Ghost in the machine

Tested. Still got memories.

Her bed was an oval gel mattress on a white, solid half-egg base made of some plastic/metallic substance. It looked as if it should rock but it was solid. The tests had taken one hour, forty eight minutes and the hologram no longer responded to her voice and had returned to its silent, rotating logo. She was alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for something to happen.

And something did. She remembered what she'd lost. What she'd promised to find. Leporinho. 

The door hissed open and the woman entered. She approached the bed without a word and picked up the discarded virtual senses device.

- You did well.

She thought she had. She'd enjoyed the tests, though she wasn't sure what had been expected of her. The physical tests had been the hardest. Not because of their content, but for her lack of references. She had no way to evaluate or compare her performance, though her strength, reflexes, agility, speed and flexibility all seemed adequate and she'd completed each task to the best of her ability, doing exactly what she thought was required of her. Her senses were impressive, and all well beyond a biological human's range, leading her to wonder, momentarily, just what, exactly, she was. She'd relished the cognitive and numerical tests, impressing herself with the depth of her knowledge of things she had no idea she knew. Thermodynamics, nuclear chemistry, structural biology, nano and femtoengineering, biomolecules, genetics, Euclidean geometry, Dopler shift, Hohnmann orbits and Lagrange points, optical navegation, relativity, topology, manifolds, algebraic geometry and a thousand other subjects were just there, in her head, waiting to be used. Even the calculations, manipulating numbers she had no knowledge of ever having seen before, just flowed. She was, in her own opinion, in peak mental and physical form.

- Table.

A table unfolded itself from the lateral of the bed.

- Muclunch two and vitmin shake.

She heard a soft subsonic rumble beneath her and ten seconds later sensed a vibration as a door swished open beside her dangling legs. The woman bent to retrieve a tray of steaming food and an ice cold beverage and placed it on the table.

- Enjoy. After you may rest.

She smiled and turned to leave. It was now or never. She'd promised.

- I remembered something.

The woman stopped. Her shoulders contracted. She turned.

- What?
- Leporinho. Where is he? Is he alright? Can I see him?

The woman sighed and her mouth tightened. She seemed angry. Maybe she should have waited before saying something?

- He's fine. You can see him later.

Relief washed over her. She smiled at the woman as she left and when the door closed she inspected the Muclunch two, sniffing it, then picking off small samples to taste. It was a two-tone, three-level dome, the upper and lower levels being a uniform white substance made from complex carbohydrates and a small quantity of protein and the middle a brown, lumpy mixture of fats and essential amino acids. Its was wonderful, and left her licking her fingers and wanting another. The shake was a water-based beverage of vitamins and minerals containing sucrose, fructose and lactose, monoglycerides and diglycerides, and an artifical flavouring she supposed was designed to mimic strawberry, but which, as far as she could ascertain, was actually comprised of at least twenty seventeen different compounds and a solvent. In spite of its unsavoury ingredients, it too was delicious.

Satisfied, she pushed the table away and lay back. In minutes, in spite of herself, in spite of her growing curiosity as to what and who she was, her reason or purpose for being in this place, her unexplained lack of personal history, she was asleep, overtaken by a stark, oblivious, slate-black slumber more akin to death than rest, void of dreams or thoughts. Void of everything but the unsettling sensation that she was falling.