04 – Back when it was sunny

There was no more moss in the cave, nothing that he could eat to expand his nanite reserves, to add more mass to his tiny body. It was time to leave this place, and to go towards where he entered the cave back when he was still a human.

Through a continuous process of improvement, via repeated trials and errors, Mateus managed to tune all of his senses so that they were almost identical to those of a human. It took a while but eventually he reached a point where, as far as he could tell, they were almost the same as they used to be before he died. If he needed to, he could still see much more than normal, hear imperceptible noises, and smell impossibly faint smells. It was just that most of the times having too much information was distracting and pointless.

Fortunately, there was a way to fix this problem. He had enough mass now to create another process to deal with all that, so that it would warn him when it sensed danger, or it would supply him with extra information should he ever need it. The process soon proved its usefulness, when it managed to spot a small moving figure scurrying along the floor of the cavern quite a distance away.

In the darkness, it was perfectly invisible, but his process superimposed a false-color image on top of Mateus’ field of vision, tracking the heat signature of the small rat. He was seeing in the near infrared, thanks to the improved eyes of his nanites.

The rat was gigantic. It was a small rat by any definition, the small numbers he saw next to it like a scale told him that, but compared to him it was a behemoth. It was three times his own size, with long sharp claws and red, bloodshot eyes. It reeked of mana, tainted and mutated, with an aftertaste that was quite similar to that of the bomb itself.

The rat did not pay any attention to Mateus, seeing nothing more than a small silvery rock standing still on the ground. Perhaps if it paid enough attention, it would have noticed that such a rock was not there before, but even in that case it would not have perceived it as threat. A rock was a rock.

Inside the rock’s head, instead, a tug-of-war of sorts was taking place. Mateus could feel the hunger inside, the desire to kill that moving pile of biomass that was the rat, and to add it to his own body in the form of new, shiny nanites. I would be doing that thing a favor as well; with all the mana it absorbed I don’t think it’s even close to sane anymore.

He hesitated. But I don’t want to kill a living creature!

Absorption of biomass would increase body’s mass by 120 grams.

Mateus mulled over the words. Computer was right, in its own way. But, at the same time, computer desired to grow above all things, without caring about anything else.

Or maybe it did. Mateus had no way of knowing.

I need to put that creature out of its misery!

He steeled himself, and decided that acting was the best course of action. Without modifying the exterior structure of his body, he creeped closer to the rat, hoping to get close enough unnoticed. Moving like that, however, was difficult even for the automated process to handle. A single error would cost him the element of surprise.

A small clanging noise. He had rolled against a tiny stone, and his exterior had hardened. The metal hit the rock, producing the noise. He stopped in place, and waited. He was sweating, even without any sweat glands.

The rat didn’t pay attention to him. Rolling was not the best thing to do, he concluded, and so he commanded the nanites to become soft and just move around like a jelly fluid. It worked, and he creeped closer.

He could almost see the underside of the creature now, an abomination of malformed flesh and short fur devastated by the corrupting effects of the mana bomb. The more he saw, the better he felt with killing this thing.

He was almost there, his plan to reach right beneath it while it wasn’t paying attention to its surrounding was almost successful. But, by his oversight, the cold metallic surface of the blob that was his body touched the fur of the animal.

He started to feel the first signs of panic, but the state of mind did not progress any further than that. He lacked the necessary hardware to feel those emotions, leaving him with only a hollow shell of what he used to feel.

This side thought, this reflection on the state of his mind costed him precious moments. Almost in a flash, in fact, the rat had turned towards the previously unassuming silvery rock and had already started to swipe its claws ai it.

Attention: body is host to human uploaded consciousness. Nanites severed from main body will become inactive.

The claws struck true, and penetrated deep inside the soft liquid goo. Mateus felt his insides rip into shreds, the pain spreading like wildfire across his very existence, the blackness of the virtual space he inhabited turning red.

A large portion of his body fell to the ground, disintegrating and losing cohesion. As the claws passed all the way through, what was left was a blob barely half what it was before, and a small pile of silver dust. Upon closer inspection, that dust was not silver at all, but it was made of little, invisible nanomachines that were no longer capable of holding onto each other. Machines that, without a direction, became inactive the very moment they were severed from Mateus.

Machines that were now dead, unless he somehow managed to survive this and reabsorb them into himself. Without him, they would be lost forever. Without him, they had no reason to exist. They needed him just as much as he needed them.

Error: insufficient power. Process stopped

Error: insufficient power. Process stopped

Error: damaged data packet. Rebooting.

Mateus saw the lights of the world dim, the sensations shut down one by one, one after the other. The last thing he saw was the rat, turning its back to him, and scurrying away. Then, all was black again. Truly black, blacker than his simulated space, blacker than night.

Light. Warmth. Sounds.

Mateus found that he could see, hear, smell. It felt good, it felt right. It felt like he was back.

Back! I’m back in my own body! It was all a dream!

He was overjoyed, he wanted to jump in the air and cry. But, the nervous signals never left him brain, and his body never jumped like he wanted it to. He was trapped here, forced to follow the motions somebody else was living through, like watching from the sidelines. Just like in a dream, he felt that his body was not his own, that he was not in the driver’s seat. All around him, the scene resolved itself a bit better, the blurry images becoming clearer. The muffled sounds became intelligible.

He was standing beside a short, burly man. He had no hair on his head, and by the stature and gait Mateus was quite sure that he knew this person. Yeah, this was his father. He would get confirmation as soon as he turned to face him. They were walking through the King’s castle.

He remembered this day. It was the best day of his life, in fact. Seeing it through the lens of this dream seemed to take something away from it, though. He could see things, notice details that he was sure were not there back when he first lived this moment. But he could not feel the ecstasy, the dangerous cocktail of chemicals that rampaged though his brain on that day. It felt lessened, although clearer.

There were many foreign, new details. Maybe he didn’t pay attention to them the first time around, excited as he was.

The King’s eyes seemed a bit hollow, his face contorted in a mask of disgust and hatred.

The memory was blurry at times. Like with a broken diary, pages were missing. From the King’s face, the whole scene resolved into something else. His father, walking hurriedly away from the King’s chambers, put a hand behind Mateus’ back and pushed him, hurrying him to follow along. He was breathing hard, labored breaths, and walking with a short, rapid steps.

He turned towards Mateus.

If he could move his face, horror would have flooded his expression. He wanted to recoil, to pull back but once again he was kept in place by the boundaries of this memory. His father’s face was empty. Blank. Nothing was there.

Calm down. It’s just a dream. A dream…

His father talked, but the words were impossible to discern. All that he could hear was a jumbled mess of sounds, making no sense.

Blur.

He found himself in the large garden, just outside the castle. His father was quite far away from him. His face was normal now, although he could not see it very well from here. He waited at the edge of the garden, meekly, while his father talked with the four heroes.

Then, as soon as his father motioned for him to come forth, he bolted like a coiled spring. The four heroes were there, squaring him up. Their faces were blurry, out of focus, dark. Their expressions almost unreadable, corrupted and missing data in his mind.

He was shaking. He knew he should have been happy, ecstatic, but he wasn’t. He was studying the few details he could see on their faces instead.

Annoyance, fear, hate. Negativity.

His younger self did not see it. He introduced himself, and shook hands with them. The shakes were painful, but that only seemed to overjoy his old self, and fill him with admiration and awe at the heroes. He found that he could not share those sentiments now, despite wanting to. There was something wrong with all this. This was not what he remembered. This was not how it went. This was wrong, all wrong.

His father was gone. He had not even seen him go.

“…Melgoth family. Tsk.” He heard, and turned around at the sound of his family’s name. The hero spat on the ground, and averted his eyes.

“Yeah, and now we have to babysit him too!” Another said.

He felt his heart thump in his chest.

“You won’t have to!” He said proudly. “I will show you what I can do!”

The words fell flat on the uncaring audience.

“You will be dead boy, sooner than you’d expect. Just like it should be for you Melgoths.”

He did not let those words deter him. He knew the hero only said that so that Mateus would grow a pair and a spine. For his own good. And he was thankful for that. He would show them, he would prove them that he was worthy of the title of hero.

As time passed, he trained. He trained hard, putting in more hours and more effort than he ever thought possible. He was always the first to get there, and the last to go away. For many nights he even forwent his sleep so that he could train more.

The practice hunt came. The first mission together, Mateus was ecstatic. But, once again, in the dark and blurry faces of the others he could not read anything but negative emotions.

And so the hunt went by, like that, and even though he felt he played a pivotal role, offering support right when his team needed it most… he was not even thanked for that. Not even mentioned. Not even noticed.

It was fine. It was good. He would show them next time, how important he was. How he could make a valuable contribution to the party. He would show them all.