Katherine couldn’t breathe. According to the man calling himself Jake, she was dead. They all were. That was not possible. She had only been twenty-four, just beginning her career as a model, cosplayer, and influencer. Now that was all gone because, according to Jake, a dysfunctional AI had decided to abduct them all. She didn’t know if the man was making that all up or if it was the truth, but that didn’t change the fact that she was trapped here.
She managed to glance over at Jake and saw him yawning as he checked a wristwatch. She was pretty sure the man hadn’t been wearing that when he entered the room. It infuriated her that he was being so nonchalant and dismissive about what was going on. Jake must have seen her glance his way. He dared to smile and wave, as if her not being able to breathe was perfectly normal.
She paused in thought. How long had she been hyperventilating? She hadn’t had a panic attack since she was in high school, and that episode rendered her unconscious after less than a minute. She was pretty sure she had been rocking back and forth on the chair, trying to catch her breath and quell her panic for far longer than that this time around.
“How long?” she managed to gasp out.
Jake looked at his watch again. “About twenty minutes. You beat my record by five. I’m impressed.”
Katherine couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the statement, and that finally let her get her breathing back under control. Well, that, and the fact that she realized she wasn’t actually breathing. Jake had told them as much, but it was one thing to know something and another to experience it firsthand.
She looked over at the other two. Franky, the dick, was unconscious and drooling over the arm of his chair, while Barry hadn’t moved a muscle since she had last seen him, and his eyes looked unfocused.
“Is he going to be okay?” she nodded toward Barry.
Jake shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I noticed you didn’t ask about Franky, can’t say I blame you; he should be fine as well. I’m pretty sure he just passed out from overstimulation.”
“Just like a hyperactive kid. Oddly fitting for that troll,” she replied with disgust.
Jake nodded. “Since you’re the first to recover, you want to follow me?” he gestured to the door, which was thankfully closed.
“And fall again? No thanks,” she muttered.
“You only fell because you didn’t know you could prevent that. That’ll come with practice, but no. Once I open the door, it’ll lead directly to your personal virtual space. You won’t be able to do a whole lot with it. We’re short on data storage at the moment, but if you want to be alone, nobody can bother you there.”
“Even you?” she asked.
“Even me,” he said without hesitation.
Katherine didn’t quite believe him, but what choice did she have?
She rose from the chair and followed him toward the door. When he opened it, it did indeed lead to another room.
Jake moved aside, and she put one foot over the threshold and tested the floor to ensure it was solid. When it didn’t vanish under the pressure, she gathered her courage and stepped inside.
When she glanced back, she saw the doorway was partially opaque and looked like frosted glass. She could make out the general shape of Jake standing on the other side, but that was it.
“I added this in for privacy,” Jake said through the barrier. “I can either wait here, or you can allow me access. Your choice.”
Even though she was terrified of Jake shutting the door and finding herself trapped in this room, she didn’t reply as she moved further inside.
Not that there was much to see. If she lay across the floor, you could stack two of her, and she could touch opposite walls without stretching. It reminded her of her college dorm room, but even more spartan. There was a twin bed off to one side, a small dresser with a mirror over it, and the kind of chair that wouldn’t look out of place in a school classroom. The walls were an off-white that reminded her of a hospital room. None of it looked inviting or comfortable.
She was about to ask where the restroom was, but caught herself. She wasn’t in a physical body anymore; she didn’t need to do all that stuff.
Then why the bed?
As much as Katherine wanted time alone to process everything, she didn’t want to do that in this room; it would likely just make her panic even worse. She quickly left the room behind, appearing back in the first room with the other three.
“Yeah, sorry about the limited amenities,” Jake said. “If you don’t want to spend time in there, you can come to my place.”
She glared at him for a moment. She could almost see the gears working inside the man’s head as the realization of what he said hit him. Once it did, he flushed in embarrassment.
“It’s nothing weird or sexual or anything its just that my space is a bit more comfortable, see, I’ll show you,” he rambled quickly as he shut the door and reopened it to what looked like a bachelor’s apartment.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
She wasn’t impressed, but it beat the sterile cube that he had given her.
Jacob hurried through the door. “Mi casa es su casa? I think that’s how you say it. Anyway, what’s mine is yours, and the others’ too. At least until I can get a handle on the storage space issue.”
“I—I think I need time to process everything,” Katherine said quietly.
“Oh, um. You can use the bedroom. I don’t actually use it. Follow me.”
She did without thinking. They reached a door, and she would have gone wide-eyed at watching the handle change if she hadn’t experienced so many astounding things so quickly.
“I changed the handle so you can lock it from the inside, so nobody bothers you. Only I can change it or enter, but I promise to knock first.”
She nodded woodenly and stepped inside.
Jake shut the door behind her, and she heard it click shut. Not even caring to see if it was locked, she promptly faceplanted into the sinfully comfortable mattress and passed out.
***
Jacob sighed. Introductions were going a bit rougher than he would have liked.
Katty seemed to have some handle on things, but he could tell she was overwhelmed.
He glanced over at the door to the other room, but he could see that the other two were still out of it.
“I’ll give them a few hours,” he said quietly, before vanishing from his personal space to do some other work.
The other two could wander his apartment when they felt up to it.
***
“This is bullshit!” Franky yelled as he knocked the bowl of cereal off the table like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “I want some real goddamn food, not this shit!”
Jacob’s temple throbbed in annoyance at the man-child’s antics, but the bowl and its contents never hit the floor. “If you don’t like it, don’t fucking eat it. It’s not like you need food.”
Franky crossed his arms and glared at Jacob. “I would make my own, but you won’t give us any control.”
It had been a few days since the trio woke. Technically, only Katty and Franky were awake. Barry was still catatonic, which was starting to worry Jacob, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the man’s condition. It wasn’t like the archive of data that Melody had left behind was any help in that regard.
Jacob ground his teeth together before responding to the petulant man. “I already told you, I’m not preventing you from doing anything. You have to learn how to do what I do yourself.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Jacob could dump the knowledge into their heads as Melody had done for him, but it would likely destroy their consciousness if he did, since there wasn’t enough space to store the extra data.
He had tried assigning them some data storage on the station, as he had done for himself, but the Station refused to recognize them as valid individuals, so he was stuck building their separate storage areas manually.
It took Jacob hours to figure out why the AI treated him differently. He thought it might be because he was a captain, which automatically gave him certain privileges that others didn’t have, but that wasn’t the case.
He had to do more research on the station’s network, but he did eventually figure out why he was recognized and the others weren’t. The only reason the station AI recognized him at all was that he was inside the AI core, not a standard storage medium. It considered the situation of a merged mind residing inside an AI core to be impossible based on its coded restrictions and just assumed its sensors were malfunctioning.
Jacob chose not to correct the AI on that assumption. That sounded like a whole can of worms he would rather not pry open.
That brought him back to the issue of his new companions.
Katty had exited the room a few times to explore the confines of the apartment, but quickly disappeared the moment Franky showed his face. Honestly, Jacob couldn’t blame her. He was ready to banish the spoiled prick back to his virtual space and leave him there to stew.
He hadn’t yet pulled the trigger on that idea because he realized these three individuals were likely to be his main companions for a long time. That thought soured his mood slightly, but he pushed that concern off to the side. People could grow and change.
Jacob decided to focus on getting them some bodies and working on the AI recognition issue. He was pretty sure he could convince the AI to change its mind eventually, but that was going to take time he didn’t currently have.
“Look,” Jacob said with a sigh. “I’m making some drones for you three to walk around in. That way, you can at least explore the station. To use the drone, you need to study the documents I gave you.”
“You want me to waste my time studying, like in school?” Franky scoffed. “I dropped out of school to stream full-time because school was pointless. Why would I want to go back?”
Jacob wasn’t surprised to hear that the illustrious Franky D had dropped out to pursue a life of playing video games on camera. Convincing him to do something else was probably not going to go over well, but then Jacob got an idea.
“Don’t think of it as school,” Jacob hastily replied. “Think of it as learning a complex system for a game? Wouldn’t you like to prove that you’re the best by being the first person to master the system?”
Franky actually stopped to think about that for a minute before scowling. “I would hardly be the first,” he gestured negligently to Jacob.
Thankfully, Jacob already had a response. “Oh, you can’t include me, that would be a lopsided challenge at best. I’m more like a dev or bug tester. You would be the first production player.” Jacob was really pushing the gaming angle, but he could see he had the younger man’s attention.
Franky snorted and stood, pushing the chair back so hard it crashed to the floor. He didn’t even bother looking back or apologizing for the act. “Fine, but this shit better be worth it,” he replied before striding toward the room he had chosen as his own.
Jacob waited for the spoiled shit to slam the bedroom door before he willed the kitchen chair upright. He turned to leave, but was stopped as Katty spoke.
“Is it true what you said to that loser, you’re building bodies for us?” she asked.
He nodded. “You want the same instructions?”
She glanced at the door Franky had disappeared into, and a vicious, competitive grin bloomed on her face. “I do.”
A thick manual appeared in the air in front of her. She snatched the floating document and slipped back into her room.
He let out a sigh of relief.
That should keep them occupied for a few weeks.
Jacob checked on Barry one last time, finding no change. He shook his head and vanished from the virtual space and into his bipedal drone.
He finished loading the last of the crates on the transport and sent instructions to the station AI to build two—he stopped himself and amended the order—three more bipedal drones, manifesting a set of the same instructions on the table in front of Barry. Then he made the connection to the welcome room one way, so Barry could leave, but the other two couldn’t bother him.
He didn’t think Katty would do anything, but Franky seemed like the kind of guy who would cheat and steal his way to victory if he was allowed to.
With everything handled, he moved to the cockpit and powered up the ship. He needed some time away from his new companions. After being alone for so long, he found their presence grating on his senses.
Thankfully, Jacob wasn’t actually leaving the system. Most of his time would be occupied in the peaceful silence of the transport, but he set up a few monitoring subroutines, thanks to the knowledge left behind by Melody.
As always, thanks for reading! And thanks for the support! If you enjoy the story, please rate it and comment below!
