Nimue Backstory

“My father won’t say it, but I see how he suffers. He longs to return to the stars, and brother’s death weighs on him… and this thing, with me… it weighs on him too. The king calls, and all of the banners must answer... I am surely bound for the ‘hospitals’ of Quirren… It shouldn’t, but it scares me more than father going off to war.” 

A tear falls to the silver inlaid floor of the greenhouse and my vision blurs, granulates in a dance of shimmering lights and for a moment the Sunkite sigil beneath my feet looks more like a depiction of radiant gemstone. The headaches, the visions… they are getting worse. When I have completely lost myself, will I know it?

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It’s one of those days, where it is hard to tell what ‘when’ it is, and my mind is all stuffy. The inspection went as we knew it would, and my father was given six months to give me over to Containers. I can hear talking - my father, and a woman. A woman who I know I will go away with, even though I can’t hear what they are saying, and she is not a Container.

The door opens and the enter, the lines on my father’s face seem deeper than ever, but in his eyes a glimmer of something I have not seen for some time. “Darling -” he starts, indicating a stern looking woman dressed in white suits. “This is doctor Morgan.” The woman bows, she must be a lowblood, but her movements are stiff and proud.

“Fey Morgan.” She affirms.

“The doctor says she can help us, help… you…” He nods to her.

“I believe I can treat you, lady Solfare - protect your mind from this decay.” 

The lurch of hope in my stomach must have shown on my face because she smiles. 

“It will not be easy… you will have to give up much - your body, but, we will make a new one - a better one, safe and free of disease and pain.” 

“My… body?”

I can’t help but raise a hand protectively to my sternum. She nods.

“I will explain properly later, but, once it is done you can be you, you can be free”.

As if encouraging me, my vision dances with coloured blocks, and in a moment the room is white, white like her clothing, sterile, clean, the image of a light shedding stone etched into the ceiling. I blink and it is gone.

I know that I will agree, because I know that I go with her, but it is an easy choice… I don’t want to go mad, I don’t want to die.

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For the first time in I can’t say how long I can feel again, a heavy, cold body. Stiff and new. A voice, soft, feminine speaks “Core connected, all diagnostics green, relinquishing frame control.” It is my voice - my body. I feel calm, detached... It is strange but it all seems distant to the knowledge that I am cured. The darkness flickers as my eyes come online, a rapid blur of text reports, balance aids and other ui overlay my sight as I will them open and look up at a cool, clean white ceiling, embossed with the familiar image of a radiant gemstone.

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It does not hurt - my receptors have been silenced, but the cluster of warning indicators and stuttering drone of my voice reporting damages tell me as much as agony ever could. I turn my head, struggling to look at the shell that took me from the air. A wire sparks in my neck at the motion and my vision pixelates and blurs in mess of colored granules and for a moment the shell is a heavy mining pinion, still trailing its enormous tether that keeps asteroids close to the facility. The fingers of my ruined hand jut up from the pulverized rock beside it. I am notified of emergency shut down as I look up at the mining base...mining base? The flickering blur of pixels washes over it again and the arms depo is as I recall - burning and broken. I feel an emotion of confusion, worry, mistrust begin to press on my logic as my vision begins to darken and I lose sensation of my body.

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A blur of red warning text flashes first, fragmented in some places, the usual visual overlay I have grown so used to fuzzy and jumbled. I open my eyes to the roof of repair bay 12, trying to sort through the lengthy damage report, but my systems struggle, and the worry and confusion I had felt earlier clouds my logic circuits. How long had it been, fighting in this war? I can’t tell. My memory access must be damaged because battles I don’t recall are there, rent by pixelated errors and flashes of color - Frighteningly familiar. I turn my attention away, unsure how to process the emotions surfacing in my core and dedicating them to a subprocess.

Sound - voices. Repair technicians. Good - I clearly need it.

“The great Solfare hm? They ever figure out what happen to him?”

“Nope, all the vets still telling the ghost story - the famous Sunkite, vanishing without a trace.”

“It's been four years now, you’d think they’d move on.”

‘The Sunkite - my father’s ship, familiar but… missing…. Four years ago?’ 

My father had visited me 10 days ago, just before the strike on the ammo depo. I struggle to understand, and the subprocess trying to sort through my emotions informs me that I am experiencing terror and confusion, and I feel it being to affect my logic. Logic telling me that as I am synthetic, all I know, and all I experience is decided by others.