Chapter 3: 3. The Subspace Emissary

Zeff blinked hard. 'Am I dreaming?' He thought. "Or is this the after-life?" he thought again with disdain.

It had to be one or the other.

First of all, there was his clothes. He was wearing a forest green long sleeved shirt with black jeans. The arms of the long sleeved shirt were nearly twice as long as they needed to be to the point where the excess sleeve went almost a foot beyond his fingertips. Otherwise, it was actually quite comfortable and fit perfectly.

The pants he was wearing were torn at the knees and tattered at the ankles. He couldn't remember exactly what he had been wearing before but he knew he hadn't been wearing a get-up like this.

Secondly, there was the place itself.

This place, this scene, he suddenly found himself standing in, was like nothing he had ever seen in his life. The floor was like beautiful ivory or marble except it was many times more reflective than Zeff felt it should've been.

As he looked as his reflection it stretched and distorted as though the floor was alive but under his feet he could feel no movement at all. Coming out of the floor seemingly at random were countless thin black pillars covered with glowing green veins running this way and that. Each pillar was tilted the exact same degree, pointed in the exact same direction, and went to the exact same height, about 10 feet, their veins pulsing and glowing dimly. The strange design of the room made Zeff feel like he wasn't standing upright but instead leaning to one side at all times. Every few seconds a sound like thunder, deep and low, reverberated through the room making the veins on the pillars glow a bit brighter and the reflections on the floor sway rhythmically as if possessed.

About 100 yards away from him in all directions the floor seemed to… end. From where he was standing he couldn't quite tell but it looked like the floor simply stopped like he was standing on a giant platform or flying saucer. All around him, starting at where the floor ended all the way to directly above his head, light-years away, was an ocean of stars. Energy and light swirled and danced. Dazzling clusters of stars and giant gas nebulae colored the scene with their purple-green hues.

The whole scene was chaotic, and mesmerizing, and beautiful but mostly familiar. Zeff couldn't quite put his finger on it. He felt like he had been here before or at least seen a place like this in a picture or movie. Zeff let his eyes roam. Other than the occasional *Boom* and the ambient hum that seemed to reverberate from the floor there wasn't much going on here. This wasn't like a dream he had ever had before. In a dream he could never quite remember when or where it had started but Zeff could vividly remember—

"Oh, Crap!" he exclaimed as he suddenly remembered Sylvan and the Tender-Man and reached up in alarm to touch his neck to see if it was still bleeding.

Nothing! He was clean as a whistle!

He hurriedly rolled up his excessively long sleeves and, sure enough, sitting on his left ring finger was the obsidian ring that Sylvan had given him.

But what was going on here? This was certainly not a dream. A few seconds had already passed and nothing 'special' had happened.

Unless you could take jewelry to the after-life, this certainly wasn't heaven.

"Where in the world am I?" He said perplexed. He began to walk forward, toward the edge of the 'platform'. As he took his first step green light waves shot across the floor and up the pillars making soft buzzing sounds as they went. Zeff didn't find himself as stunned or amazed by the phenomena as at first he might have thought he should be. This, too, was something that, even though he knew he had never seen, felt familiar. He just couldn't shake this odd sense of deja vu like everything, from the strange glowing obsidian pillars, to the reflective floor, to the literal space above his head, induced in him. He took another step then another.

Just as before, jade waves propagated across the floor and up the pillars with every step, colliding, forming smaller ripples that spread and eventually dissipated into nothing.

Zeff arrived at the edge in no time and gasped.

Directly above his head there was an innumerable number of stars and beautiful gas formations like something straight out of a documentary. The further down he allowed his gaze to fall, however, the stars became fewer and fewer in number and further and further apart. When he looked straight down all he found was an abyss as black as the void staring back at him. Zeff got down on his belly and pulled himself forward so that his chest was half on the edge and half over it, his head hanging down so that he could look and see exactly what this platform really was.

He had been partially right.

As far as he could tell this 'platform' wasn't a platform at all, but a floating disk about as thick as his fist.

Zeff let out a quick laugh that wasn't devoid, he thought, of the necessary amount of hysteria.

He slid backward and stood to his feet still facing the emptiness of space. 'Somehow or another I've found myself stranded on a flying saucer floating through space…' He thought. He took in a deep breath and filled his lungs with air. 'Yet I can still breath?' He exhaled smoothly letting the air escape and motorboat his lips. "Maybe it's finally happened." He said out loud. "Maybe I've finally lost it."

Suddenly there was a loud whooshing sound as, one by one, stars began to fall from the distant heavens and gather just above the center of the flying saucer where they came together to form a giant floating mass of light.

After several seconds the light mass began to shift and shrink and condense, spinning all the while. First slowly, then quickly, then slowly again, changing from a bright white to yellow and across the color spectrum until it settle on a pleasant light blue color. It pulsated a few more times and then finally shrunk even further losing it's curvature and gain sharp jutting edges, until it became a perfect diamond structure no bigger than a van, floating there, rotating slowly about it's axis.

All of this took place over the course of about 10 seconds. So Zeff really hadn't had the time to react initially. But now that there was unsettling silence he felt even more uneasy. It was as if something bad was going to happen any second.

zed slowly and cautiously made his way back to the center of the platform where the diamond was located. As he approached the sound of a high female voice resonated across the platform causing Zeff to jump with fright.

>>Self.Instantiate AI.4.18.3: Complete.

>> Initializing Subspace Protocol 2.0.2…

>> nanoManipulator (dRas) 100% distrubuted...

>> dRas running at full capacity…

>> Initialization complete.

>> Preparing: Draco-Rex Contagion AKA Dracophage for administration…

>> Compatibility with subject-04, Zephaniah Corad: suboptimal.

>> Chance of successful Dracophage replication: beneath 20%…

>> Likelihood of subject expiration: 81.73%

>>Rendering—

"W-Wait just a minute!" Wailed Zeff into the sky. "What do you mean 'likelihood of expiration' being 80 percent?!"

>> Forgive me, Subject-04. But in accordance with protocol I must—

"80! Percent?!"

>> I can see that you are rather distraught Subject-04. I am here to—

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"Yeah! YEAH, I'm distraught! A few seconds ago I was about to die from a bullet wound to my Aorta! Now I'm in this Godforsaken place talking to an invisible woman who keeps calling me Subject-04, for some reason. And on top of all that you casually drop a bomb on me with this 80% chance of 'expiration'!

>> (Sigh)

"Did you just SIGH at me?!"

>> I realize that you are very emotional right now, but please understand that I'm here to answer all your questions... in the 4 minutes in 44 seconds until you expire due to blood loss.

Zeff, utterly confused and annoyed by the mounting situation, could only throw up his hands in frustration. But after a few seconds he composed himself. 'I have no clue what's going on.' He reasoned to himself, using his excessively long sleeve to scratch his chin. 'But one thing's for sure: I'm still somehow in danger of dying.' He had to be smart or he might really end up dead.

"Okay." Zeff huffed. "Please tell me what you think is important as quickly as you can and if I have any questions I'll ask them as they come to me." He thought for another second and added, "And is there any way to know how much time until I… 'expire'... without having to ask?"

At once, just above the diamond, there appeared a timer that read "Time until Expiration: 4:13" And it was going down by the second.

>> Is this to your liking, Subject-04?

Zeff had been too distracted to notice before, but for the first time, as the mystery lady had spoken, Zeff could see that the giant floating diamond would brighten ever so slightly with each word. That was it. The voice had to be coming from the diamond! He would have commented but the clock was ticking so he simply replied "It is. And call me Zeff."

>> Of course, Zeff. You may call me Aida, if it pleases you.

Zeff simply nodded.

>> I am subspace emissary, AI.4.18.3. The onboarding Artificial intelligence for the pre-active nanoManipulator AKA the dracoRex Administration System, or dRas, for short. Essentially, upon putting on the black ring you now find on your left hand, the dracoRex, I am able to be accessed by your nervous system and appear here, in this virtualization of your mental subspace, as the avatar you see floating before you.

As she said 'avatar' the the floating diamond flashed purple.

>> From this point, I am to fulfill my duties to you, both as an emissary and onboarding AI, in three primary ways: (1) To summon you to this virtual subspace where 100 seconds here is 1 second in the physical world. (2) To explain the dRas to you and (3) to answer any and all questions you might have from the vast knowledge I possess. Finally, once I am done fulfilling these three tasks I am required to delete myself from your subconscious and the dracoRex, turning over all power to the nanoManipulator.

>> How are you following so far, Zeff?

Zeff felt like someone had poured magma into his brain. This was altogether too much to take in at one time. But, seeing that the timer was already down to 3 minutes and 22 seconds, Zeff decided it would be best to get as much information as possible and then sort it out later if he could. "I understand." Zeff said, making no effort to hide the urgency in his voice. "Tell me about this virus and why do I suddenly have an 80 percent chance of dying instead of a 65 percent chance, as Dr. White told me?"

>> You are currently fatally wounded. Optimal survival probability is not possible.

That made sense…

>> You have not yet been infected by the Dracophage virus, which requires final authorization from you before I can administer it. But when you are, there will be a nearly 20 percent chance that you will be healed, and an 84.6 percent chance that you will die a bitterly painful death.

It was not lost on Zeff that, earlier, he had had an 81% percent chance of dying. There was no question why it had increased. The longer he waited, the lower his chances of survival became… He pondered if he should just forgo the explanations and get it over with. But there were a few more things he had to know.

"Could you tell me, Aida, what kind of virus is Dracophage? How could injecting myself with a virus possibly save my life."

>> I do not advise you inquire on this topic. A proper explanation would exceed your remaining time to expiry.

"Give me the condensed and simplified version then please!" Zeff groaned. The timer read 2 minutes 56 seconds, and counting.

>> A virus can not replicate itself. It instead injects it's genetic material into a host cell, hijacking it, and forcing it to create copies of the virus until it is destroyed. Dracophage, however, rather than hijacking and destroying other cells, has been altered to change cells on a genetic level by means beyond the scope of this explanation. It splices the host's DNA with that of a dr—

"Wait! So I would have healing powers?"

>> …Among other things? The human body is not capable of undergoing such drastic splicing from such drastically different DNA so quickly which is why the nanoManipulator, a system for controlling the rate at which the hosts DNA is spliced, is needed.

That was just about all Zeff needed to hear as the timer hit 1 minute. "Okay! Do it!"

>> Are you officially giving me auth—

"YES!" Zeff shouted as the timer hit 55 seconds. "I authorize you to inject me with Dragosage. Now!"

>> Dracophage.

"Yes. Dracophage. Whatever!"

>> Authorization received. Probabilty of success: 9%.

9 percent?! Zeff suddenly felt like throwing up… Why had he waited so long?

>> Whether you survive or not, Zeff, we will never meet again outside of this subspace. However, you may interact with the dRas at any time by saying 'Skill Tree'.

Zeff was desperate to know more. He had a buh-million and one more questions about Dr. Sylvan, about the ring and virus, about everything! What the heck did 'skill tree' mean, for example. But his questions would have to go unanswered. It was extremely likely, 91% likely, in fact, that in the next moments he would die a gruesome death. But it was better to have a 91% chance of dying than a 100% chance any day.

>> Good luck, Subject-04.

>> Dracophage administration: Commencing.

>> Splicing: Ancient Dragon DNA to 5%

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