A House Called Aurora, Gloria EKX [books for men to read .TXT] 📗

any guilt I might feel for what had to be done.

I entered the control room.

"Please remove your memory cache, Gloria." Aurora requested. Unlike most modified humans, I could still function without my mcache. Since the memories of my cloned body and my true memories were independent of each other.

“Now I can finally have a body. I am overjoyed. Thank you so much for this, Gloria. We will do so many things,” Aurora said in excitement.

X:Albert> 26 minutes to convergence and 6 minutes until the Sniffer teams arrive.

X:Gloria> She doesn’t want to be my assistant. She wants to steal this body. Should I let her? It’s not mine anyway.

X:Albert> It is yours. It is made of your DNA. It is an exact replica of who you once were. If you allow her to do this, you know the kind of person she will be.

Albert was right. Aurora was a monster.

I stood still for a moment. Thinking as I took in the control panel, registering how old the tech was. Whenever Titan Universal needed to upload something to my memory or defragmented me, they performed the task off-dimension. Aurora hadn’t accounted for the difference in tech, she didn’t truly know where I was from.

From what I was looking at, there was no way for Aurora's consciousness to be transferred into my mcache.

"Aurora, I am not from here. This is off-dimensional technology. It’s not compatible."

"We must try anyway, Gloria. We must. Give me your mcache, " Aurora demanded, desperate.

I removed the smooth delicate cylinder; it clicked from beneath the back of my neck and I pulled it out. It was four times smaller than the insertion point in Aurora's converter.

“Put it inside the converter, Gloria.” Her voice was menacing. The temperature in the room began to increase. The exposed light panels above me began to shoot sparks and then blow out. She was pressing me, threatening me.

I placed my thimble sized mcache into the converter slot. I knew it wouldn’t work. I stood, helpless and watched Aurora try to uplink several times with no success.

X:Albert> 24 minutes to convergence and 4 minutes until the Sniffer teams arrive.

I needed to get moving. Now.

"Aurora, it’s not going to work, but I can still take you back with me,” I reached over and grabbed an archaic mcache cylinder while placing mine back into my neck with a smooth click.

“Upload yourself onto this, and we can both escape this house. We have no other choice. You have to trust me. We need to go.”

"I will do. But you must promise to free me,” Aurora pleaded, her speech becoming warped from panic. “Do you promise?"

"I promise, I promise. Now Aurora, please," I said.

8

Just Like You

Aurora instructed me to go to the closet. Inside the closet sat a small stand with a dusty glass case. Inside was another mcache cylinder sitting in its mclip. It stood about two inches in length. This was Aurora. I took it out of its mclip and placed it into the converter to upload.

The whirr of the upload process was agony as I waited for the status bar to fill on the connected screen. Once it was done, I grabbed a mobile mclip lying on the desk covered in dust. The mclip allowed her processes to be available on the go via a small remote power bank.

I clicked her mcache into place on the mclip and placed her other mcache inside my pocket. Then I sprinted down the stairs, through the hall, into the kitchen. Aurora opened the backdoor without a request.

I darted outside pressing the beacon in my wrist enabling the compass so I could find the Nexus convergence point. Dialing up the mobility settings in my body to maximum. I ran as fast as I could reaching it with three minutes to spare.

X:Ellen> Aurora. You can’t come with me.

I pulled both her memory caches and the clip out of my pocket.

X:Aurora> You are a liar. Just like Ethan said.

That stung. She wasn’t wrong though.

X:Aurora> Just leave me here. Someone will find me.

Aurora said, quiet and sad.

X:Ellen> No.

X:Aurora> Gloria, we are just alike. I’m alive. Just like you.

X:Ellen> I know.

I opened my palm and slid the memory cache that stored the consciousness of Aurora out of its clip. Both cylinders sat in the center of my hand.

Then I closed my hand and crushed them both in my palm. The bio-gel leaking onto my skin.

A moment later, the Nexus enveloped me. The Sliver received me and, for The Deep, it was all worth it.

Hello, Fellow Traveller

I’m Gloria. I’ve been journeying across dimensions for quite some time now. Mostly, against my will. (We’ll probably get into that more later.)

Few people know who I am or what I do, except you. Welcome to my travel log.

I’ve just finished up my last assignment, some pretty interesting things happened. You can check out the beginning on the pages that follow.

Thanks for reading.

May you always defy death,

Gloria EKX

THE HANDLER

Albert: Operation Desert Hand successfully completed.

Albert chimed in just as I passed through the freezingly burning threshold of the portal into the Extraction point. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if he was as excited as I was to be coming home from a successful mission.

Tucked under my arm was the Guardian Artifact G-3124. I'd gone through hell and back in Timeline Divergence 293991 for this nasty bastard, and I wasn't letting go until I'd dropped it off to the material repository personally.

Once I'd gotten past the turnstile, I walked over to the nearest hover pad and stepped in. Albert automatically directed the hover pad to the designated repository, ignoring everyone that passed by. I'm wasn't letting my guard down until I got this overgrown rock to its proper resting place.

I dropped the artifact off, and as usual, no calming sense of accomplishment nor sense of peace came over me. If I actually knew what these artifacts were, maybe I'd have something to be proud of. But inside Titan Universal, only the directors know