kasdeya on Nostr: I wake with a start as the room is filled with cold metallic beeping. I scramble ...

I wake with a start as the room is filled with cold metallic beeping. I scramble deliriously, my vision still blurry in the light: The guards will be here any second. They'll punish me if I'm not ready for my shift. Where is my uniform? I can't disappoint them again.

A device around my neck detects my rising panic and blasts my face with ice cold air for a few moments. The sudden shock brings me to my senses and I gradually steady my shaky breathing.

The familiar searing pain in my head helps to wake me up the rest of the way as I reach for the information rectangle on my bedside table. I forget what the Autonomists called this thing, but it doesn't matter. It's more of their incredible technology: A featureless box that fits in my palm. It responds to my voice and my touch, and presents information to me when I ask for it. It seems to know everything.

The rectangle beeps in recognition as I touch it, and its front face displays the text: "A synthmorph is ready in the resleeving lab. Follow the indicated path." I marvel for a moment that I didn't even need to ask it a question - it somehow knew what I wanted to know.

I was taught to fear this technology, but I'm done being a prisoner to fear. I hold the rectangle in front of me like a magnifying glass, and it changes to become transparent - as if it were made of glass. But when I look through it, I see a blue line on the floor. The "indicated path". Incredible.

I follow it out of the door of... my new home... and into the bustle of the common area. I feel a wave of nausea and my headache redoubles as I try to process my surroundings. Dizzyingly patterned art on every wall, people and beings with appearances beyond what I can imagine, flashes of color and light, and deafening sounds (music?) made using more of their electronic technology. My room must have hidden the sound from me. I don't even bother questioning how.

I grit my teeth and follow the blue line - trying not to notice anything else. Eventually I find myself walking into a cluttered metal room, full of instruments and machinery. I sigh in relief as the door closes and the cacophony of color and noise is gone again.

"Are you okay?" asks a concerned robot, which takes a step toward me and then pauses, unsure of how to help.

I close my eyes and take a few moments to steady myself in the cold air of the lab, my head throbbing in rhythm with the pumping of my heart, before finally replying, "My head hurts."

"Oh! Of course it does! Barotraumagenic neuropathy, isn't it...? Inconsistent life support conditions on the asteroid mines leading to..." It speaks quickly and shyly, seeming to mostly be talking to itself. "I can fix that! Can I fix that?" It looks at me expectantly.

"Please.", I say. The pain is always worse when I'm stressed, and I couldn't be more stressed about what's waiting for me in this lab. My eyes are drawn to a motionless mechanical body - not too different from the one the other robot is using - laying motionless on a padded reclined chair. Next to it is a second chair, this one upright and empty.

"Um..." the robot is sheepishly clutching a tool made of the same kind of matte plasticky substance that most of their technology seems to use. "This might feel a little weird, but I promise it's going to help, and it's not going to hurt. Okay?"

Without waiting for a response, it... she? Sprays me in the face with the tool. Thousands of droplets of dry moisture melt painlessly into my skin. I jerk back in alarm but suddenly... The pain is gone. It's just gone.

"I disabled your ability to feel neuropathic pain, but sometimes there can be false positives and genuine pain can be suppressed too, so please be careful until we complete the resleeving process."

I want to cry tears of relief. Nothing hurts. For the first time in my life, nothing hurts at all. But I don't allow myself the luxury of tears. I need to stay strong for just a little bit longer. "Okay," I say, tasting the cold lab air as if these will be my last moments alive. "Put me in that damned machine."