A strange dream flickered through my mind, a blur of something incomprehensible yet vaguely familiar, as if it struck a chord deep in my heart. In a way, it reminded me of the delirium brought on by anesthesia. A lantern’s light above me, a glass lid.
What a bizarre situation. But it didn’t last long. Awareness was the first step toward fully waking up. The light burned dimly.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my throat was parched, and my entire body felt like it was falling apart. Not exactly a pleasant predicament, to put it mildly. My mind slowly started to rev up, thoughts spinning faster. The veil clouding my brain burst, like someone had jabbed a needle into a balloon. Memories flooded back. Not in any particular order, and not all of them.
A series of short clips and mostly still images flashed through my head. A creepy kaleidoscope. Feeling no emotions, I opened my eyes again and sat up, rubbing my temples. My body felt okay, no longer pricked by countless needles, but it still seemed somehow subdued.
I looked around. The room, with its high ceiling and about thirty square meters of space, resembled a cave. Along the walls stood five empty, futuristic cylindrical capsules. To the left, at the far end of the room, were a few cabinets with glass doors, revealing medical supplies inside. To the right, I could see a control panel shaped like an oval, flickering with all sorts of colors. Light streamed in from the ceiling. This room was clearly meant for medical purposes—that much was obvious.
But there was no time to think. The control panel activated, ventilation ducts hummed to life, the light brightened, and a mechanical rustling sound filled the air. I held onto a faint hope that I’d soon figure out where I was and what I was doing here. Though my brain felt sluggish from the effects of sedatives, a voice broke through, and a mechanism rolled out from behind the cabinet. It managed to surprise me, and the sound, it seemed, was coming from it.
It moved on wheels, with a cubic body and a movable head that looked like a giant nautical binocular someone had attached to telescopic hinges. It also had two pairs of flexible limbs, resembling corrugated hoses, each ending in three-fingered manipulators.
“Do you understand me?” the mechanism asked.
“Yeah,” I managed to say, only then realizing that the sounds it made—and the ones I made in response—were complete gibberish, yet perfectly comprehensible to me. Another echo of emotions and memories flickered through me before quickly fading. What kind of heavy stuff did they pump into me?
“Get out of the medical capsule.”
For some reason, I got the sense that this was routine work for the mechanism. And what even was a medical capsule?
“Get dressed,” it commanded as I managed to swing my legs out of the capsule, steadying myself against a wave of dizziness after getting to my feet.
“Uh… How? Where am I?” I asked the obvious question.
“Put this on,” it—or whatever it was—said, extending a package with one of its manipulators. “Look here.” On a screen near the oval console, a video played, showing how to get dressed.
Turns out, the package was a cleverly folded jumpsuit. Wide straps formed a belt; pulling them apart revealed a dark gray garment, a couple of sizes too big for me.
I kept watching the demonstration, accompanied by sparse explanations. One part of the tight collar became movable when squeezed with my fingers, turning into something like a zipper, though there was no actual zipper to be seen. High tech? Alien tech, a sudden thought struck me. Or was it a memory? Either way, I didn’t dwell on it.
Left leg into pant leg one, right leg into pant leg two. Arms into sleeves, zip up. As soon as I turned the fastener back into place, the suit tightened, hugging my body snugly, but after a moment, it loosened just enough to feel comfortable. Not quite a second skin, but close. Convenient. The material felt nice, though there was a slight discomfort. I wasn’t used to wearing just one piece of clothing. Still, my mind noted this in a sort of background mode.
“Head out,” it said, waving a manipulator toward the wall. With a hiss, a door slid open in the wall. “Follow the arrow on the floor.”
“Alright,” I muttered in response and shuffled in the indicated direction, constantly looking around and noticing more and more unfamiliar devices.
Beyond the door was a narrow corridor, about eight feet high and six feet wide, clearly carved and finished by some kind of machine. As I glanced around, I noticed wheel tracks on the ground, different in width from those in the medical section. The door—or rather, gate—had obviously been installed here later. And this mechanism? I’d never seen anything like it before. My mind registered that all of this was, to put it mildly, weird, but I felt no emotions, no urge to question or resist. Must be some potent stuff they’ve got here. If I could feel fear, I’d probably be shaking. Instead, I felt apathy. Not sure. I mechanically moved my feet along the dark gray floor with its glowing white geometric pattern, arrows formed by diamond and square shapes pointing the way. I indifferently noted some kind of plants. Moss? Fungi? Didn’t care. Under the ceiling, cables and pipes ran everywhere, catching my eye in passing. I walked past doors that differed only by their numbers. Only once did I turn my head and linger on a door with external bolts. What was that for? Finally, the arrows on the floor led me to a place with a large round window. A cafeteria, I lazily concluded. A bunch of tables and chairs, a sink, stacks of glasses and trays, and various machines along the walls hinted at its purpose. I pushed the door open.
A voice sounded from the ceiling.
“Come in and take a seat. Listen carefully, don’t interrupt,” the voice instructed as one of the monitors on the wall flickered to life. I walked in. So, I’d arrived. Weird. Everything looked so uniform and somehow depressing. Was I starting to come off the drugs?
“Sit wherever you like,” came the instruction.
“Uh-huh,” I think I replied, stepping over the threshold.
The room I entered reminded me of an old-school college diner or pub, with a few wooden or plastic tables and dozens of chairs. Ah, youth. There was space for about twenty to twenty-five people, but right now, it was just me. It felt a bit neglected—relatively clean, but with the sense that it had only recently been tidied up. A screen on the wall lit up. I walked over, sat at an empty spot on the opposite side from the entrance, and stared at the screen and the person speaking on it.
Just a regular guy, around seventy, gray-haired, wearing a jumpsuit like mine, gray with rare dark spots. If I didn’t have so much unknown junk in my system, I’d probably be surprised or try to ask something. But as it was… a cafeteria and a TV. My mind, latching onto something familiar, somehow triggered atrophied reflexes from my younger days. A sense of focus and readiness to absorb information, like during a lecture, emerged. A machine under the wall on a table buzzed, dispensing a plate with a spoon and a drink. I grabbed everything and sat down to eat.
“Alright, let’s get started,” the old man on the screen said, sounding oddly pleased for no apparent reason as I glanced at him. “Allow me to introduce myself…” he began cheerfully.
It seemed they hadn’t just implanted language skills into me but also dumped a bunch of additional info straight into my memory. At least, during the two hours the old man rambled on, I wasn’t so much learning new things from his words as recalling stuff that had already been embedded. As weird as that sounds. Anyway, here’s the situation: there’s a planet on the outskirts of space. It was once inhabited, but after a series of wars and the use of unknown weapons around and on its surface, anomalies and spatial rifts started appearing. About a thousand years passed, and civilization somewhat recovered in areas free of anomalies. Then came the arachnoids—a spider-like race—that pushed human civilization out of the restored zones. But even they couldn’t hold on here; their tech didn’t work, or maybe the environment didn’t suit them. No one knows for sure, but you can still encounter them on the planet.
Rare valuable minerals are found only in anomaly zones. The surface is only partially vegetated, and it’s home to various mutants and creatures. There’s almost no population left, just small colonies surviving underground. Former mines, bunkers, caves, and tunnels are now occupied by remnants of invading hordes and the surviving locals, enduring cataclysms and anomalies. Recently, spaceships have started crashing on the planet, pulled in by anomalies or spatial rifts in orbit. Seems like civilization is once again trying to claim this corner of space. Pirates, colonists, researchers, fugitives—you name it, they’ve been spat out onto the surface.
I was one of dozens of people found and rescued here on a ship that crashed nearby. Since I hailed from an underdeveloped planet, they didn’t just thaw me out but, per the laws and protocols of this settlement, subjected me to mental conditioning in a medical capsule. It was like an induced dream or a virtual reality game where I was taught languages and the basic rules of life here—how to use the simplest devices and tech in this place. Beyond language skills, they also gave me a crash course on the local terrain, history, and culture. Overall, these lessons weren’t so much about education as they were about stimulating and unlocking knowledge, embedding it deep into my subconscious to stick. It was about interacting with tech, self-education, and personal growth.
There was a lot to take in, but I started feeling drowsy after eating. The old man on the screen suggested I rest and continue tomorrow. On autopilot, I returned my plate and spoon, slid them into a slot, and, yawning, made my way to a disposal unit. I fed it my trash and only then caught myself feeling a faint, muted, but distinct sense of surprise. Why did I do that? It felt familiar. Not today, though. Time to sleep.
The old man on the screen told me to come back to the cafeteria as soon as I woke up. Arrows on the floor guided me again to a bathroom and a residential block—a small room with two single beds. I lay down without taking off the jumpsuit. Night would bring clarity. My brain needed to shake off the drugs. From what I gathered from the old man, my body had been in stasis for a long time. How I got here and who I was, I barely remembered: my name, family, education, career—all fuzzy. Time to sleep.
I woke up, memories crashing over me like a snowball: who I am, where I’m from, what I’m doing here, and why. My head throbbed. After massaging my temples and lying there for another half hour, I got up. Time to get to work.
I don’t know how it works for those isekai protagonists with leftover personalities of their host bodies, but in my case, I was an artificially created subject with partially borrowed memories. A sort of induced split personality. Now, this second “me,” trained in virtual reality, was actively merging with the original me, enriching my memory with knowledge and my body with skills. Though, honestly, the first part was already done.
From what I can tell from my memories, that other guy was a personality—educated, sure, but spineless. If it had been different, who knows who would’ve absorbed whom in the end. Most likely, I’d have ended up a drooling vegetable. But the mental tech here at this base is clearly refined to the smallest detail. It accounted for everything, adjusted accordingly, and even pumped me full of sedatives. If that even matters. Anyway, stop. I’m overthinking this. Sure, the AI or base management’s approach to integrating wild immigrants into this society is pretty unique, but what does that mean for me? Nothing, for now.
Maybe I’d end up a drooling vegetable anyway, but this method of working with AI seems polished to the tiniest detail. Imaginary narratives, commands, everything’s accounted for and modified, plus the sedatives. If that’s even possible. Okay, stop. I’m not thinking about the right stuff. Sure, their solution for integrating outsiders into society is creative, but what does it mean for me? Nothing yet. I need to get a grip on myself. Get up, do something. My body’s somewhat back to normal, my head doesn’t hurt, it’s clearer now, so to speak.
What’s on the agenda? Bathroom, cafeteria.
I retraced yesterday’s path. As I entered the cafeteria, the food prep machine hummed to life, dispensing the same nutrient porridge and cocktail as before.
About ten minutes later, the screen flicked on, and the old man reappeared.
“Well, kid, how’re you feeling today?” he asked.
“Seems okay.”
“Let’s get acquainted. I’m the artificial intelligence of this base. Been working here for over a thousand years. And who are you, and what should I call you?” I’d thought he was a real person yesterday. Everything’s jumbled up, and now it turns out he’s a machine. Man, where have I ended up? The old me would’ve had a meltdown. They must’ve slipped something into the porridge.
“My name’s Nikita, or just Nick for short. I’m from planet Earth, a human. How did I get here?”
“One of our technicians found you on a crashed ship in a stasis capsule. Brought you here, I thawed you out and got you back to normal.”
“And what do you want from me? This isn’t my planet, from what I understand.”
“Correct, it’s not. No one knows its name, just a number. I ended up here too, from a research ship that crashed on this planet. I need helpers to run this complex.”
“What will I be doing?”
“To determine your usefulness, we need to put you back in a medical capsule and check your Intelligence Coefficient, or IC. It’s the cornerstone of civilization here and the key to a bright future, no matter which cosmic state you’re in. A couple of millennia ago, with advancements in tech and medicine, local scientists created a neural computer that operates based on your intellect. The higher your IC, the more powerful a neural network you can be equipped with.”
“And what does this neural network do for me?”
“Now, just like a thousand years ago, all tech operates via neural networks. Sure, some devices have manual modes, but only the simplest ones. At the very least, there’s the neurocom—a middleman between human and machine. It all depends on your IC and our agreement.”
“How do I decide?”
“First, to the med bay. We’ll check your stats, then we’ll see. Follow the indicator.”
The same corridors, the familiar doors.
I climbed into the capsule still wearing the jumpsuit. It’s comfy in here, the surface even adjusts to my body’s shape. The lid lowered, and some kind of gas filled the space. Something wrapped around my head. A small wave of panic from the enclosed space hit me, but I suppressed it with a familiar act of willpower. Funny, the reflexes of that trained personality are kicking in. Feels like I’ve already been through an IC scan. Whoever came up with this mental tech or virtual reality training is a genius. It’s the perfect way to learn.
That’s why the old man gave me that lecture—to maximize the extraction and embedding of info into my subconscious. To make the added knowledge my own. Considering how much I already know and remember, it’s a pretty successful method. Though, how would I know what tiny nuances exist—or not-so-tiny ones—and what part of the knowledge has been lost to time?
A prick somewhere in my neck, and I could move again. The lid lifted, and the medical capsule released me from its cozy confinement. Quick work.
“How’d I do?” I asked the old man—or AI, whatever I should call him—as he appeared on a nearby monitor.
“Not bad. Take your card from the capsule, check it out yourself. I’ll explain. Also, grab the neurocom, put it on your wrist. There’s a map of the complex in there. And take the headband, put it on—it’ll sync up.”
Got everything, put it on.
“What do I do now?” I asked the AI once I was ready.
“I’ve reviewed your data from the medical card. Take a look at the screen.”
The card looked a lot like my Earth passport, complete with my photo. My medical record popped up on the screen too, though in a condensed form, just the publicly accessible stuff. So, what do we have here? Name, age, gender, blood type, some purely medical details, and there it is—the coveted stat: IC. A total of 133 units. Is that high or low? What does it mean?
“Your IC score is decent. We can install a third-gen neural network, but I don’t have one in stock right now. We need to run a few more recovery procedures on your body and recheck later. Did you have any head injuries?”
“Yeah, as a kid. Around two or three years old, I impaled my palate on a toy pyramid. Doctors said it was fine, though my mom mentioned that when I ate, milk would come out of my nose. Some kind of broken septum or something.”
“We’ll treat it, take a look. For now, I’ve granted you access to move around the base. You can go where the floor lights up and doors open. I’ve also uploaded some basic databases to your neurocom; they’re running in the background. You’ve been trained on how to use it before, so you should figure it out. There’s a button on the headband to summon the goggles. They’re synced with the neurocom. Through them, you can view equipment on the base, its functions, ownership, status, and contact me.”
“So, what should I do?”
“For now, get acclimated. Tomorrow, we’ll check your condition, talk more, and meet in the cafeteria in the morning.”
“Alright, I’ll head out then.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” the AI said, and the monitor switched off.
Okay, not my concern right now. The classic question looms: “What do I do?” Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of an answer. As usual. Fine, let’s try to make a short-term plan. That’s a bit easier.
Look around, learn more about where I am, figure out the tech.
I made it back to my room and started with the neurocom and headband. The neurocom seems to be some kind of memory-enhancing device, and I need to learn fast. I need to figure out where I’ve ended up. I didn’t want to stay in the dark about what’s going on around me, so, gathering my resolve, I cautiously pressed the protrusion on the headband. A field formed in front of my eyes, highlighting objects around me.
A few seconds later, I felt intense dizziness, like feathers tickling inside my head. The unpleasant sensation faded quickly, and a new batch of images appeared before my eyes, accompanied by text and voice annotations. The first images caused slight discomfort when I repeated them, but gradually, the unease passed, and memorization became normal. I didn’t notice how much time had gone by until I realized the images and explanations were flashing by incredibly fast. I lay down on the bed. The learning speed had tripled, if not more.
Periodically, I was given test questions on the material, and I answered them without hesitation, then rested for about an hour at a time. This boosted my confidence, and I focused on learning as much as I could, noticing my comprehension growing even further. I made a few trips to the cafeteria, and at some point, I just passed out in my room. Maybe my body couldn’t handle the strain, or more likely, the headband put me to sleep, hitting a limit on brain load.