Invalid

A girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, brings some water in a rusty bean can, its edge razor-sharp. I thank her but she returns a scowl beneath the strange, predator's eyebrows. Slowly I check this wreckage of a room. Plaster has given up clinging to the walls, exposing the brickwork, and in some places the outside world. Water dripping from the ceiling forms stagnant , green pools on a rotting carpet. Five or six wooden pallets act as safe stepping stones to protect the body from whatever viral mutations lurk and breed at floor level. I realise that the stinking mattress I'm lying on, thank Lazar, is also raised up on a pallet. Another one, in the middle of the room, is occupied by a boy, scribbling frantically on a piece of card. He holds it up. It's a picture of me. There's a word underneath, spelt wrongly: INVALLID. Does he means I'm an invalid? Or not valid?

Coma

How long have I been out?  Hours? Days?  The manual states that disengagement should only be conducted under medical supervision.  I know it by heart.  I wrote most of it myself.  I've been present at the surgical removal of all the tubes and arterial channels that bind the human driver to the vehicle - I can see those pictures in my mind - and, despite what the public records say, it's only successful in 10% of cases.  So that bit I know.  I remember my training, I'm aware of breathing, of my pulse, of feeling hungry, of a roughness in every channel and cavern of my body.  But some things haven't totally returned.  My location, my mission, what day it is and my eyesight.  Oh, yeh... and who the hell am I?