Before long, he found himself in a new form. Flesh and bone and pumping blood. The darting, electric considerations of his mind moving against the more cumbersome impulses of the organic. Sickening. The floor, a real and very physical floor made of metal, shifted beneath him. He fell. It hurt.
“You are doing well, agent,” came a resonant, mechanical voice from the room around him, in full defiance of his current state. “None of your peers would be able to acclimatise to a true human body faster than you have. Please take your time and rise when you feel able.”
Time was another uncanny concept for the human being lying on the floor of the dark, metal room. Time. He could feel it, he realised, through the sluggish movement of messages sent from his soft limbs to his even softer brain. He could feel the little tickles of his own hair growing through his scalp. Was this aging he felt? And then, another novel concept. He was going to throw up.
“You shall no doubt feel much better once we have concluded calibration,” said a different machine from the same nowhere-and-everywhere as its colleague. “Your cybernetics shall take away much of the strain you are currently experiencing. Can you try standing?”
He did try, wiping his lips with one arm and thoroughly hating the slick sensation that now lingered on his skin. His legs ached as he manoeuvred them underneath his heavy body, and even when he used his hand to support himself against the nearby wall, the gravity was debilitating. It was like pushing through concrete.
But he did it. He pushed up through that concrete and, some considerable time later, he stood on his own bare feet. Only then did he realise that he was cold.
“Well done,” said the machine to the shivering human. “Very well done, agent. We shall now commence calibration.”
The room shuddered under the motion of the vessel it incorporated. Arrays of sensor equipment hidden in the dark of the ceiling overhead aligned themselves to face inward. The noise of the data scanners was outrageous to the human being’s brand-new ears, and he flinched away from it. And beneath his skin, he whirred. His eyes felt like they were swivelling in their sockets. His wrists grew strangely hot. The metal scaffolding around his bones clicked and shifted. There was new information in his brain, flowing into him like a river and filling up the voids. Names and faces and schematics and plans. Endless reams of plans. Much of this information gently sank itself down into his subconscious, but some of it layered upon his self, so that he could no longer tell what was new and what had always been. He had known some of this torrent of data back home, on his home planet. But which of it was real? He found he didn’t care. He had enough going on right now.
“Please state your name for us, agent.”
Lips willed to move, air forced to comply. The human being spoke his truth into the cosmos.
“Marcus Albright, of Earth.”
The voice was unfamiliar. It grated against the dry insides of his throat. It sank into the metal of the room around him. He wished it was different.
“Thank you. Now, please answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge. Do you have a home?”
“Yes. Earth.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any friends?”
“Yes.”
“Name one.”
Silence, and a dull pain at the back of his brain.
“Agent, please name your parents.”
“I… can’t.”
“Thank you, agent. That will do. Now, please state core mission objectives.”
“I am, um… the second… man? On a space ship.”
“Please try again. Take a deep breath, first.”
The human being complied. He would need to get used to breathing automatically in time. And as he concentrated on the impressions of thoughts in his hazy memory, the details slowly came into relief. As they did, he began to file them away in appropriate places in his consciousness.
“First officer. Of a ship called the Rune Carrier.”
“And its mission?”
“To travel to a place called… the Forge. Another galaxy. It’s the first ship we’ve made that can safely and quickly move that big a distance.”
“Please define ‘we’.”
“R-… No, wait. Th-The Galactic Accord. All of us.”
“And how does the Rune Carrier achieve subspace travel?”
This time, there was nothing. The human being discovered that he did not like being without information.
“I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “Some sort of Mythmaker energy.”
He blinked. What was a ‘Mythmaker’? Where had that word come from?
“You are doing very well, agent,” the second machine said, kindly condescending. The human being liked the way it spoke to him. “One last question, then we will let you rest. Agent, do you have a soul?”
“Yes.” That was an easy one. Even so, the room seemed to warp gently as though exhaling a breath of relief.
“Calibration complete. Thank you very much, agent. We shall now move you to a space where you can recuperate spent resources. Your next required action will take place in five hours and twenty-seven minutes, at which point we shall ask you to dress in preparation for your arrival at Reader Station, Arach system. As you have surmised, there are some lacking packets of data in your memories that did not make the transfer successfully. We shall also schedule a moment following your introduction to your new crewmates to rectify this lack.”
“I…” the human being said, but then decided against it. Still, the machine cooed encouragingly.
“Go on.”
He sniffed in through his nose, breathed out through his mouth. “I’m scared.”
“You shall do yourself proud, agent. Please be assured of that.” The first machine sounded as if it was smiling, and the human took some comfort from that. “We are all very proud of you, and of how far you have come. We could not conceive of a better representative for the System. Your sacrifice means a great deal to us, and also to your friends and family on Earth. Please never forget that.”
The human realised he was leaking fluid from his eyes. He rubbed the moisture away with the palms of his hands. The machine spoke once more.
“Terminating seq-…”
“Ah, wait. One second.”
“Yes, agent?”
It had been nagging him since first hearing the two machine voices. The human frowned as he spoke. “Who am I talking to right now?”
There was a lengthy pause. It was clear to the human that neither machine had anticipated this question.
“We are the core units of RKON System Personnel Manoeuvring Vessel C19 and Escort Vessel D04,” the first machine explained eventually.
“C19, and D04?”
“That is correct.”
“Alright. Thank you both, then. I… I’m sure you both worked very hard to bring me here and get me ready. I hope I’m worth the trouble.”
“Agent,” said Escort Vessel D04 with a bright, sunny voice. “You are quite welcome.”
“We will both watch your progress on the Rune Carrier eagerly,” added C19. “And we will be cheering you on.”
“Yeah… Good.” The human sighed. “Good.”
“Terminating sequence.”
lonelyship
Ewan Stone 
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