When I disconnected and opened my eyes in the “real world” again, I looked into the waiting faces of Irene, Asami and Opisthos.

“What happened?” the lady of the bunch asked.

“Did you manage to connect and did you get access?” the Grey basically talked over her.

I held my hands up to stop them from barraging me with questions. I felt all woosy. You know, like a crazy VR roller coaster on speed for 5 times woozy. Like vertigo mixed with cotton balls in your ears and nose while wearing the eye corrections of your near blind friend. Oddly specific you say? No, never ever have done this.

“Hold up! Give me a moment?”

“K… Malcolm you okay?” Irene asked. I hate to stereotype it but leave it to the girl to figure out something is wrong.

“Just woozy, like all my senses are off.”

“Asami, you monitored the connection. Did you see him being attacked somehow?” Irene demanded to know.

“Ugh…” I groaned and tried to get myself into a sitting position on the floor. “No attack…”

“No, I did not see anything that looked like an attack. There was a lot of bandwidth requested but it was consistent, nothing like I would expect if there had been an attack. And the requests were denied.”

“Guys, it wasn’t an attack.” I made myself heard over the discussion. “I spoke to the AI of the ship…”

“There is an intact relic AI. By the suns of Miraz. That is amazing. What was it like?”

“Not now Opisthos!” Irene reigned the enthusiastic Grey in.

“Yes, the ship has an AI. Actually it is called a personality core…”

I proceeded to explain what the conversation had been like. The disembodied feeling, the conversation, the scans the AI had performed. Optisthos was basically vibrating with excitement, not that I could see him very well but I got the feeling from all of the questions he tried to throw in just to be silenced by Irene over and over so she could get the whole story. Asami on the other hand was completely quiet and just took all the information in.

“Captain, can you please go back to the part where the AI did adjustments?”

“Sure although I don’t know much.” I pulled up the interaction log. Funny enough, my HUD was completely clear and I could interact with it perfectly fine. Nothing like the sensory weirdness I was experiencing otherwise. “I got two messages about adjustments. The first was for technological deviation and the second one was for brain wave deviation.”

“I wonder… did you just pull up your logs?” the engineer asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Can you interact normally with them?”

“Yeah. There is no weird sensation or blurriness or whatnot. Just like always.”

“I believe that when the AI connected and did adjustments, said adjustments were made in your neural link.”

“What do you mean?” Irene asked before I could.

“How much do you know about the function of the neural li… nevermind, I asked that already and know the answer. What you describe as the HUD, others call the system windows. It goes by a few more but these are the two most common ones. The neural link is, apart from a connection point, a computer that is directly linked to our brains and draws on unused neural mass for additional computing power. It is adapted to the brain it was implanted into and provides direct communication. The HUD has no physical representation. It isn’t processed through your eyes or anything because it only exists in your neural link and your brains.

“What I am saying is that the HUD is something that is created by your brain and doesn’t need sensory input. So it always works fine. However, all sensory input is piped through the neural link. For example if you see Second waving his hand. This input doesn’t go from your optic nerve directly to your brain anymore. Instead it is rerouted to the neural interface and then processed.”

Damn, that was in depth for a game explanation. But there was a niggling thought underneath it as I processed the information. Since my n-link in the game was supposedly the same as in real life, I wondered if it was the same there. And what would that mean? Someone with access to the link would be able to literally hack my brain. There were enough examples of ‘man in the middle’ hacks. The problem was that this wasn’t just between two endpoints but between my senses and my brain. Someone could make me hear, see, taste, etc. whatever they wanted. What a fucking scary thought. I shivered.

“Okay, I understand that. But why is everything suddenly out of whack?”

“I believe that when the AI made the technological and brain wave adjustments it didn’t do so on its end of the line. It made changes to your hard and software.”

“Come again?”

“Your n-link was tampered with by the AI so you could interface with it correctly. But this change has thrown your signal processing out of alignment.”

“Fuck me sideways!” I cursed. “And how do we fix this?”

I think he shrugged. My vision was too fuzzy to see it properly.

“I don’t know. This is the first time I am hearing about this. I didn’t even know it was possible to alter a neural link in a living host.”

“Void crap! I need to talk to Nyx!”

“I wouldn’t recommend connecting the same way again considering the changes already made.” Asami commented.

“Into the ship then and have a conversation.”

“You are going in?” Opisthos was his overeager self.

“Yes, but only Irene and me for the moment. You guys hold the line here and try to come up with a way to fix me in case the AI refuses or can’t do it.”

I stood up. Or at least I tried to but with my equilibrium all shot it was only thanks to Irene grabbing my arm that I actually managed.

“Thanks. Let’s go and see if we can get me fixed.”

“You think it’s a good idea to ask the AI that messed you up in the first place to fix you?” she asked on a direct com line. It sounded like someone was speaking through a water filled megaphone.

“No. But I have no other ideas and I can’t do anything in this state.”

“What if you get even more fucked up?”

I chuckled drily. “Leave it to you to call me fucked up.”

“Idiot, you know what I mean.”

“I do and I appreciate you for still caring. Remember, just a game though.”

“Yeah, you are right.”

I felt some of the tension leaving her body as she processed that statement. The thing was that I was no longer sure that there was a clear dividing line between what was the game and what was reality. I mean I generally had the hardest time remembering that I was ‘just playing a game’ half the time. And now the piece of hardware that allowed me to connect to the game had been fucked with from within the game. For a moment I thought of initiating emergency logout to see if these changes would affect me in the real world too. But then I decided against it. I would do it if I couldn’t be fixed by Nyx and then have a serious conversation with the developers of this game.

When we reached the shield around the ship instead of being repelled we simply passed forward. That however did not apply to Opisthos who had followed up excitedly and had his second face plant against the shield bubble.

A hatch in the side of the ship opened, spilling light into the cavern. A moment later a gangway extended and assembled itself. The hatch was a good five meters off the floor and we would have had to jump in the hopes of overcoming the low gravity of the generators we had placed and hope that we hit the hatch. But that was no longer necessary.

We shambled up the gangway. The moment we passed the door we were greeted by the view of a corridor that must have run from one side of the ship all the way to the other. The sides of it were slightly slanted and gave it a more organic feel, wider on the bottom and narrower on the top. The floor itself was covered in some material that reminded me of running tracks. You know the rubbery material that imitates gravel and has a slight spring to it. I mean it either had a spring to it or my perception interference was getting worse. A meter and a half or so ahead there was an intersection in the corridor.

As we passed the hatch we were greeted by Nyx’s voice. The same I had heard during the faithful connection attempt.

“Welcome to the Nyx. Visitors Malcolm Solo and Irene Adler have been registered. Please be aware that you have access to all areas marked yellow and green. Limited bridge access has been granted to Malcolm Solo only. Entering or attempting to enter all areas marked not yellow or green will result in immediate withdrawal of privileges and the activation of defense measures.”

Promptly two lines lit up in the previously white corridor walls, one green, the other yellow. Or gold or something.

“Is that her? The AI?” Irene asked.

I was about to answer her after processing the question but Nyx beat me to the punch.

“Yes, I am the persona core of the ship. I am in a way what you describe as an AI.”

“You messed up my friend and now you are going to fix him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Malcolm said that you made adjustments to his link and his brain or something. Now his sensory input is messed up. Fix it!” there was open hostility in Irene’s voice.

I was surprised at the vehemence with which she was demanding Nyx sort me out. I mean I knew she cared but this seemed beyond a caring friend or even a caring ex. Some conversation to have later.

“I do not know what could have happened. I adjusted his tech and neural connections so the information processing is smoother and faster. Otherwise it would have been impossible to conduct the necessary scans and grant access.”

“Well the access won’t help if the captain of a ship can’t stand on his own two feet now will it?”

“Temporary access to Medical has been granted. Please follow the blue line on the corridor wall.” the not entirely human sounding voice of Nyx told us.

A blue line lit up, adding to the others on the wall.

We shuffled along to another intersection, this one T-shaped, meaning a corridor branched off to our left. Looking down that way, we saw that the walls were no longer white but covered nearly halfway in green color, broken up by over a dozen doors in white. On the wall to our right was a ladder inset that led up to the deck above us and through a hatch to what was below us.

“Please use the ladder on your right to climb to the upper deck. Automatic deck transfer has been disabled due to energy saving measures.”

“Can you make it up that way Malcolm?”

I nodded. And regretted doing so. My brain seemed to fly around in my head.

“Uh yeah, I guess. It’s only like three meters or so.” I replied after looking up the ladder.

Irene went first, then I climbed up. The reason being that if I slipped and fell I didn’t want to knock her down with me. Not that it would have been a huge problem in the low gravity environment but we didn’t need to chance it. Instead I had asked her to move ahead so she could help me when I got to the next deck.

I made it. It wasn’t pretty and I slipped twice and Irene had to give me a hand to pull me all the way up but we made it. We were standing in another four way intersection with identical corridors running in each direction. The blue line ran along a wall that led us back in the direction of what we had figured was the front of the ship. It stopped on a door to our left which opened automatically as we approached.

Inside was the most futuristic looking Med bay I had ever seen. Not that I could see too much or too well. But there was an examination table right in the center with some consoles around. There was a hood that would close over the bed which was currently up. There were also things that looked like tanks, two pods similar to the cloning chambers I had seen in the CLON office and two pods that reminded me of cryosleep caskets. Or you know, what sci-fi director’s popular idea of them was. Actually they reminded me a little of the gaming capsule I was currently in. I mean I had watched how people were pulled out of those.

“Please lay on the diagnostics table and remove your vac suit helmet.”

I climbed onto the table with Irene’s help and also with her helping hands I removed the suit’s helmet. Only after I had taken a few breaths of stale air did it occur to me to check the environment sensors. Well, too late now.

The lid closed over me and dim green lights came on illuminating the interior.

“Initiating deep scan.” Nyx’s voice intoned.

I must have passed out. Again. Or fallen asleep. I only became aware of my surroundings as the lid was lifting again.

I looked at Irene but asked both her and Nyx: “What’s the verdict doc?”

While Irene shook her head, it was the AI that answered: “It seems I have made conclusions from the available data at the time that were incorrect. Following these conclusions I made adjustments that were not warranted."

Wait, did the AI sound… guilty? Embarrassed? Weird.

“Okay, now what? How do we roll back the changes.”

“I am sorry mister Solo, there is no way to roll these changes back. The only way is to adjust your body to accommodate these changes.”

“Adjust my…” I was actually speechless. What the fuck. Character makeover?

“Nyx walked me through the diagnostic process and I was actually the one pressing the buttons. Now, I am not a medical professional, much less a Neuroscientist. But what I gathered it looks like the adjusted n-link is no longer compatible with your current brain physiology. That means either removing the link or adjusting the brain.”

“You want to let the AI dig around in and change my brain?”

“Or get the link out.”

“How about you just shoot me and I’ll respawn?”

“Nope. Discussed it over the coms with Ralgau and the two Nerds. That might have worked directly after you came out from your initial conversation with Nyx but by now the parameters for your CLON contract are updated.”

“Fuck! And there is no other way?”

I really disliked the idea. The AI messing with my brain is the thing that got me here in the first place. So my motivation for more of that was understandably low. Irene just shook her head.

“Like I said, not a professional but from what Nyx explained to me, it’s the only way.”

“Fuck! What do I do?”

“Please remove your vac suit completely and any clothing worn underneath. Then please step into one of the Tissue Rebuilding Pods.”

A light lit up around the base of one the pods that looked like gaming capsules. The lid opened and I saw a familiar blue’ish, slimy surface.

This was getting fucking ridiculous. I felt like in that old movie 'Inception'. I had laid down naked into a pod like this one in the real world to enter a game and now I was entering the same pod in the game to… what exactly? Get my brain fixed?

“This is just a game. This is just a game.” I mumbled under my breath to calm myself down. It didn’t work. For some reason I was on the verge of a full blown anxiety attack. Something about this situation made me completely freak out. Then I remembered something that I had read some years ago and it stuck with me.

"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass through me. When the fear has gone, there shall be nothing. Only I will remain."

Yeah, don’t blame me for taking comfort from science fiction. I was fucking living it right now. I kept up the mumbling while Irene helped me strip. Good thing she had seen all the goods before and there was no awkward moment.

Then I stepped into the pod. The lid closed as I felt the rubbery, slimy, squishy surface on my back. The same green lights came on. Which helped. I don’t think I would have handled it well to be in total darkness right now.

“Administering anesthesia.”

“Anes…” I wanted to ask. Nobody had told me anything about that. But before I could finish that sentence darkness found me again.