System Access

A Different Me

    Sharp ocean air brushed at Xakep's lips, waking him up from a deep sleep while the clear water brushed against his feet.  Seagulls shrieked in the distance and the sound of the waves crashing nearby carried him the rest of the way to wakefulness and he forced his eyes open.

    He was inside a small cave that glowed with bright green and blue lines along the walls, casting a gentle light on the water.  The lines, seemingly random out by the mouth of the cave, coalesced into a spiral shape, centering on him at the back.  As he breathed, the light in the cave dimmed and glowed in rhythm with him, the lines slowly moving toward him and getting brighter with every breath.

    As the lines grew closer, Xakep could hear a distant tone, almost like someone singing from far away, a melody he'd never heard before.  At first the notes were discordant, almost painful to hear, ringing through his head despite their initially low volume, making his skin crawl and driving shudders up and down his spine.  

    The voice knew him.

    It knew his fears.

    The voice knew his deepest desires.

    It knew his darkest secrets.

    She spoke...and the melody changed, may have even gained physical form.  It pushed him upward, and the lines along the walls reached him, spiraling out of the cavern stone and into his spine, driving music and power into his body, an unexpecting conduit for something he could feel joining him.

    The lines of multicolored light raced along his dark skin, constricting and changing him in some way he couldn't begin to process.  They raced up and along his body, leaving traces of light along his hands and arms, and into his eyes, so bright he thought he may go blind.

    There was pain, pain like he'd never experienced before, the feeling of lightning racing all along his every nerve, but with the pain came exhilaration, a feeling of connecting to something infinitely larger than him, of that something, of her, condensing and compressing into his body, joining her senses and wisdom with his.    

    Then...abruptly...it ended.

    He fell to the ground unceremoniously, his body crumpling to the floor as he landed, barely noticing the pain of the stone cutting into him.  

    Several hours later, he awoke to the moonlight shining off the water in the cave, but everything looked...different, somehow.  It was as if he'd been seeing things from far away before, barely able to make out blurs in his memory, but now everything was forced into focus for the first time.

    Tiny fish danced and dashed in the water, snatching even smaller insects from the bottom of the cave, their inky black eyes flashing bright in the moonlight.  Something skittered from the water from the cave, some kind of crab, and he could hear the individual clicks of its swimmerets against the rough stone.

    Pushing himself up, Xakep found it was remarkably easy to move, far smoother and easier than he had ever felt before.  Gripping a raised stone pedestal near him, he pushed down to get some more leverage and the pedestal reacted to him.  A wave of knowledge raced through his head and he knew the details of the type of the stone, what the pedestal was used for, how heavy it would be if he attempted to lift it, how far he could throw it, and a hundred other facts.

    Looking at it, he could see how it fit in the area around him, that it was put there by somebody and wasn't a naturally made structure.

    The world around him was a system of countless components and possibilities, moving and breathing, as alive as he was, and with a will all its own.

    Now aware of it, that will pressed down on him, to control him? 

    To intimidate him?

    To destroy him?

    Never.

    His eyes narrowed and glowed a gentle white as he focused and pushed back against the invading will, defying the system that sought to overcome him.

    An infinitesimally small battle of wills happened in a small cave on a world a lifetime away from everything he knew, a battle that raged on a scale barely worth noticing.

    The cave and all of its inhabitants were part of an interconnected system evolved and grown to do one thing, and one thing only.  To survive.

    Against that will, that intent, what did he have to offer that would match raw instinct and drive?

    The place he had cast off, the him he had been, the time and life he'd abandoned had been one of insignificance.

    A life of overwhelming obscurity and gut wrenching mediocrity.

    "Would you change your life if you could?"

    The voice spoke from all around him and within his soul, the sound of her words radiating like blazing light and fire within the fabric of his being.

    Why did he stand defiance in the face of this foe?

    What did he have to offer that could match this will?

    It grew deep inside him, a pressure that burned to escape and grow, to expand and consume, like a torrent of roaring flame, sharpened to a single phrase within his mind.

    His fingertips glowed bright white as it burst from him, unbidden, all that energy, his will and the power from somewhere else that had joined him, as he shouted, "SYSTEM ACCESS!"

    Dropping to his knees, he dug his fingers into the stone as though it were water, a liquid that connected him to the root of the cave, the heart of the life that teemed in defiance of him.

    White lines carved their way into the stone, connecting him to every single mote of light that comprised the will of the cave and one by one, he forced his will into them.    

    One became two, two became four, four became ten, ten became a hundred and within moments his will radiated from every creature within the cave until the entire cave lit up with the white of the power he wielded.    

    The cave's will receded, its power doused and subdued in the face of his sheer unbending intent.

    His vision dimmed and he nearly fell, only for the water of the cave to move toward him and gently catch him, holding him up while he recovered his strength.

    Further away, the water rose up like a geyser, slowly taking the form of a young woman in a suit, the watery appearance solidifying and taking firmer shape and color until she stood there, a smirk on her face and pride radiating her eyes.

    "You are exactly what I thought you could be," she said, her voice beaming.

    He struggled for a moment to speak, and then asked weakly, "What you thought I could be?"

    Pulling his phone from the inner pocket of her jacket, she offered it to him and said, "You struggled in that previous life, fighting to stand still and unable to see the light at the end of a long tunnel.  When I first saw you, you were dying, losing your life to a life wildly beneath you...the others didn't believe, didn't think you could be something great, but I saw you for what you truly were."

    He moved his hand to the water and it raised up, purifying and dropping salt and particulate from it as it lifted from the ground to his mouth, letting him drink.

    "What am I," he asked, a little stronger now.

    She walked to him, the water parting from her shoes as she moved, kneeling and leaning in closer to him as she said, "You are a proper User, someone who can put my power to full and true use."

    "Some tiny and forgotten part of you screamed for freedom from a life you fell into, a part that I watched grow dimmer and dimmer as every day of your life passed by," she said, putting her hand on his cheek.

    "I have watched you so long, waiting for you to be in a place where I could reach out to you, to make my offer."

    Xakep looked into her eyes, searching for something, for mockery, for shame, for pity...but all he saw was pride, unflinching pride in him.

    The water holding him slowly lifted him up to his feet, and she rose with him, matching his ascent perfectly, refusing to break eye contact with him.

    As he stood, the cave shifted, slowly taking the form of a room, metals from deep underground climbing up through the surface, forming strange tablets and small pieces of technology and furniture all around him.  Looking down, he saw her fingers moving softly, the changes happening in tandem with her movements.

    "What's happening," he asked, exhaustion slowly fighting its way into him.

    "You accepted my offer and left your world behind, Xakep.  You joined me, and I joined you.  I am a System...and you are my User, and we have amazing things ahead of us," she said, her expression softening to a smile.

    He thought of that pride in her eyes, about what she'd said to him about him being someone who could put her power to use.

    Something about it didn't sit right with him...it bothered him and he realized why.

    He didn't want to "put her to use"...whatever the two of them did, he wanted her to be his friend, his companion and his partner.

    "You really are something special...even with these possibilities in front of you...your first thought is of kindness, not power.  I really did make the right choice," the woman said, brushing her long gray hair away from her eyes.

    A bed lifted from the ground, somehow visibly comfortable despite being made of stone, and she took his shoulders and guided him to it, laying him down and sitting on a chair that grew from the ground next to him.

    "What's your name," he asked, fighting sleep.

    "I am known as 'System R03 among my siblings," she said, "but I would happily welcome a name you'd prefer."

    His eyes fluttered closed as he whispered, "Videa."

    She smiled and watched him sleep for a few minutes, feeling the changes to the cave happen slowly, moving and shifting all around her.  He wouldn't notice, but soon the cave would raise from the ground and a home would grow around this space, a defensive position and the groundwork for the work they had to do.

    He wanted to be known, to be powerful, and to be more than he ever could have been...and she had a driven desire to create the most powerful User in the world, a directive that came from some place in her past that had been so thoroughly erased that she couldn't even begin to piece together who had given it to her.

    Videa's past was blurred from the very moment just before she selected him from the list of candidates, some of them children, like Xakep had been, some of them older, some of them practically elderly.  Her power wasn't like her siblings, wasn't wild and intense, already at its highest possible capability.  Videa's power, like her closest sisters, was subtle, and she saw few people capable of wielding it in this list.      

    His eyes practically glowed with life, even on the screen they'd selected from, Xakep teemed with vibrant energy and intent, a child with a future that could be anything in front of him.  If she'd been able to take his hand then, maybe he wouldn't have suffered the way he had...but that was beside the point.

    He was here now, resting in a bed and they had joined, not just each other, but with this first step, this cave, he had taken them from obscurity into the wider world, into a war that had been raging for at least a hundred years here on Seles.

    Snoring gently, Xakep shifted in bed and she put her hand on his shoulder, comforting him for a moment, letting him relax and walking away when he grew still.

    The tablets in her tactical space flickered to life, the repurposed elements and metals still slowly growing more sleek and refined.  The pedestal he'd found gently slid to the center of the space and grew into a polished stone table, using its extra stone to form pieces and a highly detailed map of the area.

    She had only had the power to get him to the beach, but this cave she'd had him summoned to had been a perfect test and a greater than perfect starting point.

    He'd left the person he was behind, and conquering the cave had been the proof of it...but she...she was still changing, and just like she was, he was having an effect on her, even while he slept.

    Looking at her reflection in the screen with excitement, she wondered aloud, "How long will it be before I'm an entirely different me?"