Work Text:
One morning, when Ulrich awoke from a short, uncomfortable sleep - sleep? It’s inaccurate, but still this expression can help his organic coworkers’ comprehension - , he found himself being stiffen and unable to move at all.
Of course that ‘himself’ refers even to ferrofluid part, not just to metallic body. Isn’t the sentence weird, since non-ferrofluid part is not just himself? This kind of cognitive confusion is quite common. Some stuffs manipulated by your own will sometimes feel like parts of yourself. He has read theses about these kinds of subjects. Drivers, pilots, prosthetic hands and legs, etc……. It is doubtful to apply these theories to an awakened, anyway, the result of consciousness and intelligence acts roughly similar to a human’s. He does not have Complex protein structures and neural networks of neurons himself, still calculates with electrical signals just like his co-workers. How ambiguous is the standard of a ‘human’.
Whatever. Isn’t it useful like hell to know such informations? Especially in a situation like this, restricted in physical activity.
……How long do I have to stay like this? How this happend? Why?
Surely this team leader knows why…….
-
Let’s turn the time back a few hours. Oh, this kind of metaphor could bring trauma of ‘storm’ to your remembrance. Let’s just recall the memories of a few hours ago.
Ulrich was doing his work in his place as usual, as so many do. LSCC was congested and in chaos as usual. Probably some researchers were raising hell on their process, as so many do.
So - there are no ‘unexpected accidents’ in Laplace as no one expect there will be no accidents here. Ulrich, disconnecting the electric circuit with his auxiliary arithmetic unit, detected one electrical pulse which is usually generated when something went wrong. It was over ten times he detected that for the past week.
It was from right under his office.
And everything happend. Ta-da.
Have you ever heard of EMP? Waves of sufficiently strong electric charges are often used as tactical weapons, as it can destroy the surrounding electronic circuitry. But this is not an appropriate explanation for describing the current situation. The researcher on the lower floor of his office got the timing right. Whoever it was, the researcher caused a short circuit in an awakened’s prosthetic body cutting off connection using his arcanum, thought current, while maintainig every other electronics in a good condition.
FOR FLUX’S SAKE. What the-
-
That’s the whole reason why the ferrofluid waking up after losing his consciousness, is suffering from sleep paralysis now. What’s fortunate is that external cognitive abilities such as sight and hearing are still working - That’s for sure. They must be more intrinsically connected to consciousness - and what’s bad is everything else. Did that short-circuit affect the ferrofluid? Or just for solvents filling his head? Whatever happened, he couldn't move at all. His vision was fixed toward the ceiling as his whole body settled on the bottom of the sphere in accordance with the law of universal gravitation.
I admit. This is boring, stuffy, and…… a bit terrifying. How long will it take for his co-workers to find him? 24 hours? 48? How long should he be confined in the prison of his own thought? The white light from the ceiling seems to burn the view. He has never stared at that light source like this before. The waves generated by the surrounding electronic circuit are dizzy. People are said to see ghosts in an unusual state where they are unexpectedly deprived of control of the body, and it is most likely a hallucination created by the feeling of fear. He happened to have a conversation with a arcanist with black hair in the timekeeper’s suitcase about this as well. The Maid, who carried a white bag, had a unique and professional view of this field…….
Flux. Thanks to Descartes’ Demon for not depriving his thinking. Cogito ergo sum.May not for this situation, but the sentence still works. except for his hearing. Yes, he can clearly hear the sounds, from conversation of researchers over the wall, the buzz of the computers, or someone half-walking and half-running in a hurry…….
That sound. THAT sound, running. Isn’t it quite familiar? That sound gets louder, then suddenly stops in front of the door of Ulrich’s office. Irregular knocking.
“Ulrich! Are you there?”
Adler, as expectation. What a weird salvation in a weird coincidentic situation…….
……
Wait. there’s no way to answer.
He lingers around the door for a while, then starts to walk through the hallway again. Flux. Release delayed, let’s get more bloody photosynthesis from ceiling now.
…
Wait, footsteps are coming back. Then he opens the keypad and enters something. Beep, beep, bip. The code which Ulrich had changed sixteen hours ago is decrypted after thirty-five attempts. Finally! Thanks to his still-useful-cryptological ability.
The door, he opens. One urgent step comming inside…….
And, silence. What?
Ulrich can see a human’s figure vaguely as he pushes his vision to the edge as far as he can. Yes, it’s Adler. He is. What is he doing? He is just staring Ulrich with his face of difficulty in reading. Did someone stun him with pulse too? What a tragedy, it would be much easier to just hit the back of his head.
“......Ulrich?”
He finally opens his mouth and calls Ulrich’s name, but unfortunately, he have no method to respond. Can’t he notice it at first glance? Ulrich may have to reassess the evaluation of his situational awareness. Adler, who had came so urgently, is now approching too slow. The awakened’s sight relieved from its pain as Adler keep his head down and watch Ulrich carefully. It seems he didn’t mean so, whatever it did give some help. But his face, on the opposite site from the light, remains unseen. Oh, is his hand trembling?
“......Ulrich? Are you okay?”
DO YOU THINK I’m okay? Adler should be thankful for Ulrich’s impossibility to answer back at him.
Well, may he doesn’t think so.
When he got no reaction even after patting and shaking Ulrich’s shoulders, his imagination seemed to spiral in quite the wrong direction. Now visibly pale, He started to try to wake Ulrich up. Honestly, if he could just take this artificial body to the maintenance team instead, that would be ideal. His repeated calls of Ulrich’s name weren’t exactly unpleasant to hear, but from Ulrich’s perspective, it was honestly frustrating to watch. Where did all your great intelligence go? It’s obvious something’s wrong, call for help-
Finally, with hands still trembling, he lifted the body. His clumsy handling caused the already unstable internal circuits to spark once again - and with that, the consciousness within the ferrofluid slipped back into slumber. The rest, Adler will take care of. When I wake up, I’ll be in the maintenance team’s workshop, I wish.
—
The director of Laplace is running down the hallway now - Because the leader of the ‘storm’ research team made no answer since a hour ago. Normally, an argument would have broken out within five minutes of sending the very first message — so what on earth is he doing now? What’s wrong with him?
Nein. Mit ihm sollte nichts schiefgehen.
He stands before Ulrich’s office door and knocks. The handle is locked, and there’s no answer from inside. Maybe this isn’t the place, he thinks, and starts walking down the corridor—
—only to stop halfway.
An uneasy, persistent feeling tugs at him, one that’s hard to ignore. Could someone have left the lights on with no one inside? And why bother setting a new passcode? Half out of irrational curiosity, he decides to spend a little time on that keypad. It’ll be fine, he tells himself. Nothing bad’s going to happen… right?
Thirty-five attempts. It took longer than expected. People say you shouldn’t rush in situations like this, but really—how can you not? With a clear chime, the lock clicks open. The handle turns. And inside—there was him, he longed to find.
Not in any form he had ever hoped to see.
The team leader had collapsed over his own desk. What caught his eye first was the black fluid sprawled motionless at the bottom of the glass tank. His limbs hung limply in strange, broken angles, as though their owner had long since departed. That’s weird. That’s weird. The director felt nausea rise in his throat.
Let’s talk about something else for a moment. He had never seen a corpse before—at least, not an intact one. Not the kind whose veins didn’t change into cables, whose head wasn’t carved into some perfect geometric cube, nor one that didn’t drip oil paint. He’d heard that they were quiet, like someone merely asleep, but cold and hard to the touch. That, of course, referred to beings made of blood and flesh.
He had never seen the corpse of an awakened one either. Those were rare, and little was known about them. Having not even lived out the brief span of a human life, he realized how utterly ignorant he was of death. And ignorance, as always, was the beginning of fear.
At that thought, Adler snapped back to his senses as though doused in cold water. He hurried to his side and looked him over. The ferrofluid, which used to float in its yellow solvent, now lay still-quiet as if asleep. The metal body, seemingly long since shut down, was cold and hard to the touch. His fingertips brushed against the smooth surface of the rounded glass head. No vibration - none of the faint hum he had come to recognize - answered his touch.
His own face, faintly reflected in the glass, stared back at him. Meeting the eyes of that hardened expression was unbearable. Right now, he really wanted to feel warmth right now. He needed the familiar voice.
Ulrich. Ulrich? Answer, please. You can hear me, right? You hear me.
He had stumbled upon the truth by accident - yet he could never know it himself, and that ignorance terrified him. His arms, trembling pitifully, wrapped around the awakened’s body.
Cold. The circuits no longer produced resistance, no longer gave off warmth; the body had settled into equilibrium with the room’s temperature, a chill far too complete. He absurdly brought his sister in mind from that coldness, and right after he roughly erased that heck. Even then there was no answer from the awakened in his embrace.
Those gifts named reasoning and inference do bother a human. He felt his rationality volatilizing, making his decision illogical, so what. What else can he do? He clenched his teeth and lifted the body. Just, let me go to maintenance team and get some answer. In any way. Repair, or, autopsy……. He had to try hard to erase that last word in his head again.
—
“-and the circuit was temporarily out. It was so.”
“......”
“Adler?”
“...Okay.”
“Why the frown? I explained all.”
The infuriating Awakened was, as always, pointing a finger right in his face. The director buried his head in his hands.
“I thought there was something wrong with you.”
“What an idiotic sentence? There WAS something wrong with me, Adler.”
“I mean, like, more serious and irreversible……”
After those words, the ferrofluid remained silent for a moment, then formed a circle, speaking as if it had figured something out.
“So you mean, you cared about me?
“Go away.”
“That’s the truth, huh.”
“I, said you, to go away.”
“Thank you for your caring about me but I-”
The ferrofluid was driven out, and the door slammed shut. From inside, a long sigh, sounding almost like a scream, escaped.
It is usual in LSCC.