Light Shaper Read Online Free PDF

locked forever in a rictus of agony.
    His mother was almost unrecognizable. If it hadn’t been for her clothes and the ring on her blackened finger, Rigel would not have known it was her.
    I can see….
    Another blur. The desert disappeared, and now Rigel was in a sterile doctor’s office. Rigel walked around the room, wondering at how real it felt. He touched a lamp. The texture was there. He clicked it on, and more light was added to the cold glow of the fluorescent lights overhead.
    Rigel remembered this office very well. It was here that he had gotten the diagnosis. Along with his braces.
    The second he remembered, Rigel’s memory-self entered, trailed by a youthful doctor.
    “Please, have a seat,” Doctor Martinez said. She was wearing red glasses and a white lab coat.
    Rigel stood by as the memory-Rigel seated himself and spoke.
    “What’s wrong with me, Doctor?”
    Dr. Martinez called up a holographic composite of several scanned images.
    “The reason you’ve been experiencing pain in your hands is due to the inflammation and tissue damage that you can see here. In essence, the tendons on the underside of your wrist have been worn down by excessive use.”
    “What does that mean? Will I… be able to keep on painting?”
    The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid not. Although the root cause is unclear, the fact that you present such advanced damage at such a young age indicates that there may be an underlying factor causing this. It could be a degenerative condition, one which could worsen very rapidly should you continue your current level of activity.”
    Memory-Rigel looked at his hands. They were shaking slightly, and they hurt. They always hurt.
    “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
    “I’m going to prescribe a pair of biomedical braces to help stabilize both hands. You will have to wear them always, but even with them you will have to be very careful what you do from now on. The braces will only help forestall further worsening of your condition. Unfortunately, there is no real cure for what you have. I see this kind of problem all the time in computer engineers, weightlifters, and manual laborers. Some people’s bodies are just not built to handle the constant stress of repetitive action every day.”
    “So I’ll never get better?”
    “Perhaps. If you have plenty of rest and the right kind of physiotherapy, you might reach a certain degree of recovery. Nevertheless, I would not be too optimistic. What we should be aiming for right now is to stop this from getting any worse. If you don’t limit yourself now, the pain you are experiencing will become chronic. You may even lose the use of one or both hands altogether.”
    Rigel saw himself nod slowly. He hadn’t really understood the implications of that diagnosis, not then.
    “What’s the next step?”
    “We will fit you for the braces. Wait here.”
     
     
    THE WORLD dissolved around Rigel. He was suddenly back in one of the featureless black rooms with glowing corners. Back in Otherlife.
    The enormous voice spoke, overwhelming Rigel’s mind.
    I need your help.
    “What?” Rigel asked. He was a bit shaken by what he had relived. It had been too realistic.
    The shadow is breaking free. You have seen it at work already.
    Something tugged at Rigel’s consciousness. A series of memories, plucked from his mind like photographs. News headlines he had read over the years. The crash of the White Hammer . Disappearances in the city, unexplained murders he had not paid much attention to. Electronics behaving strangely with catastrophic consequences. Deadly accidents becoming commonplace. The memories were correlated by that other presence speaking to Rigel. He saw that they all shared a common element. Nobody knew what or who had caused them.
    “Who are you? How do you know what I’m thinking? What are you doing to my brain?”
    My name is Atlas. I need your help to fight.
    “What is going on? Are you part of the Otherlife simulation? How can I stop