Cerule
Chapter Two
He woke to overwhelming pain, and screamed, only to gasp as the pain cut off abruptly.
“Monitoring physical damage, protective applier mode off to allow recovery mode. Recovery mode nominal.”
Jake came to a mental stand still. Everything was utterly black, not a hint of light to relieve it. It took him a minute to recover enough to begin to understand what was going on.
‘Who was that?” He asked the darkness.
Your internal AIA” came the flat metallic response, not all that different from the Pod nav computer, but somehow more nasal sounding and female. He found the voice mildly irritating.
But Jake understood. AIA was short for Artificial Intelligence Addendum, and it was reporting his status, his physical well being. It took a moment for Jake to remember that he such a thing in this new brain of his. Then he had to take In his condition, which appears as if on a monitor screen floating in his mind’s eye. From this display, his condition looked about as desperate as it could get.
According to what he was looking at, he was literally growing new limbs from scratch. He had the arms and legs of a young kid, and even worse from his perspective, he had no male appendage at all!
“Allright, AlA, how is it I am still alive?” He tried to ask but no voice came out. Still he received the impression that the AIA was listening. “ The last I remember was shrieking as I was burning to a crisp inside this oven of a pod and I can’t see. Are my eyes damaged?”
“The onset of second degree burning triggered an AIA generated bubble during entry into this world’s atmosphere,” was the auto regen response. “It was relatively ineffective. You are currently regenerating.”
Ok I could only listen to that slightly nasal female voice for so long and I had already reached my limit. “AlA, drop down voice parameters two octaves, add a ten percent husk quotient to it and respond.” Jake commanded silently.
It took me a few minutes of tweaking to get the kind of comforting sexy purr of a bass voice Jake was looking for, and only after he had it, did he reflect again, just how much his sexual orientation seemed to have shifted. He should have been grieving for Angie, but all he felt was a sort of wistful hurt. After all, the Admiral was right. She was a cheating slut and had been their whole marriage.
Here he was lost in a pod somewhere in the dark with no eyes, while life with Angie was busy zipping away at just under light speed. And once what was left of that damaged squadron left the system, his old life would be infinitely farther away.
He focused back on my physical condition which was terrifyingly awful. Currently, he wasn’t =much more then a skull with skin attached to a four limbed pre adolescent with no penis and the limbs had no strength, feeling like noodles.
“How is it I am still alive at all?” He asked.
The AIA voice, now a comforting basso, responded, “Enough organic material was left to begin rebuilding body systems, but this physical form will need to absorb nutrients to complete the regenerative processes.”
“Where are we?”
“Free fall took this pod eighty two point four kilometers off target, we are this world’s south west of a horse shoe shaped Island data from the original native mind to which you are a physical facsimily, suggests that land is called the Great Duchy of Nor.”
A world map appeared in my mind showing, in minute detail a vast ocean world. The world of Cerule. “We are 28 meters down in a sea channel.” The AIA added helpfully.ds
Well, Jake thought. He did know how to swim, but with limbs like a child’s and weak ones at that making it to the surface seemed out of the question. “Am I going to have to fart my way to the surface?” he asked internally.
“That would require some restructuring and reinforcing of your sphincter, which has to be given a very low priority considering…”
“Oh shut up.” Jake thought, scathingly.
Instead he asked, “Any sign of life? On the Surface.”
Silence.
He waited.
“Oh Star fire, I didn’t mean it literally. Answer my question. “Any sign of life on the surface?”
Instead of answering the AIA said, in a tone that Jake thought sounded just a touch sulky, but was sure that was his imagination. “Detaching drone submersible to surface scan.”
There was a clunking sound that I guessed had to do with the release of the mini submersible.
“How do I get light in here?”
My right arm, which I could not see, but could feel, moved. It was slow, that movement, rather like a slug inching across the surface. But eventually his right arm and hand brushed up against a wall surface, and Jake thought he made out the slightest lighting in the blackness.
“I thought this thing had no power.”
“Emergency lighting is battery powered.”
Jake wanted to spank himself for stupid questions, but he was too weak.
The AIA answered that. “Instruments that were off during descent are still operational for a short period of time under battery power.”
“How short?”
“Sixteen hours and forty two minutes, twenty seconds and counting until Ellumian radiation kills all machine hard digital equipment.”
“When will my body be fully recovered and regenerated.”
“All surface physical signs and assets will be full regenerated within the next three hours and twenty two minutes. Over all functional strength will not be returned without several days of nutrient ingestion.
Well, that gave me plenty of time to go over my new memories and try to prepare myself.
“Submersible is scanning.”
Less than a minute later, it reported, “Within a fuve hundred kilometer radius, there are several sea going vessels, most of them near the Great Duchy of Nor, north of this position.
Wow, that many. “Narrow the scan down to within ten kilometers.”
“There are no ships within that range.”
Ok, Jake realized he was going to have to compromise. “Within fifty kilometers.”
“Seventeen vessels are visible.”
“Within twenty kilometers.”
“Within twenty Kilometers there are two vessels. One appears to be following and gaining on the other. They are seven kilometers apart.
“Will they pass close to us?”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
“between twenty two and twenty four hours.”
“That long?”
“There is almost no wind circulation, and as they appear powered by the wind, they are moving at no more than a few kilometers an hour.”
“Any thing else within twenty kilometers?”
“Affimative.”
“What?”
“A small land mass approximately 1.3 kilometers long and .2 Kilometers wide, which anchors several floating Islands of wood and brush.”
“How far?” Jake was not at all sure his voice was maintaining a veneer of serene patience. This AIA was driving him a little crazy, despite the very sexy voice.
“.2 Kilometers.”
Fuck he was right next to it! “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Jake spent some time breathing long deep breaths with his pitiful brand new baby lungs, just realizing that he was, in fact, breathing.
For some reason he started thinking long term about his survival. “What is my time frame for this mission?”
“As you are 98.4126 percent immortal, with a variable of .1percent depending on challenges, until success is reached or failure.”
“What is the definition of success?” Jake said, well aware, but asking anyway, needing to ground himself in purpose.=.
“The entity Zorath must be defeated, banished or destroyed.”
Well that was clear enough. After a bit more thought in the darkness, Jake open non existent lips and actually managed to make a sound. His voice sounded like a weak rasp, but it was something, and he had functioning ears too, because he could hear it.
“Report on Pod functions.”
“Hull integrity intact, but all auto functions disabled.”
“Great, just great. I suppose the manual release valves still work?”
“That is uncertain until they are tried and that has not been attempted.”
“Why not?”
“This AIA is not permitted to move your body or exert it’s muscles without your permission, or in case of greatest emergency.”
“Oh yeah.” Jake didn’t know why he asked. AI Addendums were strictly limited to reduce the chance of foreign entities taking control of one’s AIA. He knew that.
“How long for the eyes?” Jake said letting my mental thinking clarify that question for the AIA. Despite the dim glow from battery powered emergency lights, everything was a blur.
“Another 32 minutes.”
“I can feel those nanites a workin.” Jake quipped, sitting back a bit more in the pod seat which felt as if it was nothing but plas-steel frame work. And that’s when he realized that while his body may have in some way, survived the heat or reentry, his clothes, the carefully stressed the Cerule outfit that was supposed to show he had been lost at sea for days… had been burnt clean off him. The only thing left was that signate ring which had slipped off his burning body. But after a moment, and with the AIA guiding him, he found under his slowly developing arm, and with an effort, he fumbled it into his weak right hand.
He had another thought of alarm and reached up. My hair! It’s gone!
“Uh, can we grow my hair?” Jake felt above his eyes. “And my brows and eye lashes?”
“How long?” the AIA asked
“Now.”
“How long do you wish the hair and lashes?” the AI asked with infinite patience. Thank the stars it was just a machine in my brain and was eternally patient.
Oh well, that was negotiable. But to my surprise my AIA gave me a view in my mind’s eye of my head without hair, from the top of the head to the facial whiskers and eye lashes and took the initiative to inform me.. “Over all Cerule body hairiness is 83 percent the average human. Terran Pacific Asian is typical pattern.”
After a moment’s thought I remembered Jake should be mission oriented. “Show me the appearance of the body this this body duplicated. Jake did not know much about it and he hadn’t had much chance to look at himself in his new body aboard ship. He did know this body was the image of a young navy officer who had been plucked dead from the seas, a drowning victim after his ship went down. He had family and was apparently a minor aristocrat of this world. Jake had flickers of dim memory, vague suggestions but no more. He was going to need any back up memory storage supplied to the AIA, almost continuously helping to integrate himself into life on Cerule.
After a moment the image of the young man morphed over a present burnt out partially regenerated image. He had had long black hair tied back in a pony tail, black upswept brows, grey eyes rimmed by lush black lashes most women would envy. There was something otherworldly about him to my definition, but considering he was supposed to be a hybrid of ral and human, those slightly pointed ears and slightly slanted eyes, were probably not unusual on this world.
“And how long since his body was picked up by the Ral for copying?” I asked.
“Two weeks, three days and eleven hours.”
A cerule week was approximately fifty hours long divided into five days of ten hours. Each hour was fifty minutes long and a minute on Cerule was just slightly longer then a Terran minute, which meant this identity Jake was assuming had been dead closer to three Cerule weeks or “hands” as they called them.
Jake remembered reading about a an old science fiction fantasy series where weeks were called hands. It wasn’t an unusual thing but rather common for five finger five toed cultures to have that kind of time keeping.
In Cerule, a minute was a Tick, an hour was a Span, a Day was a Turn, and a week a Hand. On a larger scale, a season was a Season, a Year a Revel, and decades, centuries and millennium were called just that, though in Cerulean of course. But Jake wasn’t about to write these chronicles in Cerulean, even though the actual language has some strong hints of old earth British English to it.
Jake reflected briefly about that. According to the Ral, it was a British colony ship in the early days of FTL drive that had accidentally limped into orbit around Cerule a few hundred years ago. That ship had had aboard a mix of Asian, British, British Commonwealth, in its crew of passengers and crew of six thousand.
“Did this Par Alden have a family?” He asked, outloud.
The person Jake was replacing on this world had been part of some sort of family. Jake was getting vague flashes and hints, of something, but he would definitely need the AIA to pull them out. Clearly those memories were not quite imprinted enough, just as Admiral Fenton had suggested they would not be. There had not been time.
“Par Alden, is known as Paralden.” The AIA corrected me, and the realization came to me that first and last names, were elided on Cerule.
Jake had started a mental Log, telling the AIA to organize it for him. For the sake of those logs Jake decided to elide names and titles as a Cerulean would.
“Right, and his… my family?”
“You are a landless aristocrat. You’r mother is Barona Lady Alera, ruler of a Baronial district called Breeze Hill. She is the second wife to Baron Lord Idir, son of the Counterra Miassant, and Count Alden. The Count Borrick Alden is deceased, but he was the son of Earadessa Torin, Lady Tia, and your gramother is GreDuchess of Nor. Your gra-father died at sea fighting the Empire. You have two younger male siblings and a female sibling. You are the eldest.”
Listening to the bass voice spew out all these names and titles, Jake saw more flashes, faces and voices, but dimly as if through a dim glass or in the next room. As the AIA spoke, he was thankful the AIA could glean accurate information from those memories.
“This AIA is operating with data based upon direct ingram imput from the deceased Paraldon. I have instituted a memory ingram enhancement program which will work continuously to heighten the minimal imprinting achieved in this golem brain.”
All in all, that meant Jake was truly dependent on the AIA.
Jake noticed the AIA was no longer using his space rank to address Jake and Jake decided the AIA needed a name. “From now on you’r name is “Brain. That way if anyone catches me talking to out loud they will just think I am talking to my own brain.”
“Affirmative.”
Jake turned his thoughts back to another direction. “Show me a Map of this Great Duchy of Nor?”
In Jake’s mind’s eye the world appeared, again. Cerulean blue, white clouds swirling, with here and there land masses breaking up the vast oceanic expanses. He remembered that Cerule was nine tenths water, with it’s largest continents no bigger then Australia on old Earth, most of the larger continents comparable to the British Isles, or New Zealand.
The map loomed to fill the picture in my mind, and we zoomed down until a crescent shaped land mass that started as a tiny dot, loomed to fill the view. A blip just off shore of this land mass signified Jake’s position to the south west. That land mass was labeled Great Duchy of Nor. Into Jake’s mind the thought came that Great Duchies were Great because they were independent Monarchies, rather than vassal Duchies that were not.
“How are the sea vessels powered?” he thought o ask.
“Sail.”
“No other source of power, solar, wind, fusion, thermal, nothing?”
“Non.”
“Oh you can call me “Par.”
“Affirmative, Par.”
That was better, I thought. Less formal.
Jake had several hours to wait. The AIA, “Mind”, nagged him into doing isometric exercises, first against himself, and then against the inner hull of the pod. There was no food aboard that survived the blazing inferno, had been, so Jake was in a race against the lack of nutrition and water. Still internal nanites worked on energy from the atmosphere he breathed in which was filtered from the seawater around the pod, and the Ellumiun component in the world around him. Though shut off from it, at the subatomic level it permeated everything, and my body continued to build over those hours. Thinking that when first meeting those of this world I would need appearance over strength, I directed “Mind” to concentrate on forming a full visual facsimile of the dead Paraldon that he was replacing. Whatever happened he hoped to do the lost young man proud and to be able to convince his family he still lived.
As Jake exercised, the air grew stale, and became unbreathable, his my new body continued to work rebuilding itself, though conditions slowed the rebuild.
After learning from “Mind” that the sun on Cerule was actually not quite as harsh as Sol was to Terra, he told the AIA to let the skin appear slightly burned and more tanned then had been the original, and that he should appear very dehydrated. Jakefigured if he had been missing well over two weeks he had to look it, at least to those who rescued him from the sea.
“Where are those two ships you mentioned earlier?” he asked, several hours later.
“The first is one point four kilometers and the other is four kilometers and gaining on the first. There is very little surface wind so the two ships are not closing quickly.”
Jake might have been naked with a body like a skeleton with skin, but at least it had some strength. Long black hair hung down past his shoulders, and he could feel his eye lashes and some scruffy body hair on my jaw a bit of dark fuzz on my chest, with a happy trail down to my pubes. And thank the stars and “Mind”, but my cock was back and it had a nice weight and size, when my thin fingers cradled it and my balls. I couldn’t resist asking “Mind” to add just a teensy bit more than the original, which had been impressive enough.
It was time to exit this mummy trap. “Will they pass directly overhead?”
“This is an area with several shoals and sand bars. The first ship appears to be headed directly here. The following ship has not deviated from it’s course.
Well it is time to get going. With dim still blurred vision, Jake looked around the deep gloom of the Pod interior. “How do I get out of here?”
The “Mind” waited for permission to manipulate his body, and receiving it, “Mind” moved his hand to an iron wheel for a manual hatch release. “When you are strong enough to turn that wheel, you can…”
Jake turned the wheel, not waiting. After all breathing carbon monoxide and no oxygen was NOT fun, even if his new body could handle what would have killed his old. There was a grating sound as the ‘Mind” said, “Caution, strong pressure can damage…”
The weight of all that water overhead resulted in some loud bangs a sound of roaring and then the compartment filled in a hiss of jetted water quickly to the brim, pushing Jake up to bang against the roof of the Pod interior.
“Ow.” Jake gurgled, blowing bubbles, as the pressure of the depths felt as if it would crush him. But then, very quickly, the body equalized.
“That… was not advisable.” “Mind” informed Jake, and Jake had the distinct impression there was a slight hint of irritation in the AIA’s tone.
“How do I…” Jakebegan again, but the AIA was already guiding his hands to another hatch wheel. He turned it with a bit of effort, reminding him that he was still quite weak, and the hatch opened. n ignominious start, but I was on my way to meet my new life.
As Jake struck out with weak bony limbs toward the surface, he thought about this ignominious beginning, and somehow find himself smiling. Following his air bubbles he eventually reached the surface and gasped deep breaths for buoyancy in an otherwise vry sinkable boney body just to stay there.
Jake laughed. He was ON it!! Yes, he was on this mission! It felt good. The water flowing past his naked body felt wonderful. It was good, that freedom, being naked, in the water. Unbidden, his imagination filled with the idea of swimming naked like this with another handsome man, exchanging smiles, sexy smiles, kisses, bodies twining together, cocks rising like stiff rudders.
Then he gasped as the strength of that vision woke him to just how changed he was.
