Tales of a Madman 6
It is getting harder and harder to remember the life that I had before I was in this cell. The memories are still there but it is difficult to concentrate on any one of them. The memories flood over me and all I get is a confused mess of people and places. There are times when everything is perfectly clear but more and more often I can't remember any details. I tried to talk to my white-coats about this but all they would say is that it is to be expected, that I am going through a period of readjustment and everything will settle down soon. I don't know what they are talking about, but it scares me. I wish I knew what the drugs they are pumping into me are and what they are meant to be doing to me.
I remember saying earlier that I stopped working with Rage when he went to work with some Stormers. My shrink wants to know why I wouldn't work with them, she says that they are a perfectly normal part of life on Mort, no different from me or you. They might not be any different from her, but they are sure as hell different from me. How can something that is grown in a tank and then programmed instead of taught be considered normal. They could be programmed to believe anything, to act in any way.
It is normally not too difficult to figure out how someone is going to act or think because they have been brought up in much the same way that you have. They have gone through similar experiences and been moulded by much the same things that you have. I mean, everyone gets basically the same schooling, watches the same vid programmes, plays the same games with their friends. To figure out what they are going to do you just put yourself in their position and decide what you would do. You can't do that with Stormers!
They come out of their tanks fully grown with all their memories and ideas planted into them by a group of technicians. They don't really know how to react to anything, they just know how they are meant to react. Put them in a situation that they haven't been programmed to deal with and they go to pieces. I have never come across any Stormer that can think for itself and them makes them a liability in stress situations. An operative is constantly put into dangerous situations where it is all that you can do to keep yourself alive. There is no way that I am going to take on the burden of having to worry about a hunk of biogenetic meat that has to be told to duck when the shooting starts.
This healing themselves that the Stormers do, regeneration or something like that, I'm not sure if it's such a good plan or not. Okay, it's damn handy not having to worry about bleeding to death but it gives them a sense of invulnerability that can get in the way of common sense. Sure, they heal eventually but they are as dead as you or I would be if they get their heads blown off. I've seen Stormers wander into situations where anyone with any sense would have kept well away from.
This one I saw walked into a fire fight between a couple of gangs, the Krosstown and the Mohawks I think it was. The last thing that it ever said was, "Not worry, it only CAF!" Yeah, it was only CAF but it was a hell of a lot of CAF.
I heard somewhere that Stormers don't feel pain, they only register damage. I'm not sure if that is true or not, but if it is true it's no wonder that so many of them get themselves killed. Pain is a very good way for the body to warn us that we are in trouble and to get out of that trouble quickly. If these things don't feel any pain they would never know when to stop. They get shot and hey just carry on as if nothing had happened, confident that they will heal up sooner or later. They are just like big kids that haven't learned not to stick their fingers into the fire yet. The only difference is that a kid will only burn itself once, Stormers never seem to learn.
Another thing that worries me is how do we know what they are being programmed with. It's obvious that they know how to fight and talk and walk and stuff like that but what else have they been programmed to do? For all we know they could be just waiting for the right moment to turn on us and take over Mort. I learned my history in Meny, I've heard of what happened during the Conflict Wars. When the time was right Slayer turned on the other races using the creatures he had sold them as troops. How do we know that Karma aren't planning something similar with all these Stormers that are appearing.
Don't you think it strange that for hundreds of years we had only one kind of Stormer wandering the streets, the 313 and now we have all kinds of new ones. Chagrins, Vevs, Xenos and who knows what else. The Chagrins aren't too bad, they're too dumb to be dangerous, as long as they don't get too close that is! I can't figure out why Karma would make something that strong when the 313 is plenty strong enough for everything it needs to do. The Chagrins are monsters, pure and simple. They are like the things my mother used to try to scare me with when I wouldn't go to bed at nights. Creatures with claws and tusks like the Chagrin have shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets without being kept on a leash.
The Xeno is simply weird. The thing looks like some kind of giant insect, something that you would find in the Cannibal Sectors. You can never tell where the things are looking because of all those eyes and it is impossible to tell if one of them is talking to you or someone behind it. They are always spying on everything that is happening, storing it up for future reference. When I was in school there was this kid who used to stand just round corners, hoping to hear something he could tell the teachers about. Xenos remind me of that kid. You can never tell if one of them is around or not, the way they change colour to blend into the background is spooky. Everyone hates a sneak and the Xenos are the ultimate sneaks,
I saw a Vevaphone in The Pit a little while before I was hauled into this place. It was writhing around the dance floor, changing shape every few seconds, copying the looks of all the people around it. It would go from Frother to Wraith to little woman to fat man to Shaktar to Stormer all in a few seconds. Okay, the copies weren't perfect but they were close. At one point it came close to me and changed itself to look like I do. It is a bad feeling, looking at something that looks like a slightly blurred version of yourself. It had my clothes, my hair, even the glass that I was carrying but it looked unfinished, not fully developed. For maybe two seconds we stood there, looking at each other and I swear that the Vev could read my mind as well as my body. Looking into the things eyes I saw my own soul in there, looking right back at me. The creature changed into someone else and moved off but it really shook me.
If the Vevs can copy the way that we look how do we know that they cant copy the way that we think? Someone once told me that the form moulds the thoughts and at the time I didn't know what she was talking about, but now maybe I do know. If the Vev looked just like me surely his brain would work like mine and he would think the same way that I do. He looks like me, acts like me so it must think like me. It was copying my soul as much as the rest of me.
That's another thing about Stormers, do they have souls? Is it right for mankind to create life in that way? I personally don't believe in any gods but I know a lot of people that do and a lot of them have a big problem with Stormers. What happens when a Stormer dies, does it have an afterlife to go on to or does it simply stop existing? I often wonder about what is going to happen to me when I die but do Stormers wonder about the same sort of thing? I would like to talk to a 313 about this sort of thing but I can't imagine ever having a decent conversation with one of those things. They haven't been programmed for theological discussions so they wouldn't know where to start.
Slayer is making more and more Stormers all the time yet there aren't enough jobs for the real people who live in Mort. Millions of Downtowners are unemployed and Slayer would rather make a creature to do the jobs that proper people could do. I saw a Low Wave wandering through the streets of Downtown once. I have no idea what it was doing there or how it got there but it must have been very lost. The kids started throwing stones at it and the thing just kept walking along the middle of the road. It didn't take long for the bravest of the kids to come up and hit the thing with a bit of wood. The Low Wave didn't even notice it, it just kept walking. Within minutes the kids were mobbing it, hitting and kicking and cutting at it. The Low Wave didn't even turn round, it just kept moving in a straight line ignoring everything around it. The kids tore it to bits in the end. There were hunks of quivering flesh all across the street and the stupid Stormer never did a thing to defend itself. I suppose that I should have done something to help it but I really didn't see the point. If it wouldn't help itself why should I help it?
That was just one example of how much people dislike Stormers. No one trusts those things yet Slayer keeps on making more and more of them. Do you think that he knows how unpopular the monsters are, or maybe he just doesn't care? I always think of Stormers as being males, but they aren't. They aren't male or female, they just are. One of the major drives in our lives is to reproduce ourselves so that there will be something of us in the future but Stormers don't have that. What sort of social life can these things have, what do they do for kicks when they are off duty? I know that the 313s like loud music but it isn't really them that like it. They have no choice in the matter, they have been programmed to like the music and that is what they have to do. Has a Stormer ever developed tastes of its own, is it possible for them to learn to like new experiences?
I wonder what Stormers think of us? Do they see us as superiors or weak inferiors? A major part of human life is wondering about our creator and whether he exists or not. Stormers know everything about their creators, they can call them up on the vidphone if they want to. Do they see the Karma technicians as parents or gods, or are they programmed to not think about that sort of thing? What do Stormers think about? I guess that only the lab technicians know that and they aren't about to tell the likes of me their trade secrets.
There was a vid program about Dante that I watched a couple of years ago. It showed hundreds of Stormers attacking a Thresher stronghold without care for their own safety. These were Stormers that hadn't been given free will, they were like machine that simply obeyed their programming and followed orders. They rushed forward towards the town that Thresher had dug into and were shot down in their dozens. The thing was that they didn't stay down, as soon as they had healed themselves they got up and rushed forward again. It took a while, but they eventually reached the town and the Thresher troops didn't stand a chance. The Stormers didn't fight like normal people, more worried abut staying alive than killing their enemy, they just attacked.
I could imagine how scary that would be, fighting against something that didn't care if it lived or died. I've met a few serial killers like that but a whole platoon of them rushing towards you must be terrifying. Whenever I get involved in a fight, whether it is with guns or not, I am more concerned with keeping my own skin intact than killing the other guy. Usually the best way of staying alive is to kill your opponent, but the Stormers don't think like that. All they were concerned with was killing the Thresher troops as quickly as possible, no matter what the cost to themselves was. This is not a natural way to think.
What do the technicians do to make some Stormers have free will while the others don't? Having free will must be the same as having a soul, so where do the souls come from? Creating Stormers is like playing at being a god and that is too much responsibility for anyone, even Slayer, especially Slayer! Still, that would suit him perfectly, wouldn't it? Being thought of as a god by creatures he has created. Maybe that is what Slayer is trying to do, get rid of all the people and replace them with creatures he has created.
Can you imagine a world full of creatures that obey his wishes without a second thought? No-one ever questioning him, disobeying him or challenging him! Slayer would finally have got the total control that he wants so much. A world full of Stormers would be my idea of Hell, but what would a Stormer think of Hell as? A place where they weren't told what to do, where they had to think for themselves?
I am never going to feel comfortable around Stormers and there is no way that I would ever work with one.
What have I just said? I am never going to get out of this place so there is no point in worrying about Stormers any more. I sometimes forget that I am a prisoner in this cell but I think that that might be because of the drugs. My grip on reality is getting weaker and it has to be the drugs that are doing it. I can't concentrate on what I am doing or where I am any more and my dreams are getting more vivid. I am dreaming of places I have never seen and people that look as though they are not from Mort. I dream of places where it doesn't rain all the time, where they have never heard of Slayer. There are times when I wish I could stay in my dreams and didn't have to come back to this bleak reality.
I should make the most of my dreams because they are all that I have now.