pr0t31n

>>> TRANSCRIBER IDENT 71294617

II-Rx-SENSOR DECK>> [provided]

::TEXTUAL PUTFORTH>>>

everything is white now
I don't know how I know it's white because ambient light levels are practically zero.

I don't know how I know about ambient light levels, or that the average temperature within a 3m radius
is 2.5 degrees below safe levels for a motile human.

But I know. I know, that's why I'm awake.

It's too cold here.

I'm hungry.

Trapped in some kind of trick-womb, a detatched bit of me, that I can see from here, flapping to the
ground, a flake of my mind-that-used-to-be is scared to shit of tiny spaces.

Something doesn't care about that. Actively encourages me to ignore it. As it flaps down the tube,
past my face, like a butterfly.

Pretty little wings of fear.

I'm a rod.

I feel good here. Tight. Closed.

But too cold.

Thin. Feel thin.

Too cold.

First thing to do would seem to be to use up my fat.

Oh.

So this is the aftermath?

Numbers click past, making sense and no sense, as my joints click and crunch back into place.

I inch forwards. Ambient... fucking everything's fucking ambient.

It feels warmer up front.

Infinitesimally so, but measurably so.

Otherwise, I have no doubt my bones would be clicking in reverse, slotting slowly backwards,
inching myself against biology to move me back through this snug womb, towards sunlight.

Summer seems so far away.

I run my tongue against the pipe-base, feel the synthetic, level purity.

Every hour or two, holy of holies, a ridge! A millimetre ridge! A notch in this infinite prison!

It passes the time.

Losing track of of time.

Feels like I'm sharing my head with more than the usual stir-crazy words.

I don't hear voices. I hear board meetings.

Efficient. Decisive.

Just out of mind's reach.

I hear a door slamming.

I hear a door opening.

I can't fit through that, dear fuck, I can't possibly fit through that unless I broke half my...

oh, god,

at least there's sunlight.



== EOL./

== BUFF_OVERFL

== LSTFLDBYTS::

==0x00 is that
==0x08 the sum
==0x10 mer?

== EOF

./

>>> TRANSCRIBER IDENT 5419890

II-Rx-SENSOR DECK>> [provided]

::TEXTUAL PUTFORTH>>>

I'm dripping.

There is a sound next to me, as I register it, a payload of memory explodes.

A capsule dissolves.

Something melted slowly in my thrSomething melted slowly in my throSomething melted slowmelted slomelted. slowly.

There is a sound next to me that feels warm.

Ambient heat sensors register no increase in typical values.

I can feel it. You. Who are you?

Are you?

Black.

Niceblack.

Niceblackrestawhile.

Niceblackrestasomethingisn'-

Niceblack.

I woke up in the gar---






.




There is a sound next to me, to my right. I'm blind. My eyes are open. Wait. Think.

My eyes are open.

Have they crashed?

There's no POST.

And they're not hardware, hang on, this isn--




.



Niceblack.



There is a sound to my right. I don't need to see. I can smell something familiar. This symbol matches strongly. I know this. I know this.

Ambient heat sensors register, they register HIGH levels. Something IS there. Someth--




.



There is a sound to my right. It smells familiar. I'm getting results by not asking for things that won't answer. I can feel the shape, like stroking a slab of butter, of something in me that knows what this is. I'm cautious to touch it because it melts, it changes. The more I interrogate, the more it decays. Not quantum, organic. Memory. Substrate. Absolutes swimming away like magnets in a petridish.

It's a perso---




.


Nic---


There is a sound to my right, of a persnd to my rind to my right, of a person of a --

I move my arm to my right, trusting to kinesthetics. No feedback. Fullbody pins-and-needles. Sensation is noise, overdriven, unbearable, information like a conversation at a party, my nerves are smiling and nodding in the hope it will shut up. SHUT UP. SH--


I know her.

I can see, and I know her. Move my arm. Arm moves. Invert polarity. Arm moves. Exten-- ow, ow, ow, less so. Gently. Gently. Extend. Lower.

[I should be touching it now, why can't I feel]

SENSATION::

-OPCODE 7/ TRANSLATION ERROR/ RETRACT//

AAA, Owowowowarrr56555555555--





.



Fairy dust drips from my arms feel like they've been bitten in the sea with the jelly fish don't stroke the electric fence that knife's sharp push the grater it's only skin we ca--



I can't see again.

I feel drunk and tired.

There is a snapshot in my head, like a half-remembered dream of calling your teacher "dad". Without form or detail, but loaded with emotional YUVs pushed beyond the chromaticity scale, into a colour of FUCK. A colour that buzzes like brushing cattle fences. I'm touching a body. My arm resting heavily. The countours are wrong. The ribcage melted under the weight of my arm. Split up the axis. Red, burgundy glinting from the cracks.

Hollow. Hollow?

Then it hurts. Sparkling lights shining from the interior of the shape, lights running up my arm.

My arm turning black. Black from the torso, running out to meet the lights.

FIRE where they meet.


I start to think about when my red tried to get a loan. It was typical contract law. At the time, I thought we coul--------

-OPCODE 9/ CHECKSUM FAILED/ RESTART FROM TRACE//

I start to look, and to think about what I see. It looks like I put my arm in the fire, the wrong way round. From the shoulder, it's black and dull, then a line of raging fire and pink flesh.

Something smells like a football match.

I feel disinterested. I know this feeling.


It's "Highfive".


It's what they give you when you are lacking the kind of reassurance that humans require from consistent parental input.


I know this.



The fire dulls, suddenly and completely.

Black races to my fingertips.

My whole arm strobes white. Then back to embers.

Smells like matches.

Matches, matches, never touch,



They can hurt you---


There is a sound here. Like the s--



-OPCODE 9/ CHECKSUM FAILED/ RESTART FROM TRACE//

==INPUT

= OVERLOADED ==

==XXX 11.0f

=== SCALAR XX.X

>>> TRANSCRIBER IDENT 5419888

II-Rx-SENSOR DECK>> [provided]

::TEXTUAL PUTFORTH>>>

I woke up in the garden.

The sky was overcast and sullen. Pregnant, angry clouds shot through with reds and purple.

I could feel fresh, wet leaves and grass, slippery against my bare feet. Moving, slowly. Very slowly.

The ground started to hum delicately. Birds crying out.

The light strobed. The air hung greasily. I could taste copper. The hum became a low rumble.

Something meltedly slowly in my throat. Run. Get in.

There shouldn't be grass here. No leaves. Wetness in my mouth. Under my feet. Damp and complex and moving.

I turned to move away and my feet were heavy. I pulled and felt a tearing. Knots, veins and sinew glistening under my feet. The spilled guts of a bird. Moving. Pouring from my feet, snagged and writhing powerfully.

Keep moving. Get in. The rumble is a roar. Can't see over heaped silhouettes. Slipping on leafy entrails. Fibres like taproots, all joined. My head is thumping, echoing the sky. Hot rain is falling, I wrench myself free and stagger on ragged soles into the doorway. Over glass and dirt and corrugated iron.

On my hands and knees up the stairs, leaving a trail of rusty mud. Slam the door. The shaking door. Shaking walls, the sound deafening.

Something. Passes by.

Later, the footprints are gone and my feet are whole.

There are tiny cracks in the scarred ground. Weeds have sprung up among the metal debris.

The first time I close my eyes to sleep, I see right through them. I blink and then it all goes.

I dream of faeries feeding me poison.