jordanabina
***This is a rough draft of the first chapter from my Sci-Fi novel Treska Vorn. Ignore Grammatical Errors. Copyright @jordanabina 2021
It wasn’t just pain that woke Weyland, it was fear. A force attacking at the deepest part of his body, devouring the very core of what makes him human. It was the type of affliction that extends beyond the physical and into the metaphysical, making its way into the unknown depths of a living being. He could see chemical reactions taking place on the surface of his skin like strands of electricity. Panic flooded his mind.
Oh God. What’s happening?
Agony rolled over every inch of his body akin to waves rolling across a dark and endless sea. Weyland crawled off of his mattress and melted to the cold floor below. The bitter breath of sleep fog had yet to release and slip into the room, but there was no need, Weyland was already awake. In a few short moments, a misty haze would creep to every corner of his sleep pad and begin its slow descent down into his sheets. Invading its way into the lungs, beginning the task of dragging the brain back to consciousness. But today would be different, the fog would find no living being to awaken, only an empty pad where Weyland had once laid.
Although most people find the sleep fog to be a source of comfort, Weyland found it to be cold and invasive. Like an unwelcome chill in the early morning air, the kind of cold that chokes and burns the lungs. It slithers, uninvited into the room, like a serpent, reminding Weyland of what he and the human race knew all too well. A discovery five-hundred years of age; the realization that humanity had lost the ability to fall asleep. Sleep is now just a distant memory from an age long ago, on a planet long destroyed and abandoned. According to history on Treska Vorn, sleep is something Weyland’s ancestors both craved and feared. Now, the human race experiences something far less than sleep. Humans pause, and sometime later, are brought back with total recognition.
The pain that had ripped through his body was slowly subsiding and Weyland tried to lay as still as possible. He noticed where the strain was at its peak. There was a heightened sensitivity and burning sensation around each of his digital augmentations. The security circuit behind Weylan’s right ear, a direct surface-to-brain implant which enhances vision and stores information, and the fifteen small feather-metal plates beneath his skin were beginning to feel as if they were going to explode right through his flesh. There was nothing Weyland could do except wait. Even the tiniest of movements sent a shockwave of spasms down his spine and into his extremities. Stillness was his only ally; he was motionless and silent as bones in the desert. Only his thoughts kept him company.
Don’t move Weyland, don’t move. Something must have broken or malfunctioned, it’s gotta end soon.
Beyond the lack of true sleep, the human race now endured a medically induced sense of repose, which never completely brings any real satisfaction and is impossible to experience without sleep fog. One thing is certain, cybernetic modifications never sleep, especially for Weyland. The mystics who first inhabited these moons believed the reason humans can’t sleep is that they truly don’t want to, as if something deep inside of who they are was rejecting it altogether. It’s ironic really, humanity craves rest, but have done everything possible to destroy it. The fog has become both a savior and a destroyer.
Weyland lost himself in time, he had know idea how long he laid on that dead floor. It felt like hours passed as his eyes gazed through the glass paneling of his apartment, his mind stirring with thoughts of all that had taken place. He hated this place, the moon, the city. He missed his family, his home. He directed all the blame, all the pain, all the anger he felt on everything he perceived out that window. It was a glimpse into the hell of which he had found himself in for so long.
Do these lights ever go out? This moon, this city. There has to be a way off this rock.
You can read all about the history of the human race in the Rivix Digital Library and research the decision to move humanity to this moon, Treska Vorn, as well as her sister moons, Terra Vin and Trell Vrain, Weyland’s home. In the deliberations between the world leaders and scientists of Earth, most of their concerns were centered around atmospheric conditions, food, and water supply. While everyone else focused on the distribution of power. Only in a few outlier journals will you ever read about something as simple as sleep, and yet it became the top priority upon the first cycle of living on the moons. People started losing their minds. According to the library, there was mass hysteria, people turned violent and many people died. It wasn’t until a biologist named Altan Bataar was able to synthesize a way to healthfully induce sleep through an element known as Sylic found on Vorn. No other moon has ever found traces of Sylic, all water and Sylic come from Treska Vorn.
The histories of Treska Vorn record that the ultimate issue that needed solving before they discovered the problem of sleep, was the lack of usable water. The water on Vorn has to be purified by an extensive process. Water is drilled from deep underground and is bonded with the native element sylic. Slik is what most inhabitants on the moons have come to call it. It was the process of separation of sylic from water that enabled Dr. Bataar to discover its unique properties. Sylic, in its raw form, is a slimy substance that evaporates quickly after its removal from water, but when purified and concentrated it can be used as a way of rendering humans unconscious, although it does not engage some of the parts of the brain as natural sleep does.
The water, however, takes a long time to get to where it needs to go, so things like hydration and bathing become extremely difficult to achieve. Sleep fog uses water and other chemicals to completely purify and clean the body while lying dormant. The process, while complex in design, is simple for the user. Before you enter your sleep pad, you remove external debris that may be on your body, put on light sleeping clothes, and activate the sleep fog. The gas first renders you asleep by releasing chemicals that activate the human sleep cycle, tricking the brain into a form of Non-REM sleep. Because humans never exit the NREM cycle of sleep, humans have lost the ability to dream and to accomplish any form of deep rest. While the temporary paralysis of the body is engaged, the fog cleanses and removes any harmful bacteria on a microscopic level. When the sleep cycle has passed, the fog releases again to wake the sleeper and your sleep cycle is logged.
The entire process uses 80% less water than a traditional shower, something Weyland had never actually used, only seen in historical records. There are pods all around Rivix to use if the need arises or if your sleep fog console malfunctions. For most, chemically induced sleep works great. Most people wake up feeling rested and alert. For a minority of humans, it has brought on madness. VornCorp, the official pharmaceutical corporation of the moons, has vehemently denied any claims that the sleeping compound itself is responsible for the mental instability and instead has published that it is due to an inability in the mind to adapt to a new environment on Treska Vorn, a risk our ancestors knew about as they migrated here. They have said that the issue is in insufficient human D.N.A., in the weakness of their bodies and minds. VornCorp tracks each sleep pod machine and updates all of its software from its headquarters on the sky level of Rivix. VornCorp insists that the sleep fog is nothing short of a miracle. A miracle that every citizen, on each moon, without question, pays VornCorp for. But as Weyland slowly began to move his body again without any pain, he began to wonder if the fog really was so miraculous after all.
Is it over? I wonder if this is happening to anyone else?
While sylic was put to good use, a deadly and dark side was discovered. There were others that discovered that sylic could be used as a highly potent narcotic. When injected directly into the blood it can put the user into a trance-like state and alter their perception. Slik has become a household name and permeates through the underground community in Rivix. It generates more crime and revenue than any other commodity on Vorn. The giveaway to those using raw slik is directly under the eyes. The glow, as it’s called, leaves a glisten, like a wet shimmer, in the lower eyelid and upper cheeks of its users. Strangely enough, it can be quite beautiful, for a while.
The first few moments following a sleep cycle are filled with a slight version of amnesia lasting only for a few seconds. It’s the human body’s attempt at maintaining a circadian clock. Weyland however, never experienced this sensation, he was always able to remember exactly where he was. But this morning, there was nothing in his mind except pain. Blue, green, and purple rays of digital light invaded the sleeping room of his small apartment, creeping in through every window pane of puncture proof glass. Rays of light burst in and out of his apartment, illuminating the poorly decorated flat. There were no pictures on the walls and only a few pieces of furniture filled the space. Even with the light shield activated, there was no drowning out the ever-glowing aura from the dark city streets of Rivix. In this city, light is just another reminder of the mass insomnia that has infected the entire population.
For the last three years, Weyland has lived on the 423rd floor of the TriCity building in the southern part of Rivix on a lease given by VornCorp. In order to preserve the moon and its natural resources, the governmental authorities on Vorn, known as The Leaf Council, restricted any form of industrialization on 50% of the moon’s surface, which led them to build up and not out. No one travels outside of the Rivix city boundaries and only the Leaf Officers venture to the outlands, and those who work the Sylic mines. This was also done in an effort to not counterbalance the unique atmospheric conditions of the moon and to avoid destroying the natural balance of her orbiting sisters, which are roughly half the size of Earth.
Treska Vorn is one of three sister moons that orbit a planet known as Ghrosk, named after Dr. Phoenix Ghrosk, the woman who pioneered the science behind inter-galaxy travel. Ghrosk puts off enough heat from its core to keep all three moons in a type of atmospheric dome, perfectly fit for the human race, as well as other indigenous life forms. The planet itself is a hostile environment, with temperatures that exceed far beyond a human’s requirement for life. There has been little attempt at any form of colinization and Ghrosk is mostly used for study and a giant garbage dump. The planet and its moons all orbit a blue star known as Astraea. Astraea is a unique supergiant whose rays color the moon and her inhabitants in a beautiful blue light. Even during the dark hours on Vorn, the atmosphere is a deep dark blue. The length of each day is similar to the 24 hour period that existed on earth. There is light for approximately 14 hours and the dark hours consist of 12 hours where the sky is dark but highlighted by blue. The humans who first settled here on the moons promised to be better caretakers of these moons than the consumers of their mother planet, but there are those on the moons who question the Leaf Council’s methods and motivations. The histories of Ghrosk, written by the Leaf Council, are a required study growing up and they were teaching it on Earth even before Weyland’s parents were born.
Weyland, get up.
Weyland was back on his feet again, the cold floor began to feel stable beneath his newborn-like legs. His body felt different, like a part of it had been permanently damaged, almost like his very insides had been rewired. He began to believe that he had experienced a terrible accident, some sort of malfunction in his sleep pad. It was that, or a serious organic malfunction in some part of Weyland’s body that had cybernetic upgrades. The pain surrounding any digital augmentation had declined but his entire body was sensitive to the touch. Moving was limited.
Now what am I supposed to do? I can’t even move without shaking in pain. How am I supposed to get out of this stupid apartment?
Weyland turned to move back toward his sleep pad when something changed. Weyland couldn’t remember how it happened and it wouldn’t have made a difference if he did, it was unexplainable. In an instant, Weyland was no longer in his apartment but in a valley made of ice. His clothes were different and it felt as if he had been moved to another place instantaneously. All around him were dark bare trees growing through the ice and Weyland could see that beneath his feet was a frozen body of water hundreds of feet deep. The roots of the trees grew from deep under the water; a dark and cold forest as far as his eye could see. At first, nothing around him looked familiar until his eyes were able to capture Trell Vrain rising above the horizon in the distance which told him that he was still on Vorn. Weyland could not move or speak, only observe. It wasn’t that he tried to move and couldn’t, Weyland somehow knew that he couldn’t and did not try. As he stood in the midst of the frozen graveyard the landscape began to move past him and beneath his feet. Faster and faster Weyland floated over the glacier floor and began approaching what can only be described as a door of light coming from the side of a rising wall of ice. There was something coming from inside, a noise, but it was more of a feeling to Weyland than anything audible. To his surprise and not by any choice of his own, Weyland reached out to move through the entrance but could not come any closer, he could only stand at a short distance. As Weyland retrieved his outstretched arm he noticed that his body was vacant of its digital augmentations. Just then, something began approaching from the light. His eyes were drawn to it. Weyland blinked and found himself standing back in his apartment exactly where he was a moment ago. He felt exhausted.
“Weyland?” asked Ora.
Ora, a personal oracle software designed by VornCorp, and the most consistent voice in Weyland’s life. This type of technology doesn’t usually come with names, but Weyland didn’t seem to mind.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked.
Throughout history, sleep was a simple and common human function, but now the word was subjective. Sleep represented another place, another interval of sylic, rather than a time of rest or relaxation. Sleep was more related to another life than it was to rest. The truth is Weyland had slept, but now he wasn’t sure if he ever could again.
“Ora,” Weyland said with fatigue in his voice.
“Yes, Weyland,” she answered hovering in the center of the apartment.
“What happened to me last night?”
Weyland was staring intently at his hands as he had a moment ago on the lake of ice, everything was back to normal. He failed to notice the brief moment that passed between them. If he would’ve been paying closer attention he may have accounted for the lag in Ora’s response, she was never this delayed.
“In regard to your physical location during your scheduled sleep cycle, I only see normal data. But—,” she replied.
“But what? Clearly you saw me this morning, what happened to me? Why did I wake up with this pain? Did something malfunction?”
“Fortunately no, everything worked according to the sleep pad’s default settings. But I did record your sleep cycle as usual. I can transfer all the data to your workstation. Your experience after exiting the sleep pad was—,” Ora replied.
Three motor pods cruised directly below the window of the apartment, interrupting Ora and rattling the doors in the kitchen area. On Rivix, the airway is the place those from the sky level travel, using a motor-pod of course. Everyone else uses the electram. The good part about living on the 423rd floor of the TriCity building is that Weyland usually didn’t hear a lot of traffic.
“What do you think happened Weyland? I was beginning to fear you had a severe allergic reaction to something,” Ora replied while beginning to run the morning activation protocol.
Ora is not like other personal information and assistance software; she has been augmented to understand humans on a higher level and also synch herself to any organic interface, including the security circuit behind Weyland’s ear. When she isn’t synched to Weyland’s security chip or another interface, she functions in a floating orb made from light weight material with cloaking technology. Her physical shell is no bigger than a child’s head and has a circle screen in the center. Her outer unit also can retract in size and if needed, she can shed layers of her structure and become the size of a small ball. Ora is also a very rare commodity; you will not find more than 100 people on all of the moons who have one. Weyland found her, in a manner of speaking, on accident while filling through digital documents at the university a few years back. She was nothing more than code discarded on a broken drive. At first Weyland believed the code was nothing more than a digital navigator for data storage or software security but he soon realized that she was much more than that. After some time, and help from a hacker friend, Weyland was able to restore the drive and remake Ora in a way that suited a human digital interface. There are only two other people alive who know about Ora. She is very well hidden in the Treska Vorn mainframe because if the Leaf Council were to find out about Ora, there would be officers looking for Weyland, with the intention of taking Ora for themselves.
“You must not enter the fog for another 24 hours Weyland, Leaf will see this on their data. And worse, there may be damage to your mind. I’ve recorded all I can, but I cannot explain what you were doing once out of the sleep pad.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you remember after you rose to your feet?” Ora asked with a mysterious tone in her voice.
The lights from the back of Ora’s small hardware were illuminating the room as she floated. Weyland’s apartment consisted of a sleeping quarter, a kitchen, a space for his work, and a bathroom. To Weyland, this was a place where he worked, that also happened to have a bed. His floor looked like a science project, his kitchen was forgotten, but his workspace showed the fingerprints of a genius. Unsolved digital equations, new algorithms, and augmentation designs covered his desk. New and untested movement gear were scattered about the room and even more were scattered in his mind.
Weyland had not yet opened the light shields to the apartment and as Ora flew from room to room, she acted as a light to the dark spaces around her, illuminating each room with color. He quickly realized she was doing this on purpose, for as she spoke, she enhanced the brightness settings of the apartment. Weyland sat down on the edge of his pad to gather his thoughts and take a vita pack.
“I feel fine now. Check my vitals.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“Normal,” Ora said in a hushed tone.
“Weyland, what do you remember after you rose to your feet?” asked Ora.
Even though only a few minutes had passed, the memory was slipping away. The ice. The trees. The light. Weyland remembered them, but they were further off than just a moment before.
How is that possible? I wasn’t dreaming, that’s not possible. And besides that, I was awake.
“I stood on my feet and had some sort of daydream. It must be a side effect of the pain I woke up with and not allowing the sleep pad to wake me properly. It was only for a second, after that you spoke to me,” I replied.
“Is that all you remember Weyland?” asked Ora.
“Pretty much, but we need to figure out what’s gone wrong with my sleep pad or I won’t be able to reenter my sleep cycle properly and my status will be red-flagged and I don’t want to see any Leaf Council officers down here.”
“As I said before, everything about our machine is running properly and has been for some time. The new update in accordance with the upcoming tally to all of Rivix has been implemented with no technical errors. Whatever has happened has something to do with you,” Ora replied.
“Then it’s time I got to work—”
Weyland was about to stand to his feet when Ora rushed in front of him, nearly touching his face. Weyland was surprised, this was unlike any behavior he had programmed into her core operating system. Ora was acting independently, something Weyland hadn’t seen before, at least not at this level.
“Weyland. Wait.” she interrupted, “would you please go over to the mirror?”
After a second or two, Weyland got up from the sleep pad, which retracted immediately into the wall, and headed for the bathroom mirror. He maneuvered over wires from unfinished projects and grabbed his clothes that were hanging on a chair by the food storage. His VornCorp jacket had been cleaned and pressed by Ora and his movement gear was near the door.
“Have I received any new messages Ora?” asked Weyland.
“Transferring now.”
The security circuit behind Weyland’s ear made a beeping sound and flashed green when the transfer was complete. Ora was now fully synched and would be able to communicate with Weyland through the circuit.
Ora played the first message. “Hey Weyland, it’s Kat. Didn’t see you at work today…”.
Katsu Motishu, Weyland’s longtime friend and fellow employee at VornCorp. He was also the hacker who helped him build Ora. Weyland met Katsu on Trell Vrain when he was sixteen years old and competed at the Rivix Hackers Convention after moving to Vorn for school. He was competing against an old version of the Leaf Council firewall and cracked it in 62 minutes. Weyland was watching with everyone else in the crowd when it all happened, the place went crazy. The Leaf Council accused Katsu of cheating and interrogated him for hours before releasing him, but they couldn’t prove he did anything illegal. The truth was, he didn’t get caught, he was just that good. Shortly after that, they both found themselves working at VornCorp. Kat is four years younger than Weyland and their relationship is a lot like two brothers. After many years of friendship, Kat is the most trusted friend that Weyland has ever had in his life.
“If you need something let me know, we were supposed to look at that thing or whatever you said you wanted to show me, but I haven’t seen or heard from you since. I’ll send you some cube later,” finished Katsu on the recording.
Cube. The currency of Treska Vorn and the other Ghroskin moons. Something that Katsu, being a hacker by night, had a lot of. Whether it be cracking securities for big companies or tracking digital data, Katsu Motishu always had something in the works.
“Weyland,” said Ora.
Without realizing it, Weyland had forgotten to go to the mirror but instead began to drift towards his computer. He was supposed to send Kat some files and realized from the message that he still hadn’t sent them.
“Weyland,” said Ora as she followed.
“What Ora?”
“Go to the mirror.”
There was a moment of pause before Weyland began to move.
What is up with Ora? If I didn’t know any better I’d say she’s being pushy, even nervous. I have never heard these tones come from her before, sounds like she’s trying to be my mother.
As he walked toward the mirror, Ora followed closely behind and above him. As Weyland got closer he noticed that there must have been a temperature malfunction somewhere above the bathroom area because the mirror looked to have fogged around the edges. As Weyland’s eyes came into focus through the fogged mirror and light, he felt his stomach hit the floor.
“Ora, what–look at my face.”
As he pressed closer to the mirror, Weyland saw a glisten shining from underneath his eyes. There was a white glow and almost a haze coming from it and it spread from his ear to his nose.
“Oh God!” cried Weyland, “how long has this been like this?”
“Since you fell from your pad. It’s already begun to fade, but it was much worse,” replied Ora.
“But how? There’s no way I could get that much Sylik in my blood to have such a strong reaction?”
Weyland had the glow. He stood there staring at his own reflection for the next ten minutes trying to figure out what could be happening, thinking to himself about what this could mean and what he needed to do next.
This is something else, this is something different. This doesn’t even look the same as the slik glow you see in Rivix.
“Ora, have you noticed that this doesn’t look like the glow from slik users? This seems different to me.”
“Yes, while a normal slik user will have spots of the glow on their face, your experience seems to be rendering differently–” said Ora.
“I’m not a slik user Ora.”
“Yes, I know. Unlike the common splotches and the glistening of the skin, you seem to have produced almost complete coverage from your ear to nose, like a band across your face. In addition, the color of your glow, although quickly fading, does not look like those who use slik. While theirs is almost a clear shine, your face has taken on more of a golden light color.”
As the conversation continued, the glow began to fade but not before Ora shed light on something else.
“Weyland, look at your eyes,” said Ora.
At first, Weyland didn’t notice anything, but as he inched closer to the mirror the light began to uncover what the shadows kept hidden. Weyland’s eyes were green, which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that he didn’t have green eyes, his eyes were brown. Weyland jumped back from the mirror in disbelief.
“My God Ora, what is going on?”
“I, I do not know. But I would advise not reentering your sleep pod without medical attention. I am unable to predict the effects.”
“Ora, start my wake-up sequence, I’m going to Kat’s. Please transfer the last 24 hours of data you have to Katsu and delete all of this conversation from our surface-level storage. Begin analysis of my blood and look through all known archives of outlier effects of sylic,” said Weyland.
“Yes, Weyland.” Replied Ora.
“And Ora,”
“Yes.” Replied Ora
“I want you with me today.”
Ora landed in a hub near the window and three lights flashed behind Weyland’s ear.
“You with me?”
“Always,” responded Ora.
The glow had now faded and the lights from Rivix city began to flood in as Ora had deactivated all light shields. Weyland looked out on the streets below, he knew something had happened that had the potential to bring a lot of unwanted attention. If there was anyone he was going to tell it was going to be Katsu. He would know what to do. Weyland grabbed his gear, got fully dressed, and entered the lift. His gear covered his entire head and as long as the eye shield was engaged, it covered the residual glow, but this was a short-term solution and would not last long.
“Ora, message Kat, tell him I’m on my way.”
“Done,” replied Ora.
Staring back into the room, Weyland wondered if he would be back anytime soon. His mind drifted again towards the ice, to the barren trees, and the door of light. The image that was so clear in his mind seemed even further than before; almost forgotten. He thought could still feel the cold air in his chest.
“Ora, let’s take the fastest route we can to Kat’s, I want to get around the morning Rivix rush”.
“Weyland, it’s midday, morning was hours ago,” replied Ora.
“That’s impossible, I woke up less than an hour ago.”
“Weyland, after you rose to your feet from the pain— ” said Ora.
“Yes?”
“Your vision of the ice, of the frozen place—”
“Yes, i’ve told you this—”
“How long do you remember being there, how long did your vision feel?” asked Ora.
“What? It couldn’t have been standing there for more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute,” replied Weyland.
“Weyland, you were there for five hours.”
The doors to the lift closed and the doors to the life Weyland had lived up until that day closed with them.
“And Weyland, you weren’t standing. You were floating a half of a meter off the ground.”
“What—”
Kat, we’ve got some work to do.
