Adam snapped back to consciousness almost immediately. He didn't feel a transition, that groggy feeling from when you first wake up. He had heard that in near-death situations, people tend to forget the most traumatic portions of the event, yet for him, he remembered every single second of what just happened. The bus, the screeching of tires, the snap of his bones, and above all, the man who pushed him.

  He lay there, mentally trying to figure out what was going on. He did not feel pain, but then again, he couldn't really feel anything at all. Whenever he tried to move his arms or legs, all he could feel was an odd void where there should have been movement.

  He experienced a moment of panic, followed immediately by a sort of bemused surprise. The panic seemed to be purely intellectual and somewhat dissociative if he was being honest. He had no sensation of breathing, increased heart rate, or fight-or-flight muscle tension. Nothing. While he was normally very analytical, especially when it came to some of the reports he had to read and write, this seemed weird even for him.

  “Am I paralyzed from the forehead down? Maybe I’m in a coma?” . The thoughts came one after the other as he tried to figure out what was going on. Gathering some of his resolve, he opened his eyes. Or at least tried to. Nothing happened.

  This time, he panicked for real. Losing his sight had always been a lingering fear, ever since that close call in Afghanistan. A grenade had gone off too close, the flash and some bits of shrapnel blinding him temporarily, leaving him stumbling in the dust and chaos. Even though it had been years ago, he still had the deep-seated fear of being blinded again. Yet once again, the panic didn’t self-reinforce. There was no adrenaline rush, no nothing. He couldn’t think of a medical condition that would do that to someone. Maybe he was on drugs? Perhaps very strong ones?

  Determined to get a handle on things, he tried again, really thinking about opening his eyes this time. He envisioned the entire thing, the mechanics, the feeling of opening your eyes for the first time, everything one could possibly think of… And with no transition, he could see once again.

  The relief coursing through his very being was indescribable, yet fleeting. The relief quickly twisted into confusion. He was upright. Or at least, he felt upright. He was no longer trapped in that void of nothingness, yet something still wasn’t right. He should have been looking at a ceiling, at medical equipment, or even just at the sterile white panels of a hospital room. Instead, he was staring straight ahead at a wall.

  The room was blindingly white, so much so that it took him a moment to process its details. It could have been a hospital room, or a laboratory, or even some nondescript government office if he were being honest. The walls were bare except for a single small painting—something abstract, splashes of deep blue and black against a neutral background. It felt strangely out of place in an otherwise featureless environment. On the far wall, there was a large window, though the view was obstructed by white curtains. Bright light streamed through, though whether it was natural sunlight or artificial fluorescence, he couldn't tell.

  He expected to see his body in the foreground—perhaps draped in hospital sheets, connected to monitoring equipment. Instead, there was… nothing. No legs. No arms. No outline of his chest beneath a blanket. Just a flat, featureless plane, as if he were sitting at a desk, staring outward.

  “The fuck…?” Adam thought as he tried to move his head to look around but found that he couldn’t. There was no resistance, no strain—just nothing, as if the very concept of movement had been stripped from him. It took him a moment to realize that the issue wasn’t just a lack of control. It was also perspective.

  The room seemed deep and narrow, but it was wrong in a way he couldn’t quite describe. When he focused on the painting on the wall, the colors morphed and stretched, shifting in ways that defied logic. The deep blues bled outward, warping like liquid before snapping back into place. It was as if the image was being rendered in real-time, glitching for a fraction of a second before stabilizing again.

  Something was off about the lighting, too. The brightness filtering through the curtain was too uniform, without the subtle shifts and shadows that natural light should cast. The longer he stared, the more he noticed other details that didn’t sit right. The textures of the walls were too smooth, lacking any imperfections. The air was utterly still—no hum of a ventilation system, no distant sounds from outside.

  Adam concentrated, trying to keep his vision steady. The more he focused, the less the room seemed to distort, but it took effort—far more than it should have. It was as if his sight was being constantly corrected and adjusted by something beyond his control. He forced himself to stay calm, to push down the rising anxiety. Breathe, focus, assess. That was what they had drilled into him in the military, and right now, it was the only thing keeping him grounded.

  Then, he heard it. A soft click, followed by the slow creak of a door opening. Adam couldn’t turn his head to look, but he could sense movement. A figure stepped into view—a man in a black suit, carrying a folder tucked neatly under one arm. He moved quickly and quietly, his polished shoes clicking softly against the pristine floor. His expression was unreadable, with much of his face hidden behind a white mask.

  For a brief moment, Adam felt the man's eyes on him. Or at least, he thought he did. It was an unsettling sensation—like being observed without truly being seen. The man studied him, or whatever he was now, then, without a word, pulled out a chair from the corner of the room and sat down.

  He placed the folder on his lap, his fingers tapping it once before finally speaking.

  "Good. You're awake."

  The man in the black suit flipped open the folder with practiced ease, his expression remaining unreadable as he scanned the contents. He turned a page, then another, as if refreshing his memory before finally speaking.

  “Adam Stafford. Age fifty-six. Born in Richmond, Virginia. Enlisted in the United States Army at nineteen, served fifteen years before transferring to the Department of Defense. Specialized in logistics and security planning. Married to Bonnie Stafford. Two children—Emma and Alex Stafford, both previously enrolled at Georgetown University. No criminal record. No significant financial debts. A commendable service record with multiple deployments, including Afghanistan.”

  He paused for a moment, his fingers tapping lightly against the folder before he continued. “Survived an IED attack in 2008, sustained minor injuries. Promoted to Sergeant First Class before your transition to government service in 2010. Officially set to retire in January 2024.” The man finally looked up, or at least seemed to—Adam still couldn’t be sure if he was actually making eye contact. “Does all of that sound correct?”

  Adam tried to respond, to say yes, to demand to know what the hell was going on, but the moment he attempted to speak, an earsplitting, mechanical screech tore through the room. The noise wasn’t just external—it reverberated inside him, like his own thoughts were being shredded by a feedback loop. If he had a body, he would have clamped his hands over his ears, but he could do nothing but endure it.

  The man in the suit, however, remained completely unfazed. He didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink. Instead, he simply turned another page in the folder and said, “The modulator should be working in a moment. Try again.”

  Adam hesitated, his mind still reeling from the sound that had just erupted from him. What the hell was that? He had tried to speak, but instead of words, some kind of horrific mechanical distortion had ripped through the air. He had felt it inside his own thoughts, like his mind had short-circuited for a brief, agonizing moment.

  But the man in the suit showed no reaction. No concern, no curiosity—nothing. He merely sat there, waiting, as if this was just another routine conversation.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Adam focused, pushing down his unease. He had no choice but to try again.

  “…What the hell is going on?”

  This time, his voice came through—raw, distorted, but intelligible. It carried a strange metallic edge, like it was passing through a synthetic filter. The words felt unnatural, distant, as if they weren’t entirely his own.

  The man nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Good. The neural modulator has synchronized. Your speech function is now stable.” He closed the folder with a soft snap and placed it neatly on the table beside him. “Now, let’s get to the real question. Do you know where you are?”

  Adam didn’t even have to think about his answer. “No,” he said firmly. “I have no goddamn clue where I am.” His voice still carried that strange mechanical undertone, but he didn’t care. “And I want to know right now what the fuck is going on. Why can’t I move? Why can’t I breathe? Why—” He stopped, realizing just how much was wrong. He hadn’t felt his chest rise and fall since waking up. He hadn’t felt anything.

  His anger surged. “Why can’t I feel anything at all?”

  The man in the suit remained composed, his expression unreadable. He simply folded his hands together, as if Adam’s panic was nothing more than an expected reaction. “That’s a lot of questions,” he said, his tone maddeningly calm. “And I will answer them. But let’s start with the simplest one.”

  He gestured subtly toward Adam—not toward his body, because there was no body. “The reason you can’t move, can’t breathe, and can’t feel... is because you no longer have a biological form.”

  Adam’s mind stuttered. “What?”

  “You are not in a hospital. You are not in a coma. You are not dreaming. Your consciousness has been successfully transferred into an artificial intelligence framework.” The man leaned back in his chair, his expression still neutral but with the faintest hint of amusement. “To put it plainly, Adam—you are a machine now.”

  Adam’s thoughts screeched to a halt. He was certain he had misheard. A machine? That was impossible. That was insane. He wanted to laugh, to tell the man in the suit that he was full of shit, but the words died before they could form. Because deep down, in some part of his mind that he wasn’t ready to acknowledge, something about it made sense.

  The lack of sensation. The glitching vision. The way his voice sounded wrong.

  “No,” Adam said, shaking his head—or at least, trying to shake his head. The movement never came, but his perspective wavered slightly, like a floating camera repositioning itself. It only fueled his panic. “That’s not possible. That’s not fucking possible!”

  The man in the suit exhaled slowly, as if he had heard this reaction a hundred times before. “It is possible. And, as you’ve probably started to notice, it has already happened.”

  “No,” Adam repeated, his voice rising, laced with frustration and fear. “I was crossing the street. I was hit by a truck. How the hell am I here? How the hell am I even—” He cut himself off. Alive? Could he even use that word anymore?

  The man in the suit tilted his head slightly, as if debating how much to tell him. “Your body suffered catastrophic damage. The kind no amount of surgery or medical intervention could fix.” His fingers drummed against the folder. “However, before your physical form failed completely, an opportunity was presented. One that ensured you didn’t die—at least, not in the traditional sense.”

  Adam’s mind reeled. “You’re saying someone… what? Uploaded me into a computer?”

  “More accurately, into a quantum mainframe used to house AI,” the man corrected. “But yes, in principle, that is what happened.”

  Adam tried to process it, tried to wrap his head around the sheer impossibility of it all, but everything in him resisted. He had always considered himself a rational man, someone who dealt in logic and reality. And this? This wasn’t reality.

  His voice came out quieter this time, edged with something dangerously close to desperation. “Why? Why would anyone do this to me?”

  The man in the suit finally gave a small, knowing smile. “Because we need you, Adam.”

  Adam’s confusion deepened, and for a long moment, he didn’t say anything. His mind was still trying to grasp the idea that he wasn’t in his own body, that he had somehow been transferred into a machine—a quantum mainframe, whatever that was, as the man in the suit had called it. And now, this stranger was telling him that he was needed for something? It made no damn sense.

  “What?” Adam finally managed, his tone flat. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The man in the suit leaned back slightly, folding his hands in his lap. “Tell me, Adam—what year do you think it is?”

  Adam frowned. Of all the things he expected to be asked, that was not one of them. “What year?” he repeated. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just humor me.”

  Adam exhaled—or at least, he tried to. It had become a habit by now, one that only reminded him he no longer had lungs. He forced himself to answer. “It’s 2024.”

  The man in the suit let out a soft chuckle, shaking his head slightly.

  Something about that reaction set Adam off. He was already standing at the edge of panic, barely keeping himself together, and now this guy had the nerve to laugh at him? His voice sharpened, laced with frustration. “The hell’s so funny?”

  The man in the suit raised an eyebrow but didn’t look particularly fazed by Adam’s reaction. Instead, he flipped open the folder again, idly running a finger down the page as if scanning through notes. “It’s just that I’ve had this conversation many times before, and every single time, the subjects have given me a different year. Some say 2015. Others say 2030. I once had someone insist it was 1946.” He glanced back at Adam, that small knowing smile still tugging at his lips. “And every single one of them was wrong.”

  Adam felt something cold settle in his thoughts. He didn’t like where this was going.

  “…Then what’s the right answer?” He asked slowly.

  The man in the suit closed the folder again, looking directly at him now. “That,” he said, “depends on what you’re willing to accept.”

  Adam clenched his jaw, or at least tried to. “Try me.”

  The man gave the faintest smirk, as if pleased with his response, and then casually folded his hands together. “The year, as you understand it, no longer applies. You were recovered, or at least, your brain scans were. Once we acquired them, they were placed into this system during the Ark-Light Initiative’s third phase of operations.” He gestured slightly toward the walls around them. “But the time when you existed as Adam Stafford, the man who walked out of his office and into an accident? That time is long gone.”

  Adam felt something sink in his chest. His thoughts raced, calculating the possibilities. Was it months? Years? He didn’t know what the hell the Ark-Light Initiative was, but the way the man spoke made it sound established, as if it had been running for a long time.

  His voice came out colder now. “How long?”

  The man’s expression didn’t change. “From your last conscious memory? The day you were struck by that truck?” He tilted his head slightly, watching him. “At minimum, a couple of centuries.”

  Adam went still.

  The words hit him like a hammer to the skull, and for a moment, everything else in the room—the glitching painting, the artificial lighting, even the eerie stillness of the air—faded into the background.

  He wanted to scream that the man was lying, that this was a cruel joke, that there was no way in hell he had been trapped in this… this thing for centuries. But deep down, in the pit of his mind, something inside him knew.

  Something inside him believed it.

  His voice barely came out at all at this point.

  “…What year is it?”

  The man in the suit’s small smile faded. He sat back in his chair, adjusting his cuffs before finally answering.

  “If we were still counting time the way you remember it,” he said, “then it would be somewhere around the year 2365.”

  Adam felt like the floor had been ripped out from under him. His thoughts spun wildly, unable to grasp the enormity of what he had just heard. 2365? That wasn’t just a few decades, or even a hundred years. That was three centuries past the life he had known. His family, his friends—everything he had ever cared about—was long gone, turned to dust while he was trapped in… whatever this was.

  His horror swelled, his mind screaming in protest, but before he could even formulate a response, the man in the suit suddenly lifted a hand to his ear. He went silent, listening to something Adam couldn’t hear. His expression didn’t change, but there was a quiet efficiency to the way he processed the incoming message.

  After a few seconds, he lowered his hand and stood. He smoothed out the front of his suit and gave Adam a final glance, his neutral demeanor unchanged. “Well,” he said, “it looks like we’ve arrived.”

  Adam’s confusion barely had time to register before the man continued. “Welcome to your new posting,” he said with a hint of dry amusement. “I do hope you enjoy your new job as Guardian of Elum 3.”

  The words barely had meaning to Adam. His mind was still reeling, his panic barely held in check. “What? What the hell does that mean? Where the fuck am I—?”

  Before he could finish, his entire world shut off.

  His vision vanished in an instant, as if someone had yanked a power cord from an old TV. The strange, sterile room, the man in the suit, even the unnatural light behind the curtain—everything ceased to exist.

  The last thing he heard was the fading echo of his own distorted voice before his modulator cut out.

  Then, there was nothing but darkness.