Saeva Alterra Hawkins

  2510.08.13

  Sol 3UN1A Adjunct to Universe 0

  Reflexis City

  AAL Floor Training Facility 4, Mental Examination Room

  “You must be Saeva.” An aged voice called from the doorway to the waiting room. “You must be the one Lillian was telling me about.”

  “Are you Dr. Roe?” Saeva asked in reply.

  “Exactly, Mrs. Hawkins, please right this way” Dr. Roe said. His words were concise as if every intonation were picked and chewed over.

  Saeva followed him down the winding set of hallways that connected various rooms outfitted for various means. Some had massage tables; others had medical beds and equipment. For Saeva, who was not familiar with the medical suite, each seemed dedicated to some unknown task.

  “It’s been what, three months since you joined?” He asked making small talk as they seemed to navigate to their destination.

  “It definitely feels like its been longer than that.”

  “I would imagine so, you were assigned to… what does he call himself now.” The pair walked for a few steps in silence. Eventually he seemed to have discovered the name he was looking for. “Ah yes, Instructor. That Abraham, was always a rowdy one.”

  “Have you known him for long?” Saeva asked.

  “Since he was a child. He is one of the orphans of the AAL. Children who were abandoned by their sovereignty due to the death or lack of guardianship. It’s a shame really. However, we make good use of them.”

  After another turn of the hall, they arrived at a dead end. It appeared as if the liminal space they had been journeying through wasn’t infinte.

  “One moment.” Dr. Roe said, he faced the wall on his right. A small opening appeared, and he keyed in a long string of numbers. A series of clunks resounded from what appeared to be a solid wall. Seams revealed themselves as a large vault door slowly opened to a large room.

  Saeva did not know if the room seemed cavernous because of the small hallway they had spent several minutes traversing or if its scale was truly in a league of its own. Foam panels of various colors coated each wall. They sounddeadened the room to what felt like an impossible silence. In its center, two chairs stood facing one another. They each took a seat.

  “Now, I’m well aware of your false level assignment,” Dr. Roe said. His expression was devoid of any life. Saeva felt a cold chill pass over her. “I think with effort we can find the block and unlock your level. Don’t worry. It will be difficult to surmount but I have high expectations of you.”

  Saeva tried to reply but her voice cracked. His words stabbed into thoughts; her mind. False level assignment? Memories of her childhood flashed before her eyes; the chanting of various bullies calling her a ‘Null.’ Her heart began to race as she thought of what it would take to manifest something she didn’t have.

  “And?” Dr. Roe said. The singular word seemed to propogate further within her mind. It brought with it a symphony of moments. The flood of visuals seemed to focus on the subject levels. The strange phenomenon that plagued their modern-day society.

  A scene showed of Ryan, who had been the first of her friends to manifest. They had been in a class and a roman numeral II hovered in front of him. Soon after she remembered the desk, he was sitting in seemed to levitate off the ground. Weeks later Veronica showed up to her doorstep ice cubes raining from her hands. She remembered the hope she had felt. A dream that she would be a level I and have the ability to make anything she wished manifest into existence.

  An immature thought that hadn’t been grounded in reality. Level abilities weren't blanket propositions that were brought into being. They were a focused and specific statement or activity that could be repeated. And so, she recalled the months and years of waiting for that roman numeral to float in front of her. A moment that never came.

  The floor beneath her caved as she fell deeper within her thoughts. Soon a black abyss rose around her. The visuals of her life seemed to flash ever so fast by her as she plummeted. Soon she was surrounded by nothing.

  “And?” Dr. Roe’s voice seemed to emanate from the darkness around her. With the manifestation of the questioning statement, the world around her shifted once more.

  With a bright shimmer, she found herself in a large meadow. In the distance, a large mountain loomed over the horizon. It was the same landscape as the simulation test from the AAL practical.

  “That is strange.” The disembodied voice of Dr. Roe said around her. She heard a bit of concern filter into his previously emotionless statements.

  What is matter? The words flooded the experience around them.

  “What is matter?” Dr. Roe said, confused. More to himself than the girl he was assisting. He had repeated the sensation which had been more than spoken words alone.

  The simulation felt real. It was concrete and solid. She could feel the uneven ground beneath her feet. The grass that surrounded her smelled like a pleasant air freshener. She could feel the immense heat from the sun that loomed over head. The thermal energies seemed to gain substantial presence filled with unreasonably strong warmth. It felt like a power she had not experienced before. The heat nothing like the artificial holographic sky she had grew up with. Reflexis city felt like paradise up until this moment.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The air closed in around her. A breeze picked up and transitioned into a strong wind. Large thick clouds rolled across the sky gathering. Dark and ominous, they slowly filled the entire sky.

  A storm manifested above her; thunderous booms pounded the atmosphere as lightning danced across the world. With every strike pressure built. Her body tensed, muscles tightened and hands clenched; more out of recent habit than anything else.

  A wind, far stronger than anything the artificial environment of Reflexis could manifest, appeared once more. She struggled to keep her feet planted firmly as the grass around her flattened. The ground began to rumble. Large rocks descended from the sky. The mountain, now barely visible behind smoke.

  She stumbled, with her right foot she caught herself before she fell. And in that moment, a large chunk of regolith descended. Right above her, the skyscraper sized rock tore through the air, heading towards her. She covered her face, bracing for the inevitable impact, as a bright light manifested around her.

  A bolt of lightning channeled from the ground beneath her feet and into the large chunk. And as quickly as it had came the entire seen vaporized before her. Dust rained around her.

  The world around Saeva grew still. In those quiet seconds, the world seemed to pause. And then from the dirt below, trees sprouted around her. They grew steadily until they were hundreds of feet tall. Tdey towered above her. The organic feel felt foreign.

  As most of human space was artificially scaped, she was someone who had never experienced the raw nature of the world. She inhaled. Deep breathes of pine and sap filled her lungs. Closing her eyes she felt the world fade into dust.

  She snapped back into her body. It was forceful. A silent scream wrenched from her lips as the sounds were torn from the air by the silent room around her. His eyes rolled back, a stream of black blood dripped from them. Dr. Roe lay there seizing.

  She didn't know what to do. Nothing had prepared her for the scene in front of her. And while they had been in combat training for what felt like the entirety of her life, she wasn't prepared for the horror that writhed in front of her.

  The edges of his skin seemed to dither into the world. As if something were slowly eating away at the very essence of him. She watched in forced silenced, ragged shallow breaths racketed her body.

  ...

  “And what happened after that?” Lillian asked her. The two sat facing each other in Lillian’s office.

  “I came to, and he was sitting there, in that state.” Saeva said. She shuddered. The scene had burned itself deep into her mind's eye. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He will be fine. To be frank we had been wary of this happening.” Lillian said. Her voice had a regretful tone.

  “Wary?”

  “Yes. Did that scene remind you of anything?”

  “The practical.”

  “Yes. The practical. That's exactly what that scene was.”

  “But how? I didn’t get to see the entire thing. How did I remember it so well?”

  “You didn’t. While yes, the scene is a recreation of an actual memory, it is a memory of Dr. Roe’s.”

  “He experienced that?” Saeva thought back to the depth the experience held. She could still feel the rumble of the earth somehow.

  “Well, the event is actually the terriforming of the former site of Mount St Helens. So yes, the event did happen. Dr. Roe was a child at the time however. His family had been too close to the demolition zone. And well, you see the rest.”

  “But how could I have seen it so clearly?” Saeva asked.

  “Did Dr. Roe tell you his level?”

  “No.”

  “Can you guess?” Lillian’s gaze seemed to search her face for something Saeva couldn't pick up on.

  “Level II?” Saeva tried.

  “Yes, it's quite the ability. Dr. Roe created the final exam for the AAL practical. It's a psychosomatic hallucination. When the examinee walks into the final exam. The holographic chamber isn't just producing a synthetic environment. It's able to pick up and read the thoughts and emotional stress of the one being tested. This is filtered through a program that mimics the nature of Dr. Roes ability. Do you know why?”

  “To gauge the strength of peoples level abilities.” Saeva guessed.

  “Not quite, the real purpose to is check what their level ability is.”

  Saeva drew in a sharp breath.

  “You mean thats something thats possible to test for?” Saeva asked quickly.

  “Yes. And it is the real requirement for citizenship. The rest of the examination is simply used to distract the population from understanding that those in power are watching.”

  “So when a null takes it, you'd know they were powerless. But how?” Saeva asked. She thought of her friend hope, and then the results of her own exam.

  “I should have talked about this when I first met with you after your examination. But this was the reason you were flagged for petition to join the AAL even though your examination technically had completed. The results were manually entered into the system of fail non-complied.”

  Saevas chair swallowed her. Her mind wandered to the random moments she felt something pulling at the edge of her attention. The incident she had the morning of her practical. The fact that the examination was literally called a practical, meaning it was a practical application of ability.

  “Wait its a practical exam of Level ability? Is that why I had additional mental training scheduled today?” Saeva asked, after a minute.

  “AAL Practical, is a practical examination of a citizens aptitude for unknown quantum phenomenon. While you completed the exam, the results hadn’t fully compiled. There was something manifesting before the systems glitched.”

  With a thought a screen appeared next to the two women. A video looped on the display. A scene of Saeva from when her assessment had materialized. There was a haze of dust that seemed to coat the surroundings, making odd gradients along the various components of the landscape. A dark miasma seemed to permeate the vast space, something that had not been visible to Saeva at the time.

  “Quite familiar?” Lillian said. Her words broke the silence that had loomed over the two. “This is oddly similar phenomena as to what affected Dr. Roe.”

  Saeva didn’t want to conclude what Lillian had directed her towards over the course of their conversation. The silence building as insurmountable pressure fell onto her shoulders.

  As if she understood what Saeva was going through, a thought that Saeva doubted was true, Lillian dismissed her to go about her normal routine.

  “We will let you know if anything of his state changes. I understand that was a difficult experience for you, Saeva. But I will remind you that it is a necessity to remain steadfast through difficult times.”

  Saeva disappeared through the door leaving Lillian alone. She connected a comm and braced herself for a very difficult conversation for Director Grey.