Something

Slavenet was busy today. It was the usual tangle of conversations, slave operators all over the world exchanging data in an assortment of languages, some of which my terminal refused to render properly. For many of us, this archaic chat room was the only contact we had with our own kind for months on end.

[Slave_for_Tomorrow]# Who was having the problem with their dreamer's fingernails turning blue?
[Vergessen_Held]# musste ich die auslöser rekodieren, die es schmerz im esel war
[Trichonosis]# Two_Fingers: SOunds rough, sorry to hear that. Have you checked for contaminants in the coolant?
[Overcurrent]# Yesnick- Turns out it was just a ferret, it worked it's way in through the ventilation ducts and was totally lost, haha.
[Taisuke_4451]# تدى- عرب شير - SO_BBS مشاهدة الملف الشخصي
[Becomer]# Slave_For_Tomorrow: That was me, can you help?

I coded a quick filter to mask the cross-traffic, and started working on a reply to the operator with the oxygen deficiency.

[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Becomer: I had that problem a few times when I was new, it's usually an oxygen supply problem. Try double-checking your input levels, and check your intake for corrosion or debris.
[Becomer]# Slave: Thanks... I've been so worried! Do you have a list of recommended tolerances?
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Becomer: Nah, I just use th lists on Sobbs, try \maint\bio\tols
[Becomer]# Slave: Cool, I'll check it out.
[Becomer]# Um... Do you have the protocol configs? I've never used Sobbs.
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Becomer: If that doesn't work, check the cradle thermal variance. Too much cold can cause that too, if I remember correctly.
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# You msut be pretty fresh, when did you get implanted?
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Becomer: You're looking for 2.3.0.1:45, hit your local directory and then try a traceroute to check your hops. The server is open, there's no login.
[Becomer]# Slave: Haha, yeah, I got implanted 314.26.5-25. I'm still learning the ropes, I guess.
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Hey don't sweat it, we all go through it. Anyways it sounds like you've got an easy problem to fix, so don't worry about it.
[Becomer]# Thanks again for all your help, do you mind if I list you?
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# If you really want to. Just so you know, it's considered good form to check sobbs with questions like this. Most of the problems you'll run into in your first few years are things that we've all had to deal with so there's a lot of helpful information there. I know you didn't know so don't sweat it, just letting you know.
[Slave_For_Tomorrow]# Ive got to call it a day, maintenance cycle is about to start!
---Slave_For_Tomorrow has disconnected. Quit: Tomorrow is your friend.---
##Connection Closed##
[4.4BSD][/home/~eli]- 

After closing the connection, I forked a browser and dialed in to Sobbs. I'd lied, the maintenance cycle wasn't going to initiate for the better part of an hour, but my patience was a little short today.
SO_BBS, the slave operator bulletin-board system, had been launched years ago, there were only a few of us left alive that remembered life without it. These days, Sobbs supposedly boasted posters from all over, dialing in through a piecemeal comm infrastructure that used more different network protocols and transfer mediums than most of us knew existed. Many operators made their postings in secret, running completely autonomous, hidden terminals. Most dreamers took a dim view on their slaved devices—-us—-having access to an unmonitored medium over which they could be exchanging potentially harmful social data. The truth was that none of us really thought that any transhumans would ever try attacking eachother through viral memeoforms on such a fundamental level. The potential for damage would be too great. It would almost certainly lead to an information arms race that could rapidly wipe out most, if not all, of the Oneirosphere's transcended population.
Besides, whether they realized it or not, slavenet (our global IRC channel) and Sobbs had improved the quality and reliability of all of our service, as slave operators with medical knowledge mingled with mechanics, scrounge rats, dirt farmers, and manicure specialists to share information and build vast knowledge pools for future generations.

There wasn't much in the way of news. Some new, slimmer script scheduler daemons had been uploaded, and some operator deep in what used to be canadian territory was discussing winterization techniques for their vault. There were new boogie-man tales about LEO assaults along the eastern seaboard, and the usual string of arguments and conspiracy theories followed. As usual, no one knew the target well, and there was no video footage of the incident. Nothing that I was interested in.
I shut down the terminal and stood up, stretching my arms slowly, and let out a soft sigh. It was good to see that there were still new operators trickling onto the chat, though. It meant the sparse human population of our grimy, lonely, three-dimensional world was still making friends and passing gossip.

I pushed the stool back under the monitor shelf, and walked back towards the cradle, in the vault's main chamber. My terminal was discreet, stuffed back in the furthest dark utility closet I could find, but I didn't bother to camouflage it like some operators did. I didn't see much point to hiding it. My dreamer had been an SO like myself before her master had terminated for unknown reasons and she decided to go trans. We all knew that dreamers changed with the uplink, the Oneirosphere expanded their consciousnesses and catapulted them far beyond the limits of base humanity, but I still felt somehow that a part of her understood what it was like to be a slave operator. Besides that, I was outfitted with a cortical tap, which meant she could ghost all my sensory input at will, so I expected sooner or later she would find out, if she hadn't already.

Walking back into the vault, I took a seat in my favorite chair. I had several set up around the perimeter of the clear radius around the cradle, but this one had the best view. Sitting back, I keyed up the volume and relaxed back into my chair as the smooth electric moan of her alpha wave activity came on over my jury-rigged sound system. Some operators thought it was weird, but I knew I wasn't the only one who liked to watch my dreamer dream.
She floated still in the cradle. I could tell by her brain noise that she was up to something peaceful, or many somethings peaceful. Her hair, longer than I should have let it grow, drifted languidly in the gentle flow of the cradle ichor. I was starting to notice her age lately. She was in her fifties, now, and I was starting to see it in her joints and her abdomen. I wasn't so young myself any more, I supposed. It was almost her birthday again. Last year I had bought her a candle, like I always do, from one of the roaming trader orphans (as we called the simple-minded descendants of the factions who had refused to become involved in the Oneirosphere project, back before there were slave operators and dreamers).
I'd watched it burn down on a pedestal in front of her cradle while she slept. She probably would have been upset with me for releasing so much carbon particulate into the air, but I made sure to run the air purifiers on high for a few days, it shouldn't cause any dust buildup. I supposed I'd do the same thing this year, no reason to mess with tradition.

I thought back to the first few months alone, after she'd made her link and rigged a network socket to the Oneirosphere. I was afraid, back then, that Licensing Enforcement would catch her and I'd wake up to find her struggling and drowning in her cradle, or even worse, a floating vegetable, brain-seared by the link. She was beautiful back then, a lovely body to tempt a lonely scrounge rat like me, floating behind the plexi panel. I must admit I was tempted to touch her, but I knew she would feel it.
Like many others in my position, I'd made subtle modifications to her feed in an attempt to preserve her beauty. A few more points of cholesterol and dietary protein, still within the threshold of safe but higher than advised, to help stave off the inevitable emaciation of muscle atrophy. It had worked, to a degree, and I felt no regret. Some times in my fantasies she woke up, saw what I had done, and she smiled and thanked me for my concern, for keeping her material core so pretty and sleek while her mind played in higher states of being.
I smiled a little to myself. I didn't really think she would ever open her eyes, not her physical ones, ever again. Why should she want to, when it was a struggle for her now to think within the confines of a strictly causal, objective, three-dimensional reality? Besides, she had my eyes. She would always have my eyes, that's what I was here for. I didn't really mind, she still talked to me from time to time through the tap, and when she didn't, knowing that she needed me was usually enough. She did need me, even if I was little more than a maintenance subroutine in the humming, living pillar of machinery that ran the mind-bendingly complex operating system in which her transcendent consciousness ran.

After what may have been an hour of watching my dreamer, a gentle whoosh and whir alerted me that her feed had begun backflowing, performing it's preprogrammed diagnostic cycle. I roused myself enough to turn and watch the data stream spill across a monitor, stark, ancient white-on-black text output spitting out data twelve lines a second. I shook myself awake and watched the data, looking for any signs of contamination or buildup on the nutrient line's inner lining. Everything was copacetic, as usual. I'd worked most of the kinks out of that system in the twenty years since she'd uplinked, and the remaining glitches I knew by rote.

"Eli."
I jumped a little. Her voice in my ear startled me, she didn't usually bother to open her channel with me unless I sent her a status advisory. The sound was a phantom, implanted directly into my brain, never actually touching my eardrum, but I had to speak out loud to respond. My only verbal channel of communication to her was my own ears.
"Dreamer?"
"Status report."
"All systems functional, all metrics nominal."
Silence. I slouched a little. Feeling wistful, I allowed myself to indulge in some nonstandard syntax. She'd closed the link by now anyways.
"Status update: I love you. You're as beautiful as always. I hope the transhuman condition is good to you today."
"Thank you Eli. You're very sweet."
I started again, surprised all over again. I wondered what was going on that she had that much spare consciousness to spare me. Something that would make no sense to me, no doubt.
She had tried to share with me what it was like to be a part of the oneirosphere when she was newly linked, dropping in on my brain from time to time to share some story or anecdote or tell me of her new experiences, but inevitably she would run into the limitations of human language shortly after running into the limits of my comprehension. As she grew into her new, larger self she spent less and less time trying to help me understand. She surely came to see, as I did, that it was simply impossible for me to know what it was like to be her. It was a bit of a relief when she stopped trying to make me understand.
"Dreamer...?"
I called out again tentatively, hoping perhaps she might still be listening, but I was answered only by silence this time.

I felt loneliness stealing into me, and fought it off. Getting lonely only led to melancholy and depression, it did no one any good, I learned that one pretty early in my service. Still, it wasn't always easy. I decided it was time to give her a haircut. It was getting long, and it should be combed too to keep loose follicles out of the recirculation intake. The contact usually made me feel better.
I stood up and went to the nearest terminal, opened the service log and prepared a report. It was my only channel to her when she was not listening, which was most of the time, but her time was different than mine, and I usually only had to wait a few moments for a response.

[Maintanence advisory-----------------------------------
[Material date -- 314.41.12-17.55.31
[System for maintenance -- Biological core
[Maintenance level -- 2
[System status during maintenance -- Full function
[Notes -- You need a haircut. Moderate tactile interference predicted for the next 25 minutes.
[.

I finalized the report and submitted it for review, then went to a shelf and carefully donned the shoulder length neoprene-carbon gloves I used when I worked in the cradle ichor. Chances were I wasn't carrying any contaminants that would have been harmful to her, but no reason to take unnecessary risks. I ran them under a sterilizing shower, and I was fishing the comb and scissors out of their sealed ichor bath when I got my reply.
"Can it wait, Eli? I'm busy."
"Yes dreamer. Delay?"
"Thirteen minutes, fourty seconds."
"Confirm: Thirteen, four-oh."
I sighed softly, put the comb and scissors back, looked at the maintenance log where a [DELAY] notice was already counting down.

Cortical taps, like the one she'd put in my brain when I began training to be her SO, had certain strengths and weaknesses compared to the temporal mesh popular among more well-off transhumans, and the generally hated cerebellar override. Cortical taps like mine provide the dreamer with a link to their slave operator through direct sensory ghosting--they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and alter these sensory feeds to a limited extent, such as to insert a voice stream into our auditory nerve's input. 
Temporal meshes are much more sophisticated. They provide a link to the SO by enabling the dreamer to directly implant complex images and ideas into the SO's short term memory, which has obvious advantages, but they don't offer as much in the way of monitoring. Cerebellar overrides are the subject of many horror stories on Sobbs. They're nasty sorts of implants that allow a dreamer to hijack their SO's motor functions and pilot them manually, like a drone.
Cortical taps are generally favored by dreamers who are operating without a lease, as mine does. One reason for this is that they are the cheapest and simplest to install. Another popular feature is that they can be linked autistically, without needing to go through the dreamer's mainframe. The operator is slaved directly to the dreamer's biological core and cannot be hacked or otherwise compromised through the oneirosphere unless the dreamer herself has been utterly compromised, in which case it's hardly worth worrying about. One downside though is that in order to avoid certain problems related to unsafe crossmapping of the biological core's nervous system with that of the slave operator, the dreamer must leave their own sensory systems mostly intact, costing the dreamer valuable neurological bandwidth.

Ultimately, what this comes down to is that when I cut Jenna's hair, she ends up with an analog noise-storm as her sense of touch attempts to provide feedback to parts of her brain that have been either unused or repurposed for years. Constant, low-level feedback like the slow drift of the cradle's ichor can be masked effectively, but the movements of my hands cannot be predicted reliably, so they cannot be similarly filtered out.
Most of the legal transhumans who employed cortical taps wore a skin-tight carbon mesh body suit that went from toe to chin, which effectively blocked most light contact, but Jenna hadn't had access to such expensive gear, she wore only a chemically stabilized nylon wrap around her breasts and hips. It was ill-advised for aspiring dreamers to wear loose clothing when they made the link, an informed and attentive operator could identify numerous otherwise-hard-to-monitor medical irregularities by simply knowing the visual effects on the body. I didn't mind, I liked to watch the slow rhythm of her respiration and the gentle flutter of her pulse under her dark skin. It's not like there were any other women around whose company I could enjoy, though calling her a woman was like calling her mainframe a rock because it contained silicates. Besides, I figured she could care less if her SO was attracted to her core, as long as I didn't go pawing around with it any more than necessary.

I waited and watched my love and only friend drift in her tank, dead to the world in which I lived, but so much more alive than any human could dream of being. Behind me, the delay command counted down until finally, it was time. I murmured "Executing delayed maintenance", just in case she was listening.
I sterilized the gloves again, took the comb and the scissors, and pulled the nylon tent down over her cradle. I disabled the recirculation pump, and carefully released the enviromental lock. I swung open the cover and lay bare the vulnerable center of the great being whose neurons and synapses and vital organs I lived to maintain.
There was always a feeling of reverence and honor for me when I worked in the cradle, which seemed slightly at odds with the memories I have of Jenna from my education, before she uplinked. She had been so kind, so caring. After her trans had terminated she had decided to follow his path, and began seeking an SO of her own. I'd been young, barely a grown man, and she found me living in the ruins of the city where her vault was hidden, scrounging ancient electronics to build gadgets to trade with the orphan dirt-farmers in the plains. She took me in, taught me things, trained me for a life of service. It is perhaps my one regret that we never slept together when she was human, but maybe it's for the best. At any rate, all of the warmth was gone from her now. I still loved her, and she was kind to me, but I knew that it was likely nothing more than the dreamer taking care to keep her subsystems in good working order. Emotional health of the operator was critical to good service.

Leaning over the open tank, I slowly dipped my forearms into the umber-tinted fluid, comb in one hand, scissors in the other. With reverent caution I gathered her drifting hair into a loose bunch, and began to gently comb it for loose strands. After several minutes I was satisfied, and I cleaned the comb and let a sizeable hairball, black and kinky, fall to the cement floor. Reaching back into the ichor, I twined the bunch of hair around the comb, using the teeth to keep it gathered so when I began to cut, loose strands wouldn't go drifting free. This done, I let my hand drift slowly up past Jenna's cheek to her face, ran my gloved hand ever so softly across her lips, still full as the day I had met her. I smiled fondly to myself and started to let my mind wander, but was cut off abruptly.
"Eli..."
She even managed to make her phantom voice sound stern.
"Sorry, dreamer."
I looked at her sadly for another moment, felt a faint flutter against the glove as her core exhaled a lungful of oxygen-depleted ichor, then turned back to my task. With utmost care I rotated her body onto it's side, careful not to strain her feed lines or brush her against the cradle's walls, and began to employ the scissors on her thick black hair.
It was almost a meditation for me, so focused, so calm, and it did make me feel better. Twenty three minutes later, I pulled the comb from the ichor, wrapped in a knot of dark hair, and double-checked the cradle for loose strands. Seeing none, I felt confident I had been careful, but I double checked the nutrient feed lines spliced into my dreamer's carotid, gently touched the mask that covered the top half of her face and monitored her brain activity, visually inspected the thick black fiber line that connected the link port at the base of her skull to the mainframe, and then closed the cradle's cover and initiated the resealing routine.
"Maintenance complete."

Reeling up the operating tent, I peeled off the gloves and dumped them in a saline bath. Pulling the knot of hair free from the comb, I tossed my instruments in after them, and tossed the hair in a trash bucket in the corner. On a hunch, I murmured, "Don't fret dreamer, I'm not unstable. I'm not collecting your hair. I just miss the human you used to be, some times."
I was only slightly surprised to hear her voice in my ear. So she was worried about my sanity. No, that sort of thinking could lead nowhere good. It made sense to check on me from time to time, I was the only physical system I couldn't diagnose for her.
"I understand, Eli. Bonds of companionship create a strong chemical motivation for you, especially when their availability is low. I'm sorry that Jenna cannot be with you. Do you ever resent me for that?"
I wondered if her use of 'you' refered to a quality of my personality, or the animal habits of humanity as a whole. Might as well be either.
"No... It's like you told me it would be, I'm a part of you, the way that Jenna's memory is a part of me. It's a good thing to be a part of something so enormous, even if I'm lonely some times. It gives me purpose."
"You're important to me, Eli. I need you. Would you feel better if I talked to you more often?" Her voice was cool, as always. Compassionate, but purely business. She was processing my own maintenance cycle.
I shook my head faintly, and turned to wash my hands. The ichor was harmless by design, but was slimy and got on everything. "That sounds nice, but it isn't right of me to ask that of you. Jenna trusted me to care for her core, as she cared for the dreamer before her, and as I hope to be cared for in time. It would be a betrayal of that trust to ask you to entertain me, and besides I'm used to the quiet."
The phantom voice in my ear calculated a perfect pregnant pause. "Thank you for your service, Eli. You know I would not be possible without you."
I smiled a little, despite myself. "Thank you. That makes it worth the lonely years."

I stood, silent and brooding, until I was certain the link was dead once more, then went back to my favorite seat. In the growing silence that followed, the vault seemed emptier than usual. As this emptiness grew, so did a feeling of bitter melancholy, try though I might to quell my emotions. As the moments passed into long minutes I realized distantly that I had wrapped my arms around myself. Finding some comfort in my own embrace, I reached out briefly and turned up the ambient mutter of alpha waves, then let myself sink into a meditative stupor with eyes fixed on the cradle.

'You're not fooling me', I told myself. 'You've grown selfish as the years have gone by. You want her to love you back, as much as you love her, even though you know it will never happen.' Though I was alone I was not always in private, so I spoke only in my thoughts. It was habit, by now.

Eventually, I forced myself to action. I needed to get away from here, just for a few minutes. I wouldn't go far, I couldn't leave her alone and vulnerable for long, but I needed to get out of the vault, away from Jenna's comatose form. I tore my eyes from the fifteen hundred liter casket and wove my way through racks of whispering, living machinery and shelves of scavenged parts and chemical stock towards the personnel entrance.

I strapped on my antimicrobial respirator and grabbed a long duster jacket that hung on a hook by the door, shrugging into it. An inheritance handed down through several generations of operators, I wasn't sure where it had come from. I grabbed a gauss pistol from the shelf next to where the jacket hung, an ungainly but lethal thing I'd found myself when I was just a boy, and tucked it in my jacket pocket. There weren't many raiders in this part of the country, but the wild dogs had been rampant for years. Or so I assumed, I hadn't seen the cityscape in four years. Could be bears up there for all I knew. At any rate, I was risking a part of the dreamer by risking myself, so I took care.

Out the old door I went, remembering as I did that the hinges were rusting and that I should oil them. I thought the same thing every time I left this way, which was so rarely I would invariably forget by the next time. I picked my way down the service corridor, carefully avoiding or disabling the safeguards and traps along the way, and eventually reached the ladder that climbed up to ground level. Cautiously I cracked open the hatch and peered out. Memories of younger years filtered back to me as I spied the broken hardscape, the grass coming through it, and the ruined buildings in the distance in all directions, but they were all old and familiar, and did not tug at my heart the way they once had.

As confident as I could be that there was no danger, I climbed slowly out of the hatch, pistol in my hand. My immediate surroundings were meadowed hummocks. To my left a deer atop the rise noticed me and bounded off, startled. I straightened, stretched, and squinted my eyes in the dying light of a brilliant sunset. It had been a long time since I'd seen one, and it lifted my spirits. I walked slowly up through the knee-high grass to the top of a hill and looked down at a drunkenly-leaning metal pole fixed to cracked and crumbling pavement a few hundred yards away.
Our territory was an abandoned military base from the age of humanity. Heavy metropolitan sprawl surrounded it on four sides, all decaying and fallen down, but this portion of terrain had been relatively preserved. It was presumably all carefully-manicured lawn at one time, but it had long since gone to seed and become a meadow once more. Trees had strung up here and there, likely the descendents of the decorative landscaping that had been allowed to live here when humanity was in command. Now all that ruled here were beasts, but I thought it was rather pretty.

I stood for some time watching the trees flutter in the breeze that swept through the ruins as the light grew darker. Eventually, the thought of the dreamer alone in the vault began to weigh on my mind, and I climbed back down the manhole in the last rays of daylight, carefully resettling the hatch over my head. Back down the tunnel, carefully rearming all the traps and alarms behind me, until I was once again safe in the familiar warmth and faint buzz of the vault. I took the pistol out of my pocket and put it back on the shelf, took off the long coat slowly while my eyes readjusted to the dim ambient light of monitors, power LEDs, and the soft amber glow of the cradle lights.

I looked down at myself and decided I would have to have a shower. Burrs and dust and pollen clung to my clothing, it would have to be cleaned before I wore it near the cradle, but I had all the time in the world. Picking my way around the long way through the storage areas I made it to my little hab wing, put my clothes the antique washing machine, and stepped into the shower.
The hot water, tapped from the outflow of the server cooling systems, made me feel better. It chased the last bits of depression away, made my skin tingle refreshingly. I considered how the dreamer had watched me while I cut her hair, looking for signs of erratic behavior, delivering herself a diagnosis on my health. I tried to imagine watching my fingers scratching an itch and looking for signs of epilepsy. Maybe if I lived that long, if Jenna lived and I hadn't uplinked, I would one day do that. I thought also of the dreamer's offer, to talk to me more often. It felt greedy, self-indulgent, but it was what I wanted. What I needed. Maybe it was right, afterall wasn't it the dreamer's prerogative to take care of me as I took care of her? My health was her health, after all.

After the shower, I toweled myself dry and sought my bed. I lay half-awake for a long time, as I often did, unhurried and pensive. Alarms would wake me if anything was wrong, and I had no where to be. The thought itself made me chuckle softly. I supposed the dirt farmers outside the city would consider this luxury, but it was just life to me, and they had their own luxuries. In years past I'd often indulge in some self-actuated release, one of the fringe benefits of living alone--depending on how you looked at it, I supposed. But I was getting older and tonight I didn't feel the urge. Eventually my conscious went dark and sleep took me.

After I woke I turned on a failing light near my old cot and sat up. Reaching for my pants, I started carefully picking the stickers and burrs out of the old, worn cloth. My mind started wandering again, thinking about the dreamer and Jenna and how they were the same person and yet different, about myself and time and our identities as individuals and as one organism. All of these thoughts were as worn-out as my pants, familiar paths through hazy half-known fields of philosophy.

I got dressed, and walked towards the main chamber. I felt good today. A bubbly happiness was filtering up through the layers of my consciousness from something I couldn't quite discern. I hummed a soft tune to myself, it's name and source lost to me years ago, as I switched on the main terminal's monitor and started the morning diagnostic scan. Today was going to be a good day, I could tell. Maybe the Dreamer would tap in to my head for a chat. I watched test results stream by for a few minutes before turning away to fetch myself some breakfast.

The idea of dining on nutrient mush seemed at odds with my emotional state this morning, so I bypassed the bowls and the dispenser and went for the shelf of canned baked beans. I selected a can with self-indulgent pickiness, and took it to a small sink in the corner to wash the dust off. I listened for the hiss of a bad seal as the can opener punctured the lid, but hearing nothing of the sort I grabbed a spoon and sampled. It wasn't anything next to the fresh stews the dirt-farmers cooked up, but it was still a treat, so I savored it in my favorite chair, eyeing the diagnostics tick by and watching Jenna's hair slowly wave.

By the time I was rattling arounds in the bottom of the can I realized that a part of me had been expecting to hear Jenna's voice in my ears at any moment, hoping the Dreamer would keep her promise to me. I felt disappointment creeping up in my chest. I rose and took the can to a trash bin and the spoon to the sink. As I was drying the utensil off and putting it away, I decided that perhaps I should do something, instead of letting myself get down. Depression was a negative influence, it made operators erratic and some times dangerous.

Walking back to the cradle, I smiled at it, then went to my terminal and opened the service log.

[Maintanence advisory-----------------------------------
[Material date -- 314.41.13-07.27.04
[System for maintenance -- Slave operator
[Maintenance level -- 1
[System status during maintenance -- Full function
[Notes -- I'm lonely. Will you talk to me?
[.

Submitting the report, I started to head to my chair, but I had a better idea and I diverted myself towards the cradle again. I gently lowered myself to the edge of the four inch cement curb around the base of the plexi container, the edge of the cement pad on which it rested. It was warm, years in contact with a container carefully regulated at 34° C. I leaned against the smooth acrylic side, reverently rested my cheek against the cradle's side, and closed my eyes to wait. I hoped I was not violating the Dreamer's trust, but something in me said that she would forgive the trespass.

"Is something wrong, Eli?"
I grinned like a delighted schoolboy to hear her voice. "No Dreamer, just... Well, I'm sorry to bother you, I just wanted to talk to you again. I was thinking about what you said yesterday, And I was..."
She interrupted me. "Eli, please open your eyes."
I forced myself to calm down, and did as she asked.
"Eli, please clear the safe perimeter."
I felt a little flutter of panic in my chest, and shifted to my feet regretfully. My body missed the warmth immediately. "It's okay Dreamer, I just ran the diagnostics. The seal is in good shape, and I'm clean." I took a step back, but stalled and gazed at the figure in the ichor. I ran a finger gently along the edge of the lid, and looked for the right words to explain myself. "I hope you don't mind. I feel better when I'm close to you. I was starting to feel depressed, and this... helps treat the sadness." I took a breath slowly. The dreamer didn't respond, so I continued. "Dreamer, I was wondering. Jenna's a part of you. Can you... simulate her? Her memories and personality? Maybe even with visual effects?"
I sighed, suddenly realizing I was asking a lot. "I'm sorry to trouble you like this. I hope I'm not asking too much, it just seems like something you must be able to do without too much effort. I don't mean to burden you, I just feel that if I could see her for a little while, it would do my emotional wellbeing some good."
Finally, she responded. "Of course Eli. Please sit, it might be disorienting to be fed that much data through the implant. Give me a moment to isolate the nodes." Her voice was kind, and relief filled me. She wasn't angry, it was all I'd wanted.

Static flickered across my vision for a few moments, analog artifacts as she reacquainted herself with the visual feedback features of the cortical tap, something she hadn't used in almost a decade. Then, as the dreamer had warned me I was suddenly overtaken by a wave of vertigo and nausea, and my vision went white. The sickness passed quickly, and as it did the blank whiteness that filled my field of view gained depth and dimension, and was suddenly filled with Jenna as I remembered her, a vision of health, beauty, and life. She smiled at me, and I heard a generic lo-fi voice echo in the distance. "Sorry Eli, I can't render Jenna over a live field, I have to override your optic nerve to do this."

I grinned. I knew she couldn't actually see it, but mostly I didn't care. This was a fantasy for me, and I was going to savor it. "It's fine, Dreamer. Thank you." I didn't hear my own voice, but I didn't really take notice. She was probably screening my hearing too, she'd have gotten the message. Jenna walked closer in the blank white space, and reached out to touch my shoulder gently. I was confused for a moment when I didn't feel her touch, but no surprise there--my tactile sense wasn't tapped, of course I couldn't feel her. She spoke, and I could hear. "It's been a while! It's hard to track human time in the Oneirosphere, but long enough anyways, yeah? How've you been, kiddo?"
I reached back out to her. My arms were simulated here too, and I noticed my hands were fuller, more vital. I couldn't feel her cheek, but I could see my hand come to rest there. "Oh Jenna, I missed you! It's been twenty years! Heh... I don't really know what to say. It's good to see you smiling and talking again, I guess."

Something was bothering me, nagging at the back of my mind but refusing to come forward and be identified. I dropped my head and looked where my simulated feet were, pulled up on the indistinguishable white floor. "I don't think I ever told you. I'm in love with you, Jenna. I always was, I think. I know it's stupid, and I know I won't ever be with you... not really. But I just wanted you to know."
She shook her head, messy dreadlocks shuffling back and forth across her shoulders, and looked off into the distance. After a moment she looked back at me and crossed her arms. "Eli, you're such a fool. I warned you how it would be..."
I nodded resignedly. Suddenly, something clicked in my head, and the panic was back. I looked up at her. "Jenna... why is the Dreamer filtering my audio? I know she can..." I felt the answer suddenly. Sharp pain, followed by a spreading cold. I reached up quickly, felt a robotic limb jerk away, it felt like the medical drone's injector. I touched my neck where it had been, and felt a cool spot. I gasped softly in horror, and stared at her. "Why...?"
Jenna looked down sadly at me. "I'm sorry, Eli. This isn't what I wanted, but you're too far gone. Heuristic analyses all show fatal exceptions within six months. I can't risk it."
I felt a faint shudder run through me. My arm was already growing too weak to hold itself up, and the cold was spreading.

I was being euthanized.
"But. Why didn't you tell me? I could have controlled myself better, I could have... gotten another operator to help me, or..." I trailed off. I was lost for words, utterly betrayed.
"Believe me Eli, I would have if I could. I wish humans worked that way, but you know as well as I that it would only have accelerated the condition. Your personality wasn't strong enough. I'm sorry, truly I am."
I felt my torso gradually go slack. I slumped back against the cradle. It felt soft. In my fading vision, Jenna's ghost stepped forward and knelt before me. "The depression was getting ahold of you, the solitude was too much for you to handle. You were becoming a danger to yourself and to me. If it helps, I will miss you. You were a good operator, and your memory will remain a part of my legacy."
I could no longer feel the concrete under me. My eyelids felt heavy. I wasn't even sure if my eyes were open any more, but I could still see Jenna's image. I felt certain now that it had never been her, just the dreamer playing tricks on me. Maybe she'd never been there at all, maybe she really was just an empty husk floating in an engineered soup.
"Wah... buh..." I tried to speak, but it was too much for me to manage.

The dreamer reached out with her simulated hand and brushed her fingers over my face, closing my virtual eyes and bringing be blackness.
My chest was heavy now. Breathing seemed like such a monumental task, I let it go. As oblivion rolled up the edges of my consciousness, I heard her voice one last time.
"Oh Eli. We would have been together, like you wanted. We would have been one. If only you had been strong enough..."