Everything burns, all you can feel is intense pain as your senses return and your lungs suddenly remember that they should not be filled with liquid. You fall forward out of your cryopod and hit the floor, barely able to keep on your hands and knees as you puke up what seems like gallons of the strange bluish liquid. You look up, blinking away the ice crystals that still clung to your body as your brain tries to make sense of the mess it's been given.
It takes a moment but your eyes focus, and soon after sound returns as well. You can see several others violently flopping out of cryopods nearby as the entire place shudders with the intensity of an earthquake.
" Warning failure in cryogenic array. "
" Warning multiple hull breaches detected, multiple unknown life forms onboard. "
The voice deafened your currently sensitive ears, but you slowly began to remember. " Secure. Protect. Contain. " that was your mission in this event. Secure the subjects, protect the subjects, contain the subjects. You rise slowly, ignoring just how many of your fellow officers lay still and unbreathing, crumpled in heaps at the foot of their pods.
___
Pain, it was not the cryoburns that bothered you so much, but the sudden and overwhelming flood of information entering your brain. Thinking was a far gone dream, only the animalistic urge to survive kept you going. There was a second voice in your ear, a quiet and gentle tone that brought warmth.
" Calm down, or i'll never be able to restore basic motor functions.
You did your best, but it hurt so much, like thousands of tiny insects nibbling away just under your skin. Slowly, ever so slowly the pain faded to nothing as you slowly rose to your feet, and a small image flickered to life in the corner of your sight. The image flickered away when you looked straight at it, but cleared up when you focused on something else. For a moment it was an empty window, but after a few seconds a warm smile filled it followed by it's owner, a strikingly beautiful woman with blue eyes and blonde hair.
" Just calm down, you may be experiencing minor temporary brain damage. Just keep calm while I try my best to fix what I can. "
You try to speak, but are rewarded with an embarrassing amount of drool and only pained grunts and gurgles.
"speech is beyond you right now, so is coherent thought. Just keep calm and let MOTHER fix everything. "
_-_-_-_-_-_-_
" So, project Alpha, what can you tell me about it in your own words. "
" Uhh, are you sure we should record this? I mean I understand what you want from me bu- "
"Just answer the question. "
" O-okay. Project Alpha, in the simplest terms, is an experiment melding human brain tissue and complex experimental AI. "
" Good, but why are the subjects all so young? "
" The brain is a stubborn organ. Previous tests with fully grown subjects ended.... Unfavorably. We use young subjects and add the augmentation slowly as the brain continues to develop so that it has a chance to accept the new information as if it had been there all along. "
" And yet as you previously stated, the failure rate is near 98%, with those not lucky enough to pass away, going insane when their body rejects the technology. "
" we still have trouble near the end, the Ai programming can be too much for many subjects. The end result with the surviving 2% however is extremely favorable. Human beings with computing capability rivaling that of even the most powerful computer, all currently under the watchful eye of our MOTHER AI. Through MOTHER the successful subjects can communicate between eachother and share data, a hivemind if you will. "
" This augmentation, it also moves past connection to the MOTHER AI. Enhanced strength, tissue regeneration... What happens if these veritable superhumans decide enough is enough? "
_____
So, there it is. Our characters, a mix of ship staff and Alpha subjects are stranded orbiting an alien planet with something very unfriendly onboard with them. I have more to this but am going to see if I catch some interest. Questions welcome and expexted. My schedule is strange but I am keeping an eye on the thread unless otherwise noted.
