21ish

Nephan’s eyes snapped open as Veren’s last breath slipped away, and cursed. “Again? How does she escape me again?” He sat up, quickly unplugging the hundreds of small wires that ran into his body.
Wincing, he got up. He felt more sore than usual,and was in no mood for it. He found he was also not in the mood for the voice that echoed in his mind almost upon waking. “Master Nephan, are you back?”
“Yes, I am back. But I am going again as soon as possible. I will take a few hours to prepare myself, and then I will find her again and this time I will take her!”
Celek’s voice was hesitant. “Master Nephan, I don’t think I can have the machine reset and restocked in less than a day. It’s highly overdue for an internal cleaning and—“
Nephan stalked through the door to the main chamber without bothering to put on his robe. “I do not believe that I asked you. I am going back in a few hours, and you will have the machine ready. I find it difficult to believe that even an interface as new to the job as you are would presume to tell me how to run my own machine.”
“I beg your pardon, Master Nephan, but I am not as new to this as you seem to think. I have now run this machine for more than a hundred years. You have only been here for three days in all that time, so I understand that I am still unfamiliar to you, but I am not incapable nor am I inept.”
Nephan paused, then turned and walked quietly over to the wall where the telepath lay hooked into the machine. “And you dare to speak against me? I have told you what to do, and I am not in the habit of repeating myself to anyone, let alone my own interface. Very well, if you will not be of use here, let us see if I can find another use for you.” He pried open the eyelids of the man in the machine, and gazed into their blue depths. “Hmmm….very interesting….Ah! There we are. It would appear that you happened to be a member of that ill-fated resistance during the second telepath wars, a lifetime or so ago. I shall never understand why the Technologers don’t screen previous life memories when they install interfaces.”

He stepped back, and pressed his thumb against a small lit panel; the blue lights of the machine flickered, then changed to green, indicating a manual override of the communications system. Nephan hit another button and spoke clearly. “This is Nephan, Adept of the Second Order of the Historians Guild. My interface is incompatible with my needs; please send another one.”
The eyelids of the blue-eyed telepath twitched, as if he were trying to wake, but his eyes remained closed.
“It would appear that your previous experiences are more valuable than the skills of your current life, Celek. As you no doubt know, I did not bring any consciousness back with me, but Temle help me, I will not go before the Council empty handed!”

In a matter of hours, adepts of the Technologer’s Guild were in Nephan’s quarters. The lights of the room flickered as one of he adepts ran the machine manually; the other blue-robed men carefully extricated Celek from the wall panel that had been his bed for a hundred years. The space was empty for less than two minutes, as another telepath was carefully hooked up to the machine. He seemed asleep, mind suspended in the constant near-dream state that made the transmission of information so much easier. One of the Technologists carefully slipped a needle into the vein that ran down the telepath’s temple, and started a steady drip of green liquid into it, ensuring that the telepath would never wake while hooked into the machine.
Celek stirred faintly, and one of the Technologists moved towards him. “Leave him,” Nephan instructed.
“But we have procedures to follow, for the safe disposal of the unit. It cannot be imprinted onto another machine.”

“I know that, but I have use for him. Give me a few moments, and then you can dispose of it however you would like.”

The Historian knelt down beside the pale body of the man, and placed his fingertips at telepath’s temples. Silver light flickered around his hands, then steadied, and formed a glowing sphere enclosing Celek’s head and Nephan’s hands. A faint humming sound filled the air. Suddenly, Celek’s eyes flew open, and he opened his mouth in a noiseless scream. His arms and legs twitched but the muscles had atrophied from the years in the machine, and were too weak to do more than gesture faintly. The life in the blue eyes faded, and went out; the green eyes of the Historian glowed brighter and brighter. He rose form the still body, and turned to the Technologists. “I am leaving for the Guild Hall. Please see to it that I have a working machine when I return.”

The Guild Hall was quiet as he strode down the corridor to the Recording Room. As he opened the cold metal door, two recorders looked up expectantly.
“Ah, Adept Nephan, how good of you to visit us. I see that you have someone for us, correct?”

Nehpan nodded. “I do indeed. I admit, it is not the one I sought, but it will do for now.”

One of the Recorders held out a large clear stone, and Nephan touched his fingertips to it. The silver sphere flickered into existence again; the small stone began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster until it was little more than a blur. Nehpan could feel Celek’s consciousness leaving him, clutching his own, being forced into the stone. Finally, the last shred of consciousness was encased in the stone, which was now a bright blue, and faceted.

“Ah, another blue one. It’s not a particularly interesting one, see, it only made eight faces in the stone. Our better ones all have at least twelve faces, and most of those that the Councilors have brought back have twenty. I think we even have a hundred-sided stone in here somewhere,” the Recorder mused. “But it’s still something. I take it there’s at least one lifetime that may be of interest?”

The Historian nodded, turning towards the door. “Yes, it should be the second one back from time of crystallization. Something about the second telepath war, I believe.” And with a final hiss of robes against the stone, he was gone.

“He must be getting desperate,” said one of the Recorders as he polished the stone, and set it into the machine. “I don’t think he’s brought back anyone like this since he attained Second Order.”

The other Recorder nodded. “Yes, that sounds about right. Well, we can use just about anything, and the Tracers are always happy to get more information. Let’s see what we have here.”

He fitted the stone between two prongs of metal that were connected to the machine just above the telepath’s head. A beam of light struck the stone, and it glowed brightly. The telepath’s eyes twitched for a moment, then the room faded from the Recorders sight; the events recorded in the stone would be projected by the telepath directly into their awareness. In a few moments, the events of Celek’s life had flashed before the eyes of the Recorders and duly noted in their records. The Tracers, down the hall, felt the new images and events flash through their minds in the steady flow of information that the Guild produced.

Celek’s consciousness was little more than a data file to be accessed, played, and replayed. He screamed every time he saw himself die.