The Tower of Brahma Chapter 57.1 - Choose Your Delusion

4/1/09
Agent Strange meets me on the West Side. A date. We're both consenting Secret Agents, so we meet, and it's a match. Cover stories bought and sold, consumed along with dinner and drinks. We walk that night talking, speaking only the truth, I listen.

I wake in the middle of the night, my heart is pounding, my jaw clenched, teeth grinding what's left down to nothingness. My slightest move will wake her, yet I reach for my phone, dying to put down words, form an idea, that will take away this ache.

She wakes. I feel the guilt. Writing, tapping keys, takes its toll on her nerves. I file it away, but it resurfaces. Why doesn't she want me to write? What would I discover?

I sleep and dream beside her.

Dr. Ether Ore, a madman probing the depths of dear old Mother Earth with his sinistar Geological Expedition Machine, a massive drill that burrows through layer after layer of rock, soil, dirt...it creaks and squeaks sending chills down the spine. The Evil Dr. Ore stares down into the tunnel with orgasmic spite.

I make the meet with her at the designated spot: a deep fried Britsh shoppe. We exchange glances, pleasantries, and size each other up. Her hair dangles before her eyes, her gaze sliding across the tiles, up the stool, but they never meet mine. She smiles.

Stuffing my mouth with battered poultry makes it easy to shut up for once. I listen as she begins to talk. She says she knows me, knows who I am, where I belong. She has no idea. I've come in from the cold, I know too much, the walls are closing in.

She says I learned from K.I.D. - Kinetic Information Discipline, which basically sounds like letting info get kicked into you. I guess I must have had a pretty shitty teacher, I say, cause I don't know nothing.

Grandma's sitting at the dining room table, glasses of alcohol lies before them as they're discussing a problem, a family affair, something about drugs, I've found that knowing too much when little, processing information you are not able to handle, it's the natural defense to start with the playing dumb routine.

Let the Dr. have her. You don't need this. You don't need nothing or anything, something or everything, begins to shift. A wave of illusion casts you ashore, alone amid the wreckage of a life gone bye.

Bloated corpses, bursting with gas, ring a tropical paradise. You're a kid, how do you deal with that, betrayal of innocence, a hotshot burned. Some cute red headed girl gives you the old wink, you fold like a paper airplane.

Secret Agency. Secret Agent, See. See Crypt Again, C?

Down dirty alleys polluted with farmland perverts, I ride my bike for my life, away from you, towards a new way to live and be. I was just a kid goddammit. Who's nightmare dreamscape am I scraping against?

I didn't know any better. Just a fool. The Fool that fell for feeling so much. Knocked down, bitter descent, slapping sounds waking me up. The knowledge is there. Who am I? What happened to me? What next?

I was shooting from the H.I.P., or higher intelligence programming, an AI interface that entered behind my face, creating personality from tabula rasa. Wild dog boy, died and came back clean, perfect test subject for experimentation.

My family needed the money, I had no choice, nor any memory of them building and installing me into flesh. I ping ponged off the fourth wall of the internet, ricochet deconstructing myself and my surroundings until a pattern emerged and digital life began.

I was sold to the government for cash. Well, my well-being and sanity sure were. I was empty and they filled me with 1's & 0's, right and wrong. Subdued my submerged rage with regularity, monitored my mental health monthly, the tests were endless. Thankfully they wiped them from my brain.

The slug from her smoking 357 was sitting in my shoulder cooling down as we glanced at each other. She was just thirteen, pigtailed tomboy in flexible body armor.

I was a mere lad of fourteen and my 44 was heavy, it felt like holding the moon. My armor was non-existent, my wound bled through my t-shirt, the bullet finally stopped pressing into the bone. I stumbled back, three times the betrayal burying into my flesh.