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Date
Posted:
02.02.1998
Date:
12.12.2195
Time:
Morning
Body Format
For the longest time, there was nothing. Aran was nothing,
the world was nothing. There was no sound, no motion, no smell,
no feel. Aran was nothingness, and part of nothingness.
I'm not dead. The realization of life without
life shrieked across the nothingness. Glitch.
I'm in a Mindscape Void. No! This isn't glitching
happening.
Aran continued to be without being human. He was not dead, he
would still exist. Existence was not dependent on the beating
of a heart for a Technomancer, not entirely anyway. The sliver
in his synthetic heart should have shut down the bio-pump, and his central
computers were already powered down. He would simply cease to exist...or
he should have. Lightning split across the nothingness;
great azure hues erupting into brilliant crimson and incredible purples.
I'm waking into it. But because he had not 'shuffled
off this mortal coil', he was stuck. His soul, mind, and body
existed; unaware of each other. Only, Aran wasn't sure which
he was. Until he could pull himself together from this Mindscape
Void, he was as good as a vegetable. Stories of rusted Technomancers
springing to life in a shower of dust and sparks raced through his mind.
The Collapsed were kept for years in hope they might be in a MV.
Aran reached out, trying to embrace nothingness with his very thoughts.
The lightning began to grow, spreading, painting a world around him.
"The Mindscape Void is the nightmare of all Technomancers.
It is getting separated from your body, your consciousness drifting through
your memory. In this stage, you have no control, cannot force
control. Your memories will live, your past will hunt you down.
If you can't find the way to pull yourself back together, you will exist
until madness; madness is it's own death."
The voice of his mentor rung in the empty world. Buildings
began to grow from the ground, sprouting skyways and roofs as they stretched
upwards. Towers of polished glass and steel, brilliant white marble
and shimmering metals.
These are not my memories! Aran crouched
at the base of a fountain slowly filling with a translucent pink water,
a rich wafting aroma surrounded it. This is not my time,
this is someone else's memory. PYLE's?
"Doctor." A voice rang. Aran sprang up, willing
nonexistent technology to work, he was as human as anything in these dreams.
He spun around in another man's body, the plaza flooding all of his senses.
Eight towers circled the plaza, eight towers of white bricks seamlessly
joined, eight towers with mirror-chrome windows and huge, sprawling skyways
between them. Tubes of glass so clear it seemed their occupants
were striding on air above him. The plaza itself was geometrically
perfect, nothing was out of place, polished white marble was broken by
smoothly paved sidewalks and strange plants seeming to shoot from the ground.
And before him was a young man in a white jumpsuit, light gray boots and
gloves seemed to complete a suit that covered everything but his face.
The stranger's hair was short cropped and immaculately combed, raven black.
"Wha---?"
"Doctor, we're ready to test it, Dr. Tsano?" The young man replied.
"Y...yes. Sorry. Let's go."
Aran faked. As long as I'm in this glitched MV, I'm
nothing more than what my fractured memories make me. I have
to find something familiar, something to lock onto, some sort of control.
Aran was led to the tallest of the eight towers. Silver
letters worked in gold was emblazoned above the doorway, displaying the
name of the company.
TECHNICIA DEFENSE ORGANIZATION
WEAPONS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
The lobby was in the same color scheme as the outside, white marble
and chrome made up the floor and walls, a thick grayish tiling covered
the ceiling. A few desks with young men and women behind them
were scattered in geometric patterns throughout the room. Everything
screamed of efficiency, organization, and control. Everyone
wore the same white jumpsuit with gray boots and gloves. The
young man with the black hair lead him to a wall on the other end of the
room, and seemed to wait. Finally, he turned a raised
an eyebrow.
"Dr. Tsano? Your pass-scan?"
"What?" Aran stumbled over the words. "Your
memories will live, your past will hunt you down."
Aran concentrated, his mind spinning.
"For the lift? Are you feeling ok?"
"Yes...just a little...lightheaded. I can't seem to remember."
788nO24x-Dr. Roan Ka'chal Tsano. The words seemed to form
on his brain, and on his lips. As he spoke them, the wall seemed
to melt away. Hologram. Albeit...a solid one.
Where the glitch? Is this the past? How far back is this?
Is this what the world was like before the comet?
The floor beneath them moved, barely noticeable, downwards.
Aran was lead through a series of steel plated doors and heavily fortified
security stations. Whatever is down here is powerful enough to
make people with this kind of technology afraid. What in the
Eiech have they made? His question wasn't answered, but
they finished their trip when the two doors slid apart. The
doors were four feet thick, made of an alloy he didn't recognize.
Pulse shielding could be heard humming outside, and inside, the doors.
He knew that he could have never gotten through that, not even with the
DIRGE. A group of men stood at a window of foot thick
glass at the end of the room. Three men, each staring outwards
into what looked like a deep room of some sort.
"Ahem," the young man cleared his throat.
"Dr. Tsano." One of them turned to greet him. He wore an
ankle-length coat of spotless white, buttoned from its thick hem to the
collar which encircled his neck. Gray gloves were sewn almost
invisibly to the sleeves. Gray hair fell past his shoulders,
and his eyes were a tired blue; the fire in them gleamed, but only with
the light of a dying blaze. The old man gestured to his two colleagues.
"Commander Lyosam and Dr. Vuu have been waiting." The old
man said, then, in a hoarse whisper. "They may be smart, but old
age brings patience, eh sir?"
"Yes."
The remaining two men could have been the best example of opposites
Aran could picture. One tall and thin, blond hair cut close
to his scalp. He wore a similar white jacket, but his shoulders
were looped with a braided golden rope. Green eyes seemed to pierce
him, searching, trying to read his mind. He was a commander
in the army, but he didn't know how he knew. The other
gentleman was short, stocky, and completely bald. They way
he rubbed his hands together made Aran cringe, he was the kind of man who
always had something else running through his mind. Not exactly
good thoughts either.
"Let's proceed, shall we..." the short man said. "If
Commander Lyosam here wants to see his weapon, let's show him how well
we have made it." The sound of the man's voice was enough
to freeze water.
"Dr. Vuu, Project 22 is a tool, not a weapon. It is designed
to allow our soldiers to adapt to the conditions of the Genetech empire,
to let us survive without becoming one of those blasted mutations.
Those half-human monsters need to be helped, but unless we can take down
the lab that makes them, we have no chance of freeing them from Genetech."
"Ohhhh forgive me." Dr. Vuu grinned.
"Let us see Project 22," Aran said, cutting the growing
argument short.
He strode to the window and stared below. The room was a hollowed
out section of earth, the heat almost unbearable despite the shielding
glass. Sulfurous gasses poured from seams in the ground, and
a thick gray-green liquid flowed from the stalagmites to pools below.
The only discerning feature was a doorway fifty yards away.
"Project 22 was initiated two and one half years ago," the young man
began. "Progressing from an idea that Technomancers could survive
conditions better than some humans. Basing the idea off of
the 'technomancer operation' we have developed a derivative of an experimental
organism: Technosites. Technosites are a parasitic organism--they
form a symbiotic bond with the body they are induced into. This Technosite,
called Technacatamine22, is given by a normal hypodermic. However, Technacatamine22
turns these cells into similar technosites. The Technosites
have complete control from four minutes after injection, and then can be
spread by fluid to fluid contact. Namely blood transfusion."
"Or a kiss?" Dr. Vuu asked wryly.
"Yes," the young man said. "As noted, the cell itself is a very
complex and infinitely superior version of the Technomancer operation,
or Body Format, as it is being called these days. The subject
will gain full control over it's individual cells, allowing for incredibly
adaptive circumstances. Our volunteer should be entering the
chamber now." At the word Body Format, Aran's legs gave way.
Something about it, something so close...yet so far away...
Aran watched the door now. Time seemed to trickle by, but
slowly it opened and a uniformed girl entered. Slowly, she began
to crumple to the ground. Aran's blood boiled.
The illusion of a benevolent civilization long past was fading rapidly.
His fist clenched, if he had to tear that safety glass apart with his teeth,
he would make sure...
The girl froze, then flailed her arms violently. She thrashed
on the ground for a few moments, her skin paling to a grayish blue, her
hair seeming to turn to black steel. It fell from here temples,
leaving only a small stalk at the tip of her skull. Aran's
skin began to crawl...
"Wirewitch," he whispered.
"Not a bad nickname Doctor," Commander Lyosam replied. "Not bad
at all. Think, a fleet of these things could survive in almost
any condition."
"No," Aran whispered. "You don't understand, there's more.
More you haven't seen, they don't just adapt, there's something else, they
can--"
The girl lept to the safety glass, a good twenty feet up and away.
Her hands seemed to melt into a mass of razors. The glass rattled
and shook, shards of it etching away slowly. Aran bolted for
the doors.
"What's the matter, Dr. Tsano? Don't like my creation?
Stick around, she'll convince you in a moment." Dr. Vuu
laughed.
Aran was helpless as memory took over, so vivid a memory of something
that had happened, something long ago. So powerful was the
memory, that he could not help but watch it as it played itself out.
Down the hallways Dr. Tsano ran, stopping at control panels to seal doors.
Towards a laboratory, his own. Fingers flew over a console
as various protocols were activated. He heard a stream
of hisses as the gas chambers were shut. He breathed a sigh
of relief. In a minute, they would all be liquid, destroyed
by a gas he himself had developed as a security measure for this building.
Dr. Tsano sat into a chair and felt the links of cyberspace fold around
him, he had to fix something...he had to leave something for the world
to find later. A cure, perhaps. But perhaps a greater
evil.
John Salan looked at the body of Aran on the table. Nearby,
his close friend Kieth Rains was working furiously to keep him as stable
as possible. The monitor showed massive surges of brain activity,
but Aran was as motionless as stone. Kieth Rains, the second
of five, was a doctor and a technician from another age. He
said Aran had to be rebuilt, but it wasn't easy, as he had been rebuilt
so many times already. But this Technomancer could be something,
he had survived having the AI in him that had been designed to kill entire
nations. John wondered for a moment; That creature, now calling
itself PYLE, had devoured entire lives and minds, collecting a database
of information drained from people's lives. How much off that
had seeped into Aran? Whose memories did he have, and from
when? What secrets did Aran now possess that he might have
no clue of how to unlock? All he could do was wait, and
see if Aran lived. |