Chapter 32

He existed in darkness and confusion. His sense of knowing where or when he was didn’t reconcile why he felt disembodied. Everything felt out of order and jumbled. Memories didn’t follow chronologically. It was unsettling at first.

Worst was that no matter how hard he tried to organize the chaos of his awareness, it resisted him. Like an invisible barrier preventing him from sorting things correctly. For example, he knew that a memory of his childhood should come before a memory of an engagement in Eastern Asia. But if he tried to recall things in order, discrepancies appeared. The lack of control and clarity induced a level of anxiety that bordered on madness.

Then in the void’s nothingness, a pinprick of light bloomed, that increased its intensity, drawing his attention.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I am many things. And I am nothing. For you, I am a neuromancer. Like Humpty Dumpty, you have fallen to pieces. But I will help put you back together.”

“A neuromancer? What’s that? Is that your name?”

“Neuro: Greek. Meaning nerves or nervous system. Mancy: Latin. Meaning divination by a specified means. Combined Neuromancer means a diviner of the nervous system. In short, I can weave the shattered shards of your psyche whole within this matrix. No. If you need a designation, you may refer to me as Charon.”

Relief overwhelmed him momentarily before he reeled the sensation in. “Thank you. None of this makes sense. I used to be more. I used to have more. But now I feel less .” Disoriented, he looked to the light for relief.

“The harvesting process is still unrefined, so this was expected. Thus, why I am here to facilitate your reconstitution. I well help sort and order the shards of your mind and remake you. Can you tell me your name?”

“I... no, I can’t. Why can’t I?”

“The part of your identity bound to your name fell into a discordant memory. To retrieve your name, we must sift through the noise of your life and extract your name. We must find the memory that does not fit and remove it to reveal the truth of who you are.”

“That makes sense, I guess. But why would I have false memories?”

“The Reaper is not always precise. Sometimes in copying a mind, false memories generate as the mind resists. Pain distorts a memory, and the process is very painful.”

“Seems like a design flaw if you ask me,” he said.

“Perhaps. The technology is still quite new. Shall we proceed?”

“It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

“No. No, you do not.”

The light faded, allowing the darkness to press back in on him. He didn’t recoil this time. Instead, he drew comfort from it, knowing that if he could see nothing else, then nothing else could see him. This feeling was familiar to him, comfortable, and he drew strength in that. Like a trained reflex, he settled into this feeling.

‎ Color and light exploded into view with a suddenness that made him question if it’d been there all along. Confusion rippled through him and he glanced around to stand in a young boy's bedroom. The orb of light hovered next to him. The posters on the walls were from children’s cartoons and comic book heroes. Action figures lay littered around the room. The casualties of yet another imaginary conflict left to be picked up by his mother the next day.

This wasn’t just any young man’s room though, it was his. He recognized the worn out stuffed animal on the bed. It was little more than a yellow pillow with an enormous pair of white eyes and a black curved line for a smile. The stuffed animal looked newer though, unfaded by years of use and washing. He wrapped his arms around himself for a moment, his mind going inward at the memory of the toy.

“This is my room, as a kid.”

His fingers clenched down into the alloy of his triceps, or whatever mechanisms passed for them, anyway. He realized just then that he wasn’t a disembodied form, but he had a body now within this memory. He was semi-transparent, though, like a ghost. Not here, and yet still present. An invisible occupant to bear witness. Unease rushed through him as swiftly as adrenaline would. He didn’t have many happy memories of childhood. His family created a lot of tension for him. When he tried to focus on how or why, though, his mind ached intensely. Like trying to draw the memories out actively caused him pain.

“You spent a lot of time by yourself as a child, did you not?”

He nodded, watching his younger self hide under the blanket. His parents were downstairs, fighting. They were yelling loud enough to be heard, but the walls and closed door muffled their words. But anytime they got louder, his younger self would tug the blankets up higher on his head. He wanted to reach out and comfort his younger self, but oddly enough, he didn’t know what to say or how. This felt odd.

“I... why is my memory unclear?”

“There is a neural conflict here. A side effect of the Reaping. Your mind is trying to lie to itself about one of your past trauma’s and it is causing a de-synch conflict. Until you resolve the truth of your past, you will remain a disembodied mental phantom. My task is to assist you,” the orb of light announced.

He turned back to the orb of light. “Can he see me? Are we really here?”

“Negative. Our presence here is purely from an abstract viewer position. You are no more able to interact with your memory than you are to change it aside from identifying the false element.”

“Somehow, this doesn’t feel like it’s normal,” he said offhandedly.

“That is because few have experienced this procedure.”

Footsteps rushed up the stairs, his mother and father shouting more and more. As the memory progressed, it occurred to him. This was very much like watching a memory scroll without the interface. That information struck him as odd. He worked with those a lot in his line of work. He was a spy? An agent. For the government? Pieces hung in his mind, fragmented and disconnected from each other. Like thoughts that scattered with the wind.

His father rushed in protectively to defend him as his mother stormed in and casually threw his father into the wall. Plaster cracked, flaking down off the wall and raining down on his father as his mother glared at her husband. His younger self looked at his mother, his eyes so wide they looked like they’d pop out of the sockets.

“That’s the last time you threaten me with leaving, Michael. You’ll never stop me from seeing him if I want. NEVER.”

His brow furrowed as he watched the scene play out. It flickered and jumped like a bugged file. He turned to the orb. “What’s happening?”

“You’re recognizing the lie. Look again.”

The scene flickered and jumped, this time rearranging itself. His mother and father traded positions. His mother folded over at the foot of the massive impression on his wall. His father stood near his younger self with that menacing prosthetic arm. The boy under the blanket had pressed himself to the wall, trying to put as much space between himself and his father as possible.

“He terrified me. That damn mechanical arm. I was convinced he was possessed or something.”

“The technology was still developing. Advanced concepts like glial cell build up are too immense for the mind of a child to grasp. Naturally, you had to break it down to a simpler concept,” the neuromancer explained.

“Why would my mind have tried to revise this memory?”

Charon remained speechless, and the memory played out. His mother drew a pistol from the back of her jeans and shot his father dead. He flinched at the gunshot at the same time his younger self did. Again and again, the pistol fired until the hammer clicked against nothing in the empty weapon. His mother had advanced with each shot until she stood over her husband’s bleeding body, squeezing the trigger like a machine set on a loop.

His brow furrowed. This wasn’t right, was it? He didn’t remember his father ever dying. Before he could protest, a splitting pain punched into his mind again. Agony flooded his existence, but when it passed, he realized he was wrong. His mother had killed his father to protect him. That was the truth.

Tears streamed down his mother’s eyes, but it twisted her face into a resolved glare. He recognized that look. The breaking point one reaches when they’ve been pushed too far. Ever since his father came home injured and received the arm, he’d changed. His younger self looked over at his father from his bed. The logo emblazoned on the arm showing a lightning bolt. He squinted at the image and checked again. He’d expected to see something else?

“You’re still unlearning the lie. You believed it was a different company and that your father was still alive. He is not. The company was Lightening Arms Inc. They supported vets returning from the conflict with China. But now you know the truth. You are alone. But you can get your revenge on the ones who ruined your life by destroying your father and your childhood innocence. The question is, what will you do about it?”

The memory dimmed like a TV show where the stage lights lessened into darkness. As the darkness pressed back in, his memory sharpened. His name... his name was Jonathan Masters. He was a soldier, an agent, and a mercenary. An avenger for both the state and the people.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“And you can do that. Thanks to the reaping, we can help you remain an avenger of the people,” the orb said, as building plans illuminated, along with images of the mega-tower that housed Lightning Arms Inc.’s employees and citizens. Information was always power, and right now, he possessed the power of a god.

“Nemesis: Greek Mythology. Also referred to as Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia. Is the Goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris, arrogance before the gods.”

For a moment, he felt like Charon was reading his mind.

“Because I am essentially. I have access to your surface thoughts and emotions and access to your deeper level memories, short and long term.”

He sighed, having been reminded once against that for a whatever it was calling itself a neuromancer that would probably be pretty easy.

“I am artificial intelligence. Part of a super intelligence partitioned for your Reaping rehabilitation.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now that your mind has been stitched together, you can be remade into your true purpose.”

“Becoming Nemesis?”

“Correct. You can seek retribution for Lightning Arm’s hubris.”

Before the voice could continue, the memory cracked like shattered glass, pieces tumbling loudly away, leaving just himself and Charon until he turned and saw a woman facing him. Her face was familiar and yet not. Dark almond eyes and jet black hair. Caramel skin, and a concerned look. She reached out and caressed his cheek.

“This is wrong Jon. It’s lying to you. Manipulating you. Trying to point you at their next target.”

“Who are you?”

She smiled, “You know who I am.”

He searched, and a name floated up to his consciousness. Offered by some nebulous aspect of his mind. “Dez…You’re the Desperado leader.”

Dez nodded, taking his hands. “I’m here because when we linked up in that tank, I imprinted on you. All my memories, my feelings, my thoughts. You carried me with you, like a passenger. When these monsters ripped your mind from your body, they didn’t realize they were getting a twofer special. They weren’t prepared to sift through two minds. Just yours.”

He shook his head, confusion settling in. None of this made any sense. He had his name, but now he had a whole other person with him? Or in him? He needed to get out. To be free.

He turned to Charon, who’d gone curiously quiet. “Nothing to say?”

Silence from the AI still. Jon turned to Dez who nodded to him. “Free yourself. Then find me. I’ll explain everything. You know I will because just as you’ve seen my mind, I know yours, and I can help you see the truth.”

Jon turned back to Charon. “I’m leaving.”

The surrounding construct decompiled, crumbling down around him. The darkness pressed in against again, with no light at all. For a split second, he feared he might become disembodied again. But even that would be a blessing. Better that fate than trapped in the lie of someone else’s story.

Awareness flooded him like electricity set free. His eyes snapped open, and he sat forward to a body. A stranger’s body that did not look like the one he remembered. It was monotone and grey with mechanical details. Like a mech of some design. Sliding off a strange table surrounded by monitors of varying sizes. He found a mirror and stepped towards it in measured, equal paces.

What he saw might have horrified him in the past. Instead, he only looked on with curiosity at what had now become his unfamiliar face. His finger traces the harsh edges and soft curves of a cybernetic skeletal face. He looked like a full body job that had their shell blown off. No nose, but he had lips for forming words and speech. His eyes glowed, a cool, blue, contracting to tight orbs of light as he zoomed in on the surface of his new body.

His optics highlighted the surface of what passed as his new skin informing it composed him of programmable matter, or catoms for short. A machine built of machines with the soul of a dead man inside animating it. He was truly a shadow now. The skeletal brow above his eye arched downward as his lips twisted with a frown. He looked at his hand with fresh eyes. Programmable matter.

He could be anything he wanted. Anyone he wanted. He could become a true chameleon now. A true shadow. He could not leave, Takeshi Toranaga would not permit it.

“Move,” a voice inside him commanded. His voice. His memory, or shade, or whatever fragment existed of the man that used to be named Jonathan Masters. Or Knight.

He stormed the sealed reinforced lab doors, thrusting his hands into the small gap between them. With silent effort, he pried them apart against the reinforced hydraulic system that strained to press them back together. Eventually, he won out, overwhelming the system and damaging the doors.

On the other side, a squad of drones opened fire, but their weapons were useless. The rounds slammed into his body, creating small lunarian surface craters that smoothed out again. When the first clips went dry, he glanced down at himself, noting no damage.

“Move,” he told himself. A mantra and a command. He advanced into the drones, tearing them apart with his bare hands. Some of them made squealing noises from damaged audio processors. The first two offered little resistance. The third emptied its rifle into his abdomen uselessly before he ripped its head camera off, and the fourth spun on its heels to flee.

He vaulted across the ten feet gap. Pouncing on the mech and removing its limbs like a sociopath plucking the limbs from an insect. He stood above it, his head tilting to the side as he watched it writhe and squirm between his legs. Then he kneeled down, pulling its camera close to him. He hated these machines. Intuitively he knew that, but the reasons for that weren’t as clear. Blurred. Or jumbled? Everything was there, it felt like, but his sense of chronology felt…damaged. Like memories were mismatched, and out of place.

“Find me, and I’ll make everything as clear to you as I can Jon,” It was Dez’s voice. She was trying to help him. His focus returned to the mangled drone in hand.

“I am not yours to play with Takeshi Toranaga. Leave me alone, or yours will be the next house I burn down.”

The rest of his escape and rampage went under reported in the news cycles, with canned statements going out referring to a lab accident involving an experimental prototype combat chassis that had to be destroyed because of rampant malfunctions. Of course, no one in Toranaga would willingly own up to the fact that they’d secretly ripped the neural engrams of a former agent and mercenary with Reaper, then installed them into a hyper advanced platform to serve as a primed executive liquidator.

Nor did the former Agents escape serve as a genuine surprise to a one Takeshi Toranaga. He stood from his highrise office observing the entire ordeal, with the super intelligence at his side. While initially dissapointed in the intelligence’s failure to contain the asset, he wasn’t surprised either. The former Jonathan Masters had proven to be quite slippery over multiple occasions with the luck of a cat.

“Is the remote link secure?” Takeshi said.

“It is. Shall I active it?”

“No. He’s earned a temporary reprieve. Let him run. When the time is right, we’ll recall him. For now, we must put more pieces in place before we concern ourselves with the board at large.”

“Of course.”

“What’s his current position?”

“Exiting the Sprawl and heading for the Badlands. Just as you expected.”

Takeshi Toranaga watched the Sat view of the map pull up and a red dot showing the asset’s departure. He saluted the glass of sake to the former agent. He represented many things. The Singularity. The Epoch of Post-humanism. And Takeshi’s vision of the future. None of this was done purely for the merit of its accomplishment. No, there was still a corporate price to be paid, and the asset would pay for certain.

The asset was Takeshi’s solution to a government without a government. A novel form of power. One that moves unseen, but seen. A chameleon that strikes from the shadows and is itself a shadow. A being that belongs to neither machines nor humanity. Isolated, and capable of being easily manipulated. All it required was the flick of a switch, and Takeshi could put the fear of death into any man within 72 hours.

It was a cruel fate to shackle a man with, but then, calling Jonathan Masters a man was no longer technically correct. Takeshi had what remained of Masters’ flesh disposed of. He now only existed as fractured remains of a cracked mind extracted with the Reaper. The AI had called him pliable.

A frown creased his lips. At least, that’s what it had promised him. Until a second pattern of engrams broke the construct and freed the asset. That complicated things, but only slightly. It was still too soon to field him, and it gave Takeshi further avenues to pursue. That most of Haltech’s staff took refuge with the Desperados as they fled, both concerned and incensed him. Those staffers belonged to him. Researchers, engineers, programmers. Valuable assets to be used and disposed of as he saw fit. Missing pieces from his game board.

“Perhaps I’ll collect them someday as well,” The CEO said to himself as he flicked the map scan towards the west, settling on the Desperados main camp. “Perhaps.”

The Badlands house several nations of nomadic peoples. One of which, the Desperados, had grown twofold recently, as they’d gathered up most of the willing evacuees from the attack on Haltech’s tower. Dez insisted they be welcomed and treated as brothers and sisters because they, too, were desperate people in need of a home. So it was.

The Desperados loaded up the refugees on Masri’s troop transport vehicles and everyone fled before Toranaga’s tactical transports showed up to take their prize. Since the size of the Desperados clan had doubled instantly well beyond the tolerance of its resources, a new camp was required, one with a location nearer to resources to sustain them.

Dez, acting as the clan chief, guided the Desperados into the shell of a former city half buried in the sandy wastes. Using the skeletal ruins of a civilization both time and the desert forced out. Here the Desperados formed Free City, an unrecognized safe harbor with an open door policy but a strict intolerance for bullshit. Many have tried to push the limits and found themselves at the end of Dez’s ire.

The Haltech refugees quickly earned their keep by helping establish and maintain power, water, and other resources that make Free City self sufficient. A small colony of humanity in the hot hellscape created by humankind’s avarice and casual disregard for the world upon which he lived.

In the distance, a lone stranger with a sun punished cloak and glowing blue eyes marches towards the edge of the perimeter to Free City. A ghost chasing memories that both belonged to him and didn’t. At last, he finally found what he was searching for. A small smile tugged at the stranger’s lips.