Welcome to Gaia! ::

Posted this in the writers forum in the artists corner, but thought I'd post it here to as its not a bad introduction to the main character of one of my story concepts. Hope you like it. Maybe not strictly "Explicit", but its got a few dark disturbing twinges that I thought would be best placed here.


* * * * * * * *

The psychologists office was a typically lavish affair, with its brawny black leather couch and flourishing potted plants in the corners. The desk was a modern, sleek, polished affair free of unnecessary clutter, with only a pristinely positioned pen and a few carefully sorted papers on one side. Light filtered in between the creamy stripes of the plastic shade, partitioned into six or seven strips of plastic turned to allow more or less light in. The place smelled of new leather and a hint of perfume, although there didn't seem to be any fragrancers in the room.

Karlim sat bolt upright on the sofa. Every fibre of his being resisted and resented this idea. He didn't need an 'expert' to tell him what was 'wrong' with him. He knew what was 'wrong' with him. People were wrong with him. There was nothing in his head that your average teenager subjected to fifty years of frontline warfare and infiltration didn't share with him. Except maybe the fact that he was the only one of his kind. And that once, there had been a hundred or so others just like him. He felt tense, angry. He felt like tearing the place apart, but settled for simply being rude to the psychologist.

The psychologist hadn't deigned to arrive yet, and Karlim found himself staring at the empty leather armchair in front of him. Between his sofa and that chair, was a low glass table with a questionaire he was supposed to have been filling out in the meantime, and a biro. The biro, typically, was a simple, mass-produced affair. The pen on the desk may have been silver plated.

In boredom, or perhaps he was subconsciously trying to cooperate with the idea, he picked up the questionaire and gave it a cursory inspection. Apparently it was some kind of personality questionaire. It asked him a lot of questions about his favourite foods, his favourite drinks, his best memory, his worst memory, his parents, his home, his ideal vacation spot, his ideal lover, his favourite songs and films, his hobbies. It left him a lot of room to write. The idea was evidently to encourage him to write as much as he felt like writing. The assessment wasn't entirely in the answers he gave, but in the way he answered.

Karlim tore through the questionaire, answering 'NOT APPLICABLE' in block capitals until he got to 'What was the happiest time of your life?'. He considered it, but couldnt really decide. He'd forgotten so much. He'd forgotten that once, he used to be normal.
A: 'BEFORE I WAS CHANGED', he scrawled idly.

Q: 'What is your worst memory?'
A: 'ADVANCED INDIVIDUAL TRAINING'

Q: 'How do you feel about your parents?'
A: 'IRRELEVENT'

Q: 'How do you feel at home, and what is it like?'
A: 'NOT APPLICABLE'

The remainder of the questions purtained to his interests, his ideals. Eventually his wording shrunk to "N/A" for every answer. He went back to the start where the questionaire asked him to fill out details about himself, his name, current address, contact details and occupation. He filled them out dutifully.
Name: ANGLERIGHT, KARLIM J. (CALLSIGN: DEVILBOY)
Occupation: CLASSIFIED
Contact Details: CLASSIFIED
Current Address: N/A
He looked over his answers, satisfied himself that he had "answered as honestly and as openly as you feel you can", and returned to his tense waiting.

After a few minutes, a young woman's face appeared at the door window. Karlim's eyes flicked to inspect the change in scenery, then once he had familiarised himself with the circumstances they returned to their vigil, burning imaginary holes in the glass desk. The woman opened the door and smiled hesitantly.

"Karlim?"

"I've never met you before in my life. Why are you using my first name?"

The woman sighed and nodded to unseen figures behind the door. Two white-uniformed security troops moved to flank her, their heavy armaplas riot gear signifying them as the Specials branch. Specials were assigned to particularly dangerous criminals and other such "detainees". Although they wore heavy calibre side arms, they weren't supposed to use them - in their free hands, they carried humming electro-bats.
Karlim glowered at the two guards's faceless helmets with a purplexed grin, and shrugged.

"Mr Angleright, I'm hoping these guards won't be necessary. You were recommended here by your commanding officers, not this institute. This place would have sent you to a maximum security stockade, but I managed to convince them that maybe you're not all killing machine. Maybe there's someone in there who wants to give it all up and come back to reality."

"I am real. Thats the terrifying fact, isn't it?"

The psychologist nodded to the guards either side of her, who reluctantly left, closing the door behind them. A bleep and a click signified that Karlim was now locked in with this damn head-shrink. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I'm real. Its hard to believe, but I exist. No matter what I do now, nothing will countermand that fact. All the things I've done, and want to do, they exist. They live. They are real. No matter how far fetched it seems, I am here, and everything that comes with that is real too. No matter what I imagine, or lie, or say or do, its all real, and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it. Once you're brought into existence, there's no way to leave it. No matter what you say about coming back to reality, I'm already there. Maybe I'm not the one who needs to wake up and return to the real world."

"I see you've filled out our questionaire. Do you mind if I take a look?"

"Were you listening to what I just said?" Karlim demanded as the psychologist picked up his questionaire and started looking it over. She replied without looking up at him.

"Yes, Mr Angleright. I just don't know how to answer you yet."

That threw him. She was being honest. Honesty always caught him off guard. Everybody lied so much that when someone told the truth for a change, the surprise hit him like a hammer. He was touched for a moment, but then decided that these people knew everything about him, and they probably knew his personality already without reading his scrawl on a piece of paper. Besides, he had been deliberately obtuse. They knew him already. They knew he had lied on the questionaire.

Karlim shuddered as he consciously wrestled with his conditioned instincts, seeing threats from every angle and trying to counter them with efficient force and manuevres. Trying to conceal his identity. Trying to keep him alive and out of the enemy's hands. He bit his lip, his fangs bringing blood trickling down his lip. He lapped it up quickly, and forced his mind empty. Try to cooperate. Try to get out of this horrible mess in your head.

The psychologist sighed very quietly and put the questionaire back on the table. "No one has ever really loved you, have they Karlim?"

Karlim froze. They knew him.

"No one has ever treated you as anything more than just a tool, is that right? You joined the military in...gosh, 2802 and things got worse from there. You don't know anything except how to kill and not be killed. You were never shown how to fit in, how to live like normal people, because you were being taught only to take orders and obey them without question. By the time you deserted and left the army, disillusioned and traumatised, you felt it was too late to try and do anything other than revenge yourself on your former masters. Is that right?"

Karlim nodded without shifting his frozen gaze. "Thats about right."

"You had a family once. You were perfectly normal. You could have been whatever you wanted to be, just like anybody else. Then you were taken from them, and your future was sealed into what you are today. You were taught never to see the importance or meaning of things most of us cherish and value today. You'd be perfectly happy living off tree bark as you would eating a five-star restaurant meal. Perhaps even happier. You've been told that love is just another tool that people will try to use to destroy you. Is this correct?"

Karlim looked up at the psychologist. She was doing a very good job of appearing concerned, with a reserved yet pained expression behind her stylish glasses. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat ponytail with two simple forelocks that framed her face. If he cared, he'd have said she was quite attractive, even though her appearance was composed to downtone that aspect of her image. Here was not an attractive young woman, but a faceless sounding board, something to confess to.

"Love is a tool." He said flatly.

She held his gaze. She didn't seem to be disturbed by his point-blank answer and bland, emotionless stare. "How do you mean?"

"Love is used. People use love. It is a need that must be satisfied. In order to satisfy your own needs for love, you must absorb it from another source. By appealing to the desires of that source, you evoke the necessary love you need. Love is a tool. I also am a tool. Love is used, just as I was used. Love is needed. I was needed. I was well-loved."

The psychologist raised an eyebrow and nodded gently, before reaching for a notebook and a pen from inside her jacket pocket. She scribbled something down.

"So you loved the army in turn?"

"For a time. I still do. I had many friends there."

"And how do you think they would feel if they knew how you were behaving?"

"I think they'd laugh."

"Why so?"

"Because they knew me. And I knew them. Richard - Captain Harrison - once told me how this was going to end. He said I would go mad and start killing everybody. At first I thought he had been joking. But as the years went by, I realised that he had known me better than anyone I had ever met, and all without much being said between us. He just knew. Even though he knew that, even though the men knew that, they didn't mind me staying with them. I felt grateful. I don't know why they kept me around."

"Isn't it because you're a powerful fighter? And with you around they could accomplish their missions more easily? Weren't they using you?"

Karlim considered for a moment. "Yes."

The psychologist nodded and made another note in her book. "So why aren't you angry with Captain Harrison and his company? You admitted just now that they were using you, in the same way your...superiors were using you. So why do you feel more positively inclined toward them?"

"Because they weren't using me the same way as my 'superiors'. My 'superiors' took a perfectly normal eighteen year old brat and changed him into a psychopathic monstrosity. I made friends with Captain Harrison and his men after that event. They accepted what I was then, rather than simply making me into something they needed. They did not influence or change me, they took me as I was and they happened to have need of me. I was grateful."

"So you felt loved?"

"In a sense, yes. I am not without a fundamental understanding of basic human faculties. I was human before these 'additions', remember."

"Karlim, or Mr Angleright if you'd prefer, could you tell me how you feel about yourself? If I asked you to describe yourself, what would you tell me?"

"I'd tell you I'm far worse than I look."

"Elaborate."

Karlim glared at the psychologist. "Please." She added, curtly. Karlim shrugged.

"What do you want me to tell you? A graphic account of how I'd kill you if I felt like you were about to have me committed or something? About how I'd do my usual trick of pushing my thumbs into your eyesockets and ripping your head apart?"

The psychologist flinched, breathed in, summoned courage. "If thats what you think you are, yes."

Karlim blinked. "I think I'm...I used to be a boy. And I used to be a person, a human being. Now I'm something far worse. Humans are bad, but they have redeeming features. I am manifestly grotesque. Everything about me is trained, conditioned, or simply created for the purpose of destruction and survival. Destroy, and survive. Kill, and get away with it. I don't know anything else. Love, comfort, fun - these things are irrelevent to me, absolutely. I have no need of a lover, because my sex drive has been translated into an urge to survive. I can't feel comfort, because I don't recognise it as anything more than an intellectual concept. Sleeping in a bed and sleeping on a pavement feel much the same to me. The difference is totally inconsequential. Fun...what is the point in doing anything else other than fulfilling your prescribed role in life? When you're trained to kill, when its made your sole task, the meaning of your life, why do anything but?"

The psychologist spent some time taking notes as he was talking, and he waited for her to finish. Looking over them, she paused before asking; "Are you happy?"

"In many ways I am fortunate not to care about the trivialities and nuances of ordinary life. I do not get confused by complicated relationships and betrayed by weak people. I do not get bored. I don't get disheartened when I have no money or no roof above my head. Yet there is a great deal of this existence that will remain forever lost to me. I feel cursed, betrayed. I despise myself, although I blame others for my circumstances, and thus I despise them also. I would not say I am happy. But I'm not sure if it was ever intended for me to be happy."

"Let me put it another way. Are you satisfied with your life and yourself?"

"Fundamentally.....technically, yes. Because I am alive. And presently, there is no one trying to destroy me. However, on reflection - when I stop and think about it - my existence is meaningless outside of butchering the individuals who did this to me and slaughtering their families."

The psychologist paled a shade and blinked. Karlim smiled wanly.

"Depressingly futile, isn't it? I don't think I've ever spoken about myself this openly. Because I don't want anyone to know me. Ultimately, I don't want to exist. But I do. I never had a choice other than existing. I could kill myself, easily enough, but what would be the point? Not yet. There are things I have to do first. Like taking revenge. And even if I did die, I would still *have* existed. There would be records, memories. So if, as I claimed, I don't want to exist, I wish I had never been brought into being at all, I would need to destroy all evidence of my ever having existed. That way no one would be able to turn around and say "Ah yes, I remember Karlim, he was that mutant boy wasn't he?". If I wanted to remove myself from existence, I would need to delete everybody who ever met me."

Karlim paused in thought for a long time. The psychologist watched him. She had given up taking notes now and her pad lay face up on the glass table. Karlim read the words "HYPNOSIS", "IMPLANTED SUGGESTION" and "BEHAVIOURAL CONDITIONING" with arrows linking them to quotes she had taken from what he was saying.
At the bottom, they were all tied to the phrase "Ex Nihilo".

"So, do you think there was any point in our meeting here today?" Karlim asked.

The psychologist balked and frantically composed her answer. "Well, it will be difficult, but we could start with institutionalising you in a...."

Karlim held up the notepad and tapped the key phrase at the bottom of the page with a razor-sharp talon. He seized her around the throat with his free hand. The psychologist gagged and reached for a small button with a wire running from it, but she looked at her own thumb with puzzlement as, for some reason, it wouldn't press the button. Her hand had gone cold numb.

"Tell me everything you know about this phrase here. I'll start you off. Ex Nihilo means 'out of nothing' or 'from nowhere'. Sounds about right. With particular reference to myself, what does this phrase mean? Answer in your own time as honestly as you feel comfortable."

The psychologist had panickedly explained that 'Ex Nihilo' was the name of an essay written by a military think-tank some century prior to the Hellbringer project that spawned him. It contained the first key concepts involved with biologically and psychologically modifying a subject into total servitude and susceptibility to authority. There was a copy of the essay on her computer hard drive, but he would never get hold of the code, unless he was psychic or something. Karlim chuckled, and released his psionic grip on the young woman and turned to face the door, talons flexed and ready for murder.

"You can press that button now, miss. Your office is first left, on the third floor, is that right?"

“How…did you guess?” The psychologist, shaken to the core and with no control of the situation anymore, gasped.

“You should know. You’re supposed to be an expert on psionics. Perhaps you thought I’d be uncomfortable if you mentioned that.”

The two security guards hammered into the office with their tall shields together. Karlim let a slow, relishing grin spread across his face before making his move.

* * * * * * * * * *

There goes nothing! sweatdrop

Uhhh, in a good way or a bad way?

biggrin Psychologically unsettling is our business, please call again!

More of this to come, hopefully fleshing out the character - as the road to utter psychosis is not always spontaneous...for this guy its more of a spiralling motion, getting wider and wider until eventually everyone is a threat that needs to be disposed of/escaped from.

Well, thats the eventual aim, anyway. Whether it winds up reading that clearly is another thing entirely confused

mrgreen mrgreen mrgreen

pirate

Then I shall continue to produce it!

Many thanks for the encouragement. And happy St. Patrick's day.