And God said "Let there be light."

A quote from the ancient Earth bible seems to be a strange thought for me to have upon awakening. But there is light, and the light seems radiant, as if god has just created it.

I am aware of where I am. The surroundings are comfortable and familiar. I am in one of the engineering bays of the Andromeda Ascendant watching a young man enter code on a hand-held keypad. The young man with spiky blond hair and deep dimples is dressed in bright and definitely not military issue clothing. He is using technology of which I am not aware. While I do not recognize him, I am fairly certain he is not god.

I feel . . now that is an interesting word, because right now the only sense my body seems to have is sight . . . like the way a newborn baby or a person who has just awakened from a long coma might feel. At first I thought it was a temporary sensation upon awakening, but it has not gone away. Furthermore, when I look down I cannot see my body. It is as if I am the eyes of the abyss. I wonder my eyes are red and piercing.

I think; therefore I am. René Descartes. Again I am thinking the words of an ancient Earth philosopher. Proving him right. What is happening to me? What has happened to me? There are hundreds of questions that I have to ask and find answers for, but I have no voice. I can only ask them to myself and expect that I can find the answers from within. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It has to make sense. I am Dylan Hunt of the Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, and I am not easily confused.

* * * * *

"Does this look like what you wanted, boss?" The light has returned and with it, sound. This time I also seem to sense by body in space - kinesiology. I remember that course at the High Guard Academy. Thought it would be easy because all the jocks had to take it. Thought they would have to "dumb it down," but they didn't. It was a tough course both physically and mentally, but I studied hard and learned a lot. The course was essential for those of use who have spent extensive time in space. Even with my heavy-gravity-world genes there have been times when I was only able to survive because I knew exactly where my body was and how it moved. Right now, however, I am aware that my body seems lighter, airy, ethereal -- I wonder if I have been drugged.

"Good job, Mr. Harper." I recognize that voice. It is that of my first officer Gaharis Rhade. I wonder what he is doing talking to this man in engineering. He's never been interested in the mechanical aspects of the ship. Strange?

My vision -- it is like I am extremely hyperopic -- things in the distance are clear and sharp, but things get nearer, especially my body, I cannot really see them clearly. I see my body the same way I feel it, as if it is not completely real, not completely there.

"He -- it -- can interact with objects? Like I requested?"

"Well, yes and no, boss. It's sort of strange. He can touch things and interact with them."

As he says that a small ball comes flying through the air. I reach up and catch it. My body seems to work fine. I throw it back to him. He misses it. That's exactly what I have always said about engineers -- no hands.

"But on the other hand. . . " He walks toward me, coming closer and closer. He extends his arm and it seems to pass right through my body. As if I am not there. I am here. This is my space.

"How does that work?" Rhade's face shows astonishment.

"Don't know, still figuring that out. I patterned a lot of it after Andromeda's holographic presence, but added a few of my famous bells and whistles. I've never worked with a human . . . brain . . . soul. . . what every you want to call it before."

"Thought print, Mr. Harper. Human thought print."

Ah yes, I remember doing that. Just before we left on the last mission we had all spent three-long-days wired to some computer while some techno-geek took readings and asked questions. Everything from our early childhood to our sex lives. He was going to attempt to duplicate a pattern of our brain waves to store for the ages, so that after we were dead . . .

Wait? Am I dead? Has this barely post-adolescent mad scientist actually brought me back from the dead? Could he really be god? No, I think I already decided that.

"OK, if you want to call it that. I prefer to call it Harper's Hologram. You requested it for a GO partner, but it can have so many, many more uses. Haven't figured out the voice part yet, but he will be a good listener. Talk to him to your heart's content and it will go no further. Of course, if you are a little kinkier, I am sure that he will be he can do some fun things with those lips of his. Strikes me as someone who would be adept at . . ."

"Never was before, why would he change." I see a smirk on Rhade's face; then the world goes void.

* * * *

Harper was on a personal mission. Who would have thought that the project to retrieve the antique High Guard warship would have ended up this way? Sure they might have ended up dead. You take that chance any time you go one-on-one with a black hole, but they survived that. Saved the ship. Bested that Nightsider who thought he owned the crew. Found a new home, but it wasn't exactly the home he had wanted.

Why do Nietzscheans have this thing for mudfoots? Why was he the only member of the crew that the captain found acceptable to beat with his force lance? No matter how hard he tried he couldn't please him. He had built him the avatar for the ship given Andromeda a body, and a damn nice body at that, and the uber still wanted more. More, right now! As if he thought a blow from the force lance would stimulate his brain?

This project had to work. Maybe if the captain had a GO partner -- is that a euphemism or what?

Who was he trying to fool? But maybe if he did the job right, he might have a chance of getting Beka back.

Getting Beka back would imply that he once had her. That wasn't completely true. Beka had had him. Beka Valentine, his captain on the Eureka Mauro, had saved him from at best a life of dull and boring and at worst a life of crime and punishment. Since he had left Earth he had drifted. He wanted to be an engineer, on a spaceship, but with his counterfeit credentials more likely he would end up at a power plant or a garbage treatment facility on some small planet even worse off than Earth. At least on Earth there were babes -- human babes. Now this human babe, hot human babe, had taken her onto his ship. Wow! She'd even let him fuck her a few times. Not like they were in love or anything, but she was as horny as he was. Liked that in a babe.

But now, since they had discovered the one member of the crew of the Andromeda Ascendant was still alive, Beka had a new main squeeze. She was cuddling up with the captain a big bad Nietzschean named Gaheris Rhade. She'd always had a thing for Nietzscheans and men in uniform. It was to be expected. She'd spend her days learning to pilot this wonderful huge ship and her nights bonking the captain. No time for sweet Seamus. He missed Beka and he missed getting it on.

He was sure going to try. He knew the best way to deal with Nietzscheans was to make them happy. He wasn't going to stop until he had.

* * * *

"Who are you?" I can talk. I can see, I can hear and now I can talk. My body, however, still suffers from translucency.

"Great. Now I can test my data verbally, I can talk a hell of a lot faster than I can use this freaking keypad. Voice print satisfactory. Adjust timbre slightly. Volume adequate. Adjust eye movements to correspond to lip movements. Remove arm swing during conversation -- it's freaking disconcerting."

I do not like him talking about me as if I am some machine to be adjusted and tweaked the way I know engineers are wont to do. I wish he would get a little closer so I can see if I can put my hands around that skinny little neck of his and see just how strong I am.

"You haven't answered my question."

"I'm too busy to talk to you. Captain Rhade wants you ready for this evening. Says he can live with you a little see-through, but you have to be able to walk and talk. I have a few thousand more adjustments to make. If you don't shut up, I'll turn you off. I've got a lot of data to input, you don't realize how complicated just walking is."

"I do. I worked on a service project of reprogramming paraplegics when I was in high school. So tell me who you are and maybe I can help you."

"Wow. I didn't know that. Sure would save a lot of time if I knew what you already knew so I didn't have to key it in."

"Tell me who you are?"

"Seamus Z. Harper, Engineer extraordinary." He said with a big smile.

"And that's supposed to mean something to me."

* * * *

I had experienced the reaction in others, and chastised them for it. Now I was doing exactly the same thing. I was fine going through the drills necessary to program my muscles to take steps when I was holding on to the parallel bars, but as soon as I was deemed ready to go off on my own, I had refused to use the canes provided. I wanted to do it myself. I had worked so hard and I knew I could carry my own weight. Of course I wasn't, and I fell flat, and the engineer had to call another crewmember, a somewhat overworked Nietzschean to help me back to my chair. From now on I will use the canes.

"Captain Rhade wants to see if you can play GO. I should warn you, I have an IQ of 183." The engineers had set out a one level board. I hated to tell him that we played in three dimensions.

"I rarely lose."

"Rhade says you were good competition."

"Beat him most of the time. Seem to recall that when I didn't it was because he was cheating."

"Ready to take on the Harper."

It wasn't even close. The boy may know wires but he doesn't know GO. He was fine on the probability but weak on the strategy. He would give up, when he should have played with confidence and hoped his opponent would make a mistake. It's not a question of how smart you are, but how well you opponent is playing that day.

"Looks like you're ready. Are you going to make a fuss if I help you down to the Captain's quarters?"

"No."

* * *

The testing stage went on for . . . actually I have no idea as to the passage of time because of the holes in my Swiss-cheese brain. There are times when I seem to have been turned off. I know I am still in the testing mode because I win every game I play against Rhade. I at first attribute it to my lack of external diversions, but finally conclude that it is due to his lack of cheating. I guess you don't cheat when you are testing. I suspect that future games will be more of a challenge, not in the actual playing, but in the looking for pieces concealed in his hand. I not only have to watch, I have to memorize each piece as it is placed to see if it might be moved subtly with a trailing bone blade. Damn those Nietzscheans!

Rhade likes to talk. He spends almost as much time bouncing ideas off me as he does playing GO. He seems to be having difficulty with his crew and his mission. My expertise never leaves his quarters or the engineering bay. I'm on for a while, then switched off. I remember reading about multiple personalities who experience lapses in memories the scientists have called fugues. I wonder if that is what is happening to me. I wonder who takes over this so-called-body when I am not there.

I have wondered why the engineer has not made me a hard, A/I body like he made for the avatar of the ship. Perhaps Rhade likes me here in spirit and not in flesh. With a crew this small, it would seem that I would be welcome, yet . . .

* * *

The world is changed. I may be a machine with a see through body and a mechanical chip for a brain, but even I can deduce that things today are not as they were yesterday. They are as they were . . . the entire concept of time and space is being twisted by some external source. One second it is today and the next it is a year ago and the next three hundred years ago. I search for a link to explain this phenomenon and concluded that it is something new, or perhaps something not yet invented, that is blending the past, present and future.

I am alone in Rhade's quarters. He usually only switches me on when he is ready for a game, but he is not here. Maybe he was planning to play GO and had another thought. Perhaps he had one of his yearnings for that blond woman he regularly fucks while I am watching, not bothering to turn me off. I don't know what he is trying to prove. It's even worse when he jerks off. The last thing I need to watch is a big Nietzschean dick getting hard and shooting gism all over the room. It can even shoot right through me -- through this holographic body -- the way the engineer can pass his arm through me. I hate him when he does that.

But I am on, and he is not here. That means I am free. I can take a look around my ship, and see what he has done to it. Judging by what he had done to this room it won't be pretty. Carefully I try his door and find that it opens. I walk the hall slowly and see Rhade on his knees ahead of me, bending over a figure lying on the ground. I wonder if he has finally killed the engineer that he likes so to beat with his force lance? I move a little closer, silently and watch as he removes the man's clothes. Is he going to have sex with this unconscious or dead man? I put nothing past Rhade. He removes his own clothes. I am not going to stay and watch this. I wonder if I should try to stop him.

Suddenly I realize that the man on the ground is also Rhade, or perhaps an artificial version of him, like me. The Gaheris Rhade who was my first officer, not the Captain Rhade who has made me. I am confused. He dons the clothing and moves toward the flight deck. I watch in horror as he shoots Reflectons of Dawn and fights with. . . . he fights with ME.

He, we, I, fight with him hand to hand. I win. Dylan Hunt kills him. The time dilation is increasing. Suddenly the world is as pale is my body. I am certain that I am going to cease to exist. Do I melt? Do I dissolve? Do I sprinkle down in a trail of photons?

I AM!!

Jan

March 26, 2003

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