Seventh Read Online Free PDF Page B

already too late, James.  …but then you knew that."  Odyssey replied, and then she was silent.  What did that mean?  How long had Odyssey been calling me by my first name?  I tried to remember if she’d always done that, or if that was something that had only happened since my hallucinations had begun.  How long had things been messed up?  When the alarm had gone off I’d been asleep.  That would have put it sometime in the middle of the night, maybe one or two in the morning.  How much time, I wondered, had passed since this had all began. 
                "Odyssey, what time is it?"
                "Odyssey is experiencing a malfunction in the entangled timing system.  Only relative local time is currently available."  Startling news again delivered in a voice too calm, and with a hint of malice.  Entangled timing systems didn't just break down. 
                "What is the relative local time?"  I pressed.
                "It has been 1,364,544 years, 7 months, 23 days, 10 hours, and 50 minutes since relative local time began calculation."
                I shook my head and sighed.  The ship board systems were completely fried.  Either that or I was so far lost to DSD that even my conversations with Odyssey were just figments of my shattered imagination.  I wasn't sure which was more frightening.  I felt that sense of dread that overtakes one when they discover they are completely lost in a hostile environment. The difference was that I seemed to be lost in my own mind, which was turning out to be much worse.
                A cold shiver passed through me, like the one I'd experienced upon first waking in my bunk.  I took a deep breath, and the air felt cold and thin.  Momentarily I wondered whether the ship's life support systems were working properly, but I didn't dwell upon the thought.  The thing in the hallway was still foremost in my mind.  I would need to escape this audience chamber eventually.  Would my pursuer still be waiting for me? 
                "Can you guide me to the nearest security locker?"  I asked the AI, deciding that whatever was happening, I wanted to be armed.  I might only have access to stunners and batons, but at that moment, with whatever I'd seen in the hallway still skulking around, it seemed better to have a stunner than to be running around without any form of self-defense. 
                There was no answer. 
                "Odyssey, can you guide me to the nearest security locker?" 
                A colored arrow popped into the corner of my vision, pointing towards the bulkhead I'd just come through.  The nav-system directions were projected stereoscopically onto the insides of my irises by a medically implanted nano-projector which was wirelessly fed data from a CPU wired to my frontal lobe.  I'd had the whole unit upgraded just the previous year.  The original model had been ponderously slow in receiving data.  The new one was not only faster, but it was also capable of threading ten different images to each eye separately.  I'd actually used that particular function only once soon after I’d gotten it, just to try it out, but it was nice to have the option.
                I looked at the bulkhead and frowned.  That was the last place I wanted to go.  I couldn't hear the creature through the soundproof metal door, but I felt certain it was still out there, waiting for me to step out into the corridor again.  I wasn't ready to face that nightmare just yet. 
                "Is there another way to the security locker that doesn't involve the main corridor?"
                I waited for a full minute without a reply, or an update to my heads up display. 
                "Odyssey, is there another route to the security locker?"
                "There are two available alternate routes."  She chimed in, as peppy and