Overnight, everything had changed. Ethan had committed one of the most sinful acts you can on another person and immediately after, developed a conscience. Coming in response to his actions, it was a conscience that hit hard. Ethan was extremely aware of his guilt.
All he could remember was the fear in the girl’s eyes. What had been so exciting to him the night before, now was imprinted in his mind as a complete and utter violation of another soul. She was so young. His guilt made him sick to his stomach, and more than anything, he felt like killing himself.
He needed to find a way to live with himself. All he could come up with was to be exactly the opposite of what he now knew himself to be. All the excitement and prestige that came with being Eldon’s right hand man meant nothing anymore. It was all illusion masking what was real and meaningful. He knew that now, and he couldn’t turn away from it. There was right and there was wrong in the world. He would forever more live on the side of righteousness. Otherwise, he could not live with himself at all.
Ethan no longer admired Eldon’s accomplishments. Now, all he could see was how Eldon accomplished those things. It was without regard for anyone. Picking kids off the streets to abuse and kill, was just a fun Saturday night for the man. Eldon lived in a dark, black and vacuous space. Where there should have been a soul, there was nothing.
Civilization was rapidly losing its freedom to people like Eldon. Many were like Ethan had been and admired Eldon, but the majority were starting to see past the smoke and mirrors, and questioning his social responsibility. Ethan knew it was worse than that. The man was poised to take over the world. It was a very real possibility. If you followed the trajectory of world outcome, Eldon’s success would have been the most probable outcome. This was what Ethan knew. Soon, very soon, Eldon would be beyond anything they could do, and the world would live in his shadow forever after. Ethan saw this very clearly now. The purpose of his quest was to put an end to Eldon Whitehead and all he represented.
He started planning. First he reviewed everything he knew about the time and place he had placed himself in. It was just 3 years before the singularity. He tried to remember what Whitehead and Zhang were doing during that time, and what the rest of the world was doing too. He really didn’t know. It wasn’t his focus while in VRAID. He knew no specifics. He just knew it was getting very close to the singularity, and in the end, the people rose up to put an end to the likes of Whitehead and Zhang.
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He also knew AI had something to do with it. What, he didn’t fully understand. The enlightenment was the transcendence and the singularity. That’s about all he knew. He wasn’t aware of any interaction between the two. He only knew they met in space and time, and formed a happy bond when it was all over.
Ethan started to take stock of his situation. About the only advantage he could identify was he was close to Eldon. Within striking distance, but the fact didn’t make things much easier for him. Eldon was surrounded by security. Ethan started thinking his only way to stop Eldon would be to strike if the opportunity presented itself and hope he could kill him, before he was killed by the guards.
He wondered how closely Eldon was watching him. Probably pretty close. He could have already exposed himself and Jimmy just by their talking in his office. Eldon’s ears would pretty much be everywhere. Ethan would have to be vigilant moving forward. No more screw-ups, and he’d proceed as if Eldon was suspicious of him already.
He decided to lay low for as long as possible. Blend in and look for places of weakness. Find something he could exploit, and create a situation where he had Eldon alone. Alone and vulnerable.
Ethan spent the rest of the day and most of the night, thinking and planning. He drew upon his backstory, which he now consciously kept fully separate from his own memories. There was a lot of information coming through. It didn’t matter how far he went back, a memory would pop up of something he had done, or he and Eldon had done together. These memories stimulated more memories until they reached their end when the two had first met.
For some reason, the memories didn’t stop there. Memories continued to flow past Ethan. At first he thought they were still part of the things he and Eldon had done together, but they were different. They looked like they were Eldon’s backstory, and had nothing to do with Ethan. Why would Ethan be getting Eldon’s backstory?
Ethan watched as Eldon’s life passed by him. He saw the good times, bad times, evil times and everything else. Sometimes he’d take a closer look at moments in Eldon’s life when only an outward expression defined what was going on in the mind of the man. Sometimes, he felt empathy and other’s horror. Then he got to a moment when he felt compassion for Eldon. Way back, when Eldon was a child, and the moment his world crumbled around him. Ethan felt that moment. Felt it like he had lived it. That’s when he knew. He was Eldon Whitehead, and he had come back in time to look himself in the face. He remembered now.