Thanks for those reading along, here is pt8 after Trego just ‘died’.

 

Something had awoken me enough out of a deep sleep that my eyes opened, but I felt like I might as well just sleep in.  Not like I had a job to go to or anything.  I rolled over a bit, letting the lethargy slowly fall off of me as I opened one eye and saw a spot of sunlight on my pillow, the bright white played on the blue color.  Color…

My eyes shot open.  I pressed myself up and looked around the room, everything was in color.  Why should it not be?  Had it not been that way my whole life?

I noticed my breathing was fast, my heartbeat accelerated.  A nightmare.  Uhh…what was it about though?  I lay back down, trying to not let my conscious mind take over, trying to let the subconscious remind me of what it was.  A dream within a dream?  A girl.  Yeah there was definitely a girl in there.  Something about it ending sexually?  Yeah, some really hot girl that came into my room feeling me up to try to get with me, been a while since one of those dreams.  Hmm, that seemed kind of right, but no, that was not the point of it; there was something profound in it floating at the edge of my consciousness.

Proud.

“Proud?”  I said the word that came to my subconscious.  Proud of what though?  The images coalesced a bit more.  Yeah, I think I got shot, or attacked.  Something about my pride because I was running from an attack?

I looked around my room, and everything was normal.  The white walls, the blue pillow, just as it had been every time before now.  Whatever that nightmare was shook me a bit.  I put a hand on my heart and was surprised how fast it was still beating.  I had a drop of sweat rolling down my nose.

That girl in the dream was the cause, I think, or maybe I was protecting her or something.  I think we could talk telepathically, but then again I don’t ever remember ‘speaking’ in dreams to begin with.  A fence.  Yeah, some guy who was in the military, we talked about something.

I sat up.  Whatever.  I had a dream of me being attacked, and ended up with some dominatrix girl.  Like it mattered.  I gave up on dreams a while ago.  I used to think they had meaning, but I don’t know if they were even metaphoric anymore.  I bent down to put a sock on, and my vision felt like it zoomed in on a spot while I fell backwards out of my body.

Just the simple act of looking at that sock unlocked a lot more of that dream.  Definitely a dream within a dream.  I remember that for sure.  I slapped myself.  Yeah there was pain, so at the very least this was real.

But I remembered being shot in one of them, and it ‘hurt’…well I think so.  Hmm, I turned a screen on and the text was visible; didn’t that supposedly prove you are awake if you could actually read?  I was definitely in reality now.  That could not be denied.

Anyway, yeah, shot in one of them, I think I died or something.  I woke up and was convinced I had psychic powers.  I didn’t get shot, but then I think that girl trapped me, or did something, I remember I was going to die again and she was interested feeling my body, creating some apocalypse sex scene as the world ended.  I laughed.  Ha, that’s kind of hot now that I think about it.  Maybe I needed to go find a girl if I was having weird sex dreams like that.

Hmm, green hair.  Kind of odd, I did not think that color was naturally engineered except in unique circumstances, but I had not kept up on the latest trends so I could be wrong.  What was her name?  Something weird.  It kind of fit, but it kind of did not.

‘Whatever, just drop it.’ I thought to myself.

I shook my head and got up and left.

At the very least, I felt like that by constantly being out and walking around I would have a good pulse on the community and know when an opportunity might arise I could get in on.  Really though I should probably just get out of here; this planet was toast as this was the only city and ReCorp wasn’t doing shit.  I had been hoping to ride out the ReCorp unemployment for a while now but it wasn’t heading anywhere.

Hmm, seems like I had recently talked to someone about getting out of here, but that there never seemed to be out-bound ships.  Yeah, that’s why I never left.  Never had an opportunity.  I was just making excuses though.  If there is a will, there will be a way.

I guess I will use today and see if there really is no way out of here.  That might be kind of interesting, though if either answer came down I might feel bad.  Obviously if there is no escape off the planet that caused some major problems, but I doubted it; I was sure there was a ship out-bound somewhere on the planet.  More than likely there was an occasional ship a city over, and then I would just have to battle myself and decide to actually get the hell out of here.

Might as well start at the spaceport, though for a while now it seemed like only a one-way port.  I walked for a while, enjoying the morning and trying to remember where exactly it was between the tall buildings.  I caught a glimpse of a trail coming down out of the sky and it confirmed where I was before a few more turns brought me to the port.

Though now it was a shell of its old glory.  Most ports tended to be open terranariums, Dimaglass windows enclosing the complex with plants, aliens, shops, just about everything going on.  The Dimaglass of the main complex was still there –  it wouldn’t be going anywhere unless you specifically had the equipment to dispose of it – but it was much smaller than it used to be.  Even the port itself had only one serviced landing pad that was actually kept clean, the rest in the process of being reclaimed by some of the more vicious ground plants.

Well this was kind of weird.  Clearly they had decommissioned a majority of the spaceport, but why?  ReCorp had not been here too long, unless this was part of some bigger thing at play here.  I recalled someone mentioning that ReCorp was propped up by an empire.  I sure hope I wasn’t trapped.  This was the perfect plot to experiment on an entire planet and when they all die it gets chalked up as an ‘accident’ or a Burn attack.

Inside there were only two people walking through a door for employees, and a single attendant.  She was female, and attractive, but a bit too attentive to my presence because she never looked away at all.  Probably an android.  The only biologic creatures I thought operated kiosks like this were the fox-race Aelisha because they enjoyed all the contact, otherwise they left the monotonous job to androids or robots.

Actually, Aelisha tended to flirt with anyone with about every line they uttered.  It was kind of funny, but also kind of annoying.  I never knew if they were serious, like when after commenting on one’s skillful hands of punching my information in she responded, ‘You should see what else I can do with my hands.’

“Hey,” I said walking up to the black-haired Solarian.  Had things become so bad that this woman was reduced to attending an empty port?  At least she still had a job.  She’d think I was just unemployed trash if she knew the truth.  How ironic given where I once was.

“Hello.” She gave me a big grin of perfect teeth.  It was tough to tell if she was an android.  Her appearance bordered on perfect, but a lot of people were engineered to our interpretation of Terran perfection.  The AGEd system absolutely blew away formed constructs of what was possible as far as appearance, intelligence, physicality.  “I don’t get many visitors here anymore,” she continued with a frown.

“I figured, so I have to know…  Is this spaceport active anymore?  I mean, I know ships are coming in, but can you get out of here?  Can I get out of here?”  I emphasized the final question.