E R R O R < I D E N T I T Y > // Leviathan + worldeater

[Leviathan]

        A flurry of white blankets and sheets were violently tossed aside at the jarring thump that echoed throughout the small, two-story building. In the midst of the disarranged fabric, a young woman sat straight up in a state of alarm as if her mattress had suddenly turned into a pile of hot coals. She stood absolutely still, counting the seconds that passed with the help of the sharply ticking clock on her nightstand. Perhaps she had imagined it this time… Perhaps it was nothing more than a hypnic jerk… Her heartbeat quickened abruptly and outraced the passing seconds as softer sounds continued to resonate from the first floor. Obviously, the noise hadn’t been a figment of her nightmares as she’d first hoped. Abigail swore inwardly, trying desperately to untangle the mess of bedlinens wrapped around her legs while her hands pushed away the long mass of dirty-blonde bed-hair that had fallen across her face.

        Again? They were trying to pull this bullshit on her again? The lack of disturbances in the past year had convinced her that those damn thieving bastards had finally decided to leave her alone. Evidently, they weren’t quite finished with jacking up her anxiety and massacring her sleep schedule. She could feel the adrenaline surge through her system as she clumsily slipped off the bed and stumbled towards her dresser. Shaking hands desperately searched through folded blouses and t-shirts, tossing the clothing to the side as she reached for something hard and cold. A pistol was easy enough to get your hands on if you knew where to go—it might have been old tech but it worked just as well when properly aimed.

        Patently, this wasn’t Abigail’s first experience with home invaders. After her initial fall from grace three years ago, people had been breaking into her laboratory, ransacking her files, and hacking her computer systems. Even after she’d moved from her uptown house near the university to this shitty back-alley neighbourhood they still managed to find her. Initially, she had been concerned that people were trying to break into her laboratory in an attempt to steal money or technology worth selling; worse yet if they were a repo-gang who planned to murder her in her sleep and individually sell her body parts at the black market. The repetitive nature of the attacks—and the fact that she was still breathing—made her realise that they were nothing more than pathetic attempts to steal her work and remind her that she was utterly powerless. How many times had she woken up in the middle of the night to find shady military thugs stealing her journals and tearing apart her lab? Of course, all attempts to contact the police ended in utterly futile tug-of-wars with the bureaucracy. Whoever these assholes were, they had most of the damn city under their thumb.

        It angered her to no end that she couldn’t even put a face or a name to whatever vile facility had destroyed her livelihood. They hadn’t simply taken away her single greatest achievement, they taken everything away. Her dignity, her reputation, her friends, her home... All of it in tatters. Ever since they had stolen him. The university shut down her funds and stripped her of her status, what few investors she had seemed to fade into mist, and her friends and co-workers started calling her mentally ill and delusional behind her back. With all her money gone along with her life’s work she’d been forced to move into this crumbling two-story building; the top floor serving as her entire living space while the first floor accommodated her office and minuscule lab. It had been a pretty steep fall from Dr. Abigail Carlisle: Genius Inventor in University With a Promisingly Bright Future to Dr. Abigail Carlisle: Robotic Limbs and Biotech Councillor, Have a Seat While You Wait. Yet even when she had gone from breaking scientific barriers to installing mechanical limbs and repairing broken androids, they still felt the need to scare her. It all served as a stern reminder that she was helpless, and that any attempts to change her position would swiftly be thwarted and crushed. Well, maybe so; but she could still shoot whatever bastard they had sent to harass her this time around.

        There was a slight click of metal as she checked the gun’s cylinder and pushed down the hammer. Taking in a deep breath, Abigail realised that she was still in her nightclothes—and as comical as a slender 5’3’’ female might seem when holding a retro-age gun, the effect was multiplied when she was wearing only a tank-top and a pair of shorts. Deciding to mind her modesty at least slightly, she quickly shrugged on her workplace lab coat and slipped past the bedroom door. Olive eyes scanned the surrounding living area cautiously, the pistol held firmly in both her hands. Her breathing was still coming out rather ragged and she bit her lip sharply to keep from swearing aloud. They hadn’t managed to make their way upstairs yet, but going down the steps in the dark with a gun was going to be a challenge; especially considering that her view of the lower floor would be blocked. She pressed her back against the wall beside the staircase, but just as she reached the bottom step, a screeching creak of wood below her feet unceremoniously announced her presence.

        “Fuck...” she swore aloud this time, mentally cursing her lack of carpeted stairs. Well, she certainly wouldn’t be catching anyone by surprise. With her back still to the wall she braced herself, holding out the pistol at arm’s length and desperately scanning the surrounding darkness of her office for any signs of life.

 

[worldeater]

RE: E R R O R < I D E N T I T Y >

They said that men like him were born from dead dreams.

Jay never remembered where he got the quote from; the scientists that studied him and put him back together were always tight lipped about everything. They never answered any of the questions he had.

Why was he born?
Why was he here?
What was he?

All these questions were easy to come by as he was naturally curious. Truth was that . . . he felt like he was supposed to be something . . . but his body was happy to tell him otherwise. His home was a glass cage, a prison that shackled him by removing his limbs. He knew he had limbs because the scientists were keen on letting him test things out and were just as easy to remove them once they either felt they had gotten enough info . . . or were afraid. They too were keen on questions, but he let the answers trickle out as slow as he could. How long were they going to keep him, after all? What if they got rid of him? Surely, these people would have turned him off by now if they could study every little bit about him.

In the end, the questions slowed and the visiting hours decreased little by little. Jay could tell because his own brain was counting every second and any little difference he noticed was recorded to the literal minute. Days passed into months, which easily passed into years by the end of things. The darkness was not a friend by the time he powered down and sleep was the only friend he had. So he waited . . . and waited . . . and waited

. . .

And waiting got him a friend.

______________


Now he was here, a part of his memory some what fazed out except for a single part that screamed for him to do something. Find Abigail . . . and order . . . find Abigail and keep her safe. He wanted to assume that it came from his own head, but the memory was suspiciously intact. Still, by the time he had broken into the crummy apartment, he was doing his best to fulfill the order.

Luckily for him, the voice behind him was very similar to his memory banks of what this "Abigail" was. All he had to do now . . . was to ensure that his human looking form wouldn't throw the scientist off. Slowly but surely, he raised his hands and began to turn towards the voice. His glowing blue augments shined bright from his eyes.

". . . uhh . . . hi?"

 

[Leviathan]

RE: E R R O R < I D E N T I T Y >


        The movement in the darkness had Abigail pressing her back even further into the drywall as if she could become a part of it. Her breath caught in her throat, and though the words ‘don’t move’ and ‘I’ll shoot’ came to mind, neither response made it past her lips. Fear raked her gut as the figure turned towards her slowly. Why was there only one? Didn’t these guys usually come in two’s? Was he armed? Her racing and panicked thoughts were brought to a sudden and abrupt stop when the man finally turned towards her fully and spoke.

        ‘Hi’? Was he intentionally mocking her? Had they gone beyond simply terrorising her to actively humiliating her? The damn brute had broken into her home and now he was greeting her and putting up the front of surrender? Despite herself, Abigail’s expression contorted from one of anxious determination to confused anger. Though she still held her gun out pointed directly at the center of the man’s chest, she took a moment to let go of the breath she was holding and examine the intruder a little more carefully.

        Though he was mostly shrouded in shadow, there was no hiding those glowing blue irises. Their piercing light intrigued her as much as it unnerved her. Were they contacts of some sort? But, the light seemed to originate from inside the iris. She knew that some new trends involved neon contacts made out of phosphors; they were mostly intended to make the wearer look like an android. An android...? No, this was definitely a human being, not a machine. She’d spent the majority of her life around androids and damn her eyes if she couldn’t tell them apart from humans even in the midst of darkness. The movement was all wrong, and so was the language; androids weren’t capable of speech disfluency. A modification then? Perhaps he’d switched out his eyes for something a little more high-tech; but even then that would involve some damage to the skin around the eyes themselves. Such a seamless job would require...

        Oh for heaven’s sake, stop overthinking! You’re not supposed to be a goddamned scientist right now! The logical part of her brain kicked into gear and asserted itself before her volatile scientific mind could dive into a further analysis. It didn’t matter whether his eyes were glowing blue or shooting lasers, it only mattered that he removed himself from the premises as quickly as possible. Yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling of something anomalous when she looked at him—given the circumstance, that wasn’t exactly odd to begin with.

        “Who the hell are you?” she demanded sharply, though her voice came out rather husky and shaken—a reminder that she had only risen from the dead of sleep a few minutes ago. “What do you want from me?”

 

[worldeater]

RE: E R R O R < I D E N T I T Y >

He gulped . . . not for necessity or for a dry throat, mind you. He had no need for such human actions, but Jay had long since cared that his body was made of metal and servos. He was still human on the inside and he certainly acted like it when he began to raise his hands up. Slowly but surely, he tried moving around towards the better lit areas in the hopes to gain her trust. He also kept talking, but his damned head kept messing up what he wanted to saw. After all, who knew what sort of high-tech gun she was using. Jay was so scared that he hadn't even bothered using his augmented eye sight to see that her pea shooter was merely an old-aged pistol from the forgotten era.

When he got to the light switch, he flicked it on with his back and suddenly, light flooded the senses of everyone in the room. Jay remained unaffected, but he could see that Abigail was not gifted with his traits. Once she finally recovered, Jay's true form was revealed to Abigail as the very cybernetic being she worked on.

His skin, thought human like, was clearly made of something non-fleshy. Every time he moved, the light bounced off of his skin like metal did. Indeed, every little bit of his body was connected up in numerous bits to imitate the seemless flowing vision of what skin should have been. Abigail would have also recognized the Gaian seal of Military Weapons grafted on his chest as it looked messy as it contrasted to the "clothes" he wore that actually came from himself.

What else was there? Ah yes, overall, his upper torso was relatively untouched as was his arms and legs. There were some clear augments to his waist and stomach, but these looked like old improvements. Jay himself knew of the extensive work that his captors did on him, but with nothing to do, he had no way to complain or suggest something as a replacement.

Looking towards Abigail with meek eyes, he slowly let his hands downs as he looked at her gun, "Oh . . . I . . . um . . . nice gun Miss . . . Abigail . . . science lady . . ."

 

[Leviathan]

        The sharp burst of artificial light blinded Abigail completely, and the flash of pain in her eyes forced her to shut them immediately and flinch. She swore under her breath, turning her head down and to the side in order to hide her face from the direct glare of the overhanging light source. The visual overstimulation left her rather vulnerable—a fact that she was currently very aware of. Desperate to get her vision back she blinked rapidly, letting her eyes tear around the corners as she struggled to bring her chin upwards in order to face the intruder.

        When she finally found her focus beyond the blur of startling light, she raised her gaze, fully prepared to direct a series of morbid and highly baseless threats towards the man in front of her but instead she froze. Abigail stood utterly and seemingly irrevocably still, a single inhale of breath caught in her throat as every muscle in her body seized and stood at ridged attention. It was as if she had been sucker punched. Her expression contorted into one born of horror and awe as her human eyes met those dazzling circlets of cerulean.

        Him. It was him... Impossible. It made no sense whatsoever, it was utterly illogical. Lies. Cruel, cutting lies. But how could she deny it? That design had moulded itself into her memory a thousand times before she had brought it to life with her own hands. The effort she had put into the seamlessness of the build was evident even now. Her work; how could anyone see him and say otherwise? Yes, there were some discrepancies, some differences that she could see just from looking him over in the light. And, the fact that he was functioning... A human in every conceptual way. But she couldn’t ignore the signature of her own craftsmanship. That equilibrium of man and machine she had dedicated her life to... And after so long, after she’d spent so much time trying to forget that superlative architecture?

        “N-no... That’s not...” Abigail’s words were barely more than a whisper as she spoke them. “Wh...What the hell? It’s a lie... That’s... Not possible, n-no...”

        Like a doll whose strings had been cut, she leaned her entire weight against the wall and slid downwards. She shook her head slowly, her aghast gaze continuing to soak in his shape in desperation as if trying to find any scrap of proof that she was wrong. The gun clattered against the floor as her hands dropped to her sides limply. Evidently, the will to fight or run had been knocked out of her at the sight of him along with her breath.

 

[worldeater]

Jay was rather . . . puzzled. On the one hand, he knew he had found the scientist known as Abigail. Finding her meant finding what in the world had happened to him that led him to become a weapon for the Gaian Military. On the other hand, it was there that he realized he had no other plan after this. Worse yet, the very scientist he was hoping to get answers from was now sliding against the floor. Seeing this, he rushed forward as his eyes tried to look over her. A flood of information hit him, detailing her bodily measurements, the temperature, and eventually, her condition. She was not hurt in any way . . . rather she was actually distressed, most likely due in part with his sudden appearance.

He went for the hand that had been holding the gun as his metal skin touched her. His synthetic hand looked quite good for what it was, due in part with how it was designed. He was careful to try and keep his hands as soft as it could be while he held her; he didn't want his hand accidentally slicing fingers or something! With her desperation and shell shocked gaze starting wreck his nerves, Jay tried looking down at her hands as he fumbled with her fingers. He was breathing hard, heavily trying to weave air through his lungs.

"I . . . I-um . . . Ms. Abigail . . . I suppose its been a while? I don't know how long I've been . . . um . . . up . . . and I was hoping you could give some answers," slowly but surely, he dragged his eyes up towards her own as the augments glistened a light blue, "I'm sorry . . . I think?"

 

[Leviathan]

        “Answers?” Abigail repeated the word numbly, a thin line forming between her brows as she tried to regain focus.

        Answers were what she desired at the moment, not what she possessed. Her mind was a horrid muddle of conflicting theories concerning how this situation could have ever been brought into fruition. On one hand—the logical hand—this was outright impossible. But at the same time, there was no denying the very acute evidence of his existence. It dawned on her that she was experiencing the same sort of gouging doubt that she had when her creation had first been kidnapped. Everyone had thought her insane; they had all questioned the validity of her creation to the point where she almost believed them. And that same creation was now... He was... He was holding her bloody hand!

        The young scientist looked down at her fingers being carefully cradled in a palm of synthetic skin. The texture of his flesh was certainly foreign and inhuman but it felt alive nevertheless. She remembered how stressful it had been to mould the medium into such a form where it would resemble a human epidermis but be durable enough to resist far greater forces and be compatible with other machinery and electronic impulses. Abigail could distinctly remember a particular afternoon where she had broken down in hysteria after the 35th consecutive failure. She hadn’t wanted to create just another machine—she was working with a true human being after all; and she wanted him to retain as much of his humanity as possible so that he’d be able to wake up and properly integrate himself with the rest of the world as if the procedure had never even occurred.

        “You’re quite... Human... Aren’t you? I mean, after everything, you’re still...”

        She shook her head, slightly as her lips moved upwards in an almost imperceptible smile. Everything about her body language and run-on speech unmistakably presented as a state of shock but the lucidity of her thoughts were very slowly creeping back into order. She brought her free hand over to turn his upwards, running her fingers across the lines within his palm and the smooth expanse of his wrist. Her eyes focused intently on his arm as if she was reading through a particularly hard text; examining every line and edge, manipulating each digit with her own fingers.

        “You speak so naturally, it’s marvellous... Disfluency, inflection, even the change in pitch and breathing... I was always so worried about that part, that’s why I didn’t want to make any changes to your hippocampus despite the university’s protests. I mean, we have enough supercomputers running around and making a genius-type cyborg would really take away from your true self and maintaining your original personality was so important. Well, that is to say, I wanted to... Bloody hell, you’re really here, aren’t you?”

        Her small, nonsensical rant ended suddenly and she turned her head upwards, meeting his gaze with a firm albeit desperate expression of utmost sobriety. “I’m not dreaming, am I? I didn’t fall down the stairs and just imagine you, right? And if you’re some sort of elaborate fake... Please, you can’t be manipulating me like that, it’s far too cruel.” Abigail’s hands closed tightly around the cyborg’s wrist and palm as if she were a drowning man and he the life raft. “Who are you, truly?”

 

[worldeater]

Of all the things that Jay would have been uncomfortable with, he never thought that his status as a cyborg would have been one of them. Of course, he knew he was one of a kind, he knew there was no one like him, and he knew that this lady was related with his creation. That being said, the way she seemed to dissect him, feel him, examine him . . . just every thing about this woman's actions made him feel like he was her toy. He may have been partially a robot, but he was not going to be anyone's toy. Thus, he tried to pull away from the scientist trying to grab a hold on reality.

"Um . . . yes . . . thank you for the kind words . . . I guess . . ." Jay gulped on instinct, "I-uh, well . . . I'd like my hand back."

Before long, he was starting to try and recall what specifically brought him to her location. At first he remembered mission parameters and internal objectives, but he soon came to think of his own questions. He had so many to ask like who she was and why she had even considered making him. Unlike the scientist, however, he was keen on keeping his own thoughts at bay . . . more in part because he didn't want to make things any more difficult or awkward between them. He was going to speak to her about taking her with him when he heard what she asked of him and saw her eyes. Such desperation was easy to recognize and Jay felt something in the back of his head click as she looked like she was coming to tears. The worst part was her own questions . . . especially the last one.

"I-I'm not a dream Ms. Abigail . . . and I hope I'm not a fake . . . and I thought you were gonna answer who I was? Didn't you make me?" He shook his head, "You know what, never mind. I have to move you right now. No time to explain-"

Suddenly, without warning, a huge explosion the lit up the sky some blocks away from them. With how her room was placed, they could not see the direction or feel the blast of the explosion, but Jay could immediately identify the rumbles to be a highly destructive explosion. He looked around, shaken to the bone as he felt the impending conflict looming a long ways from them.

"Hoooo . . . . oh boy . . . I hope that wasn't the bridge . . ."

Hint hint . . . it was.