Post by Mouse on Sept 28, 2004 2:02:58 GMT
A Quick Note: "Evy" is being written in a serial sort of fashion. This is my excuse for the fact the sections don't always flow into each other very well... any feedback regarding the amendment of this would be appreciated. 
If anybody had ever asked me what I hated most about being a mish-mash of bio and mech, I would have said not having a heart.
It’s stupid I know. A heart is just a lump of muscle. But for some reason, knowing I didn’t have one made me feel inhuman. I could have been totally mech on the outside, but having a heart would mean I was still a human being. A person, not a machine.
As it was, most of my modifications were internal. The outer bits—my left arm to the elbow, the right to the wrist, my right leg from hip to knee, and the maintenance panel beneath my breastbone—were easy enough to conceal if I felt like it. Which I rarely did… what was the point when inside I was a writhing mass of circuitry?
The one grace Del Morte did me was leaving my brain be. Knowing I didn’t have a heart was bad enough. Knowing I didn’t even think like me anymore would have made it unbearable.
I stared at myself in the tarnished mirror I had found in an abandoned apartment building. It had become a morning ritual—get up, wash, look at myself in the mirror and mull over what I was.
I ran my fingers over the seam where soft flesh merged into hard metal just beneath my breasts. It seemed stupid to have an access panel when there was nobody in the Tert who could even start to make sense of Del Morte’s insanity. And believe me, I’ve looked. I’ve looked with a single-minded intensity you could only understand if you were me. Or if you were one of Del Morte’s experiments yourself.
Every day I felt the corrosion in my body spread a little, become a bit more pronounced. I hated it. Not the breakdown itself, not necessarily, but how helpless it made me feel. How desperate. Most days I’d do anything if somebody could fix me, and I didn’t appreciate that kind of vulnerability.
I’d thought about doing it myself, instead of waiting for the corrosion to run its course. I’d even found a knife once, with the full intention if cutting my wrists with it. Of course, when I actually went to do it I’d been forcibly reminded that my wrists were no longer in any condition to bleed. As an experiment I’d tried cutting my upper arm, but it only bleed for a moment before clotting to a scab in minutes. I gave up on the suicide idea that day. If I was going to die, I was going to die kicking and screaming every inch of the way.
There were plenty of people looking for hired help around the place, so I let myself out for pretty much any sort of work I could get. In the process I learnt a lot of interesting things and made a few contacts, but nothing ever lead me to salvation.
I sighed, shaking the thoughts from head and pulling on my shirt.
I didn’t have a heart. Del Morte had taken my soul, and without it salvation would always be just out of my reach.
I knew it was going to be a bad day when I woke up at some insane hour of the morning to the sounds of a brawl in the alley just outside the smashed glass of my window. I rolled over, pulling my blanket tightly around my ears, but it was useless. The Tert never really slept, and it seemed wherever I went it was determined not to let me either.
Any other time I might have been inclined to throw something highly acidic out the window and go back to sleep in peace. Instead, I threw back the blanket and paced to the corner where I had dumped my meagre belongings.
At least it was better than Muenoville, I reflected as I hunted down some vaguely clean pieces of clothing. I’d spent a very short time hanging around the place before the noises and the smells and all that blood got to me. The advice that Torley’s had good pickings for somebody willing to work was the last excuse I needed to get out of there.
By the time I got dressed, the sounds in the alley had died away. I glanced down in the hopes that maybe the loser was still there so I could scavenge something to add to my armoury from them. No such luck. I could really have used a new gun, having managed to lose two of my three in as many months. I did a quick stock take before I ventured out. One handgun that I couldn’t for the life of me identify with only four bullets in it, one rather large and nasty looking knife that I could just fit into a compartment on my right forearm if I tried, two shuriken I’d scrounged up somewhere (useless because I couldn’t throw for shit, but they were pretty, and sharp enough if I was desperate for something to cut with), and one long sharp needle I figured would kill someone if you jabbed it far enough into their eye.
I sighed. There are plenty of Pets that are walking wars in themselves, but I don’t happen to be one of them. Sometimes even I’m surprised by the fact I’m still alive. With my degree of weapon and street savvy, I sure don’t deserve to be.
It took me ten minutes to traverse the dilapidated stairwell to the ground floor. I didn’t trust the stairs at all, but I couldn’t throw out the gaggle of feral kids that had made the ground level their home. So it one of those things I just had to deal with.
I have quite a few of those things.
I was hoping that maybe one of them might be inching a bit closer to resolution.
You see, there was actually a reason why I bothered dragging myself out of bed several hours before I’d usually even think about it. I’d gotten a message just before bedtime from the only acquaintance I’d made at Torley’s so far—a funny little man called Guazo. I’d hunted down the seven escaped monkey-toad hybrids he was watching for a friend on my first night in the area, and in the few weeks since then he’d gone out of his way to help me out. Keeping his ears open for me, looking people up, telling me interesting little bits of information. He’d told me to meet him on the corner just down from my condemned apartment building at three. Something about only being able to leave when the toad-monkeys were asleep or they’d stage another escape. At first I told him to get stuffed, but then he held out the best possible bait.
He’d found a tekboy who was interested in working on me in exchange for a bit of general labour.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. So that’s how I ended up on a disgusting street corner, in possibly the scungiest place on earth, at three in the morning.
I could only imagine what my mother might think if she knew.
EVY
0:0
If anybody had ever asked me what I hated most about being a mish-mash of bio and mech, I would have said not having a heart.
It’s stupid I know. A heart is just a lump of muscle. But for some reason, knowing I didn’t have one made me feel inhuman. I could have been totally mech on the outside, but having a heart would mean I was still a human being. A person, not a machine.
As it was, most of my modifications were internal. The outer bits—my left arm to the elbow, the right to the wrist, my right leg from hip to knee, and the maintenance panel beneath my breastbone—were easy enough to conceal if I felt like it. Which I rarely did… what was the point when inside I was a writhing mass of circuitry?
The one grace Del Morte did me was leaving my brain be. Knowing I didn’t have a heart was bad enough. Knowing I didn’t even think like me anymore would have made it unbearable.
I stared at myself in the tarnished mirror I had found in an abandoned apartment building. It had become a morning ritual—get up, wash, look at myself in the mirror and mull over what I was.
I ran my fingers over the seam where soft flesh merged into hard metal just beneath my breasts. It seemed stupid to have an access panel when there was nobody in the Tert who could even start to make sense of Del Morte’s insanity. And believe me, I’ve looked. I’ve looked with a single-minded intensity you could only understand if you were me. Or if you were one of Del Morte’s experiments yourself.
Every day I felt the corrosion in my body spread a little, become a bit more pronounced. I hated it. Not the breakdown itself, not necessarily, but how helpless it made me feel. How desperate. Most days I’d do anything if somebody could fix me, and I didn’t appreciate that kind of vulnerability.
I’d thought about doing it myself, instead of waiting for the corrosion to run its course. I’d even found a knife once, with the full intention if cutting my wrists with it. Of course, when I actually went to do it I’d been forcibly reminded that my wrists were no longer in any condition to bleed. As an experiment I’d tried cutting my upper arm, but it only bleed for a moment before clotting to a scab in minutes. I gave up on the suicide idea that day. If I was going to die, I was going to die kicking and screaming every inch of the way.
There were plenty of people looking for hired help around the place, so I let myself out for pretty much any sort of work I could get. In the process I learnt a lot of interesting things and made a few contacts, but nothing ever lead me to salvation.
I sighed, shaking the thoughts from head and pulling on my shirt.
I didn’t have a heart. Del Morte had taken my soul, and without it salvation would always be just out of my reach.
*****
1:1
I knew it was going to be a bad day when I woke up at some insane hour of the morning to the sounds of a brawl in the alley just outside the smashed glass of my window. I rolled over, pulling my blanket tightly around my ears, but it was useless. The Tert never really slept, and it seemed wherever I went it was determined not to let me either.
Any other time I might have been inclined to throw something highly acidic out the window and go back to sleep in peace. Instead, I threw back the blanket and paced to the corner where I had dumped my meagre belongings.
At least it was better than Muenoville, I reflected as I hunted down some vaguely clean pieces of clothing. I’d spent a very short time hanging around the place before the noises and the smells and all that blood got to me. The advice that Torley’s had good pickings for somebody willing to work was the last excuse I needed to get out of there.
By the time I got dressed, the sounds in the alley had died away. I glanced down in the hopes that maybe the loser was still there so I could scavenge something to add to my armoury from them. No such luck. I could really have used a new gun, having managed to lose two of my three in as many months. I did a quick stock take before I ventured out. One handgun that I couldn’t for the life of me identify with only four bullets in it, one rather large and nasty looking knife that I could just fit into a compartment on my right forearm if I tried, two shuriken I’d scrounged up somewhere (useless because I couldn’t throw for shit, but they were pretty, and sharp enough if I was desperate for something to cut with), and one long sharp needle I figured would kill someone if you jabbed it far enough into their eye.
I sighed. There are plenty of Pets that are walking wars in themselves, but I don’t happen to be one of them. Sometimes even I’m surprised by the fact I’m still alive. With my degree of weapon and street savvy, I sure don’t deserve to be.
It took me ten minutes to traverse the dilapidated stairwell to the ground floor. I didn’t trust the stairs at all, but I couldn’t throw out the gaggle of feral kids that had made the ground level their home. So it one of those things I just had to deal with.
I have quite a few of those things.
I was hoping that maybe one of them might be inching a bit closer to resolution.
You see, there was actually a reason why I bothered dragging myself out of bed several hours before I’d usually even think about it. I’d gotten a message just before bedtime from the only acquaintance I’d made at Torley’s so far—a funny little man called Guazo. I’d hunted down the seven escaped monkey-toad hybrids he was watching for a friend on my first night in the area, and in the few weeks since then he’d gone out of his way to help me out. Keeping his ears open for me, looking people up, telling me interesting little bits of information. He’d told me to meet him on the corner just down from my condemned apartment building at three. Something about only being able to leave when the toad-monkeys were asleep or they’d stage another escape. At first I told him to get stuffed, but then he held out the best possible bait.
He’d found a tekboy who was interested in working on me in exchange for a bit of general labour.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. So that’s how I ended up on a disgusting street corner, in possibly the scungiest place on earth, at three in the morning.
I could only imagine what my mother might think if she knew.
