Project Un: The Unamoly

“Humanity must survive.”  - Captain’s log, R. Gunson, Paradigm Prime

[Subject: J. Polaris]

[Bio: Head Engineer, Rank 01]

[Status: Unknown: Last seen aboard The Commission before event 06]

[Archive LT: Error]

[Designation: Deceased]

Jess could not scream. Air fled her lungs desperate to find vocal cords. But no sound escaped. Heat traced her veins in a silent engulfing of her very being. Chemicals filled her nostrils as blue flames leapt across her skin. The starship blurred out of sight and only the fire remained. Scorching, choking, intoxicating fire. Memories blinked in her mind. Cloudiness soaked her thoughts. She shut her eyes and curled up to wither away. 

A dream came to her. It was an odd sensation. As if remembering a life she had not lived. She woke up to a dream and recognized the dream. Jess walked the halls of The Commission with a man. Mannis was his name, a strange fellow that one. She watched herself walk the halls with him. Her face could have been carved from stone. His face could not have been more expressive. They went to see the stars. Jess shook her head. Just a dream. No…A memory.

A memory came to her. It was an odd sensation. As if dreaming of a life she already lived. She remembered and she recognized the memory. Jess walked the halls of The Commission alone. Crew passed her by without a glance. They seemed to phase through her as if she was nothing but a ghost. Jess smiled. Strange to be real and unseen. She watched herself walk the halls in a charred black standard uniform. She went to find someone. Jess shook her head. Just a memory. No… this had never happened.

Reality came to her. It was an odd sensation. As if sleeping oneself awake. She lay huddled on the cold steel of The Commission. No blue flames in sight. Her uniform was charred black, but with a webbed pattern of grey still untouched. She could hear her breath. Oh blessed hearing! She stumbled her way to her feet. Her vision swirled. Perhaps she had stood too fast. Where was her composure? She straightened her posture and her face fell into stoic silence. 

“Jess!” Someone called her name. An urgent call! She ran towards it and nearly stumbled into a woman. Jess opened her mouth to apologize, but the words died in her throat. She stared at a woman who had her face. This woman had the same expression she trained herself to have. And she wore the same pair of goggles. Jess could only blink in confusion. This other version of her turned at the same call of her name. Jess and this other her both watched in horror as an explosion of blue flames rushed towards them.

Jess screamed herself awake. It was an odd sensation. She let the sensation die. She stumbled to her feet and braced herself on a starship wall. Her vision swirled, but she had to get away. She walked the halls alone in a charred black uniform. Crew walked pass her without a glance. They seemed to phase through her as if she was nothing but a ghost. Jess watched a burly man’s arm pass through hers. She blinked. A dream? A memory?

She turned and saw blue flames in a wave through the hallway behind her. Jess didn’t wait for an explanation. She ran. Hallway after hallway, she had to get somewhere! Where can one go in space to avoid disaster?  Whether cleverness or insanity took hold of her, she chose an airlock. A man ducked out of it and she ducked in. The airlock shut. 

“That’s cold Jax!” The words jolted her out of fear into utter confusion. That voice sounded familiar, but the figure stood in a 03 panoply with the visor down. Jess frowned, the man wore her recently finished Gen 7 Grav boots. 

“Go die in space Mannis!” the man outside the airlock shouted. Mannis. Jess blinked up at the figure. He was a dream wasn’t he? Or was he the memory…? Blue flames licked the edges of the airlock and she scrambled to the center in a vain attempt to outrun the fire. She felt tears roll down her cheeks. She hadn’t cried in a very long time. Jess shut her eyes as the airlock opened.

Jessari Polaris screamed herself awake. She stood in the damned hall and all around her blue flames burned. This time, they did not burn her. She stood as Vincent rushed past her. He looked this way and that but he didn’t see her. She reached out with a hand and felt it land on his shoulder. Vincent didn’t notice. He rushed off and she tried chasing him down. She waved her hands and screamed, but he didn’t stop running. Jess felt her breath go shallow. What was happening to her? Was she still dreaming? Was she still dying?

She sat down and stared at the sights around her. Polaris were not scared and witless children, they were thinkers. Jess thought and strained to comprehend her situation. Emotions cascaded inside her, but she ignored them. Seven minutes. She could keep the emotions at bay for seven minutes. Ignoring how she knew this to be fact, she set to thinking.

Her name was Jessari Polaris. Good. She had her memories. Mannis was someone who had been real, or a dream. Unhelpful. Dreams, something with the fire had to do with dreams. That had potential. She seemed to be in a loop of some sort. A spiral of dreams, memories and reality. Alright. The blue flames had done something to her mental state? Jess looked down at her charred uniform. Blue flames had burned her uniform, but not her skin. The disaster had been physical and mental. Something that burned clothes but not skin. The smell of chemicals…halucengetics? Perhaps. Nothing concrete so far. Jess frowned. Nothing concrete. Why did those words feel like the right answer? Everything seemed to be the exception in an equation.

The word exception pulled at her mind as well. She seemed to be getting close to the answer by not finding the answer. Exceptions…not the rule. Close, but not quite. What are exceptions? Outliers. Closer… Irrational? Imaginary numbers? Nope too far... Paradoxes? Black Holes? Yes! Almost there. What is missing? What are they? Jess closed her eyes in concentration. Anomalies. Bingo.

She snapped her fingers. Anomalies were at the heart of this. The Commission had been sent as a part of D.A.W.N. to investigate the anomalies of the near inhabitable planet of Dathanem. Were these blue flames an anomaly or caused by one? Jess didn’t know. With no other answer, it seemed close enough. 

Her scenery had changed. She sat in the conference room where she had been told of The Commission project. Memories. Jess raised an eyebrow. The impulse came to her to check if she was present. A resounding slap across her face with her own hand confirmed that she was. 

“I can live memories,” She muttered. “I can move between memories.”

A thought came to her and she shut her eyes. A dream came to her and she tested if she was present. The sting on her hand and face confirmed it. 

“I can move between dreams,” She said. “But not reality?”

Insanity, her mind claimed. Jess could not accept that she was insane. Insane people still had to find a way to live. 

“If anyone can hear me,” She said. “And I’m just insane, please find a way to help me out of it. I don’t care how, even if it kills me.”

Nothing happened. Jess shrugged.

“Well, if I am insane,” She muttered. “I’ve at least taken care of as much as I can on that end. If I’m not insane, then something has changed fundamentally in my being. I’m physically being transported between real and not real places. Either that or I’m hallucinating to such an extent that I believe it's real. If that’s true then I have as little agency as if I was insane. I’ll have to reject that too.”

She realized she had been talking aloud.

“Well no one can hear me, or I can’t hear them and I’m insane so I suppose either way I can keep talking.” She laughed. “Either I’m lost in my mind that is deteriorating or I’m somehow altered so that I can bypass space and time.”

That seemed an appealing thought. Insanity or superhuman.

“Multiple realities?” She considered it. “Too complicated. So is time travel, but I seem to not be able to affect things that have happened. Could be because they aren’t real like a dream or they already happened like a memory. Great, so I have the most pathetic superpower of living in un-reality. Non-reality. Wait…”

Something clicked in her mind. “Not real, but not completely unreal. A dream world? Nope, has to deal with memories too. Unless the two are somehow connected? Potential but not quite.”

Jess began to pace the halls of a starship. “Maybe I’m dead? That would be easier to believe, but what does that mean? Definitely not in heaven, so is this hell?”

Jess looked around. “Not what I pictured, but I suppose it could be. But I’m breathing. Are we supposed to breathe in hell? I don’t think anyone should answer that…”

Jess shook her head. “No, no, no. Off track again. Something less tangible than hell and more realistic than a dream world. Somewhere in between them.” 

She stopped pacing. “Is that it? Really?”

A morbid laugh burst out of her. “I’m somewhere in between reality and non-reality. An Un-reality. Somewhere between hell and life. A purgatory or limbo sort of place. Separated from physical reality and instead drifting through cognitive reality.” 

Jess frowned. The ideas were not very refined, but she wasn’t sure if you could make a missing link of realities make sense. It might as well be going from three dimensions to two and trying to understand what was lost. 

“I’ve been separated from physical reality…er…sort of… I still have my body so maybe it's like it was forced inside my mind instead of my mind inside my body? Not sure how I feel about that one. But maybe there’s a place to go that is not a dream or memory. An Un-place.”

She concentrated on the idea. Somewhere in-between space and time. 

Jessari Polaris screamed herself awake. It was an odd sensation. As if she had left her mind to be in her right mind. As if she left her body to be in it. It was a strange place. A horizon that warped and shimmered like a bubble. Beneath her were islands of black rock hovering above the stars. She smiled at the sight. Finding her footing, she stood in a place of in betweenness. Jess walked in a place incomprehensible and yet tangible. She was not alone, a figure turned and faced her. Jess stared at Mannis as he contrasted the bright horizon in a charred black D.A.W.N. uniform. 

“Of course you found this place,” He said. His face was as pale as death, but he smiled at her. He spread his arms out to gesture around them. “Welcome to Unamoly!”

The seventh minute passed and all the emotions returned.