[ Name: Katare ]

[ Race: Human ]

[ Level: 1 (0/100) ]

[ Class: None ]

[ HP: 1/10 ][ HP/h: 0.01 ]

[ MP: 0/10 ][ MP/h: 0.01 ]

[ STR: 1 ]

[ AGI: 1 ]

[ CON: 1 ]

[ VIT: 1 ]

[ INT: 14 ]

[ WIS: 13 ]

[ Brain in a jar]

[ Universal Language ]

[ Catastrophic Injury ]

[ Malnourished]

[ Hypoxia]

⁂

Katare thinks she has a pretty good grasp on her current situation. It’s just a shame that this knowledge is exceptionally useless to her. From a multitude of clues, she has managed to put together a long list of reasons why she is screwed, boned, fucked, and will most likely die soon.

First, there is the fact that she is just a brain, presumably floating in a jar. This is something she is explicitly told, and for various reasons, she isn’t inclined to disbelieve the source. Like a painful scab that she just can’t leave alone, she mentally asks about her current situation once more. The blackness she is floating in is blasted apart by a blinding screen of white text on a blue background.

[ Brain in a jar; you are but a brain in a jar, your entire body removed and kept alive artificially. STR max 1, AGI max 1, CON max 1 ]

Secondly, and this one is probably a result of the first reason, she isn’t just blind. She has no bodily sensations, can’t hear, can’t taste, can’t feel, and she has the mother of all migraines. The single solace in this absolute void has been extremely interesting, however. The one sensation that she does perceive is a sense completely, totally new, and foreign. An entirely new layer of existence for her to discover. And she has found out that she can influence this layer with nothing but a firm application of her mind.

While that is pretty neat, all in all, her mental state is still pretty horrible, all things considered. She still feels herself going crazy, slowly but surely, and the lack of bodily sensations is messing with her sense of self in a big way. She does know that concentrating on the absolute void she has found herself in is not a good idea.

Instead of mentally flopping around in a blind panic, she has been zoning out. She has experienced a whole scala of alien relaxation methods, from microgravity floatation tanks to mountain-sized beds of high-tech slime. Using these experiences to channel this new situation into a form of meditation has worked surprisingly well. She had started glimpsing the new layer of reality after doing just that for a small eternity.

Since then, she's enraptured by the interplay of blue lights inside her own brain. The existential questions and life-shattering revelations that she experienced just after waking up are no more. Now, she is fully engrossed in the rather meditative past time of ‘poke the floaty sparkles.’

[ New skill learned; Meditation lvl 1 ]

The blue boxes seem to agree, so that’s nice. Blinking the screen away through the pain, it takes her another small eternity to get back into the right state of mind. The migraine in her head doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. This brings her to the third reason why she firmly believes that she is extremely and irrevocably screwed.

Thirdly, even the cheapest of base-line cerebrum support systems will perfectly support the brain it’s keeping alive with oxygen and nutrients. Under no circumstances should the person inside the system feel less comfortable than inside their own body. And Katare is not feeling very comfortable right now.

This means that she is either being kept inside an improvised containment vessel, something or someone deliberately messed with the settings, or the machine keeping her brain alive is broken. The fear of death, the dark dread that wants to put icy claws in her stomach doesn’t really take hold, as she has no stomach. Instead of twisting her guts into a painful pretzel, she manages to forget about her approaching demise without much effort.

She just sinks back into blissful forgetfulness and pokes at the strands of light in her head some more. Now and then, there are minuscule sparkles between the blue filaments of light. Much smaller than the shiny wires in her brain, it takes her a good bit of effort to see these. Sometimes, these fragments float in from the outside, or they float away from her perception range. The fact that these extremely hard to perceive shards are coming in from the outside world is a massive relief to the woman. She knows that she isn’t really in a void, that there is a world outside of her extremely limited, brain-sized perception range. But seeing the actual proof of this fact is giving her a microscopic smidgen of hope.

[ Mana Sense lvl 2 ]

To her amazement, the strands of power floating around inside her head become even clearer and more vivid. Instead of staring at glass threads floating in the wind, she now sees small shining tubes. Looking around and outside her brain allows her to see a small ocean of blue fragments. Then, she spots a new strand of power being made. In a dark corner of her mind, small blue fragments assemble themselves into a brand new glowing thread. She spends the next small eternity of meditation in quiet observation, just staring at the constellation of moving blue pinpricks around her.

It’s just a shame she keeps blacking out, though. This happens any time the blue strands start getting all riled up. She long since realized that more and more of the glowing wires keep showing up. But until she got the Mana Sense skill, she hadn’t been able to observe their creation. Once the strands reach a threshold level, they start moving like mad, and she blacks out. When she wakes up again, her brain will be once more empty of the glowing fibers.

The one thing that she isn’t able to ignore, the one thing that keeps bugging her is that there are shapes inside her brain. Her memory is starting to get hazy, but she is pretty sure that the only thing she had implanted in her head was a standard neural interface. Implanting a dense network of wires into the hindbrain of all newborn sapients is standard practice. The majority of all important technology is controlled through these implants, and they usually act as a proof of identity. It has taken her a while to realize that she has more neural implants than just the minimum, as she couldn’t understand why there are threads and shapes woven throughout her entire brain. The strands of brightness dim as they move through these spots, allowing her to begin understanding that her entire brain is wired up.

The increasing light show in her head pulls her attention away from the fact that she was operated on without her consent. The fact that she never agreed to undergo a brain-isolation procedure slips her muddled attention. The swirling lights in her mind seem to beg to be touched, so she tries poking them once more. The fact that the smidgen of power actually moves under her poke this time stuns her into mute stupefaction for a moment.

[ New skill learned; Mana Control lvl 1 ]

[ Mana Sense lvl 3 ]

[ Meditation lvl 2 ]

She is overwhelmed by the sudden stimulus of having something new to read and experience after hours of her current perfect sensory void. Then the dance of glowing fibers reaches its crescendo, and she blacks out again.

⁂

She comes to once again. Her attention is immediately drawn to the star of blue that’s blazing in the center of her being. Floating in the middle of her brain is a single unit, a quantified portion of power. Her brain is empty of all other energies and lights, and she catches the occasional flash of blue being sucked into the singular point. No more strands, no more floating fragments, just this single source. It feels both all-encompassing and very small. Like a weak little soap bubble holding the entire universe.

That’s not the only blue dot she sees, however. Somehow, even though she doesn’t have any eyes, there is a blinking dot at the bottom of her vision. Concentrating on the rather attention-grabbing light, she wonders what that’s about.

[ Secondary planar ingress point in critical danger ]

[ Assessing options ]

[ Bonus stat points remaining; N/A ]

[ Potential class change; N/A ]

[ Potential Race change; N/A ]

[ Potential skill gain; N/A ]

[ Potential apparel integration; UNKNOWN ]

Before Katare can even read the entire thing, it vanishes, another set of blue screens popping into view.

[ You have donned UNKNOWN. You have one apparel slot remaining. Activate UNKNOWN?]

[ Donning UNKNOWN. System integration of the outfit will take time-based on the complexity of outfit ]

[ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]

[ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 6% ]

Katare thinks about the unfairness of life for a bit. One moment, she is so bored she could die. The next, text flies by too fast for her to read, and the sun floating around in her head starts wobbling and dancing. The last thing she sees before blacking out again is the bright blue light popping apart, splitting into two.

⁂

[ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 100% ]

[ Apparel slot SourceForge Neural SuperVisor v2.9450AH ReQuit FullBrain integrated ]

[ Implant detected, one apparel slot freed ]

[ You have donned UNKNOWN. You have one apparel slot remaining. Activate UNKNOWN?]

[ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]

[ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 2% ]

And she shoots awake again. Looking at the blue boxes, she is suddenly extremely annoyed. She’s had many discussion with Solan about the topic of neural implants. Time and time again, she had proposed implementing the much better designed third version of the neural supervisor implant framework. Time and time again had she shown him extremely compelling reasons to do so. Time and time again, Solan had shot all of them down with a single counter-argument.

Version three of that protocol is compatible with nearly all known species, sub-species, life forms, and sapient classifications. Version two is based from the ground up on a humanoid centric protocol, based around the universe as seen through the eyes of a carbon-based life form of roughly humanoid shape. Solan seems to like non-humanoids well enough, but Katare has long since learned that he is a hardcore shapeist. She has learned many things from her supposed father. But, she has never been able to understand why he believes that a sapient is less just because their corporeal form isn’t a humanoid.

The old fool hadn’t budged a single time. Katare had expressed a fervent and deep desire to be outfitted with a version three neural link often. Yet it turns out that her old man has stubbornly put a version two model inside her head.

That’s not what is really pissing her off, though. It turns out that she is now equipped with the ReQuit Fullbrain version. A standard neural supervisor is just a web of wires implanted in the midbrain. This allows for rudimentary monitoring and neural interfacing, which is usually enough for most people.

The FullBrain version is required for low-cost virtual reality, full monitoring of the brain, full simulation of senses, or in Katare’s case, full immersive remote control of cloned bodies.

That thought sobers her up real quick, and she realizes that the remote controlling of bodies was precisely why she was implanted with the extended neural implant. Her anger at the world, Solan, the universe, and the unfairness of it all surges for a few minutes. She fumes and steams for a while, wishing bad things on all the people even tangentially involved with the removal of her body.

She feels like panting as she comes down from the rush of anger. The lack of lungs to do this with doesn’t seem to stop her from being dizzy. Nor does it stop her head from spinning. She feels nauseous as her migraine starts to worse. The single bright spot of blue light starts wobbling, suspended in the middle of her perception, and she feels her consciousness slipping again.

Only now does she realize that even though the light had split before, now there is just a singular light. It separates into two dimmer spots again, and things fade to perfect black.

⁂

[ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 100% ]

[ Apparel slot nWear Custom H2OGpat Emergency BrainPreserver integrated ]

Katare knows that things are getting real bad now. She knows that she needs to act, knows that she needs to do something to survive. Yet, despite that knowledge, the migraine is blinding at this point. The dizziness is stripping her of any remaining sense of direction.

She doesn’t even have the presence of mind to wipe away the blue screen blazing painfully and directly into the visual centers of her brain. Unable to concentrate on anything, she barely realizes that she has been reading the same two lines of text over and over.

[ Congratulations; you have generated an entirely new Tier 0 class; Technician ]

[ Would you like to select the Technician class? ]

The letters that lack any meaning are replaced by new ones. Nothing means anything anymore at this point. Where there actual doctors around, and were she still to have a body, she’d probably be declared braindead right about now.

Yet despite all that, despite the massive toxic buildup in her grey matter, and despite the near-lethal lack of oxygen, she manages to create a single thought. Forming her consciousness into he shape of a question mark take sup all her effort.

[ Technician; UNKNOWN. Skills; Mana Sense, Mana Control, Magical Interfacing, Magical Integration. ]

Instead of nodding, she imagines letting her head drop forward. The faint mental image she has of herself - more a hallucination than anything else at this point - is sitting in front of a desk, and she just lets her face smash into the bureau. The light at the end of the tunnel - the small spark of blue in her brain - beckons, and she lets go. A series of rather chipper boxes pop up in front of her, but she faints before she can even read a single letter.

⁂

The moment she wakes, she knows she will die. Her mind springs back into focus, fighting through the thick blanket of pain, drowsiness, and just general malaise that is impeding her thinking capacity. There is one big change now, and that is that she knows she will die if she doesn’t wake up. She knew that she would die before, of course. But actually knowing how long she still has to live - a mere three minutes and two seconds - turns out to be an amazing wakeup call. Even being dumped into a vat of hyper-ice is no match for the pure reality of her mortality, the countdown to her death staring her in the face.

Luckily for her, she also knows what she must do. She knows that she is currently nothing but a human brain wired up with a FullBrain Neural Supervisor. She knows that she is suspended withing the cracked and failing case of a BrainPreserver. The nutrient package in the emergency item encasing her being has long since run out. The H2OGpat designation of the BrainPreserver means that the nutrient package is highly specialized and comfortable. It also means that it runs out much quicker, and by all accounts, she long since should have starved, asphyxiated, or just died in general.

The seals that are supposed to keep the brain life-jacket closed are not properly engaged. The automatic clamps keeping the two semi-spherical halves together have only partially locked. Every single status indicator present on the piece of tech keeping Katare’s brain alive is showing red. Some are even blinking rapidly, indicating that shit is currently hitting fans with truly monstrous quantities.

And Katare finds that she agrees with this assessment. She only wonders why the initial predictive algorithms are so far off. She should have died ages ago, at least a couple of days ago, she sees from looking at the item’s internal log. The temperature regulators that are only certified for a few hours have been running for at least a week. The reservoir of synthetic cerebrospinal fluid has been empty for a while. The moisture levels inside the containment area are below life-sustainable, while the containment area itself has not been sterile for hours. The PH levels of the fluid encasing her are either too acidic or too basic; either way, it’s outside of the measurable range.

In short, shit is broken.

The only reason the piece of emergency gear that is housing Katare hasn’t completely shut down yet is a hardwired circuit. This prevents its processes from shutting down while it still registers life signs. The single part of the BrainPreserver that still works is the passive oxygenator. This is only due to the fact that it’s a passive, self-regulating module, and only needs to be exposed to fresh air to function properly.

[ Magical Integration lvl 3 ]

Suddenly, Katare realizes that she has been getting hints and tips from somewhere. All of these hints, feelings, and instinctive guesses relate to either meditation, sensing mana, or controlling mana. Not a single one pertains to what she understands to be a magical connection between her and the technology around her. She quickly realizes that while this is an interesting line of thought, she has other pressing issues to take care of.

One of these issues is the question of how it's even warping possible for her to be still alive. All her brain activity should have stopped hours ago, as she is currently in an environment unable to sustain a disembodied nervous system. She once again realizes that this train of thought is less than useful to her imminent survival. The small desire to figure out this mystery is wiped away when she remembers that she is on the clock. The remaining seconds of her life are quickly growing less and less.

It must be said that Katare has been holding out remarkably well. When confronted with her won morality in such a concrete manner, the small bout of panic that she falls into can be expected. Instead of curling up into a ball, trying to flee from the reality of her situation, she starts frantically flailing for an escape. But despite all her knowledge and education, there is little concrete she can actually do. Her current status as a brain in a broken jar is not allowing her many options, and she knows that on a deep level. Then, out of ideas and really freaking out now, she starts screaming for help.

[ Magical Interfacing lvl 2 ]

Then she realizes that there is another component in her housing that still works - a small transmitter designed to send status data and emit an emergency signal. Katare works off of pure instinct at this point, her mental state just a smidgen above conscious. Instead of carefully looking through the available protocols and pre-programmed messages that can be sent, she just starts shouting.

She feels the messages that are being sent more than anything. She also gets a faint feeling for the room. Then a massive amount of digital information is sent back. Her foggy mind isn’t even able to perceive the sheer amount of data that is being sent back to her. Like a library that’s massive beyond belief, Katare mentally takes a step back and watches as things start happening.

Somehow, she gets the feeling that she is in a large room. Behind her is a machine that feels dead, a large mass of metal that is wrong on a lot of levels. Beyond her current room, there are many more rooms, a lot of them equally wrong and dead. In front of her is a thick wall and a large doorway kept shut by even thicker doors. Off to the side are all kinds of emergency stations, one of them quickly coming towards her.

[ Magical Interfacing lvl 3 ]

Then a monstrous limb extends from the single item that's rushing towards her, and Katare shakes with fear as the massive arm envelops her. She is lifted, and her blinding migraine is overshadowed by sheer nausea for a few moments. The relief of knowing that she has no stomach and throat to throw up with is bittersweet indeed, but it only lasts for a split-second.

Then, she is falling, and she is blind. The world around her had slowly coasted into a recognizable silhouette but quickly returns to darkness. She feels herself slipping out of the BrainPreserver as the robotic limb opens it. A part of her brain catches on a sharp and damages lip, and her entire existence suddenly smells of green. Then, she sees toast in the eye of a hurricane; the universe is just a pimple on the face of god, and the-

Her brain completely slips out of the broken BrainPreserver and splashes down into a giant vat of H2OGpat synthetic cerebrospinal fluid. The world rights itself, her migraine vanishes like boiling water in the void of space, and Katare feels safe and sound for the first time in days.

And days it has been, she realizes. It’s been six standard days since her brain was expelled from the philotic linking unit that was housing her. The initial expulsion had been so catastrophic that the regulatory system overseeing the room initially ruled her a total loss. It was only when the cleanup bot meant to isolate her mortal remains registered electromagnetic waves indicating life signs that the BrainPreserver was installed around her. The emergency wrapping that the philotic linking unit had swaddled her in was not removed properly, though.

The remaining fabric getting stuck between the two halves of the BrainPreserver prevented it from sealing. This prevented it from sending the signal that the rest of the system was waiting for. So instead of being carted off to the next step in the process, she was just left on the ground.

Floating around in the small ocean of highly nutritious and perfectly oxygenated fluid, Katere realized that she has been going over system logs. All the information she is now learning comes from timestamped event loggers, dry data that's honestly just meant for statistical analysis and debugging.

[ Magical Interfacing lvl 4 ]

Somehow, she has been going through the systems inside her implants and the electronics directly around her. For a few seconds, she is extremely thankful to her math and computer science teacher. Only because of the lesson her taught her, is she now capable of making heads or tails from the weird data formats that the logs are made of. Then she remembers that the scaled lizard piece of shit is actually a pathetic being, and wills herself to forget about him.

Instead, she spends some time going through the text logs. She senses herself polling the machines around her, requesting the publicly available activity logs through the transmitter in her brain implant. Waves of binary flow through the air and she can somehow sense them all.

[ Magical Integration lvl 3 ]

Then she sees what the systems in the room have been doing. All caught up with the events of the past week; she starts noticing what is currently transpiring in the room around her. Her brain is now floating in a large mobile vat of cerebral fluid, a position usually meant for freshly disembodied brains.

The large drone housing her is slowly and gently rolling towards the far wall, where a large amount of brain-care equipment is located. Among this highly expensive set of tools and items is a series of bodies. Requesting this list, Katara knows that she has had more than enough of all the bullshit going on around her. What she now needs is time to relax and destress.

Among the large lists of possible cyborg bodies, she selects the most comfortable and natural one. She also removes all the optional features, going for a setting that will mimic her natural body as closely as possible.

Her mental finger hovers over the start button for a while, hesitating over what other features to check. She then firmly decides that the last few weeks are best forgotten. She has not made any personal gains, has not lived any experiences that she deems worthwhile, and she honestly just wants to forget about the world for a long time. She no longer wants to think about the fact that her father had her body surgically removed. No longer does she want to think about stupid skeletons, magic, and blue lights flowing around in her head.

She then selects the ‘amnesiac’ option, alongside the ‘Berry FullBionic iSheath HominoidAndroid’ body.

She feels the drone around her inject anesthesia drugs into the cerebral fluid she’s suspended in. One last change she makes to the body is to switch off all transmitters, radio controllers, and other wireless communication devices on a hardware level. Then the drugs hit her naked brain, and she slips into blissful unconsciousness.