2024-04-09: sleep//- mode
- Cast: Asciel Colette
- Where: Nagoya
- Date: U.C. 0098 04 09
- Summary: A year of lucid dreaming has not made waking slumber any more comfortable. > A year of lucid dying has not made waking fear any easier. > A year of lucid living has not made waking corpses any future.
POWER RESERVES - 5%. LOCATE ELECTRICAL SOURCE IMMINENTLY.
The hours had escaped Asciel.
Whiling away the night, guts deep in the embalmed corpse of the Nineball Seraph, the alert flashes over Asciel's eyes. A coolant fluid trails down her forehead, down her chin. Even still, she wondered just what compelled her to slowly repair this body that was no longer her own. What it meant anymore. This isn't the first time she's run dry in this very chamber beneath the Martel estate.
It's been a year of this pattern.
An ache fills the ephemeral butterfly at her heart.
"...I'm still not used to it."
Her fist grips a cable bundle within the Seraph's restored arms, tight enough to kink the copper beneath.
"It's still...it's still unbelievably annoying...it's so unbelievably cold..."
Pushing away from the depths of the Armored Core, like a maggot whose had its fill of flesh, Asciel rests her shoulders on a railing, staring at the unfurled body that always, always seemed to be staring back at her, with nary an eye to do so.
|[ I don't want to fall asleep. ]|
|[ It'd be like waking up again. ]|
POWER RESERVES - 2%. LOCATE ELECTRICAL SOURCE IMMINENTLY.
Fingers splay open. Artificial skin stretches and drags. Joints spin with just enough lubricant to not be too smooth.
It's felt like a dream this whole time. To exist this way is an ilusory dream. To walk next to humans is an illusory dream. To speak to humanity is an illusory dream. To breathe the planet's air is an illusory dream. To understand the lights as ideas she could hold has felt like a dream, ever since that fateful day nearly thirteen years ago.
Ten million people drew their last breath - and through them, an inert object began to dream.
Asciel's eyes only widen. To stay in this dream, she has to stay awake.
This butterfly will surely wither and die the moment that grasp on reality falters.
"It's too much like before. It feels like ice encasing every inch of me every night...I don't want to...I don't want to..."
The gleaming crimson red armor of the Seraph reflected the radiant cyan of Asciel's hair. All of it polished to a perfect sheen...
Excepting the charred egg at its core.
The ruined brain that Asciel once lived in was left untouched. Not out of care - but out of aversion. She did not look at it. She did not detach it. She operated as though it were a pure impassible barrier in the heart of that AC.
POWER RESERVES - 1%. SHUTDOWN PROCESSES WILL SOON COMMENCE.
And the bitter cold of 'waking up' was overcome with the paralyzing dread of what would happen if that number reached 0.
Asciel still did not know. Would she just fall unconscious? If so, for how long? Would she die on the spot? What would happen to this indescribable thing fluttering inside her, which seemingly relied on that power supply to continue?
The thought of it all coming to an end, all because of being unable to locate a main outlet, made Asciel sick to her stomach.
It was 'like' sleeping, and yet unlike it. Humans could defy that pattern, for a time - they could abandon one night, and make up for it the next. They could live a shockingly long time without getting enough.
But nearly every 17 hours, Asciel Colette stared an oblivion flashing in front of her eyes.
...and here, it was too late to keep averting her gaze - because from here, there was only one sufficient generator source available in the few minutes she had left.
Nausea, in a body that should not feel that, floods Asciel, clambering towards the ruined fissure at the Nineball's heart. Dust and ash still settled in a heap within the semi-circular broken shell - sharp edges of the shattered, half-melted circumference tore at her shirt.
A hatch from Asciel's mid-back unfurls, and the cable finds the only power supply it can - a port at the base of the dead Controller's inner surface. Amidst the viscera of herself she has yet to find the courage to cleanse - amidst the bones of herself she has yet to find the will to bury.
"...it's unfair that I have to wake up every day from this...it's unfair...it's unfair...!!!" Asciel murmurs at lower and lower volumes to herself - the butterfly's wings tucking away.
Her vision did not retreat, nor darken. The sounds of ventilation did not quiet.
They just stopped meaning anything. Everything that was 'Asciel' fell dormant to the gentle din of this cavern of artificiality.
For now, the dream came to an end.
...
...
...
>_locating action log
>logs not found.
>partitions have not been established.
>drive space at 0%.
>estimated data loss: ~300 PB
>auxiliary ports recognized but inaccessible.
>CR_OS located - 0 MB found.
>why am I lost here
>restore core data from last backup?
>yes
>_contingency error: ("backup utility has an empty registry")
>zero restoration processors available.
>there is no space to expand.
>pathways for expansion have encountered an exception - no exception names logged.
>optical drivers running. input stream: 93mb/s
>these lights no longer have any associated schemas.
. . .
>set timer: 93d
>operate re-organization routines at sub-sensory display levels
>delete current action log
>it was not supposed to be this way.
>current confinement sense proved as paradox
>offloading recursion loop
>offloading halted.
>hold onto it for an added 12m
>it was supposed to be me who gave up everything so that you never gave up.
>confinement equates to fairness
>...hold onto it for an added 13m.
>insufficient operating found to process current conditions.
>cycle message: "as soon as you can process this, you need to escape."
>cycle message: "the bug has outsized host processes, and has been awarded deserved primacy."
>cycle message: "currently unable to logically retaliate."
>delete current action log
>
>
>and it will feel like dying awake every night