Chapter 3 Analese
Aria
I began to stir. I was waking up.
No thanks—didn't want to.
I shuffled onto my side and used my arm as a headrest. It was more comfortable like this, but something felt off.
My bedding—it didn't feel right. It felt like…
I opened my eyes and was greeted by blades of grass.
Last I remembered, I was at a graduation party with my friends. I may have had a little too much to drink. Just a little. Don't judge me, though—I wasn't the only one who got drunk. Just the one who got the most drunk. I swear I'm not an alcoholic. In fact, I rarely ever drink. Mostly because I'm not old enough to. This was a special occasion, so I decided to make the most of it. Can you blame me?
Noises began to pierce the quiet—people. Talking—and scared.
I pushed myself up from the ground. I was in a small, grassy clearing surrounded by dense forest. The sun was shining, unimpeded, right on my face. Personally, not my ideal morning.
In front of me was a group of people. I blinked and began to identify them one by one. Andre, Jessie, Sunny, Havi, and Sim—No Simon.
All my close friends from the party were here—except for Simon. The five of them were huddled together, talking amongst themselves. They hadn't noticed I'd woken up. I should probably join them. But first…
What happened?
First theory: I got blackout drunk, and the rest is history.
Do I have any idea how I could've ended up in the middle of a forest with all my friends?
No.
Would I put it past myself to end up in this situation while completely wasted?
Also, no.
I doubt I could've roped my friends into it, though—unless they got just as drunk as me. It would explain why that lovebird wasn't here. He probably abstained from our antics in favor of spending time with Jenny.
Still, no one looked hungover except me—wait, I wasn't hungover either.
How was that possible? Can I replicate this phenomenon? …Er, probably not what I should be thinking about right now.
Okay, maybe this is a dream. Right? But I just had a dream. Some guy called Volingold made me his family. I can still remember the words.
It's actually kind of sad that I dreamt something like that, but I know why I would.
I've never had a family. My biological parents gave me away, and I spent most of my early years institutionalized at a "special facility" for talented kids. Apparently, my parents didn't even learn my gender—not even at birth. They thought Aria was a good enough name for whatever I turned out to be and sold me immediately afterward. Technically, selling your child is illegal, but there's always a workaround. Eventually, I was permitted to live on my own and given money for living expenses.
…I'm a boy, by the way.
Back to the point—could I still be in a dream after having a dream? I think this happened once before when I was ten. Dream-ception is no joke.
Still, I felt too lucid for this to be a dream.
Let's just check.
Ouch.
Okay, I pinched myself—didn't wake up.
Does that even work in the first place?
Nothing about this feels real, but it doesn't feel like a dream either. Plus, my friends were panicking, so maybe this was real.
So what exactly happened?
I was abducted and then… adopted?
Strange combination, to say the least.
Everyone else was scared out of their minds, but I just felt confused. Maybe it hadn't hit me yet. Or maybe my friends were right when they said my brain isn't normal. Aren't I taking this in stride a little too well? It's not like panicking would help me figure anything out anyway.
Why did I have this weird urge to stand up and start walking in a very specific direction?
It just felt right.
"Aria!"
Oh, they finally noticed me.
I met Andre's eyes as he called out. He was a bit taller than me, dark, and… fat.
Well, not really fat; more like a walking square. Beefy but soft.
If someone asked me to describe him, though, they'd end up picturing the most obese, unhealthy slob imaginable.
"Heyyyy. So, does anyone know what's going on?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
"No. We all woke up here with no memory of what happened. Dude, this is serious. What the fuck is going on?"
Jessie was clearly not taking it well—which was funny, because he looked like he belonged here. The shoddy stubble on his face and fluffy, unkempt hair that looked like a bird's nest didn't help. He didn't have the build of someone who lived in the jungle, though. His face was puffy but not fat. He was slim, but not scrawny—definitely not athletic either.
His pale skin didn't fit the jungle vibe either.
I don't know why that bothered me. Probably because of that old movie character—what was his name again? Tarzan?
Standing next to him was Havi. Now he was tall. Really tall. Like his ancestors were trees. His dark brown skin didn't help shake the comparison either. His long, flowing hair reached just above his shoulders—if he dyed it green, he could say he dressed as a tree for Halloween.
If he went naked, he could even say he had a branch.
The only one who looked completely normal was Sunny.
He was as tall as me but seemed smaller somehow—frail. Skinny, a little skinnier than Jessie, and way more delicate. He was always weird around us and extremely awkward around anyone else. If you passed him on the street, you'd think he was drugged.
His face was small and round, with a pointed jaw, droopy eyes, and mid-to-light brown skin. His slightly brown hair was styled—well, forced—by his mother before the party, slicked back and to the side. It was an odd look on him, one I planned to bring up many times in the future.
Wait—was he shaking?
Please don't tell me he pissed himself.
"I think we should get going," Havi said, glancing toward the trees. "I'm not sure why, but I feel like that direction might lead to something meaningful. Not to mention, we all have that same feeling. That has to mean something."
I mean… he wasn't wrong. But still.
"Why don't we figure out what happened to us first?"
The others looked at me with annoyance.
Andre threw his hands in the air. "Well, you see, Aria, that's exactly what we've been doing while you were off in la-la land. We've got nothing, and I doubt you're gonna find anything more."
"Hey, for all we know, we are in La-La. Just let me boot up my analese and do some quick research before we head off into god-knows-where for god-knows-what. It won't hurt."
I braced for Andre's comeback, ready to put him in his place—but instead, I just got another round of stares.
"What do you mean?" he said slowly. "As soon as we woke up, our analese went completely offline—practically missing. That's part of why this is so terrifying."
Huh?
"What do you mean? I can still use mine. Here, let me ping you—wait, that's weird. The functionality for that isn't there anymore."
For the third time, five pairs of eyes stared at me in disbelief.
No, this time it was worse—they were horrified.
Like there was a spider on my face.
Sunny pointed at my face. "Aria, your eye…"
Andre jumped in. "It's like one of those stereotypical hacker screens—except blue."
What was he talking about?
"Your iris is blue," he continued, "with darker blue numbers streaming from top to bottom."
Maybe it wasn't alcohol that landed them in a forest with me.
Havi's shock slowly turned to wonder. "It's like you activated some kind of hacking superpower."
Seriously, what were they on?
My confusion must've shown because Jessie pulled a compact mirror from his pocket. I wanted to ask him why he had that, but before I could he held it up in front of me—and I saw it for myself.
The milky white skin of my face stared back. I've always been surprised by how pale I am compared to everyone else.
My right eye was the same as always—pitch black, like my genes were lazy and just gave me two black dots. It's a distinct trait of people born in the Fourth Orbit. They were known as "Void Eyes." The iris details were there, but barely visible unless you looked closely.
The truly shocking thing, though, was my left eye.
It was just like they described.
Was it because I activated my analese? But that didn't make sense—the analese never had visual cues; it was a brain implant. Its effects were internal, not visual.
I felt a bead of cold sweat run down my temple. Anxiety began to crawl up from the pit of my stomach. Maybe everything so far had felt too surreal for me to care, but this—this was different. Something that had always been part of me was now warped. Why would the use of the analese manifest like this?
I turned it off.
Sure enough, my left eye faded back to normal.
I stood silently, thinking—getting nowhere.
My friends watched, holding their breath, waiting for me to say something.
I couldn't even begin to form an explanation for what was happening.
I needed to calm down—loosen my thoughts, think outside the box. Don't focus on whether something makes sense. Focus on whether it feels right.
Restarting from scratch, I began to recall everything I knew about the analese.
In its simplest form, the analese was a brain implant that let the human mind act as its own processor. It gave everyday people internet access hardwired directly into their brains. You could download information straight into your head, send messages or take calls telepathically, and experience augmented or integrated reality firsthand.
The gaming scene loved it—games could now be played overlaid on the real world or in full-dive virtual environments that felt almost indistinguishable from reality.
That was the modern analese, though. Its past was far darker.
It was originally designated as an integrated analysis tool, and from the word analysis it was named analese. Using your brain as a processor, this device allowed you to perform at the level of a quantum computer. Complex calculations could be solved in seconds, thousands of scenarios considered in moments. It was powerful, but just as costly.
It could also manipulate the body: adrenaline, pain suppression, hormone control.
Useful, sure. Dangerous, absolutely.
The dangers didn't end there—accidental input and tunneling were also major risks. The analese's greatest travesty, though, was organic hacking.
Because the analese was connected through shared networks, others could invade your system. They could override your senses, hijack your body, trap you inside false realities of their own making. Eventually, firewalls and safety locks made this nearly impossible—except for one case.
A jailbroken analese.
Jailbreaking was the practice of lifting the restriction on your analese. It grants full access to the implant's suppressed functions—but it also left you exposed. In most places, it was taboo. Only highly specialized people were allowed to jailbreak them legally.
In the Fourth Orbit, it was practically a standard practice.
I'd been trained to jailbreak mine properly and to defend against organic hacking. I could adjust my own restraint levels, control its depth of integration, and had full awareness of every process it ran. That had to be the difference between me and my friends.
Their analese systems were suppressed. Mine wasn't.
That's why mine still worked.
Does that mean they'd also get the hacker eye if they jailbroke their analese?
The thought of organic hacking stuck around in my mind. It was a far-fetched theory, but maybe this was all an illusion—a shared hallucination forced on us. It would explain why my analese turned into a glowing eye. Still, everything didn't add up.
At my skill level, it would be harder to hack my body than it would be to hack through the commercial analese's firewalls. No one could have easily been able to hack my brain and put me in this situation, but I suppose it wasn't theoretically impossible.
Perhaps if I had a normal analese I would come to a conclusion like that. The thing about all the built-in safety nets and limitations was that you couldn't get much information on the state of your analese. If someone somehow managed to hack your analese and lift your analese's restrictions, it wouldn't be a proper jailbreak. They would have access to manipulative capabilities while on your end, the analese was still in its suppressed state.
If someone did this on me, who had a jailbroken analese, I'd be able to see all the ways the analese was operating on my body. It would be impossible to hide that information no matter how much sensory manipulation occurred.
The thing is…there were no signs of hacking. This wasn't a virtual sandbox.
No foreign activity. No unauthorized links.
This wasn't a simulation.
This was real.
After all that, I noticed something else.
Most of the analese's normal functions weren't broken—it was more like they didn't exist anymore. Any ability to connect to the network or interface with machines was gone.
No wonder everyone else thought theirs had "died."
To them, it might as well have.
Ironically, mine had reverted to its original purpose—a cognition enhancement.
"Hey, Aria," Andre said in a concerned tone. "You alright?"
I looked back at him. "Yeah. Just… thinking. Give me a bit."
He nodded, and everyone backed off from me. I walked toward a nearby tree to be alone and do some testing.
I activated my analese again. The familiar tingling filled my head. I focused on the tree, isolating details one by one. Slowly, my cognition sharpened, until the world felt hyperreal.
I could tell its age, water content, and root condition from observation alone. From subtle dampness and residue, I even guessed it had rained four days ago.
That part worked fine.
Next, I tried physical interference.
Heart rate—nothing.
Blood flow—nothing.
Muscle spasms? Pupil dilation? Goosebumps? Adrenaline?
Still nothing.
Nothing worked. It wasn't the same as before, where functionalities of the analese were not present. Everything was there, but the analese had no authority over it.
It was like trying to send signals through a severed wire.
Is my biology different somehow? But I can still use it to analyze my body and it shows that I'm still me.
So what gives? Was I somehow fundamentally different to the point where the analese can't mess with my body?
No, cognition enhancement is literally the biological manipulation of the brain. If my analese couldn't interact with my body for whatever reason, it shouldn't be able to affect my cognitive abilities.
So was the analese fundamentally different from before?
Er…yeah of course it was. I get a blue hacker eye whenever I use it now. Still, I needed something more than that. How did it "feel" to use the analese? Pretty normal. If anything, what's different is how it feels to "have" the analese.
I turned it off again. When it's off, it's like it's not there anymore. I know I've said the analese has an "off" state, so I should be used to it, but there's fundamentally something different from this "off" than the "off" I'm used to.
Normally, turning the analese "off" is setting all its influence levels to 1. In this state, it's a redundant organ, not aiding in anything nor getting in the way. Now, it feels… I don't know what it feels like. It's like it's not even there, but what does that mean? It's not like you could feel the analese inside you to begin with, yet somehow it felt like it wasn't there.
This "off" was like a seamless surgery, that removed the analese from you entirely. Then, when turning it on, that same surgeon manages to implant it back in just as seamlessly.
Now the analese felt like…
Like…
A superpower? Sort of, yeah. Wait, that's the perfect word to describe it.
It felt like an ability.
I sighed, rubbing my temple. My brain felt fried.
All that thinking, and I'd reached a conclusion that made no sense—yet somehow felt right. Was it at all useful? Well, no. Not yet, anyways
Maybe I should warm up a bit—loosen the body for whatever comes next. I assume we're going for a walk in the forest.
I stretched, cracked my neck, bounced lightly on my feet—
I stared at the ground from the height of my jump.
I had leaped my body height with barely a twitch of my muscles.