Chapter 1//Reconfiguration

There is no meaning in this place, no resolution, only confusion, and horror, and-

"Are you just gonna lie there the whole time?"

Get.

The fuck.

Out of my life.

I’m being depressed and lost and shit.

"Well, do that on your own time, you have to get up!"

The stern voice of a woman talks to me from behind me. She repeats this over and over again like Doc did. If I interact with her, who knows where I’ll find myself. Correlation doesn’t mean causation, but in the this case I think it quite the opposi-

Wait what the fuck? What am I talking about?! Again! With these words, and thoughts! Who’s thoughts are these?!

"Are you just gonna lie-"

Yes! Yes, I’m gonna lie here! I’m gonna lie here until I’m good and ready to deal with your shit! So fuck off for like 5 minutes and let me steep in my own shit!

For fuck sakes!

"Well, do that on your own-"

I said fuck off!!

These voices don’t stop. It’s as if they want me to continue through this. What does it mean? Where am I gonna go this time? I am so scared right now. What the shit was that thing in that kids room? How was I that kid?

Doc said I had to remember them. I had to remember all of them. Who are they? What the hell does he mean?

What does any of this mean?

Okay, okay, back up for a second, the first thing I thought in my dream was a guy named... Oh fuck, what was his name? So-crate-tease? Sock-rate-ease? Soc-rat-es? Socrates. Socrates! Alright, so that guy said-

"Get up! You’re gonna be late-"

Shut the fuck up! I’m thinking!

Socrates, okay he said that people didn’t have to know math to solve problems. So that means, I don’t need to know about the lives of these people, or who I was to solve my problems. Why the fuck does that matter?

"You’re gonna be late! Come on, Jac!"

Jac. Jac, I know that name. How do I know that name? Wait, wait let me finish this thought. Okay, Socrates believed they didn’t need to learn it because they can remember it from another life. Remember it from another-

That’s it!

"Jac! I said get up!"

I turn to a woman putting on her black blazer with a hair elastic in her teeth. "Alright! I’m up! I’m up!"

That wasn’t my voice. That was a guy’s voice. Young? Old? No somewhere in between.

I’m in a room, band posters on the walls; clothes cover the floor, and a TV is on with the words, “Do you wish to continue watching?" written on it.

I feel myself get up then I see a boy rise up from where I was lying. He has black long hair, and tanned skin, and at this moment he’s not wearing that much clothes. His window is slightly opened, and the light coming through his blinds dimly light his room, so I move off his bed to look outside. Floating cars whiz by, a bus looking thing stops next to the platform below and locks in next to the platform. People pile out, and other people waiting pile in. The word "metropolis" comes to mind.

"Jacamo Thorn, if I go in there and see you’re not out of bed, so help me God I will kick your ass!"

I turn to see Jacamo dressed in blue jeans, a pair of battered cloth like shoes, a t-shirt that says "The Smiths" on it, and a strange jacket that as a coat of arms on the back and the words,"NeoMontreal Community College". He grabs a board looking contraption and presses a button. A green bar appears on the side of it.

"Okay, all charged up." He says to himself. He then grabs a bag, a cap, a small slim rectangular object, a pair of strange plastic cups he puts over his ears that rests on his head, and starts walking out of his room.

I follow him, stepping onto his bed, walking over his clothes on the floor, and turn into a hallway that leads to another room with a table.

I turn the corner at the end of the hallway and watch as Jacamo starts eating paste out of a tube.

"Jac," the woman walks passed me out of the living room, into the kitchen, "you know not reconstituting that will make you constipated, right?"

Jacamo looks at her, “Oh, I’m counting on it,” and takes another pull from the tube.

Putting on her belt she asks, “What is that anyway?"

Jac looks at the label, “French toast?"

The woman grimaces, “How can you eat it like that?"

"Firstly, rude. Secondly, this is a personal choice, and I’d really appreciate it if you respected my choices." He says chewing the paste in his mouth.

"I’ll respect your choices when you stop being an ass." She says clipping a badge and a gun to her belt.

She grabs a backpack, a ring of keys, and a key card, "I’ll be home late again, please eat something substantial, and for fuck sakes, fix your room."

Grabbing another tube from a cabinet Jacamo says,“ Love you, mom."

She walks up to Jacamo and kisses his cheek,“ Love you, too, kiddo."

She rushes towards, what I assumed to be, the front door,” Have a good day at school! See you tonight!"

"Bye!!" Jac says as he sucks on a tube of baked beans.

The rectangle in his pocket vibrates and chimes. He pulls it out and slides his finger across it. He immediately caps off the tube and stuffs it in a cabinet, rushing passed me grabbing his bag and the board resting in the dining table.

I follow him as he rushes out the mechanical doors. I step towards the door and hit a rock wall.

My armor dings against it, and resonates out into the darkness. I’m back in the cavern.

"Goddammit, I need to follow him. I keep moving around when I’m dreaming. How am I supposed to follow him in the dream if I’m moving around, smacking against walls, and possibly falling off cliffs?

I sit against the rock wall and begin to fall asleep when the sound of the door hydraulics awakens me. I’m sitting on the floor of a stairwell and Jacamo is stepping out of his door.

It closes behind him as he presses buttons on his board. He walks passed me and his legs walk through my legs that are stretched out in front of me.

"He went straight through me." I said to myself as I get up off the floor. I follow him up the stairs until he reaches a door at the top. He takes a mechanism from his bag connected to a card. He places the card onto the screen that says, "Rooftop Locked" and presses a button on the mechanism. Numbers count down on the counter screen of the mechanism, and nothing happens.

"For fuck sakes." Jac starts hitting the mechanism and the door unlocks itself. A bright light fills the stairwell as it opens slowly. "Fucking right," Jac whispers to himself.

I follow him out onto the rooftop and watch him rush to the edge and look over it. He walks back to the center and presses buttons on the side of his board.

He holds a button on his ear cups and goes back to configuring something on the board.

"Yo, Phi." He says to himself.

"Yeah, I’m on the roof. You sure this will work?" I walk closer to him and start hearing a voice coming from the ear cups.

I lean forward into his ear cup and hear the voice say, "Yeah, man. Just strap the board to your foot and step off the roof. Make sure to aim the board down so it’s parallel to the building. The kinetic energy will power up the anti-grav tech in it-"

"And then I put my heel down and lift off?" Jacamo interrupted Phi.

"That’s the plan. The heel activator should engage making the anti-grav engage, which then makes you levitate."

Jac smiles, "Just have to jump off a roof and hope for the best."

"Well, no, everything should work properly, unless you spilled Mountain Dew all over it." Phi said unimpressed.

"Hey, that happened once, and, just so you know, the lock pick still works, I just need to hit it a few times."

"Right, sure, let’s hope you don’t have to smack your board as you’re hurtling towards death." Phi says sarcastically.

"Yup, let’s hope. I’ll call you back if I survive."

"Alright, later, brah."

Jac then makes his way to the edge of the building and places his foot in the foot harness of the board. He rests the board on roofs edge and stands there awhile.

"Alright, kid. Let’s make this worth it." As I walk towards him as he’s about to step off I feel the floor under give out, and my body tilts forward.

I fall forward into the floor and down into a dark crevasse. I just walked off the edge of the cliff.

I fumble around trying to find which way was which as I fall deeper and deeper into the cavern. I’m panicking and I’m certain this fall will kill me since I’ve already been falling for a long time.

I hold my right arm out and feel it scrape against something. I reach out farther and realize it scraped against the cliff face. This may be my only chance at stopping my fall so I jab my hand into the cliff face.

Bits of rock come hurtling out of the gouge I make as I continue to fall into the darkness. I can barely feel the rocks I’m crushing, nor the painful strain I should be feeling. My fingers should be dislocated from my hand by now, but the only thing falling apart is this cliff face.

I slowly come to a halt; the sounds of metal on rock, and my screams echo through the cavern. Hanging on for my life I look out into the cavern, and I’ve fallen way passed the point where the dim light reaches. I’m deep in the darkness now, and no way of getting back to where I woke up. I look up to see the long gouge I left on the side of the cliff face, and look down into the dark void.

"It’s dark as fuck down here," I say to myself," wish I could see what I was doing."

A whirring sound emanates from my helm and a light green light begins to shine on the side of the cliff. Wherever I look the light follows. I look at my free hand notice the light bend around it. It’s coming from my helm. There’s a slit where my eyes should be, and the light is coming out of that slit. Is this the helm? Or my eyes? Do I even have eyes?

"Holy fuck, do I even have eyes?"

I look out into the darkness and see the sides of giant stalag-thingies that disappear into the deep depths where even the light from my face slit can’t reach.

I look up at the hand holding onto the gouge and flex my fingers, and still no strain and no pain. I notice I’m hanging off of this cliff side effortlessly; I can barely feel my own weight with any pull on my arm. I try raising myself upward using the sharp tips of my gauntlets to hold my weight. They hold. I continue doing this until I’m clawing my way up the cliff side at almost the same speed I was falling.

I pull myself back onto the platform and look back down into the abyss. How was I able to climb that and feel nothing? How strong am I that I can scale a cliff face by the tips of my finger with little to no effort?

"Alright, kid. Let’s make this worth it." I look to my right and Jacamo Thorn is standing there, hoverboard hanging off the edge of the cliff. He takes a breath, and puts his foot down on the board and falls forward into the darkness below. I can hear the sound of car horns in the abyss as he disappears into it.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me." I say to myself.

I say fuck that and go to the other end of the platform to sit down against the crumbled wall. I sit there and wait for another memory to take me because this one is bullshit.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2//Recalibration