- Joined
- May 9, 2014
- Messages
- 1,934
- Reaction score
- 105
Everyone’s world is different in various ways. We can all usually point out how it is different simply by looking at someone, and noticing that the many scars on their body meant they’ve had an arduous life where they’ve paid dearly for all of the things they have now. A stern and focused face can say several stories about a person. What is most peculiar is how everyone chooses to distinguish themselves from the rest, where they even go as far out as to wear emblems and specific attire to their purpose. A Businessman will go out of his way to wear an expensive suit and carry around a briefcase and glasses, which shows success in the hard work he puts forth. A Warrior or killer in general will often distinguish themselves with their many weapons and tools for killing, not even bothering to hide their profession. But it is the personality of someone that gives it all away. Personality, the thing that makes up the actual person no matter what they wear over their shoulders, is something that is molded over countless years of life from birth to present day, where ultimately it isn’t something that is lost or easily hidden, but rather, it is something that is constantly changing with every single event in one’s life. It is such a meticulously crafted belonging that we simply cannot get rid of, and no matter what happens to you or how hard you try, your life’s story is inevitably told in this exact pillar of your being. All of your training, relationships, knowledge, and everything in between can be found in your personality, and for the right people, it can be read like a book. What does this have anything to do with me though?
In the very beginning, I feel like I can remember everything, although I know this isn’t true. The truth is that all the things I’ve learned in the beginning is implanted into my personality, where my every action and reaction to my present world is determined by the very events that happened in the beginning… and in the end… and everywhere in between. However, the beginning is the most important, because these are the events that have been with you the entire time. They’ve had the most time to grow on you and to develop.
If I’m being completely honest with you all, I can’t remember anything about the beginning other than that it was important. What I do know of the beginning is that I know it oh so well. I can only say is that I was born here, and a part of me will always live here. Whether I was physically born here or not though is something I’d never be able to say with any certainty though. All I know is that the only parts of my life that are of any importance is what happened after I was born, and for all that is concerned, I was born here.
For my entire life –Here-, I’ve lived the only way I knew how. Everything before that, there is no way for me to know for sure, but I’ve had no memory of a life from before Here. For all I know, I was literally born here. My life was a game, an adventure, a schedule, a survival, a mission, anything that it was, it needed to be that. But above all, my life was and always will be survival. In order to survive, you needed to live, and to live, you needed to survive. The things I’ve learned of my home, ‘Here’, is that nothing can really be predicted. There is always something new to be experienced and to be learned. And if you didn’t adapt to it, you wouldn’t live or survive. I had to become everything to escape from nothing and be nothing to escape everything.
Let’s make this a little simpler: My days, as far as I could remember included searching. What I was searching for depended though. Nothing came easily, and what I happened to be searching for appeared to me with certain reasons that simply had no easy explanation as to why it was actually there. I hunted a deer, and within the corpse, it was there. I killed a man, and in his hand, it was there. I woke up in the morning, and on my chest, it was… there. If my life was a dream, then my dreams were the only normal thing about my life. Slowly, and quickly, I’ve always known, but discovered how my world wasn’t the same world that everyone else lived, but it was the only life I knew, because from birth, it was all I had.
Some days, I would search for an escape. A trap door, something different in the walls, something that simply didn’t fit in my world, anything new, or something extraordinarily old that shouldn’t be old, my world is a puzzle in need of constant solving. But sometimes, I would search for ‘It’. That thing that I’d find in the corpses, or in the hands of someone killed, or on my chest in the middle of the night; I would look for ‘it’.
Then, there were days I’d simply search for more. More meaning in my life, more knowledge, more of anything that could improve my life in general, it was all on my list of things to find. I always know there is more, and there is always more for me to discover, and all I need to do is find it, and so I search for it.
My world was ever expanding and forever changing. Today, I would be living in a tropical rainforest, and tomorrow I’ll be living in a desert. The only thing consistent was that it was changing periodically, and that all I had to do was find How it changed. It could be a lever hidden deep within a dead tree, or it could be as simple as picking up a stone that didn’t belong. Either way, there was really no way to determine How to force the world to change in any consistent way, because each time it was different in one way or another. It always kept my mind occupied and thinking, and for that I suppose I could thank my world, but sometimes, I just wish I could be left alone in a place that would actually accept me for a moment without driving me to find the answer to a question I never asked.
The ‘It’ I am always searching for is simply that, an ‘It’. Sometimes, it is a droid, sometimes it is a puzzle box, and sometimes it is as simple as a book. ‘It’ is the part of my life that creates the most inconsistencies, and it has always dug deeper into my subconscious that I had a life before this one at one time, and that these things, some of them familiar, and the rest completely new to me, indicated that a droid didn’t walk out of a deer corpse, simply, because it was there and always was there, but because it didn’t belong in the forest in the first place. I knew this, although I didn’t know How I knew this.
Regardless of How it got there, I knew that I need it. These droids and puzzle boxes, or even the books had information meant specifically for me. It was never the same information, although it often used information I already knew about, and even better is that it always knew my name, “50452”.
For living in a crashed destroyer for 4 months, I sometimes didn’t know why I needed to know how to build an explosive from nothing but a few pieces of scrap metal, a few barely functioning electronics equipment, and dirty fuel, but still I soaked up the information taught to me like it was going to save my life one day. And sure enough, it did save my life one day when pirates came to raid that downed destroyer.
The things I was taught came in handy every single time, and they continued to come in handy form time to time. Even when I was in a hidden bunker, knowing how to fasten a pulley system got me out, and into the next… well room, is all I could describe it as. The rooms I moved to from each room to the next, they seemed endless, like there was an undying supply of them, where I only moved onto the next room to be faced with the next problem and to find the next piece of survival.
There were always barriers and benefits from one room to the next, where the tribe of savages that lived within cold either provide a home to me, where they helped me to hunt and taught me how to fight without a weapon, or they hunted me down relentlessly, where my every waking –and sleeping- moment was with the idea that at any moment they might pick up one of my carefully hidden trails, and find me hiding up in a tree. The droid that I find might teach me how to use an energy sword, and help me to find my rhythm with it, but the moment I do pick up the finer parts of the energy beam, it would try to kill me with it.
My belongings… They’d appear and disappear. In the middle of the night, in my bag, I might find another book or a hunting knife, but at the same time, I might lose all of my food or my sword. There have been so many times that I’ve lost my homemade armors to some unseen creature in the night. Needless to say, someone had complete control of my life, and I learned to accept that. Rarely, I’d have a companion. Some taught me things, some were simply there, it seemed, for company, and others lied to me without remorse until they decided they’d try to kill me. Every one of them taught me something in one form or another, whether it was how to properly lie, to disguise myself in the environment I was trapped in, or it was to never fully trust anyone. Either way, I couldn’t help, but to look forward to them all.
The more I went on though, the more I learned of my world. The dimensions of my world seemed to change, and they seemed to recycle from time to time. Ten thousand eight hundred and forty paces longitudinal and six thousand, twenty two paces laterally for one room. The next room, fourteen thousand by eight thousand. One thousand by five hundred. They always changed from one room to the next, but in every different room, they seemed to return in one way or another, and I’d find clues from time to time. To escape one room, go down into a tunnel that will eventually lead to the smaller room. The next room, move through the far eastern wall, and the next room, go up. It took time, but I soon found that I was living in a cube of rooms. Four by Four in dimensions, if one room was exactly ten thousand paces by ten thousand paces. I have yet to discover any room that would break this pattern, although I seem to share this cube with others, where the outermost rooms boarder what I can only assume to be rooms that factor into someone else’s’ cubes. It is perplexing what it all means, but these ‘others’ that I occasionally share a room with are never good company to keep around long term. They seem to be just like me, where their worlds, exactly the same puzzle in some way or another, but some have been around much longer. What is the purpose then?
One, in particular, I’ve run into while in a Jungle world. The Jungle was flooded, and the other man, I knew he was there just as well as he knew I was there. The last encounter I had was friendly enough, that my intention to seek him out was to try and figure out as much as he knew about our world as I could, and then we could find our respective ways out and into the next room. Unfortunately though, despite searching for him, I simply couldn’t find him. It was as if he was trying everything in his power to prevent me from getting to him, running off into one direction, and suddenly appearing far behind me, the moment I thought I’d caught up to him. Why didn’t he want to know what I knew of ‘Here’?
Eventually, I found out exactly why. The moment I heard a lightsaber being ignited above me, instincts from where I don’t even know where kicked in, and I managed to escape his obvious attack at me. Where he’d gotten a lightsaber though, I was perplexed, because I hadn’t even seen a lightsaber I the past 4 rooms. AS perplexing as his equipment was though, the difficulty lied in why he was out to kill me. It was only then that I realized that no one needed an obvious reason to kill another, but rather you had to figure it out for yourself. You might not even ever be able to find it out before you are either dead or kill the one hunting you.
I’d been hunted so many times before that avoiding someone hunting you is only second nature, but this one had something else that everyone else didn’t have. He had knowledge. When he swooped down from nowhere with his lightsaber in his hands with the clear intent to kill me, I got the look in his face. I was the exact window into his personality that allowed me to see exactly who he was. This is exactly what I was talking about before. Looking at his face, and seeing how he acted and reacted… I saw exactly who he was. He certainly looked nothing like me, but everything that I saw in him, I could see in myself, from the way he looked to how he looked at me too. He was older, much older than me anyway, and I knew he’d seen everything I’d seen, and more. He wasn’t the same as me, not species nor build, but he looked exactly like me –in a metaphorical sense. His eyes saw me as the next challenge before he got to the next room. And from him I learned more than I could have ever learned before that exact moment and he hadn’t even said a word.
The way he moved, he knew exactly how to wield the lightsaber, and likely even better than I could. I moved, and he moved precisely to counter that move in a way that made me feel that he was practically reading my mind, and it made me feel powerless. Was it a mistake? Did whoever was watching me want me dead now? There was really no real reason anyone could believe I’d be a match for him in combat. Hell, the only way I escaped him was by diving into murky water, which anyone in ‘here’ would know is a huge gamble, when you don’t know what else lives in that water.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night, where all I could do was to prepare myself for his eminent discovery of me again. And unlike before where I was trying to find him, and he was running away, it was now the other way around, but this time, we knew the extent of each other’s abilities. He was far superior to me in nearly every way. He was better trained with a sword, better trained without a sword, and better equipped than myself. And the more I tried to run away, I realized he was better at hunting me than I was at running away. The only thing I had to my advantage was that I was running away, and that I could pick the place we finally met at.
It took a considerable amount of courage to build up to it, but I chose a spot and stood up to him finally. All I had was a hunting knife made of cortosis weave. Everything else I had was either discarded in order to outrun him or taken from me while I wasn’t paying any attention. What creatures were in this world where they could steal something right from underneath my nose, I hadn’t the slightest clue, but I knew they were there is all I could say.
The timing had to be perfect. I could only assume that he knew everything I knew and more. So, how do you defeat someone with everything you have and more? You focus on an aspect he’d never think to focus on, and attempt to use it to your advantage. I knew that he also knew that he had every single advantage over me, and it was more than likely that he’d know I was setting up a trap for him. This was even more eminent by how he’d disabled the traps almost immediately as he came across them. It was as if child’s play for him, and his arrogance showed itself as he walked through the traps and right up to my hiding place. How could he have possibly determined such a thing? Regardless, I knew I was made, and I leapt from my hiding place with my cortosis weave hunting knife against his lightsaber. Getting in close, I used the slippery mud to my advantage, and the rather narrow environment to limit his ability to move about the environment. He was somehow stronger than me, and the only way I was able to overcome him was a combination of redirecting his strength and using the mud to my advantage.
Finally, it was time to enact my plan. My plan, in its simplicity had flaws within it that any moron would find to not make any sense what so ever. It was to make it easier for him to injure me. My final trap, in a position that would never have any place in being tripped by him, not that it would matter, even if it was strategically placed in order to harm him. It was obvious, and of no danger to him, but for me, it was to my back and out of place. It, for no better way to state it, was for me. The trip wire was behind me, where it could only possibly be tripped by myself first, and on the end of the trip wire, the sapling would thrust a spear towards me. For my opponent, the spear would be exactly at his heart, but for me, it would be just a bit too high and into my shoulder. Examining the trap, it would appear to be used exactly against him, though making it as obvious would only bait him into tripping it, where tripping it couldn’t possibly hit him, but rather myself. Thankfully, it would only possibly injure me by harmlessly piercing my shoulder rather than my heart. But what could injuring my own shoulder possibly prove to benefit me for?
Even as he pushed me backwards through the mud, I attempted to avoid my own trap, where he adjusted himself perfectly in order to place me squarely into the line of fire for that small spear on the end of a sapling. It was far from a big enough spear to pass through me and into him, and he knew as much, but more importantly, his adjustments allowed me to know that he did indeed know of the trap, and that he took my bait in activating it into my own shoulder. It allowed me to know that he was entirely focused on killing me, and I should be entirely focused on defending myself. Thankfully, his repositioning allowed his lightsaber to be a second thought to the task of driving me towards my own trap. It left the lightsaber vulnerable, and it was the biggest threat against me overall. My hand, sacrificing my superior footing in order to do so, shot to the handle of the lightsaber, where I partially prevented it from being driven as hard into my defenses, and the most immediate threat was gone at the sacrifice of being thrust into the trap.
Before being thrown backwards, I managed to toss the lightsaber into the forest and out of both of our reaches. If the forces at work were consistent, they’d retrieve the lightsaber from out of view. After all, I was doubtful that they even wanted him to keep it in the first place, so getting it away from him was likely at the top of their list of things to do other than watch my shoulder get pierced by the spear.
I’ve experienced immense pain on many occasions before, and so to feel the stake go right through muscle and flesh is something I know how to expect it, and no matter how many times I’ll feel it, it is simply not a level of pain that I can simply shrug off. Of ‘course, pain is something you can place at the back of your mind, but that takes focus, determination, and all kinds of experience with. In short, no matter what, the exact moment it happens, you know that you can expect that immense pain to very real and very present at the forefront of your mind, no matter how much training you’ve gone through. Like any other time, I shrieked in my pain, for the heat of the wound to wash over me, and I flinch at it, but still I stand with the chunk of sharpened wood still stuck in my shoulder.
My aggressor on the other hand though, he was determined to finish the job, and I knew very well that this was the exact moment he’d choose to end me, even if he no longer had the lightsaber in his possession. In order to avoid that finishing blow, I rolled backwards as if falling in the most graceful manner one with an injury could possibly manage, I rolled over the sapling off to safety, where the nearby ferns, made a somewhat cushioned landing for me to get up in. His attempt to finish me though was a failure.
What was particularly well done though is that I’d previously collected a few thorns while I was on the run, a handful to be more specific, and as I rolled backwards, I was careful to ensure they spilled out onto the forest floor, where the ferns hid them from view. It was one of the many advantages I had by choosing this spot, and laying the unseen trap, where I knew my enemy would have to tread in order to follow me. Wasting no time, I dashed off into the forest to hear my thorns had pierced his feet. They were long and they could easily make it through makeshift footwear. I’d learned that on more than one occasion how the forest floor can be unforgiving, even to some of the more careful who tread it. It bought me time to make some distance.
Looking over my shoulder, I could see how his inability to keep up with me now meant that he’d attempt to recover, meaning he’d go back for the lightsaber I’d thrown away and out of view. If my predictions about it were correct though, we’d be on a more even playing field now than we ever were before. His feet would make travel, no less standing effectively, difficult, though not impossible. He is now unarmed, where I was armed with the hunting knife. If there was one thing I’d noticed is the stock he’d taken in the lightsaber and how reliant he was on it. In order to lighten his load, he’d ditched many supplies, just as I had, and what had aided him in catching up to me had ambiguously become the very thing that would put him at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, I still had that spear in my shoulder, meaning that fighting would be half as effective, even though I was still armed against the armed opponent; That, and he still had the skill and experience advantage over me.
I’d chosen my final battleground so precariously. I knew it well enough that it was someplace that was likely unfamiliar to him. But what made this place so important to me? As he caught up with me, I noticed that my sacrifice wasn’t for nothing, as he was unarmed as he reached me, and using the skills and training we’d learned in our various ways, we went into combat. I, heavily favoring me left side –as the other was pierced by a stake-, was left predictable in my methods of attack. He, on the other hand, had difficulties closing the distance between us, and it left a singular method of defending myself left on the board, is that I’d only come into range, while attacking, but stayed out of range when defending. It allowed me to lead him around as I wished, though it also might have felt like he was bullying me around, which was also in part true. The only advantage I had left was to use my legs, as he couldn’t, nearly as effectively, also use his own legs.
A low kick to his shin, a slash at his defending arm, a small jump backwards out of range. It was all effective against him, nut one of it was lethal, and quite frankly, it only served to make him angry and frustrated, but he knew he still had more than enough in him to finish it right here. I knew that as well, and it was in part shown in my tactics of defense, and no matter how I cut it, all I was doing was defending. None of my strikes could kill him with any level of certainty, meaning that it was simply an offensive form of a defense. I was buying time is all.
Finally, as I backed up with a skip, I realized that the blood trickling from my shoulder was growing thicker and thicker. None of this movement was helping me at all. All in all, he could very well outlast me in the fight, and I was in no position to continue at this rate. I allowed him to close the distance between us, where his strikes, though fast and strong as they were, weren’t quite what they could be. It is surprising what your stance can contribute to your overall form, and his stance was at an all time low. Still, he was beating me, getting in a punch here and there. Blood trickled from my mouth and a swollen cheek made it difficult to see out of my left eye. A cracked rib made every punch to my torso feel like it was empowered tenfold. I was losing, but victoriously, because his strikes pushed me back.
*Fwoom!*
*“Aaaahhh!”*
I clung to a branch on a tree as the very ground gave way beneath me. With the ground, my enemy fell uselessly down a tunnel, where he ricocheted off the walls on his way down, where the way he hit the walls, I could hear his injuries. Peering deep down, I could see the light of the new room, and far below was a dangerous landing zone that could have been safely managed if he hadn’t crashed into the walls on the way down, he could have survived if he hadn’t only moments before had inch-long thorns penetrated deep into his feet. Looking down as best as I could, I saw his body hit the ground gracelessly, where the thud could be heard as far above as I was now. And I too could have, or still could, suffer the same fate, if I didn’t bring myself safely to solid ground. Swinging myself to the edge of the open pit, I lid myself onto the edge, where the pain of my many injuries radiated through my body mercilessly. The adrenaline could only do as much as to allow me the strength to even move as I did in the first place, but it did nothing for my pains.
Looking over the edge as I caught my breath again, I looked down at my own work. His body still lay there, either dead or in the process of dying, and I knew it was my doing that killed him. There was no help coming to him, and if anything, he could hope for something to kill him faster. It was his own knowledge of being superior that led to his demise. He’d become so focused on the fact that he could, and should, kill me that it was the primary thought on his mind. He’d even forgotten that there was a way out of the room that I hadn’t forgotten about during his endeavor. Unfortunately, I knew I’d suffer getting there, but finding the exit was something of a miracle for me. If I hadn’t found it sooner, I would have certainly died, and if weren’t for those watching me, there would have been a way to get down through the hole safely, but someone wanted me to face him and either die or fight. Escape wasn’t an option for me. I was only after looking down the hole, did the ladder even begin to descend from within the tube. It was finally a way down and a way out of the room.
Still though, there was no way I was going to survive with my many injuries, at least not without help, and it was only then that it happened. I didn’t even have to search for it, like everything else I searched for, but rather it simply floated down from above to me; A package, It landed not too far from the hole, containing bandages and ointments that would help to patch me up again. It was a reward for my survival. Yet, there was no rest for the wicked, as the next room was simply that, another room.
It was one of the most memorable moments of my life, where my concerns that someone was indeed controlling every aspect of my life, provoking danger to me, and even going as far as to helping me, was confirmed. My life was simply something to be played with and controlled. To survive was beginning to become an endless task, and based upon the age of my former opponent, it meant that I could very well spend the rest of my life in the puzzle of endless rooms… Right up until the day I too was killed by someone better than me.
From that point on, my experiences became far more difficult, if ever at all one could imagine it. If to considered it anything at all, it would be conditioning me… training me, and it only got harder and more intricate. The years before that event, they took the time to teach me things, such as shooting a blaster, wielding a sword, teaching me how to improvise tools and weapons, how to use my body as a weapon, and how fighting and not fighting in various situations can have different effects. But now, my “Training” became something more in depth, where if my training before required text books on survival, it now took entire encyclopedic collections to explain every detail of survival in its most intimate form to me. So much information is thrown at me at a time that I find it difficult to keep up most days, and my brain is at constant work in an attempt to memorize every single detail, because, no different from any room before, I will always need to recall that information in order to survive; It might not be today, or the next day, but some day I will need to use it, and learning it now could very well mean the difference between life and death, and so it is the Only thing I think about throughout the day.
Meal began to come in different forms, where simply hunting it in a forest had become too easy for my overseers, I found my meals become more difficult to attain. A vacant city room, I would have to set tiny traps to catch rodents in order to feed myself. A room, where the whole thing was a small town with a large market, I would have to steal my food, and getting caught would mean flogging me, or the attempt to kill me. Escaping my captors would be the only way to prevent a hanging, but only for me to have to attempt to steal again. And sometimes, my meal would come from completing various tasks. Killing another survivor, a meal would simply float from the sky again. There was really only a single way to find a meal each day, and moving through the rooms got faster and faster. I recognized irregularities and solved the puzzles faster, thus discovering the way out sooner.
The droids that would appear out of nowhere to teach me would teach me the most advanced unarmed tactics of combat where fighting a metallic droid that can move as fast as a piston, can be as strong as hydraulics, and fight with as much endless endurance as one can manage… It meant that I had to be smarter, learn faster, and apply precisely and use exactly what I needed at all times in order to learn the technique or to avoid the punishments of failing.
A Holographic projection cube would teach me everything I’d need to know about sniping. How to find a perch, what was best in a perch, how to properly conceal a sniper, and how to assemble it, when I’d located my perch. The mathematics involved in using only a single shot to hit a mark were ingrained in my brain, and knowing all the different snipers and tools used to enhance a sniper were all shown to me and experienced in a variety of ways.
Sometimes, something as simple as a small communicating device would brief me on a mission, such as to assassinate a particular target, and I would be shown the next hidden exit and fed for the day as a reward. Distinguishing the proper target, and using the proper method of killing that target without anyone knowing it was you would not earn the food nor the way out, and having to start again from scratch the next day would be a common reoccurrence, and it would pound proper techniques and strategies into my brain.
I had become well educated through my training, and I was well aware of most, if not all, things that pertained to what I was specifically trained for. The Force, was taught to me in various ways, where I knew how to control an object with precision, and I was easily familiar with how the Force was stronger than the body, and cold easily manage such feats as lifting extraordinarily heavy objects. I knew it required focus to use, where it was not something to be used lightly. I was familiar with the full array of uses it had, but regrettably, my opportunities to using it were limited by the plethora of other tasks I had at hand, but more than a few times, it came in handy when needing it in a mission.
I didn’t yet realize it, but this training wasn’t simply in order to see how I would tick and how long I’d last. In fact, it never once occurred to me that it was all for a purpose. I suppose that the paranoia, attention to details, my puzzle-like mind, and my focus on the task of the room were all more prominent in my mind. So, when the day came… today, I never even saw it coming.
It was my final room in a sense, and it was the end of the game that was my life. Survival, however, never left me, and every corner had a new puzzle for me to solve. This puzzle, however, was particularly disturbing. I’d only just learned another skill, and with my task completed, it wasn’t long before I was able to find the key out of place for my next room. It was painfully obvious this time, a large red button in the middle of a door at what I judged to be the end of the room, and it parted a wall that appeared to be made of brick, where I eagerly entered to find it painfully small. It was a mere three square paces, and with the door behind me closed, I couldn’t help but to panic. Thankfully, it was lit up, but I was unaware of any possible way to open it to the next room. I frantically searched the room for any sign, but to no avail. There was nothing… The walls were bare, plain, white, not opening from any angle. Suddenly, it lurched in a familiar way, downward. An elevator?
It wasn’t long before the door behind me opened once again, revealing a rather plain room with a chair in the middle of it, and a protocol droid standing in front of it, “Please, will you sit for me?”
Not every room I’d come across had chairs in it, and never was I asked to do anything, but rather told to do everything. And never was he able to simply sit and relax. It was always moving, always making action. What purpose was accomplished by sitting down? I did not oblige, “I will stand…Thank you.”
Being polite didn’t come easy to me, but the room I’d only just come from was familiarizing me with manners, which wasn’t something I was used to. However, I was also taught that words can never be too important to not be used too often. This was simply an unfamiliar time for me to use them, were meeting a droid usually meant I’d be fighting it or taking it apart to see how it worked.
“Very well then. State your number for us,” it replied cordially.
“Us?” I replied, looking around. Whoever, ‘Us’ are, must be the ones overseeing my progression through the rooms, and deciding the every aspect of my life. However, without the slightest reaction to my asking, ‘Us?’, I realized there was no answer to it, “50452” I stated, gaining an instantaneous response from the protocol droid.
“Where are you?” It asked me. I was perplexed by the question. What could it possibly mean by that? Didn’t it know where I am? It was asking to see how much I already knew, which was a method of interrogation used to not leak any information I didn’t already know, or to gain information the interrogator didn’t already know from me. Either way, it made me feel like answering wasn’t in my own benefit.
“Are you confused droid? Where we are, is an interrogation room,” I cleverly responded.
It must have found the answer satisfactory, because, as if a switch was flicked, it came to life with the next question for me, “Why are you here?”
Certainly, the questions were aimed to achieve some goal, but by the way they were being asked, I hadn’t a clue as to where they were directing me. How could I protect myself from the questions if I didn’t know what my interrogator was trying to find out from me? Surely, it had an idea of how I was going to respond, as questions as general as asking for my awareness required some sort of preexisting answer on their part, although gaining my own perspective might also give them insight as to what I was after.
In short, I didn’t want to play their game, and all that I wanted was the end of the interrogation, “What is next for me?”
The silence between us became eerie as I could practically hear the arguing of the overseers behind the controls of the droid. The protocol droid simply asked me again, “Why are you here?”
An even longer silence ensued, where I unchangingly stared back at the droid awaiting my answer. I must have been minutes despite feeling like ages, but finally, I attained my response from the droid, “What do you want next?”
I couldn’t help, but to chuckle in response. In truth it was frustrating, but if there was anything I’d learned, it was patience. Then, something came back to me from somewhere. I’d heard it so long ago, but still it cut through me clear as day, and I couldn’t help but to speak it out loud as it came to me, “Learn the facts and reasons behind your world, and the truth will be revealed to you.”
My world was surreal. There were so many factors and controls within it, it simply couldn’t be, and for there to be purpose behind the resources put forth towards it, it would have to be a rather immense purpose that simply didn’t’ include me in it. Since as far back as I could remember, I’d been forming a mental image of my world, where every single calculation added up in my mind. Nearly 8 years to the day was my calculation as to how long I’d been in my world since I could remember, and my world, although starting off in a forty thousand cubic pace-length collection of rooms, my world had expanded since the day I’d almost died. In fact, it had expanded to another ten million paces out and five hundred thousand paces down, where the various rooms included, if kept constant would equate to hundreds of millions of square pace-lengths of surface area where myself and/or others could tread upon, all of which these rooms could be changed at will, being filled with the accommodations of limitless different environment. The inhabitants of these worlds were perfectly adjusted to their world, where living in such small “Rooms”, completely confined without anywhere to go would almost certainly mean extremely limited lives, where they were perfectly unaware of any larger of a world.
I’d attempted endless experiments in an attempt to find a permanent way out of the rooms that made up ‘Here’, but with no way out anywhere, and no one even aware that there was even a way out of
‘Here’. So, with such a perfect world, where my very life was decided, what limits does my world include, and to what end does it yield? Why are all of these resources expended for the simple purpose of keeping a single individual content to some extent? Why is every single room completely devoid of the existence of any other being, despite my knowing that there are indeed others participating in my world?
I lunged at the protocol droid, tackling it to the ground and speaking out loud as I pulled it apart, “You, droid are connected to those watching over me, meaning that…”
I paused, realizing that my world was shattered, “…You’d have to be receiving some method of transmission from my overseers, but you have no such method of receiving transmissions. You are a standard protocol droid. Simply and painfully a standard protocol droid. You… cannot be receiving transmissions, meaning that you are either my overseer, or that you have been pre-programmed. However, you take too long to think, which goes against your processing core.”
My thinking out loud caused a disturbance, where, from behind me, the wall opened up. The elevator was one there, and coming out of the elevator was a man, but the man was eerily faceless. Where his face should have been, there was a smooth, reflective surface, that when I looked into it, I saw my own face. It shouldn’t have existed, and he instantaneously jumped me. Instinctively, I fought back, where his every movement was all too familiar. He was just as strong, just as agile, and just as fast as I was, and he used attacks that I would have used in every situation. The fight took place so quickly, that my brain couldn’t process how he was using moves that only I would have used in those exact situations that I would have used them in, but still I knew. It was essentially fighting myself, and the reflection of my face in his visage was proof of it, likely done on purpose too.
Even when I attempted to predict his next attack based on what I Would have done, he too predicted what I might do, where the result was much like a poorly choreographed move set, where we flopped into each other like fish out of water, but to have no advantage over the other, and it was all too familiar how I could fight myself. My brain even began to contemplate how this exact situation could even be possible, and the answer was that it wasn’t. By the time the fight broke off from the constant brawling between us, slots in the floor opened to reveal lightsabers rolling into reach. Of ‘course, we both reached out with the force to grab out lightsabers, and we clashed in a way that was exactly equal in angle, strength, speed, and duration. Uncanny as it was, I knew that the end of this fight had the end result of one of us dying, and though I figured it was simply another test. How strong can you possibly be? How can you adapt? If it was a droid in my own disguise, it would likely only have the latest back up of my own skills saved, and only use those skills, meaning that to win the overall fight, I’d have to adapt and create something new, learn something knew that only I could teach myself. I’d have to drastically alter my tactics in a way that didn’t hinder me. I had to use my own weaknesses against myself. I would have to cease being myself. I would have to cease being myself. I would have to… Cease being myself.
Finally, it all added up to me. I knew where I was, and I knew why I was here. I couldn’t’ help but to say it out loud, “I know where I am and why I am here.”
The mimicking droid, or whatever it was, of myself cocked its head to the side at me, silently, where the old me that it embodied saw its opportunity to attack me when I was most vulnerable. Of ‘Course, my instincts and reactions failed to let me down, where I twisted my body out of the way and blocked the attack with the lightsaber I wielded, but unlike the survivor I’d prided myself for being, and the survivor that got me to the last room, I smirked at the doppelganger. Then, I deactivated my lightsaber while closing my eyes, knowing that by deactivating my lightsaber, I was allowing myself to die here, in the exact moment that I could have continued adapting to my surroundings and killed myself, but to what end? Would it be another fight against myself? Would I eventually end up being killed by something else? Would I have control over my own death then? What did allowing myself to die ‘Here’ Achieve for me?
The lightsaber cutting into my chest, I could feel it clear as day as it went through everything. It was only but a moment later that I died. The immense pain was nothing compared to dying, where absolutely nothing engulfed me. The pain was endless though, and it never ceased. The entry of where the lightsaber cut through me constantly burned in an endless stinging. For the first time, I felt relief. I didn’t breath, and I didn’t move my arms or legs. I just… kinda floated about in darkness and a neglect of perception.
********************************************************************************************************************************
Finally, air was forced into my lungs the exact moment I felt that I could slip out of existence. From my armpits, I was hoisted, where every ounce of pressure against my skin seemed to slip away in an almost slimy way. Like a giant suction cup stuck against my body, I *Thwah-Puh* right out of what I could only feel to be a jelly-like substance. I was pulled out onto a metallic platform, and as I opened my eyes, I knew they were opening, but I saw nothing. I tried to hear, but I heard nothing. My world was black, scentless, tasteless, soundless… All I could do was feel, and I felt the plastic of the mask pressed against my face as it fed me fresh air. Everything I felt only moments before death I could still feel apart from the fact that I felt like I was just pulled out of a bowl full of jelly, and that the brisk air cooled my skin. But still, I felt hungry, my muscles were tired, and most importantly, my chest burned where the lightsaber crossed through my chest. But as I moved my arms to the wound, I couldn’t feel any hole or any such wound. Yet, it felt so real.
I flailed, where I felt living creatures holding me, directing my body, and pinning down my limbs. They attempted, but even blind I was overpowering, and the skill I had was too much for them to control. Suddenly, and without any warning at all, a dart pierced the skin on my back. Another dart and a third also struck me. I could feel the venom inject into me, where my body was quickly paralyzed and my brain was quickly subdued into that limbo I’d fist felt upon my first death.
In sleep there is no way you can perceive how long you’ve been that sleeping, and so, for the first time since waking, my body was alerted to the fact that I was awake now. Opening my eyes, I remembered that I was blinded, but I saw light. It was sensitive, and I hadn’t even realized that I was also hearing. It was very loud, where the sound of dripping pounded in my ears far too sensitive to be good for anything. I could smell the classic sterilization of a hospital. It, after all, wasn’t the first hospital room I’d been in, although I suspected that this was the first one that was real.
When the light died down enough, I found a pair of fingers prying my eyes open, and my hands failed to reach up to defend my eyes from the threat, but to only find the feeling of steel around my wrists and the unbearably loud noise of metal clanking as my hands were bound down to my sides. I groaned, not out of the pain I felt, but because of the helplessness and the endless torture I’d lived through for the past lifetime. The voice was loud, but I understood it, “Relax, I’m removing the brackets, but I expect you to behave. Do you understand?”
Clearing my voice, I nodded and managed to part my lips, “I understand.”
My voice sounded weird, and there was a disturbing feeling of an oily substance along my throat as if something about it was wrong with it. My voice was all wrong, as if I hadn’t used it for a while, but it didn’t simply go away with a simple clearing of my throat.
I attempted to clear my throat again, and began to speak again as I felt my wrist freed, “Whe…” My voice was still wrong, so I cleared my voice again, “Where…” it was still wrong, and what was worse was that my vision wasn’t adjusting to the light fast enough, and the person unshackling me was only but a blur.
Their voice broke my attempts to clear my throat again, “Don’t try it, you’ll scratch your throat before you get it to sound like you are used to it. It hasn’t been used in years, so it will take a long time to readjust to where it once was. As to where you are, other than a hospital bed, the answer is far more complex than I could explain. All that you need to know about Where you are is that you are somewhere you haven’t been for over 8 years.
“Is this real?” I asked. It sounded like a funny question, but I’d discovered that the world I was in before was not real, and still I was unsure as to whether or not I was someplace that was real, or the place that Id deemed not real was in fact real, and that place I am now is not real.
“You are very clever, and you took a massive gamble on the notion that your world was an illusion. What gave it away? Was it the doppelganger?” he asked me, neglecting to confirm whether the world I was currently in was actually real or not.
“It was everything,” I responded, “The place I knew to be the real world simply didn’t add up to be something that could possibly be real. The only explanation is that it wasn’t,” I explained, not even realizing that I was answering questions I really shouldn’t have been. That person freed me from my shackled, but it didn’t, by any means at all, mean that he could be trusted with my thoughts.
Realizing this, I leapt from the bed at him. If I could keep him as a hostage, I might be able to find out some answers on my own. I might be able to escape this place, and find out for myself if it was real. But the moment I flew towards him, I felt an overwhelming Force press me back from mid air, where my very inch of my body was pinned underneath it. I recognized that force too, because it was nothing other than The Force. I’d experienced it… or maybe I hadn’t… many times before.
“Now, now, I thought you were going to behave 50452?” the voice almost seemed to mock me, “You should know that you are completely out of your league here. I recommend you behave yourself.”
Beyond frustrated now, no groaning could help me, and my helplessness got to me. I’d been under someone else’s’ control for far too long now, and I was breaking. I began to whine as if someone was slowly plunging a dagger into me, or as if a child that simply wasn’t getting what they wanted, “What is going on?! Why can’t I see? Why can’t I just leave here? Just tell me what is happening here!”
I couldn’t help but to shudder as I said it. I wasn’t used to demanding what I wanted. I was far too accustomed to figuring it out for myself, and begging for information wasn’t in my skill set. It felt disgusting to me, and my helplessness didn’t help.
I heard n audible sigh from my captor, “You are disappointing me 50452. What do You think is happening here? Why do you think your position is exactly the way it is?” The way he asked it, I could feel that he expected me to already know the answer, and perhaps I had an idea. It was complex, and above all I didn’t want to believe it was even remotely possible, but still, it was the only answer available to me.
Relaxing into my bed, the moment I did, I felt the immense pressure he’d exerted upon me with the Force relax upon me, but it still pressed me down ever so lightly, “I… I was in some sort of virtual reality, where I was trained for something. When I killed myself I was either released or I broke my simulation, where I came back to the real world. The time I’d spent in the simulator though is equal to the time I perceived in it, meaning that I was in whatever gel that kept me for nearly 8 years, where I hadn’t the opportunity to speak, open my mouth, breath on my own, use my eyes, hear anything, or even so much as smell and taste anything. I can only assume that the only sense available to me during my virtual reality was the sense of touch that allowed my real body to perceive the virtual reality, which is why I felt like I was dying after being released from the simulator.”
Saying it out loud, it fit perfectly into what I’d perceived in the past… day of being ‘Awakened’ if I was in fact in a simulator. Still though, it was so far-fetched that I didn’t even believe it was possible despite it being the only possible explanation I could think of. And in response to it, all I could hear then was clapping.
I could hear the excitement in his voice as he responded, “You’ve exceeded every single expectation we’ve had of you too! I must admit that you were not one of the subjects that I thought were going to make it out alive. In fact, we even tried to kill you off to another test subject… until you killed him anyway.”
Shocked at how I was confirmed correct, emotions flooded my brain as I realized that my entire life, or what of it I could remember, was essentially laying about in a bowl of jelly. What was even the point anyway?
With the excitement still in his voice, I could feel him lean in towards me, where the Force exerted down on my harder, and he pried my eyes open, dripping something into my eyes. I struggled, but the Force he exerted upon me was well beyond my physical limits, and whatever he put into my eyes made it in without resistance. My eyes began to burn, and I couldn’t help but to blink uncontrollably, as if some speck of dirt was dropped in, and I needed to blink it out of my eyes. And as I blinked, the burning became even more intense, but the fluids on my eye pooled up at the corners where they eventually dropped out as tears. The tears were unfathomably thick, and the more I blinked, the less blurry my vision became. My sight was clearing, and with my clearer vision, all the intense frustrations I’d felt also began to melt away in part. Before I knew it, my vision was completely back, though not to the strength I would have wanted, but I assumed it would come back in time.
Sitting in front of me sitting back into a chair at the end of the room was a man in a long black cloak, but his face shaded away from view by some sort of veil. I turned to the side of the bed, where I enabled myself to stand from the bed. And well beyond my expectations, I didn’t feel like I’d only just awaken from an 8 year nap, but rather that what I’d experienced was all real. If real life didn’t feel so real, then what did that make the virtual reality I’d once felt was real?
As I stood up, I could feel his gaze combing over me, and I looked down at my hands to make sure I was really here. My paws were woundless. They didn’t show a single sign of my time in the virtual reality, and it dawned on me that I could very well have been placed into a virtual reality, or perhaps this is what death feels like, and the afterlife cures you of all former injuries… but for what purpose?
Finally, he spoke to me as I began to walk over to the window that had its blinds drawn as to keep prying eyes out, or from keeping my eyes in, “The only question 50452, is how much do you remember?”
Pausing to draw the shades, it revealed a rather small laboratory with 5 giant pods, or fluid-filled tubes. Three of them were empty and the last two had people in it. Neither of them looked like me, though I could feel deep down inside that they were… Exactly like me. As the two bodies floated in their jelly-filled chambers, I saw them moving and twitching, where restraints held them in place, allowing various levels of restraint against their actions. More so than the jell that held them could resist them, chords and mechanical arms held their victims inside of their tubes, preventing them from ever escaping on their own, and quite honestly, they were probably allowing the subjects to move in order to keep their physical shape while they laid in an 8 year slumber. It was quite a surreal moment that he could have very well been in one of those chambers himself. Even now, he felt his wrists and elbows where the restraints would ordinarily hold him in place if he were still in the test tube.
Realizing that there was still a question to be answered, he couldn’t even think as he responded, but rather he simply said exactly what he was meant to and exactly what was on his mind, “What can you remember of an entire night of dreaming before waking?”
Except that instead of an entire night of dreaming, I was ‘dreaming’ for 8 straight years. And I could only remember the very final room, where everything finally came together. I could recall the gist of what I dreamt about, how I went from room to room solving puzzle after puzzle and learning skill after skill, but the specifics were lost faster than I could think of them. I was losing it, and the only things I could remember are the things I was reminded of. I could… feel that he was disappointed, far more than his quiet sigh indicated, but there was still hope present. I could hear him reaching onto his person, and I turned around to see him pull out a blaster pistol that he began to disassemble with the Force and scatter on the floor before me.
Thinking it to be some sort of cruel joke or insult, I refused to even look down at it, but rather to stare at him. And at that moment, I remembered a flash of an event. It wasn’t an event that happened to take place within the ‘Dream’, but rather it was something that happened before all of that. I was just a young man, freshly recruited for the Force only knows what I’d gotten myself into. Still though, I could recall that I was willing to do anything, and what it had led me to remember is that I’d willingly signed up for the project. And in the flash back, I saw and recognized myself as naive and predictable as any other youth, but I didn’t recognize him. I certainly didn’t correlate that it could possibly be the very same person standing in the room today. What had I become? However, I hesitated to relinquish the information to my inquisitor.
Instead, my heart thudded hard and my mind raced for all the possibilities as he drew a second blaster and pointed it at me. Without a word, I knew his intention and why he’d decided to pull the trigger, I wouldn’t be able to even think about the reasons behind it, but I knew that action needed to be taken if I were to stay alive. Quickly, I dropped out of his line of sight to scoop up the pieces of the blaster pistol scattered about. The shot missed me, shattering the window behind me. With the various pieces of the pistol, I dove out the window, gracefully avoiding the shards of glass that threatened me as I flew safely away from a second blaster shot. And after landing, I didn’t know how, but the blaster pistol was already assembled. My hands moved with a mind of their own, but all the same, I thought about how it was possible, and I knew that how each part fit into each other, how they functioned, and how they could be assembled in the fastest time, before I was ready to aim down the sight. Picking myself into a kneeling position, the exact moments of my time spent in the dream that covered every time I’d disassembled, reassembled, and shot a blaster pistol returned to me, where I was able to replicated it from memory alone enabled me to fire the blaster at the man still in the hospital room.
The blaster bolts fired without an issue, sending two bolts to his chest and one to his head. How did he know to shoot it like that? Unfortunately, a massive red blade ignited just in time to deflect all three of them without pause, and before I could get off anymore rounds, the gun was ripped from my grasp into the chuckling hands of the lightsaber wielding menace that had only just attempted to kill me. I attempted to flee into a strategic retreat, but I found myself unable to move a muscle as he approached me, “See?! I knew you had it in you! It’s just buried deep down in there somewhere. The only issue is getting it out.”
Kill me, don’t, none of it made sense, but I was starting to pick up the pieces, and I thought I could see where he was going with it. The only problem is that I didn’t know whether I wanted to become the man in the dream again. Perhaps innocence was bliss, and perhaps I could do better in this world if I wasn’t a highly trained killer? Did I like who I’d become in the dream? The worst part about the future, is not knowing what you will become, but the worst part about My future is that I cannot find out what happened in my past without becoming that person in my future. Was my curiosity worth it then?
Releasing me from his grip, he let me fall to the ground almost helplessly without any means to defend myself should he choose to kill me for real this time, “There are people you should meet, 50452,” he paused before continuing, “And I’m afraid that you cannot go back to the life you had before this program. I’d give thought to another name if I were you.”
NAME: 50452; Former name Unknown; Adopted Alias: Vakira
FACTION: Lords of the Sith
RANK: Acolyte (Or equivalent)
SPECIES: Shistavanen
AGE: 27 Gsy
GENDER: Male
HEIGHT: 6 Feet
WEIGHT: 184 Lbs
EYES: Golden
HAIR: Dark Grey with White secondary color
SKIN: Not visible, but the paws are black
CREDITS: Unknown wealth
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Various scars are covered beneath his fur
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes
STRENGTH: Vakira is Physically Strong, although due to his only source of strength training in 8 years coming from a physical therapy simulator/resistance training, he is incredibly toned and has room to grow as far as strength is concerned. he relies more on strategy and technique than strength.
DEXTERITY: Vakira highly prefers agility and dexterity over strength, and his mind, despite his body being beneath his peak potential, is as sharp as obsidian.
CONSTITUTION: Vakira is extremely healthy, though susceptible to various newer strands of diseases he'd not have been exposed to during the past 8 years. He has many vaccinations though and due to training and conditioning, he is fully capable of taking a beating when needed.
INTELLIGENCE: Vakira's knowledge is almost all entirely practical, when accessible. Vakira's training involved extraordinarily intense mental work outs that allow him to mentally be far more extraordinary than his body can keep up with. Because of this, he has a wide gap to close. However, the downside is that although he has learned all this information, he doesn't have immediate access to all of it, and requires real life training to "unlock" this information to be used.FOr now, he's essentially a blank slate.
WISDOM: Vakira has an unfortunate lack of wisdom, being locked away in a computer system for 8 years, although his "experiences" in this program give him insight as to how to react in the real world, as his training there revolves entirely around his training there.
CHARISMA: Similarly to his wisdom, he has virtually no sense of charisma, being locked away for so long. He's learned to not trust easily what so ever, and he'd become quite a recluse if he didn't have to play nice with everyone.
FORCE POWERS:
Vakira's grasp over the Force is rudimentary and practical, though still he requires the extra training to "Unlock" what he already knows. His training included telekinesis and minor mental manipulations, though these are skills far less developed during his training, and he requires a lot more training if he intends to become a Lord of the Sith.
SKILLS:
| Introductory --> Average --> Professional --> Expert |
|--- 1-2 ----------> 3-5 --------> 6-8 ------------> 9-10 ---|
Like everything else, Vakira's Knowledge in the vast majority of these skills are locked away inside of his mind and needs re-training in order to recall his training in these subjects.
Vakira's training expanded across a very wide variety of categories including:
Espionage- 7/10
Unarmed Combat- 9/10
Mechanical and Electronic Engineering- 5/10
Interrogations- 6/10
Weapon Maintenance- 7/10
Hunting and Tracking- 8/10
Human(oid) Anatomy and Basic Medical Care- 4/10
Free Running/Art of Movement- 9/10
Driving- 3/10
Pilot- 4/10
Survival (Natural)- 8/10
Survival (Urban)- 6/10
Blaster Marksmanship- 6/10
Sniping Marksmanship- 8/10
Explosives- 5/10
Boobie Traps- 5/10
Strategizing- 8/10
Personal Relations and Negotiations- 4/10
Swordsmanship- 6/10
Force Manipulations- 5/10
LIGHTSABER/SWORD FORMS:
Vakira's skills everywhere else didn't leave a lot of time and energy left to be dedicated to learning how to use a Lightsaber nearly as well as he could have. For a Sith, he requires a great deal more training with a lightsaber, though he is certainly capable with it and other bladed weaponry. Though his knowledge in lightsaber combat has taken a brief coverage over everything, he has taken a particular liking to D'jem So, but due to design of his training he is far more equipped to practice Niman, as it covers the majority of his skills. Vakira's skills in combat are much stronger in unarmed combat, and using the Force is also an asset in his armory, and the way he was trained was to never leave out any benefit if you could help it. That being said, Niman caters perfectly to his wide extent of skill best, allowing him to alter his strategy and adapt to different combat scenarios seamlessly as well as integrate whatever other combat assets he has available.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES:
Vakiras strength best lie out of reach, where he cannot attain them. His training, though strong is currently, mentally, unattainable, and he requires refreshing training in order to access them again. This training, as extensive as it is though doesn't specialize so much as it covers a little bit of everything, which on one hand makes him effective in the widest variety of scenarios, but due to his over extension in training makes him unable to directly compete with anyone who directly specializes in these skills. this variety in training, though useful as it is, hurts him the most in the necessary training required for Sith, where his lightsaber and Force training is particularly lacking.
Vakira's training has left him and his personality in a wreck. He is practically unable to trust without the deepest of reasons to do so, he is manipulative if it serves him to do so, and his ability to sympathize is on the same levels as a sociopath. He can play the part if he needs to, but deep down, he really isn't anymore human than his design, which is to be a killer.
GEAR:
Vakira is brand new to the Sith Order, a fresh face, and thus his equipment is severely lacking, but is bound to expand in time:
Blaster Pistol
Black Duster
Short Range Transmitter
Durasteel Knife
-- The Content Below is Optional, but Encouraged!--
SHIP:
Vakira Owns No Method of Transportation
DROIDS:
Vakira Owns No Droids
PETS:
Vakira Owns No Pets
KILLS:
Vakira Has Earned No PC Kills
BOUNTIES COLLECTED:
Vakira Has Earned No PC Bounties
DUELING RING MATCHES:
Vakira Has Not Participated In Any Dueling Ring Matches
GRAND TOURNAMENT MATCHES:
Vakira Has Not Participated In Any Grand Tournament Matches
ROLE-PLAYS:
Vakira Has Yet To Participate In Any Role Plays.
In the very beginning, I feel like I can remember everything, although I know this isn’t true. The truth is that all the things I’ve learned in the beginning is implanted into my personality, where my every action and reaction to my present world is determined by the very events that happened in the beginning… and in the end… and everywhere in between. However, the beginning is the most important, because these are the events that have been with you the entire time. They’ve had the most time to grow on you and to develop.
If I’m being completely honest with you all, I can’t remember anything about the beginning other than that it was important. What I do know of the beginning is that I know it oh so well. I can only say is that I was born here, and a part of me will always live here. Whether I was physically born here or not though is something I’d never be able to say with any certainty though. All I know is that the only parts of my life that are of any importance is what happened after I was born, and for all that is concerned, I was born here.
For my entire life –Here-, I’ve lived the only way I knew how. Everything before that, there is no way for me to know for sure, but I’ve had no memory of a life from before Here. For all I know, I was literally born here. My life was a game, an adventure, a schedule, a survival, a mission, anything that it was, it needed to be that. But above all, my life was and always will be survival. In order to survive, you needed to live, and to live, you needed to survive. The things I’ve learned of my home, ‘Here’, is that nothing can really be predicted. There is always something new to be experienced and to be learned. And if you didn’t adapt to it, you wouldn’t live or survive. I had to become everything to escape from nothing and be nothing to escape everything.
Let’s make this a little simpler: My days, as far as I could remember included searching. What I was searching for depended though. Nothing came easily, and what I happened to be searching for appeared to me with certain reasons that simply had no easy explanation as to why it was actually there. I hunted a deer, and within the corpse, it was there. I killed a man, and in his hand, it was there. I woke up in the morning, and on my chest, it was… there. If my life was a dream, then my dreams were the only normal thing about my life. Slowly, and quickly, I’ve always known, but discovered how my world wasn’t the same world that everyone else lived, but it was the only life I knew, because from birth, it was all I had.
Some days, I would search for an escape. A trap door, something different in the walls, something that simply didn’t fit in my world, anything new, or something extraordinarily old that shouldn’t be old, my world is a puzzle in need of constant solving. But sometimes, I would search for ‘It’. That thing that I’d find in the corpses, or in the hands of someone killed, or on my chest in the middle of the night; I would look for ‘it’.
Then, there were days I’d simply search for more. More meaning in my life, more knowledge, more of anything that could improve my life in general, it was all on my list of things to find. I always know there is more, and there is always more for me to discover, and all I need to do is find it, and so I search for it.
My world was ever expanding and forever changing. Today, I would be living in a tropical rainforest, and tomorrow I’ll be living in a desert. The only thing consistent was that it was changing periodically, and that all I had to do was find How it changed. It could be a lever hidden deep within a dead tree, or it could be as simple as picking up a stone that didn’t belong. Either way, there was really no way to determine How to force the world to change in any consistent way, because each time it was different in one way or another. It always kept my mind occupied and thinking, and for that I suppose I could thank my world, but sometimes, I just wish I could be left alone in a place that would actually accept me for a moment without driving me to find the answer to a question I never asked.
The ‘It’ I am always searching for is simply that, an ‘It’. Sometimes, it is a droid, sometimes it is a puzzle box, and sometimes it is as simple as a book. ‘It’ is the part of my life that creates the most inconsistencies, and it has always dug deeper into my subconscious that I had a life before this one at one time, and that these things, some of them familiar, and the rest completely new to me, indicated that a droid didn’t walk out of a deer corpse, simply, because it was there and always was there, but because it didn’t belong in the forest in the first place. I knew this, although I didn’t know How I knew this.
Regardless of How it got there, I knew that I need it. These droids and puzzle boxes, or even the books had information meant specifically for me. It was never the same information, although it often used information I already knew about, and even better is that it always knew my name, “50452”.
For living in a crashed destroyer for 4 months, I sometimes didn’t know why I needed to know how to build an explosive from nothing but a few pieces of scrap metal, a few barely functioning electronics equipment, and dirty fuel, but still I soaked up the information taught to me like it was going to save my life one day. And sure enough, it did save my life one day when pirates came to raid that downed destroyer.
The things I was taught came in handy every single time, and they continued to come in handy form time to time. Even when I was in a hidden bunker, knowing how to fasten a pulley system got me out, and into the next… well room, is all I could describe it as. The rooms I moved to from each room to the next, they seemed endless, like there was an undying supply of them, where I only moved onto the next room to be faced with the next problem and to find the next piece of survival.
There were always barriers and benefits from one room to the next, where the tribe of savages that lived within cold either provide a home to me, where they helped me to hunt and taught me how to fight without a weapon, or they hunted me down relentlessly, where my every waking –and sleeping- moment was with the idea that at any moment they might pick up one of my carefully hidden trails, and find me hiding up in a tree. The droid that I find might teach me how to use an energy sword, and help me to find my rhythm with it, but the moment I do pick up the finer parts of the energy beam, it would try to kill me with it.
My belongings… They’d appear and disappear. In the middle of the night, in my bag, I might find another book or a hunting knife, but at the same time, I might lose all of my food or my sword. There have been so many times that I’ve lost my homemade armors to some unseen creature in the night. Needless to say, someone had complete control of my life, and I learned to accept that. Rarely, I’d have a companion. Some taught me things, some were simply there, it seemed, for company, and others lied to me without remorse until they decided they’d try to kill me. Every one of them taught me something in one form or another, whether it was how to properly lie, to disguise myself in the environment I was trapped in, or it was to never fully trust anyone. Either way, I couldn’t help, but to look forward to them all.
The more I went on though, the more I learned of my world. The dimensions of my world seemed to change, and they seemed to recycle from time to time. Ten thousand eight hundred and forty paces longitudinal and six thousand, twenty two paces laterally for one room. The next room, fourteen thousand by eight thousand. One thousand by five hundred. They always changed from one room to the next, but in every different room, they seemed to return in one way or another, and I’d find clues from time to time. To escape one room, go down into a tunnel that will eventually lead to the smaller room. The next room, move through the far eastern wall, and the next room, go up. It took time, but I soon found that I was living in a cube of rooms. Four by Four in dimensions, if one room was exactly ten thousand paces by ten thousand paces. I have yet to discover any room that would break this pattern, although I seem to share this cube with others, where the outermost rooms boarder what I can only assume to be rooms that factor into someone else’s’ cubes. It is perplexing what it all means, but these ‘others’ that I occasionally share a room with are never good company to keep around long term. They seem to be just like me, where their worlds, exactly the same puzzle in some way or another, but some have been around much longer. What is the purpose then?
One, in particular, I’ve run into while in a Jungle world. The Jungle was flooded, and the other man, I knew he was there just as well as he knew I was there. The last encounter I had was friendly enough, that my intention to seek him out was to try and figure out as much as he knew about our world as I could, and then we could find our respective ways out and into the next room. Unfortunately though, despite searching for him, I simply couldn’t find him. It was as if he was trying everything in his power to prevent me from getting to him, running off into one direction, and suddenly appearing far behind me, the moment I thought I’d caught up to him. Why didn’t he want to know what I knew of ‘Here’?
Eventually, I found out exactly why. The moment I heard a lightsaber being ignited above me, instincts from where I don’t even know where kicked in, and I managed to escape his obvious attack at me. Where he’d gotten a lightsaber though, I was perplexed, because I hadn’t even seen a lightsaber I the past 4 rooms. AS perplexing as his equipment was though, the difficulty lied in why he was out to kill me. It was only then that I realized that no one needed an obvious reason to kill another, but rather you had to figure it out for yourself. You might not even ever be able to find it out before you are either dead or kill the one hunting you.
I’d been hunted so many times before that avoiding someone hunting you is only second nature, but this one had something else that everyone else didn’t have. He had knowledge. When he swooped down from nowhere with his lightsaber in his hands with the clear intent to kill me, I got the look in his face. I was the exact window into his personality that allowed me to see exactly who he was. This is exactly what I was talking about before. Looking at his face, and seeing how he acted and reacted… I saw exactly who he was. He certainly looked nothing like me, but everything that I saw in him, I could see in myself, from the way he looked to how he looked at me too. He was older, much older than me anyway, and I knew he’d seen everything I’d seen, and more. He wasn’t the same as me, not species nor build, but he looked exactly like me –in a metaphorical sense. His eyes saw me as the next challenge before he got to the next room. And from him I learned more than I could have ever learned before that exact moment and he hadn’t even said a word.
The way he moved, he knew exactly how to wield the lightsaber, and likely even better than I could. I moved, and he moved precisely to counter that move in a way that made me feel that he was practically reading my mind, and it made me feel powerless. Was it a mistake? Did whoever was watching me want me dead now? There was really no real reason anyone could believe I’d be a match for him in combat. Hell, the only way I escaped him was by diving into murky water, which anyone in ‘here’ would know is a huge gamble, when you don’t know what else lives in that water.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night, where all I could do was to prepare myself for his eminent discovery of me again. And unlike before where I was trying to find him, and he was running away, it was now the other way around, but this time, we knew the extent of each other’s abilities. He was far superior to me in nearly every way. He was better trained with a sword, better trained without a sword, and better equipped than myself. And the more I tried to run away, I realized he was better at hunting me than I was at running away. The only thing I had to my advantage was that I was running away, and that I could pick the place we finally met at.
It took a considerable amount of courage to build up to it, but I chose a spot and stood up to him finally. All I had was a hunting knife made of cortosis weave. Everything else I had was either discarded in order to outrun him or taken from me while I wasn’t paying any attention. What creatures were in this world where they could steal something right from underneath my nose, I hadn’t the slightest clue, but I knew they were there is all I could say.
The timing had to be perfect. I could only assume that he knew everything I knew and more. So, how do you defeat someone with everything you have and more? You focus on an aspect he’d never think to focus on, and attempt to use it to your advantage. I knew that he also knew that he had every single advantage over me, and it was more than likely that he’d know I was setting up a trap for him. This was even more eminent by how he’d disabled the traps almost immediately as he came across them. It was as if child’s play for him, and his arrogance showed itself as he walked through the traps and right up to my hiding place. How could he have possibly determined such a thing? Regardless, I knew I was made, and I leapt from my hiding place with my cortosis weave hunting knife against his lightsaber. Getting in close, I used the slippery mud to my advantage, and the rather narrow environment to limit his ability to move about the environment. He was somehow stronger than me, and the only way I was able to overcome him was a combination of redirecting his strength and using the mud to my advantage.
Finally, it was time to enact my plan. My plan, in its simplicity had flaws within it that any moron would find to not make any sense what so ever. It was to make it easier for him to injure me. My final trap, in a position that would never have any place in being tripped by him, not that it would matter, even if it was strategically placed in order to harm him. It was obvious, and of no danger to him, but for me, it was to my back and out of place. It, for no better way to state it, was for me. The trip wire was behind me, where it could only possibly be tripped by myself first, and on the end of the trip wire, the sapling would thrust a spear towards me. For my opponent, the spear would be exactly at his heart, but for me, it would be just a bit too high and into my shoulder. Examining the trap, it would appear to be used exactly against him, though making it as obvious would only bait him into tripping it, where tripping it couldn’t possibly hit him, but rather myself. Thankfully, it would only possibly injure me by harmlessly piercing my shoulder rather than my heart. But what could injuring my own shoulder possibly prove to benefit me for?
Even as he pushed me backwards through the mud, I attempted to avoid my own trap, where he adjusted himself perfectly in order to place me squarely into the line of fire for that small spear on the end of a sapling. It was far from a big enough spear to pass through me and into him, and he knew as much, but more importantly, his adjustments allowed me to know that he did indeed know of the trap, and that he took my bait in activating it into my own shoulder. It allowed me to know that he was entirely focused on killing me, and I should be entirely focused on defending myself. Thankfully, his repositioning allowed his lightsaber to be a second thought to the task of driving me towards my own trap. It left the lightsaber vulnerable, and it was the biggest threat against me overall. My hand, sacrificing my superior footing in order to do so, shot to the handle of the lightsaber, where I partially prevented it from being driven as hard into my defenses, and the most immediate threat was gone at the sacrifice of being thrust into the trap.
Before being thrown backwards, I managed to toss the lightsaber into the forest and out of both of our reaches. If the forces at work were consistent, they’d retrieve the lightsaber from out of view. After all, I was doubtful that they even wanted him to keep it in the first place, so getting it away from him was likely at the top of their list of things to do other than watch my shoulder get pierced by the spear.
I’ve experienced immense pain on many occasions before, and so to feel the stake go right through muscle and flesh is something I know how to expect it, and no matter how many times I’ll feel it, it is simply not a level of pain that I can simply shrug off. Of ‘course, pain is something you can place at the back of your mind, but that takes focus, determination, and all kinds of experience with. In short, no matter what, the exact moment it happens, you know that you can expect that immense pain to very real and very present at the forefront of your mind, no matter how much training you’ve gone through. Like any other time, I shrieked in my pain, for the heat of the wound to wash over me, and I flinch at it, but still I stand with the chunk of sharpened wood still stuck in my shoulder.
My aggressor on the other hand though, he was determined to finish the job, and I knew very well that this was the exact moment he’d choose to end me, even if he no longer had the lightsaber in his possession. In order to avoid that finishing blow, I rolled backwards as if falling in the most graceful manner one with an injury could possibly manage, I rolled over the sapling off to safety, where the nearby ferns, made a somewhat cushioned landing for me to get up in. His attempt to finish me though was a failure.
What was particularly well done though is that I’d previously collected a few thorns while I was on the run, a handful to be more specific, and as I rolled backwards, I was careful to ensure they spilled out onto the forest floor, where the ferns hid them from view. It was one of the many advantages I had by choosing this spot, and laying the unseen trap, where I knew my enemy would have to tread in order to follow me. Wasting no time, I dashed off into the forest to hear my thorns had pierced his feet. They were long and they could easily make it through makeshift footwear. I’d learned that on more than one occasion how the forest floor can be unforgiving, even to some of the more careful who tread it. It bought me time to make some distance.
Looking over my shoulder, I could see how his inability to keep up with me now meant that he’d attempt to recover, meaning he’d go back for the lightsaber I’d thrown away and out of view. If my predictions about it were correct though, we’d be on a more even playing field now than we ever were before. His feet would make travel, no less standing effectively, difficult, though not impossible. He is now unarmed, where I was armed with the hunting knife. If there was one thing I’d noticed is the stock he’d taken in the lightsaber and how reliant he was on it. In order to lighten his load, he’d ditched many supplies, just as I had, and what had aided him in catching up to me had ambiguously become the very thing that would put him at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, I still had that spear in my shoulder, meaning that fighting would be half as effective, even though I was still armed against the armed opponent; That, and he still had the skill and experience advantage over me.
I’d chosen my final battleground so precariously. I knew it well enough that it was someplace that was likely unfamiliar to him. But what made this place so important to me? As he caught up with me, I noticed that my sacrifice wasn’t for nothing, as he was unarmed as he reached me, and using the skills and training we’d learned in our various ways, we went into combat. I, heavily favoring me left side –as the other was pierced by a stake-, was left predictable in my methods of attack. He, on the other hand, had difficulties closing the distance between us, and it left a singular method of defending myself left on the board, is that I’d only come into range, while attacking, but stayed out of range when defending. It allowed me to lead him around as I wished, though it also might have felt like he was bullying me around, which was also in part true. The only advantage I had left was to use my legs, as he couldn’t, nearly as effectively, also use his own legs.
A low kick to his shin, a slash at his defending arm, a small jump backwards out of range. It was all effective against him, nut one of it was lethal, and quite frankly, it only served to make him angry and frustrated, but he knew he still had more than enough in him to finish it right here. I knew that as well, and it was in part shown in my tactics of defense, and no matter how I cut it, all I was doing was defending. None of my strikes could kill him with any level of certainty, meaning that it was simply an offensive form of a defense. I was buying time is all.
Finally, as I backed up with a skip, I realized that the blood trickling from my shoulder was growing thicker and thicker. None of this movement was helping me at all. All in all, he could very well outlast me in the fight, and I was in no position to continue at this rate. I allowed him to close the distance between us, where his strikes, though fast and strong as they were, weren’t quite what they could be. It is surprising what your stance can contribute to your overall form, and his stance was at an all time low. Still, he was beating me, getting in a punch here and there. Blood trickled from my mouth and a swollen cheek made it difficult to see out of my left eye. A cracked rib made every punch to my torso feel like it was empowered tenfold. I was losing, but victoriously, because his strikes pushed me back.
*Fwoom!*
*“Aaaahhh!”*
I clung to a branch on a tree as the very ground gave way beneath me. With the ground, my enemy fell uselessly down a tunnel, where he ricocheted off the walls on his way down, where the way he hit the walls, I could hear his injuries. Peering deep down, I could see the light of the new room, and far below was a dangerous landing zone that could have been safely managed if he hadn’t crashed into the walls on the way down, he could have survived if he hadn’t only moments before had inch-long thorns penetrated deep into his feet. Looking down as best as I could, I saw his body hit the ground gracelessly, where the thud could be heard as far above as I was now. And I too could have, or still could, suffer the same fate, if I didn’t bring myself safely to solid ground. Swinging myself to the edge of the open pit, I lid myself onto the edge, where the pain of my many injuries radiated through my body mercilessly. The adrenaline could only do as much as to allow me the strength to even move as I did in the first place, but it did nothing for my pains.
Looking over the edge as I caught my breath again, I looked down at my own work. His body still lay there, either dead or in the process of dying, and I knew it was my doing that killed him. There was no help coming to him, and if anything, he could hope for something to kill him faster. It was his own knowledge of being superior that led to his demise. He’d become so focused on the fact that he could, and should, kill me that it was the primary thought on his mind. He’d even forgotten that there was a way out of the room that I hadn’t forgotten about during his endeavor. Unfortunately, I knew I’d suffer getting there, but finding the exit was something of a miracle for me. If I hadn’t found it sooner, I would have certainly died, and if weren’t for those watching me, there would have been a way to get down through the hole safely, but someone wanted me to face him and either die or fight. Escape wasn’t an option for me. I was only after looking down the hole, did the ladder even begin to descend from within the tube. It was finally a way down and a way out of the room.
Still though, there was no way I was going to survive with my many injuries, at least not without help, and it was only then that it happened. I didn’t even have to search for it, like everything else I searched for, but rather it simply floated down from above to me; A package, It landed not too far from the hole, containing bandages and ointments that would help to patch me up again. It was a reward for my survival. Yet, there was no rest for the wicked, as the next room was simply that, another room.
It was one of the most memorable moments of my life, where my concerns that someone was indeed controlling every aspect of my life, provoking danger to me, and even going as far as to helping me, was confirmed. My life was simply something to be played with and controlled. To survive was beginning to become an endless task, and based upon the age of my former opponent, it meant that I could very well spend the rest of my life in the puzzle of endless rooms… Right up until the day I too was killed by someone better than me.
From that point on, my experiences became far more difficult, if ever at all one could imagine it. If to considered it anything at all, it would be conditioning me… training me, and it only got harder and more intricate. The years before that event, they took the time to teach me things, such as shooting a blaster, wielding a sword, teaching me how to improvise tools and weapons, how to use my body as a weapon, and how fighting and not fighting in various situations can have different effects. But now, my “Training” became something more in depth, where if my training before required text books on survival, it now took entire encyclopedic collections to explain every detail of survival in its most intimate form to me. So much information is thrown at me at a time that I find it difficult to keep up most days, and my brain is at constant work in an attempt to memorize every single detail, because, no different from any room before, I will always need to recall that information in order to survive; It might not be today, or the next day, but some day I will need to use it, and learning it now could very well mean the difference between life and death, and so it is the Only thing I think about throughout the day.
Meal began to come in different forms, where simply hunting it in a forest had become too easy for my overseers, I found my meals become more difficult to attain. A vacant city room, I would have to set tiny traps to catch rodents in order to feed myself. A room, where the whole thing was a small town with a large market, I would have to steal my food, and getting caught would mean flogging me, or the attempt to kill me. Escaping my captors would be the only way to prevent a hanging, but only for me to have to attempt to steal again. And sometimes, my meal would come from completing various tasks. Killing another survivor, a meal would simply float from the sky again. There was really only a single way to find a meal each day, and moving through the rooms got faster and faster. I recognized irregularities and solved the puzzles faster, thus discovering the way out sooner.
The droids that would appear out of nowhere to teach me would teach me the most advanced unarmed tactics of combat where fighting a metallic droid that can move as fast as a piston, can be as strong as hydraulics, and fight with as much endless endurance as one can manage… It meant that I had to be smarter, learn faster, and apply precisely and use exactly what I needed at all times in order to learn the technique or to avoid the punishments of failing.
A Holographic projection cube would teach me everything I’d need to know about sniping. How to find a perch, what was best in a perch, how to properly conceal a sniper, and how to assemble it, when I’d located my perch. The mathematics involved in using only a single shot to hit a mark were ingrained in my brain, and knowing all the different snipers and tools used to enhance a sniper were all shown to me and experienced in a variety of ways.
Sometimes, something as simple as a small communicating device would brief me on a mission, such as to assassinate a particular target, and I would be shown the next hidden exit and fed for the day as a reward. Distinguishing the proper target, and using the proper method of killing that target without anyone knowing it was you would not earn the food nor the way out, and having to start again from scratch the next day would be a common reoccurrence, and it would pound proper techniques and strategies into my brain.
I had become well educated through my training, and I was well aware of most, if not all, things that pertained to what I was specifically trained for. The Force, was taught to me in various ways, where I knew how to control an object with precision, and I was easily familiar with how the Force was stronger than the body, and cold easily manage such feats as lifting extraordinarily heavy objects. I knew it required focus to use, where it was not something to be used lightly. I was familiar with the full array of uses it had, but regrettably, my opportunities to using it were limited by the plethora of other tasks I had at hand, but more than a few times, it came in handy when needing it in a mission.
I didn’t yet realize it, but this training wasn’t simply in order to see how I would tick and how long I’d last. In fact, it never once occurred to me that it was all for a purpose. I suppose that the paranoia, attention to details, my puzzle-like mind, and my focus on the task of the room were all more prominent in my mind. So, when the day came… today, I never even saw it coming.
It was my final room in a sense, and it was the end of the game that was my life. Survival, however, never left me, and every corner had a new puzzle for me to solve. This puzzle, however, was particularly disturbing. I’d only just learned another skill, and with my task completed, it wasn’t long before I was able to find the key out of place for my next room. It was painfully obvious this time, a large red button in the middle of a door at what I judged to be the end of the room, and it parted a wall that appeared to be made of brick, where I eagerly entered to find it painfully small. It was a mere three square paces, and with the door behind me closed, I couldn’t help but to panic. Thankfully, it was lit up, but I was unaware of any possible way to open it to the next room. I frantically searched the room for any sign, but to no avail. There was nothing… The walls were bare, plain, white, not opening from any angle. Suddenly, it lurched in a familiar way, downward. An elevator?
It wasn’t long before the door behind me opened once again, revealing a rather plain room with a chair in the middle of it, and a protocol droid standing in front of it, “Please, will you sit for me?”
Not every room I’d come across had chairs in it, and never was I asked to do anything, but rather told to do everything. And never was he able to simply sit and relax. It was always moving, always making action. What purpose was accomplished by sitting down? I did not oblige, “I will stand…Thank you.”
Being polite didn’t come easy to me, but the room I’d only just come from was familiarizing me with manners, which wasn’t something I was used to. However, I was also taught that words can never be too important to not be used too often. This was simply an unfamiliar time for me to use them, were meeting a droid usually meant I’d be fighting it or taking it apart to see how it worked.
“Very well then. State your number for us,” it replied cordially.
“Us?” I replied, looking around. Whoever, ‘Us’ are, must be the ones overseeing my progression through the rooms, and deciding the every aspect of my life. However, without the slightest reaction to my asking, ‘Us?’, I realized there was no answer to it, “50452” I stated, gaining an instantaneous response from the protocol droid.
“Where are you?” It asked me. I was perplexed by the question. What could it possibly mean by that? Didn’t it know where I am? It was asking to see how much I already knew, which was a method of interrogation used to not leak any information I didn’t already know, or to gain information the interrogator didn’t already know from me. Either way, it made me feel like answering wasn’t in my own benefit.
“Are you confused droid? Where we are, is an interrogation room,” I cleverly responded.
It must have found the answer satisfactory, because, as if a switch was flicked, it came to life with the next question for me, “Why are you here?”
Certainly, the questions were aimed to achieve some goal, but by the way they were being asked, I hadn’t a clue as to where they were directing me. How could I protect myself from the questions if I didn’t know what my interrogator was trying to find out from me? Surely, it had an idea of how I was going to respond, as questions as general as asking for my awareness required some sort of preexisting answer on their part, although gaining my own perspective might also give them insight as to what I was after.
In short, I didn’t want to play their game, and all that I wanted was the end of the interrogation, “What is next for me?”
The silence between us became eerie as I could practically hear the arguing of the overseers behind the controls of the droid. The protocol droid simply asked me again, “Why are you here?”
An even longer silence ensued, where I unchangingly stared back at the droid awaiting my answer. I must have been minutes despite feeling like ages, but finally, I attained my response from the droid, “What do you want next?”
I couldn’t help, but to chuckle in response. In truth it was frustrating, but if there was anything I’d learned, it was patience. Then, something came back to me from somewhere. I’d heard it so long ago, but still it cut through me clear as day, and I couldn’t help but to speak it out loud as it came to me, “Learn the facts and reasons behind your world, and the truth will be revealed to you.”
My world was surreal. There were so many factors and controls within it, it simply couldn’t be, and for there to be purpose behind the resources put forth towards it, it would have to be a rather immense purpose that simply didn’t’ include me in it. Since as far back as I could remember, I’d been forming a mental image of my world, where every single calculation added up in my mind. Nearly 8 years to the day was my calculation as to how long I’d been in my world since I could remember, and my world, although starting off in a forty thousand cubic pace-length collection of rooms, my world had expanded since the day I’d almost died. In fact, it had expanded to another ten million paces out and five hundred thousand paces down, where the various rooms included, if kept constant would equate to hundreds of millions of square pace-lengths of surface area where myself and/or others could tread upon, all of which these rooms could be changed at will, being filled with the accommodations of limitless different environment. The inhabitants of these worlds were perfectly adjusted to their world, where living in such small “Rooms”, completely confined without anywhere to go would almost certainly mean extremely limited lives, where they were perfectly unaware of any larger of a world.
I’d attempted endless experiments in an attempt to find a permanent way out of the rooms that made up ‘Here’, but with no way out anywhere, and no one even aware that there was even a way out of
‘Here’. So, with such a perfect world, where my very life was decided, what limits does my world include, and to what end does it yield? Why are all of these resources expended for the simple purpose of keeping a single individual content to some extent? Why is every single room completely devoid of the existence of any other being, despite my knowing that there are indeed others participating in my world?
I lunged at the protocol droid, tackling it to the ground and speaking out loud as I pulled it apart, “You, droid are connected to those watching over me, meaning that…”
I paused, realizing that my world was shattered, “…You’d have to be receiving some method of transmission from my overseers, but you have no such method of receiving transmissions. You are a standard protocol droid. Simply and painfully a standard protocol droid. You… cannot be receiving transmissions, meaning that you are either my overseer, or that you have been pre-programmed. However, you take too long to think, which goes against your processing core.”
My thinking out loud caused a disturbance, where, from behind me, the wall opened up. The elevator was one there, and coming out of the elevator was a man, but the man was eerily faceless. Where his face should have been, there was a smooth, reflective surface, that when I looked into it, I saw my own face. It shouldn’t have existed, and he instantaneously jumped me. Instinctively, I fought back, where his every movement was all too familiar. He was just as strong, just as agile, and just as fast as I was, and he used attacks that I would have used in every situation. The fight took place so quickly, that my brain couldn’t process how he was using moves that only I would have used in those exact situations that I would have used them in, but still I knew. It was essentially fighting myself, and the reflection of my face in his visage was proof of it, likely done on purpose too.
Even when I attempted to predict his next attack based on what I Would have done, he too predicted what I might do, where the result was much like a poorly choreographed move set, where we flopped into each other like fish out of water, but to have no advantage over the other, and it was all too familiar how I could fight myself. My brain even began to contemplate how this exact situation could even be possible, and the answer was that it wasn’t. By the time the fight broke off from the constant brawling between us, slots in the floor opened to reveal lightsabers rolling into reach. Of ‘course, we both reached out with the force to grab out lightsabers, and we clashed in a way that was exactly equal in angle, strength, speed, and duration. Uncanny as it was, I knew that the end of this fight had the end result of one of us dying, and though I figured it was simply another test. How strong can you possibly be? How can you adapt? If it was a droid in my own disguise, it would likely only have the latest back up of my own skills saved, and only use those skills, meaning that to win the overall fight, I’d have to adapt and create something new, learn something knew that only I could teach myself. I’d have to drastically alter my tactics in a way that didn’t hinder me. I had to use my own weaknesses against myself. I would have to cease being myself. I would have to cease being myself. I would have to… Cease being myself.
Finally, it all added up to me. I knew where I was, and I knew why I was here. I couldn’t’ help but to say it out loud, “I know where I am and why I am here.”
The mimicking droid, or whatever it was, of myself cocked its head to the side at me, silently, where the old me that it embodied saw its opportunity to attack me when I was most vulnerable. Of ‘Course, my instincts and reactions failed to let me down, where I twisted my body out of the way and blocked the attack with the lightsaber I wielded, but unlike the survivor I’d prided myself for being, and the survivor that got me to the last room, I smirked at the doppelganger. Then, I deactivated my lightsaber while closing my eyes, knowing that by deactivating my lightsaber, I was allowing myself to die here, in the exact moment that I could have continued adapting to my surroundings and killed myself, but to what end? Would it be another fight against myself? Would I eventually end up being killed by something else? Would I have control over my own death then? What did allowing myself to die ‘Here’ Achieve for me?
The lightsaber cutting into my chest, I could feel it clear as day as it went through everything. It was only but a moment later that I died. The immense pain was nothing compared to dying, where absolutely nothing engulfed me. The pain was endless though, and it never ceased. The entry of where the lightsaber cut through me constantly burned in an endless stinging. For the first time, I felt relief. I didn’t breath, and I didn’t move my arms or legs. I just… kinda floated about in darkness and a neglect of perception.
********************************************************************************************************************************
Finally, air was forced into my lungs the exact moment I felt that I could slip out of existence. From my armpits, I was hoisted, where every ounce of pressure against my skin seemed to slip away in an almost slimy way. Like a giant suction cup stuck against my body, I *Thwah-Puh* right out of what I could only feel to be a jelly-like substance. I was pulled out onto a metallic platform, and as I opened my eyes, I knew they were opening, but I saw nothing. I tried to hear, but I heard nothing. My world was black, scentless, tasteless, soundless… All I could do was feel, and I felt the plastic of the mask pressed against my face as it fed me fresh air. Everything I felt only moments before death I could still feel apart from the fact that I felt like I was just pulled out of a bowl full of jelly, and that the brisk air cooled my skin. But still, I felt hungry, my muscles were tired, and most importantly, my chest burned where the lightsaber crossed through my chest. But as I moved my arms to the wound, I couldn’t feel any hole or any such wound. Yet, it felt so real.
I flailed, where I felt living creatures holding me, directing my body, and pinning down my limbs. They attempted, but even blind I was overpowering, and the skill I had was too much for them to control. Suddenly, and without any warning at all, a dart pierced the skin on my back. Another dart and a third also struck me. I could feel the venom inject into me, where my body was quickly paralyzed and my brain was quickly subdued into that limbo I’d fist felt upon my first death.
In sleep there is no way you can perceive how long you’ve been that sleeping, and so, for the first time since waking, my body was alerted to the fact that I was awake now. Opening my eyes, I remembered that I was blinded, but I saw light. It was sensitive, and I hadn’t even realized that I was also hearing. It was very loud, where the sound of dripping pounded in my ears far too sensitive to be good for anything. I could smell the classic sterilization of a hospital. It, after all, wasn’t the first hospital room I’d been in, although I suspected that this was the first one that was real.
When the light died down enough, I found a pair of fingers prying my eyes open, and my hands failed to reach up to defend my eyes from the threat, but to only find the feeling of steel around my wrists and the unbearably loud noise of metal clanking as my hands were bound down to my sides. I groaned, not out of the pain I felt, but because of the helplessness and the endless torture I’d lived through for the past lifetime. The voice was loud, but I understood it, “Relax, I’m removing the brackets, but I expect you to behave. Do you understand?”
Clearing my voice, I nodded and managed to part my lips, “I understand.”
My voice sounded weird, and there was a disturbing feeling of an oily substance along my throat as if something about it was wrong with it. My voice was all wrong, as if I hadn’t used it for a while, but it didn’t simply go away with a simple clearing of my throat.
I attempted to clear my throat again, and began to speak again as I felt my wrist freed, “Whe…” My voice was still wrong, so I cleared my voice again, “Where…” it was still wrong, and what was worse was that my vision wasn’t adjusting to the light fast enough, and the person unshackling me was only but a blur.
Their voice broke my attempts to clear my throat again, “Don’t try it, you’ll scratch your throat before you get it to sound like you are used to it. It hasn’t been used in years, so it will take a long time to readjust to where it once was. As to where you are, other than a hospital bed, the answer is far more complex than I could explain. All that you need to know about Where you are is that you are somewhere you haven’t been for over 8 years.
“Is this real?” I asked. It sounded like a funny question, but I’d discovered that the world I was in before was not real, and still I was unsure as to whether or not I was someplace that was real, or the place that Id deemed not real was in fact real, and that place I am now is not real.
“You are very clever, and you took a massive gamble on the notion that your world was an illusion. What gave it away? Was it the doppelganger?” he asked me, neglecting to confirm whether the world I was currently in was actually real or not.
“It was everything,” I responded, “The place I knew to be the real world simply didn’t add up to be something that could possibly be real. The only explanation is that it wasn’t,” I explained, not even realizing that I was answering questions I really shouldn’t have been. That person freed me from my shackled, but it didn’t, by any means at all, mean that he could be trusted with my thoughts.
Realizing this, I leapt from the bed at him. If I could keep him as a hostage, I might be able to find out some answers on my own. I might be able to escape this place, and find out for myself if it was real. But the moment I flew towards him, I felt an overwhelming Force press me back from mid air, where my very inch of my body was pinned underneath it. I recognized that force too, because it was nothing other than The Force. I’d experienced it… or maybe I hadn’t… many times before.
“Now, now, I thought you were going to behave 50452?” the voice almost seemed to mock me, “You should know that you are completely out of your league here. I recommend you behave yourself.”
Beyond frustrated now, no groaning could help me, and my helplessness got to me. I’d been under someone else’s’ control for far too long now, and I was breaking. I began to whine as if someone was slowly plunging a dagger into me, or as if a child that simply wasn’t getting what they wanted, “What is going on?! Why can’t I see? Why can’t I just leave here? Just tell me what is happening here!”
I couldn’t help but to shudder as I said it. I wasn’t used to demanding what I wanted. I was far too accustomed to figuring it out for myself, and begging for information wasn’t in my skill set. It felt disgusting to me, and my helplessness didn’t help.
I heard n audible sigh from my captor, “You are disappointing me 50452. What do You think is happening here? Why do you think your position is exactly the way it is?” The way he asked it, I could feel that he expected me to already know the answer, and perhaps I had an idea. It was complex, and above all I didn’t want to believe it was even remotely possible, but still, it was the only answer available to me.
Relaxing into my bed, the moment I did, I felt the immense pressure he’d exerted upon me with the Force relax upon me, but it still pressed me down ever so lightly, “I… I was in some sort of virtual reality, where I was trained for something. When I killed myself I was either released or I broke my simulation, where I came back to the real world. The time I’d spent in the simulator though is equal to the time I perceived in it, meaning that I was in whatever gel that kept me for nearly 8 years, where I hadn’t the opportunity to speak, open my mouth, breath on my own, use my eyes, hear anything, or even so much as smell and taste anything. I can only assume that the only sense available to me during my virtual reality was the sense of touch that allowed my real body to perceive the virtual reality, which is why I felt like I was dying after being released from the simulator.”
Saying it out loud, it fit perfectly into what I’d perceived in the past… day of being ‘Awakened’ if I was in fact in a simulator. Still though, it was so far-fetched that I didn’t even believe it was possible despite it being the only possible explanation I could think of. And in response to it, all I could hear then was clapping.
I could hear the excitement in his voice as he responded, “You’ve exceeded every single expectation we’ve had of you too! I must admit that you were not one of the subjects that I thought were going to make it out alive. In fact, we even tried to kill you off to another test subject… until you killed him anyway.”
Shocked at how I was confirmed correct, emotions flooded my brain as I realized that my entire life, or what of it I could remember, was essentially laying about in a bowl of jelly. What was even the point anyway?
With the excitement still in his voice, I could feel him lean in towards me, where the Force exerted down on my harder, and he pried my eyes open, dripping something into my eyes. I struggled, but the Force he exerted upon me was well beyond my physical limits, and whatever he put into my eyes made it in without resistance. My eyes began to burn, and I couldn’t help but to blink uncontrollably, as if some speck of dirt was dropped in, and I needed to blink it out of my eyes. And as I blinked, the burning became even more intense, but the fluids on my eye pooled up at the corners where they eventually dropped out as tears. The tears were unfathomably thick, and the more I blinked, the less blurry my vision became. My sight was clearing, and with my clearer vision, all the intense frustrations I’d felt also began to melt away in part. Before I knew it, my vision was completely back, though not to the strength I would have wanted, but I assumed it would come back in time.
Sitting in front of me sitting back into a chair at the end of the room was a man in a long black cloak, but his face shaded away from view by some sort of veil. I turned to the side of the bed, where I enabled myself to stand from the bed. And well beyond my expectations, I didn’t feel like I’d only just awaken from an 8 year nap, but rather that what I’d experienced was all real. If real life didn’t feel so real, then what did that make the virtual reality I’d once felt was real?
As I stood up, I could feel his gaze combing over me, and I looked down at my hands to make sure I was really here. My paws were woundless. They didn’t show a single sign of my time in the virtual reality, and it dawned on me that I could very well have been placed into a virtual reality, or perhaps this is what death feels like, and the afterlife cures you of all former injuries… but for what purpose?
Finally, he spoke to me as I began to walk over to the window that had its blinds drawn as to keep prying eyes out, or from keeping my eyes in, “The only question 50452, is how much do you remember?”
Pausing to draw the shades, it revealed a rather small laboratory with 5 giant pods, or fluid-filled tubes. Three of them were empty and the last two had people in it. Neither of them looked like me, though I could feel deep down inside that they were… Exactly like me. As the two bodies floated in their jelly-filled chambers, I saw them moving and twitching, where restraints held them in place, allowing various levels of restraint against their actions. More so than the jell that held them could resist them, chords and mechanical arms held their victims inside of their tubes, preventing them from ever escaping on their own, and quite honestly, they were probably allowing the subjects to move in order to keep their physical shape while they laid in an 8 year slumber. It was quite a surreal moment that he could have very well been in one of those chambers himself. Even now, he felt his wrists and elbows where the restraints would ordinarily hold him in place if he were still in the test tube.
Realizing that there was still a question to be answered, he couldn’t even think as he responded, but rather he simply said exactly what he was meant to and exactly what was on his mind, “What can you remember of an entire night of dreaming before waking?”
Except that instead of an entire night of dreaming, I was ‘dreaming’ for 8 straight years. And I could only remember the very final room, where everything finally came together. I could recall the gist of what I dreamt about, how I went from room to room solving puzzle after puzzle and learning skill after skill, but the specifics were lost faster than I could think of them. I was losing it, and the only things I could remember are the things I was reminded of. I could… feel that he was disappointed, far more than his quiet sigh indicated, but there was still hope present. I could hear him reaching onto his person, and I turned around to see him pull out a blaster pistol that he began to disassemble with the Force and scatter on the floor before me.
Thinking it to be some sort of cruel joke or insult, I refused to even look down at it, but rather to stare at him. And at that moment, I remembered a flash of an event. It wasn’t an event that happened to take place within the ‘Dream’, but rather it was something that happened before all of that. I was just a young man, freshly recruited for the Force only knows what I’d gotten myself into. Still though, I could recall that I was willing to do anything, and what it had led me to remember is that I’d willingly signed up for the project. And in the flash back, I saw and recognized myself as naive and predictable as any other youth, but I didn’t recognize him. I certainly didn’t correlate that it could possibly be the very same person standing in the room today. What had I become? However, I hesitated to relinquish the information to my inquisitor.
Instead, my heart thudded hard and my mind raced for all the possibilities as he drew a second blaster and pointed it at me. Without a word, I knew his intention and why he’d decided to pull the trigger, I wouldn’t be able to even think about the reasons behind it, but I knew that action needed to be taken if I were to stay alive. Quickly, I dropped out of his line of sight to scoop up the pieces of the blaster pistol scattered about. The shot missed me, shattering the window behind me. With the various pieces of the pistol, I dove out the window, gracefully avoiding the shards of glass that threatened me as I flew safely away from a second blaster shot. And after landing, I didn’t know how, but the blaster pistol was already assembled. My hands moved with a mind of their own, but all the same, I thought about how it was possible, and I knew that how each part fit into each other, how they functioned, and how they could be assembled in the fastest time, before I was ready to aim down the sight. Picking myself into a kneeling position, the exact moments of my time spent in the dream that covered every time I’d disassembled, reassembled, and shot a blaster pistol returned to me, where I was able to replicated it from memory alone enabled me to fire the blaster at the man still in the hospital room.
The blaster bolts fired without an issue, sending two bolts to his chest and one to his head. How did he know to shoot it like that? Unfortunately, a massive red blade ignited just in time to deflect all three of them without pause, and before I could get off anymore rounds, the gun was ripped from my grasp into the chuckling hands of the lightsaber wielding menace that had only just attempted to kill me. I attempted to flee into a strategic retreat, but I found myself unable to move a muscle as he approached me, “See?! I knew you had it in you! It’s just buried deep down in there somewhere. The only issue is getting it out.”
Kill me, don’t, none of it made sense, but I was starting to pick up the pieces, and I thought I could see where he was going with it. The only problem is that I didn’t know whether I wanted to become the man in the dream again. Perhaps innocence was bliss, and perhaps I could do better in this world if I wasn’t a highly trained killer? Did I like who I’d become in the dream? The worst part about the future, is not knowing what you will become, but the worst part about My future is that I cannot find out what happened in my past without becoming that person in my future. Was my curiosity worth it then?
Releasing me from his grip, he let me fall to the ground almost helplessly without any means to defend myself should he choose to kill me for real this time, “There are people you should meet, 50452,” he paused before continuing, “And I’m afraid that you cannot go back to the life you had before this program. I’d give thought to another name if I were you.”
NAME: 50452; Former name Unknown; Adopted Alias: Vakira
FACTION: Lords of the Sith
RANK: Acolyte (Or equivalent)
SPECIES: Shistavanen
AGE: 27 Gsy
GENDER: Male
HEIGHT: 6 Feet
WEIGHT: 184 Lbs
EYES: Golden
HAIR: Dark Grey with White secondary color
SKIN: Not visible, but the paws are black
CREDITS: Unknown wealth
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Various scars are covered beneath his fur
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes
STRENGTH: Vakira is Physically Strong, although due to his only source of strength training in 8 years coming from a physical therapy simulator/resistance training, he is incredibly toned and has room to grow as far as strength is concerned. he relies more on strategy and technique than strength.
DEXTERITY: Vakira highly prefers agility and dexterity over strength, and his mind, despite his body being beneath his peak potential, is as sharp as obsidian.
CONSTITUTION: Vakira is extremely healthy, though susceptible to various newer strands of diseases he'd not have been exposed to during the past 8 years. He has many vaccinations though and due to training and conditioning, he is fully capable of taking a beating when needed.
INTELLIGENCE: Vakira's knowledge is almost all entirely practical, when accessible. Vakira's training involved extraordinarily intense mental work outs that allow him to mentally be far more extraordinary than his body can keep up with. Because of this, he has a wide gap to close. However, the downside is that although he has learned all this information, he doesn't have immediate access to all of it, and requires real life training to "unlock" this information to be used.FOr now, he's essentially a blank slate.
WISDOM: Vakira has an unfortunate lack of wisdom, being locked away in a computer system for 8 years, although his "experiences" in this program give him insight as to how to react in the real world, as his training there revolves entirely around his training there.
CHARISMA: Similarly to his wisdom, he has virtually no sense of charisma, being locked away for so long. He's learned to not trust easily what so ever, and he'd become quite a recluse if he didn't have to play nice with everyone.
FORCE POWERS:
Vakira's grasp over the Force is rudimentary and practical, though still he requires the extra training to "Unlock" what he already knows. His training included telekinesis and minor mental manipulations, though these are skills far less developed during his training, and he requires a lot more training if he intends to become a Lord of the Sith.
SKILLS:
| Introductory --> Average --> Professional --> Expert |
|--- 1-2 ----------> 3-5 --------> 6-8 ------------> 9-10 ---|
Like everything else, Vakira's Knowledge in the vast majority of these skills are locked away inside of his mind and needs re-training in order to recall his training in these subjects.
Vakira's training expanded across a very wide variety of categories including:
Espionage- 7/10
Unarmed Combat- 9/10
Mechanical and Electronic Engineering- 5/10
Interrogations- 6/10
Weapon Maintenance- 7/10
Hunting and Tracking- 8/10
Human(oid) Anatomy and Basic Medical Care- 4/10
Free Running/Art of Movement- 9/10
Driving- 3/10
Pilot- 4/10
Survival (Natural)- 8/10
Survival (Urban)- 6/10
Blaster Marksmanship- 6/10
Sniping Marksmanship- 8/10
Explosives- 5/10
Boobie Traps- 5/10
Strategizing- 8/10
Personal Relations and Negotiations- 4/10
Swordsmanship- 6/10
Force Manipulations- 5/10
LIGHTSABER/SWORD FORMS:
Vakira's skills everywhere else didn't leave a lot of time and energy left to be dedicated to learning how to use a Lightsaber nearly as well as he could have. For a Sith, he requires a great deal more training with a lightsaber, though he is certainly capable with it and other bladed weaponry. Though his knowledge in lightsaber combat has taken a brief coverage over everything, he has taken a particular liking to D'jem So, but due to design of his training he is far more equipped to practice Niman, as it covers the majority of his skills. Vakira's skills in combat are much stronger in unarmed combat, and using the Force is also an asset in his armory, and the way he was trained was to never leave out any benefit if you could help it. That being said, Niman caters perfectly to his wide extent of skill best, allowing him to alter his strategy and adapt to different combat scenarios seamlessly as well as integrate whatever other combat assets he has available.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES:
Vakiras strength best lie out of reach, where he cannot attain them. His training, though strong is currently, mentally, unattainable, and he requires refreshing training in order to access them again. This training, as extensive as it is though doesn't specialize so much as it covers a little bit of everything, which on one hand makes him effective in the widest variety of scenarios, but due to his over extension in training makes him unable to directly compete with anyone who directly specializes in these skills. this variety in training, though useful as it is, hurts him the most in the necessary training required for Sith, where his lightsaber and Force training is particularly lacking.
Vakira's training has left him and his personality in a wreck. He is practically unable to trust without the deepest of reasons to do so, he is manipulative if it serves him to do so, and his ability to sympathize is on the same levels as a sociopath. He can play the part if he needs to, but deep down, he really isn't anymore human than his design, which is to be a killer.
GEAR:
Vakira is brand new to the Sith Order, a fresh face, and thus his equipment is severely lacking, but is bound to expand in time:
Blaster Pistol
Black Duster
Short Range Transmitter
Durasteel Knife
-- The Content Below is Optional, but Encouraged!--
SHIP:
Vakira Owns No Method of Transportation
DROIDS:
Vakira Owns No Droids
PETS:
Vakira Owns No Pets
KILLS:
Vakira Has Earned No PC Kills
BOUNTIES COLLECTED:
Vakira Has Earned No PC Bounties
DUELING RING MATCHES:
Vakira Has Not Participated In Any Dueling Ring Matches
GRAND TOURNAMENT MATCHES:
Vakira Has Not Participated In Any Grand Tournament Matches
ROLE-PLAYS:
Vakira Has Yet To Participate In Any Role Plays.
Last edited: