Mech Pilot who has just been promoted to Abiotic Officer, First Grade.
The world came into focus slowly. My first thought was that I shouldn't be seeing it at all. My last memory was of the cockpit, of the Engine shrieking as I took her into a desperate maneuver to take out a nexus organism at the heart of an enemy fleet. A flash. Then blackness. I knew, intellectually, that I had died. Or should have.
"Its waking up Doctor" said a voice. It? I hadn't used that pronoun set since academy. That was an awful breach of etiquette for medical staff. I tried to sit up but found I couldn't, restraints held me to a stretcher. I was still in my flight suit. And as I rolled under the restraints uncomfortably I realized that I wasn't really in any pain. Uncomfortable sure but not hurt. I should have hurt. I had felt my own heart tear itself apart under extreme g force. Hurt was the least of what I should feel.
Distant shuffling drew near and a face loomed over mine, an old woman with a well lined face and warm eyes. She smiled at me ruefully, "so you're awake pilot? You gave us quite a show out there. We were lucky you were found in all that space trash afterward. I imagine you have questions." She spoke carefully, like she had chosen these words as a test and was watching for my answers.
"I..." my own voice startled me. Another incongruity, I had been screaming at the end and yet my throat felt completely normal. A little dry maybe. I cleared my throat and spoke again, "I...how am I here? What happened to my Engine? The battle? Who won?"
"We did pilot. United Earth broke the xenobiotic fleet after a heroic pilot pulled off a suicidal maneuver to deliver a killing blow to their core nexus. Once that big brain was dead the drones were swept up easily. You'd probably get a medal for that, posthumously, under normal conditions but you aren't here under normal conditions."
"I died. I should have...no I did die out there" I said. I could remember it clearly. The Engine had come apart around me. I had felt its mind dying too.
"In a sense. Your Engine impacted the Nexus at a decent fraction of the speed of light and detonated like a small sun. No one walks away from that. And yet when we sent salvage crews to go rip the neurons out of the thing's corpse we found your Engine intact with you inside it. Examination of your body revealed something interesting. You don't have mass."
"W-what? What are you?" This felt like a joke.
"I know. You seem to have mass. And from what I can tell you seem to have normal senses, normal cognition, but none of our imaging tools can see you. We can't break your skin with needles to take blood samples. It defies explanation. Or it would if you were the first person this had happened to."
"So...so I'm not? What? I dont understand at all. Will you take these fucking restraints off?"
"Thank God you asked." Said the doctor, snapping a finger at an orderly who finally freed me from the heavy straps, "that was the last test. Sorry, this process is awful but it's necessary. A human wouldn't believe they could break those restraints, but a non-human mind might. We had to ascertain which we were dealing with."
I sat up and ran my hands over my body slowly. It felt real. I felt real. And yet some part of me knew this was off. Like that part of your brain that knows when you're dreaming. "Nonhuman? What did you think the Nexus had body snatched me?"
"No, actually, we thought the Engine might have done it." She said
"H-how? An Engine barely had a consciousness how would it do that?"
"Alright, calm down. Let me explain. You have undergone something known as Archonic Collapse. It is a rare event that can result from the death of an Engine and its pilot, usually involving the psychic shock of a dying Nexus. We don't know exactly what triggers it or how all of the mechanisms of it work, in part because it seems to break the laws of physics. But the leading hypothesis goes like this: as you and your Engine died, your minds took the brunt of a Nexus' death wail. There's a lot of dark energy in a signal like that, and combined with the Engine's own cascading power plant a reaction occurs that consumes the matter constituting you and your Engine. In this reaction only one mind can survive. Either you or the Engine come out of it, never both. Whether you fused and your identity came to the forefront or you consumed the Engine's mind we don't know. Whatever the case the end result is an Engine with no mind in it that is basically in mint condition, and a human body with no detectable mass that continues to interact with the world as if it did have mass."
I stared at the doctor in disbelief, "this is some kind of joke. Tell me what actually happened." I demanded, becoming angry
"I am being wholly honest with you." The doctor said
"How could I have not have mass. I clearly do?! I slapped the bed and felt it shake, "massless objects can't do that"
"True, they can't. And we were stumped by that for a long time when the first few Collapse survivors came back. But eventually we realized what was going on. See, your body acts as if you have mass because you expect it to. You have senses because your expect to have senses. But what you actually are is a dark energy projection. Your mind doesn't reside behind your eyes inside your skull, you haven't got eyes or a skull. Your mind is inside the Engine, now composed of dark energy, rendering it undetectable by most sensors. Basically only Nexus neronic matter can be used to see detect you. You're a ghost tethered to a machine."
"That can't be true. You're out of your mind. This is some psychological experiment or a dream or" I began to panic and the panic suddenly worsened as I realized what that little part of my brain had been noticing. I couldn't feel my heart beat. A hand to my chest I said, terrified, "my heart isn't beating"
"No, because you don't have one." Said the doctor gently. "You are now classified as an abiotic intelligence. I know its an insane thing to imagine. But there are things you can do in this state that are of amazing value to the war effort. So we are prepared to give you a choice. Continue on with the military, keep serving United Earth, and we will teach you how to cope with this condition. If you say no we can discharge you. You are legally dead after all. We have a nice habitat in the Sol system you can retire to. We can't guarantee you full freedom but it will be a comfortable life. If you serve us though, you will do so much good for humankind, you have no idea how much you can achieve."
"What if I want to die?" I asked "die for real. For good."
"We have the means to grant you that request as well. We had to develop one to deal with the Engine minds that come back. They are...dangerous. Too dangerous to keep around." We don't use it on human minds unless they request it. But we can do it if you wish."
I sat there quietly for a long time before speaking, "ok. Ill stay with the military. At least until I have this figured out."
The doctor beamed at me, "excellent, congratulations then. Pilot Nasir Greenwood, I hereby promote you the rank of Abiotic Officer, first class. For the time being I will be your commanding officer, I am cheif research specialist Thomas. You are hereby reinstated as a legal human being with all rights guaranteed by the United Earth Charter. Welcome to the Exotic Munitions Corp, Psionics Division."