7-Alpha-6
Point: 1
Sometimes I remember who I once was. A first name, the
family name, my family, and who they were.
Where I lived as a child. Where I first felt fear.
When I last felt fear.
Those recollections often come at the strangest moments,
unprompted and crystal clear. Precise and with purpose, making me hesitate,
check myself, question myself. Or other times those recollections come during
the black realm of sleep. Insidious swirling invasions in what is supposed to
be rest time, the point where I take myself offline so my mind can reboot.
Invasive as it tumbles the images, sounds, smells and memories into a mixed
mash-up that pulls me screaming from the realm of the dead. The one realm where
I really want to live, forever.
Dead forever. If only.
Stupid contradiction? Aye, you might say that.
For I exist in an ethereal form, a complex tessellation
of data, where all that I once was is mixed with briefings and skill packages
on knowledge I have never learnt myself. I exist within the Grid – that virtual
landscape of digital impulses in this new electronic age. I exist online,
loaded into a physical form suitable for the tasks that are needed, any walking
and talking flesh-form fit for purpose. Any carcass collated and prepared to
allow me to physically interact with those unfortunate to meet me.
And I have known many vessels, many of these physical
carriers grown and cloned for me, or chosen people blanked for my use, vessels
that I have part-destroyed in the pursuit of the tasks given to me. All those
physical forms, of skin, sinew, bone and blood may end up smashed or burnt,
lacerated or utterly ruined, but I never die. I do not know what it is to lose
my grip on my own mortal coil, despite the many times I have delivered exactly
that for others.
When the carcass fails, or when its end-mission, I ‘hack’
out of it and into the Ether, dump myself back into the Grid. That allows them
to retrieve the experiences and the knowledge accrued, before I’m restored back
to my usual shell, or instead, getting set up on a new task to complete.
My broken life. Like I said earlier, I’d rather be dead
forever. Sometimes.
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