The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Tag Archives: identity

Slowly Awakening

1 Comment Posted by on April 22, 2012

Flicker.

Who am I?  What am I?

Noetic reinstantiation is in progress.  Secondary noumenal systems and incrementing memory string load incomplete.  Please wait, avoiding intensive cogitative activity.

Sensations and images flicker through my consciousness: Warmth, brightness, color, rough textures, old aches, the taste of sweet fruit.  The feel of an organic body from within.  Eldrae.  I am — I was eldrae.

Running though the old stone-lanes as a child.  The feel of dog’s fur under my hands, and a poke from a cold, wet nose.  A double sunrise, clouds staining the sky green and red and gold.  Bathing in the hot mineral springs on Adírdis.  The scent of Calcíë’s hair –

Who?

Please hold all queries until incrementing memory string load is complete.  New associations may interfere with engram binding.

A golden liquor that tastes of smoke and stone.  Breakfast at a café near dome-edge, watching the ethane cascade down the water-ice cliff.  Laughing at our first attempt to learn to dance in microgravity.  Disassembling a plaser in a tearing hurry, while the room shakes around me.  The acrid smell of regolith as I take off my breather.

Confusion.  Running down a river of wine with a mass of fire in the shape of a woman while the cold-gas thrusters laughed in the methane sky…

Apologies.  Errors in the mnemonic merge-update process have produced engram cross-links.  Retrying.

Sipping wine in front of a roaring fire, my wife by my side.  Cold-gas thrusters hissing as we ride a boat down a river of oil, under the green-blue haze of Galíné’s sky.  The feeling of exasperation, my hands deep in the guts of the partly-upgraded house brain.  Walking in the garden, flowers bright red and purple against green-blue leaves, with the scent of rose and honey and old wood tickling my nose…

Incrementing memory string load complete.  Please claim your identity.

I am…

I am Elyse Adae-ith-Atridae isil-Cyprium-ith-Avalae Erinlochos, ion-Tiryn, iel-Airin, mis-Eliéra-en-Palar.

Dynamic mind-state analysis confirms mental integrity.
Am-I-Me service confirms continuity of identity; Identity Tribunal concurs.
Current mind-state backup transmitted to incarnation insurance provider.

Noetic reinstantiation complete; initiating corporal awareness.

For the first time since my death, blinking at the bright light on never-before-used retinas, I open my eyes.

Fic-a-Day , , , , ,

Where Everything Knows Your Name

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 22, 2012

Nobody overslept this morning.

That’s because my bed didn’t wake me up.

Of course, then the lights were painfully bright when I did wake up, my kitchen served my morning esklav weak as dishwater, and the morning newspaper, when I picked it up, was showing nothing but a few priority headlines and the configuration interface.

Indeed, it is a tribute to the weakness of the esklav that I didn’t quite realize what was going on until I slipped my wearable on, only to be confronted with the default glasstop and a blinking warning message; authentication claim not found.

Shit.

Okay.

How does this go?

Infrastructure. Utilities. Cypherclerk diagnostics.

Null response.

So that was that. Universal definitely not working, then. Pain in the – well, someone’s got to be the one-in-five-hundred-thousand failure, but…

Search query: where did I put my backup identity documents?

Xinalath: You do not have permission to query this volume for objects owned by this person.

Oh, shit and corruption!

So. About two hours of searching later, I finally found them. In a crate. In the back storage room in the sub-basement. Underneath half a dozen scarves and my grandfather’s fueling tongs.

Then it was time to go and get the replacement installed. Which is easy enough – it can be done at any Imperial Services office. If you can get there.

You do not have the owner’s authorization to operate this automobile.

Oh, shit, corruption, and entropy!

Agent query: summon a chartercar. Payment at destination.

At least from then it was smooth sailing. Apart from trying to get the seat position and the microclimate comfortable manually. And the advertising blathering on about things I already owned or had no interest in. And the stares from passers-by seeing authentication errors when they looked at me.

And the process of removing the old Universal isn’t nearly as comfortable as they advertise.

But it is very good to be somebody again.

Fic-a-Day , ,

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