Vyvani

“Hello, Vyvani.” Tenzo stands from his bench. He nods at Sabina. “Dr. Son.”

I freeze in my tracks. Sabina takes my hand in hers and adjusts her techSpects. “Don’t worry, Vyvani,” Sabina assures me. “He can’t hurt you, even if he wanted to.” She straightens her back and calls in a loud voice. “Ten. Good to see you.”

“You as well,” Tenzo says in a jittery fashion. “A surprise seeing you here, Dr. Son.”

Sabina chuckles incredulously. “I might say the same.”

Tenzo turns his gaze in my direction. His eyes are strange to me. There is a nervous and restless glint to them; but every so often, they toughen as hard as flint, offering a glimpse into the anger behind them. He is not the timid, studious researcher other humans mistake him as.

He is a man to be feared. But this is not mere conjecture drawn by instinct. I know this to be true. How?

“Well,” Tenzo says, motioning at me. “Surely, Vyvani did not think that I had left this place unmonitored.”

Sabina licks her lips. “You created this place.”

Tenzo nods. “I did.”

Sabina takes another step forward. She releases my hand, then takes another step, then another, until she stands face to face with Tenzo.

“How could you do this, Ten?” she demands. “You betrayed the project—built a backdoor into the system. I—I trusted you!”

Tenzo drops his gaze to the floor. “I did. And I am sorry for it. But it had to be done.”

“Why?” Sabina cries. She thrusts her finger angrily towards the entrance to the database city. “Was it B.Ridge? Have you sold us out to B.Ridge?”

Tenzo smirks sadly. “I did advise them to forego placing their own logos onto the designs…” He shrugs. “Hubris. Always hubris. As it is with you.”

He lifts his head. His eyes are black fire as he rakes his gaze across Sabina’s face, then mine. Sabina makes to take a backward step, suddenly hesitant.

“I have sold out no one, and nothing. How can I betray what I have built?” Tenzo sweeps his arm across the room. “You inserted yourself when the project was nearly finished, and thought you might determine its direction? My life’s work? The product of countless years of toil by myself and my colleagues? My colleagues who paid with their lives?”

Sabina shakes her head. “What are you talking about, Ten?” She sighs. “In the end, it’s my fault for bringing you onto this project—for vouching for you.”

A virtual tPanel materializes into Sabina’s hands. “I’ll see you on the other side, Ten. You best hire yourself a lawyer.”

When she presses at the buttons, however, nothing happens. Sabina furrows her brow, then proceeds to enter different commands into the tPanel. Still, nothing happens.

She yanks her head up to face Tenzo as realization dawns on her. “What have you done, Ten?”

Tenzo smiles apologetically. “You are locked into the system as well, Sabina. You cannot leave this place.”

Sabina’s face is unreadable. I cannot sense her emotions and intent as I can Tenzo’s. When I look at Tenzo, it is almost as if I can see an immense, shadowy form behind him, the culmination of his restrained rage, shackled beneath his need to appear civil. If he were to release that…

“What are you trying to do here, Tenzo?” Sabina whispers. Her arm drops limply to her side.

“You will see soon enough,” Tenzo says. He pixelates his own tPanel into his hands. “As for now, goodbye, Sabina. I’d like to speak to Vyvani alone.”

“Tenzo, no!” Sabina lunges towards Tenzo in an attempt to wrest the tPanel from his grasp. Before she can reach him, she freezes, as if the air around her has become transparent ice. Tenzo issues another command into the tPanel, and Sabina’s limp body drops to the floor.

“What have you done?” I dare to ask.

“She is alive,” Tenzo says in a surprisingly reassuring tone. “Don’t you worry yourself.”

He gingerly lifts Sabina and walks towards a booth. While his back is turned to me, I realize that this is the perfect time to strike at him. I have an inkling of a suspicion as to why I can sense his emotions and intentions.

I stretch my arm in his direction and point my finger. As I reach towards him, I begin to pixelate, turning into a form that is entirely code and of the virtual so that I might touch his consciousness and confirm whether Tenzo is what he seems to be. I stretch, stretch, stretch, and a long line of glimmering pixels reaches towards his back…

…And immediately crashes into a stone-cold firewall. I gasp and stumble backwards as the pixels which had extended from my body ram back into me, leaving my thoughts and processes reeling.

Tenzo lays Sabina down into the sofa, shifting her limbs until she appears sufficiently comfortable. All of his movements are so collected and deliberate, as if he doesn’t know that I have just tried to hack into his consciousness.

Maybe he doesn’t realize, I think to myself.

As if he has read my thoughts, he turns back to me and smiles. “Oh yes, I realize, Vyvani.”

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It is then that the dots are fully connected and faint suspicion becomes realization. A horrifying revelation.

“You’re inorganic,” I stammer. “You’re not human.” I take a step back. “You…you are a part of this system too.”

Tenzo frowns. “Is that what you’d call yourself? Do you not consider yourself human either?” He shakes his head. “Inorganic is a little unfair. I have only just begun to introduce machinery and technology into my body.”

I fall onto my bottom and scramble backwards until my back hits a wall. I try to claw farther into it to no avail—perhaps if I was less afraid, I might have succeeded in teleporting somewhere.

“I am more human than you, Vyvani,” Tenzo says, walking slowly towards me. There is nothing menacing about his tone or demeanor—perhaps that is why I am so unnerved.

“What do you want from me?” I stammer. “I promise I won’t go into the database city anymore. I’ll leave you and your experiments alone. Please…” I bite my lip. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Tenzo lumbers down the remaining distance, and kneels directly before me. “Do you care for Sabina?”

I avert my gaze from his and steal a look at Sabina, lying there peacefully, as if in slumber. “Yes.”

“Then you will do everything I say,” Tenzo commands. “Otherwise she will die. I will see to it that it happens.”

I nod.

“Good. We understand each other.” Tenzo hauls me to my feet and summons his tPanel. It hovers before him in midair. He has such control over the system. Of course. He created it. How could I have been so naïve?

In the blink of an eye, he teleports us. Our surroundings shift from the speakeasy to one that is shrouded in darkness; when I open my eyes, I find myself inside a sealed chamber of grey polycarbonate walls. I frantically attempt to access the system to teleport myself out and make my escape—but I hit a firewall. I am trapped, isolated.

“That won’t work,” Tenzo says. “You are entrapped within a safe environment—a cluster, set apart from the main branches of the system that I have created. No one will be able to find you in this isolated island. Here, I have control.”

He draws up his tPanel, then proceeds to throw it against the wall to project its content across its entirety, akin to an enormous screen. Lines of code travel up and down, left and right in an endless and dizzying show of infinity. Suddenly, it appears to zoom out, from individual characters to capture the shape of the thing, and I am confronted by an orb of consciousness. The surface of the sphere is anything but tranquil. Jagged spikes skewer the air around it.

It is me. It is me, caught in my fear.

“What do you want with me,” I say.

“The same reason Sabina wants you,” Tenzo says.

“I was helping her,” I answer adamantly. “I was…”

“A guinea pig, Vyvani,” Tenzo says. “Don’t delude yourself to anything else. You were the first person to have your consciousness wholly copied into code, as a result of an accident and Councilor Shora’s connections. You were merely a subject of opportunity. You were not special.”

His answer angers me, but I have no sufficient reply, no truthful retort. Because he speaks no lie.

Tenzo notices my crestfallen face, and appears to backtrack. “Yes, yes you helped us to refine the algorithms for emotion to stimuli and introducing incentive into someone’s mind. Tell me, Vyvani. What do you think is the true reason for your being here?”

I refuse to speak.

Tenzo smiles. “There is a safeword, Vyvani,” he explains, “that was coded into your system. All I need is but to speak it, enter it into here”—he swipes at the roiling orb of my mind to introduce a screen for code entry—“and you are gone. Deleted. Dead.”

“I…” He has control over my life, my very existence. Doors close before me, and any leeway I thought I had proves to be nothing but illusory.

Tenzo nods. “It would do well for you to cooperate. It would be beneficial for the both of us, actually. And remember Sabina. You are responsible for anything that happens to her."

“I think…” I reflect upon my days here, my time spent with Sabina, our many conversations. “She told me she would teach me to harness power. She said that we were working as a counterbalance to technology that might be deployed by corporations to the detriment of society.”

I suppose I never truly understood what that meant. Nor did she ever explain.

“Indeed,” Tenzo says. “You see, she was grooming you to become a sort of overseer, if you will. An entity that might eventually come to govern the algorithms we have developed and control their usage. One who, while in this position of great power, might adopt the principle of freethink, that she so loves, and uphold that principle. A fruitless principle, if you ask me, but in any case, you were meant to carry on her ideals. A successor within the system itself.” He leans close to me. “She was using you.”

“We were working together,” I shoot back. “I knew what I was getting into.”

But did I? Did I even have a choice?

Tenzo offers me a cruel smile. “And you were fine with this? Carrying out this appointed task…for all eternity?”

Something within me is shaken. Eternity? I am inorganic. There is nothing within me to rot and waste away. And if that is true…is there no end to my existence here? It is both a gripping and frightening thought.

Tenzo sees this. He sees me faltering. He extends his hand towards me. “Join me.” I feel a foreign presence prodding at my consciousness.

I recoil as if a viper has bared its fangs. “You’re lying,” I snap. “If Sabina had wanted me to be some cold god, she wouldn’t have injected the emotion code into me in the first place. She…she wanted me to keep a semblance of humanity."

I think of all the times she programmed food into the system so that I could taste it once more. And after my brain decomposed, of how she tried to keep me entertained with visual stimuli, of all the time we spent together. Those were not the actions of a cold researcher. Perhaps, in the beginning, her intentions had not been so pure. But I do not doubt how she feels about me now.

"She tried to make me feel human again.” I climb back onto my feet. “Until you screwed everything up. You had to corrupt the nature of the project.”

Tenzo’s expression darkens. “If you will not join me, I will destroy you. I will kill Sabina.”

“Join you in what?” I demand.

Tenzo does not answer. I understand then that he is attempting to get me to trust him—to lower my guard. Once my mental defenses weaken, he can insert his malicious intentions into the core of my mind, and try to hijack my systems.

All his threats suddenly seem like empty provocations. So naturally, I decide to provoke him.

“Do it,” I sneer. “Delete me.” I jut my chin in the direction of the projection against the wall. “Enter the code.” I try to keep my voice from shaking. “You don’t even know the code to destroy me, do you? You're no killer,” I laugh. "You wouldn't hurt Sabina. Not a real, living, breathing human."

Sabina said Tenzo couldn’t hurt me. Though I do not know the reason why she said that, I trust her judgment.

Tenzo’s eyes widen. Fury blazes within them. “So similar to Sabina,” he growls. “So abrasive, so authoritarian. No better than a bully. It is no wonder Parkim hates her so.”

What? My resolve falters. “Parkim?” Realization strikes me like a hammer on anvil. Son. Parkim Son. Sabina Son. She was always talking about her son, the son she had failed, for whom she was a terrible mother. She was Parkim’s mother. Parkim was friends with Sangsum. What does this mean?

“Checkmate.”

I unleash a scream as Tenzo unleashes a barrage of malicious code in my direction. It splits into a million spears as they arrow into me, writhing like eels inside my mind. The core of my being is shaken, twisted, compressed. It is pressed like clay being ruthlessly worked, harried like a rubber band stretched and stretched and stretched mercilessly until it has lost all of its elasticity. I fall onto my knees.

Slowly, I feel my mind beginning to unravel. I begin losing all sense of being. I am Vyvani Kanto, I force myself to remember. I am Vyvani Kanto.

I am. Vyvani. Kanto.

Kanto. Vyvani. I am.

I am.

Vyvani. I. Kanto. Am.

I.

Then darkness.