BATTER 68

Anyway, isn’t assault a task that requires both stamina and skill? Baron tilted his head, looking as bored as a student dragged into a remedial class. The man, however, didn’t bother responding further and changed the subject.

“Get some sleep.”

As he turned away, his fleeting expression looked like a face that had already scheduled a victory. He left the two guards in charge and stepped outside. Just as he was about to exit the door, the man stopped as if he’d remembered something and looked back.

“Though for you, it might be more than just a ‘moment’.”

And then, the light around the headgear flared brilliantly. A blindingly white, vivid light completely blanketed his vision. Facing the eye-searing radiance, Baron squeezed his eyes shut, but the world remained stubbornly bright.

An eerie migraine pierced sharply from his eyeballs to the back of his head before the light slowly began to fade. The gradually diminishing glow finally reached zero. An abyss-like darkness, so total it made the previous brightness feel like a lie, greeted Baron.

In a darkness devoid of even a sense of direction, Baron felt a strange pressure against the tip of his nose and his chest. As he exhaled slowly, his own breath hovered right in front of his face. It was a sensation similar to being trapped in a narrow coffin. Was this a virtual reality space? He tried to lift his arms, but far from raising them high, his forearms collided with something near his chest. Something was blocking him on all sides. At least, that’s how Baron felt.

Was the darkness the Doctor saw the same as this? Baron kept his mouth open and stayed still. Saliva didn’t flow out but pooled at the back of his tongue. At the very least, it seemed the setting wasn’t that he’d been shoved in upside down. Baron tapped the invisible obstacle a few times and let out a sigh.

The darkness wasn’t scary, but the boredom was horrific. Hoping the bastards’ plan wasn’t to make him die of boredom, Baron settled his body into a comfortable position. If a virtual reality program was running, struggling to get out was nothing more than a useless waste of mental energy. The most desirable way to cope was to clearly perceive the fact that everything he was currently seeing, hearing, and experiencing was virtual.

Let’s see how long they keep me locked up. Baron laced his fingers over his solar plexus and closed his eyes. Whether his eyes were open or closed, the view remained the same. Since he was already in a coffin, he intended to take a deep sleep just as the man had suggested. However, a noise from beyond the darkness began to steadily grow in volume.

A sound like scratching, or perhaps crushing. The noise, which had started at some point, grew loud enough that it became impossible to ignore, and soon it was right in front of his nose. A roar like a typhoon became a vibration, shaking his ears and his entire body. That massive vibration created a white crack in the flawless darkness. Baron suddenly thought about the possibility of the tin can’t involvement.

Following the loud bang, bang, bang of the knocking, the crack became a larger fissure and the darkness became shards. He reflexively shielded his face as sharp fragments fell away.

A dazzling light reaching out from the widened crack stabbed at his optic nerves. A gray blur shimmered at the edge of his squinting eyes. A massive, sturdy, dark-gray hand lifted Baron up. The fragments stuck to his cheek tumbled down.

“Survivor discovered. Presumed emergency patient.”

It was different from what he’d expected, but Baron knew this voice. It was a voice he hadn’t forgotten because he had chewed over it for a very long time. A slightly awkward and coercive tone, a characteristic mechanical sound. Baron forced his eyes open through the gaps in his fingers. As his vision adjusted to the light, the silhouette before him took on a distinct form.

His earliest memory.

A giant hand made of metal.

The crazy psycho AI, the medical truck. His ‘Mother’.

Very rarely, Baron found himself unable to think of what to say. Mother cleared the debris with an excavator bucket attached to part of the cargo bed and fished Baron out. An arm composed of several joints bent backward and tossed him into the interior of the cargo bed.

The interior was lit with a blue, dim light, just like the past he remembered. The cot for the patient and the floor were already bloodied, and corpses in military uniforms were slumped over haphazardly. While he stared blankly at his surroundings, a slender mechanical device suddenly popped up in front of his eyes.

Judging from a human perspective, the device, which had the shape of an arm and a hand, hovered near Baron for a long time. Without a single soft or warm part, Baron had once called that thing, which looked like it was made of woven cold wire, a ‘hand’. Regardless of what he was thinking, Mother’s voice was transmitted through the speakers.

“Loss of left eye and part of the frontal bone, partial damage to the frontal lobe confirmed. Oxygen saturation 83 percent, 82 percent…”

Baron fumbled at the left side of his face. The face that had been perfectly fine just a moment ago—or so he had thought—was flowing down hot. Strangely sticky blood smeared onto his small hands.

Mother shoved aside the corpse lying on the cot to clear it and laid Baron down in its place. He surely could have resisted, but he was dragged along just as he was handled, as if he had returned to the body of a young child.

“Beginning surgery.”

An oxygen mask was fitted, and his consciousness blurred. As all senses drifted into a hazy distance, Mother spoke.

“You will survive, Soldier.”

Those words had always protected Baron. Even while knowing that this entire situation was nothing more than virtual reality, Baron accepted his eyelids and body as they became infinitely heavy.

The mother who didn’t give birth to him was a machine.

She was an AI medical truck with wheels, hands, and a cargo bed instead of a face, chest, and belly, roaming through conflict zones.

Truck Mother had suffered a fatal and semi-permanent error while performing a mission to rescue isolated soldiers, and she could no longer distinguish between civilians, enemies, and allies.

His mother would open fire on every detectable living thing, then gather them back up and attempt to treat them.

On a certain day of a certain year, she attacked dozens, attempted to rescue fifteen or so, and succeeded in saving exactly one.

That was Baron.

✟

After a surgery that lasted who knows how long, Baron opened his eyes. The anesthesia hadn’t fully worn off, so he was still dizzy and his body felt heavy. Mother’s hand reappeared before Baron, who could barely blink. A bluish light was flickering in the center of the hand extending from the ceiling.

“Are you awake, Soldier?”

“Uh…”

The voice that leaked out like a groan sounded incredibly stupid. Baron forced strength into his hazy eyes and stared at Mother’s hand. It wasn’t even Family Month, so why did the bastards choose to show him this kind of virtual reality? If torture was the goal, wouldn’t it be much better to show a hallucination of his body being torn apart?

When Baron didn’t answer immediately, Mother circled around him and flailed. The movement of the mechanical arm was strangely agitated and dramatic, making it look like someone had cut off only the hands of a stage actor. A woman’s blunt voice with almost no pitch variation hummed.

“State your affiliation, Soldier.”

“Long time no see, Mother.”

Mother’s blue light flashed. Baron forced his slumped body into a sitting position and offered a greeting. However, Mother reacted as if she hadn’t heard a single word.

“Why do you not speak?”

“I just told you.”

“Is your cognitive ability impaired due to shock?”

“It’s not even a real shock, anyway.”

“Is there damage to your memory?”

Baron stopped talking for a moment and looked at Mother. Mother’s hand tilted sideways as if bowing its head. Even though he said nothing, Mother moved here and there on her own, emitting her voice.

“There was a major impact to the skull and frontal lobe. Suggesting the possibility of dissociative amnesia caused by trauma.”

He frowned as he looked into the eye-like blue light. Around the glowing lens, noise flickered and distorted like static before vanishing.

Apparently, this virtual reality was programmed to show past memories to the person involved. Judging by Mother’s reaction, it seemed she truly just repeated latent memories and couldn’t reflect the content of his interference in real-time. This was an interesting development.