There was darkness, no sound, and no sensation to feel. It was then that 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 optic, 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.
"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 was hearing 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 to his hands and legs, only to realize his mechanized augmentation was absent. He was looking at a body of a pure bred human.
"It seems that 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.
"I have told you a hundred times, Adui, you have to be careful…" 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 a very poor 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 sporting loin cloth around their privates.
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 seem to be spreading across the sky, giving a beautiful contrast to setting sun.
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 wrong, he could see the messages before his eyes. 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."
It is then a girl around his age came running in 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 of the town were heading where they were heading. Soon, Harry found himself in front of a great pile of wood with his so-called father. There were children with him, and as they seemed to be close with his father, he figured he had siblings as well. And from what he saw, it seemed that all the people of the town were before the pile of woods.
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 that 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, 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…