blog: readaptation

Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>

blog/readaptation-2021-02-21.markdown

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+---
+title: Readaptation
+date: 2021-02-21
+series: short-stories
+---
+
+# Readaptation
+
+Thena suddenly saw a large red sign labeled "system overload" in front of her.
+She tried to push it away but wasn’t able to do anything. After a bit of
+struggling something added the text “Get out of your pod to initiate repairs”.
+_My...pod?_ she wondered.
+
+Suddenly her arms started working again, but she wasn’t able to see them, only
+feel them. She reached up to her face and felt a weird kind of mask. There was a
+handle and she pulled on it. Finally that message went away, but it swung up and
+over. She had never seen any of the messages do that before. The room started to
+light itself up.
+
+Thena looked down at herself and gasped. She did not see what she was used to
+seeing. She saw a body in a black and orange jumpsuit. It appeared to be male
+too. She decided she needed to see herself in a mirror. _Dreams don’t let you
+look into mirrors right? This is just a bad dream._ She got up out of her bed
+and stood on her feet, only to take a step and fall right over on the ground
+with muscle cramps she’s never felt in her life.
+
+After massaging her aching muscles (which was hard because it was nearly all of
+them) she managed to crawl over to the mirror and took a good look at herself.
+She managed to get on her feet again after bracing for stability on the
+conveniently placed bar. There was no doubt. Her avatar was male. It felt
+familiar though, like it was something she should have known about but the
+details didn’t come to mind.
+
+_Anyways, system overload, that means the server needs to be rebooted right? Why
+couldn’t the automatic system handle this? Was that compromised too?_ Thena
+ambled her way to the door out of her chamber and looked for the server cabinet
+symbol. It was difficult to find much of anything though, everything in her
+visual awareness seemed to blur out about 2 meters in front of her. _Oh, right,
+glasses!_ Thena got back into the room and looked for her glasses.
+
+The details of her former life were slowly coming back into focus. Thena was an
+employee at one of the big corpos. She didn’t really want to be reduced to a
+body in a gelbed permanently wired and tubed into the machines, but after the
+climate got so harsh humanity had no other choice. Putting on her glasses, Thena
+took one last look at herself, confused but somewhat recognizing that stoic male
+stance that used to let her stand out in the crowds, then she ambled out of the
+room again and looked for the server cabinet.
+
+_My chamber is behind me, so my server room is front front left._ Thena took a
+few steps forward and then turned to the left and walked until she hit a wall.
+
+Walked may not be the best term for what kind of motion was used though, it was
+a half-limping barely committal stride, but to someone stuck in VR for 30 years
+this was the best you could expect out of that person "walking" without any
+practice. This physical body felt different, more “real”. Thena’s virtual form
+had moved without any restriction or limit. This body was full of restrictions.
+Strides were restricted to a small angle. The knees had to be consciously bent.
+The arms had to swing to maintain balance. Balance itself was an issue too. It
+was all very weird for Thena. She was trying to not think about the body’s
+layout very much.
+
+Thena finally found the server cabinet symbol and twisted it to open. The lights
+weren’t blinking like they should be. There was a friendly sticker in Comic Sans
+above the switch that said "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Thena
+grabbed the switch and turned it solidly off.
+
+The noises of her room had stopped, leaving Thena in silence and darkness. It
+was peaceful. There was absolutely no sound. Thena didn’t want to tempt fate
+though, so she turned the switch back on and all the lights turned on like they
+should. More lights on the servers kept blinking in their happy patterns. A
+voice came on from above saying "System startup complete. Your pod is ready
+Micheal. Enter your adaptation room as soon as possible. It is not safe out
+here."
+
+Micheal. Thena despised that name. That name reminded her of her former self.
+The self that died in that pod. The self she was born from. She shrugged it off
+and tried to not think about it. Her stride was a bit more sure now and she was
+able to make it back to her pod without falling over. She made it into her bed
+and pulled the face mask over her. It sealed in place and everything went dark
+as she faded back into Terranova.
+
+---
+
+Like this kind of writing and short story format? I have a [biweekly
+newsletter](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/theprincessxena) on Revue that has a
+huge backlog of these stories that I was never really happy with enough to post
+here. I have also added its feed to my [/feeds](/feeds) page.

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