Waking up Alison immediately noticed something was off. Instead of the slow coming to and drowsiness from waking she was used to, she was awake in an instant. No lazy turning over in bed and no hazy mind, but instant and glaring clarity of thought. Not that this clarity really helped her understand why she couldn’t actually feel her body right now. She tried to remember the last thing she did before going the bed, when it hit her like a brick to the face.

The Ourchos, the battle above Eorhild, her frantic actions to save the energy source of her superdreadnaught, and finally an amazing view of a starry canopy with the planet of Eorhild the size of a pea in the distance.

What the hell happened to me! Am I in sickbay? Did I hit my head or something? She wondered to herself. As she tried to relax and think back to why she was no longer in the core room, she felt the massive databases in her mind opening up.

Information upon information blossomed in her mind. And yet she did not feel overwhelmed but felt an analytical state of mind coming over her, classifying each bit of data as it came in and putting it away for later use, should the need arise. She became so lost in wondering at the fountain of knowledge suddenly found in the recesses of her memory, that she completely lost all sense of time and the immediate sense of urgency to figure out what happened to her she felt previously.

After what felt like an eternity of reveling in the flow of information, she felt an alarm going off in some corner of her brain.

Hmmm apparently, I have low energy…. Why the hell do I even have or use energy? But before she could follow this thought any further this energy seemed to have run out and she felt herself going into some sort of hibernation.

***

When she awoke again, it surprised her. As before there was no slow coming to out of hazy nothingness, but suddenly she was there, and she was thinking. As before she could not feel her body nor actually see anything around herself.

Ok Alison, no getting lost in some strange memory archives this time! She told herself firmly. So I have energy and it can run out. How did this happen, where did I come from?

As if on cue for her demand for knowledge, she saw herself standing in the core room, tapping away at a virtual keyboard. She remembered this moment! She remembered as she saw the surrounding area transform from matter into energy and she remembered when she herself was absorbed into the core. She remembered this astonishing view of the stars.

So, I am a dimension core now. Why do I have low energy then? Aren’t they, no am I, not designed to produce my own energy? However checking her log, I have a log, wooooo!, she saw an entry, right before the entry mind assimilation, about an emergency tap shutdown. Well I guess that’s just great! So how come I even have any energy at all?

Searching her active processes, she figured out she could absorb minuscule amounts of energy from her surroundings. Concentrating on these energy flows, she figured out she could indeed control and form the energies in the air like they were so much dough in her hands, causing them to flow toward her and replenishing her energy reserves.

Not that she could see what she was doing, but she could feel the flows of energy around her. With each new quanta of energy absorbed she caught glimpses of rock, some water flowing or if she was lucky, or unlucky depending on viewpoint, of something crawly with a lot of legs.

Having realized what must have happened to her another thought struck her. Why am I not panicking? I saw my body dissolve itself and I am a fucking machine now? Why do I not feel horrified at the thought?

In general, now that she spent some time pondering it, her feelings all seemed strangely muted. As if it was faint echo of what she felt as a human being. She still felt the panic she was expecting from her new situation, however she could control it, if she concentrated, she might even be able to quench it all the way.

Best not go there, don’t want to go down the slippery road of getting rid of unwanted feelings. She reminded herself strongly, keeping the simulation of what she should feel, albeit in a muted form, active. She stayed away of the mind-numbing drugs many took due to the pressure of living under a sword of Damocles by the Ourchos, she will damned well stay away from similar effects now that she was an enhanced AI.

Noting her energy levels dropping again she remembered the feeling of absorbing the small amounts of energy previously and started pulling on them with more power to feed herself. Being active seemed to consume more power than she could absorb passively.

For a moment this seemed work as the power flowing into her increased, however after only a short amount of time the sources of the energy seemed to cut off and there were no more tasty morsels of energy in her surroundings for her to grasp.

The amount absorbed was barely enough for her to last another couple of minutes. Well Shit, that worked out wonderfully Alison. Well done! She congratulated herself for cutting off the only source of energy she had before. As before when she was about to run out of energy, she felt herself going into hibernation again. Paying close attention and knowing what she was, she was able to tell that it was some kind of sleep mode, set to awaken if a certain threshold of energy was reached.

Before she could do anything with this knowledge however, her mind blanked out again and her core went back into passive energy absorption mode.

***

When she awoke next, the first thing she did was to raise the threshold for energy required to awake her, so that next time at least she would be able to do something about her energy deficiency. The second thing she noticed was, that her passive energy sources seemed to have replenished themselves and were feeding her a trickle of energy constantly.

After that she started to look into methods to extend her battery life for lack of a better word. The first thing she did was to shut down parts of her mind, or more accurately parts of the core, she did not immediately require, such as extended libraries on advanced technology and other non-essential databases. Doing so she thought she could feel her mind dimming slightly, as capacities available before, were cut off.

Having done all she could to preserve energy consumption she started looking into other ways to acquire power other then extinguishing the small trickle of flow currently extending the time until her next hibernation.

Looking into the flows more intricately, she noticed the sources for her trickle of energy all seemed to come from her immediate surroundings, within a sphere extending roughly an additional 5 cm from the border of her dimension core.

Seems I am limited in the area from which I can absorb energy from. Could I extend it in some way? She challenged herself. No matter how hard she tried to extend her range however, nothing seemed to have an effect in the end. Even with her heightened capabilities and sense for details in the subatomic scale, she barely noticed an increase in acquisition area. Calming her mind again she started to think again on what other possibilities she might have, yet before she finished the first sentence in her mind, the power levels once again reached critical levels and she was forced to put herself into power saving mode once again.

***

Coming to an unknown amount of time later, this time aware of her status as an unusual AI, she managed to follow the last traces of her start-up sequence in the back of her mind.

So, it was not just a weird dream. She consoled herself, I guess that confirms my new identity as a freakishly aware computer.

Checking her power levels immediately, she noticed the increase compared to the last time she awoke, just as she expected. Seeing as she was still no closer to solving her dilemma of acquiring enough constant energy flow for permanent active operation, she decided to turn her attention to something else that had bothered her since awakening.

She knew being a core now, she had no need for a body or any of its associated functions, she could not get rid of the itch of a phantom feeling of her limbs. Being unable to move around was slowly getting to her. Her lack of a vision except for the constantly undulating forms of energy flowing around her did not help to ease her feeling of unease.

Experimenting with the capabilities she had, caught within an artificial world, she decided to try and recreate a semblance of an environment. At first, she felt the programming resisting the unconventional use of computational power. Soon though she thought she saw something other than the glowing flows of power flicker in the corner of her vision.

Ha! she exclaimed, seems like I am on the right track! Enheartened by this shadow of a success she kept on manipulating the confines of her imaginary environment. As time passed and Alison lost herself in her own creations, the power reserves were again dropping at an alarming rate due to the heightened consumption of freestyle programming, something the lattice structure of the core was never really intended to do.

Just before Alison was forced back into unconsciousness she finally succeeded. With a sense of accomplishment, she reveled in the feeling of her taut muscles as she stretched her arms out on either side of her body.

That feels amazing! She thought to herself as she kept exploring the missing feeling of her previously non-existent limbs. Having succeed in recreating her body inside this virtual environment she was still only her old self floating amidst nothing. So, she moved on to create somewhere from which to work on from now on. With a thought she used up the last of her remaining reserves to recreate a small room around herself with full length windows all around, showing her current vision around the core containing herself.

Lying down on the small bed created in a corner she again went into power saving mode to await the replenishment of her energies.