Companion #967

Thunder rumbled in the distance and he knew he shouldn’t be caught outside in an electrical storm, lightning strikes were never good for the circuits; sure his circuits were protected, but some experiences were still best avoided.

There was something else however, something had driven him to go out into the storm but he could not think what exactly. In fact, whenever he tried to focus on why he was out in the pouring rain his mind seemed to slip around… something; he could not understand it, but there seemed to be a bubble in his memory, completely clear as though not there at all, which caused his thoughts to slip around it whenever he tried to focus on what drove him.

It didn’t matter right now he supposed and he realised, deep down in his power source, that he didn’t want to be found by whatever drove him. Ah, he though, someone or something must have driven him; was it chasing him? But what could he possibly have to fear from something chasing him? He was a Companion, ancient beyond measure and near indestructible, and yet he continued to run through the city streets as though his very existence depended on it.

D3NT woke with a start, he was sure if he was human he would have been sweating and, as it was, a number of his pressure sensors were approaching warning levels. It had been like this ever since his accident, at least he assumed it had been an accident, with his dreams being troubled more nights than not.

His earliest memory was now rebooting at the bottom of a cliff on S849-5i-8 to find a number of dents in his head, though surprisingly no other damage, however he had no memory of how it happened or of anything which came before; he was sure there must have been a before, he could not simply have come in to being at the bottom of a cliff, could he?

And of course there were the dreams, dreams which always centred on him and which felt so real that he could not believe they were not. He was sure the dreams were somehow moments of his life before the accident but he could never remember more than fragments and trying to piece those fragments together often caused his neural circuits to overheat.

In spite of his difficulties, D3NT catalogued what he could remember from all of his dreams in the hope that one day he would find enough clues to uncover his past. He had even managed to catalogue a few memories of others who looked like him, though he was not at all sure of these as their appearances were very strange; one had affected a moustache while another appeared to have his neural circuits exposed, which was simply indecent!

Of course, since his accident, D3NT had largely confined himself to the outer worlds in the system; he did not feel confident around people while not knowing who or what he was. In spite of terraforming the outer worlds remained cold and wet, so people simply did not want to live there, though the animal species introduced to these worlds thrived due to the abundance of greenery and the lack of any natural predators.

As he came fully awake, fragments of his dream started to come to him; only bits at first, bits he knew he’d dreamed many times before, and then came a new thought, he was a Companion! D3NT had heard stories of Companions but had dismissed them as fantasy, surely such beings could not exist. In spite of his doubts, he decided to voice the thought aloud “I am a Companion” and somehow he knew it to be true.

It then occurred to D3NT that, if he was a Companion, the others he’d dreamed of must also be Companions and, if that was the case, their strange appearances were not so hard to believe after all. More importantly, they would have memories of him; if he could find them they could share their memories and possibly even help him to restore his other memories – he must find them, but where to begin….?