The video played at several thousand times the normal rate and they saw in a few silent minutes what takes a fortnight of surgery to achieve. The body of Regon is almost hollowed out and flickers around the body were the toiling surgeons. Slowly the body was opened from neck to groin. Very carefully.
“Does this serve a purpose?” asked Drej.
“Most of it is merely gore for the sake of itself, to anyone but the conversion techs,” said Joseph, riveted to the screen. The image paused where the doctors were installing a white, pearlescent box about the size of a foot. Pausing at that exact moment would be impossible for a human unless by million to one odds.
“What’s that?” asked Drej.
“Do you really need to ask?”
“The Instinctual Cluster.”
Joseph nods, “Made of our own artificially grown bone.”
“Strange.”
“I think you mean conductive.”
Drej found that an obscure comment, “What do you mean?”
“Perhaps you would like to know what’s inside it?” asked Joseph seeming to ignore him.
Drej had never thought of it before and glanced to the frozen image on the screen. “Yes. I would like to know.”
“So would I. As far as I can tell we would be mind-wiped for even hearing rumour of this, but in that box is the last piece of purity we have as life forms.”
After that conversation, Joseph left. That night Drej thought more than he ever did about the great dilemma of an android. How different are ones and zeroes? One means active. Zero means inactive. These ideas bounced back and forth in his mind for hours. That was the night he first felt the tapping in his chest. That was the night he had his first nightmare.
Sindaris Tessol is cold. Despite being wrapped in a thick hooded jacket, fully lined and two sizes too big, given to him by one of the group he holed up with earlier, he doesn’t feel covered enough. The dangling straps at the collar with D rings at the ends, pockets in the sleeves, grey lining and mesh over the grey makes him look like some kind of dark jester.
He’s standing in an alleyway looking over the streets in Blackhaven District. He managed to get into the area easily enough but the military are blockading this quadrant off, and that’s driving the contaminants towards the central zone to avoid detection.
Sindaris gazes upwards at the sky to see a Desolator satellite moving into position, not directly overhead but close enough to flatten the street Sindaris is in.
With the conclave nearby, the contaminants have started to panic; but the more intelligent are going underground. And the less intelligent are going to be used as bait. Blackhaven is one of six suburbs encased in the new blockade and the soldiers will be deployed to clear it soon.
The whisper amongst the share-mind spreads horror, an image of a bald, sightless android that is coming to kill them all. Sindaris can sense a fear so thick in the minds of the contaminants that he can feel other mind try to recoil. The massive android is firing a rifle that looks like it belongs on top of a tank. The stream of fire it emits is solid light, like a Jacob’s Ladder yet impossibly hot, shearing through bodies like butter. Several contaminants get within reach, but the android swings the rifle like a club, coming down so hard the infected local is almost crushed flat. It fires projectiles from its wrists throwing contaminants off their feet with the force, and its claw attacks can cleave limbs. It’s a walking nightmare.
Sindaris feels a wave of renewed fear pass through the share-mind, and for a moment he’s drawn in with them. He puts his hand in his pocket, gripping the handgun, taken from someone or other by the contaminant that gave him the hooded jacket. He doesn’t want to know where it came from exactly but it’s the best chance he has at taking out the controller.
Part of him doesn’t want to find out what’s underground, especially with how clear his eyesight is. Sindaris wonders if he’ll ever be able to forget any of the horrors he’s already seen. The average human can only focus on approximately the size of a thumbnail on their outstretched hand but with binary pupils Sindaris’ range of focus is the size of a basketball. For a while it was very awkward for him to get used to. If only he knew how to fire a gun with a practised hand he’d be quite the sharpshooter.
He can still sense the other copies of his consciousness out in the city; but there are fewer by the hour. Sindaris finds himself smirking at how he is the real him and must pretend he’s someone else, and somewhere else. He looks from the claws of the Desolator satellite poking through the clouds to an alley across the street. The sky is cloudy and with the mass blackout the night would have been pitch black if not for his ability to see in the dark.
Sindaris can hear gunfire in the distance coming from all directions, and assumes the contaminant decoys are attacking the blockade already. The alleyway entrance to the conclave beckons, and Sindaris makes a run for it. The D rings of his jacket jingle lightly despite his efforts to immobilise some of them.
Dark Jester, he thinks ruefully. He’s scared almost out of his mind of becoming a possessed thrall to this controlling entity, responding to any whim like a good subject of this unholy court.
He stops just inside the mouth of the alley and looks out onto the street for one last time. He can feel a strong mental pull from the conclave; it feels like an intense sense of understanding or acceptance. Maybe both.
Sindaris briefly doubts that he can resist the sheer mass of minds.
But I have to, he thinks, taking his first step in.
I must.
Rennin is pacing in front of Caufmann, a few steps to and a few steps fro.
The doctor thinks he’s having some kind of stress related episode at first, before Rennin asks a question that genuinely has him stumped. Caufmann considers several replies, discards them all, and asks a question instead. “Programmed you?”
“The night of the GA Rally part of my head was crushed. What did you put in?”
“A replacement skull fragment made of Thermosteel Plasma.”
“And?”
Caufmann isn’t sure what Rennin knows about his operation but he’s certain that the former watchman doesn’t have any idea about the piece of brain he took. “And nothing. What’s wrong?”
Rennin relays what happened in Gunship Dead Star when he tried to flee and when he rescued Carmine, emphasising how horrible and how good he felt. “So what do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“All you put in was a piece of skull?” asks Rennin stepping towards him.
Rennin isn’t a fool, so Caufmann comes clean. In his way, at least.
“There was some damage to your brain so I implanted a small gland that is designed to simply make you feel better.”
“That’s it?”
Caufmann nods, “I don’t have the expertise required to program a human mind.”
“But what about all the other shit I feel whenever I do anything?”
Caufmann shrugs dismissively, “The gland gives you a slightly elevated sense of wellbeing, all the other mood related rise and falls is you, yourself.”
Rennin blinks. “What?”
“You’re feel better in general, so when you do something that in your view is cowardly or cruel you feel as bad as you ever did but because you’re constantly feeling good it just seems like you crash harder.”
Rennin shakes his head, “I’m not talking about a mood swing. This is different. Intense.”
“Rennin, when you do something you believe is a good thing, of course you’ll feel better. It’s a side effect of the gland and you’ll adjust with a little time.”