Histaff Read online

  His skull lights up with a web of green lines originating from his forehead, illuminating a small room with many pillows floating around. A fragment of the crumpled grate manages to snag on his jaw and rips the bone free from his skull. The green light intensifies as the next object he collides with are more forgiving than the previous obstacles he encountered. He loses relative momentum with each headrest he collides with, finally hitting the opposite metal wall while spinning rapidly.

  Then Douglas sees a chaotic display of riotous colours and white snow as the pillows start bouncing around the cabin, one of them having torn and bleeding white fluff throughout the room. The green glow fades and so does Douglas’ consciousness.

  “…ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again. Order now for only forty-nine ninety-nine credits. Please ask for terms and conditions.”

  A jingle plays through the small cabin as a rectangular tablet lights up a piece of the painted wall. It slowly floats around, kept tethered to the metal panel by a cable stuck in a socket. No sound propagates through the cold, hard vacuum present in the room, but Douglas hears what is being said anyway. His entire being spins slowly, allowing him the sight of the flickering light that the tablet shines throughout the room.

  “And welcome back to Planet News, the only reputable source of news. Brought to you by GalaxNet, the best and only legal way to keep in contact with your close friends and family light years away.”

  Douglas can’t get angry. He has faint memories of being angry, and he knows that he should be fuming mad right now. It just isn’t happening. He has heard the same hour of news at least a hundred times. His slow and uncontrolled trajectory through the cluttered room guarantees that he only occasionally sees the moving images displayed on the tethered item, but it has been playing long enough that he has seen the entire hour of video multiple times.

  The female voice, once again, changes from the well-practised and rehearsed spiel to a less controlled timbre. The slight hint of panic that is present in the voice is so perfect that even Douglas feels he should go do something. Douglas realised a couple of dozen broadcasts ago that he wasn’t hearing this through his ears. Even back when the old guy was giving orders, he barely heard anything. These words somehow arrive in his mind through something other than sound.

  “The evacuation of Evengi’s moon is complete, and the ships will return to evacuate Evengi’s citizens as soon as they have delivered our dignitaries and officials in uncontested space. The Histaff infection is being halted by our courageous military, and they are making great progress. Code Red is still in effect, so please stay inside your homes. Don’t go outside, for now. Remember that it’s mandatory to recycle your waste and keep your home supply filled.”

  Douglas almost wishes that he could return to his previous state, blissfully unaware and content with doing nothing. That is not the case, however. His new mental faculties allow him to fully experience each slow collision with the wall, the bed, the small washbasin, or one of the many floating pillows.

  “The Empire’s spokesperson has promised aid; a full military fleet will be dispatched soon and will liberate us from this heinous threat. All citizens only need to hold out until then.”

  The picture of a cat comes slowly into view as Douglas’ skull starts another long and slow journey to the other side of the cabin. He idly observes that the amount of cushioning filling in the air is lessening - he has seen many of the small fluff balls float away through the ragged opening - when he reads the words below the fluffy animal again.

  ‘You c-nyan do nya-it!’

  The anger is once again glaringly absent. The malformed words beneath the cute critter make him want to rip the poster to pieces for reasons unknown, but Douglas is suffering from an unfortunate lack of limbs to do this with.

  “In other news, the singer Arnita Golash has announced that she is having a carrier baby with the boyband Deep Space Fine. The latest developments in gene therapy by the company Splice have allowed her to conceive and remotely carry a baby with the genes of all seven singers.”

  Douglas stops listening to the soft chatter. He had memorised the entire hour of broadcasting by heart at this point and feels like he is slowly going mad. His slow mind can no longer think of new ways to entertain himself. There was a faint impression of a blue screen filled with information that had been haunting his memories. Pondering this odd and unfamiliar concept, he had discovered a series of mental commands that allowed him to freely access the blue treasure trove of distracting information.

  He now only needs to think and beg hard enough for a blue screen to pop into view. The actual screen doesn’t have any effect on the world around him, the dark room not lighting up in the slightest under the influence of the bright rectangles. Concentrating his newly unlocked mental might on his status once again, he can bring only the information he wants to the forefront. Mentally begging the system to give him a basic overview of his status, he sees four blue lines pop into view.

  [ HP: 1/10 ] [ HP/h: 0.0003 ]

  [ MP: 100/100 ] [ MP/h: 11 ]

  [ Frozen; -10 Con, -10 Vit ]

  [ Shattered; Con max 1, Vit max 1 ]

  His forehead bumps into the ceiling of the room, his skull coming to a near standstill as it collides against one of the many floating pillows on the rebound. The narrow blue blocks don’t cast any light upon the pillow nor do they collide with it. Narrowing his mental focus upon the frozen panel, another line appears in front of the weightless skull

  [ Frozen; you are currently NAN degrees, making your bones brittle. -10 Con, -10 Vit ]

  He wonders what the ‘NAN’ means for the thousandth time. It isn’t likely he’s about to suddenly discover something new anytime soon. He has already spent many hours pondering this question and gives the screen a mental command to close. Instead, he focuses on the other effect.

  [ Shattered; you are missing over 90% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 90% ]

  Douglas will be back at full health in over a thousand days - just under four years. It has taken him literal hours to slowly do the needed mental math, losing track of his progress and having to start over many times.

  Focussing his attention on the individual parts of his display screen allows him an odd feeling of certainty about their meaning. A foreign force keeps giving him subtle hints about the words he can somehow read until their meaning is ingrained in his mind.

  ‘HP’ means his health or physical body. ‘MP’ stands for his mana. He doesn’t yet know what mana is, but he is making eleven of the things an hour so he’s bound to find out soon, right?

  Douglas is really tempted to search out the old guy again. Following his orders in blissful contentment will surely be better than having to spend years tumbling around weightless through a room with that poster on the wall or that woman chattering his non-existent ears off.

  But Douglas has a plan. His mana had been three-quarters empty by the time he had managed to bring those blue screens back up again, a couple of hours after waking. He remembers seeing two blue lines when he walked and stabbed his way through that town, and he recalls a flash of the screen showing his information in full after taking the crystal. He had started testing ways to bring that information to the forefront again when he had heard the entire audio track twice.

  An empty sort of irritation at the repeating sounds had set in by the time his mana was back at a hundred percent. Then he feels something wrong with his skull, an odd glow trickling from the middle of his forehead. He had seen the room light up with a faint green light. Back then, he had been going pretty fast still, his momentum not yet lost to the myriad of soft items tumbling through the room. He had been able to see himself in a small mirror in the wall once every hour or so.

  His forehead had been glowing. His eyes had also been glowing, two small flames rimmed by pitch black sockets. Another thing that had been glowing was his jawbone and something at the base of his skul
l. Both places had been empty except for the faint outlines made from green power.

  Two hours later, he feels something click into place. Half a broadcast passes before he sees himself in the mirror again. A piece of his shattered jaw is back into place. Sluggishly, an idea emerges in his mind. Trying to get a better feel for what was going on inside his skull, he starts paying attention to the flow. He feels two streams: one going to his jaw and one going to the back of his head.

  Recalling how his colleagues looked, he concludes that a working jawbone would be a lot more useful to him in this situation than a single piece of his spine. Two broadcasts, and thus two hours later, he succeeds in stopping the glow from going towards the back of his head. He had been trying to force the flow to stop, willing it all to go to his jaw. He only succeeds when he follows a single piece of the flow, guiding it from the moment it emerges from his forehead. Taking all the emerging power, he guides it to his jaw.

  He knows he is completely successful when he feels his neck becoming smaller and a cloud of bone fragments starts floating around him. Unable to do anything else, he patiently waits for his jaw to fill in. Many hours later, the realisation that this might never happen starts to creep in. After all, he has come to a complete and utter stop.

  His violent entrance into this cabin had thrown things into chaos. Small knick-knacks, items of furniture, and a lot of cushions had started a weightless dance through the small room. The bone fragments accompanying him inside had made a soothing form of rhythm, their unpredictable collisions fighting against the predictable repetition of the broadcast.

  The only time he had some peace and quiet to himself was when he flew into a cushion, blocking his sight. The perfect darkness was accompanied by perfect silence, leading Douglas to the weird conclusion that he was currently hearing through his eye sockets.

  “…drive is fifty per cent faster than our competitors. Take back your freedom, stop waiting for transfer windows, and go boldly your own path. The new iShuttle X 3040 S is now available at selected retailers.”

  Douglas knows the words by heart and unconsciously starts talking along, an odd, instinctual habit from some forgotten past.

  “No active connection found. Please connect to any available network. Reminder, it is illegal to be disconnected from the GalaxNet for more than twenty-four hours while using a free account. Your current fine is nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine credits. Replaying buffered broadcast.”

  Then there are a few more seconds of precious silence before the entire thing starts again.

  “…ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again.”

  Douglas freezes as his vision bobs up and down while the pillow in front of him starts drifting off. He was mouthing along with the words in a dazed state when his skull suddenly started moving. He is actually moving his jaw! Douglas spends the next ten minutes furiously clacking his teeth together in elation.

  What follows is a lot of trial and error. He first directs the flow of power to his neck, hoping that the last few fragments of bone inside the small room will be enough for him to reform more bones.

  The only way to move available to the skull is his jawbone. He thus starts frantically flapping his mouth as hard as he can when objects float near. This works, but he has little control over the direction he is being bounced. An hour later, he has the idea to start jerking his mouth open at strategic moments. He waits for a wall to be below his jaw and opens wide just before impact.

  He spends the next few minutes bouncing around the room, smashing against everything while out of control. He then sees something that scares him. Shooting past the mirror, he sees his jawbone full of glowing cracks and missing splinters.

  The idea of losing his single mode of moving actually manages to scare Douglas. He immediately moves the stream of power back to his jaw. Most of his momentum is bled off when he floats past the mirror again, many soft collisions later. The diminished amount of glowing cracks in his jawbones allays his dimming anxiety.

  He spent the following three broadcasts testing out how to move in an open space without gravity and with only a jawbone.

  [ New skill generated; Microgravity Manoeuvring lvl 1 ]

  Dismissing the small prompt, he continues practising without noticing a difference. He opens his jaw with just enough force to spin with a slow rotation, passing by the mirror. His jawbone looks nearly whole again, his teeth starting to regain their glossy sheen instead of the fractures they were before.

  Next, Douglas decides to try aiming for the opening he came in through. His repairing jaw has picked up all the small bone fragments in the room, and he is getting pretty sick and tired of hearing that same broadcast time and time again.

  His mind made up, Douglas calculates the force needed to reach the ragged opening from his current position and shoves off the wall. It only takes him two hours to hit the spot he’s aiming for.

  Chapter Two – Picking Up His Pieces

  Douglas knows he should be angry. He feels like he should be angry. The emotion just doesn’t take hold in his white cranium, no matter how much he tries.

  He is still hearing the broadcast, except now he is stuck inside the crumpled remains of the metal grate, unable to move. His jawbone actually hurts, a phantom pain irritating the wedged skull even further. He stopped trying to dislodge himself when a tooth broke free from his frantic snapping. He is sticking through the grate with his entire jaw, the top of his skull remaining in the small room. His sight is taken up by the top of the vent and some scraps of thin metal.

  Back when he first awoke inside the room, Douglas had wondered why his mana was only a quarter full by the time he managed to open his status page for the first time. He had thought that the grate was pretty thin, having crashed through it while remaining whole. Looking at the half centimetre thick scraps, he thanks his bones for the fact he is still alive. As alive as a floating skull can be.

  He has no idea how long he’d been out; his skull might as well have been reduced to a single piece of forehead bone for all he knows. His missing bones seem to be regenerating at a slow pace thanks to the energy from his forehead, after all.

  That’s probably mana, Douglas suddenly realises. He feels kind of stupid for not consciously making that connection earlier. He can feel the energy quite well, having practised with the mana stream some more. Instead of needing to focus with all his mind to sense the energy, he faintly feels the stream of power moving to the back of his head at all times. His jaw is completely healed now, as much good as that does him in his current situation.

  Douglas tries his very best to tune out the annoying broadcast, shifting his attention to his mana. His forehead seems to be the nexus point for that power, flowing from an area the size of a coin. Trying to speed up the process, he starts pulling on the energy, encouraging it to flow to his top vertebrae. What he vaguely feels to be two broadcasts later, his concentration is broken by another blue line of text.

  [ New skill learned; Meditation lvl 1 ]

  Staring at the message, Douglas wonders what it’s about.

  [ Meditation lvl 1; mana recovery is multiplied by 1.1 when active ]

  And suddenly, Douglas knows what he has been doing wrong and what he can do better. It’s like he has access to a large collection of people that have also been meditating, giving him hints and tips on what to do.

  A lot of the hints and nudges confuse Douglas. Something in the back of his mind is telling him how to stop going hungry or thirsty for long amounts of time. He even gets the urge to make some special foods to facilitate this. Douglas doesn’t think he needs to defecate or sleep. He has been awake for many days now, and he still doesn’t feel the urge to sleep.

  Douglas resigns himself to the fact that he has nothing better to do and is stuck anyway, so he sets about trying all these tips and hints one by one.

  He immediately runs into more problems. He doesn’t need to breathe, nor does he hav
e to find a comfortable place to sit or lie down; he is currently just a skull. A skull who is completely stuck. Nearly none of the tips that are being injected into his ponderous thoughts do him any good. Even the one about clearing his mind is pretty useless. Clearing his mind is really easy; it’s the thinking of thoughts that’s hard and takes effort.

  Instead, Douglas focuses on the stream of mana flowing through his skull, using the few vague hints on dealing with mana flow to better his own control. The trickle of mana does seem a little bit thicker than previously, and he starts pulling it towards his neck with muted enthusiasm. The irritating chattering fades into the background as Douglas loses himself in the task of guiding mana.

  Douglas ignores all the blue bars, only stopping when he feels his stream of mana split into three separate flows, many hours later. This change in routine is enough to wake him from his meditative daze.

  [ Meditation is now lvl 5 ]

  [ New skill learned; Mana Control lvl 1 ]

  Pushing away the notifications, he feels for his mana. Eight vertebrae form a small snake-like tail that flows from the back of his skull. He tries feeling the power flow, instead of merely ordering it where to go, and senses that it flows where connective tissues should be. The flat and hollow spaces between spinal sections are filled with nothing, his bones floating freely without touching.