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"Raised" By Raska Kannagami

"Alright...he's waking up..." Spoke a voice. The sound was...tinny, like being spoken through a can of some sort. But that couldn't be right...could it? I tried to move my arms.

"Hey! Whoa! Easy there! Don't move so much yet, you're not ready yet."

"Ready? Wha-a-a-?" My voice did not seem to work properly, the words were like lead on my tongue. I was still half asleep. A dim part of my mind recognized that this wasn't the normal kind of grogginess one gets after sleeping for a long time...it was more like I'd been drugged. As this thought crossed my mind, some part of my brain told my body to panic. I thrashed about, struggling to fight through the haze of chemicals and sit up.

I felt a paw on my shoulder, stroking. "Calm down, you're in no danger! It'll be alright. Just relax and let yourself wake slowly. It's better that way," Spoke another voice with the same tinny sound. I could tell it was a different person, though I didn't know how. The paw went away.

"Shy? Shy!?" I cried out, reaching out for my mate. Of course, that was when the drugs finally stopped fighting the adrenalin my system had been flooded with, and I suddenly had perfect clarity. I was in what looked to be some sort of sick bay, though this was far from the kind I would have been more familiar with. Instead of white plaster walls I saw cold surgical steel. Instead of rows of beds, there was only the one, which I had been laying in (somewhat comfortably, if drugged) until I foolishly tried to lean out from it to reach for the nurse (?) I had mistaken for my mate. Naturally, gravity insisted that I make new friends with the floor. However the nurse-person-thing had catlike reflexes, and caught me before I could fall and injure myself. "Now what did I tell you? Relax," the tinny voice said, close by my ear.

I let whoever-it-was settle me back into the bed. He or she was wearing some sort of spacesuit-like thing...akin to a haz-mat suit but better looking. "Where am I?" I asked. It seemed a logical enough question, and it gave me the chance to examine my surroundings better. As I had first surmised, it was a sickbay, but I didn't see any of the normal sickbay-like things. There was no medicine cabinet, there were no other cots, and the walls were all the same uniform surgical steel, with a digital clock reading twenty-four hour time across the room from me. The only thing that made me think "sickbay" was that I had an IV drip poked into my arm, and there was another machine nearby the bed that was making a rhythmic beeping noise I assumed was my heartbeat.

"You are in the infirmary of the CNIS Gazardiel, an Angel-class interplanetary vessel," the nurse answered.

"CNIS Gazardiel? An...interplanetary vessel? A spaceship?" I asked, my alarm quickly rising.

"Yes," came the simple answer.

I wasn't sure why I was alarmed by this revelation. I knew what "Angel-class" meant as far as the ship's design...I understood the acronym CNIS as standing for 'Canid Nations Interplanetary Ship. I even knew that the model number of this type of ship was DE1316. So, I assumed my seemingly unfounded alarm was due to the fact that I was on such a ship at all.

"Why am I here? What happened to me?"

There was a hiss of air as the nurse took off his (her?) suit helmet and turned to face me. I saw that it was, in fact, a female, and a Cheetah. Her expression was a mix between compassion and regret. "You've just been Raised."

* * * * *

I was not particularly awestruck by her reply, dramatic though it sounded. I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about. It must have shown on my face, 'cause she drew up a chair which she had pulled out of a hidden compartment in the wall. "What's the last thing you can remember?"

I thought on that...and thought...and thought. I realized that the last thing I could remember was...waking up here, "So, what? I have amnesia?"

"Yes...well, not normal amnesia..." she said, sighing, "Earth-that-was is gone. Most of the livable areas were fought over, and many were destroyed. The ones that weren't outright destroyed by the do-- er...by the conflict, were made unlivable due to fallout. When the war was over, the new government began to implement a special program. They used new technologies to scan the bodies of those who died, using a powerful computer to extrapolate for the body's condition before any wounds or decomposition. They especially made scans of the brain - on those whose brains hadn't yet rotted away. This data was stored and, when our two races finally left Earth-that-was, this data was stored here, on this ship. We use the data to reconstruct those who died on Earth-that-was, down to the very alignment of the brain's synapses. In effect, it resurrects the dead."

Now I was awestruck. Either this woman was entertaining a very complex and somewhat frightening fantasy...or she was telling the truth. I guess I wanted to believe the former, but knew that the latter was true. "So...I was dead? How come I still know how to speak, I know who I am, what my name is?"

"The alignment of the brain's synapses - the 'wiring', so to speak - is how all our knowledge and memories are stored. The Raising process maps these synapses down to the nano-spaces between neurons, with an accuracy of over ninety-eight percent. Since the wiring is the same, you retain all your memories. However, some of your memory is inaccessible now, because your brain is still...how should I put it...'rebooting'. Do not worry, your memory will return to you in time."

"...But what if I didn't want to be Raised?" I asked.

"Well...um...you see, the government realized that if we are to repopulate a new planet...when we find one...we will need many distinct bloodlines to prevent inbreeding. Therefore, they decided to use the information gathered for the Raising project to bring back as many individuals as possible," The petite Cheetah nurse replied. At this moment I realized that her eyes never once met mine, and that her demeanor was extremely submissive. I wondered why, and was about to ask, but she interrupted me with a question.

"What is your name? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I must write it down, for our records."

"Raziel," I told her.

"As in...the Raziel? You are a hero to us!"

Her sudden change in demeanor surprised me, "What?"

"Shh! You fought with us. During the War, you were one of our Captains. The Dogs, they want your head on a platter! To us you are a hero, but to them you are a traitor. There were rumors that you had survived, and were living in exile on Earth-that-was with those of our race the Dogs didn't enslave for this journey. If you are to survive here, you cannot use that name! They will kill you!"

In quick flashes the memories came back to me. Shy...Me leading a platoon of Feline Army soldiers through the streets of some bombed-out city...The Battle of Moonfang Court...The Siege of Impawl...and our defeat at Sherkahn. I also remembered, viscerally, getting shot once in each shoulder, once in the belly, twice in the groin. I remembered hitting the asphalted ground and struggling to get up, but I'd lost too much blood and was in too much pain. I could hear shouting, gunfire...and then I heard nothing.

I was woken from my reverie by the Cheetah nurse gently slapping my cheek. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have reminded you of your death," she said, "But I couldn't let you be killed by them. You had to know who you were before you went out...out among them."

I nodded. "So what name shall I use?"

"Call yourself 'Shirika'. It means 'ally' in our language. In your tongue it is just a name, though rather unique and uncommon, to be sure. This fits who you are to both my people and yours."

I nodded again, "Thank you..."

She smiled, "My name is Shauri. Come, I shall take you to choose some clothing."

I followed Shauri through a door that...dilated? Yes, the door was constructed like an iris, and widened when it was 'opened'. She then asked me to wait while she removed her hazmat suit. As she did this, I realized that she had no clothing on underneath. This actually made sense considering the tightness of the suit. There really wouldn't be much space for cloth underneath. I was also used to seeing members of various feline species what my race would consider "shamefully unclothed". The feline concept of nudity was...you could say...different. However, their contact with canine culture had led to interesting compromises. For instance, I've seen some Panthers wearing only t-shirts because they liked the images on them. Naturally, they didn't bother with the rest of what my people would consider an outfit.

Having gotten the entirety of her suit off, she led me into the adjacent room, where she handed me a neatly-folded pile of clothes with a smile, and indicated another iris/door. "I shall be in there while you change, to maintain the illusion that I haven't seen you naked. When you are done, come join me, and I'll show you to your quarters."

As she left, I grinned. I love how direct felines are, compared to my own people. As I got dressed, I noticed that the clothes were surplus military, just dyed a different color. It felt odd to me, to put on the uniform of the army that had caused my death. Even if it was a different color, it was still their uniform.

Still, even after living and fighting with felines for six years, I still couldn't resist the need for clothing - though most of my kind would have been scandalized to walk around naked as nonchalantly as I just did. As I shrugged the jacket on and checked my appearance in the nearby mirror, another dilating door (I just can't get over how they're constructed. Very awkward-looking, in my opinion.) opened up, and in stepped a muscular border collie dressed in a crisp military uniform. I immediately froze. This was an officer of the Canine Nations Army. Would he recognize me for who I was? Did they have "Wanted" posters of me somewhere?

"Hello, I am Colonel Recke Haifisch. I am in charge of the Raising Project here on Gazardiel. I'd like to say, welcome to our ship," He said, in a surprisingly pleasant tone, offering his paw.

I took the proffered paw and shook, adopting an air of suspicious dominance. I chose suspicious dominance because it's really not in my nature to be any sort of submissive. We dogs being what we are, Haifisch picked up on the body language immediately. "Is anything wrong, sir?"

"No, nothing's wrong...except I was dead and now I'm alive," I replied, laughing bitterly, "What's worse is, I can't remember anything except my name."

He nodded, interpreting my apparently aggressive body language for frustration. "That will pass eventually. I wish there was something we could do to help."

I nodded and headed for the door Shauri had gone through. "I'm sure I'll get over it." I replied. The door activated as I approached, and I was able to make my escape before he realized that my antagonism had nothing to do with my 'frustration'.

* * * * * *

Recke stood there for a few moments after the Dalmatian had left, thinking to himself. There had been stories of a Canid who had fought, led, and died with the Feline Army. Those stories never included the Dog's breed, only his name. Raziel. In the stories, Raziel was a fearsome fighter, capable of taking down a dozen of the Army's best with his bare claws. In the stories, he was a nigh-unbeatable commander, using his wit and exceptional grasp of tactics to leverage advantages out of what would normally be disastrous military traps.

Recke wasn't quite sure yet, but there was a sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind that...well, it would be best to err on the side of caution, no?

He pulled a small communicator from his pocket, "General, we may have a problem."