Interim 7: Destroyers of Worlds

 Interim 7: Destroyers of Worlds

Art from Legatus 505 MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ycwVMsM3l0

    Bright golden eyes stare at me inquisitively now that he's been summoned. The ticking of a clock is the only sound in the room, punctuating the silence as I carefully try to formulate my words.

    "What did you do?" I ask. Normally it would be him asking that question to me. As a child I had often come to seek guidance from Professor Canis, and he could always see the guilt or confusion etched into my features to know what direction the conversation would go. I was harder to read now. Not as hard as him. Face weighed down by the decades he'd experienced. Heart turned cold from the centuries he'd lived through. It didn't help that half of his face was buried beneath that beard. Brown hair laying atop the flesh like soil on a corpse.

    "Ovid, nice to see you too. No please do come in, it's always a pleasure- oh, we're in your room. Sorry kid, I must have dozed off. I don't seem to remember coming over for some reason." Canis' deep voice was filled with feigned surprise and an unsuppressed accusatory tone. The fans of my PC once more spun to life, working as hard as they could against the heat of the day.

    "Don't worry about that. I need to know what you did to me, Canis," I say, voice shaking slightly. It was a question that I once thought about constantly, even asked upon occasion, yet I always simply accepted the simplest answer without any deeper exploration.

    Canis stood up from my desk where he'd been seated. In childhood he had towered over me like a god. Back then he hadn't seemed much removed from the title. My savior. My creator. The one who built everything. Even in adulthood, he was several inches taller. Just enough that I had to tilt my head to hold eye contact.

    A deep and slow sigh escaped his lips as he marched around my room, looking from detail to detail. "You know what I did to you, kid. Four groundbreaking military-grade cybernetic implants, a never before seen transplantable cynet spine, highly illegal modified IIs capable of adjusting between different viewing modes and of course a Throa2 that has more data storage in its neural network than you'd ever need in a lifetime." Canis finished pacing, breaking our eye contact to instead stare at the wolfsbane plant sitting on my desk. He reached out to stroke one of the petals, but stopped to glare at me instead. His mocking smile had no signs of the joy he usually felt from teasing me. Instead there was only challenge, daring me to go on.

    "What about my mind, Canis? For some reason it seems like I can't trust my own memories recently." My face betrayed no hint of emotion, but the cadence of my speech was faster then usual. I needed to calm down. Compose myself and act rationally. One misstep could shatter the fragile stability I'd finally found.

    "Have you tried therapy?" Canis shrugged, a soft chuckle rumbling from his chest. "Even lone wolves need to accept help every now and then. Being trapped in your own thoughts isn't healthy, kid." He span to view me once more, hands lightly resting on the desk behind him as he leaned his back against it gently. "I should know."

    "You're so fucking funny, old man. Quit it. I need you serious for once."

    "You don't want me serious, kid, believe me." His knuckles faded from peach to white as he squeezed the desk for support. As the colour bled out, so too did his smile, fading from a teasing smirk to a contentious glare.

    I glanced away, terrified of those golden searchlights that focused on me. I always tried to keep to the shadows but this man... he'd literally built me. How was I supposed to feel anything other than exposed while under his gaze? He'd been angry before, upset, disappointed, but he'd never given me such a cold look. "I need to know Canis. Please... tell me about Solis Legatus?"

    "Oh-ho, now there's a name I haven't heard in years. First legatus of The Republic. Hero of the people. Champion of the downtrodden. The last time I heard that name was when Lulu read you a bedtime story between surgeries." Lulu... he never called his wife Lulu in front of others. It was a name he usually only wanted her to hear. A secret only they were allowed to share. Gelu had worn her heart on her sleeve, hiding none of her feelings from the world, but Canis was a different sort. The things he treasured were to be protected from all others lest they find some way to corrupt them. I'd only heard the nickname before when they thought I was unconscious or away.

    "I don't mean the stories your wife use-"

    "Say her name!" Canis commanded, stepping away from the desk and closing the distance between us.

    My back hit the wall of my room and I struggled not to collapse against it. I hadn't even noticed I was fleeing backwards until that point, but Canis made no effort to push or grab at me. Simply glared with that same look that he didn't even try to hide. Revulsion. That's what it was.

    "The stories Gelu used to tell me," I corrected, unable to stop the wavering in my voice. Canis' body language softened, arms crossing over his chest as he let out another sigh. The PC fans slowed, their gentle hum the only sound in the room for a moment.

    "You don't mean Solis Legatus as told in history and legend. You mean the Solis Legatus that I saved?"

    My IIs are drawn back on Canis as he moves back to the desk and stares at the flower again, waiting. It wasn't a surprise at this point. The whole reason I exist at all was due to Canis. There was no-one else who made weapons as life-threatening as him. When I'd seen Solis' power eclipse my own, I had my suspicions, but seeing what had spilled out of his head all but confirmed it.

    "You built that... thing?" I ask, unsure whether to call it an android or cyborg.

    "Saved, kid, I saved Solis Legatus after the other Arbiters had him executed for treason. He was the most loyal soldier The Republic ever had and I didn't want his sacrifice to be in vain."

    I opened my mouth to ask more, but the words caught in my throat. There was a sinking feeling in my chest that threatened to pull me down to a place I might never return from.

    "What... what was it?"

    "He," Canis corrected. He didn't bother to look away from the wolfsbane as once again he waited for my next move. I swallowed hard, forcing my mouth to move even if my mind could barely function.

    "What was he, Canis?"

    "He was a good man," Canis began tapping out that same tune he always had on the desk. My PC fans made a pained groan as they struggled to keep up with the heat of the room. "A good man who didn't deserve to have his life torn away from him so early."

    "So you gave him life?" I ask, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

    "I didn't give him life, kid. I'm not a god."

    "Then what are you?" The question spilt out of me before I could catch it, but I quickly added, "what did you do to save him?"

    "A simple surgery at first," Canis responded, voice as cold as his glare had been. "When I brought him to the lab he was already clinically dead. I put him on a respirator, gave him blood transfusions, and fitted a pacemaker to preserve him as best I could. Then I made an I'mprint of him and placed his body into cryogenic sleep to keep him fresh." I shudder at the phrasing, but Canis continues as if this is all normal. "The I'mprint didn't work, as you could imagine. He was already braindead when the scanning happened, so likewise the I'mprint had broken pathways in its neurons. That was exactly what I wanted." Canis turned, locking eyes with me once more, smile even more twisted than before as he goaded me with his revelations.

    "So I did what I myself had always made it a rule for no-one else to do. For weeks I poured over the code of his I'mprint, making tweaks and edits. The same way a neurosurgeon manipulates flesh, I manipulated his code, and after almost a year of differing levels of a brain damaged I'mprint, I finally had a Solis Legatus that could think and function."

    "You... what about-"

    "Not done yet, kid." Canis crossed the room in three long strides, looking down at me once more, so close that I would feel his breath on my face if it were possible.

    "I'd brought Solis back to consciousness, but it wasn't enough to bring him back to life. This was only the first century of The Republic. The data needed to store an I'mprint was immense in those days, and storage of a single I'mprint took a data tower the size of a large man. There was no way to fit all of that material into a human skull, so I went back to cryosleep and woke every decade for a week or so to study all the newest advances in technology, suggest ideas and theories, work on a few here or there, then return to my slumber. It was another century and a half until they'd finally had a breakthrough big enough for my work. Nanobiotechnology. Some genius in the commune managed to perfect technology that could program DNA to store computer data at the molecular level and perform tasks just like a computer. Boom! The breakthrough of the millennium - and those fools were just using it to save energy and reduce waste and storage space! All we had to trade for the data was a handful of AI patents and military drones and I was back to work programming the first biological I'mprint." Canis chuckled quietly as I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. "First," he had said. I'd always joked to myself that I was Frankenstein's monster, but it turned out Canis had toyed with the boundary between life and death long before I even existed.

    "Then Solis... was something between I'mprint and man?" I ask.

    "What is a man?" He responds, looking me up and down with disgust. "If it's all about consciousness and will, then I'mprints were always as human as us. If it's about being made out of flesh, you'll find that many citizens of The Republic have long since become more machine than man. Ignore that for now, I'm not done answering your previous question. Next I had to transplant Solis' new brain back into his body, but the other arbiters were understandably worried about bringing back a man who had already gone rogue and attempted to end their lives once."

    "It took me another few months without sleep, but in the end, through trial and error I managed to discover which parts of an I'mprint's data stored the memories and isolate the ones that included the truth about the Arbiter Senate and Solis' death."

    "What do you mean trial and error?" I cut in. Canis' eyes narrow and he finally looks away from me, silent for a moment before he walks back to the wolfsbane and continues.

    "You know what I mean. You've seen enough amateurs do the same in your own time. I hadn't written the code yet to read specific memories or analyze them, so I did it the old fashioned way. I erased chunks of data, powered Solis up, talked to him about his memories, then shut him down and rebooted him until I was sure I'd managed to erase all the parts about his little discovery and the ensuing mental breakdown."

    I grabbed onto a wall for stability, suddenly feeling light headed. He was right, I'd seen enough amateurs try to edit I'mprint memories within my time as both auxiliary and lagatus. The I'mprints that had their data messed with often woke up feeling something was wrong, experiencing pain, or becoming unstable and erratic with key parts of their existence missing. Their brains would glitch and their very existence would feel like an error. It was difficult to stomach for most men even after we'd passed conscription and been taught to see I'mprints as less than human. 

"I thought you cared about I'mprints?" I ask, almost muted. In all the time that I'd known him, Canis had always cherished the children of his research as dearly if not more so than human life. Now he spoke about Solis as if months of torturous reboots and awakenings were nothing to him. I had once had the unfortunate experience of hunting down an I'mprint that had similarly been illegally manipulated. It had described the situation as being killed and brought back to life hundreds of times and remembering each painful end as clearly as it's waking days. I put the machine out of its misery and moved on to the next mission without a thought, but I still remember the pain in Canis' voice when we'd discussed it later.

    "I do care, kid. I care more than you can possibly imagine... but the suffering of one shouldn't impede the progress of many."

    The ticking of the clock filled the room as the computer fans slowed. Each second pressed me forward on a path I had tried to avoid for most of my life.

    "Aren't you going to ask? This charade has gone on long enough, hasn't it?" Canis' voice was warmer now, but it wasn't due to any kind of lingering affection he had for me. When I looked up to meet his gaze, he was challenging me, taking joy in my suffering as I fought to take the next step.

    "So, you erased Solis' memories... but they came back at some point?" The smile disappeared, and Canis crossed his arms over his chest.

    "Neuroplasticity, I'd guess," he responded. "An I'mprint works by scanning the brain and digitizing it. It creates a copy and replicates all the biological functions that a brain has. Even if we erase the memories, there's a chance of them coming back as the 'brain' so to speak creates new memories with similar neural pathways. Once I'd written the code for finding specific memories and eradicating them automatically, it became an easier process to simply delete those memories whenever they resurfaced. Even that has its limit it seems. Solis was used by The Republic as its secret weapon for almost a century after I put him back together. Even as his body broke down and they replaced every part of him except for the artificial brain I placed in him. By the time you met him, he'd had more memories erased than he ever experienced in his first life."

    My closed fist trembled silently. The whole conversation sounded so matter-of-fact. Was this how he saw all of his experiments. They were all just bumps in the road leading to his ultimate goal. Nothing mattered as long as he got what he wanted. "Frankenstein was always the monster after all..."

    "Sorry, kid, I didn't quite catch that one with you whimpering through it like a child."

    "Billions... you killed billions during The Fall. I thought I could understand it since the stories about the doomers were always so horrific. They were horrible monsters who would have led humanity to extinction. That's what you and the other arbiters instilled in us."

    Canis chuckled again, nodding in my direction as he replied, "don't worry, I'm sure you'll manage to get there someday. You're racking up a hell of a tally yourself, kid. Even I left humanity a chance at survival with The Fall."

    "I've met so many doomers at this point, Professor. They can be petty, materialistic, selfish and hateful, but that's no different from citizens of The Republic. They're just the same in every time."

    "What's your point, kid?"

    "I couldn't have done what you've done. All this time I thought that I was a monster, built to kill and complete missions. Time and time again I found justifications for my actions. They were just I'mprints, or it was for the greater good, or hell, it didn't even matter since death was a better option than living in that world!" I hadn't meant to shout but my voice rose in my throat along with the emotion that threatened to choke me. "I can't even sleep at night Canis! Every time I start to dream I see their faces and hear their screams! How the fuck do you live with yourself with everything you've done!?"

    A warm chuckle rumbled throughout the walls of the room, shaking the very foundations of the Noctyx house. "You know, kid, I'd do it again a thousand times over if I had to. I would torture every existing living, breathing human on this planet to the same extent as I did Solis if it meant that I could hold Lulu in my arms again, grow old with her, and pass away together." Canis swiped his hand through the wolfsbane, the plant not moving at all as his hand simply passed through it. He turned on me, advancing slowly as he continued. "How can I live with myself? I live in perpetual pain that you will never understand since you've never loved a thing in your life that you haven't killed yourself. I live because I knew that one day my research would be complete and I'd usher in an age where I'mprints would have equal rights to humanity, where I could clone my love's body, put a copy of her mind in it and grow old together, and I would sleep like a baby in her arms, knowing that whatever I had to do to get to that future was more than worth it. You think you know pain because you were born with a body that hurt you physically, yet you nothing of real pain. You speak of being unable to sleep at night, yet every life you took that haunts you, does so because you didn't have a good enough reason to take it!" Canis was now on me, fist pulled back as I froze against the wall. The fist flew through the air, making no sound as it passed right through me and the man held true, forearm disappearing into my chest. "You judge me for what I did to Solis, while you've done the same to me for the last several months." Both of us held there for what seemed like an eternity, Canis' I'mprint panting with his fist through my chest, until he pulled back and stared daggers into my very soul. "We treated you like a son. Lulu... treated you like a son. Ask the fucking question, kid. I wont sugarcoat it for you ever again."

    The air in the room was thick and hot, the fans in my computer spinning as fast as they could to support the I'mprint of Canis that was stored in my neural network. My mouth opens, but trembles without a sound as I look down at the red and black hands Canis gave me decades ago. A question which bothered me since the slaughter in the slums, when I noticed the feeling of something artificial running between my four limbs finally leaves my mind and out my lips. "How much of me is actually me, Canis?"

    "Not a single piece." The answer was immediate and without any emotion. I looked up at my creator, towering over me without an ounce of care about my state. His form blurred as tears welled in the artificial IIs he'd designed. I'd collapsed to the floor at some point without noticing, and now looked up to Canis as I had the first time we met, when I had stood on my own human feet. He towered above me, casting a shadow that swallowed me whole. Canis turned away and continued, "your condition didn't just affect your peripheral nerves. It started at the extremities but was working its way inwards. Given time it would have effected your brain itself, which is also just essentially a bundle of nerves. So I started with your extremities and worked my way in. Four groundbreaking military-grade cybernetic implants, a never before seen transplantable cynet spine, an artificial nervous system to link it all together and replace your faulty one, and just like Solis, a biological I'mprint brain. Your torso and organs were all your own at first, but with all the damage you went through trying to kill yourself since you were a teenager, we had to replace most of your organs before you finished with the Auxilia. They're still human, but cloned in a lab just in case you needed them. From the beginning you were always just a proof of concept, kid. I'd tried to wake Lulu countless times, but she wouldn't live in a world where she couldn't grow old with me. Then I told her about you and suggested putting you back together to prove to the arbiters that I could put them and every other citizen of The Republic into artificial biological I'mprint bodies. They'd all be immortal, but I'mprints, and they'd have to give I'mprints the same rights as humans. I could clone Lulu and we would live and die together as we always planned."

    "Then you went wild in the slums and they became obsessed with something more. Why return to life in human bodies when they could instead be metal gods? The duoverse could be modified to include touch, then they would all be able to experience humanity without any of the weaknesses that threatened. So, for the last 15 years, I've worked in secret on you and Solis, perfecting android bodies that they could download into before they would give I'mprints human rights. All that time I grew older while Lulu refused to sleep, staying young in an android body and raising you as a son - trying to keep some humanity in you... look at how that turned out." Canis' words hurt more than any physical blow possibly could have. "From the beginning, you were always just a proof of concept, kid, but Lulu loved you. It wasn't a future with me that kept her going in a world she couldn't live in. It was you. The broken boy that she wanted to put back together more than anything. We treated you like a son. After everything that's happened, everything I've seen occur in the last 3 centuries, you're the greatest and only regret I have in my life."

    Tears began streaming down my face and I simply let them flow in silence. Deep down I'd felt that I wasn't human for a long time, but that and everything else I'd been told shattered what little grip on reality I had. By the time the tears dried and I could see clearly again, Canis was gone. I called for him, knowing he had no way to refuse the summon, yet somehow the father of I'mprints had managed to defy the rudimentary programming I'd put in place to make him obey. Somehow while living inside my own head, he managed to rewrite his own code just to make sure he wouldn't have to speak to me again. Beyond that, I knew that he'd somehow managed to find his way into my own memories and see ahead to the stories I hadn't written down yet. The final one I had wanted to tell in my own time, right before my battery finally ran out. With all my stories finally told, I guess there is only one thing left to say:

    The end.

Art from Legatus 505 MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ycwVMsM3l0