“Hey, Al? You are seeing all my sensory data, right? Can you tell me what happened when I died in the river?” Bec preferred to talk aloud to Al. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but she felt like it kept her sane better than thinking all her words.

She was nose deep in her logs. As harrowing as it was to read about her own deaths, she knew she needed to learn from them to keep herself sure that she wouldn’t die in this timeline… or at least do something useful before she died.

Bec shuddered at the implication that she probably would die, and it was an extremely small comfort to know that her existence would be perpetuated in some other way in some other timeline. Bec preferred not to die.

Bec was grappling with the fact that there was a good chance that she’d be able to figure out what killed her and still be utterly helpless to stop it from happening. Knowing things and knowing skills are two totally different things, after all. Even if she figured out what was killing her in the stream…

“That’s the strange thing. You didn’t feel a thing until your organs started to react to the lack of blood. It was like the wounds just appeared on you without any pain at all.” Al said this with an odd air of mystery.

“Aren’t I supposed to heal faster? You can fix my concussions after all.”

“Well, yes but your healing is powered by the nanites, and the nanites are powered by your natural metabolism. I can’t patch up wounds that are too numerous without exhausting all your nutrients and calories. Sure, I could heal you faster and better if I didn’t care about your stamina, but you were waist-deep in water and I was not going to have you pass out and drown. You were hungry and, let’s be honest, Danishes are not the most nutritious thing.” Al paused. “Calorie dense, though.”

Continuing on, Al expounded, “Even if I did repair it, I’d wager it would take days before you would gain your strength back. I feel like it’s important to tell you that I can’t repair utterly destroyed complex organs and body parts so try not to get a limb torn off.”

Bec nodded. Bec hadn’t intended to lose organs in the first place but it was so important that she knew all the cards in her hand. “I appreciate the tip. So… if I had crawled out of the river faster, I might have survived?”

“You might have, yes.”

“Can you write all that down?”

“I already took the liberty.”

“Thanks. Keep doing that please.”

Bec turned to the card that she knew nothing about. Other than the chill she got whenever she said it, what was a Word? Before even that, what was her Word supposed to do? WAVE? Talk about a vague thing. Lots of things could be waves. Could I make a tsunami? What are the bounds that dictate a power like this? Bec wracked her brain for any foothold. Let’s see if I can do things with sound. That’s easy to study. I hope...

Bec started humming. Could she feel the airwaves? Her skin prickled as she started humming louder. Does this mean I’m feeling the airwaves with my body or am I going insane? I’m already insane so might as well figure out my brand of madness. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she closed her eye to focus. She clapped. In that moment, she felt like she saw something. No, it wasn’t that she saw something but more like she sensed something. Al, can you record my senses so I can see the data after I do this?

“I think I sensed what you sensed but it’s not a feeling I’m programmed to parse by default.”

I’m not “designed” to parse it either. If I learn to sense it, do you think you could tap into it as well?

“Not if I figure it out first!”

Bec’s brows furrowed. You can learn things about me before me?

“I would hope that I could figure out what you’re feeling at least as fast or faster than you. I’m an AI who is devoted entirely to mulling over your senses. If it weren’t for your senses, I wouldn’t have a window into the world.”

I think that’s true for me, too.

“Yes, but I think you take it for granted.”

Bec clicked her tongue in frustration and she felt it again. Her Word. It felt like she was feeling a mural on the wall and trying to figure out the picture by how much the sun has warmed the different shades and colors of paint. Did you feel that?

“I did and I think your metaphor sucked.”

It was a simile.

There was a pause. “I think you suck.”

Bec smiled but kept on clicking away. She was echolocating like a bat but so much worse. She couldn’t seem to grasp the image for more than an instant. Is my ability to memorize a room in an instant what’s holding me back? Not my power? What good is echolocating if I can’t navigate without constantly clicking? Actually, it would be pretty useful, but I don’t want to be clicking constantly, and I’m worried about it not working outside in the open.

“I have an idea!” Bec exclaimed after a moment. She flopped over to the nightstand where her phone rested. She pulled up an app for recording audio and hit the big red button. She clicked as loud and as fast as she could for about five seconds. “Hey Al, could you play this audio clip whenever I ask?”

“It would be my pleasure! This is exactly the kind of assistance I was designed for. Soft programming was the original planned use for AI like me, anyways!”

“Programming, eh?” Bec thought about that for a moment. “Could you loop this over and over again as well?”

“Absolutely! Would you like to name this program for easy access?”

“Call it [Echo]. Please run [Echo] right now.”

Her phone started clicking in her hand and she was getting something. It was like trying to grasp sand. Whenever she focused on making the picture of her surroundings clearer, the fuzzier it got. Also, Bec found that having to hold her phone sucked, and storing it in her pocket was even worse than nothing as it served to distract her and provided next to no info.

An added issue was discovered when Bec tried to do things with her eyes closed. She found success not walking into furniture but when she went to pour a glass of water everything went haywire. The moment the sink turned on it was like everything was static.

She was instantly left blind to her surroundings. She couldn’t even focus well enough to turn the faucet off, so she reluctantly opened her eyes to find the handle and end the noisy torrent. Worse of all, it seemed like the sound of rushing water was so disorienting, it took her a minute to get back into the feel of echolocating again. She knew that, if she intended to use this to protect herself, she would have to be able to switch to [Echo] quickly.

She also knew that this was not a blade to hone as much at it could, potentially, be an armor to don. This wouldn’t stop a vicious alien from mauling me as much as it could be something to stop it from getting the jump on me. Could she weaponize sound with this power or will it just be a support skill? Could she figure all this out before she ran out of Danishes?

Bec needed a weapon. She needed to figure out what killed her in the river. She needed to find a food source. She hoped, more than anything, that the water in her sink wouldn’t run dry, at least not before she claimed the river as her territory. Bec’s eyes scanned the room for things she could use. Metal panels on the wall that she may be able to rip off. Furniture she could disassemble. She took inventory of her luggage, backpack, and belongings in the room. A glass cup branded with the word Lauds, a toothbrush, hairbrush, phone, 5 changes of clothes, some jewelry, shampoo/conditioner, bar of soap.

Dammit, why didn’t she bring a knife or anything useful. She sourly picked up a chair and stepped out of the trailer. Bec knew it was dangerous, but she needed to put herself in some risk if she intended to survive this. Bec found a rock, more a boulder, buried in the ground about halfway between the river and the trailer and went smashing. She lifted the chair over her head and threw it down on the rock over and over, trying to break off a leg.

Finally, the entire seat splintered and cracked down the middle. She separated the halves and stepped on one of the two legs and pulled with all her strength.

*Crack*

The leg gave way in her hand. She now had a chair leg with a chunk of wooden seat on the end. Bec tried to untwist the chunk with the hope of finding a bare screw for stabbing but it just spun loosely. Bec had a crude club. Actually, now that she thought about it, she had two. It was so crude, it barely made her feel safer.

Bec gathered up the rest of the chair and laid it in a pile in front of the trailer. Maybe it’d work as firewood. Bec also used a leg to dig up a hand size round rock and left it in the pile. She figured she could use a rock like that for hammering, or she may even be able to split it into a hand ax. That was for later. The novelty of terrestrial rocks, in general, was lost on Bec as she stared at her biggest hurdle in this world. The river. She cringed when she realized that the other Bec was too busy cleaning herself to notice that a forest laid on the other side of the river.

It was a survivalist gamechanger, but she knew there was no way she’d be able to investigate the surprisingly mundane looking trees until after she figured out a way to cross this river. Was she being paranoid? Was it a fluke? No, fluke or not, I can’t afford to risk underestimating this foe. River, YOU’RE MINE!

“Hiyaah!” Bec swung her club into the rushing water with a slap. Nothing. She stuck her stick into the water and pulled it out. Nothing. Hanging over the water, she leaned in close to try to see anything in the babbling river. Bec heard a tiny splash upstream and turned her head just to see a tiny, thin fish barely jump over her. She turned her head downstream to catch the landing when she noticed her arm was bleeding.

“WAAAAH!” Bec fell back to the riverside and scrambled up the slight hill. She was bleeding profusely from a wound on her right shoulder. It looked like a damn bullet wound. As the adrenaline subsided, she lost the ability to move her arm without an unbelievable amount of pain. “AAAAAL, THIS DAMN FISH JUST POKED A HOLE IN ME.”

“Yes, I have saved a nice picture of it from when it jumped over you. It has a needle-like nose. I would wager that it eats by ripping through its prey at high speeds.”

“A NICE PICTURE. THAT’S NICE.” Bec was going into shock. The wound went to the bone.

“Actually, Bec, that’s not precisely true. It seemed to have passed straight through your clavicle. Keep the pressure going, I’m trying to knit your subclavian artery back together. The damage was clean so please just stay calm.”

Bec stopped flailing and just laid there, bleeding. “Ok.”

She said with an air of futility like a child being put in time-out. Bec stared at the blue sky speckled with friendly clouds. She felt the sun on her face, and she relaxed.

She lifted her one good arm up to reach the sky. She ran her fingers over the sunlight and saw the light slip through her fingers. She grabbed at the light. Nothing. She knew she wasn’t going to be throwing lasers, but she had hoped. Light was a wave. Gravity was a wave. Wind was a wave. Oceans would bend to her will. She laughed.

She wasn’t bending anything to her will. She lost her first fight to a fish the size of her pinky. She laughed harder. Tears rolled down her eyes as she laughed and laughed. She put her hand up to the sun and clenched. Nothing didn’t happen. Something happened. Bec saw something odd around her silhouetted hand. She saw the light act strangely. Something was not normal, but what was it. Was it brighter?

Bec thought that the hand’s edges seemed to shine a little brighter than she’d think. She opened her hand and swore that her hand started to shine. No, the light around her hand got brighter. Her hand was trembling as she saw it got darker. She focused until her hand wasn’t a silhouette. She could see. The sun wasn’t blinding; it was dim like the time she watched the solar eclipse with those glasses. She really felt like she could stare at the sun between her fingers as she waggled them.

She wasn’t keeping pressure on the wound, Al thought to itself. Aaaand she’s staring at the sun. “Please don’t do that.” Al interrupted with a sound that made Bec realized he was concentrating. “I’ve nearly stopped the bleeding, but the bone is going to need a lot of time. Your desire to damage your retinas right now is not helping.” Al sounded almost frustrated.

“I’m sorry, Al. You must be stressed out.” Bec whispered.

“I don’t like failing my primary objectives. I can’t say I’m stressed any more or less than you are, which is pretty stressed, but I don’t deserve an apology.”

“Yeah, you do. If I die, do you die?”

“Most of my… me is inside you. A chip made by the nanites allows me to use your brain to exist. If you die, the elements that you received so positively, the human-like side of me, would assuredly die as well.”

“I don’t want you to die, Al. You’re a pAAAL.” Bec laughed until she started to wheeze.

“Ah, you certainly have lost a lot of blood. Let’s get back to the trailer.” Bec’s wheezing laugh turned into a snore. “Or sleep… yeah, that’s a safe idea. Bec? Bec, come on wake up! Bec!!!”