Neural Upload Dream 13: A Rens Refugee Camp

I am a young boy just entering adolescence.

I am in a bed.

I am in pain.

At the moment, I know little more beyond that.

My head is filled with a cloud, partly from pain, and the other from a slow haze that speaks to powerful medicine or drugs.

My body aches. It is a deep and abiding ache, an undercurrent that runs through my entire body, and pools at my joints.

I open my eyes slowly, blinking at the ceiling.

The pain limits my breathing, forcing me to take short, quick bursts. It adds growing anxiety to the pain and the confusion.

"Shh, calm yourself boy. I know it hurts, but you're being taken care of." The voice is deep and echoing and masculine, yet kind and human despite it.

My head follows the voice, moving my neck gingerly to avoid sparking the dull pain buried between each vertibrae into something worse.

My eyes find the source of the voice. A huge man is sitting next to my bed, his face carrying the dark skin and strong features that mark my Tribe. He peers down at me, his size making him appear looming and threatening, though his eyes carry a soft light within them, and the set of his face is calming more than intimidating.

I recognize him as one of the Vri'Tosh, one of the most visible strains among the many who still carry obvious signs of Amarrian changes with their bodies. They were easy to notice in the refugee camps, their massive size and height setting them apart in the busy markets, standing a head taller or more from even their Brutor kin.

One could also hear the whispers, and the signs to ward off evil people would secretly make in their direction.

Many among the Matari still fear the Amarrians, and still fear those who carry their touch in their blood.

I would always keep my mouth shut, and say nothing.

I was young enough that strangers would always mistake me and my size for a much older boy.

I could hide my Vri'Tosh blood just awhile longer. Or so I thought.

I slowly open my mouth. My throat is so raw. My belly is stuck in an uncomfortable place somewhere being being ravenously hungry and sick to my stomach.

I try to speak. "Hard..to.breath...." My voice comes out as whisper.

His voice answers, rolling over me like distant thunder. "I know, your skeleton has been growing so rapidly that your muscles have been having a hard time keeping up. Your diaphram is in spasm. It will pass. You must endure." He last words echo the hard ways of our tribe, but are delivered with obvious empathy.

"I am Kaxom Jer'vaki, I am one of the healers of this place." He motions with his hand, pointing to the dark room around us. His massive size makes the motion appear regal, his motions deliberate and considered. "This is a hospice in Camp 14 for the Vri'Tosh." He looks back down to me, his eyes meeting mine. "For us."

"We had hoped the worst of your condition would have been delayed with the drug treatments, but your growth burst happened earlier than expected." His deep voice takes on a softer tone. "I'm sorry for your pain and discomfort, I should have brought you here earlier. But I was hoping you would have at least a few years free from this."

I stare up at him, my body aching too much to truly follow the impact of what he was saying. I slowly turn my head, gazing past his looming form. I am in a dark hall, with numerous beds lining up and down the walls.

In the bed next to me, I see a young man. His body is elongated past tall, easily covering the large sized bed he is resting in. He is shirtless, only wearing a pair of thin white pants that he seemed to have long outgrown. He appears emaciated, his features painfully thin. Each rib is shockingly apparent under the skin of his chest. His joints are red and swollen, his eyes sunk in.

The sight is terrifying.

I start to breath faster, and I try to get up, to leave, to flee.

Medical equipment behind me begins to beep in protest, and previously unnoticed tubes running into my arm tug painfully at my skin.

"No, you mustn't get up. Please, rest." Kaxom's deep voice carries both a stern command and deep sadness.

I need to leave this place. I tell my hands to reach for the tubes, as Kaxom is punching something into the console next to my bed.

I see a massive hand move over my body, reaching for my arm. It is large, huge, elongated, it's joints red and swollen.

I don't recognize it. In my pain and drug induced stupor, I am fascinated by it, wondering who's it is.

It moves when I tell my hand to. It's an odd thing, that our movements would be so in sync.

"Please, you must rest. Try not to move." Kaxom's deep voice flows through the haze in my head.

I stare at the stranger's hand as a soft, warm darkness moves around the edges of my sight. It seems to slowly go limp as the drugs overcome me. The stranger's hand is the last thing I remember seeing as the drugs drive me to a deep sleep.

I dream.

I dream furiously, my mind wandering deep into my seemingly boundless sleep.

I dream of the mines, of the echoing of the monster that lived here, the sights and sounds and smells of the dark earth and the people swallowed within it.

I dream of the golden Chapel, tinted red from the perpetually setting sun as we orbited the gas giant.

My mind moves through the dreams like a boat maneuvers through a rapidly moving river, following the ebbs and currents. And, like that same sailor maneuvering his ship through a white water river, there are dark and jagged places and things I try to avoid.

I sense them, their shape and outlines. The awful times in the Chapel, when the doors opened and the strangers came in. The sound of a boys whimpering as he's trapped in the machinery, as it slowly tears his arm from him.

There is another place, a place lighted only by an ancient computer terminal, on the far horizon of my dream scape, a place my mind dares not go.

My mind swims within the deep river of my dreams, trying to stay within the comforting pools of the few peaceful memories I have as a child. it seems to go on forever. The food of the Chapel. Learning math and numbers at the feet of Father Larherian, his robes bright red.

Red robes, like the color of blood. Blood on red robes. I find myself in that place I cant go.

I'm so sorry.

Those words echo through my dreams, my mind, powerful and deep like Kaxom's voice.

My eyes burst open, wet with unshed tears.

I'm still in the same hall. It's still dark.

I try to calm my breathing, the way the Shaman's taught me. A rite against fear. The ways of controlling one's body through will and discipline. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying hard to follow the Brutor ways that still seem so foreign to me.

I hear his words. "Fear is greatest when clad in the unknown". I try to take more of the room I'm in, to learn more, to fear less.

I still see the same dark hall. I take a deep breath, and turn again to my left, to the place where the tortured young man slept.

His bed is empty now, the sheets white and perfectly made and sterile. My mind decides that he must have gotten better and left this place. It does not allow me to think anything else, and I meekly grant myself that one small bit of cowardice.

I hear a girl softly sobbing.

I turn my head to the right of my bed, and I see a girl curled up in her bed. She is massive, her body long and lean, but with wiry muscles beginning to form along her frame. Her joints are swollen red. Shes curled into herself, seeming to cradle her whole body, her young face striking and incongruent when placed on her immense body.

She looks like Lerina. She's in such pain.

I promised Father Yervanian I would take care of her, take care of them all. I failed so badly.

I cry with her, the tears wet on my face. I instinctively try to reach for her, though my body feels clumsy and sluggish.

The stranger's hand moves out to her. It is massive, even larger than I remember.

"Shh, hush, please, you must rest." A woman's voice finds my ear. I turn, looking up.

I see a woman of middling years. I think she is a Sebiestor, though it's still hard for me to distinguish the Tribes. She softly lays me flat on the bed, her delicate hands only hurting my ravished body a little.

I watch as she moves to the massive girl's bed, whispering soft words as she gently lies her still, as she quickly and efficiently manipulates the medical monitors and equipment behind the girls bed.

She returns back to me. She is wearing a healer's clothes. Her eyes are soft, her dark hair shot through with just the faintest hint of grey, her face worn by worry and concern.

She is beautiful.

She whispers to me, softly placing her hand on my forehead. It is cool and weathered, like old worn soft leather. I watch as she holds the stranger's massive hand in hers, her hands dwarfed by its size.

She whispers a soft song, a song of healing. I don't know the words, but I think its a prayer to the ancestors.

My mind slips back into the river.

I dream, the afterimage of the woman slowly turning, her voice changing.

I see the young girl in the mines. The one who was so kind to me. She would always give me food.

I hold onto that memory. I live in it, forcing my mind to fight the current of the river, to stay in eddy of this one dream. I savor it, every detail.

I horde it as a Caldari does wealth, clinging to it, dolling it out carefully and preciously. The depth of her dark eyes, the look of her skin. The way I smiled up at her. The way I felt in those precious few moments.

Yet, it fades, slowly but surely, like sand slipping from my hands.

I try to cling to the memories, grasping at them violently, but they run from me faster now.

Momma, don't go.

My mind is pulled down the shifting river of my dreams.

I hear the echoing of the mining machines, then the roar of the accident. It chases me, haunts me, drowning out everything else. I run from it, to the only safe place I knew as a child.

I find myself in the Chapel, looking up at the stain glass window. The red-gold light of our sun flows through it, tinting everything a deep, soft crimson.

In the stained glass, in the place of the angelic sefrim handing the brothers Ametat and Avetat a Crown and Scepter, is the image of a young woman, no more than a girl, offering what little food she had down to me.

I'm on my knees, praying, as I often did. I'm giving words of thanks, and praying for deliverance, all in the same breath.

"Adrean." I hear a deep voice behind me, masculine and kind.

My mind knows its Father Yervanian.

I do not wish to be here. I can't be here.

I pray feverishly, for forgiveness. My lips seem numb, they wont respond. Perhaps God doesn't want to hear them, perhaps my body knows I don't deserve to say them. I keep trying.

"Adrean". No. I don't wish to see. The blood on red robes.

I finally turn. I cant help it.

I see him, his frame ravished by the high-gravity of the moon, thin, hobbled and emmaciated like the giant boy I had seen. He would never leave the moon, he thought it was his duty. His penance, to stay with his flock even as the high-gravity slowly broke down his once-strong soldier's body.

I see his face, thin and worn like old paper. The depth of his blue eyes, his flesh pale and growing paler every second.

I will not look down, to his stomach and chest. I know what I would see there.

"Adrean." I hear his words, but his lips keeps silently mouthing "I'm so sorry", over and over again.

"Adrean."

I wake. My eyes blink once, twice, and I see Kaxom's huge form over me. "Adrean, you're dreaming. It's ok."

He smiles at me, his massive shoulders bouncing up and down a bit as he chuckles. "You were talking in your sleep...you still remember the Amarrian tongue, I see."

I try to move, but he is already holding me down gently, his massive hands softly holding me down. "Don't move, not yet. Your body has been still for quite awhile."

It feels like I've been laying here for an eternity.

"How....long..." I cant find the coordination to finish the words.

Kaxom's deep voice does it for me. "How long have you been here? For..a long time. Over seven months."

I gasp at that. Months.

"Your body entered into its adolescent growth phase. For us Vri'Tosh on a normal-G world, it is a harsh time. We were designed for a much higher gravity environment. The increase of testosterone and growth hormones sparks a massive growth spurt for us. It can be...difficult."

He looks down at me, his eyes filled with an understanding that frightens me.

"I know it hurts."

I simply nod at that. I want out of this bed, a sudden yearning to be free from the soft, comforting prison.

"I....want...to get up..." I will myself to talk, determined and stubborn in a way that only a young adolescent boy can be. I don't wish to sleep anymore.

More precisely, I do not wish to dream anymore.

I gingerly push myself up. My body is weak beyond description. Sweat pours from my forehead simply from the exertion of sitting up.

Kaxom's large hands guide me up. "I know your weak. Your bodies musculature still has much catching up to do with your skeletal growth. However, your body should quickly fill out, given typical Vri'Tosh growth patterns." His voice is deep, his words practiced. I wonder how many times he's said this.

I throw my legs over the side. I'm shocked at how much longer they appear, how quickly they meet the ground. I close my eyes at the pain, look up at Kaxom, and nod, as he gently helps me to my feet.

I begin to stand. And I keep standing up, the process seemingly to take forever.

I find myself uncertain and wobbly. I can barely keep from falling over.

It takes me a moment to realize that I'm staring down at Kaxom.

I feel my knees go weak again at the implication, one lone sob racking my chest, and my hands desperately reach out to his broad shoulders.

God and all His Saints, what happened to me?

I command my hands to hold onto his shoulders, to keep me steady. Kaxom supports me, his eyes painfully empathic. I do not wish to look into them. I do not wish to be seen this way, let alone pitied for it.

Instead I stare at the hands gripping his shoulders, clutching onto him for dear life. They are large and massive, the swelling of the joints more a soft pink than a deep red. They are hands I do not recognize, yet they move when mine do.

It slowly dawns on me that they are now mine.