Deleted Inventory

Prologue
It was really dark. I mean darker than any color or shade. It was like the other side of the idea of darkness; at first I thought I was in a black hole which, to my surprise, I remembered existed. I searched for the border, or a clue, or the limit of the darkness but it made things worse. I thought I was moving my head to look around but I couldn't feel my body. I tried to panic but there was just nothing in me that could panic, or scream, or cry. I had no voice, no body, nothing but my thoughts. I immediately tried to think of the last thing I remembered. I started becoming aware that I could think but the fear scattered any sense of self before it was assembled. I struggled to remember anything, anything, but instead of remembering I started to feel something. It felt like a light had just hit me and there had been music playing in my head the whole time. I waded in the stillness of my thoughts and although it felt like I was dying, I stopped trying to live.

"Sir? Sir, don't move..." It was female. "Just let him. Let him do what he needs to. He'll be sensitive to even our voices. It's a good thing. Get up, young man. You're safe, warm. You're alive." The voice was old, late fifties. There was gruffness, subtlety, and a something I couldn't identify. He was talking to me. Oh, and I forgot I was dying. "See? He's okay," He began to whisper to someone. I could hear his voice perfectly. "Start the program, be ever so careful," Again with the subtlety. "Doctor." I said. I could speak. "You're a man. You're fifty, perhaps fifty nine? You have a clear set of strings in you, there. Are your lips dry?" I asked. I wanted to focus on at least one thing. If I could bring myself back from the edge of oblivion, or not, at least I could focus on someone who cares.

"Yes, son, I'm a bit warm," Again with the damn subtlety. It was like he was avoiding saying anything negative at all. "I can hear you," I said, trying to sound desperately happy, optimistic. "Say it that again, son? I'm not sure I caught that," So I repeated myself. "I.. Can hear you," My voice fluctuated. I could barely feel where my throat should be. It confused the hell out of me; not knowing if I was upside down, sideways or standing. I started to panic. "Stop! You're here!" He lost all of the subtlety and I tried to open my eyes. My head, or at least what I thought was my head, hurt like hell. I tried harder to open my eyes and suddenly, before I was even aware of it, I was looking at something. "I can hear you. Thank you, Doc." It came out flat but I meant what I said. "You can see me, too. Look at the person in front of you." Suddenly I got the sense that I was doing something wrong. It felt like my body was moving without my command and it was doing bad things. I calmed myself down this time, and looked right into the old man's eyes. "You're... You're younger than I thought. You sound fucking ancient. Excuse me." I tried to tap my head for swearing when everything I was looking at moved away from me. "Whoa! It's okay! You can swear here." He said, uncomfortably. I could see him and the female moving back to where they were. "I need you to listen to me, okay young man?" He waited. "Yes, of course, sir." I acknowledged. "I want you-" He started to slow down his speech. "To be very aware of your body." The finality of his sentence made me try even harder than I would have. I stopped thinking and started feeling. Suddenly, like nothing else I've experienced, my body came back to me. It was different, though. I tried once again to focus on my neck and my vocal cords but they weren't there. I moved on to my abdomen and although I could feel it, it was absolutely different than it should've been, or so I guessed. Everything became natural very quickly, though, and I looked at the doctor. His face struck something in me and I spoke.

"Do I always forget?" But the words weren't mine. It came from me, I knew, but why would I say it? "I'm sorry?" He said, getting a bit closer. "I... I don't know. Sorry." Was all I needed to say. The doctor stepped back and I could see he was holding something and touching it frequently. "You're going to slowly start feeling your body again. Just tell me when it's the most comfortable for you," And so I waited. I could start to feel my skin but only lightly. I figured a good jab to my hip would feel like a love tap. Finally the anaesthetic, or whatever it was, alleviated enough for me to feel somewhat comfortable; I didn't want to push for anything more in case I'd be in pain. "There. That's fine." The doctor wasn't reading the handheld device any longer. He was just staring at it blankly. "What happened to me?" I asked, stretching my neck to the left and right to get a feel for my bones. Oddly enough I didn't feel any limitations so I stopped. Too, I became aware that I wasn't hungry, or full, or that I needed to go to the bathroom at all. In fact, it felt like everything inside of me had been scooped out. "Yes, your functions. Don't worry, you're fine. Young man, do you recall anything at all?" He said, watching the device more thoroughly now. "I... I uh... No. I know that... I know that I'm not a bad person," I said, optimistically. The doctor smiled widely and I watched his crow's feet appear and disappear. "No, you're not a bad person. Do you remember your name?" He looked up at me as he spoke. I looked at him and tried my hardest to recall something, anything. Nonsense started coming from my voice and instantly I could feel where memories were, but not the contents of them. I noticed I could find language, though, and could see and feel the English alphabet compose itself into words. Then I saw thousands upon thousands of words flick by. Within what felt like a minute I'd seen what I believed to be every word imaginable in English. The idea of faces struck me as important as well, so I began to recall every type of face I'd ever seen: cartoon characters, actors, people, animals, back to people and finally to the woman who was standing next to the doctor. I recalled her name but not his.

"Mrs. Theresa Lajolie. I've seen you before. Doctor, I recognize your face but I don't know your name. I'm sorry," I stretched my shoulders and once again felt no limits to my muscles or bones so I stopped. The doctor didn't say anything. Just as the English language went through my head, or my past my eyes I'm not sure, so too did objects begin to enter my memory. I faded away into memories and woke up some time later, when I abruptly realized that I wasn't breathing. "Doctor!" I hollered, trying to search the room. He wasn't there. My body didn't seem to be suffering from a lack of oxygen so I waited. "What the hell?" I asked. Slowly my peripheral vision became sharper, my focus adjusted and I could see a lot more of the room I was in. The one-way mirror ahead of me. The rolling cabinet with some things on it. The large cords dangling from the ceiling and into me. Into me? And these white cases around my arms with tiny hoses and lights under them. I moved my arm to feel the case above it when I realized it was my arm. Stunned, I looked down at my body and saw that it was encased in the same thing, which meant it too was my actual body. "What the hell?!" I hollered. I tried to calm down and remember something but all I had was what I had just witnessed and a few textbooks worth of English words, faces and objects. I avoided looking down and closed my eyes. Were they really my eyes? "Hey!-" I shouted just as Theresa and the doctor stepped through the door. I calculated their velocity and it seemed not to aim towards me. "Hey!" I repeated, and louder. The doctor glanced at me and snatched the handheld. "Do you remember now?" He asked. Realizing something, he rephrased his question. "Are you okay?" "What happened? Was this supposed to happen? Who am I? Did I do this willingly?! How am I alive? What do I look like?" I screeched the questions at him frantically. "You're a transplant. You and your family agreed to this a few days ago. A synthetic mind contains what is essentially an exact duplicate of your brain and the larger framework that you feel as your body is a special unit that simulates touch," He said matter-of-factly. His expression changed but I remember something before he could continue.

"What about eating? What about sex? Can I eat or sleep?!" I probed, trying to take things one step at a time. "You can sleep and there is something close to eating and drinking that you can do. In fact you'll need plenty of sleep to prevent a severe psychosis or dementia. Knowing you, though, you'll be okay," He said, looking over his nose at me. "Do you know me sir?" I asked. He began to loosen the steel rings around my arms. "I know you well enough, yes. You can say we're family, technically." He smiled. "You were extremely intelligent before the disease caught up with you. You were also kind hearted and I can tell you are still that person," He finished loosening the rings and stepped back. Theresa was ready to dash for the door. I stood up slowly, focusing very carefully and calculating the distances I needed to move my limbs. Questions ran through my mind too quickly for me to catch one and ask it. "Take this glass," The doctor grabbed what looked like a whiskey cup and held it in front of me. I couldn't question anything, I just did as I was told. "Okay," I said. I grabbed it from in between his fingers and held it up to the light. "I remember Vladimir. I remember exactly how this works now.