Sensory Reboot

[Gridstatic]

((hello everyone, Gridgrinderr here. Just writing a (sorta long) story about how my new "alt"(who may become my main, even though he's an MA, and I'm a Fixer at heart..blah blah blah ), gridshayde, comes to be.))

It was just past 3 AM, and after a long night of partying at Reet’s, a small, opifex Fixer was walking up to the nearest Grid terminal, ready to get home for some much needed sleep. As he punched in his access code and begins to be encoded, an Atrox stumbles up to the terminal. It was pretty obvious he had been at the party, if only because of how wasted he looked as he waited for his turn to access the Grid. Must’ve been that imported stuff that can get even the alcohol resistant ‘Kan breeds plastered, the Fixer thought with a smirk. The Atrox looked over to see the small Opifex grinning at him, and apparently took the wrong way in his inebriated state. After muttering a few slurred, but obviously angry words, he took a swing at the Fixer with his sledgehammer. He missed, and with the sound of crunching metal and electrical short out, crushed the terminal the Fixer was almost finished being encoded into. The Fixer frowned as he saw the first of many things he’d never seen before today: in bold, flashing red letters, the words “FATAL ERROR” appeared in front of his eyes before he was engulfed in a blinding white light.

[Gridstatic]

Void. Void as far as he could see, an empty white light that seemed to stretch forever in all directions. This wasn’t the Grid, this wasn’t the Rift, this wasn’t the Reclaim terminal that a white light flashing in front of your eyes usually precedes. This was nothingness, a vast, endless nothingness that anyone who’d ever reclaimed would seriously wonder if they were permanently dead if when they experienced it.

Then, suddenly, the void was filled. Every thought the Fixer had ever had, every person or event that he had kept in his memory, they flashed in front of him, before taking their place in the quickly filling emptiness. The Fixer stared, in stupefied awe, at the thoughts and memories that were overloading his senses. After the last, most recent thoughts about where the hell he was had taken their place with the others, they all slowly began to fade. The Opifex continued to stare as the void was refilled by the familiar notum blue of the Grid. He watched as the dark, brownish blue spires and ledges appeared, along with the Grid nodes, that made up his digital “home away from home”. And now, parallel to the Fixer’s familiar Grid, appeared the even more familiar land of Rubi-Ka. He saw it all. He saw the entire cities within the grid nodes that led to them, he saw the vast lands between the access points run parallel with the Grid’s sea of digitized blue. He saw the world in its entirety, but he also saw it in it’s every detail. He saw every city an landmark; he saw every living and unliving thing that populated them. And everything he saw, from the giant Eremites of the desert to the smallest particles of air, were “wrapped” in the blue, pulsating gridcode the Fixer had worked with throughout his life. It was overwhelming. The Opifex wanted to close his eyes, to block out the mind boggling sight going on all around him, but they wouldn’t budge. He reluctantly gave in, letting his mind be absorbed into the scene around him. As he began to get used to this, the two worlds began to fade, until he was in the void again.

[Gridstatic]

Being plunged headfirst into the sensory overload and swiftly pulled back to the surface of nothingness had been too much. He didn’t know if he could take any more of this mental torture, if he could handle pushing his mind to the limit in one extreme only to be pushed to the limit in another. But his mind’s craving for something to focus it’s senses at was soon appeased, as the “ground” below him began to fade, becoming translucent. Below him he saw a strange land, similar to Rubi-Ka and yet so very different. Directly below him, he could see a battle raging. Humans of all breeds, in strange armor, wielding even stranger weapons, were clashing in combat on the gnarled, twisted land. As the battle continued, the leaders of the two forces slowly fought their way to the edge of the conflict. They both let out a blood curdling warcry, and, as each was engulfed in a notum blue light, began to charge each other. At the last second before they clashed the lights faded, and the Fixer watched as a white armored angelic figure clashed weapons with a black creature, as twisted and demonic as the bleak landscape. Everyone fought on, and at the end of the battle, all of the warriors, including the two who had transformed, lay on the ground, dead. The Fixer watched as the world faded, the translucent ground became more and more opaque, until the twisted land became little more than a blurred shadow beneath him. The Fixer mentally prepared himself to be put back into the Void, but, quite unexpectedly, he watched as the world of Rubi-ka and the Grid reappeared, parallel to the land in shadows. As he watched the 3 worlds parallel to each other, as he saw the 3 realities next to one another, he felt the strangest feeling deep inside of himself. As he watched the Rubi-ka and the shadowed land coexist, almost a mirror image, covered with the endless data of the Grid enveloping the two, he felt his subconscious being filled with the deepest of deep understanding, despite his current conscious thoughts of bewilderment, amazement, and above all else, confusion. After taking in the view of the worlds for some time, he noticed..himself.

He knew it was him lying next to the Reclaim terminal, a blank, empty look on his face. He knew he was looking at his own long, black hair, his own red and blue tattoos on his arms, his own slender build. But while he recognized himself, somehow he thought he looked..different..somehow. Behind the blank stare on his face, the Fixer could see the spark of deep wisdom in his body’s eyes. And as he saw this, something inside him told him to look away, to close his eyes and free his cluttered mind of all thoughts. As he did, he saw, no, he felt, the calm notum blue of the Grid. He focused on it, forgot about his endless questions clouding his mind until all he could see was the blue. When he had done this, he felt the same rushing sensation as he did when this whole ordeal began…