The Tower of Brahma - 58 - the Twelve: First Five (edit)

4/7/09
(John, Beth, Reilly, Jared, John)

I've found five people to help define me. I seek to find my shape beyond her realm, alone floating in cosmos, flailing about seeing who is there. There will be twelve, but now there is five.

I wander Friday night out, trapped between worlds, unable to return home, unwilling to lock myself away. I inhale the remnants of smoke trailing down the sidewalks, seeking some sort of high, asking to be distracted. Exhaling finds my heart racing, my breath and time are short.

Before I close the bars behind me, I send out an emergency beacon hoping to be found outside the next night, for I feared the madness would return and end this once and for all. I tried to absorb doctrine, to let my mind be at peace, but there's so much to think about.

I slip out the crack of dawn and keep moving through the streets, mixing with the masses, splinter in the public's flesh. I meet with a seller and grab five bags of sanity. I jump ship and abandon the island, long subway ride to lose myself.

I trade the five bags for a night of normalcy. Two guys hanging out, drinking beers, fetal on his bathroom floor, I wash my hands and face a friend. We watch movies and bullshit, things are calm, I don't need to watch my peripheral for possible attacks. I'm off the map.

I crash after playing couch potato. I wake and step out into the sun, it hates me intensely. Coffee and cigarettes make me feel worse, and I drag myself up the platform, hop on the first train in, and plunge back into life. Somewhere along the way a distress signal from a kindred soul flares across the West of Brooklyn so I break out.

The drama we've separately shared since we met tells us that there is a deeper connection. We'll need to be there for each other, magnetic empathic resonators, empowering and devouring one another. She's switched on like never before and on the run from an ex-assassin, as am I.

An ally comes to meet us for wine and sliders on the outdoor patio. I run distraction as she leaves to protect her love from insane jealous rage. I skirt paying the bill with an innocent smile, and the inside man comes out with me. He brings me back to Manhattan, and we head to the highest point.

Overlooking the city skyline, a few midnight cocktails in me, I try and get the information I need from him. He drops hints and tips but dodges anything concrete. He does what he can but it's not enough, I'm impatient to advance to the next level. I'm in Hell and I'm holding her hand. How do I get out?

He leaves me cold in the wind. She floats upon me and envelops, we disappear into the night, returning home to hide. Beside her, the madness gurgles and begs for release, I finally sleep, forcing myself to suppress the viral enemy inside me.

I dream of falling back, landing hard on my spine, paralyzing me at the point of impact, only it never comes and instead I bolt upright awake. I don't know how I can resist the darkness in me any longer. I've got to get back into the game, find the zen in the movement forward.

The silver laptop that was once all I was, the entirety of my being crunched in the bits and bytes of digital images, playlists, and bookmarks, it needed to be resurrected. She knew I must be connected on my own, my soul shredded by the rummaging through her own computer self, seeing her love someone else.

She heads out for another mission, but before she does, I leave, not wanting to watch her dress the part: the short skirt to catch a guy's eyes, the top that held them, her hair ensnaring the mark, with eyes that took everything. I couldn't watch her go that way. So I ran.

I met my friend and his friend, and they brought me along to be manly. We ate wings, drank beers, watched sports, talked shop. Somewhere in the moment, I was released from every snare, and free to exist as I wished. We went back to the old bar and had a free shot.

It felt normal. I was a regular joe, living his life, forgetting the burden of eternity that rests on my shoulders for one brief night. In my old bed I try and sleep, my eyes burning with tired. My mind begins to slip and slide across the wreckage of my life. I grind what's left of my teeth, the cyanide capsules all gone, leaving holes in my mouth.

Tomorrow begins a day to become myself all over again. I hope I'll be stronger, more sane, and further from the devil that dogs my step.

I don't want to live in this prison. I want to stop escaping. My friends hold me afloat as I rise from the ashes.

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 57.3 - HotShot ShotDown (edit)

4/20/09

It was our first date, a second chance meeting, the third time I'd let her slip away. We knew each other when we were kids, but so much had changed since then. I tried to find the girl I fell for all those years ago.

Her name was Jasmine Jones, Jazz we called her down in ABC Block. Her movements as erratic and beautiful as escalating notes emanating from a trumpet, like disciplined chaos slipping into the public system, she flowed with a natural grace and hit like a hammer.

A tomboy in pigtails, a dichotomy of duality, she was awkward and alone coming into the gang. Jazz kept to herself and went with the program when it benefited her, rebelling when she needed to be herself. The others all wanted her or wanted to be her.

I was a dog, loyal and simple. They dragged me in and gave me games. I had to learn from scratch, how to speak, think, feel like a human. I was the team mascot, kept around for morale more than anything. The artificial intelligence they instilled in me helped rebuild what momentary death had robbed from me.

Was I just a pet to her? A project to kill time inside? A lost soul she could guide so as not to focus on herself? I had no idea how she felt, nor the capacity to even know the difference. But she sparked something in me. I had to make sense of this madness in my head.

I saw what pleased her and repeated it. She smiled sadly when she left me to train. I processed everything around me faster and faster, hoping I could stand as her equal. Running faster, thinking more, fighting smarter, I was growing.

Tom Trainor came in and saw my improvements, remarking to Marcus, the boy genius who made me from the raw matter of a kid, binary code, and dog spirit. He thought he could enhance ordinary children into super secret agents. I wanted to be good, to help, to have the approval of those I thought to be friends.

I began processing data at superspeed, my reaction time shooting to seconds. Canine instincts gave me a momentary headstart, while the computer in me gave me the processing speed. I was faster, smarter, and stronger than all my classmates, no longer the dog-boy, laughed at and scorned.

They saw me fit for active duty and I dressed for success, slipping into a suit, and dropping behind the wheels of a hotrod red sports car. I hit the gas and roared out of the warehouse, jumping the drawbridge before it was fully down. Tom thought it was a mistake sending me so soon, although curious of the outcome.

Marcus just wanted me to crash and burn.

I met up with Jazz after leaping from the diving plane with my low altitude jetpack on. She whipped around me playfully as I grinned back at her. The sun shined down on us lighting the way, but we soared up together, dancing in the clouds for too long. The missiles and laser cannons had pinpointed us.

Dr. Ether Ore had shot us down and we were separated, scattered to the winds. I landed on the backside of his isle of doom, clinging to the cliffs. I worried about her, knew she must be in danger, I had to rescue her. Surely his robot drones must have captured her, dragging her back to his lair.

Sneaking in was easy. I had figured out the location of cameras, and guards were easy enough to take down with my enraged strength. I ran wild through the inner core of his hideout, smashing the doors down to his sanctum. Sure enough, there was Jazz, now adorned in one of his soldier's uniforms, probably made to bend to his will.

Then she shot me. I never saw it coming. I stumbled out onto the balcony, he stood there gloating, she coldly glaring. I was bleeding and betrayed, both hurting more than I thought possible. Jazz, or the girl, the friend, the agent, I called Jazz, walked slowly over to the evil doctor, the bastard mastermind of a thousand disasters, and put her arms around him.

I tossed myself over the railing after that, tumbling down ridges and falling into an open drainage ditch. Letting the flow drag my body down to the coast, where I surfaced among the corpses of a hundred dead agents. Others like me, maybe not so like me, not damaged and dead like me, for I was still alive.

Eventually I was returned back to the foundation for information retrieval, then decommissioned. They castrated my potential and plugged me back into the machine. Gave me normal and suburban life once again, letting my family raise me, not that they knew what to do with a failed superspy, half dog and half program.

The man with the murky past, now cleared and revealed, held a gun to the head of the woman who was once a girl who betrayed him. All was revealed, and he knew who he was, and why life hurt so bad. She was the reason, she cut his life short, ended his adventure and caused his suspicious paranoia.

She was the enemy. The barrel hit her temple and he imagined watching in slow motion as the bullet exploded from the chamber, slid down the length of the gun and burrowed into her brains. It'd dig through layers upon layers of her self, before ending everything she was.

He thought about her. The action she saw, the life she led, the others she fought and betrayed. And then what came after. Put out to pasture, left out in the open like a discarded toy, she'd be a broken shamble of a human as well. Too long spent playing the game to be any good at being normal. So much like himself.

But with experience. However, he had another headstart. Thanks to Marcus and Tom, he was placed out into regular reality way before the others, the first to fail and be forgotten. Didn't he then have the advantage? Wasn't life experience gained regardless of specifics? Wouldn't he now be able to help?

It was Marcus he needed to kill. And she could lead him to that diabolical director of his destiny. That villain who robbed him of everything. She was just serving the agency when she shot him. Probably seduced Dr. Ore into betraying his own plan. After all, the Earth was still intact, not dismantled by machinery.

Agent Fenris put away his gun and let time slip through his hands. The date continued. Charles Crown got to know Jasmine 'Jazz' Jones, and that night they kissed. He walked home in the rain, smiling to himself.

Charles awoke, startled and screaming, crying tears of fear. Jasmine put her arms around him, soothing him back down to the bed besides her. He turned to face her, the tears shifting with gravity, dropping off his nose. She was beautiful and he loved her.

"It was just a bad dream sweetie. Go back to sleep."

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 57.2 - You New All Along (edit)

4/16/09

She went on to be a super secret agent. Slipped in and out, saw the world, and put it all behind her. But on my first mission, she betrayed me, left with an enemy agent. On my graduation, she betrayed me, leaving me far behind.

Now, with her pocketknife against my throat, my fingers wrapped around her neck, windpipe in the grip of my thumb and forefinger, I'd gladly die, neck slashed open, bleeding out all over her bed, her vocal chords in my fist.

Wake up. Past. Dream.

I never was good enough, a failed experiment. I died a few years earlier. She knew that. They all knew that. They all saw me on that first day when I was awakened, snarling and sneering with my fangs bared. I knew nothing save instinct, felt nothing but rage.

Training. Mission. Decomission.

Marcus, Master Maker. The madman behind it all. He created this world for us to play in, to test me. He had my friend, my watcher, Tom Trainor take it all down as he monitored me. When he needed to, he broke me, leaving Tom to gather the pieces and give me clues to heal.

I was a secret agent kid, but now just a spent man, with no cynaide capsules left in his teeth, a shaky hand with an itchy trigger finger, and a head full of bad wiring. I saw the subtext of my self, the veiled explanation for my consuming madness. I was once so much more than I am now.

But I still got enough in me for some payback. I looked up at Agent Strange, seeing her now with my memories intact, my entire persona now shifted to include a long lost secret. She rambled on about trivial matters from her past as I shut down the audiowaves in the air.

"Babel", I whispered, and everything went silent.

When time and space froze down to near absolute zero, I pressed through the friction of the moment, retrieving my gun from my jacket. I took an eternity to look it over as I rested my grip comfortably around it. It wasn't heavy this time. It was simple.

Pull the trigger, kill her, shoot down an agent for the people that did this to you, the ones that drove you mad and took away a life of action and adventure, replacing it with dysfunctional disaster. The life of a damaged science experiment called for revenge.

Completing the mission, killing the persona. Evolving past the idea of itself. Fenris and Spider emerged from HotShot, kid superspy, being denied the action he was trained for, a powder keg of impossible imagination kept under wraps for years.

Their sentimentality in keeping me alive was their mistake.

The Tower of Brahma Chapter 57.1 - Choose Your Delusion (edit)

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, heart pounding, my jaw clenched, teeth grinding themselves 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 speak. 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 nor 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.