"We cannot simply handwave the murders, mister..."
"Kricher. Adam Kricher."
One of the officials had smiled at that. Barely, just an upwards twitch of her mouth's corners. A reference I hadn't understood at the moment. I wasn't amused after meeting an approximation of the legendary spy, a slave to his lust as I once was to my anger.
"You desire that to be your legal name, yes? We understand you do not want to be known as 'the monster', and 'Adam' is somewhat...widespread."
Managing not to sneer at the mention of my title, I had nodded. "Yes. I would have a proper name."
The first among them, a balding old man with horn-rimmed glasses, had raised a hand, wrinkled and spotted but not shaking, preempting any questions or comments. I had appreciated the gesture at the time, and still did.
He'd had a question for me himself, however, and it had made me think. "If I may l ask one more thing before you go?"
"Yes?"
"Why Kricher? I understand the pun. Making light of bad circumstances, using things said to hurt you as armour, that makes sense. But why not Frankenstein?"
I had smiled a wan, brooding smile, unwilling or unable to properly explain it. I think they understood, however, because they said I was good to leave, any my papers and files would be updated soon.
Let this be recorded for posterity, then, as I seem to have found my words and my wits: I am the first of my kind, and I will not be the last. I am my father's motherless son, begotten through sorcerous technology and arcane artifice. My flesh is dead and stitched; my blood as dark and cold as the depths of the manmade animus that shrieks where a man's soul would be.
I am the first man of the breed Victor Frankenstein dreamed of crafting, and will become the unliving ancestor of the breed I will birth. I am the Adam creature of our ilk, the made king who never had the queen he longed for. I am crowned with power and my mantle is murder. In my mind lie the secrets of my father's fleshcraft, the way he devised to steal light from God and turn it into knowledge.
And I am vexingly, boringly alone.
Victor's book seemed to gleam at me as it wiggled on its support, as if winking. I answered its inane fretting with a heavy-lidded glare, helped by the inky spheres I have for eyes. The rag did not seem repentant in the least.
Sometimes, Victor's book was a leatherbound volume. On other days, it was a scroll of papyrus or a roll of vellum, a touchscreen-equipped, circular device or a bizarre arrangement of faceted crystals. At the moment, it resembled a stack of bronze slates, words heavy with destiny swimming across the polished surface.
I knew what it wanted. Suspected it, at least - it hadn't communicated with me in any true sense, besides childish "gestures" meant to raise my hackles. It wanted me to make more people like me, to build. To what purpose? To no purpose. But not doing such things was not something it could conceive.
I pulled off my gloves, the black fabric hidden under blood even darker than the stains spattering my heavy, hooded lab coat, and leaned my hands on the operating slab. The surgery had stopped moments before the butchery had begun, but, just because the subject was an unliving mound of flesh, it did not excuse my tantrum.
Nor my sloppiness. Being angry was no excuse for swinging a scalpel like a hatchet...but then, I still lacked a proper handle on my anger. This only fed it, predictably.
I shook my head, taking a breath that would've frozen a man's lungs as my long, dark hair almost with a will of its own. Driven by false sentience, it sought not to obstruct my sight, instead pulling aside to let me see everything. I looked ridiculous, as if my hair had been blasted by a burst of air, but it was efficient. Less efficient than focusing my arcane sight to gaze through obstacles, but this required neither effort nor attention.
No. Standing next to the slab was only going to raise my choler again, I was sure of it. My current predicament did not help my temper, either.
Striding soundlessly, I made my way to the ash-coloured, unornamented wall. This laboratory was small, being new, but no longer sterile. My first experiment in it had gone horribly.
I'd made my way to the North Pole because, though the scattered, frozen lands had been fused together by the magic and technology used to stave off the act's natural consequences decades ago, settlements were few and scattered. you could live your whole life here without coming across another person, and that was what I wanted.
Contrary to what you might believe, it had nothing to do with nostalgia towards my last confrontation with Victor. Though I'd been the butt of a few tasteless jokes about the culprit returning to the scene of the crime, I did not feel more than indifference towards the location, sentimentally-speaking.
Practically, however, it would serve my aims. I needed a quiet place, without annoying neighbours. I could ruin my own day like a grownup, thank you very much.
The enterprise I had embarked on was starting to take place. Once it reached its optimal stage, Patch Works would be a nonprofit organisation working to help traumatised constructs get overt their past, or offer them alternatives if they couldn't. I had been informed I'd likely have to work closely with ARC to get artificial beings away from their abusers, as well as with national paranormal law enforcement agencies as appropriate. I also wanted to help natural children as well, when I could.
It was not just guilt talking. I had been an awful son for a poor father, but it was more than wanting to make up for my atrocities. I wanted to give people a chance not to live like I had. And if the thanks of the grateful warmed my uneating heart? I believed I deserved what pleasures I could get in my unlife.
For, though I had the body of a corpse and the power of a god, I was still a man, with a man's passions. I still wanted a wife. I did not believe I'd ever stop. Once I married, I'd just want my wife in a different way, the way husbands are supposed to cherish their spouses. I wanted children, sired or made. A family to raise and grow old and happy alongside.
The thought alone brought a soft smile to my black lips. Some would see me as a cowering fool, I had no doubt. People already did. If I wanted, I could very well crown myself god-emperor of a stretch of creation, rule over a realm of beings spawned from my power, doing as I pleased as long as I did not offend that guardian of life and death, the Keeper of Endings.
David Silva. Were I capable of fear, I believe the thought of him would've left me twitching on the floor, on the brink of a heart attack.
Quite possibly the most important being in our macrocosm, and certainly the most dangerous, only equalled by his predecessor, a regretful thinking abyss of a creature.
Only surpassed by what my father believed we could all become.
A snort escaped me, despite myself. Victor had still been a bloody optimist, in the end, and damn me if I could tell you how. Some people did not want power, did not crave eternity. They were content with their lot, humble as it might have seemed to some. Those could only be dragged into ascension kicking and screaming, and if we resorted to that, what was the point?
But...perhaps my father hadn't been as blind as I thought, I told myself as I slid down the wall I'd been leaning against. Perhaps, ever the visionary, he'd glimpsed some distant future where the only people left were those who craved godhood.
Perhaps he wanted me to blaze a trail to that future.
Was that it? My arcane sense was clouded by the powers whose shadows stretched over existence, but my gut told me my idea wasn't wrong. Was that why Victor's notes acted the way they did? To goad me? Motivate me?
Following what many called the moment of unity, I'd willingly went to trial for my past deeds, where I had been sentenced to eternal community service.
No, I am being facetious. Making a joke of it.
To be more honest, I would be allowed to structure my unlife as I wanted, and experiment on what caught my interest...with regular check ups from the Global Gathering. I approved. I wouldn't trust someone like me toiling away in obscurity at the top of the world, either. Who knew what the gloomy freakshow would make?
That was another facet of my mostly one-sided agreement with the GG. If I made or discovered something interesting, they'd be awfully grateful if I shared it with them.
I did not mind. It was what I wanted to do, anyway. Share the wonders of Frankenstein science with the world. And if they knew how to implement it, sparing me the tediousness of paperwork and talking with dullards I'd never met and would never meet again (or care about), I was more than happy to let them act as my middle man and errand boys.
I had an experiment I'd tell them about as soon as it was finished. It was already cooking, so to speak, and I'd found ways to pass the time while I waited, as is an immortal's wont.
Less than a week ago, I'd come across this unholy fusion between a shaman and a back alley quack. This witch doctor had specialised in cybernetics, and I was using that term loosely. More accurately, he'd been a technomancer of certain skill, as well as adept to grafting mundane bionics to people.
Though I was licenced to take down the likes of him, and incensed at what he'd done, I'd nevertheless alerted ARC. Before they arrived, I confronted the witch doctor and his menagerie of grotesques.
The worst part, in my eyes? Maybe it was the bigot in me talking, wanting an inhuman enemy to hate, but he hadn't been that way from the start.
Normal people, for a given value of "normal", did not come to the North Pole. They were either eccentrics who wanted to get away from society, or pariahs exiled in all but name. Discounting the military and scientific personnel stationed there, I mean.
The doctor, who had begun as a kindly old man - as I learned from going over his memories and timeline with my arcane sense, as well as listening to the observations ARC had been willing to share with me -, had gone quite mad from isolation. He had left his past life behind because he'd disliked confrontations, and had never truly grasped interacting with others.
But cutting himself off had not been the cure he'd hoped for. Instead, he'd ended up trying to make his own solution for loneliness, and failing miserably.
The remaining result of that, the one who hadn't fought, was laid across the slab. Part of me, the one that often found itself morbidly fascinated by one crime against nature or another, wanted the thing to rise from the operating table and shamble to me, trying to strangle and eat me for failing to save her.
It would've been dramatic, and offered me a break from my dark thoughts. But, while I waited for the double call I'd been assured would happen today, I could not afford distractions. Brooding might have weighed down the mind, but it focused it wonderfully, as well.
The majority of the doctor's horde had consisted of things barely elevated to sentience. Golems of ice and snow, moss homunculi, living lichen, things like that. Beings, if you could call them that, too simple to thing. They had amused the doctor, blundering about, helped him while away the days.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
But those bloodless clowns hadn't been enough, in the end. So, Asger Jensen had turned to darker research, telling himself he wasn't doing anything wrong.
In a way, that had been a boon in disguise. People who knew they were evil but continued their pursuits were often far more shamelessly creative, and thus dangerous.
Jensen had never had children, nor any real family. After his parents had passed away during his adolescence, the few distant relatives he'd only heard off had become even colder. I understood it, this need for companionship. But I did not approve.
Doing so would've been the first step on indulging my worst impulses, and that was not something anyone deserved.
Jensen had built this...brood mother, I guess you could call her.
I flinched, despite myself, hands balling into fists as I sneaked a glance at the thing on the table.
Could have called her.
Asger had wanted children. Some people do, when they feel their end approaching. They crave companionship and unconditional love, if not a legacy. What he hadn't known was that he wouldn't die of old age.
Jensen's first and last sapient construct had been a gestalt, consisting of three organisms: a "female", to lay noisome things that only resembled eggs in the sense spawn would burst out of them, a "male" to fertilise them with its foul seed, and a thinking womb, sessile and trapped in a sick parody of life.
When I first laid eyes on the womb-thing, I was reminded of those mother-goddess statuettes common among ancient humans, but only superficially. The womb had resembled the figurines in in shape and what it represented, though not fully. It had been rotund, though limbless, like a bloated slug. At the centre of its green-grey mass had been a humanlike face. A woman's visage, stuck to the body of a monster.
This tortured creature had been forced to birth Jensen's playthings, and enjoy it, too. She hadn't seen anything wrong with it, hadn't been able to, even when the ARC agents and I put her down. She'd died smiling, and that had been wrong, in a way that could not be put in human words.
There were certain things, old and cold, dark and foul, that thrived on violation so profound the rape of the human body seemed like a childish caress in comparison to its monstrousness. The beings who delighted in such things, inasmuch as they could, viewed mankind as a species of infants. To them, men, women, everyone, were like children. They enjoyed showing them ways to mate and breed that had nothing to do with bodies, minds or souls, and the broken, gibbering wretches left behind often made good slaves. That, if you'll believe it, was sometimes a coincidence, rather than an aim.
The thinking womb hadn't been such a thing. She'd been a victim to the end, but her mind had been like nothing human. Jensen, in his madness, could neither decide what kind of child he wanted, nor grow attached to one as a parent should. So, he'd had the womb churn out baby newborn after newborn in the flesh-mills inside its cavernous form.
Some of the infants had died young, minutes after their births, when the not so good doctor got tired of their wails. Others were made to grow at unnatural speeds, only to be reabsorbed, shrieking, when Jensen found them too ungrateful, too disrespectful, too inquisitive. They hadn't loved him as he'd wanted, for making the thing that had brought them into the world and taken them out of it.
Some of the newborns had been vile little things, with grown brains and minds that made their skulls bulge and split, foul fluids running down the sides of their smooth, hairless heads. Dark eyes set in the midst of twisted features, as if half-erased, and mouths twisted in smiles that had nothing to do with childishness, innocence, or joy.
These creatures, Jensen had made into his assistants, clothing their stunted forms in dark robes and replacing much of their flesh with wicked mechanical equivalents. By the time I'd broken through the defences of his laboratory complex, their numbers had grown through both asexual breeding, their small bodies splitting apart into identical clones (how the cybernetics were copied too, no biologist could've answered), as well as through means I'd rather not think of. Why would you make something that looked so infantile yet was so fertile...
When ARC arrived, they found me covered in blood, with one arm through Jensen's heart, going into the ground. My eyes had burned darkly, gore-covered as they'd been, but, despite the steaming vitae coating me, I'd never felt colder.
They had understood the kill. They'd have done the same. Jensen had been twisted enough no one would seriously judge me for taking his life the instant I laid my eyes on his madness. My ire had barely cooled by the time they told me they'd put down the thinking womb, who could not be rehabilitated, nor did she desire to go on without her twisted family. They delivered me her remains to do with as I pleased.
Was it any surprise my anger had got the better of me, yet again? I wouldn't be able to revive the creature without recreating her condition, nor was there any knowledge to be gained from her inert carcass.
Hence, the tantrum. Hence, the chipped scalpel, cracked against structures that only felt like bone.
Victor's book possessed all his intellect, but none of his humanity - and let that close the mouths of those who claim brainpower alone makes us better than animals. Seeing my grief, it had more or less shrugged and told me to build, build, build. Being sad was pointless; what did it achieve? Much better to make something.
My gaze darkened as I thought that, maybe, the book simply thought as my father had when he'd made me. When he'd been far more concerned with matters of intellect than morality.
That call could not come faster...
* * *
They found me sitting, arms crossed over my knees, on the now-empty, blood-slick operating slab. I'd disposed of the thinking womb's last piece, unable to do anything for her, even in death, just as I'd failed to overcome the immunity to esoterics her monster of a father had built into her. Just as ARC had failed to bring her around.
It was a day for failures, so when I saw the people I'd been waiting for, I did not hide my dry, bloody-toothed grin. We were all defined by what we hadn't done or couldn't do.
Asterion was astrally projecting a semblance of himself here. The minotaur had first approached me at the celebration following the moment of unity, and we'd bonded over growing up with father who'd quickly given up on us, though I'd chosen to become a monster.
The memory of the blind, ungrateful man I'd helped flashed through my mind, and I forced down the bile that rose in response.
Mother Wound's Scorn, a product and victim of one of the most odious cultures I've had the displeasure of knowing, was present as a towering hologram, thick arms crossed belligerently.
I don't think he did anything without making it look like a threat or attack. I'd seen him open food containers as if they'd killed his...well. Not his mother. He wouldn't have been angry at anything for that. Merely jealous.
'Aster,' I said conversationally. 'Scorn.'
After exchanging greetings, we quickly got down to business. This was not an official visit in any sense, as the Tartarus Engine wasn't here in his capacity as an agent of either Olympus or the Aegis Adamantine, and Scorn did not possess authority over...anything, as far as I knew.
This was a social call.
The Bull Rampant wanted a full life for his lover. Hera's curse had left her unable to feel anything physically, no matter what form she took. Strange, to be sure, for she could easily imitate powers greater than the goddess' had been when she'd cast it, but some things aren't limited by their wielder. He thought that, if I couldn't change her back through my control of creation and destruction, maybe I could build her a new body that could feel.
'I cannot guarantee anything,' I told him softly, 'so do not get your hopes up. With my luck, I'll make a body that can only feel pain, or some grim nonsense.'
The Black Hunger snorted, his spiked brass nose-ring swaying slightly, but nodded curtly. He'd rather leave her numb than make her suffer. If only more men thought that way when it came to their women.
Scorn just wanted to share trivia. He had come to Earth as a courtesy to an acquaintance he referred to as the Flesh That Flays, who was interested in the many Earthlings who could enhance their powers with no limit, as well as imitate those of others.
'Why do you think that is?' the Vyzhaldi asked, pausing in his explanation of how he planned to help the Flesh meet those who'd piqued its interest, either by convincing them to visit the cosmic creature or by bringing a piece of it to Earth. 'Most civilisations only have one such being or construct, a handful at most.'
'Bias,' I answered bluntly. 'Unconscious bias.'
'Huh?' the exiled Kratocrat grunted, mandibles parting.
'When the Unmoved Mover - yes, I see you're following me - slept, its dream was skewed towards Earth. When creation was remade, everything was left as it had been.' I leaned forward, resting my chin in one hand. 'I do wonder how unconscious it really was, however. Maybe the Mover really liked this mudball, and wanted it to have powerful beings.'
That resulted in a fairly hilarious tirade about tasteless gods, followed by a retelling of Scorn's experiences on Earth.
'Their females are pleased with my form,' he said at one point, flexing as he stood. Pointedly not looking between his legs, I met his yellow, multifaceted eyes.
'I'll imagine you're referring to some fighting stance.'
He scoffed. 'Imagine away. Human women like big males, especially those whose seed cannot take root in their wombs.' His wings flicked open and closed again at his sides. 'I cannot say the feeling is mutual, however. They're less than a third my height, with no exoskeleton and two arms. I told one, would you sleep with a skinless, armless infant? She looked at me as if I were mad!'
'I cannot imagine why,' I lied. 'But listen, Scorn: while you're here stealing the women Zhal needs, I would prefer if you didn't interrupt my work just to talk. Our tempers mirror each other, so we'd just rub each other the wrong way speaking too often.' I looked him in the eyes, my hooded ones meeting yellow circles covered by pale red, transparent lids, the layer beneath the full ones. 'So, why this meeting?'
'You know what this is?' He gestured at his crude necklace. At my nod, he continued, sounding both amused and disbelieving, 'Recently, I have mirrored a power that lets me keep track of things pertaining to my kind.'
'Fascinating,' I replied honestly. 'But if you seek therapy after observing all Vyzhaldi meatheads in real time, I am afraid I am not that kind of doctor.' Me, a therapist! That would've been like making Silva a motivational speaker.
Scorn laughed lowly, and I was thankful for my senses' ability to discern the meaning behind the buzzing screech that actually resulted when he opened his mouth. 'No. But I have been given reason to believe you are tinkering with something based on Vyzhaldi power.'
'And if I am?'
He barely lifted his shoulders. 'Your business. I was merely curious. Loathe them as I may, my people are powerful. Perhaps the most powerful species in this cosmos, discounting outliers.'
I would have heavily contested that, but I was not interested. 'Maybe.'
'It would make sense to use them as templates.'
'I will make sure to suggest this to anyone wanting to imitate them.'
Scorn's smile was an abyss bordered by blades. 'You do that.'
After that, a silence followed. Not comfortable, but amicable enough. The alien was pleased with the result of my outburst, I thought, from how he looked at the gore-caked lab.
'Why are they like this?' he asked finally, breaking the silence. I knew he wasn't referring to the darkness in the heart of man, that fed their psychoses, but to a different burden. 'With so many powers at their disposal, the macrocosm could be their playground. It already is, for some.'
'Laziness.'
'Laziness?' he repeated, sounding mystified. I did not believe he'd ever felt sloth.
'Some resistance made them abandon their first extraplanetary colony, not that they needed one, seriously speaking.' I faked a yawn, considering it appropriate. 'The truth, Scorn, is that people are comfortable with what they know. I've contemplated it often, and let me tell you: they could all be psychic cyborg mages, or weres, or some other sort of transhuman or posthuman.' I smiled. 'But they don't want that. They still use money, as if post-scarcity is not a thing.'
That, I thought, was the proof, if more was needed, that mankind and its adjacent species were in a transitional stage. The GG provided everyone shelter and sustenance, but everything from transport to entertainment required currency. Why? Because it did. Because, though they could have provided everyone with every luxury they wanted, that was not their aim.
Some cynics would doubtlessly say monsters born of the human psyche would become worse when mankind began living easier. Just because the pantheons policed each other, and the Bogeyman and his cackling sister kept the demons of dreams at bay day and night, it did not mean encouraging memeophages was beneficial, in their view.
The truth was, I think, that people simply weren't ready. They still half-lived like the Shattering hadn't happened, but there was no true need to rush them. They would grow into something beautiful. I knew. I had seen the signs.
Just like how vampires would, one day, move from the infant, suckling stage their species was in, and the seed planted by Primus would grow into what they had always been meant to become.
'Nostalgia,' Scorn thought out loud, ending my reverie. 'Or cowardice?'
'Does it matter? We can't push them along, nor should we. We can only guide them.'
Scorn did not look satisfied when he left, which made two of us.
I left the laboratory behind, moving between the diminutive and towering forms of my Igori. The popular culture character had appealed to some part of me, and I'd caved in. The assistants, homunculi and vatgrown alike, were good company, if nothing else. Talking to them was like talking to vacuum cleaners, but I took what I could.
In one of the arena-labs, my Bloodied tested themselves against each other. The constructs, made of and clad in blood, combined a Vyzhaldi's baseline power and adaptive growth with regeneration tied to their control of their state of matter. The mutant one, a black-hearted colossus of blue blood, was proving even harder to kill, not to mention able to perform feats that had nothing to do with brawn, because it was, metaphorically speaking, strong enough.
Unsurprisingly, it had become something of a leader to the narrow-minded guardian creatures. Soon, I'd run out of excuses to avoid distributing them as cheap security across the globe. As ridiculous as it sounded, though, I wanted them to remain innocent for a while longer, even if they did not think, as such. Not yet.
My power had allowed me to analyse the Kratocrats' makeup during my visit to their realm, as well as recreate their flesh in the form of regenerating protoplasm. That would be spread across the world, too. It would be my first gesture of goodwill, proof of my trustworthiness.
I was curious to see how my rivals in the field of genetics, like Yamada, Kalodiosi or Doctor Plague, would react. It would've been a joyless game, without competitors.
As I reached one of my bedrooms, having stripped down to plain grey sleeping clothes, I closed my eyes, then the door. A thought turned off the lights (a pointless affectation for someone with eyes like mine; I was more human than I'd thought, it seemed), and I laid on my stomach, face half-buried into my pillow.
And, in my dreams, the wife I'd never had came to me, once again.
I am not there, Adam. I will never be, while you remain a child. You want a woman who loves you and nothing more, with no life of her own. No interests that will take her away from you. Who will bow her head when you lash out, and smile. You cannot let go of your anger, and turning it upon monsters will only feed it.
She always spoke to me in my own voice. Strange thing, wouldn't you say?