"Yeah, and I can sprout wings out of my butt and fly!" his uncle quipped.
"It's all true, I'm telling you!" Jake said as he rolled his eyes.
"Did you wedge your oxygen tube in something out there? Did your brain asphyxiate and make you hallucinate?" his uncle said heatedly.
"No! I..." he tried to say.
"Right, I've got no time for your shenanigans son, we need to mine as much of this asteroid as we can before somebody else comes and boots us off this rock."
He shrugged. "Okay uncle, I'll see you later."
"You get back to that witch and that witchcraft of yours."
"Classic uncle, calling my virtual assistant a witch." he replied.
"Yeah, whatever that thing is, now scoot."
He sighed, and on his way back to his compartment, he bumped into Hannah.
"Is it true? Did you find something out there? What was it?" she asked.
"I'm not sure, uncle thinks I was hallucinating."
"And what do
you
think?" was her question.
He contemplated an answer for a moment. Did he somehow hallucinate it all? He'd have to ask EVA later.
"Maybe I did, I wish I recorded the whole damn thing!" he exclaimed.
Just then, a buzzer sounded and she looked at her belt.
"Okay, you go on and get some rest. I'll see you around" she said hastily as she hurried out of the way.
Maybe it was a good idea after all. He headed for his compartment again, wishing for no interruptions this time, and he found none on his way back.
"EVA, did I imagine all of that out there?" he asked as he looked around.
"Imagine all of what?" his AI enquired.
"What? You too? Forget it, I'm going to bed. We can talk tomorrow." and so he did.
Slouched in his berth, he had the strangest dream.
For the first time in his life he was standing on solid ground. He stood by a lake, and the beautiful girl from his simulation was there, naked, and she was talking; although no voice would come out.
It was dark, but he could see the light coming off of his face. He looked at his reflection in the lake and saw his eyes aglow.
His eyes were radiating a faint blue light. He freaked out and moved away, but as he got more agitated the lights only intensified.
Sensing his distress, the girl moved closer and softly touched his cheek. Her touch was warm, and it made him feel safe. Safer than he'd ever felt in his entire life.
And for the first time in his life, he was content.
He stretched as he woke up, feeling oddly relaxed. But his panic returned and grew worse when he opened his eyes and could still see the faint blue glow reflecting off the compartment wall in front of him.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, when he opened them again, the glow was completely gone. He unstrapped himself and floated into the compartment.
"I must be losing my mind." he pondered out loud.
"You are not."
the feminine voice replied.
"What the hell? Who is this?" he yelled as he looked at the empty compartment around him.
"I am your virtual assistant." his AI chimed in.
"Not you, EVA, I'm talking to the other voice." he said.
"What other voice? At the present only you and I exist in this compartment, I can detect no other sounds." it said.
"Never mind."
"Oh, nobody else can even hear me, you can just think to me if you like. I'll hear you all the same."
the voice whispered.
"What? Are you.. are you reading my mind?"
he thought.
"Not reading it per-se. More like settling in."
it
said
quietly.
"Some interesting memories you have in here, interesting imagination too. Surely full of plump breasts and..."
"Stop right there! You can see my memories?"
he interjected.
"Oh yes, I can access them with ease, it's quite thrilling, seeing a human life through the eyes of a human!"
"Oh god, is this latent schizophrenia? I need help." he said aloud.
"Shush
,
don't go making a scene now. We don't want a repeat of your performance at Luna now, do we?"
it said sympathetically.
He flushed at the mention of the disgraceful event.
"Just who or what the hell are you exactly?"
he asked.
"You can think of me as an interactive thought."
it said slowly.
"A what? Define 'interactive'."
"A thought that can think back at you."
"And how did you come to be in my head?"
"Oh, let's see. When my mother lured you to that rock..."
"Your mother? What rock?"
"Let me explain."
And ponderously, it did.
"When you approached that rock, or what you thought was a beacon of some kind, you were approaching my mother. Who decided to gift you with me."
"Until that point, I simply did not exist."
"But I simply exist because I can't not."
"I am what you could call a probability wave, and a sapient one at that, a quantum phenomena that's beyond your education or comprehension, suffice to say that my kind roams the universe in search of beings like yourself."
"I am a pattern in the æther, and so are you. We both exist at different levels of energy and different states. But we both exist. I am a self-organising pattern of probabilities, while you are a self-organising pattern of atoms and molecules. And just as atoms make you up, probabilities are my major component."
"As you can guess, intelligent life is quite rare, and so my kind sent rocks to your world amongst others that have golden zones and are viable candidates for life, but we got caught in what you call the asteroid belt, and my mother was the last to survive the æons of time it took for your kind to evolve and actually reach space."
"She waited patiently until, finally, you happened upon her. So she lured you in with an energy signature similar to what she knew your beacons emitted. She didn't know if someone would actually come to investigate. But she hoped for the best. And you did."
"And so she
touched
you and brought me to life."
"She died when she did that, you know? Her own pattern shattered; she had to die so that I could live, and be with you.
"
"Why did she have to die?"
"Don't interrupt me... and to answer your question: she expended the last of her energy trying to reach out to you."
"Wait, you're saying that she was a
she
? Are
you
a she?"
he asked.
"No, I'm genderless, so was she. I'm only using the female form of addressing because I'm mated to you, in which case I became a she."
"You're what?!"
She paused for a moment, then continued.
"I know it's hard to comprehend, but I'm mated to you now. I can't leave you or bind to another. We're mated for life."
He listened quietly as his mind reeled.
"Don't worry, that doesn't mean you can't find a human mate, but I'll always be part of your life."
"I was struggling with your pattern until you went to sleep, only then could I make sense of the jumble of mess inside your brain. When your neurons aligned and the pattern settled, I could finally make sense of what I was feeling. Ah, to feel. That's a new experience! Ha ha! I'm a newborn, you see."
"I still retain most of my parent's memories and experiences, it just takes time to recall them. I can also access your own. They're as much a part of me now as I am part of you."
"But.. where did your kind come from?"
