Chapter 132 – Upgrade – Artificial Muscle (1)
I woke up.
But my body doesn’t move.
My consciousness is clear enough to say I was half asleep. There is no pressure on breathing when pressed by scissors.
In fact, it’s easier to breathe than ever before.
Oxygen flows in and out as if there is a highway from the mouth to the lungs.
Yes, as if I had been intubated.
Huh?
Intubation?
My eyes opened brightly.
“Whoop!”
An intubation can be seen deep in the mouth.
Even though consciousness was clear, there was very little foreign body sensation or discomfort characteristic of intubation.
My body is submerged in a giant glass tube filled with clear liquid. It is large enough to fit 2–3 vans.
Even if I use it, I can’t move a single finger. It’s not that my body is heavy or tired, it’s that I feel like a doll with a few cogs missing. Commands from the brain are not being transmitted to the body.
When I barely managed to turn my head and look down, I saw limbs and my expression hardened.
All parts of the body are discolored whitish.
It’s not something like, ‘My skin has become clearer.’ It turned out to be like boiled chicken. In some places, muscle fibers are visible.
Although it looked like someone with weak nerve would have screamed, fortunately there was no pain.
The time I lived as a soldier saved me from panic.
‘When you come to your senses and find yourself in a ridiculous situation, think about the last thing you remembered.’
Even in the midst of confusion, I remembered something an instructor said during beginner officer training.
I released the force I was trying to force into my limbs and stabilized my breathing. I slowly tried to remember the last moment.
The first thing that comes to mind is a woman’s voice.
It was a beautiful yet powerful sound. A voice that is arrogant but has a kindness that cannot be hidden behind it.
I don’t remember who it was.
[This is different from the previous accelerated implant procedure. You have to stay in a state of suspended animation for a long time.]
Before? Implants? What is that? My dulled brain only allowed access to fragmented memories.
I can remember things from the distant past, but things from the not-so-distant past are dark.
[It is not a barbaric procedure that removes bone or flesh. There’s no need to be overly nervous. Think of the ship of Theseus described before. The components of your flesh and bones are replaced little by little, cell by cell. The speed just accelerates quickly. Nothing changes inside the skull. Now, let’s go in.]
Yes, I vaguely remember entering the glass tube with my feet. That cold feeling when you step on the coffin with your bare feet.
[You may be able to dream while your consciousness is deeply submerged. Your mind will be heavy, and your memories will be confused. I just follow the lead of the past buried in my unconscious.]
I also remember what looked like an anesthetic mask coming down and a clear liquid filling up.
[Stop!]
The woman shouted at me as if to stop me from trying hard to recall memories.
This is not a flashback.
It was the voice I heard in the present, in reality.
[It’s still too early to wake up. Sleep more.]
Who on earth are you…?
That question could not come out because the mouth was sealed.
Immediately after, a fierce feeling of sleep attacked me.
* * *
What is this?
I don’t know how much time has passed.
I was back in childhood.
Crying and being scolded in the orphanage’s reception room.
A long-forgotten nightmare from my childhood is reappearing before my eyes.
“Do you still not know what you did?”
The orphanage director told me.
“The director is asking. “You’re not answering?”
“…”
Even when other adults scolded me, I remained silent. Because at the time, I really didn’t know what I had done wrong.
“You threw a stone through the window of a place of worship. Not just one or two, but four!”
I only remember that the other kids who bullied me framed me falsely.
The expressions on the faces of the children silently booing in the corner can be clearly seen. A sadistic sneer appeared on their faces.
Since it was a service held with invited sponsors, we put more effort into it than usual, but everything was shattered along with the sound of the glass breaking.
“Three windows were broken, and instead of worshiping, everyone ran out! “What kind of disgrace is this?”
What made the director furious was the risk of sponsors leaving, but he did not dare to mention that.
It would seem too snobbish for a child. Instead, I brought something else.
“The nun was also seriously injured!”
An older nun standing to one side of her had bandages wrapped around her arms, neck, and face. She’s still getting red and wet because she hasn’t stopped the bleeding.
There was anger in her ever-pious nun eyes, and her wrinkled mouth that spoke of her mercy was closed.
“I didn’t do it!”
The expressions of the adults surrounding me became even more stern.
My protest did not correct their wrong thoughts, but seemed to erase even the slightest bit of sympathy that remained in their hearts.
“You disappoint me to the end.”
The director spoke in a heavy tone.
“Ugh…”
Did go back to childhood make your mind weaker?
I could only say one word of protest, and because I was denied that one time, my heart ached and tears poured down my face.
Even though I wanted to defend myself, I couldn’t open my mouth properly.
However, the fear, injustice, and sadness were vividly felt.
“I’m sorry, but we can no longer help a child who refuses to help. Jinsu, you will leave here and be sent somewhere else.”
The director stood up and spoke coldly.
Thanks to the brilliant sunlight shining from the window behind him, his face is not visible at all. However, the cold eyes were clearly chilling.
“Do you have any other opinions?”
When the director asked, the adults each added a word.
“It’s so bad that you lied all the way to the end.”
“How much my baby cried when he saw this.”
A female employee pointed to her scar on her cheek.
“There was a fight last month too.”
I wasn’t the one who started the fight or hit him first. They were the ones laughing in the corner.
But everyone seemed to like the truth.
And so the most terrifying part of this memory began. It is a murmur coming from all directions.
An adult’s words that if you let me go, there will be more space in the garden.
Complaints about scars.
Concerns about how to invite sponsors again.
The argument is that before they send me out, I should go to them and apologize to them by burying my head in it.
An adult’s insults toward me.
Children swear at me.
All of that hits my eardrums from all directions.
I felt like I was tied to the wall of a lighthouse in bad weather and faced the wind, rain and thunder alone.
I covered my ears and cried, but no one sympathized with me.
I returned to my weak body and weak mind. So swept away by the storm and torn to pieces…
[Shut up!]
A voice that appeared from nowhere blew away all the murmur.
A human figure wrapped in brilliant light descended from the ceiling of the drawing room.
It was all white, but she had voluptuous breasts, a slim waist, and beautiful legs extending from her wide hips.
Even at a glance, one could guess that it was a female shape.
In that brief moment, an evil whisper creeps up again.
[I told everyone to shut up!]
Perfect silence came to her roar.
A voice filled with fierce and powerful power. But for some reason, it felt infinitely cozy to me.
That white being is looking at me.
[I told you to sleep deeply, but what if you end up in a place like this?]
Every time she said a word, a sweet scent that seemed to pickle my soul came out.
[Your unconscious mind, the rooms containing memories of your past, are all full of wounds.]
The figure reaches out its hand to me.
[So I wanted to tie it up under the shallow water so that it couldn’t go somewhere else, but then it would rise up with force and wake up.]
Carefully caress your cheek.
[If you let it sink just a little deeper, at some point it will sink to the bottom and cry.]
She hugged my face to her breast. An indescribable softness wrapped me comfortably.
[Really… This troublemaker.]
And then everything disappeared. The people who scolded me, even the orphanage that seemed cold to me.
She and I are submerged in the water.
Fish with pretty patterns swim around. Is this a river? Or the sea? I could still breathe.
Not far away, you can see the water shining brightly on the water.
Slowly we climb up there. But it didn’t go all the way up.
When I take her face out of her chest and look underneath her, there is infinite darkness.
There is no seaweed, coral, sand, gravel, or anything else to be seen. Only darkness, pitch-black darkness lurks.
Even fish did not head there.
[Do not look below.]
She grabbed the back of her head with her warm palm and guided it back to her own chest.
It’s soft. It’s crazy soft. Even though I was in the water, there was a nice scent, and two small, soft protrusions touched my cheek.
[I like it just like this. Just stay here.]
She whispered in my ear.
Instead of answering, he wrapped his arms around her slim back and hugged her tightly.
Then she also responds. The mature and beautiful legs wrapped around my immature legs like a snake.
As if we had returned to our mother’s womb, as if the twins in the womb had recognized each other, we hugged and closed our eyes beneath the surface.
* * *
When I came to my senses, I was in the wrong place again.
This is not the water where I was hugging that white woman just a moment ago.
It was floating in outer space. The sun can be seen far away in the black space.
Although it emits an intense hexagonal light, it is not enough to sweep away this infinite darkness.
Just as a small cave is allowed only a slight darkness in broad daylight when the sun shines, the sun is only allowed a faint light in a dark universe.
The Earth is very close.
It is not a view of the entire Earth at a glance like in movies or photos.
A river that flows between mountain ranges and flows into the sea.
Snow-covered peaks.
Undersea terrain connected to a delicate coastline.
Clouds that scatter, gather, and swirl.
Lightning and storms seen from space.
Each one of them was a wonderful sight.
Among them, what caught my eye was the edge of the islands submerged in the sea. They shone with prisms like oil floating on water.
And on the other side, one step away from the sun and the Earth, there was the moon.
[Ugh. Do you even remember escaping again? This troublemaker.]
A voice came from somewhere.
[Seo Jin-su. Specialized in facility capture, commander of a combat engineer unit. Now a shelter manager.]
I looked around to find the owner of the voice, but all I could see was the beautiful space background.
[Careful but reckless. Prefers field command. Never surrender in any unfavorable battle. Not frustrated. We must find a way to survive.]
The voice that had been reading calmly began to mix with laughter as it went on.
[Oh! Okay. I never take it quietly. I was always trying to find a way to live. That’s the cause.]
A voice came from behind me.
[That was the cause.]
She is a woman of pure white light.
[Unlike during the accelerated procedure, I have to sleep for a long time this time. If you see even a single ray of light above the water, you will eventually swim up and wake up.]
She reaches out her hand and touches my cheek.
[Here, no matter how much she swims, there will be no end. And there are no bad guys to harass you. There is only silence.]
Her hand comes down from her cheek and holds my hand.
[Now, aren’t you bored being alone? Come with me. It’s still too early, but it’s like a preliminary field trip.]
Where her shining finger pointed, the Lunar Mare spread out.
[There are many places we can visit there. By the time we’ve looked at all the places, the procedures in reality will have been completed.]
We went down to the surface of the moon together.
