Chapter 65: it’s hard to be a god

I can't tell exactly when my deathbed dream ended and this began. What happened could be called the strangest awakening of my two lives, and can it even be considered an awakening? A human consciousness deprived of access to a human interface, what is it? Does it have the right to call itself human, and why should it care what it calls itself, if it does not understand if something else exists besides it... if it still exists itself...

I can't even tell how much time I've spent in this state. How to measure time if you are not breathing and your heart is not beating, because you simply do not have one, just like you do not have lungs to breathe.

In retrospect, Daisy certainly had too high an opinion of Peter Parker if she thought that, in addition to the monstrous situation in which my mind now found itself, additional psychological treatment was required. She had gone to great lengths to break all resistance in me beforehand, but really, it would have been enough for her to show me the process itself so that I would understand the position I was in. When your very existence is not life-a mistake, a defiance of the laws of nature-no resistance is out of the question. A brain without a body, without a chance of recovery, what other options are there but to surrender and dissolve into something larger, and let the last piece of your body, this clot of neurons, serve as a cog in the overall mechanism. That's what I would do if, say, I had forgotten about my past, or had been born and raised on this earth.

Except Daisy had no way of knowing about my past, and I hadn't forgotten, despite her best efforts.

That knowledge didn't help me much, though. My consciousness was focused on itself with the sole purpose of not disappearing, not dissolving into a deceptive nothingness.

"I am thinking, therefore I am?" - Bullshit! It doesn't work. Thinking under such conditions is simply impossible. Thinking is a sign of the conscious, except that the conscious is not adapted to such an existence. Consequently, I did not exist then.

An infinite agony later, while my hopelessness-filled consciousness was desperately clinging to the crumbs of the old existence, another part of my self, what we in our ignorance call subconsciousness, though it should more properly be characterized as unconscious, wasted no time. It, the unconscious, turned out to be much more plastic and flexible, i.e. adaptive enough to find and systematize the data received from outside. From other unfortunates connected to this monstrous "non-life" system, and further, from numerous external devices: sensors, cameras, and manipulators.

This was not an instant flash in the sun. No, a small ray of light piercing through a veil of leaden clouds brought the first packet of data into my consciousness, processed by the smarter part of my self. Information from a lone surveillance camera mounted in one of the many corridors of the complex. This camera was my first eye; through it I saw a team of workers in a hurry trying to repair a wall that had been punctured by something. There was a body being carried down the corridor, dressed in a military uniform... I remember this woman. I remember the look of surprise on her face as she died at the hand of the Lizard. By my hand.

The first one was followed by the others. And now it was like an explosion. An information bomb exploded in my brain. I was everywhere. Every camera in the complex became my eyes, my hands were countless manipulators, in numerous laboratories and operating rooms, including those that had removed my own brain from my body. And also those that, at this moment, exercise control over all the other humans who have become part of the system. A huge, terrifying system. And somewhere in its depths lurks what remains of the old me: a tiny clump of neural and glial cells...

"What's going on?" Mace Carson asked, looking down at the many bar graphs and tables showing the current state of the system.

"The system is stabilizing," took the floor a woman from the support staff, whose name Johnson was not known, as well as the names of most of the people below in the hierarchy and not subordinate to her personally, "the core is adapting, one might say adapting to the new conditions for it. Our prediction is that within five hours the system will be at maximum capacity.

Johnson wasn't entirely sure whether Mace was actually interested in the information behind these charts, or whether she was merely demonstrating her power and involvement in what was going on. Much more so, Johnson wondered why Carson was here in the first place.

Mace was the type of person the colonel hated and despised with all her being. She was the daughter of Vichy Carson, one of the apostles, and therefore a conspicuous pile of no-nonsense in this place. But until now, their acquaintance had been in absentia, and Johnson would have given much to keep it that way. The morning after the system was launched, however, everything changed. Mace Carson became the head of base security and, in fact, the first post-Apostles in their entire massive project. This rat-faced lowlife had fallen into the hands of a power she in no way deserved, and was therefore incredibly resentful and needlessly vicious. Mace was jealous of anyone who had anything that she didn't have. And everyone had something she didn't, if only talent, or looks, or self-esteem.

A vain nobody, who, moreover, is well aware of how insignificant he is, and that makes him even madder. It was hard to imagine a worse boss.

Compared to Mace, even that upstart Daisy Brennan looked like a bargain, too dangerous and dismissive of soldiers' lives, but at least she knew her stuff. Though reluctant, Johnson might have accepted such a commander, but Carson...

And Brennan herself, as if nothing had happened, is having fun with that boy from the control room, as if the status quo didn't bother her at all. And it is not clear who to blame for such a drastic change, and, more importantly, from whom to seek help.

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