Recovery of Rez 8

As nearly as he could understand, Rez thought perhaps she was only trying to prove he wasn’t so morally strong as he claimed. At first were the subtle questions, the testing which always seemed to manipulate him into saying something she could make him regret. Why she never simply left him for someone else was beyond him, but she kept making these tests more intricate and complicated. She began enlisting help from others, he was sure, but never found out who. In fact, he later realized he never even knew what she was studying at the academy, but what he knew about the curriculum could have explained some of what happened.
Knowing it didn’t help. Somehow she managed to create a false reality around him. He would leave for a short trip, come back and she would overwhelm him with an emotional welcome back. He would lose himself in her intoxicating embrace. Then just as he was sure everything was okay, she would start the game. When he was most open and vulnerable to her was when she struck hardest. It was back and forth in waves, first in passionate heat then in passionate words of distrust. She was using forms of manipulation he never understood, things which simply and plainly caused him to doubt reality itself.
There were times he had to test the floor under his feet to make sure it was solid, and then still not too sure. The technology and tricks she used literally drove him insane.
So on that one last test at the end of the term, when he was assigned to visit a distant planet system which had an assortment of old mining equipment, she demanded he not go. Of courses, it was impossible. After another session of twisting reality around him, Rez was ready to flee to the ship just to hide from her.
Things did not go well. The ship grabbed a hyperspace anchor point and spun the space past herself. Upon entering real time and space again, they encountered one of those incalculable accidents. A rather small bit of rock bounced off the hull at precisely the moment between coming out of the anchoring point and before the shields went up. It wasn’t too awfully bad, the crew thought, just a dent in the skin showed in the exterior cameras.
The cameras lied. While it was no more than a simple dent, it was in the ship’s skin adjacent to the cargo bay airlock. When a crewman entered the bay to inspect, the airlock cycled automatically. Someone back at academy dispatch forget to include a minor detail regarding the area they were visiting: It had been mined for heavy metal crystals formed in ways no one could comprehend. That bouncing rock had left microscopic slices in the hull. Upon cycling the airlock, the whole dent suddenly became a gaping hole with loose shards of skin flying around the bay. The crew had to evacuate quickly.
They waited for a bot to clean up the mess but none of the standard temporary seals would work. They had the raw materials for custom patch, but not enough for large holes. It required calculating for the microscopic details of the damage, something not typically available on a ship’s computer. It meant someone using a handheld camera, and the image would have to transmitted back to the academy. They tried repeatedly, but between the signal issues from all the clutter in the area and the unusual nature of the damage, Rez’s instructor simply could not get a proper scan. The calculations came back too imprecise.
Naturally, Rez demanded a chance to try. Viewing the screen display in his suit helmet, he was able to estimate the precise location for the camera on a half-dozen views. But there was still the issue of transmission. The captain decided to risk using their small store of slow propulsion fuel and backed away just a bit from the asteroid belt. It was all entirely too risky, especially for a training mission. So while Rez managed to save the day and they finally got it all patched and were able to limp back to the academy port, no one could save Rez. The entire experience offered a stress level few space veterans handled well, but Rez was still a bewildered student from a backwater colony.
He never remembered exactly what it was; no one else saw it. His girlfriend had managed to plant a message on his personal device. As soon as he touched it to record something for her, it came to life. Whatever it was, it pushed him over the edge. During the routine check on the personnel before coming out of hyperspace, they found Rez curled up in a ball, his personal device shattered on the floor beneath his bunk.
The actual electronics of such devices were microscopic. The whole thing was done by automation, designed and built by computers, and consisted of various strands of exotic artificial molecules. The most recognizable part was the display, which still had to produce an image which was human readable. The ship included an analyzer for most common electronic devices, standard equipment on such voyages. When Rez’s device was scanned, the computer suggested there was a high probability someone had added a 3D projection module. This would explain why so much of it was burned, since it would have drawn almost all the battery power in a single flash for just a few moments of projection.
All they knew for sure was it had something to do with his fellow students at the academy. The automated medical scanning showed a comatose young man who did not respond to any of the array of things they could do to him. Whatever was there at the academy was a threat to him, so taking him back was out of the question. After some back and forth with academy officials and some others on the planet, the only reasonable hope was to see if the Brotherhood could help them recover their huge investment in one very promising student and hero.
The ship switched to another anchor point in hyperspace and took Rez back to the same star system they had just left, because it happened to be where the Brotherhood had their hospital.