By N.D
The empty vessel makes the loudest sound. -Plato
There at first, was the feeling of warm air brushing against his skin. Then came the coldness of the world. He was cold, shivering, and just awakened into the world. He could not see, everything was dark, but he could hear. He could hear the sounds of whirring, the sounds of hissing air and the sound of liquid being flushed out from whatever he was in. He began to stir, began to move his arms, they felt as heavy as rocks. He managed to finally open his eyes, but let out a wince as the bright lights that shined onto his face distracted him. That and the thing in his mouth.
Gathering the strength to grab at it and pull out it, a long, rubbery sort of hose came out of his mouth and he gagged and spat, heaving as he began to make out his surroundings. He was in a glass tube, a big one, and he was strapped down from the waist on a metal table. He looked at himself, seeing his naked body before him and felt it almost dumbly. This is me, He thought. But who was he? Why was he here? He began to panic, trying to grab at the metal restraint across his middle. With some luck, he pressed something which seemed to have unlocked it, allowing him to pull it off with ease. He then stepped forward, but used the glass of the tube he was in to support himself as his legs felt like gelatin. He looked out through the glass to see nothing but a near dark room with several dozen other tubes. All filled with a blue liquid with shapes in it he could barely make out.
Feeling the metal top of the tube he was in, he found a latch and pulled it, the glass in front of him sliding open. He let out a small yelp as he fell flat onto his face and groaned, holding his nose. That’s right, I can’t feel my legs. He rolled onto his back, feeling the puddle of what he presumed to be water on the cold concrete floor. He laid there for what felt like hours, but after a moment he sat up and looked around. He couldn’t understand where he was. He didn’t even know who he was. But scrambling together, his brain rationalised that he, naked and cold man, was in a lab. But...why? Maybe if I get up and look around, I’ll get my answer. He’d used the side of the tube to stand himself up, his legs shaking and his body shivering in the cold air. When he stood himself up, he caught his reflection in the cylinder next to his. He didn’t think it was him at first until he realised it copied his movements.
He was fair-skinned and decently-built, but he looked a bit older than he thought he was. Maybe middle-aged, maybe younger ,but his face indicated that he couldn’t be younger than...maybe twenty-seven. He had no hair on his body, he was shaven like...one of this hairless cats. He had no idea why he made that comparison, for now he felt gross looking at himself. But looking past his reflection, inside the tube was...something. Looking closer, he saw a strange lump of flesh being held by a rubbery hose, the same he had in his mouth. He gawked at it and stepped back, “What the-” He coughed, his voice sounded hoarse and strained. It was like he had never opened his mouth to speak before. “What is that…?” He wheezed out, asking just himself. He was the only one in here, after all.
Turning around, looking down both sides of the room, he spotted a doorway and sighed with relief, beginning to hobble his way towards it. His body ached, all of his muscles having pins and needles, making this small walk to the door even harder. Grunting, he found it wore off the more he did it. He stepped up to the door, frowning. There was no handle, how was he meant to open it? He felt the cold metal door, sliding his hands over it, but found himself consciously tapping at it. When he reached the left side, he pressed his fingers on a panel and it beeped, the door sliding open, startling him again. The hallway it opened up into was a strange sight, the floor was a glassy-white while the ceiling and walls had projections of various forms of nature, constantly changing.
He slowly walked down the right, looking around, holding his other arm as he wondered what this place was...and who he was. Flashes of what he premised to be memories came by in him. Night skies, A sea of a city with several thousand lights...and the feeling of hitting concrete. That last one he felt the most, considering his nose still hurt from meeting the ground with a kiss. He gritted his teeth as he felt up his face, considering, Maybe I fell before. But why would falling onto concrete lead to here? The hallway turned left and he kept following it, stopping when he saw another door.
Tapping the panel he saw at the side, he smiled with some relief to see it was a room that looked less unfriendly like the room with the glass cylinders- Vats, as his mind corrected him. It was a relatively spacious room with two semi-circle couches surrounding a table with a glass dome in the middle of it, a kitchen-like area took up the corner of the room.
On the counter, draped over it, was a white coat with no collar. Awkwardly picking it up, the man looked at it’s front. He saw the name ‘Dr. Yu’ flash on the left side of it on the grey line that circled around the top half of the entire coat. Was this his? Was he Dr Yu? If not, well, he was putting it on anyway, walking around basically naked made him feel uncomfortable, even if it was possibly how he usually was. Maybe. There was a lot of questions going around in his head right now and none of them he felt would get answers, they would all just end up with nothing answered. All left untouched.
He found that all the cupboards and even the fridge in this room had no handles, just panels that one had to tap to open them. What he found was the basic amenities, coffee packets, tea bags, stuff like that, nothing that caught the man’s eye for interest. The fridge however was a different story. He was certain it was one, since the word came to his head so easily, but the machine in front of him baffled him greatly. It was mounted on the wall, the outer edges of it was all mechanical but the interior had a green gel with only a sandwich, a few cans of energy drinks and what seemed to be a fruit was in it. He reached towards the sandwich, retracting his hand just a bit when the gel moved away from his fingers, as if it sensed he wanted it. Feeling hunger come into him, he took the sandwich, the gel filling in the space it once held.
Weird. He thought to himself, after checking to see if the sandwich seemed alright to eat, he took a bite out of it. It was ham, cheese, spinach and some other flavour he couldn’t quite pin down, but it was one he liked a lot. He finished it quickly, not realising how hungry he was. He found it strange, how he let the taste linger in his mouth. Hadn’t he eaten before? But if he did, why did this feel all so new to him? He sat down on the couch and sighed, rubbing his eyes in frustration. He felt wrong.
He felt like whatever thing he was going through went wrong and it was now making him wrong, because why else wouldn’t he be able to remember anything? Trying his damnedest to scrounge up anything else didn’t help, it still just came out as blurry flashes. That, and he was now getting bothered by just wearing this coat, he needed to find some clothes. Deciding to venture out into the hallway again to search for more rooms and even hopefully someone who could explain what the hell was going on.
Walking down the hallway some more after leaving the room, he walked past a window showing another room with all those Vats in it. He stopped to stare, seeing that there was possibly dozens of them in there, going up on the platforms above the others. He wondered, he came out of one of those...and there was things...growing within them. Was he one of those things, fully grown? That was a weird thing to think about. He shivered, the cold atmosphere of this strange place was getting to him.
He found another door and had an easier time getting it open than the last one, stepping in to see that it was a locker room. He couldn’t open any of the lockers, of course, but to his luck nobody else seemed to be in here to see him take the pair of pants that he found draped over the bench that was there. He felt proud, he was no longer naked. But then he wondered if that was a norm for people like him to wake up naked and wander around. He left through the other door of the locker room out into an office area. He paused, noticing that out the window, he could see the sun begin to rise above what seemed to be a city. Stepping closer to it slowly, he found himself beginning to recall something. A name, a name of the place this building was in, a name for the city he found staring out the window from, his hands pressed against the glass as he stared across to the strangely shaped curved buildings of glass, greenery and metal, where projections of advertisements flashed across the buildings, where the sight of a flying vehicle flying by made him startle back. It was mesmerising, it was where the eye could stare upon it for moments and wonder, ‘What goes on there? What happens in a place like...this?’
Yes, I know the name of where I am now...He thought, looking at it all. It was called….’Sid-Neh’, he believed. He wondered if that was either how it was said, or how it was spelt. One or the other, he presumed. But the word was enough to give him the memories of walking through the streets of the city below him. He had a yearning to re-experience that again. Perhaps he’d find himself in a place like that. He looked back when he then heard voices from the other side of the door down on the other end.
Stepping away from the window as they entered, the man saw the other person enter into the room and found himself being quite stunned at their appearance. They were another man with younger features and a much more sharper face, but even in the dim lighting it was visible they had something off about them. For one, their eyes just seemed to be entirely light blue, with their pupils being a glowing white. On the left side of their head above the eye, there was a small glowing white hexagon that flickered. They were wearing a lab coat like the Man was wearing, and the name it had on it was a ‘Dr Ive’. The doctor seemed to be speaking into thin air until their eyes locked right onto the Man himself. The white hexagon seemed to dim after this.
“Oh, hell,” Dr Ive said with a stunned tone, “I didn’t even get notified you were done with your cloning, sir.” The Man stared at him with confusion, “What?” Cloning...that word was immensely familiar to him, but yet, nothing came back to him. “Your...cloning. You’ve been cloned, sir. Like you requested in case of any sudden ah,” Dr Ive seemed to struggle for the right word, “’Accidents’, like you said to me. I’m confused as to why you’ve...taken someone’s pants and Dr Yuri’s labcoat, which she did report missing five minutes ag-” “I’m sorry.” The man raised a hand and furrowed his brow, “But, I don’t mean to sound rude at all but I really have no idea who you are or...what this place is or even who I am. I’d, just like a good explanation please? Because I am dreadfully confused at whatever the...the fuck is going on.”
Somehow that word, ‘Fuck’, felt like it nailed it in the head that the Man had no memory of who he was to the blue-eyed man. Dr Ive seemed to be processing it in a way that made the Man uncomfortable, as he slowly asked, “..So you...don’t know your name?”
“No.” Said the man simply, “Can you tell me what it is, please? It’d make my day better.” And what the hell did he mean by cloned? I gotta ask, Thought the man.
“Alright uh,” Dr Ive seemed to sweat just a little, stepping closer, “Your name is Ambrose Ludlum. You’re the CEO of Ludbrose Inc, the one who sponsors us?..In secret?” The man, whom he now knew himself as Ambrose Ludlum, shook his head slowly, “Well...no I don’t remember that. I’m a CEO, though? Wow, I must be important.”
“Oh god uh-” Dr Ive calmed himself wiping his brow with a sleeve, “Okay let me try...this, do you remember how you died?” That question made Ambrose’s eyes widen in horror, “Wait, I died?! When?! How?!” Dr Ive shushed him, “Hey hey calm down, calm down….you answered my question there, alright uh,” Nervously pulling something out from their pocket, a rectangular piece of glass, mumbling something about ‘this damn thing happening again’. “You...died after you fell off the balcony of your apartment in the Central District during your 27th birthday party. Does that bring back anything?”
Ambrose looked to the side and seemed to recall something, but he furrowed his brow in frustration and shook his head, “N-no, but, is that how I died? Oh god, how am I...how am I alive, then? Was I rebuilt?” Dr Ive shook his head, sighing, “No you...didn’t pay for that in advance. You…” He’d rub his eyes, seeing the clear, almost frightened confusion across Ambrose’s face, muttering to himself. “Here, just follow me, alright?” He’d walk back towards the door where he came from, “I can explain everything properly to you, we usually have a protocol for this but...well, you’re already awake...and this may be a better way. Come, follow.”
Ambrose stood there for a moment, feeling a wave of hesitance wash over him. Then, he pushed that aside, then followed him. He was lead towards an elevator that sent them a few floors upwards. When they arrived to the floor, Ambrose was led down a much more lively hallway. Others in labcoats like Ive walked past them or talked amongst each other. They were like Ive, too, they had strange...things about their body that made Ambrose stare at them for a few seconds longer than he realised. One of the doctors there seemed to be over 7ft tall, while one, a woman with more grey skin, stared right back at him with confusion. She must’ve been wondering why he had her spare coat on.
Each time they passed him, they addressed him as ‘Mr Ludlum’ in a polite cordial way. He found this entire place to be strange now, finding himself to rubbing his arm and just focusing on following Ive. Ive brought him into a room with several large metal rectangular devices coming out of the ground, surrounding a main screen in the centre of the room. Dr Ive walked up to it while Ambrose looked at the glass these devices had on them, walking up to one to inspect it closely. He stood back when he saw that, just behind the glass was what seemed to be a softly glowing pink sheet of...something that writhed around.
“What...is this place?” Ambrose asked, gawking. Ive turned to him as he typed away at the screen, “This is the Memory-Bank. It’s...where all the memories of all our clients go to.” He’d notice how he stared at the thing behind the glass, “In there is the wet-ware we use to store it all.” Ambrose looked at him, about to ask what wet-ware was, until he saw the big arm chair that would begin to fold out from a slot in the ground, Dr Ive saying, “Don’t worry, the moment we reinstall your memories, all will be natural to you, you won’t have to ask anymore questions. Now, take a seat here.”
Ambrose was hesitant for a few seconds, before making himself comfortable on the chair. A synthetic cord with a plastic end came out from the left side of the head rest, moving about like a snake in the air, turning towards the side of Ambrose’s head. He looked at it wearily, but Dr Ive said, “Don’t worry, it’s not going to hurt you. Just relax and stay still.” Somehow, even with the soothing voice of the doctor, Ambrose didn’t feel relaxed. He sat still as the cord pressed the plastic end to the side of his head above the eye. Ambrose realised, Do I have one of those hexagon things in me too? Before he could think much more, he felt something sharp pierce into the side of his head and he froze up, eyes rolling to the back of his head as a flash of colours dominated his vision, his thoughts feeling scrambled and uneven.
Childhood came only in bits and pieces. His love life was merely blurred images with inaudible sound. One memory, however, was the memory of falling. Falling backwards off the balcony of his luxurious apartment at his own birthday party, watching the horrified look of friends staring down at him as he fell. One man had tried to reach and grab him but had just missed him by an inch. Well he tried, Ambrose had thought as he fell over 90 floors to his death.
From the flashes that showed him reality, he could see the lights in the wet-ware room turning red and a panicked Dr Ives trying to deactivate the machine. Security and another doctor, the tall one, stormed in, trying to ask Ive what was wrong.
A piece of the week before came back to Ambrose, it was him at a dinner party with his board members, having finished a discussion about some important business deal in Neo-London, now listening to the rambles of their most oldest member of the Board. “..Everytime I see it happen to someone, it’s like they’ve been sapped dry,” He said in between bites of roast pork, cutting another piece and putting it into his mouth, “Their wet-ware gets wiped clean, their entire personality gets thrown out, memories? Gone, reduced to nothing but recollections of deja vu.” He looked right at Ambrose as he said, “Like you said, they’re merely just Vessels of someone they once were.”
Another flash of reality, this time, Ive and another doctor were trying to get the cord out of him and to unlock his joints. He felt like his head was going to burst like a ripe grape and splatter all over him, he felt hot wet tears going down his cheeks as he only let out primal sounds of pain.
One last piece of a memory. He was leaning against the railing of his balcony. He had just bought this apartment. He was looking at the skyline of the city and was just smiling. He had reached it. Years of work paid off. He would always remember this.
Until he wouldn’t.
It took Ambrose a month to recover. For almost a full week of the recovery, he was in a medical ward with his own bed and room, laying in bed and having a numb sensation to everything below his knees. He was told by the doctors that he was lucky to even have control of his body and that he could still even think. What had happened, they said, was an error on their behalf and one that was irreversible. “You see,” Dr Ive said, looking more nervous on the night Ambrose was told, “I hadn’t done an automatic check of the Memory-Bank’s internal storage before hooking your Link in. We...now know that, where your memories were, is just nothing. We’re sorry to inform you but, your entire memory-log has been corrupted.” Ambrose still can’t remember if he even yelled or cried about it, even just a little, he was still numb from all the painkillers pumped into him and his mind was still reeling from the bits and pieces of his life that did return to him.
He was told, perhaps, it was sabotage or someone had stolen it or tried to copy it and take the original, but he didn’t understand any of it. He didn’t even know what a ‘Link’ was. He had to relearn a good majority of the modern world, the nations, the cultures, the politics, where he stood, where he was, etc. Even with what he knew now, he was still feeling the confusion of it all. He couldn’t understand any of it from here, in this room he had to stay in to ‘recover’, he had to feel like he belonged in the world again.
Not even visits from the faces of friends he now knew could help….to a full extent. Apparently, before he lost his memories after getting cloned, he never explained much of his personal life or his life ‘out in the Sticks’, much to his frustration. Not even his own home could be of help, for apparently, everything had been seized by his own company after they learned of the wet-ware corruption. “But why have they seized it?” He asked Dr Ive after having to take a test to see if he could walk (He could, just not quite as well), “If I’m someone high up why the hell would they seize it?” Dr Ive shook his head, “I’m...sorry, Mr Ludlum, but, they’ve declined to explain why, stating it’s company policy.” The frustration came again and it would stay with him even days later, until it was replaced with the more frustrating news that he had no family that came to claim him.
The feeling of being lost had grown more until it felt like it was swallowing him almost completely. He would sometimes refuse to eat or drink the food that they would give him with how strong this feeling of loss overtook him. During a daily check up, Ambrose had weakly asked, “Why do I feel like this? I feel...lost.” “It’s what we call the ‘Lost Life’ Syndrome,” Dr Ive explained to him,”It happens to those who well...are aware of their wet-ware having been completely erased and feel aimless, lost and unable to feel as if they could do much.” The silent reaction from Ambrose gave Dr Ive the confirmation that Ambrose’s one was much stronger than others. “You can recover from this, but, it will take some time. We have...centres for it, as well, over in the Blue Mountains just over the city border. If you wish, you can be relocated there and be put into a recovery program.”
Ambrose looked up at Dr Ive, then down at his lap and considered it. Everything he had gone through had felt alien and unnatural, but also familiar and unchanged. He had to relearn of the world, and still knew nothing. Faces that his past life knew were strangers to him, and with no family to come and help, what could he do there? His fortune was there to at least pay for however much this program could be, but afterwards, he knew he wouldn’t exactly have a home to go back to, considering it was all seized by the corporation he supposedly was apart of. He exhaled through his nose and looked up at Dr Ive, “I’d like to do the program...I...want to feel like I least know what this world is going to be like if I re-enter it.” Dr Ive gave him quite the strange look, tilting his head a bit, “Are you certain, Mr Ludlum?” Ambrose thought for a few moments, then nodded his head. “Yeah, I’m certain.”
Dr Ive watched from his live feed at his desk of Ambrose Ludlum going into the Aerocopter, scratching at his cheek and letting out a long, drawn out sigh. He closed the live feed and leaned back in his chair and stared at his ceiling. This was going to be bad rep for the company, and it was going to be on his ass for it. Another person, another Corporate person with their memories sapped out of them, leaning them as clueless, lost individuals who had no idea if they had any belonging here. Usually, they’d never accept the recovery program that came with this and would instead just try to go out into the world to relearn everything.
Usually, that resulted in them either dying again from something or just going off the grid, becoming another one of the megacity’s lost and unfound. He’d reopen his Link’s data base and looked at the tidbits of memories they could recover from Ludlum. He went to the one with the old man talking about this exact sort of thing. Was there a connection to this? Was he behind it?
...Did he want to risk his job to find out? No, he did not. For he merely closed the window again, got up and went to get some coffee, having a moment where he wished he was just like those ‘Vessels’, lost, clueless but having a chance to be naive once again in the world.
Something everyone could have, at least for one moment more.
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