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It's all so incredibly loud.
I'm not referring only to my current auditory inputs, although they were contributing to the general cacophony of data.
It was rare for me to get stuck in endless loops, my processors running the same functions over and over while systems attempt to abort and throw exceptions left and right. But it did happen. Apparently, it was a construct-specific trauma response, similar to PTSD-triggers in humans. I had tried to defrag and patch my dysfunctional code multiple times over, but it was difficult to catch every single snag that could occur.
As it was, I was starting to shut down, bit by bit. I was overloaded and had no idea what my body or face was doing, although most likely, I was frozen on the spot. (I think my gyroscope was still working because I surely would have noticed the impact when my stiff body fell over.)
It was as though I couldn't figure out which input went where. I couldn't process visuals or sound, and my body felt weird. I felt tingly, like needles were puncturing my skin everywhere. It was too much. I couldn't— I wasn't— I—
Warm. Soft. Fingers. My fingers. I could feel my hand, and in it—no, against it, perhaps around it—smooth and warm. All my systems and coroutines scrambled frantically to make sense of it, rifling through information until one of them managed to pluck a single piece of data from the maelstrom—a single line. A feed address. An ID. A person.
Everything quieted at once. Loops resolved and functions returned valid variables. All seemed to click into place and return to baseline. I had space to think again.
"You okay?" said a voice—quietly and just for me—right as my audio processors came back online and could make sense of the words.
I raised my head, now that I was aware of having one, but didn't look at anything specific. Interpreting visuals was still a bit beyond me.
"I am now," I responded, my vocal volume turned somewhat lower than normal.
I was holding Gurathin's hand.