Fading away [Zara]
21 Jun 2024Haraldsen
June, 3310. From the abyss. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. Every day, I feel less and less human. Less and less alive. They say it's for my own good, that they're saving me from death. But is this really living? Being hooked up to machines, wires, implants, and artificial organs? Losing parts of myself, one by one, until there's nothing left but metal and circuits?
I remember how things used to be, when I was young and free. When I had a family, a home. When I could run and laugh and play with my sister, under the blue sky and the warm sun. When we dreamed of exploring the galaxy, seeing new worlds, meeting new people. When we joined the Pilots Federation, hoping to make a difference, to fight for a better future.
But then, everything changed. The Thargoids came, and with them, the plague. A virus that no medicine could cure. A virus that ate away at your flesh, your bones, your organs, until you were nothing but a husk of pain and agony.
I was one of the unlucky ones. I contracted the plague during a mission in the Pleiades, where I encountered a Thargoid scout. I didn't think much of it at the time, I thought it was just a minor injury. But soon, I started to feel the symptoms. Fever, nausea, fatigue, headaches. And then, the lesions. The horrible, green, oozing lesions that covered my body, that burned and itched and bled.
I knew I was doomed. There was no cure, and no escape. I wanted to die, to end the suffering. But they wouldn't let me. They said they had a solution, a way to save me. They said they were working on a project, a secret project, that could reverse the effects of the plague. They said they needed volunteers, people who were willing to take the risk, to undergo the procedure, to become something more. Something better.
At first, I refused. I didn't want to be their guinea pig. I didn't want to lose my humanity and my identity. I wanted to be me. But they were persistent. They said it was my only chance - my last resort. They said they could restore my health.
And so, I agreed. I signed the papers, and took the leap. I let them take me to their laboratory. I let them put me under, I let them cut me open, I let them change me.
And they did. They changed me. Bit by bit, piece by piece, they replaced my organic parts with synthetic ones. They removed my infected tissues, my damaged organs, my broken bones. They implanted me with wires, chips, sensors, and processors of unknown origin. They connected me to computers networks. They upgraded me, modified me, optimized me.
They transformed me.
And now, here I am. A cyborg. I can do things I never could before. I can fly faster, fight harder, think smarter. I can access information, communicate with machines, control systems.
But at what cost? What have I become, in order to live?
Tomorrow, they say, they'll upload the final piece of my cybernetic software. I'll be autonomous, a fusion of flesh and machine. But will I still be me? Or just a vessel for their experiments?
I don't know. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know if I'm still human. I don't know if I have a soul, or if I ever did.
I don't know if I can die, or if I ever should.
I don't know anything.
I don't know anything.
I don't know anything.