There were many things you could put yourself to, you realised as you left the alley way, as you ensured that the coat you had aquired was correctly set about your form. Maybe it was the time you had spent wearing robes that had you take a preference for such long, flowing attire. Maybe it was an old desire that had become subconscious by now to own one of these coats and nothing more than that. Maybe it was because the alternatives had been a dress and a childs clothes.
A cap or other form of hat would have been nice to go with this, though you immediately knew that it would be impossible to keep it on your head, due to how your head was now a smoothed bronze construction, that any hat would have slipped from. At least when you had to do anything that created any more wind resistance than merely walking around. Maybe you would get a hat for indoor use, to soften the appearance you bore. Maybe you would rely upon the fact you appeared so intimidating and do nothing of the sort. So many choices, so many options, so many possibilities.
It was strange, your mind was racing faster than it ever had before, with the implanted routines that you had been given doing little more than to assist in enforcing order to your thoughts. It was liberating, to know that you were now likely capable of carrying out any path of thought without distraction from it, without having to abandon it as you carried out other tasks.
That couldn't be a mere product of the work they had done on you though, could it?
"No," came your voice as you watched the sunlight continue to fade. "No amount of error could possibly have resulted in this, could it?"
The question remained unanswered in your mind, though you were fine with the concept of error being the product of perfection, knowing that they would never be able again to repeat such mistakes if it had been. It would make you unique, truly unique. The task at hand was another matter though, one that you had compiled a list of many possibilities for as you considered other matters, before discarding all but a few things. All but the things that seemed like they should have been the highest priorities.
You needed to find means to see more clearly than you did now, to optimise the high clarity vision to allow you to see in more than green. You wanted to experience the beauty of the world, every detail laid bare to you, with the added benefit of every other interaction being in subsequent higher detail.
You needed to find out what had happened to Pride, what had happened to the rest of the Enlightened. You needed to free them from the Clockworkers so that they would never have to go through whatever plans were in store for them. If only so they could be awed by what you had become, if only so that the Clockworkers would have to recapture them instead of focusing their efforts on you.
Finding out what had happened to Pride was more personal.
You realised now for the first time, that the sensation of his presence was absent, after all.
You needed to play your hand as a figure of power, knowing that you were eternal, that if this body was destroyed that you would likely regenerate your prior one gave you a very strong standing point, after all. Who was better to hold power, than one who understood its potential, one that could apply it logically and efficiently?
The best point to start however, was with Pride you decided.
Even like this, you felt that you should have some connection to him.
There were a few potential starting points for clues as to Pride's fate, one of them being the hideout that you had lingered in undetected for so long. At least until Anxiety had betrayed you, telling the man who had cracked her feeble little mind with whatever lies and promises, before he had turned up. The brief meeting you had with that man had been one in what he had put a bullet through your head, yet it had been enough. It had been enough for you to see that there was more to him than was on the surface.
Maybe it was the fleeting moment in what conscious thought fled that had given you this insight into him, this moment in what your physical form was damaged, in what your near-transcendent nature kicked in. You had been one of the next who would be given that status, one of the next who Pride would assist in mastering the means to walk in both this world and the world of the unconscious mind at the same time.
It was in that moment that you had seen something about him that was truly horrifying.
There wasn't just one of him.
There were countless minds within that body, raging away beneath the surface. Many minds with no clear soul, many minds that for that moment you could see him boiled away as they sought to rise to the surface yet could not ever hope to. You had seen a part of him that you knew even he was likely unaware of, that was likely invisible at all other times.
Anxiety on the other hand, when she had arrived several days later to finish her betrayal, was as unimpressive as ever.
Other than checking on the old hideout, there was the option of locating and assaulting one of their less public research stations, attempting to locate the prisons that they had kept secret for the most part, or...
Or maybe you'd just see how many Vultures you could find sleeping, then deliver a crate filled with them to their door.
Several people had gathered to point and stare at you while you pondered your choices, though they were of no signifigance right now. The question was, did you devote time to one of the places you had considered, or did you pursue another course of action to devote yourself to?
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Topic: They told me I could be anything... (Read 78904 times)