2 From the past.
15 August 2020- Rome
The high noon sun shone high on the sky, bathing the world below in incessant heatwaves. Fronds whipped about under the effect of the weak breeze, casting shades for the tourists to take shelter under.
Adriano Meis walked about the city his wife adored. The white monuments displaying the glory of his ancestors used to be the subject of so many of their discussions, and yet now, they couldn't take his mind away.
"Where are you, Ophelia?" He asked to the air.
Last year while they were hiking by Lake Mead in Nevada, Ophelia went for a walk by herself and was never seen again.
Adriano had mobilized police, media, and dozens of volunteers, but they never found her traces. That was only the beginning of his troubles. Public attention painted him as a murderer, killing his wife and claiming she disappeared. Others said she ran away because she was tired of him and wanted to start a new life by herself. A small minority he ignored added her to their wild conspiracies of alien abductions.
Life alone was unbearable for him. They used to call each others halves of the same apple, only whole together. Now there was only one half, and its exposed heart was rotting in pain.
And like him, he knew there were many others. Hundred of thousands disappeared every year and were never found, maybe even millions. Why did it not make the news? How could the equivalent of a whole city go missing every year without anyone noticing?
Instead the news was constantly blaring their horn about immigration or rising crime statistics. Which he found odd, he had never personally experienced either of them.
In fact, the cities seemed more spacious than when he was a kid. Traffic too had decreased and finding work wasn't so hard in general. Odd.
He wondered as he wandered around the city. "Would anyone notice if I were to go missing?" He questioned himself.
"I have no parents anymore. My wife is missing. Haven't seen my friends in weeks, and even when they call, I let it go to voicemail." He stopped at a crossroad.
"Maybe I should disappear into nothing as well. Perhaps then I would see Ophelia again." Feeling tempted to step forward into the oncoming traffic, he slapped himself awake.
"Get a grip! You have to live, if not for yourself, at least for her memory. What is she going to say if you waste your life away?" He picked up his phone with a sad smile, ready to answer at least one message from his worried friends.
[Adriano, pick up your damn phone! Your godchild keeps asking where her uncle is. Don't you dare pull the vanishing act on her.]
Reading about that little brat constantly pestering him for rides and toys, he chuckled helplessly and decided to record a voice message. As his finger touched the button to start recording, a truck swerved to avoid a woman crossing the road watching her phone.
The truck quickly lost control and invaded the sidewalk, and that's when Adriano looked up in horror. His body couldn't even react before being sent flying away.
He flew like a ragdoll, his bones broken on impact, and landed on the floor with a wet crunch sound. Quickly, many onlookers rushed at him while calling an ambulance, but he didn't see any of that, knocked out cold.
The emergency responders quickly reached him and brought him back to the hospital, where, after a lengthy operation, a team of surgeons stabilized him.
Placed in a clean bed, Adriano entered an inescapable prison of dreamless sleep.
Since he didn't have any family or close relatives, the hospital asked a courtroom to look for a health proxy to decide whether or not to pull the plug since he was in a vegetative state.
His friend and their family insisted to take care of him, in the hopes there still were hope for his recovery. However the court denied their request and instead gave the power of attorney to his physician.
Soon after, his decision came. "The patient is to be transferred to a special research facility to undergo an experimental treatment." The doctor handling his case casually signed his transfer papers as he had done hundreds of times before and saw him off the hospital's premises.
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??? ????
Adriano opened his eyes to a vision of bright white light covering the world. His dazed mind failed to come up with answers, but random guesses bloomed in his numbed brain.
"Am I dead? Is this heaven?" Slowly the world turned clearer, and he realized he was staring at a foreign ceiling. He expected to see clouds, but instead, his eyes met hundreds of rows of military bunk beds.
It took him a moment to realize that he was also lying down on a bed. Same as him, many people slowly started waking up. Some in fright at being in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers, others curious or confused.
Adriano dropped down from the bunk, surprised at the state of his body. His muscles felt springier and harder than usual, and even his balance as he hit the floor felt higher than ever, almost as if he had gone back to being eighteen again.
He looked at his body, wearing a black suit from neck to toe, muscles bulging aggressively under the second-skin-like material. A golden lightning bolt emblem decorated his right shoulder, with the number 467th right below.
The crowd clamored as they got off their beds and started looking for a way out.
"Attention." a voice came from a speaker box on the roof, he couldn't identify the language spoken, but a voice in his ear automatically translated the man's words.
A multitude of screens appeared on the roof, displaying a bulky black-haired man.
"I am the Stratego Julius Chen. Supreme Commander of the EPC military forces. You might be wondering where you are. You are in the future, the year 2351, to be exact. Your governments have sold you in exchange for technological advancements and exotic materials."
Julius' words sent many spinning in confusion, and some even doubted his words, but seeing his stoic and valiant expression, Adriano had problems doing the same.
"Some of you were wandering through life without aims or ambitions; others might have taken a bad road at some point, and others yet might have reached the end of their story and taken before death. It matters not to me. All of you received today a new chance and a bright new goal."
The man's stoic expression softened into a smile, so brief Adriano almost thought he imagined it.
"Your old world neither wanted nor needed you. We do." The screen changed to show images of heart-thumping battles in space between star-fighters and warships and on the ground between mechas and aliens.
"The Folgore Division has been created to protect humanity against the alien threat that seeks to eradicate our freedom and reduce us to slaves." The images shifted to devastated cities where humans were chained and loaded like cargo.
The man vigorously thumped his chest and roared:
"WE ARE THE LAST BASTION OF HUMANITY!
ITS PROTECTORS IN THE LONG NIGHT AND COLD SPACE!
FURIOUS STORM AND RIGHTEOUS LIGHT. WE, ARE, FOLGORE!" He said with a military salute, and then the screens disappeared.
Adriano felt his heart furiously pumping hot blood and fought hard to keep down a howl. Unlike him, many couldn't hold back and howled in excitement or thumped their chests, repeating the commander's words.
"Something feels strange." He thought, trying to calm down his heart. He had always loved humanity in its full potential and capabilities, and the idea of driving a mecha to go fighting off an alien threat talked to the inner halo fanboy hidden in him.
However, was that enough to thoroughly go over the whole being kidnapped and sent to the frontline thing? Unlikely.
"So, you've noticed." The same voice that translated the monitor's words echoed again in his ears. "I'm a multipurpose neuro-interface designed to assist my user in keeping stress levels down during a combat situation and provide tactical aid. You can refer to me as Oracle."
The robotic voice took a more feminine tone. Adriano guessed it was a design choice to endear male users. Women probably had a smooth man's voice instead.
"What have you done to me?" He asked, feeling a cold sensation spreading from the back of his head that washed away the excitement and adrenaline, leaving him calm and composed.
"I've tweaked your endocrine system and injected dopamines and adrenaline to induce an excited state. Now I've switched to endorphins and serotonin to calm you down and let you think lucidly." The voice happily chirped.
"You are pretty honest in admitting this after stealthily influencing my thoughts and mood," Adriano remarked, enjoying his unnaturally zen state.
"I'm programmed to reveal myself slowly, and as the user gets used to me, reveal my functions, little by little. However, I'm also programmed to reveal myself early if the user can identify his altered state." Oracle didn't withhold any information and happily revealed her programming as if chatting about the weather.
"How can you read my mind? Can I deactivate you? Can you control my body?" Interrogated Adriano in quick succession. Thanks to the chemical cocktail in his system, he couldn't feel angry even if he tried.
"I can perfectly read all your neural impulses, interpret your thoughts and translate them into language. No, I can't control the host's body. Complete deactivation is impossible, but you can deactivate most of my functions, although I would strongly discourage this course of action. Would you like me to stop balancing your mood?" After flawlessly answering his question, she poignantly added a question of her own.
Her sad voice made Adriano consider how helpful it would be to be calm at all times, and he finally shook his head. "Just inform me when you play with my head, ok?" For a moment, he felt like patting her head but couldn't physically, so he patted himself.
"Thank you!★"She chirped out.
"Wait, how did I hear the-" The doors to the barracks opened, and the crowd quickly fled outside, breaking Adriano out of his stupor.
Adriano followed them to the entrance and saw the base outside the barracks. A green open space covered the earth. Trees and small creeks decorated a perfectly curated green meadow.
Upon the lawn, soldiers trained and took walks; mecha pilots tested their machines, and some even had taken off their uniforms and went for a swim.
However, none of that pulled Adriano's attention from the monolithic presence that occupied most of the world.
A vertical wall that went from one side of the horizon to the other and whose height easily surpassed the clouds. Above the clouds, one could see a second similarly massive construction on top of the first and even higher, where space met the atmosphere, a third and final level.
The top of the third level reached all the way to space, where a human fleet of spaceships docked. From up there, it didn't look like the ziggurat-like tower had been built on the planet but that the planet had been placed like a scoop of ice cream on this galactic-sized ice cream cone.
Back on the ground, if not for the glowing photovoltaic blue surface of the construct illuminating the surrounding like a cerulean sun, the structure would have covered the planet's surface in shadow at all times.
Along its whole length, busy wall-mounted hangars saw an immense amount of drones and other flying vehicles taking off and landing.
"Welcome to Mount Olympus, Folgore Main HQ. And your new home."
