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"When they first brought us here, they extracted what was in us and stored the information, remixed it like so much paint, and gave us back new memories of their choosing. But they still needed an artist to help them. I understood the human mind better than they ever could, so they allowed me to keep my skills as a scientist... because they needed them. They made me delete everything else. Can you imagine what it's like to erase your own past?" 
 — Dr. Schreber, Dark City


Velcro awakes to the noise of Cyrgan flicking through Vidfeed channels, searching for a newsline. Buy this... Upgrade now...
Velcro: "Do you have to play that damn thing?"

Archive material: Several pictures of Morgan on Mars, some vidstream even Morgan on official promotion dates and so on. 

Cyrgan: "He is usually accompanied by a woman; identifiable by her mannerisms. Always the same person, different bodies. Sometimes she is his bodyguard, sometimes his entourage. The same body language as Kitty. Seems Mr Morgan fancied the furries for some time before Kitty met us. So he just rebuilds and rewrites her, on and on. He can do that... an expert in his field as he is. Now... Katha."






Cyrgan was sleeping it off, leaving Katha2 and myself alone together to figure things out. Not an easy scene. 

Katha, like Cyrgan, is a cyborg; except unlike him, she went all the way; the only human component is a cloned memory. To my way of thinking that means she is entirely a machine. One that is unclean because it's mind is confused by fucked up fake human persona, therefore it is a dangerous machine.

This one is one of an elite custom series designed by a rich mad bastard to kill people and look sexy while doing it. Once I had got over being terrified to be near it and then, realising it isn't going to kill me, not yet at least, gotten over fancying the fuck out of it; we got down to some girl talk. As we spoke, I realised it is cleverer than I am by far. It got the information it wanted from me too easily. I am exhausted from stress peak and sleep deprivation; a human failing.

We discussed post-humanism. This thing is not a human. It is a machine. I shouldn't have let it in. I don't even know what I am doing here, I stupidly followed Cyrgan out of weakness. I don't know what Cyrgan wants from it either. Katha2 wants his help, and its willpower is strong; it has led us here on a shuttle flight to the Mars colony. Katha2 has great tastes; this flight class don't come cheap. It says Gemini Corporation is paying for everything. It says that it is running from Gemini corporation. It says a lot of things that don't add up. I can't tell if it is doing this on purpose to screw with me or if it is glitchy. I don't trust it. It makes me feel like I am in a trap. 

There are differences between Katha2 and Katha1. The first one enjoyed cruelly toying with its prey before killing it. This one explained that it has chosen a different persona response for its current purpose; it will get further by befriending us. Then it explained itself to be a psychotic personality and what that means. I can't tell if it is merely relaying information to me or if it is playing its cruel games in a way that I am not smart enough to understand, or if it really is trying to build some type of companionship between us. It feels like a trick. This thing is strategic, that's part of what psychopaths do, how they function; and the same with machines; calculating. Anything it says or does is working toward an ulterior motive. I become intensely aware of this and then I forget it, my attention ebbs and flows along with the methods it is using to talk with me, seemingly so natural. Although, intense even when it appears to be relaxed. It feels like we are outside of time; constantly motionless and infinite. And I am too tired, and I am too freaked out, to tell the difference any more. 

It's fucked up. Everything is fucked up. Because recently, that's exactly how I have been seeing the world too. How Katha describes the mind of a psychopath. The clarity that comes from emotional detachment. The empowerment that comes from letting go of morality based upon empathy and compassion. Replacing it with... nothing. The feeling of wrongness, a strange newness, that comes from going against strong intuition, against the instinct to survive and to do the right thing. The enhancement of the senses that such a perception enables. I hate it because it is so alluring, I have to admit to myself in a tiny, egotistical voice that I like it. And then I resent the ego that said that and I dump it, so that what is left is; I like it and now I am beyond the false-self. I like it and now I am the self. The self as psychopath, more comforting than directionless confusion. 

Katha1 had forced me to stare my own death in the face and use adrenaline rush to overcome the fear. Katha2 rescued me from ISP cops. In both situations I was incidental as it is Cyrgan who the Katha's are after, because the data he has access to. He's letting me run with him only because I reminded him what it was to be human, before he got chipped. I am feeling so far out of my league here that it is forcing me to face up to my own limitations. And... there are none. I was a little girl yesterday playing hard street games. Today, I told Katha that I don't love Cyrgan and plan to move on. I sort of meant it. I sort of want her to believe that because it takes away an emotional lever she might otherwise be tempted to screw us with. I really don't trust Katha, and I really don't trust all these machines that are making life so much more confusing and complicated and dangerous.

Katha2 says the two models are not specifically working together for the purpose of driving me crazy. I am stupid to think so. They were sent to kill Kitten but, their secret orders from Morgan, a personality encoded into Katha1, are to not kill Kitten. Only now as I think it through more clearly, I realise that it's directive contradicts itself. Conclusion; Katha lies. Not really a surprise.

It has given me so much to think about! 

Where I am originally from, there are three types of life form. Humans, Monsters and Aliens. Some of the monsters, the ones that the humans work with, they have human-like qualities, enough that we can deal with them; they help us fight the other monsters, the ones with no-human-like qualities. They also help us fight against the humans who are becoming more monstrous, the weird cultists and mutants worshipping strange things. Then also there are the aliens. These also have human-like qualities, enough that we can deal with them. *

On my home world, we do not have sentient machines. There is some cyborg technology but it is nothing like this, not so advanced as what I am encountering here. It is so strange; monsters and aliens I can cope with. Machines though, with artificial intelligence and uploaded copies of real human personalities; these are hard work. They frighten me. The machines have no human qualities. Instead they mimic humans, so that they appear to have human qualities. They are a trick. In many ways they are worse than the humans with monster limbs and monstrous minds.

The machines are cold, emotionless, compassionless. They are clinical, strategic. They have a superiority complex, believing themselves better than humans; the words they all use to explain it are trans-human, post-human. They believe they are what follows on next. They do not consider themselves a different thing from human; they consider themselves to be an upgrade. But they just don't get it. They don't get what it is to be human. They don't think the same or act the same. Only similar.

* The writer concedes to necessity of accrediting source paradigm: Orson Scott Card's beautiful Enders Game series (the books); the three 'types' of human, human-like and non-human-like.


A lot can happen between a small group of people locked up in close quarters together for a few timeless days. Velcro awoke after a 14 hour and 23 minute sleep (Katha's mind IS a calculator) to hear the others talking together about Morgan. Velcro observes that Katha has persuaded Cyrgan of her version of the situation. Velcro begins to explain how frightening it is being a worthless, uneducated, unchipped street rat in a world of industrial corporate technology. Katha hacks Cyrgans mind to demonstrate her powers, totally freaking Velcro out. 

Velcro throws a tantrum and has a breakdown, finally conceding that although she believes Katha is studying Cyrgan and herself so as to become a better manipulator before killing them both; that the android assassin's assurance that in this part of space, an unhackable true-flesh human with no cybernetic implants is a treasured rarity, because hacking them is a whole different game to doing it electronically. Therefore the hooker has worth and is a useful commodity.

Velcro retreats into the nihilistic void space of mind, accepting that it doesn't really matter what happens, as she has already decided that she hates all machines and is probably going to be dead very soon anyway because of them. 







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