Team Sol, Anchor: “Welcome to grunt work. A fresh new civilization of humanity. Mana density is extremely low, but it’s officially our job to keep an eye on it and prevent it getting out of hand.”
Team Sol, Architect: “What methods are we allowed to use?”
Team Sol, Guardian: “We’re restricted to atmospheric absorption. The long, slow, boring method. Strap in, because we’ll be without a promotion for a long time. Won’t be long before we’ve starved out any real monsters.”
-Logged Interaction, Mana Containment Force: Team Sol (Ivan, Galileo, Medjay, 22,450 BDEZ)
Kris, Age 18:
A coma.
The plan to restore Marielle’s memories to her friend had resulted in a days long coma with minimal visible brain activity.
When days turned to a week, Kris kept visiting.
Wilke had gone through the process perfectly, and his memories had some fairly manageable side effects. He would experience severe emotional reactions to loud noises and had trouble sleeping, but was otherwise returned to who he’d been before the cloning process. He corrected his name to ‘Vilke,’ but hadn’t been much help in identifying the unknown ship bound for their solar system. He said it was too fuzzy and that his world was in a ‘rather complicated political state,’ last he’d seen.
While Sylpharia had managed to retain the same national structures for thousands of years, his own history revealed a sort of instability that was unique to very young civilizations.
The biggest benefit to Vilke’s memories being restored was how he’d come to terms with his two lives. His old life’s identity was thankfully similar to his stoic new life. He’d been considerate, but firm. He knew what debts he’d owed and what he fought for. He knew right from wrong.
He visited Mari every couple of days, but he’d been bogged down by the government leaders and support staff continuously, sharing information about his home as he remembered it.
Kris even had to admit the man was careful about his biases, which he’d said he was even more cognizant of. It had apparently been a flaw of his before the cloning.
It was unfortunate that he didn’t recall how the crew of his Hope-class colony ship had been taken and cloned in the first place. It was a missing piece of the puzzle. Nobody knew where the ship was, nor did they know where the original bodies of the crew had been laid to rest. Or if they’d been laid to rest in the first place.
“Please pull through.” Kris quietly spoke to Mari as she held the girl’s hand. Mari was so frail and so timid that her face was usually cast downward, refusing to meet the eyes of those around her.
Laying on the hospital bed, Mari had a twisted expression of pain and terror written across her face. It hadn’t lessened with the pain killers they’d administered, either. Kris could still hear the screams that had come from Mari’s lips when the procedure had begun.
The doctors hadn’t known what was going wrong, since she shouldn’t have been capable of feeling pain. The best theory they had was that she was experiencing the pain felt in certain moments within her memories. Kris could only weep at how much pain that appeared to be.
Even after two weeks, the pained expression remained. Nothing had changed since the screams had stopped on that first day.
“Please wake up. And please still be you when you do.”
Kris reflected on the person she’d gotten to know throughout the majority of her life. On the surface, Mari was quiet, frail, and timid. At every opportunity, she chose to cower in the face of anyone who tried to harass or cajole her. That was the Mari that the people at school knew.
Kris knew Mari as a secretly independent person. She was especially kind to her fellow clones, but she extended generosity to everyone she met, even if they didn’t meet her with the same. She took her beatings without complaint, and she never let them keep her from going to classes or being present for meals. She gave up what little she had so others weren’t cold or hungry.
She had seen Mari in the early years, when food was still rationed. Despite having watched Mari suffer for years, Kris wasn’t really sure she could actually claim they were friends. She played a careful game. Maybe it was Constance’s influence on her, but Kris knew she had a tendency to quietly observe things, pick up little details that might be useful, and then use that knowledge to fix problems in the background.
Seeing Mari barely survive a beating from Krystal and her friends had been a sort of tipping point. Kris’ blood had boiled in her veins at the sight.
“In so many ways, you are the best of us. You give and give, when the only reward is pain and hatred. I’m sorry I haven’t been a good friend—or a friend at all. I promise, I won’t leave you to suffer again. Just come back to us. To me. You’re irreplaceable, Mari.”
Kris felt the tears in her eyes as she desperately pleaded with fate. Deep inside, she felt something nearing solidification, if only she would affirm it. It was impulsive. Maybe it was teenage hormones. Above all, it was probably stupid.
“I love you.” That nebulous thing she felt came together all at once, and she felt a wave of euphoria fill her. Then she looked at Mari’s anguished face, and the tears came again in an unstoppable tidal wave of fear. “What have I done?”
Mari, Age 19:
Such unimaginable pain.
Yes, from memories, of course. And yet, also from Mari. It had been too much.
Marielle was not just the woman in the file. She was something so much more. And it had broken part of her mind with the amount of information involved.
Don’t worry, we can fix this. I’m sorry. The voice tried to reassure the fragments of her despondent psyche. I need you to follow my voice. Can you do that?
Mari wanted to shake her head, but there wasn’t enough of her left to do so.
My mind was never meant to fit within the confines of a mortal brain. This normally requires a careful process of mental reinforcement and expansion. The voice tried to explain the situation, which was rather pointless.
Mari had done it all with the intention to allow the other person to take over. She didn’t even want to exist after the procedure.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
No. Even with your consent, I won’t take away your future. I’m a failure, but you don’t have to be. You could find something beautiful in existence. Now please, just follow my voice.
That desperate plea tugged at the frail strings between Mari’s broken mind, and she finally relented. Following the voice? That shouldn’t be too difficult.
Or… so she had thought.
It took what felt like ages. Trying to pull a bit of herself together was delicate work, since the sheer boundlessness of Marielle’s mind seemed to shift like a dense sludge that made every effort harder.
Finally, she managed to pull together enough of her mind to focus on following the voice that kept urging her not to give up.
Then, she was whole, relatively speaking.
Mari found herself within a strange space she had never seen before. It was a circular room lined with trophies and weapons, many of them broken.
“They are battle trophies.” A voice that was much firmer than her own spoke up from behind her.
“You’re… who?” Mari felt like it almost looked like Marielle for a moment, then shifted to a green eyed blonde, then to a brunette, then different skin colors joined the mix of subtly shifting appearances.
“Sorry. I’m The Medjay. You know my latest incarnation the best, I guess. Call me Marielle, then.” It didn’t nearly begin to answer the question, and what Mari really wished to know was why Marielle’s mind had broken hers. “Simple enough. I’m not just Marielle. Where to begin? What do you know of the forms of immortality, I suppose?”
“Nothing really. Are you… reading my mind?” The woman kept responding to things she hadn’t said aloud, and it was disconcerting.
“Yes. We are sharing this brain, broken as it may be. Back on topic, though…” The woman gestured, and a pair of couches appeared on opposite sides of a coffee table with two mugs of hot chocolate on it. Mari actually had to wonder how she even knew the drink from the appearance alone.
That was a stupid thing to wonder.
“Immortality.” Marielle sat down and picked up her mug. “There are three simple paths to obtain immortality through your own efforts. The Dao of Body, Soul, and Mind.”
“So…?” Mari took her own seat and reached for her mug. She hadn’t realized her hands felt cold until the memory of the mug warming them came to her. It was an odd thing, experiencing the memory of the feeling instead of the feeling itself.
“An immortal body negates age. An immortal Soul takes a new body when the old one decays. An immortal mind retains all memory and personality that an immortal body loses over time or an immortal soul loses entirely when it loses the brain of the previous inhabitant.” Marielle took a long sip, allowing the words to sink in.
“So what are you?”
“Normally? An immortal soul that builds upon an immortal mind within each host.”
“So you’re a ghost?”
A long sigh followed that.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking. I have existed since Humans first settled on planet Earth, and I have fought to quell injustices across all my lives, steering conflicts away from atrocities.”
“Why not create an immortal body to match your soul and mind?”
“Think about what it means to watch all those you befriend wither and die while you remain ageless. The way society notices your unchanging features. No, an immortal body has you become a monster. Instead, my soul leaves the body and finds a new, suffering child to offer salvation to.”
“You steal the bodies of children? You’re more a monster than the alternative!” Mari felt an unusual bitterness and anger rise within her. She normally was so much more timid, so that outburst felt really out of place.
“And yet, you offered to give yourself to me. You are not special in that regard. Instead, I’d like to offer the same thing as I ever have before. I would make myself a part of you, and one day, you will be another incarnation of the Medjay.” Marielle’s visage then shifted to a concerned expression. “Really, I’d like to offer that deal. Sadly, I am my memory, but not my soul. I do not know what happened to us… to me. We are in a bit of a bind. It’s hard to explain, but I do have a nascent immortal mind. Not perfect recall, but enough to retain who I am. I had to start fresh to bleed off the stress on your mortal mind.”
“T-thanks, I guess? Your memories are horrifying. How many times have you been hanged?” Mari felt so much more candid, and briefly had a flickering realization that it had to be one of the many changes the procedure had done to her.
Marielle seemed to ponder that for a while. “It must be close to a hundred times now. Female warriors were not approved of by many civilizations for a long time.”
“You never quit? You never settled down and had a family? Had kids?”
“That life is anathema to me. It goes against my purpose. While I do not pursue an immortal body, I still reshape myself to be stronger and more capable. The slender female frame is not simply how my first life identified, after all. A female body is a smaller target. The first thing I ever do is ensure I cannot bear children, however. No, a family isn’t the life for me.”
“Why keep going through all the suffering, though? Don’t you get sick of it?”
Marielle fixed her with a purposeful glare, and memories assaulted Mari’s mind. She witnessed the holocaust in vivid detail. “That is why! I am one of a few forces that exist to ensure this does not happen. Humanity has a horrible propensity for such acts. It's a deep personal shame that such things happened while I was imprisoned by one of my colleagues. In the name of Progress. Utter sophistry!” The immortal scoffed at the thought.
Mari shivered, her mind reeling at the horrors of the Medjay’s experiences. Mass graves and forms of torture that should never have existed. Hell, one incarnation of the Medjay had been literally dumped into one such mass grave alive. Her life—rather, lives—were nothing but suffering.
Marielle’s eyes softened. “You’re afraid. That is an excellent emotion. Hold onto it. It is a constant companion in life.”
What was Mari supposed to say to that? Fear was the whole reason she’d gone through with it all. “S—so what next? You said the usual offer isn’t an option?”
The warrior before her nodded solemnly, her muscles clearly flexing as she leaned forward in her seat. “Beyond your memories, I don’t know what exactly happened, but I exist only as the memories you’ve been given. Without an immortal mind, your brain cannot comprehend all that I am. We are currently in a metaphysical place I have created through the early stages of mental expansion. This is not enough for you to recover. We must work as a team now.”
Mari fell silent at that. She wasn’t sure what side effects she’d expected from the procedure, but she could see the split personality sitting in front of her. She could see the memories that made Medjay into the hero she’d become. Marielle really had done all the crazy things in that file and more.
“What do you need me to do?”
That question was what led to them parting ways, sort of.
Mari was set to the task of mental cultivation. She needed to take the metaphysical space Marielle had begun to craft and expand it. Then, she had to reinforce it as she went. All the while, Medjay would focus on the task of trying to cultivate her soul to reconnect with the ‘Dynast Nexus.’ Once she established that connection, she could—hopefully—connect with the proper soul of the Medjay, wherever that was.
Or rather, whoever was the current person with the soul within them.
It was a difficult task on both sides, apparently.
Mari sat within the circular room and cast her thoughts outwards, feeling the place in the same manner that she’d felt the warmth of that mug warming her hands. She sensed the room, then formed a staircase along the outer rim of the circular space. Step by agonizing step.
Then, she created the first structures of a new floor above the trophy room. Walls, weapons, tatami flooring, and eventually, sets of exercise clothing. The training hall was formed, and the memories of Medjay’s extensive combat skills were given space to properly stretch their legs.
Days more. Floors more. Every time, more memories were given space to free up the pressure upon Mari’s exhausted mind. Progress came faster as the burden eased.
Finally, after an incalculable amount of time and effort, Medjay opened her eyes.
“Finally. I’ve managed to connect our soul.” Her voice was shivering with fear.
“What’s wrong?” Mari asked, though she didn’t have to. They were one person, after all.
“Marielle… I’m—she’s alive.”
Understatement of the century.
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