He slowly, and carefully lifted his coffee cup and took a sip, before placing the cup equally carefully back onto the table.
“And you did seriously consider using this… well let’s be honest, this monstrosity?”
I could only hang my head, trying to find an answer that did not sound… too bad, just to flounder miserably.
Finally, I gave up and told it like it was.
“At one time, I fully intended to use it, to end it all.”
“You know that it is pretty unlikely that anyone would survive the lamb, including you, right?”
I laughed bitterly.
“Yes, I know. I did not care. On the contrary, I welcomed the idea of not surviving.”
We remained silent for some time, he obviously digesting what I had told him, and I in silent prayer that he would not dig deeper.
I should have learned long ago that it does not pay to invest too much into higher powers, as my prayer failed dismally.
“You say you were in a bad place. Care to flesh that out a little?”
I buried my face in my hands, mumbling my answer:
“You don’t want to know.”
“Sorry, what was that?”
Yup, way too quiet. I steeled my resolve and looked at him.
“I said you don’t want to know.”
As an answer, he leaned back, looking intensely into my eyes.
When I did not elaborate, he sighed and continued.
“And how do you conclude that I don’t want to know?”
Oh yes, his voice had some bite now. I absolutely hated this topic.
“I don’t want to know, and I lived it. I would like nothing more than for it to be one long malicious nightmare. To wake up somewhere realizing that it was a fever dream. So yes, I can tell with some certainty that you absolutely do not want to know.”
He thought about his answer for some time, before he answered me.
“I can understand that, and agree to some extent, but I fear I need to know.”
Damn. I desperately tried to find a way to dissuade him. To no avail.
Finally, I gave up, and whispered:
“You’ll hate me.”
He grasped my hands over the table and held them firmly.
“Did you do anything worse than create this digital apocalypse?”
“No… not really. Unless you are believing the big corps that is. I… regularly hurt them. But otherwise, no.”
He shook my hands for a bit.
“And anything that happened, was it your fault?”
I tried to take my hands back, but his grip was too firm.
So I just shook my head.
“So, why do you think I will hate you?”
It took me maybe a minute to formulate my squeaked answer.
“You will realize how broken I really am.”
“Oh, Kitten, I already know you are broken. So what? In this world? If you are not broken somehow, you are part of the problem. Or a small child.”
He gave me a soft smile.
“Now, I still fear I have to know what drove you into creating that. I need to understand why.”
After a couple of deep breaths, I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Ok.” Even to me, I sounded hesitant. “As you wish.”
Somehow I managed to free my hands and stood up, and started walking around nervously.
“Where do I start…?”
Ben chuckled softly.
“Usually the best start is at the beginning.”
Haha. Very funny. My scornful gaze did not seem to faze him in the slightest though.
“Yes, very helpful advice. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
Get a grip, girl! He is not the enemy. At least not yet.
“Well, I think the best place to start is my father. He was Brigadier General Julian DuClare of the CDF. He was the commanding officer of the 56th assault brigade, something of an elite unit of the CDF. They were usually tasked with breaking enemy strongpoints, and they had a relatively high success rate."
I fruitlessly tried to get my fidgeting hands under control. Unfortunately, I had nothing to play with right now.
“It happened during the AFS-offensive in ’30 when some newly promoted Major General Bartholomew Dalgon-Smythe took over command of the division. The problem was, he was a staff weeny.
Had never been even near the front, but still climbed the ranks unduly fast, thanks to his last name.
Everybody knew he was a fuckup of epic proportions, but little Bart desperately wanted a combat ribbon. He wheedled and whined until his granddaddy pulled some strings to get it to him.
To minimize the damage, they decided to give him command over one of the better divisions, the 6th. Including the 56th assault brigade. I have never found out what kind of logic that pose at, but they did it anyway.”
I took a deep breath, trying to center myself.
“ It became pretty clear quite fast that Bart was no hidden tactical genius, but the division soldiered on, taking unnecessary casualties. But Bart got his combat ribbon so everything was fine.”
Ouch, too much sarcasm, even for me.
“But Bart was not satisfied by getting the coveted ribbon. No, he wanted glory. His name written in the headlines. And of course, he was not stupid, perish the thought. So he concocted a clever plan. Clever in his own mind that is.
He decided that the ruined village from which the AAFS conducted operations would make a splendid target to take over.
He apparently was quite happy realizing that he was the first one to realize the strategic importance of this village.
Of course, he did not stop for even one minute to think why this fucking village was not on the target list.
If he had asked somebody, he would have been told that the village was very well defended, but was utterly unimportant. It opened no avenues into AFS territory or NWC territory. Its only importance was symbolic, as it was the childhood home of Bryce Sanderson. That was all.
Everybody knew that taking over this little ruin would be a bloodfest for absolutely no gain.
But Bart had decided, and he had a mission. His brilliant plan consisted of feeding the 56th into the shredder. Full frontal assault in midday light, without cover.
From what I could find out, my father was not quite on board with this stellar example of tactical genius, and protested, tried to explain to Bart that it was a strategical unimportant target with extreme tactical risk.
To no avail. Bart had made his decision. And thanks to the wartime rules, disobeying these orders would have resulted in my father’s immediate execution for insubordination and cowardice in front of the enemy, while his second in command would lead the brigade into the meat grinder.
As it was, he had a minuscule chance of pulling it off, but only if he commanded it. Even that chance was, in one word, negligible, but it was the best he could do.
Well, the miracle kept missing, and the 56th ceased to exist. There were barely 20 survivors of the nearly 4000 men.
Bart’s brilliant plan had failed spectacularly. But that was not all. The division encamped in the village used the disarray to start a counter-offensive. And Bart really showed his brilliance, by losing another 30k soldiers. The whole 6th division was wiped out.
And Bart knew he fucked up. He was one of only a bit over 800 survivors of a division of nearly 40000 soldiers. And not the usual conscripted riff-raff, but the well-trained, well-equipped type that provided the backbone of the CDF.
The type that is very hard to replace.
Don’t get me wrong, even if it had been conscripts, it would have been bad for his career. But with the 6th… that could make him eligible for the death sentence.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
So brilliant Bart concocted some bullshit story about how the evil Brigadier DuClare had committed treason and riled up the enemy, destroyed unit cohesion, and then sacrificed his troops. The attack of the AAFS then hit the remaining 6th while it was disorganized and weakened.
Don’t get me wrong, everybody knew without a doubt that it was complete fiction. There were several recordings of the ‘planning’ sessions, including the complaints of my father, and the threats of Bart.
The story was more threadbare than fishnet stockings.”
I had walked in a circle, while I told about how my father died. While I took a short break to gather my thoughts, Ben interjected.
“Ok, I understand that is shitty. But honestly, not shitty enough to warrant the apocalypse.”
I snorted harshly.
“Oh, sure. If that had been all, then I probably would have destroyed Bart, and left it at that.”
I paused, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
“The thing was, though, that the father of my mother had made himself unpopular in the council. He had some ideas that the majority simply did not want to hear.
But he was, is, too powerful to touch. And now there was a Dalgon scion that told everybody and his brother that my father was a traitor.
And the people in power grasped the chance. They essentially told the old man that unless he calmed down and meekly integrated into the fold once more, they would hammer my mother.”
I tried to remain calm, while I continued bitterly.
“And he chose his principles over his daughter. So my father was officially declared a traitor, and my mother was sentenced for ‘his crimes’. That happened before my birth, so yeah, no chance of me being even remotely responsible for that.
But I was born in prison anyway. And that was just the start. We were placed in a special prison unit, where the council put people they found uncomfortable, but who were important enough to not outright kill.
The guards of this unit consisted solely of exceptionally large, low caste Pures.”
Ben’s confused grunt made me look at him, and he posed a question.
“Low caste?”
I rolled my eyes but answered him anyway.
“When the assholes designed the Nephilim virus, they envisioned an orderly, well-organized society. To achieve that, they upped the social instincts of the Pures to a point that it is very hard for most Pures to not follow the rules of society.
But hypocrites as they were, they did not want them to be constrained in that manner, and build in a genetic switch, that in the presence of enough genetic markers would instead lessen the social instincts a bit.
We all know that they were arrested and executed, but there were enough others that had a combination of these markers to trigger the change.
These were the ones that had no qualms to bend or even break the rules and laws to get ahead. Not all of them successfully of course.
And so the Pures were divided into three castes.
The vast majority are the base caste. You will rarely find them on our side of the law. Then there are the low caste and the high caste. The only difference between these two castes is that the ancestors of the latter were successful in getting rich, while the ancestors of the former failed.
And the low caste Pures know that as well. Most of them are… a tad bitter about it.
And here we were, two high caste Pures in the hand of 12 low caste pures.
My very first memory is being beaten by one of them. They took particular delight in scaring me, ‘punishing’ me for any imaginary infraction, or just because.”
Ben interjected.
“And that is why you have problems with Oleg?”
I slowly nodded.
“Yes. Oleg would go the smallest of them to the top of the nose, but he is still big enough to… trigger it.”
He nodded.
“Ok, I can understand that you are pissed off by them. But you got out.”
“I don’t think you understand how it was. It was a living hell. And my mother had it even worse.
Panacea had decided that they needed a drug that worked on Pures, something that could addict the discontent.
End they tested it on hapless inmates of their political prison. Including my mother. This… stuff is incredibly addictive, creates an unpredictable high where anything from hallucinations to rage could happen.
But worse, it slowly damages the brain. Not deadly, but it damages the long-term memory and the impulse control, the personality, and in general the drive of the person. In other words, before I was two years old, my mother was a living, breathing zombie.
It was one of the few instances where Panacea got its ass kicked by the NWC. The council forced them to dissolve the project, and when it came out that it was nearly impossible to get clean from the drug, to supply the drug to their victims.
But that did nothing to help my mother.”
He massaged his temple.
“And your grandfather simply…”
I was surprised by my own vehemence when I interrupted him.
“NOT my grandfather! It takes more to be a grandparent than to provide a quarter of the genes! He decided to put his principles over my mother, over me!”
“Okay, okay. I get it. But… what I wanted to know, he simply stood by and did nothing?”
Another bitter snort from me.
“No, he decided that his principles were more important.”
“Fuck, that is… yes, I slowly get why you created the lamb.”
I smiled sadly.
“It gets even worse. I spent the first five years of my life in prison. With a mother who barely knew I was there, with guards who had fun tormenting me. And then Apollo intervened.”
I chuckled again.
“The NWC decided early on to remove the human corruption from the educational system and created a VI with the sole purpose to educate the children to the best of their ability and will.
And Apollo, as any VI took this objective seriously. He does not care that the five-year-old is in a prison, or politically a hot potato, he will educate all children. He simply placed me in school. When the powers that be tried to intervene, he fought them.
In the end, they decided it was not worth it to piss of the VI, and released my mother and me. But they still prohibited our family to help us.
So we were put into a welfare apartment, in the low caste sector. And sent me to school. With low caste children, who knew that I was high caste. Of course, they all knew about the difference between high and low caste.
I give you three guesses how they reacted to that information.”
He groaned.
“I guess they did not welcome you with open arms?”
When I shook my head, he rolled his eyes.
“Figures. So they continued tormenting you. And what did the teachers do during all that?”
“The teachers had orders to not help me in any way Not that they would have, most of them were low caste too.
Heck, every time I tried to complain I was sent to the school counselor for my ‘rampant imagination.
And of course, they did not send me to the usual counselor, but a special counselor who in reality was moonlighting for the job while his real position was Major in the psyops division of the Commonwealth IA.
He used these sessions to mess with my mind, doing his level best to destroy every shred of self-esteem I had.
I was… not so stupid that I did not realize fast what was going on, and stopped complaining. Not that it helped much. Every single invective one of the teachers heard me say brought me back to the good Major.
I learned pretty fast to censor my speech, but it was hopeless. If I did nothing they could send me to the counselor for, they pretended I did.
Meanwhile, at home, we had visits from the peacekeepers every other week, where some ‘anonymous tip' made them search our home. And nearly every nice stuff we somehow managed to get was trashed.
It got somewhat better when I reached third grade. That’s when every student gets a diadem and a small educational board, and Apollo takes over the education directly. It is usually assumed that the students have extracurricular activities together outside of the matrix, but it was not mandated, and I said good riddance to the assholes of my class.
And I decided that I would not be the nail that stood out. I already had realized that as a functional K4 I was not normal, and did my best to play it down. But I could only play dumb so much.
Of course, that did not mean that I was rid of counseling sessions. No, because of my ‘antisocial’ behavior I was court-ordered to a counseling session every week. And naturally, that was with another fine young Major of psyops. I slowly managed to ignore his attacks, play the victim while the rage build up.
You know, if they could have, they would never have let me study anything, but higher education was also under the control of Apollo. I can only guess how often the council cursed the decision to put him in charge, but he put me into USW.
I choose computer science on a whim. I had no idea what I wanted, just that I wanted to see the world burn.
When I was 13, nearly 14, I got the idea for the Lamb. It took me quite some time to work on it, but when I finished my Ph.D. in computer science I decided to get myself a jack, build my first board, which was less than spectacular, and that accelerated my work.
As I said, I spent a couple of decades working on it, and to keep myself from going completely insane before I was ready I distracted myself with learning whatever I could get my hands on.
I found my passion in nanoengineering, and have a Ph.D. there also. And I found that I did not really want to destroy everything anymore. And then I was finished with the Lamb and had no clue what I actually wanted to do. That was just after my 16th birthday.”
He nodded.
“I see that. And you decided to give up on your revenge?”
I was around the table in a moment, nose to nose, and snarling at him.
“NO! Absolutely not! I will get my revenge. These assholes are sitting in their comfortable nests, are rich, powerful, and without any worry. I will not let them get away!
A few of them I have already gotten to. The guards… well, when there was the change of guard in the council, only two of them were smart enough to stop their… questionable fun. It was child's play to rat them out to the new council. The two smarter ones, well, I managed to frame them. With all the evidence of their earlier misdeeds, any protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears.
They now serve life sentences in prison themselves.
The psyops people, well, they are all dead. I planted evidence that they were traitors to their patrons in the council, selling them out.
One of them ‘committed suicide’ by shooting himself three times into the back of the head. Pretty flexible, the guy, after all, his hands were cuffed behind his back at the time.”
I had already stomped back to the other side of the table, pacing wildly.
“And Bart… I systematically destroyed his life. I found evidence that he slept around, and send it to everybody he knew. I managed to hack into his investment manager, and… let’s say for some inexplainable reason Bart’s investments did not work all that hot anymore. He lost his house, his car, his penthouse suite, his stocks in Dalgontech and is now too poor to have a pot to piss in. He is now in social housing, eating basic food substitutes, getting shunned by anybody and everybody.
But I have yet to get to the ‘scientists’ who developed the drug, or the execs who decided to use my mother for the tests, or the bosses who decided to break an old man to their will by abusing his family.
But it is just a matter of…”
I was interrupted by a message appearing on my HUD.
I shook my head in confusion. What action? What had the VI stopped?
I looked quickly in the logs and felt the blood drain from my face. Oh fuck. I blindly stumbled to the chair, and let myself fall down onto it.
Ben now had a seriously concerned expression on his face.
“What is wrong?”
I looked at my shaking hands and took a few tentative breaths.
“I… I can’t talk about it anymore.”
My voice was hoarse, from all the agitated talking I had done, but more from the shock.
“Vivian, what is wrong?”
I tried to calm down, but could not manage it in the slightest.
“I… without wanting to do it, you have to believe me, I have launched the Lamb.”
He too got a case of pale pretty quick. Then he stood up, leaned over the table, and screamed:
“You did WHAT?!? Fuck, why did you do that?”
“I… I did not want to. I was not even aware that I did it. It… I did not want to do it.”
“Fuck! Please tell me that you can still stop it!”
I took another shaky breath before I answered him in a small voice.
“I… yes… I could. I… the whole time during the first 24 hours I could stop it. But that…”
“Then get down to it! Immediately!”
He was still screaming, and I shrank into my chair.
“That… that is not necessary. The VI intervened.”
The anger slowly left his eyes, and he sat back down, closing his eyes and calming down.
“The… VI intervened? How? Why?”
“The how is easy. The Lamb is launched from the cluster, and the VI has total control over it. The why… it send me a message that the risk of my death is unacceptable, and the action was stopped.”
“So… do I understand it right that the VI won’t let you use the lamb?”
“It seems so. And unless I find a way to launch it without risking myself, I don’t think it ever will let me.”
“So in reality now is the very best time to talk about this shit.”
I sat up straight.
“What? No! Why do you think that?”
He massaged his temples again.
“It is… not good for you to simply eat this… anger, this pain. You have to let it out, sooner or later. Right now is a pretty good time I think. We are alone, we have time, and, despite what you believe, I don’t judge you for your past. Yes, you got a fucked start in life, but you got out. I don’t think you realize, but you already beat them.
Now you have to let it heal. And for that, you have to let it out. And with the VI stopping the lamb, there is no risk.”
Somehow my vision got blurry. Then I felt wetness on my cheeks.
Suddenly he was directly in front of me and took me in his arms.