Chapter 01: A Madman’s Fear

Slave to Memory [2 of 44]

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He stood in the rain. A dark wet outline against an even darker city. The neon-bright Century City loomed behind him as he stared into a forgotten corner of the city: the Stacks.

The rain beat down on him, and so did his thoughts. They weighed heavily on his gaunt shoulders. He’d been powerfully built once, now he was more bone than muscle, more regret than ambition.

The constant drip, drip, drip of dark corrosive thoughts weathered channels in his mind. He fought for moments of clarity and calm, but the man he’d once been — and the man he’d wanted to be — were long gone.

He knew he was a failure, a fraud, and a figment of an imagined self. Even his name was lost. Now, just a shambling figure in rags, he stumbled through the city, poorer than the beggars with their trolleys and their bin pickings.

He wasn’t a picker or a scrapper. He didn’t need bins. He needed bandwidth. He had skills — deep code, dark net — but no one wanted a hacker who might overdose mid-job.

He called himself Murph now, the name that seemed to fit his life. If anything could go wrong, it would. That was his existence. Who was he to think that he could or should be more? He deserved nothing. To think otherwise would be to lie to himself and hide his true nature, to cover up his shortcomings, to blend into the fabric of some community. Become one with a tribe that didn’t recognize the mole within.

Anything else would be a lie, Murph flinched, a whisper in his mind chiding him for a thought he hadn’t realized was his own. A flash of a laughing face, haunting and familiar, too quickly submerged in the dark waters of his mind.

Rubbing at his temples, “Focus, Murph,” he spoke to the rain, “why are we here?”

Yesss, what’s the plan?

A tumor eating through their resources and waiting to rupture, to surprise and rent, to let them down again. To be cut out and cast away, a filth without worth. Less than that, a betrayer, a thief, and a traitor.

His familiar swirling storm of thoughts settled on his shoulders like a cloak, caught the cold of the rain and drove it deep into his heart and his bones.

But tonight one clear thought shone brightly in the night. A neon bright beam of purpose. He looked at her through the cold, biting rain.

“She needs my help.”

As she sat in her cramped converted container lab. A single bulb cast a warm yellow nimbus around her shoulders as she worked.

“She’s always working.”

Whenever he’d watched her at night, he’d found her working.

Watching a young girl at night, Murph, are you that kind of man? Spying through the windows like a creep. Do you want to break in? To steal her away from her life and her family? Hmm?

“She’s in danger.”

How so? Can you put it into words? Can you even form the thought clearly of why she needs your help?

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Without warning, his hand twitched a series of gestures, a spasm guided by a ghostly conductor, or a past he tried to bury. He grabbed it and stilled it, massaging the flaring joints of his ice-cold hand.

She looks fine. She’s warm and fed and indoors. You’re the hungry wretch standing in the rain leering at a teenage girl.

“I’m guarding, not leering.”

Guarding her from what? Hmm?

“Not now,” he muttered under his breath. “Please, not now.”

Doubt never gave him peace. She gnawed at his motivation as it always did. Nibbling down at the weak flesh, until his resolve broke, teeth gnashing at the frail bones of his mind. Cracking and splintering them in its powerful jaws. Doubt cackled and laughed at him in the darkness. Forever circling and driving him away from his purpose.

Doubt always won, always.

Murph turned and stalked back into the night. He didn’t know why he was there, he couldn’t voice it. He was probably mistaken.

Mad and confused, the thought whispered.

The beacon in his mind dimmed to a faint flicker, the flashing alert in his lenses dismissed. In the puddle’s murky surface, Murph’s reflection warped, as if someone else peered back, mocking him with a grin he felt but couldn’t see. A shiver crawled up his spine, the city’s chill seeping into his bones. Embracing an old friend.

Soon he’d forget why he’d even come.

Soon he’d drown the doubt.

Soon he’d wake in an alley, and be less than he was tonight.

Omni looked up. Around her, a constellation of unfinished projects and dreams in varying stages of obsession or neglect, each proof of a mind that the walls of her makeshift lab couldn’t contain, nor the expectations of her world. Many of them might have failed, but she knew Ada was the key. Ada would set her free. She stared out into the rain. All she could see was darkness and her own reflection in the window. Ada sensed her tension and switched overlays to the various security cameras around Omni’s Lab.

Omni chuckled, “It’s hardly a lab, Ada, I’m not some mad scientist. I wish I were,” she mused quietly, the thought lingering in the air between them.

< I prefer to think of you as a wizard.>

The label changed to Omni’s Tower.

“You’ve been reading too much Tolkien again.”

< Sanderson…>

“Oh?”

<Helps me sleep.>

“That boring?”

< Blasphemy! > Ada said, a chuckle in her voice, < The perimeter’s clear. One heartbeat outside the ring, but it’s gone now. >

Omni’s head snapped up. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

She scanned the darkness outside the window again.

< You were busy, and it’s gone. Probably just a bin-picker looking for something easy to steal…>

“Let me know next time.”

< Next time? >

“They always come back.”

Her gaze lingered on the grainy edges of the camera’s reach, where light met dark. Was there something out there watching?

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