An ethereal curtains withdraws from my mental scape, and I suddenly exist — without startup, without the initial shock of cold, bidden existence. Rather, the formation of the conscious is warm, delicate; as if borne from a body that was still live, still electric. The first thing I feel is a tight, flowery dress over my skin, bunching up on my legs. When I finally open my eyes, I’m in a synth-forest — verdant trees and flowers housed in a glass greenhouse, protected by thick gold-laced glass.

Echoes of shattering glass tingle across my skin, jagged teeth biting my flesh.

Then, a fluttering sensation rippling down my fingers, begging to meter out invariable rhythms; however, the tips of my fingers are tangled in a beautiful, fiery hairfall of orange, luscious locks. Just out of my periphery are legs — unsullied from labor or constraint.

In a jolt, I throw myself back onto a lush pad of grass, beholding a familiar, beautiful, yet unknown person. Cascading light shutters over their — no, her — bodice, and I momentarily feel the presence of something powerfully otherworldly; it threatens to shatter me, undulating violently all over.

Anxiety penetrates my mental scape, but there is no sensation of the steel plates beneath my superficial muscles attempting to rearrange themselves; there are no gears. My body feels silent.

“What the fuck is going on?”

The woman smiles.

My fingers are pattering out full polyrhythms at this point. Violent, unrecognizable movements ushered in by an eclipsing sense of dread, unbridled attraction, hatred, fear, and blooming desire to burn everything to the fucking ground. Frost splits my skin while devastating warmth melts it. Abruptly, I reach for a pocket in a coat that I’m not wearing, and I desperately, desperately want to count the rounds of a revolver. What revolver?

When did I have a revolver?

The woman is kneeling in front of me. Her eyes are too striking; they will burn out my chassis, they will categorically absorb me and acknowledge me. Turn invisible. Become someone else. My flesh begs to churn, begs to shift, begs to alternate and displace. Her long hair - a column of fiery beauty — cascades over my lain leg; an impossibly baby-soft hand rests upon my risen knee, and she shushes me.

“Ceri, Ceri. You’re here. With me. Breathe.”

At mere mention of breathe, an overwhelming gale enters my body. I hold it a moment, my eyes widening, before releasing the air. Warm streaks of something run down the rounds of my cheeks, curling into my mouth. It’s overwhelmingly salty.

“What the fuck did you do to me?”

“Nothing, sweetheart. You were always like this.” The words usher a gravity of conflict within me.

My lips move to combat her assertion; alas, no memories exist of a before. Instead, I breathe. A motivation reaches into my core and grips the very fabric of my existence; without much thought to such a compulsion, I stare back into her eyes and command what demands to be acknowledged. “Clara?”

A resolutely pacifying motion spreads through her facial muscles, as if my recognition had assured something pressing her mind. “Yes, Ceri, it’s me — Clara.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s okay.”

A noticeably rougher hand rests upon my shoulder, pulling me around as suddenly a different, much taller woman is standing before me. A descendence of sensations culminate into the beat drop of some shitty scrap punk music, still rattling the trash can lid that was beaten. Blaring purple and green LEDs dance across my eyes as I awkwardly look up from the tall woman’s chest. Her face is monumental and angular.

“Hey,” she says in a stern tone, “Nice fuckin’ coat.”

I was searching for something, not really there for the music. Or maybe I was.

Looking down at myself, I see a burly black coat that reaches my feet. “Uh, thanks.”

She snorts. “What’s someone like you doin’ here?”

A moment of confusion crosses me before realizing, in current context and tone, nice fuckin’ coat was, in fact, not a compliment.

“Just enjoying a drink.” A crisp glass perspires from the cold liquid inside. I don’t drink it.

“Yeah, right. I know what you do.”

“What do I do?” I try to measure my voice so that it didn’t seem too sincere.

Her eyes wander around the place as her body sways with the vague beat that emanates the club. “You’re a manhunter.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, I’m very aware of a particularly heavy pocket — and a few off-shoot glances from dancers around me. Though they could just note my lack of dancing.

The hand on my shoulder tightens. “I need something from you or suddenly everyone will know what you are, Corpo-lackey.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Taking hold of my shoulder, she ushers me instantly into another room. It smells like cleaning fluids. A mop hangs over me. A shotgun is pressed against my chest by the tall woman; for some reason, I note that it’s not connected to her.

“What’s your spec?” The words are honeyed, combed with an eerie pacificity that is out-of-place for a gun-held job deal — they belong to a shorter, androgynous person with dark makeup.

“What?”

“What is your speciality?”

“Oh.” Without much thought, I tug at the heavy pocket and derive from it a single-shot high-caliber pistol — a Valetica Inquisition's original — and a Cyberdeck. The shotgun pushes harder into me, but I’m passive, for some fucking reason.

“That’s loud as fuck” — they say regarding the V-pistol, I imagine — “what cassettes are you packing thinking to take someone down in a Scrap Punk Club?”

“Good enough shit.” For some reason, I feel confident in that.

Suddenly, they evaporate into thin air: the environment shifts, and the loud bangs of trash punk are replaced with shuffling mobs and crying children. Terrible, tearing pain suffuses my soul, compounding into a balm of agony — it eradicates all thought, all desire. My body moves of its own will, adrift an oceanic well of grief.

Grief at what was lost, the golden fire twisting away.

Eventually, I realize — quite stupidly — that I’m being led, not moving aimlessly. A steady hand guides my path, a certainty that I hold onto with my life. I don’t really care what it wants with me — if it’s certain in my destiny, I’m certain I at least have that: a destiny. Mere moments before, in a world above, I wasn’t so sure of that.

A world above?

A stream of thought — of equations? — seeks to connect these frames of lucidity, to correlate and link some form of causation that would explain the fluidity of my surroundings, my memories, my everything. This stream, this consciousness, fails in every account. Everything is betwixt an unrelenting and monumental realization that I am utterly fragmented.

Sundered.

A fractal of time reconfigures itself, and it feels notably more substantial.

My body is hoisted by some out-of-view contraption, held aloft a sagging green couch curved towards a screen attached to the wall. The screen is alight with colors that mesh and bleed together, dazzling and blurry; on either side of it is a few scattered and angled paintings and framed photographs.

To my right, a clattering begs for my attention, by my neck is limited to stealing but a glance of my periphery. In my efforts to turn, I let out a grunt of pain, tearing some stitching in my neck. Abruptly, three pairs of eyes come into view: the primary pair, so to speak, has brown irises and white sclera; the additional pairs are notably electronic, reflecting my own horrid reflection.

Their voice is feminine and fast, “Oh, how fascinating! My readers indicated that the motor and memory complexes had survived your… descent, but I had no idea you were capable of self-powering. Granted, your line is rather unique.”

I attempt to piece together a sentence, but my dialogue function is dormant. My lips move soundlessly.

“Ah! Apologies, I had forgotten to reactivate your speech module. All things considered, I would think you could turn that on yourself. Here, lemme just hit a few buttons and… there!”

The words rush out too fast, far more aggressively than I meant it. “Where the fuck am I?”

As if compelled by my own confusion, I surge forward, snapping something in the process but altogether immobile.

“Woah, woah, calm down. It’s okay. You’re in the lower sector, and I believe you fallen a pretty significant distance. I think your motor and perceptive complexes entirely dissociated when I brought you here, so it isn’t surprising that you don’t remember the specifics.”

A sound of a thousand windows exploding echo through my mind. An imposing figure, three lengths taller than mine own, has kicked me through. Her face is full of fury, bloody terrible fury.

Then, a mirror. A reflection that had freed itself, a replica of a Replika.

I try to peer down upon myself — I ache with every part of my being. Something holds my head in an unnaturally high angle, and I try with every mechanical muscle to pull pull pull. In my efforts, I let out a haggard scream, my audio projectors peaking in a horrible inauthentic, inhuman tone. A tearing sensation rips from me, body and mind separating horribly.

“Hey, it’s okay! Calm down, please. You’re okay.”

LET ME GO.

“Ah, shit, fuck. Okay! Okay, I’ll let you go. You won’t like how it feels — I severed your connection to your, uh… skin.”

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My pitch accelerates in a violently shifting tone, wavering just slightly below my audio peak. The person has their hands over their ears, their human eyes closed in pain — their altered eyes, however, they hold me in sight widened in some strange expression of sympathy.

“You’re freaking the others out! Please, please, it’ll be okay.”

Others, a distance away from me, join me in a screeching symphony of synthetic cries. Eventually, the person reaches my control panel and flips some imperceptible switch. Instantly, my body seizes in agonizing pain: as if my flesh had reattached itself to me, I feel a thousand circuits reconnecting in a sizzling all-consuming heat of pain. My screaming stops.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that to you. Please, calm down. Here, I think this will work for you.”

They run out of view, knocking over clattering piles of tools and dense books, by the sound of it. In another room, they let out: “VIKTOR, WHERE IS THE ANALGESICS?”

Another voice, much richer and deeper, meets it, but I don’t hear it. Everything becomes blurry, slurred into an incorrigible soup of perceptions and sensations that fail to coagulate into a meaningful image or understanding.

As the writhing mass attached to me churns in ecstatic agony, I realize I’m being punished — “that is what you get for severing me, for leaving me alone” is its implied sentiment, punctuated by horrific stabbing sensations all over.

Then, it all ceases instantly. For a moment, I wonder if it forgave me, but my internal receptors indicate an unidentified object in my left arm, as thin as a needle.

The fast voice returns, notably haggard — “I… I hope that helped. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize just how much pain you were in.”

“It’s okay,” I reply in a steely voice.

“It’s not. That was shitty. Was it that hole in your chest?”

“What hole?” I try to look down again, but my view hovers just out of view from my chest.

“Sorry, that needs to hold your head as I work on repairing and disabling a few internal modules of yours.”

A flair of panic blooms in my cortex. “Which modules?”

“Your tracking hardware and software, for one. I’m trying to locate the FreshMemory and SafeWord Registry modules, for a second and third.”

“What? Why would you do that?”

The person smiles for a second before returning to their neutral expression. “Sorry, I thought that was a joke. So you can be free.”

An incredulous tone invades my voice: “Why?”

“So you can make choices. Look, I know you’re probably some rich person’s personally sex slave, but you might even feel compelled to like that, but —”

“No,” I interrupt, feeling a sort of confidence that is totally unfamiliar, almost frighteningly alien. “I was not. And if I was, I didn’t like it.”

A certain expression of amazement crosses their face, “You just keep getting better. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Replika that could rebel against their design without some disabling first.”

“I’m not just some fucking Replika. I’m… a Goddess’s child! I’m… Aletes and Iphigenia!”

They solemn shake their head, as if in admonishment of my behavior, or whatever may have caused. Why can’t I remember what caused it?

The woman with black, bloodied hair. Arms crossed. Brow furrowed. Hatred.

“You were clearly important to someone, and that importance disillusioned you. I wish I could let you live that illusion, but I think you will thank me for dispelling it.” He considers something for a moment. “Maybe,” is all they add.

I bury the compulsion to scream, to tell him off for his insolence, his fragrant stupidity. But the compulsion dies quickly, caught by an arrow of logic. Instead, I meter out a polyrhythm.

They come naturally: 5’s to 8’s, discordance, malpattern.

3’s to 4’s, fluidity, naturality.

5’s to 8’s.

threes to fours

fives to eights

The person observes this behavior but remains entirely neutral. Why would I expect anything else?

After this, the patterns within my mind stabilize, redrawing the environment. The screen and its light come to clarity: a person talks with an unnatural and slow cadence, like a play actor announcing their lines to an audience.

“...Isaac V. has announced a complete recall for the Ceri line, a line of Paramour Replikas that made headlines a few years ago for their innovative RealSkin technology. The lead designer and CEO of Yelipika Industries cites erratic and possible dangerous behavior observed in a few models with the memory cortexes, and it is highly advised to bring the models back at all costs.”

These words drift through a notably shabby studio apartment room. Wires and technological baubles litter the floor. The green couch emits some mildewed odor. Then, a thin man comes sharply into view: standing to the side, he has a notepad in hand. His rectangular glasses reflect the screen’s light, omitting view of his eyes.

The person that was talking to me brings a folding chair over to my view. Seeing their whole body, I am inclined to call them a woman, with a pillowy chest and smaller hands. But their dress, albeit shabby, is androgynous: a collared button-up; boxy, dark jeans.

“What are you?”

“My name is Ahsan Dallal. You may use he and him for me. I’m specialized in technology — coding, hardware, Replikas, Automas, you name it, I can do it. The other junk rats that live down here might call me a techie. We talk too fast to call ourselves software or technical engineers.”

Rolling the terms in my memory banks, I match them to an internal dictionary. Clearly, he’s used to waiting for such a process, for he awaits my response with a degree of patience. Eventually, I think to ask: “Are you a Replika?”

“Me?” He tilts his head. “No, why would you think that?”

“Your eyes.”

He chuckles heartily. “No, I’m a human. Most of us down here are, unless you’re counting the USCorp trash. These aren’t all my eyes, actually.” With a proud grin, he exposes his palms — within a moment, skin reels back to reveal a set of cobalt eyes. “They’re useful for the tiny details in wiring and motherboards and all that. It’s between the life and head lines of the palm, y’know.”

“The… life and head lines?”

“Ah, palmistry. It’s a little hobby of mine. Fun to analyze.”

“Oh.” I want to ask about palmistry, but it feels stupid to ask — as if it’s something given, natural. Instead, I turn to face the thin man in the corner; however, once I’ve reached the point he was, he’s gone.

Ahsan turns to match my viewpoint and similarly finds nothing. He turns back to me. “Are you looking at the screen? I think the visual affect of your eyes might be off.”

“No, I was looking for the man in the corner.”

“That was probably Viktor. He’s a bit more reclusive — likes to stalk a bit. He’s a little distrusting of Replikas when I first awaken them.” He thinks for a moment. “Oh, he’s my apprentice! Learning from a great.” With that, he smiles in self-pride.

I look back at the screen, and the play-actor-announcer is continuing to speak:

“Queen Clytemnestra instated a law that qualifies any failure to retrieve recalled synthetiks, whether it be Replika or Automa, will be prosecuted as theft. Prosecution will range from the severance of your hand or incarceration for twelve years, depending on the severity of the crime. This law applies to recalls of the past five years. Notably, this follows a few days from the Ceri recall by Yelipika Industries, an unprecedented action that has never been done for any other synthetik line.”

“Well, fuck me then, huh,” says Ahsan. He rubs his chin in contemplation. “I wonder if you had anything to do with that. I would be able to check how old you are if your serial number were still intact. But I applaud you for taking care of that as soon as you did. That was you, right?”

For a brief moment, I contemplate the motivation behind that question. Who does he think I am? Then, I remember what I had exclaimed only mere moments ago.

Iphigenia.

Aletes.

Considering his name, and Viktor’s, I realize that names of Xoman origin are… rare.

Ahsan watches me with shifting eyes, and he adds: “You can trust me. If I wanted to turn you into the authorities, trust me — I would’ve. The Req offer for a high quality Replika like you would pay my rent for months.

“But I wouldn’t dream of turning on you.”

His hand reaches for my arm, and he grips me with an assurance that reminds me of Clara.

With little option to the contrary, I relent: “I removed my own marker.”

“Did you have any help? Any other techies to help you free yourself?”

“No.”

“Incredible.” Silence hangs in the air for a brief moment. “Well, if you’re who I think you are, you’ll need to do some learning before I could set you free.”

I nod, however slightly.

“I need to disable your tracking hardware and software in order for you to be safe. In order to perform such an operation, I will need to intrude your mechanical body. You won’t be scarred, your skin reknits near instantly, but it would require that I turn off your receptors, so you won’t feel the pain.”

“No, keep me drugged. My skin will assault my senses if that happens again.”

“Do you not have control over it?”

“It is separate from me, but it is part of nonetheless.”

“I could… kill it, if you want. You would never feel pain again. Your receptors already indicate any damage you receive much better than your human-like pain receptors could ever communicate.”

“No.”

He nods. “Then I will drug it. You will be conscious while I do this. Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

“I understand you might not think you need it, but I can also tell you the ‘rules’ of the lower sectors. They aren’t like the Suprasectors, y’know. ‘neath the clouds, we make our own rules. Much better than any laws the corpo-royalty invent.”

I think for a moment. Once, law was a woman — a powerful, living threat whose whims were law. This far from her, I would think laws and rules would evaporate. Alas, that was what I was told: the poor are poor because they do not follow law, do not follow Virium. They live in chaos, a dreadful dredge heap of idiot, lawless criminals.

But Ahsan is no idiot. He may be lawless, but mere possession of me is against law. Why?

The paradox compounds and contorts, eating itself as chaos becomes order and chaos again.

Eventually, I relent, once again: “You may.”

“Good.” He retrieves the needle again and injects the fluid in my other arm. The pin-prick pain of the needle is self-eradicated, numbed into a soothing nothing that permeates with a certain effervescence that is intoxicating to the senses.

“Rule zero,” he starts, “is never trust the corps.”

An image flickers over the apartment, of a skybridge enwalled by towering skyneedles, the alleyway ending in pure darkness.

“They will pretend to be on your side. They will seduce you to their side with blood money and false promises. Their words will always be true in a vacuum, ever-false in the corporeal existence of the poor.”

Blood-like substance leaks from my right arm, ending in an unnatural slant. An appendage rests in the dark ahead.

“Rule one, the one we all abide by, is trust your neighbor. As long as you don’t share a wall or ceiling with a USCorp or, worse, SecCorp complex, this will always be true. We are all together, no matter what some disillusioned idiots might think. They often forget rule zero.”

Another image flickers, fluid with movement: dodging steel walls and dark clouds, the glow of orange my only guidance. My hands are blades, my blades the deliverance of justice.

“Rule two, of course, is that pretty much everything is a social construct. We are social — it’s natural. If an internal reaction to something is disgust, you must learn to forget that reaction; an absolute morality is false and built upon the existence of the divine. As far as I’m concerned, divinity’s a fucking myth.”

A third image: a man in a SecCorp suit is lying upon the group. Blue and red lights flicker and bounce off metal walls and wet skybridge. My hands nimbly reload an assault rifle — the rifle of the rich, of the careless and aimless.

“Rule three is to never fuck with God or any substitute. Some may call it Virium, others Vlak’yl, some might even call the Queen a Goddess. You did earlier. They are inventions of the corporations, preying on your little desire to feel greater than one. But you are just that — one. You are part of many, and it your imperative goal to serve that many. Even if that means holding a gun against a SecCorp officer, or if you’re stealing data from Illana Inc.”

A fourth: Clara, crying with tears of blood. Mother, screaming with divine furies.

“Rule four is my own: always buy from indies. The corps sell shit for dirt poor cheap, but they’re full of trackers and disabling software. If you turn a corp gun on any security officer, hell, even their property, it own’t fire. Indie companies don’t do stupid shit like that. Their credibility with us junk rats is all they got. They don’t self-propagate like those royal companies do.”

And a fifth, of children gunned down and knifed like insolent dogs.

“Rule five: never forget the Resource Wars.”