“Tell us!”
Shifter’s mask turned slowly to face them. The caricature of a simple happy face was carved cleanly into the light beige clay as ever. An unchanging expression. Light flickered from beneath the edge, the screen within changing as Shifter used the HUD within – utilizing his eyes and thoughts to navigate and use the UI.
“Why should I?”
The old hints of Scottish brogue or burr were still there – slowly eased out over decades as most accents were within the North-Americanized, English speaking Guardians of Destiny or Black Armada.
His voice rang tinny from the mask, the face tilted towards his old cyborg creation.
Unafraid. Curious. Seeking intrigue.
“We need to know. We are trying to choose a name.”
“We? You’re speaking like you and Alfred are the same person.”
The thing turned, the armored bodysuit flexing. Pieces of the cyborg weapon’s armor package were missing. Some of the dark grey and rust-colored hematic plates affixed atop the bodysuit had been shattered, damaged, or lost to slugs or melted away by plasma.
Tiny, dark grey strings of the microscopic swarm of drones within their shared body migrated between the two halves of a gaping wound in the chest. That was where a shell shredded his flesh and damaged one of two hearts.
The artificial one, luckily.
The tiny robots worked to sew the flesh back together even now, making fairly quick work of the grotesque cleft between two missing armor plates, shards shattered inwards into the wound. The dark grey webbing of the swarm was slowly pulling things back together, to repair and seal any damage in a fraction of the time that normal Human healing might take.
“We are that same person. Two halves of one whole. You made us this way!”
A laugh from Shifter, at that.
“He was around before you came along, technically. He’s Xex Project Zero. Actually defied High Council orders when I reused his code. The council feared him, thinking he might signal the end of their reign. Artificial intelligence that can truly feel, think, evolve, hell they were scared shitless from the sheer possibility of it. Why do you think they worked so hard to implement A.I. controls and programming requirements all those centuries ago when Class 2 and 3 intelligences came along? Things I purposely ignored when I was coding Alfred from nothing.”
The weapon turned, the right cybernetic eye glowing a soft blue in the darkness, reflected slightly in the wet sheen of the organic eyeball beside it. The soft hissing, buzzing, and creaking as the nanobots continued their work persisted, regrowing hematic plating and bodysuit materials from the metal, materials, and extremely iron-rich blood within them. The bodysuit was torn across the left knee, a previous injury from the initial infiltration, now pristine, long scabbed and scarred by the tiny machines back to imperfect perfection. Once the more serious injuries were handled, Alfred would get to work on having the nanite swarm remove scar tissue entirely.
“Alfred is our partner. Our friend. And we need to know! Why did you make us?! I need one name for me alone, and another name for us together. Why did you give Alfred a name but not me? Not us?”
Shifter sighed, scratching at the bald skull behind the mask, criss-crossed as it was with horrific scars and strange chemical burns.
“I made you because I could. Because that was always the point. A proper creator doesn’t create because they ever care about the ramifications, he creates to push the boundaries of the possible. Nobody had ever coded a Class 7. Hell, never even considered that an A.I. could simulate a Human brain or self properly. So I got there. They said I couldn’t create a perfect fusion of human and machine, a perfect cyborg far beyond the grotesquerie of the Harlequin or Dread Knight – and there you stand. Your closest sibling is the only true exception and regret, and being forced to create at gunpoint is hardly much of a choice, yeah? Especially knowing it’s your own stillborn child you’re playing with the genetics of. Bit traumatizing, yeah?”
A child’s voice. Alfred.
“I enjoy existing. Especially with him as my partner. That’s not the point. He can’t walk around with a fake serial number from a set of long-outdated Seraph armor and call himself ‘Xex Project 01,’ now can he?”
“And why not? The Seraph serial number was merely part and parcel of the top secret nature of The Xex Project at that point. You were at least made with a purpose, after all. Some of us spend half our lives looking for such a gift as any glorious purpose! Why not just go back to the G.O.D. High Council begging for your life, take up the mantle of hero again, try to off Xex a second time? Doesn’t seem like a bad name nor a bad gig, killing an asshole like Xex that really needs killing.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
One and Alfred spoke in unison the second time.
“No… Okay… Well… Tarnos follows you around playing nursemaid, so maybe go ask the Former God of Death for a name? I might be your maker but I’m not your parent, as it was just commissioned G.O.D. work, okay? It was Tarnos and Hephaestus that got all emotionally attached.”
The screen’s light changed color slightly. Shifter made a waving motion with his hand to move something on the screen inside his mask.
“So… I don’t really give two fucks what you call yourself or what you do now, eh? You two can go live your weird little body-sharing sex-party lifestyle in a shack out in The Neutral Territories for all I care. Or I can call you Jim and simply kick your ass out the door?”
“How does that even work? I don’t have a body, I can’t have sex.”
A cackle at the A.I. retort. The mostly tan armor rattled and clacked against itself with this new laughter.
The chitinous, humanoid-looking Beast carapace that the armor was made of had been carved and peeled from X-2 itself after an old capture decades ago. Despite X-2 eventually escaping from his biological father’s clutches, Shifter still wore it constantly, having strapped X-2 down himself before flaying the insect-like carapace from the green and purple tissues beneath.
Apparently the entire removal process had taken several hours, involving a cacophony of pain as Ultimate was kept awake and healing rapidly throughout the process. His carapace would eventually grow back, just like fingernails or hair, of course. Shifter’s own myriad scars being inflicted by X-2 in the first place culled any sympathy.
But ever since, Shifter always wore this unique set of armor, complete with smiling clay mask.
Religiously.
His terrifying scarred and disfigured face remained hidden. Shifter had always been a thin, wiry man, even as “The Doctor” before his various transformations. But the armor and the mask now made him very hard to read, much less to ever get a straight answer from.
Various etched runes in unknown languages or formulas across the chitin armor, inked in black, might mean anything.
Do anything.
Only Shifter actually knew.
“So you didn’t have any reason other than your commission, plus your artistic and scientific endeavours? Not even a theme to guide you?”
The eight foot tall form moved to a nearby lab stool and sat heavily upon it. The stool creaked dangerously from the mass of all that metal, circuitry, and flesh, despite being welded steel itself.
“Of course fucking not. I learn because I like learning, and there are always more secrets to decipher and technologies to incorporate. Obviously I’ve picked apart a few more secrets than anyone else. I simply enjoy the work.”
The pink-tinged hands poking from the ends of the armor’s wristguards flourished, seemingly for show, drawing a palm beneath the left pauldron and the dozens of runes engraved into the surface.
The nanobots eventually finished stitching together the first few long strings of scabbed hematic metal across the gap of the chest injury, the microscopic swarm slowly pulling it together so more of the swarm could create a superstructure of such webbing and close it up over time.
Shifter turned fully, the happy smiling face carved into the fired tan clay reflecting the overhead lights with a dull sheen. It tilted slightly downward, watching the microscopic robots work for a minute or two as they continued to busy themselves like ants with weaving more strands between the first of several sewn threads of the dark grey hematic material. At the rate the nanites were going, the wound would be pristine, unblemished flesh within the hour. It had already closed by almost a half inch with the connected webs of nanites and hematic material tugging the edges towards each other slowly.
“Listen, kid. I don’t mean you any ill will, clearly, but you’re asking me why I made you like I’ll have some deep, insightful, wisdom-laden answer for you. I don’t. I can’t give you a name. The High Council asked me to build a superweapon that could kill Xex. Offered me unlimited resources. An enormous contract. Little to no ethics oversight. Plus the direct help of the fucking God Of The Forge himself. Hephaestus! The very guy who figured out rifts! He who designed Seraphs and Chayots! The immortal who figured out modern Plasma Ionization Practices and Field Shaping! No young scientist or artist was ever going to turn that down. Ever!”
Shifter paused a moment, swiped with his hand again to change something on his mask’s HUD.
“Am I glad I salvaged Alfred from ‘Xex Project 00’ after the council got spooked by the idea of a sentient death machine? Sure, look at you two, you’re adorable. Like a kid and his fucking guide dog! But I’ve moved on. Bigger and better things! Churning out your Xex Project Siblings for the laughs as I experiment with each new technology or technique. Comprehending the very nature of Central Universe itself is the goal! Accessing other realities, universes, and existences! If one of my many experiments eventually does kill ‘God-Emperor Xex?’ Great! But such a feat is a mere benchmark at best these days. With my next project I’m throwing together an approximation of the fucking Creator itself! An energy being! And not just like Three, less a condensed universe, more like a shitty version of the real deal in Central! Fucking revolutionary! tentative code name is ‘Xex Project REDEYE!'”
Shifter blabbered it all like a kid in a candy store reciting the many flavors of salt water taffy.
The partners were unamused.
“Should we stop you? Such meddling with reality itself could be dangerous, Shifter. Some academics beyond the realms of Guardian and Black Armada propaganda argue that you could have accidentally collapsed the multiverse with Three.”
The tension in the room rose.
“You could indeed try to stop me…”
The lights flickered, dimmed as power and energy drained from the air and environment itself in tiny black wisps or motes. These tiny, drifting little pitch black sparks pulled towards Shifter, seeping inwards through the cracks in the armor, around the edges of the mask, and through the white lines scarred into the skull. The superweapon took a step back off the stool defensively, the wrist blades sliding down from their sheaths inside The Hazard Gear. Almost simultaneously they ignited with the glow of white-blue plasma around them.
They held.
Only for but a few moments, and then Shifter started cackling.
“The fact that you’re brave enough to try is adorable, kiddo!”
The tendrils of power eased their pull, the wisps of black in the air around them moving again in all different directions like motes of dust in sunbeams. The lights flickered a final time, blinked off, and then back on a second or two later with a hum. The specks of void were gone when the light returned.
The weapon retracted the twin blades with a billowing of dispersed plasma energy, returning to the stool.
“That’s the best you could give me?”
A snort.
“Well, I can give you a more grandiose idealism I suppose, perhaps something in Latin, or Greek?”
A slow, sad shake of the head.
“Listen, kid. Maybe you could do what they do in the slums and ghettos out in The Neutral Territories, and do that whole new-family ceremony thing, choose a new name, yadda yadda? You’d give me a complex if I actually even gave two shits about this. You are very lucky I can split my attention and juggle multiple mental tasks, unlike most mortals.”
The glow behind the mask changed to a reddish hue. Shifter crossed his arms and leaned back against the crate, crossing his legs slightly as he did.
“How about Pax? Quick, not many morphemes. You’re fighting for peace and freedom with that little ragtag resistance of yours, right? It would make sense. Gives them something to use.”
“Alfred, you were right. This is a waste of time. We fought through all those defenses for nothing.”
Shifter uncrossed his arms, then took a few steps forward and jabbed a finger at the construct, accusingly.
“I will bill your people for all that, by the way. Expect a fucking invoice. You’re lucky I got all that footage as proof of concept for both your own cyborg half-metal ass and the three different prototypes you fucked up while you were trespassing. Some obvious fixes I guess.”
The superweapon turned to leave, ready to duck through the smoking hole in the defense shutter they had carved in the blade doors.
Disappointment was splashed across his face.
“Wait.”
The child’s voice.
Alfred.
The weapon stopped, expectantly. Turned to face Shifter, straightening to full height.
“Doctor-”
“Don’t call me that. Use the right one.”
The words came with gouts of venom laced between each of the syllables.
“Shifter.”
A nod of appreciation.
“With creation, comes responsibility. We take responsibility and accountability for what we created together with Tarnos, Hephaestus, Revol, and the others. Our movement may be a joke to you, a tool to use against the factions when you need us, but it isn’t funny to us. Perhaps the next time you create someone, maybe have a think about what you might owe them as their maker. We never chose to be like this.”
Shifter pointed to the scars and burns webbed across the naked portions of his scalp, hands, and neck.
“And I didn’t fucking consent to this, yeah? Life sucks – and then you die. The fact that you aren’t already dead yet is a fucking testament to my skills as a creator.”
He seemed to grow bored of the conversation, turning back to his work bench.
“Figure your own shit out, I have work to do.”
A waved hand.
An ignorance.
His scorn.
A hundred deeper emotions beyond, buried beneath layers upon layers of scars and traumas split across the three sentient beings in the room.
“Goodbye, Father.”
The two voices echoed it together, and they turned to go, completely unsatisfied. They moved to duck back through the hole, vanishing into cloaked camouflage as One crossed the threshold in a shimmer of hazy air, and distorted bending light.
Shifter pretended to watch his screens until he was sure the two in One were gone.
Once he was sure they’d left, he spun fully and fell forward onto the workspace on both forearms, letting out an enormous sigh of discontent.
The lights flickered once, and then died again.
This time permanently – succumbing fully to whatever previous Starcaller powers Shifter had evoked.
Shifter was left completely in the dark, with only the faint glow at the edges of his mask to light the workshop space.
“Fuck.”
