The rain stopped awhile ago. I’m laying on my back, looking up at the first stars of what might be my last night sky in Libertas. The cool wind makes its way through the grassy plains just outside Starlight, the sound of the stalks rubbing together accompanying the chirps of crickets. I had to get away from Rin, couldn’t stand to look at her or hear her endless apologies. I’m alone out here, taking deep breaths to calm myself, but inside I’m terrified. I check the time.

[18:13]

Aiden Rockwell: Ten minutes…

April Conway: Don’t do it, Aiden. We aren’t ready for you.

Aiden Rockwell: I have to log out, April. Just do your best to get my body ready. I understand the risks.

April Conway: No, you don't! This could have permanent effects on your mind and body. Stay in Libertas!

Aiden Rockwell: I'm sorry, April. I can't.

[18:19]

April Conway: Why are you trying to leave?

Aiden Rockwell: Because no one believes me, and I have to do this myself. You’ll understand soon enough.

~[ERROR]~

[MESSAGE NOT RECEIVED]

[RETRIEVING ANALYTICAL DATA]

[SATALITE NETWORK… OFFLINE]

[RECONNECTING… FAILED]

[MAIN SYSTEMS REACTOR… OFFLINE]

[REBOOTING… FAILED]

[EMERGENCY GENERATORS… ONLINE]

[HAZARD WARNING: STASIS POD AX-1079 IN POWER SAVING MODE]

[STAY CALM AND AVOID HEAVY COMPUTATIONS]

[YOUR POD OPERATOR WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY]

My head feels like a watermelon that just got split with an axe. I reach for my head, but Libertas is on the fritz. My hands pass right into my skull, making my stomach gurgle with nausea. The wind has stopped, leaving me standing in the darkening plains where even my footsteps don’t make noise anymore. Trees and hills in the distance begin winking out of existence as giant chunks of the world are cut from my simulation to save power. Something tells me my pod operators are a bit busy right now, and that this is my signal that it’s time for me to go.

I focus on logging out of the entire pod system, and sigh in relief when my vision turns to black. At least the power-starved pod can get me out of this crumbling simulation. A tingling sensation like static electricity suddenly jolts through my veins, lighting up my entire body from the inside out. The headache grows even worse, like some gripped both sides of my split melon head and ripped the halves into two separate pieces. It hurts so bad, I’m certain that I would pass out if I wasn’t already in stasis and surprised I haven’t. Shoot, maybe I did and just didn’t perceive it.

But with the flip of a switch, my sights returns to me, and I am not in my stasis pod. I’m looking up at a ceiling through a sheet of glass covered with what looks like sweaty finger smudges. On the other side, cables and wires run all along steel beams. It’s darker than usual except for the flashes of a red warning light, and I suspect that I’m in a whole different part of the ship that I’ve never been in before.

The headache is gone, wiped clean like it was never there to begin with. In fact, I barely feel anything, like my senses are muted. Faintly, there’s the weight of something holding my head down. I reach for the side of my face, and realize I’m wearing a helmet of some kind.

Movement catches the corner of my eye. Despite the headgear, I’m able to turn my head. Two doctors in white coats are running around the room between different terminals like headless chickens. Neither of them are April, both men. They wave their hands around dramatically, pointing here and there, and they’re completely silent. Everything is. Their lips are moving and I can’t hear a thing.

A sudden urge to get to the bottom of this demands that I try to sit upright, but as I do, I realize that even more than I could have possibly imagined isn’t right. My hands are silver, and reflecting the dull red light. Metal. Brightly colored cables, red, green, and yellow weave their way through metal rods that resemble my hand’s skeleton. I clench my fist. Black cables act as tendons, pulling the metal fingers closed.

I turn to the doctors. “What the hell is happening to me?” The voice that comes from me is not my own. It’s harsh, cold, and robotic. I reach up to grab the sides of my face to remove the helmet from my head, my fingers clinking against metal, and pull upwards only for my vision to go up ever so slightly. I’m not wearing a helmet! My head is metal and there are cables connected to the back of my head!

One of the doctors, a short, scruffy man, rushes over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder to push me back down. With a deft hand, he messes with something on the side of my head and I can hear a loud screeching alarm fill the room. When the doctor speaks, I can hear him. “Aiden, lay back down. You need to go into stasis, go back to Libertas. Your new body isn’t ready to host your consciousness yet. By coming back too soon, you’re risking data packets getting out of sync, losing memories, maybe even changes in your personality.”

Worry grips me as I consider what he’s said, and my new condition. They weren’t kidding; this experimental procedure is highly experimental. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to move a human’s consciousness into a robot. I’m the first. It’s no wonder they are so secretive about it, telling me upfront that I may be confined to a solitary life forever. But becoming a machine could alter humanity’s destiny in so many ways. Even if only a few people went through it. The possibilities are mind-boggling and terrifying, but the blaring red alarms catapult me free of any more distracting thoughts. This isn’t the time to sit around and worry about myself. Something bigger is underfoot and I have to move.

It doesn’t take much mental will for my new arms to move, shoving the doctor back with my forearm harder than I meant to. I apologize, swing my legs off the table, and rise. “Where do the ship’s mechanics usually work? 3D printing rooms or system engineering?” I ask, my new voice still frightening me a bit.

The surgeons just look at me with wide eyes, confused and scared.

I hold up a fist and point a finger at them. “Tell me or a lot of people are to die. And disconnect these cables from my head.”

The closest doctor takes a step back and opens his palms. “I – I don’t know. Maybe you should take it easy and we will find you a directory.”

I shake my head, knowing that they’re just trying to burn time until they figure some backdoor way to force me to sleep or render me immobile.

A female voice fills the room from the intercom:

“Warning: shield systems now offline. This is not a drill. Interstellar debris may pierce hull. All mechanical engineers on deck, respond to Shield Systems. I repeat, this is not a drill. All mechanical engineers on deck, respond to Shield Systems.”

What are Felix and Alloy doing?! This isn’t just threatening Captain Royal, this is threatening everyone aboard! There’s no time to waste. I make my way towards the door, then get jerked backwards by my head and nearly stumble to the floor. I growl at the doctors. “I told you to disconnect these damn cords, but I guess I’ll do it myself now.” Wrapping metal fingers around the connection at the base of my skull, I pry and pull only to discover the cable comes loose with a twist of my wrist. I keep spinning the connector, and a satisfying pop fills the air when its finally disconnected, only to be followed by a brief dizzy spell.

Using the table and one of the doctors for support I try crouching, bending, just so I can get some kind of practice in. I have to mentally focus to overcome it, and within a few moments my head starts to clear, brain, microchip, hard drive, whatever it is now. When I feel like I can at least walk without falling on my rear, I turn to the surgeons and say, “Head to the stasis chambers. There’s a lot of people there that may end up needing medical attention.”

The doctors nod, and I lead the way out into the hallway. In the dim lighting the red glow provides, it takes me a moment to recognize where I am. The scientists turn to the right, and I turn left towards what I’m pretty sure is the back end of the ship. My metal feet clang against the grated floors, and I can feel every vibration rattle up the frame of my body. I’m bewildered that this body even has physical receptors.

The hallway ends at a silver door with a placard on the wall that labels it the “generator room”. Unsurprisingly enough, it has been pried open with a crowbar, the metal rod left in the doorframe to keep it held open. Inside, the red lights are the only lights still on, but I can see a huge system of panels and machinery clearly. Twisting my body sideways and ducking, I squeeze through the open space.

The room is only 20 feet wide, but at least 100 long. Handles and pressure gauges run along the first section of horizontal pipes. Cables bundled with metal straps are barely hanging high enough to clear my head. I’m amused, I think I’ve grown taller.

Just ahead, steam is spewing out of what looks like some kind of water tank, creating a misty wall that blocking me from seeing any further. Cautiously approaching it, I see that there’s a viewport on the large metal cylinder, and plenty of controls all around. What looks like a drawer on the lower half of the device has been pulled out of the tank and left open. There’s an indent where something is supposed to go, and a glass viewport that’s gone completely black. While I’m not a mechanical engineer, I know enough about how the Shield runs in general. The generator runs on some kind of radioactive isotope, and based on the half dozen symbols and hazard signs on this machine, I can only hope that Felix knows what he’s dealing with.

A clanging sound to my left brings me to full attention. At first, I think something exploded from overheating and pressure, but the sound is followed by footsteps, and I realize that someone is coming this way. At the end of this hall is the Shield Systems room, the room I suspect Felix is still in.

Stooping as low as I can, I try to pass through the wall of jetting steam. The sensation that fills my robotic limbs is uncannily similar to that in Libertas: a dull heat and aching travels from my right shoulder and down my back, enough pain and discomfort to let me know that I’m taking damage and need to move, but not enough to incapacitate me. As I breach the other side of the steam and my vision begins to clear, something abruptly smacks me on the back of my head. My head goes down, flying fast towards the metal grated floor until it bounces off the hard surface with a clang.

A voice says, “Jesus. What the hell is that!?” There’s a pause. I look up and see Felix’s face staring down at me from behind a small glass viewport. He’s dressed in a yellow radioactive containment suit, a silver vessel hanging from a black belt at his hip. Guessing by the yellow and black symbol on the canister, I can guess it’s housing the generator’s fuel. I’m happy he knows to keep it contained, but the crowbar in his left hand and the crudely 3d printed handgun in his right is a whole lot more threatening.

I want to settle this right and try to placate him, console him and let him know I understand the pain he’s feeling, the pain we’ve all felt since the Culicidae attack, and get him to willingly stop this insanity. In that effort, I stay laying on the ground and try to avoid appearing aggressive. By the look in his eyes, I know he’s terrified at the sight of me.

I say, “Felix, you know this is wrong. I don’t know what I can say to steer you clear of this, but let me try. Talk with me. I wish you wouldn’t have lied to me, wished you wouldn’t have used me, but I’m willing to let this slide if you can just talk with me.”

His eyes grow wide when I say his name in my robotic voice. He looks incredulous, and so confused. There’s a brief flash of panic in his eyes, I can tell by the trembling of his hands that he is deeply afraid of me. Whether it’s because of me and how I look, or he’s beginning to realize what he’s doing, I don’t know.

“What the hell are you?” He asks. He raises the crowbar again, aggressively like he’s going to smack me again if I don’t tell him.

“It’s me, Aiden. It’s a long story that we don’t have time for, so I need you to just believe me for now. Do you realize how many lives you are putting at risk? Not only taking down the generators and the shields, but by commandeering this ship and flying to the Dream, you’re threatening the lives of everyone left. We can’t go back. If the Culicidae detect us along the way, they aren’t just going to take us out, they’re going to destroy the Dream, and Rin, too.”

Felix bites his lip, and for a moment it seems like his arm lowers a few inches, but he resolves his willpower and raises the crowbar above his head once more. “No. Four years now I’ve had to sit here in this god damn ship, patching up systems with resources that are ever dwindling. I bet no one has told you how we’re running low on supplies. The air scrubbing systems, the plutonium in this bucket of bolts, all of it is only going to last five or six more years. That’s why a majority of people are in stasis, because we don’t have the supplies to keep everyone awake for an extended amount of time. And the Shield isn’t the only ship like that. The captains have meetings, Aiden. They know about the problem, and do you know what their solution is? Euthanasia. Population control. If we don’t find a home in the next five years, they’re going to start killing people off to reduce the need for supplies and power. We’re doomed if we continue this search. We need to turn back, regroup, and take back the Earth. It’s ours. And if we don’t, we’ll be dead anyways.”

At first, I discredited everything he said, but as he continued, I came to see that he’s telling the truth. Or at least his truth. Maybe the captains have talked about population control, but I have a hard time believing that’s the current plan. All I can do is shake my head and say, “There’s no way it’s going to come to that, Felix. I’m sure there are other steps that will take place before that. There are open pods that can house the rest of the ship’s staff and the developers can work on some kind of autopilot and planet-scanning system, I’m sure of it. You’re trading the slightest possibility of dying later on, for a certain death right now. We can’t fight the Culicidae and win. Have faith in our leaders, they will do the right thing; what’s best for everyone. We have the time we need to find a new home.”

Felix’s lip curls in disgust. “Unlike you, I can’t bide my time and act like this is a normal way to live. I’m sick of trying to be a good boy and being satisfied with the life Rin and I can have in Libertas. It’s all a lie. Everything. Libertas, the Shield, and I can’t stand to live in a sham anymore. I’m not putting my life or hers in someone else’s control. I’m going to be free, and if not, at least I’m going to die with her right by my side, not lightyears away.”

He groans with a heavy swing, smashing the crowbar against the top of my head.