmured at him…
Suzanne had told him about it, her… whatever. The only way Dakota could reclaim her mind, was to create a second body for her overpowered subconscious to control. It was a strange being of solid light, named Dop- that, now, worked alongside Dakota in the lab. Suzanne mentioned it was bizarre, yet, he agreed, it was Dakota. He felt like he got caught red handed- for thinking about a girl that never had nothing to do with him… which puzzled him further.
Suddenly, he heard the gravelly voice of Vincent, “Whoa! Hey now. Back to work…” The old bot, in a little girl form, hurriedly got between him and the solid-light form. A form that did not seem to want to be pulled away.
“Dop!” Dakota said as she spun about… red again.
“I got her, I got her…” Vincent reassured Dakota, then turned to Major questioningly, “We weren’t expecting you down here…?” As in- What the hell are you doing here?
“I was sent here,” Major explained, “Orders came through. Here I am.”
Major looked at both of them, from their expression, it was clear– they had no idea what orders he was referring to.
“Damnit, Dop,” Dakota muttered just low enough for it to register in Major’s mind, who it was, exactly, that got him here.
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