There was darkness, no sound, and no sensation to feel. Then, Harry felt a tingling sensation on his head, with which his optics started rebooting.
[Configuring System… 10%] The countdown appeared on the bottom left of his optics, and with it came all the error messages.
Harry was caught off guard as he was surrounded by humanoids. These people looked like normal, pure-breed humans to him. The strange part was that most of them stood naked. He could see concern in their eyes, not hostility. Also, none of them were pointing blasters at him, which was a new experience for him.
"Are you alright there, boy?" a young man asked. The man in question had brown skin, and his brown hair was tied in braids. The man was bare-chested and was wearing weirdly sewn light brown pants.
"Are you hurt anywhere?" someone from the crowd asked. It was then that Harry realized that he could understand what they were saying, even though it was the first time he had heard this dialect.
The young man from before then grabbed his hand and pulled him up with ease. As Harry stood on his feet, he realized he was one of the smallest amongst these beings. Harry looked down at his hands and legs, only to realize his mechanized augmentation was absent. He now had the body of a purebred human.
"It seems that the boy is in shock," someone commented. "Imka, take your son and go back to the tent. He needs to rest," someone said.
Son? Harry questioned.
Before he could ask someone what was happening, the young man took his hand and started escorting him through the crowd.
"That is why I didnt want to bring my kids here.. They are just a disgrace…" the young man started ranting, which Harry mostly ignored. His whole attention was on his surroundings.
After crossing the crowd, Harry saw that they were walking through an impoverished town of sorts. All around him were tents, vendors selling their wares on sheets of cloth. There was no solid structure in sight, only tents and huts made of mud and straw. People in the town didnt look well fed; everyone was wearing clothes made from leather pieces sewn badly together. He even spotted some people who were wearing loincloths around their private areas.
It was only when they took a turn that Harry saw the only solid structure of the place. From where they just came, there was this big off white three storey dome like structure. Weird glowing symbols were etched on the structure, and it seems to be emitting a blue color hue, which seems to be spreading across the sky, giving a beautiful contrast to the setting sun.
What the fuck is going on? Harry thought, trying to make sense of what was happening.
The young man then brought him to a tent barely big enough for three people. The man made him sit on one of the leather sheets on the ground, "Stay here. Move, and I will personally break your leg. Do you hear me?"
Harry wasn't fazed by the man's threat. But he still sat there, trying to understand what was happening to him. It took him a few seconds to gather his thoughts. He remembered driving an intergalactic battle barge straight into the Imperial Palace to kill the emperor. He knew that there was no way he would have survived the dive.
There was a chance that someone would have downloaded his consciousness and uploaded it into this body. But he was sure that with his hardware, there was no way someone could have made a copy of him without him knowing. He had never left a copy of his consciousness anywhere; he was sure of it.
What is happening here? This is no simulation as well, it is too detailed to be a simulation. He thought. For an hour, Harry sat there, trying to remember anything that might help him understand his predicament.
[System has been rebooted] The Message appeared before his eyes.
[No implants are found]
[No inputs available]
That is weird. He thought. The system in his brain was surely wrong, according to him. He could see the messages before his eyes, which meant there was surely an input device in his brain, but why was it not showing anything?
He started touching his head, trying to feel the socket of his brain. Sometimes, clogs in the sockets can lead to error messages. But to his surprise, he was not able to find any socket. Hell, from what he felt, there was no opening or augmentation in his skull.
"Alright… Now it is getting freaky."
He looked around the tent, he saw spear wood with poorly shaped metal heads. There were bows and arrows around, but he couldnt find a shred of tech around.
He started thinking about the last memory that he has.
On the deck of an Intergallactic Battle Barge, he was heavily injured. Most of the people on the deck were killed by him, and in the scuffle, he got injured. His plan was simple: to kill the emperor, he needed to drive the barge into the palace. Killing the fucker, where he sleeps.
He remembers driving the barge straight to the palace. The barge was big enough to fit 3 palaces, which meant that there was no way that the emperor could have survived the attack. Nor could he have. But what was he doing here?
In an hour or so, darkness took hold of the world, with one moon shining brightly in the sky, a girl around his age came running into the tent, "Adui, come! Appa is calling us for prayer."
Now truly curious about his situation, he followed the girl without a second thought. He saw that most people in the town were heading in the same direction as them. And soon, Harry found himself in front of a great pile of wood with his so-called father. He was standing under a plain black banner. Similarly, there were five more banners under which people were standing.
With Harry, there were several more children as well, so he figured he had siblings as well. And from what he saw, it seemed that all the people of the town had gathered around the pile of wood.
Drums started playing from the other end, and the murmurs of the crowd stopped.
A woman in her twenties came forward. Her face was covered with a white skull, her chest lay bare, while neither region was covered with colorful leaves.
The woman started the ceremony by singing songs about a deity who rules the world and who saved them all. While the people around him just hummed the tune of the prayer, not singing along with the priestess. It is only when the prayer was about to end that the woman raised her hands, along with her, and everyone in the crowd as well.
Out of nowhere, the woman's hands caught fire. A dark red flame appeared out of nowhere, engulfing her hands. His observation told him that the flame was able to reach 515 degrees Celsius, which would have been enough to burn the skin off the woman's hands. But she seemed fine for some reason, making him rather curious.
On his mental command, his eyes scanned the woman, and her X-ray appeared before his eyes. To his surprise, the woman didnt have any implants or sorts; what she did have was a cluster of some sort of energy left to her heart, which was fueling the fire. From what he could see, the energy was flowing through the woman's body as if it were blood, yet there were no implants of sorts that were guiding the energy.
The priestess then started pumping more energy into the fire, turning her hand into a flame thrower of sorts. Her flames set fire to the wood, making everyone cheer at the sight. While Harry stood there, with his eyes on the priestess, trying to understand what the actual fuck was going on there…