The Gate Read Online Free PDF

different
from the one he played before, he realized.
    The realization that being monitored
was nothing new set off an almost explosive chain reaction within
his brain. Memories rushed back into his mind as he sat quietly
staring, not at the view beyond the window, but his own
reflection.
    Like the alternate universes he had
been studying, his life had become a nightmare that seemed linked
to another and another—an endless series of nightmares that changed
but remained a nightmare. It had been unnerving enough to find
himself disembodied, wandering aimlessly with no clear idea of how
he’d gotten there or where he was or even who he was. It had been
as if he was drifting on an endless sea of fog and his mind had
seemed just as untethered. Memories swirled just beyond his reach,
but as hard as he’d struggled to grasp them, they moved away
again.
    No longer disembodied, the memories
seemed to have found a harbor to rush back to, but as hard as he’d
struggled to capture them in the endless time he’d floated
unmoored, he was almost sorry that they’d returned.
    And he was still confused.
    This body looked like his own, but it
wasn’t.
    It didn’t feel right. Every movement
he’d made since he had awakened to find himself in a box within a
box had seemed awkward, required a conscious effort to complete
when it had never been that way before.
    For a little while after Carly had left
he’d wondered if he was insane, if the thoughts and memories were
true and real or if they were no more than a figment of his
imagination.
    She looked familiar. No. She seemed
familiar. He hadn’t recognized her. Somehow, he’d known her name
was Carly, but he hadn’t recognized her and nothing she’d said made
any sense to him. There was something about her, though, that had
seemed familiar. He just wasn’t certain what that something
was.
    He dismissed the effort to figure out
the newest puzzle, to grasp more missing memories, fairly
quickly.
    When she’d left, he’d settled in a
chair in her living room to stare at the landscape beyond the
window and try to sort his newfound memories. He was looking at the
moon colony and for a while that fact distracted him. Why was he on
the moon colony? How had he gotten there?
    He shrugged that question off with
angry disgust. He knew the answer to that. The crate was still
standing in the center of the living room behind him, reflected in
the window glass.
    Excitement flared for a moment. His
sister, Brenda, lived in the moon colony! For a few seconds
thoughts triggered by that memory collided wildly in his mind and
then reason reasserted itself.
    Brenda had nothing to do with him being
here. He wouldn’t have arrived in a crate if he’d decided to go
visit and he wouldn’t be sitting in a stranger’s living room—a
companion she’d apparently ordered and paid for.
    He hadn’t wanted to examine that but
one thought led to another and he realized why he felt more like he
was trapped inside a strange box than within his own body when this
… shell, looked like his body. He realized why it didn’t feel
right.
    Because it wasn’t. It didn’t feel
‘natural’ or like his own because it wasn’t.
    The only kind of companion that came in
a box was cybernetic companions.
    He frowned, too wrapped up in his
thoughts to consider that his watchdog might make a note and begin
to tabulate possibilities to explain that very human emotion. But
then, he’d carefully chosen the chair facing the window to avoid
that possibility as much as he was able. The computer might be able
to analyze his reflection but the glass distorted his image, which
would make analysis difficult.
    He was as safe to explore his mind and
emotions as he could be.
    Carly might be right about the bathroom
being a safe place, but he couldn’t sit in there for hours
contemplating his situation. That would be suspicious in and of
itself.
    Were the memories floating in his mind
now not memories at all? Or not at least not his