1 Reborn Anew

Author's note: The story begins here in chapter 1. You can skip ahead if you want, but as an author I highly recommend you read the prologue chapters first as it introduces the MC and a small fraction of his background.

***

Year 2085.

A 45-year-old head scientist of a research facility lied down on the cold steel floor full of injuries. He was in the depths of a nuclear reactor—precisely near the core. Everything was falling to a meltdown.

There was a strange accident. An inexplainable accident that stipulated to the disaster unfolding now. He was investigating something in the core, all the while searching for his friend. He then saw an enormous light, buzzing like million volts of electricity, shrouded in black-colored sparks. It led to an explosion that incapacitated him.

His handy talky was not far from him. Static voices rang out from it.

"Mr. Zal! Detective Gunawan! Report in! We just heard a massive bang down there. Where are you!?"

…But the head scientist never responded. He could no longer speak.

More explosions tore down the lower stratum apart. Fire began to spread, and the cold metal floor was like a heating pot. The temperature rose to the point that no human would survive in it.

The head scientist who doubled as a private detective, Goldwin Zal Gunawan, was at the edge of his life. He regretted not being able to prevent the tragedy from happening. He regretted for failing his friend. And so, he thought of his death as a punishment.

But before darkness clouded his eyes, he spoke to himself in his mind.

"This level of heat… ha-hah… An android would be able to withstand this. Radiation? Hah, screw that. Radiation does not affect robots. It must feel really good, being a robot and all. Hahah, what am I saying?"

Goldwin's vision slowly faded. Just when the darkness was about to fully consume his eyes, he made one final wish.

"If I were to live a second life, I wish it will be a place where I can do experiments in peace, in a body as formidable as those androids… unable to feel fatigue or pain… can go on for days without the need for sleep… Man, that's too dreamy for a middle-aged guy like me. Well… It's alright. It's just a wish that will never be heard, anyway…"

At the end of his thoughts, a giant fireball swallowed him whole.

…

***

I couldn't see anything.

It's all pitch black.

All control of my body had been stripped from me. I couldn't feel anything. It felt like I was floating. I was suffocating. Breathing was extremely difficult. Is this what it feels like to die?

Something faded into my vision.

"Huh…? What's this?"

My eyes noticed a rectangle with zero percentage metric by the upper right corner. By the left side, there was a phrase written in programming letters.

"Synchronizing progress…?" I saw a loading bar running from 1 to 100 percent.

At first it started slowly from 1 to 12. But after that, it sped up in an insane rate as if 512 Zettabytes of RAM mustered into it. It just whooshed up to 100 in less than a second. Even my computer at home wasn't that fast.

What the hell am I looking at? What is this?

Hey, now… It's not funny if hell or heaven had cutting-edge technology.

After that, my eyes saw a loading bar.

"Huh?"

This time, it said <REBOOTING SYSTEMS>. I couldn't stop thinking of how strange this phenomenon happening in front of me. I sure as damn was dying. I didn't remember firing up virtual reality or something.

"Oh? What's this now?" My eyes then slowly captured the sight of a heads-up display.

An odd notification showed up in my eyes: <AUDITORY SYSTEMS… OK>

Shortly, my hearings that were rendered obsolete now heard some kind of whirring turbine starting up.

Another phrase popped up: <POWER GENERATOR… OK>

Power generator? Some kind of battery? Just what kind of thing are you starting up, eh? A Mars Supercomputer?

At this point, I started to believe that I might have survived the explosion. And now, currently being treated in hospital. Perhaps those noises and letters displayed in my eyes were medical stuff that was connected to my body…

And my state right now was probably in a deep coma. Those words, loading bars, all those things… I might be having a bad nightmare.

"Ooh, I can feel again! There's something cold underneath me,"

Another pop-up phrase appeared before my eyes.

Then, I suddenly felt a solid and flat object under my back. It felt surprisingly like a surface of a wet brick - cold and soggy. Somehow, I could feel something weighing on me. I could smell something, too. It was unpleasantly pungent as if I was in a sewage system.

Another pop-up appeared.

Then, there were billion amounts of information I couldn't fathom rolling down rapidly.

This might be the oddest dream, yet. I saw those appearing words one after another clear as day. In fact, it didn't feel like a dream anymore. It felt too real.

Before long, I somewhat sensed something opening. Light washed off the darkness in my sights. It was as if I was entering a gate to heaven, ascending beyond all things. But when the light faded, I saw a ceiling built from mossy bricks, dripping water unto my face.

It was then I realized… I just opened my eyes.

I blinked twice before I looked around me. The environments around me were nothing like my room. I was in some ancient catacomb. I lifted my arm, looking at my palm. They looked so smooth, for some reason. It reminded me of my skin during my younger days. My body, too, looked younger than my former self. Despite being slenderer, it was quite muscular.

And for some reason, I was naked, only wearing a tattered shorts made of an animal hide.

Looking at this situation now, I sure would suffer a chronic headache due to how impossible this felt. But I did not feel any pain in my head.

To connect things together, I tried to trek back in time, remembering what happened.

"Hmm… If I remember correctly, OH—!!!"

I realized my voice was no longer a husky voice of an old man. It was like my youth returned to me.

"My voice has changed… What the hell is going on…? Grr, focus. I was going to Reactor C with the police… Oh, right!" I then remembered. "I was trying to find Gareth. And after that… I found him in the core area. And then there was an explosion…" I tried to piece the puzzle in my mind.

It was then I remembered it like a flash of lightning. I was caught in the explosion caused by some otherworldly shitty lightning orb that threw me and Gareth away. I remembered I was in critical condition. I still remembered the sensation. The feeling of losing my eyesight, control of my body, and unimaginable pain that flowed to my whole body. And after that, it was all black.

I then thought of one possible thing, "I'm dead, ain't I? And now… where am I?"

Where I was right now was obviously not hell nor heaven. I was in an underground building of some sort…

Nearby, I heard a flow of water nearby. I looked around and saw vines all over the mossy walls. The air was cold and smelled bad. Initially, I would think this was hell. But it didn't feel anything like it. In my mind, hell was full of fire, stench of burning flesh, and some executors of hell that would torture me with flaming chains and boiling lava. But this didn't seem like that.

Sitting around won't help me understand my situation. I decided to explore around. As I stood up, I felt a metal clanking against the brick floor when my knee landed. It shocked me.

"What… was that?" I paused to think.

I then crouched and tried knocking my knees with my finger. The skin was not a human skin. It was synthetic. Moreover, I heard metal clanking when I knocked them. I proceeded to inspect my whole skin. My palms, my arms, my body, my legs, even my head and hair.

Finally, I realized. I was not made of human flesh anymore. This skin I had now was nothing but artificial. I was stunned.

"What… happened to me?"

I tried to listen to my heartbeat. …It was not present. I didn't have a beating heart in my chest. Man, I felt down.

Last, but not least, there was one important place that I wanted to check. As a man, I wanted to know if my symbol of manliness was still present or not. I peeked a little into my shorts.

Dear God.

It was not there.

I crouched in the corner, whining about my form right now, "…My skin wasn't human. My heart was not present… and then, my Excalibur was gone…"

That was the first time I spoke. My voice wasn't husky like how my 45-year-old self was. I sounded like a young man, perhaps around twenty-five years old.

This was beyond cruel, I thought. I couldn't accept my current self. For some reason, I couldn't let tears off my eyes. I felt sad, but no tears could flow out. In a joking sense, I knocked my eyeballs.

They're solid. Hard like a tempered glass.

I crouched again, but in a different corner now. "What the hell has I turned into…?"

It hurts, man. I couldn't solve the case from before. My research facility (the reactor C) was blown to bits by a strange, sci-fi-like thunder orb. And now, I woke up as a non-human being. Lady Luck wasn't on my side at all, man.

But I know whining would not bring me anywhere. It's the same when dealing with Calculus IV equation. It made me want to cry but whining about it would not solve the problem. I had to get a move on if I wanted to get a grasp of my situation.

With that, I stood up and walked to the place where I heard the flow of water. It appeared that I was standing on a higher point. I saw a stream down there. The water was clear. I immediately thought, "Is it drinkable…?"

I climbed down to get closer to it. I usually had a backache when I was climbing. But for some reason, I didn't feel any illness when climbing down. In fact, I felt like I had a freedom of movement.

As I got down, I walked down to the stream and saw my face on the water.

"This face…" I said quietly. I might sound calm, but I was actually shocked. Who could've thought that the face reflected on the water was my face when I was about to enroll into university? That young, spirited face, it certainly brought back memories. It returned to me!

The only thing that turned out to be different would be my fair. My hair was now silver as opposed to my usual brown. My short silver hair has few strands of black that extends down to my neck. I even grew one streak of hair that shaped like an acute angle. It was called an ahoge in Japanese comic books.

Denial - that was what I was currently facing. I could not accept this state I was in. I wanted to believe that this was just a stupid nightmare. I wanted to wake up.

Finally…

Calmly, yet peacefully…

I pinched my cheek.

Nothing.

I tapped my face a few times.

Still nothing.

I slapped myself twice.

Nope. I couldn't feel the pain. …Maybe I'm still dreaming?

I then tried sinking my head into the clear water, disturbing the stillness of the stream. I pulled my head from the water since I could feel the cold sensation of the waterflow breaking into my face. My soaked face, my wet hair, it felt real.

It was at this moment that I realized… this was not a dream.

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