These are my thoughts.
I was once a man.
I don't remember much beyond the truth from that time. Flashes of thought, moments of nostalgia or familiarity.
They talk about me when they don't think I can understand. They tell my story the way they see it, the way they know it. It's never that far off, but it's never perfect either. I suppose I shall allow some understanding, for my own sake.

I was in my 20th solar cycle when I joined the Company. I was a good soldier, a good fighter. I did what I was told, what I had to do, what I wanted to do. I didn't do anything special, not by a long shot. Everyone else was the same. We just did. It was very simple.

I served the Company as well as I could, and was rewarded however mildly I could be. A small promotion, better gear, better pay. More freedom. I signed up for whatever programs they offered, because they were always beneficial to the money I earned. Bonuses for testing new equipment, and the like.

They made a form of...
I suppose it can be called reconstruction. It started in the early years of my service, I don't recall when. It wasn't immortality, not like we thought it was. They just made you back together again, good as new. I didn't know how it worked, neither did anyone else.

My first death proved it. We were the best the company had. We were the hardest fighters, the bravest, the strongest.
We didn't fear death, because we would be back again in a couple days, ready to go back and fight harder. We were heroes, we were invincible.

We should have known it wasn't all it was made out to be once we started forgetting things.

We couldn't stop them after they proved it worked. People began to panic when they realized they couldn't remember their names, or their friends, or anything beyond how to move, load the weapon, and fight. Delusions came alongside the deaths, damage to thought, followed by paranoia and a slow degradation of reason.

At that point we fought harder. Not because we were fearless, but because we knew there was no escape. No matter what we did, we couldn't end it. People threw themselves out of airlocks, torched themselves, had themselves literally vaporized, but the only thing that changed was the time it took to bring them back, and they would be even worse.
The only solution was to keep fighting, harder and harder, until we could stop.
There was no stop.
We were never going to age, so we would continue being put out on suicide missions. Our pleading fell on the deaf ears of the Company, and anyone who tried to escape was blindsided by the fact that they couldn't support themselves outside of the services offered by Them, and at that point escape was the last thing on our eroded minds.
Some fell into a void of thought and were recycled. Brain-dead, fried by the constant death. They still wouldn't let them go, augmenting them with whatever technology would be useful, turning them into meat hijacked by electric impulses. The few who did manage to hold on enough to speak to us would just scream for as long as they could about the pain until their voice box was removed or they were lobotomized.

It was a nightmare. The only respite I had from the blur of combat and the fading memory of my many lives was sleep.
I dreamt a lot about things, some real, some fabricated. When I woke up, they would be the only memories I had, and I clung on tightly. They held me through the hardest times. I began to stop caring about the other people in my situation, the ones riddled with fear to the point they were paranoid wrecks desperate to kill the ideas they had or the ones who couldn't remember anything beyond what weapons they used. We were ancient people, but we weren't old.

I had moments where I would recall my childhood perfectly, and I would be there. There were lapses in time, and it felt like I was living my life out of order. I would be in the middle of combat when in a split second I was back on the front porch, reliving a common memory, then everything would go dark and I would be back in the tank, half-alive again.

I don't know when I started being awake when I was dead, or at least remembering the death-dreams. I would see the others in the Program there, along with strangers, through endless, impossible landscapes. Thousands of miles of granite hallways, taller than the highest mountain. Endless waves of waist-high grain. Tall, beautiful hills and peaks, covered in green growth, teeming with animals and plants and life. Rough, muddy terrain, the ground smothered with rotting meat, covered in hundreds of wooden stakes and religious emblems. A blank, ruined city thick with smoke and fog, where everyone was "Waiting." Many, many of them were spent in what could only be called Hell.
We would talk for as long as we could, before I saw each of my newly discovered comrades ripped away, taken back to life. The amount of fluid time we spent in these places wasn't ever enough to regain what we had, not with the impending summoning back to service.
It was strange, as I found that the only place I could truly think, truly be myself, was in the dreamscapes that I was sure were fabricated. All the time spent in the meat shell I resided in during the moments I was alive was the true dream.

The one place after death I spent the most time in was Nothing. An abyss, where I had no motion beyond my own control of my body, which itself began to fade the longer I spent there.

I don't remember when the other places slowly faded away, until I was left with only Nothing. I chose it, and I was alone, but I was happy for the respite from the time I had outside of it. I was determined to not go back many times, fighting it as hard as I could, but I could never control it. Same waking moment every time, half-alive in the tank with less capability of thought than the last. In between my lives, however, I had endless time to think about my condition. I found that I slowly began to master the void, but as I did, the other places began to feel more distant. I didn't care, because I was beginning to enjoy the peace and tempered silence of Nothing.
I began to exert control from the void over my physical body, and found that I could place myself in an Interstice, a place where I was in neither of my existences. I began to live in both places. I would still die physically and be sent to Nothing, but it wouldn't take long for me to be back, recreated by the company, where I could interact with my physical surroundings again.

It felt like a game. I would simply drown myself in thoughts, waiting any amount of time I chose in the void, and then I would be allowed to see things away from myself. I was in both, and it was beautiful.

The Company quickly noted my progress, and began to speak of things like, "It's a miracle, I really don't understand it. Why don't the others have this happen?"
They were never able to recreate my success, and slowly began to venture to ask me things. I never responded, and when they tried any multitude of things on me, from offering payment to torture, I would remain silent. They had earned nothing from me, and I only accepted the combat missions because I knew they would never tire from investigating me, and the mortal realm was my only form of entertainment.
I would only speak to others in the program, but slowly became detached as I realized they were too comfortable in their afterlives to really understand. They had become lazy, and were only good for grunt work, still being drawn into their physical bodies with no control. They had no control over their situation, which made me despondent for a time. It soon passed, as I realized that I could still travel the Multiverse on whatever mission the SEC sent me on.

And here I now reside. I have control over the most infinitesimal parts of my body, and I can choose as much time to think about whatever decision I wish to make. I have no "super-powers," because I am not superhuman. I still die the same as any other.


I am simply in control.