I wake up. Such a sensation… like no other I’ve experienced before. I am suspended but no string is pulling me. Inside a womb I am held.
A subtle humming fills the liquid I am breathing, I try to open my eyes but they were never closed: the darkness is all around me. The humming turns into vibrations resonating throughout the womb, I now know how small it is, only holding my body.
I get goose bumps on the back of my neck, alike static electricity during a storm. I doze off… Again?… The memory of a storm pouring rain, safely waited out under the porch of a wooden ranch… A lightning strike flashes before my eyes, I’m not on the ranch, it’s happening in the moment: “Upload complete. Welcome to your new consciousness.”, a soft and melodious voice rings through my head.
It is faint, but I hear a muffled buzzing. It is not far, nor is it close. There is no distance, only intensity rising.
The buzz turns into a scratching and grinding sound. And now my skull is echoing a screaming voice, as loud as those primitive petrol engines. I try to find which one of my memories it is attached to, but it seems to exist on its own. Why would my subconscious inflict such wrenching migraine upon itself. A sudden outburst of anger takes a hold of me: “WILL YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH?!?”, I… we yell internally. The screaming stops.
“SHUT YOUR FUCKING PROTEIN TRAP!”, a nasty hoarse voice blasts from the void. As my limbs move uncontrollably, I am met with resistance trying to take control of… myself?
“Once you’re done fishing for control, I got business to attend to.”, the parasitic noise follows. Our struggle goes on for some time until I realise we could keep on fighting for all eternity; or is it the foreign being pushing such a thought?
In any case I completely abandon myself to his forceful grip so we can move forward. As soon as I do, the static sensation on my neck disappears and the womb starts to evict my… our body.
The same melodious voice wakes me up from my slumber: “Exiting hyperspace.”. My eyes are met with a colourful cloud peppered with lights on a endless ether. I detach my gaze from the immensity and begin to acknowledge the infinitesimally smaller space I am in.
There seems to be no limit between me and Space, I extend my hand to look for the glass… a screen suddenly comes on: “Proceed to checkpoint” is written above a map that the slightest shift of my hand seems to move. I see my ship and not far from it a blinking red dot. I lower my hands to my sides in a absent minded manner and grab both joysticks, the screen changes to a vortex-like figure I need to align to in order to get to my target. The silence fades to an ever increasing humming as the stars begin to move around the cockpit. A bright white glow appears on the right and draws a trajectory alike to that of sunset to sunrise. Suddenly the ether sky and its nothingness is chased by a hazy blue halo. As it grows more enormous by the second, an unease begins to fill me: I feel even more cramped than before inside the walls of the cabin. “There’s only blue”, I whisper.
But there is not time to think, static from a radio starts pouring throughout the ship: “Glad you’re here, Beno”, a crackling voice erupts. Without realising we’re now hailing back: “I know I’m late. I ran into some… issues.”. We then manage to man the ship to turn around and face stars serving as a background to the spectacle of a raging battle ; we reluctantly push a handle and move towards the white trails chasing one another all the while projecting strokes of lights. We now engage combat entangled in a web of white trails and when we cross one, small particles of ice stick to the windshield.
Everything ramps up to incredible velocity; we move upwards while turning starboard using the handle, then pivoting the ship on its axis weighing in on with my body to come face to face with another ship rapidly approaching. In a matter of seconds I pull a trigger, flashes shoot at the target before we evade the coming attack and continue onto the next adversary. “PAPA BENO IS HERE, MINIONS!” we yell over the radio. “Don’t loose your grip, kid.”… Kid?… “We’re not done yet”, replies the woman, “We’re still outnumbered two to one.”. Onto the next trail blazer, as much as the first swings caught me by surprise shoving me about, similar to being in the passenger seat, I am now dancing with the ship, composing with every breaking maneuver we undertake. We dodge fire from a “dust sucker”, we mutter under our breath, but get to destroy our prey in an explosion of fire and steam. As the last enemy blows to pieces, the crackling voice speaks again: “OK, let’s rendezvous down there.”. We pass the debris field and head towards the planet. Excessive jolts from the descent and I faint.