lu bixing's expression darkens, immediately, his fingers stilling where he's petting the cat. he's silent, for a long moment, as if gathering what he wants to say.
and, well.
the screen flickers. it's crazy how memories explain things. ]
[ the first time you remember seeing, you remember seeing a man, and you remember the glass and the liquid and his face. he's got scruff and wild hair, one blue eye and one gold, and he looked -he looked what you recognized even then as thrilled, when you locked eyes. or, well. eyes. you don't have eyes. you can see, though.
this man is your entire world. for five years, you get to know him from inside the tank. monoeye hawk, he is called, when he's on the phone, but you don't ever call him that - you're supposed to call him "dad". you see him, whenever you open your eyes. he's always there. and he interacts with you. he reads to you, he sings to you, he - brings you children's books that you're over immediately, that you find boring, because he tells you fairy tales about people like him. but that's not you. you're nothing. you're a series of nanomachines and sensors with a human consciousness strapped inside, held as delicately as a piece of glass.
you're not a person, really, until you're five years old, because when you're five years old, you start to look like him. like the people in the books, really, because you have a body, now. it's fragile, and delicate. you can't leave the tank, but you have ten fingers and ten toes, pale skin, hair. eyes. your senses are no longer confined to the machines that you know have held your consciousness up until this point, but the senses that make someone a "human" don't work. your father wanted to help you, so he taught you how to connect to the mental network, to sync with the cameras outside of the house, to see the planet that you live in. and you took that opportunity like a fish to water. enthusiastic to learn, desperately curious and confined to a tank, you learned. you learned enough to hack your dad's personal reading device, actually, and learned more about the world than he really wanted you to, hearing him mutter about changing his own reading material. it's funny, because the books that were supposed to be scary, or - about people kissing, they weren't, to you. they were just information, and your dad's reactions make you happy. you're just happy to see him. you're happy to see everything. you think you love the world.
--
it's not until you're eight years old that you disconnect from the wide open sensory systems, because you're able to open your own eyes for the first time. you're lifted from the tank, and taken to the world outside of glass. you are placed in a bed. your brain is in a body. a real, human body that works.
...doesn't it?
it doesn't.
simple tasks are impossible. it takes you days to learn how to lift a finger. it takes weeks to return to the personal device your father had taught you how to use in the tank. months, before you can at least sort of move your hand. you are constantly fighting your own body, trying to teach it how to breathe when you don't know how to, trying to keep your eyes open, trying to see the world, and you are so, so tired of fighting. you are only eight years old.
a world that was wide open to you was snatched away. you're so frustrated you want to scream and throw a tantrum - you are, after all, only eight, now - but you can't, because your body is too weak to thrash or scream. you experience pain for the first time, and you experience it in unending amounts. your love for the world, your curiosity, shrivels and dies; you hate existing. you hate the world; you feel jealousy and hatred for the people who walk and talk and breathe and live outside of your walls, and you know they'd look at you with horror, too.
one day, you use all of the strength in your tiny body to hack into the systems in the house, and you use the AIs to smash every single mirror in monoeye hawk's home. it takes you two hours and brings you no catharsis, even to know you won't ever have to look at this face that became yours. you give up on trying to look at cayley, give up trying to interact with people, with the outside, and you use your indextrous, useless hand to write, and draw, and doodle. you read books, on weaponry and mechs. you create plans for weapons that could destroy the whole world, and based on your calculations and studies, you know they would work.
your father doesn't know what to do with you, either. he thinks you don't see it, but you do, and you - even if you hate the entire world, even if you're miserable and painful and angry, you don't ever lash out at him. his kind, worried eyes, his demeanor - you can't, and he, the rascal, takes advantage of that and takes you outside in a wheelchair one day, much to your horror.
...but when it's just the two of you, you can't hurt him. and bit by bit, he starts to expose you to the world outside, and you start to take it in, again. you have to learn this, too, how to love, how to be human, how to care again.
one day, monoeye hawk gets a call that he has to leave. you've never been alone before - every time you opened your eyes, your dad was always there, caring for you. today, he's running around like a chicken with its head cut off, promising you over and over again he'll. be back, nagging you about something or the other, acting like he's going to leave and then turning right back around and returning to tell you something else, like a cat chasing its own tail. it's amusing, and though you have no verbal response for him, you can't help but faintly smile, affectionate, because you know this - you know you love your dad.
--
he's gone for 48 hours. it's not that long.
the automated wheelchair you live your days in is on a programmed path - and is going to drag you outside for your daily walk. at this point, you're used to it, but the idea of going outside without monoeye hawk terrifies you. you try to override the programming and steer the wheelchair back - it carries you along to the elevator in the house you always take to go to the ground level, and you reach up for the control panel on the elevator itself to try and stop it. your hands are shaking, always shaking, and they slip from the control panel, and the wheelchair errors, sticking in a handrail on the elevator itself. you have to try and wrench it out, and you are so, so weak that you're covered in sweat by the time you unstick the handle, and before you realize it -
the elevator kept going.
when the doors ding! they open not to the outside, but to the basement. six floors underground - with a digitally locked door marked with a skull and crossbones staring you in the face.
the lock is the same lock your father uses on all of his devices. you hacked this when you were still a brain and nothing else. you could get into this room, if you wanted. you just had to touch the lock.
curiosity flares in the back of your mind, for the first time in what feels like centuries. you lift your hands - your motor control is fine, now, it's just the shakes, your hands are just shaking, and as you access your personal device, you take thirty seconds to hack the door, and.
ding!
almost anticlimactic, it opens, and you're looking at the face of a girl. a child. in a glass tank.
only... it's not. her face is human - she has long hair that hangs free from her head, and her body is completely naked and exposed, but she's looking away, her arms at unnatural angles, held up by the mechanisms of what you know is a breeding tank, the same kind you grew up in. and - the lower half of her body isn't a human at all. it's a snake.
at the ding of the elevator door, her head turns, and it terrifies you. she looks at you, and her expression is listless, empty - apathetic, numb to every emotion, the inexplicable and utterly broken expression of human, human pain.
you don't even realize what you're doing. you stare at her, your heart pounding in your chest and you've moved. the security robot that must stand guard at the door is deactivated but it has, it has something, and you grab it, not even paying attention, you lift it -
your tiny fingers close unshaking around the trigger of a gun.
and you fire.
bang. the shot pierces through the glass and hits its target dead on, right in the center of the forehead - glass, liquid and blood explode backwards, showering the room as the snakelike woman jerks backwards, and you swear, you swear, she's smiling. as she jerks lifeless in the draining breeding tank, you realize in a jolt that you're standing out of your chair, and your body collapses, your useless legs hitting the ground, while your hands are still clutched around that still warm gun.
when they start shaking, you stare at it again.
No wonder I'm different from the rest of the world.
(the snake woman, with her constructed body, the way your body was made and not your own)
Everyone that's like me is here.
you lift the gun. you bring it up, your hands shaking so hard now that it's back to normalcy. you don't care. you don't want to be alive. you lift the gun, and you bring it up, up to your head, tears rolling down your cheeks, and as you're about to pull the trigger -
light flares through the room, as every single screen in this bizarre lab turns on, flooding the place with brightness. you blink, wide eyed and still crying, and as you look at the video screen you see - it's your dad.
"Bixing! Listen to me!" he shouts. it's cacophony - hes inside of a mech, barking directions and shouting at everyone around him, and he keeps looking back at the screen, at you, terrified and crying and about to shoot yourself in the head. you think, desperately, Why did you give birth to me? Why did you decide to keep me? Why did you raise me? Dad, living is too painful, but you haven't been able to speak for years and you can't voice a single word.
monoeye keeps talking. "Listen to me - I just need a little more time - two hours?! We haven't reached the transfer portal, make an emergency warp, I don't care how many times we've done it!!"
he's desperate. begging. begging you not to do it, not to pull the trigger. the signal is choppy and bad and you stare at your father's face, and you realize, his eyes are red because he's crying, too.
all of the lights turn off all at once.
you're left staring at the dead body of the snake woman, and the broken glass, hands shaking, and you wait for five minutes, caught in a moment of life or death, when monoeye hawk bursts through the door, crosses the room in half a moment, throws himself to the ground, and gathers you into a hug. (he turns his head and throws up because he made himself ill, too, but it's the thought that counts.)
the hug is awkward and uncomfortable and it hurts your body, but you drop the gun, and monoeye hawk kicks it away, and holds you. for two whole minutes, he holds you, unmoving, like he can cling you to life, because he loves you, and he wants you to be safe. he loves you.
your hands stop shaking. you only realize it because monoeye is shaking so hard that you're still.
... and slowly, you lift your hands. and slowly, slowly, you hug your father back. you bury your face in his shoulder, and silently, you cry, and hold onto him for - for dear life.
(he overexerted himself enough that this trip made him sick, and he spent days in bed. you tended to him, the best that you could, and when he was feeling well enough, monoeye hawk sat you down for a talk.
"The little girl you saw underground the other day was a specialty breed of the Eighth Galaxy; we stole her from a trafficker around the galaxy but couldn’t help her, so we just decided to keep her that way. Our Eighth Galaxy had suffered at the hands of the Rainbow Virus a hundred years ago--you remember Daddy told you this part of our galaxy’s history, right? After that, the Union never fulfilled their promise and tossed us all aside to die. There are plenty of other poor souls out there like that snake girl, and you were born in this world to save them. That’s why you’ll be like a caterpillar that sheds its skin time and time again until you evolve into a butterfly; you will go through trials after trials, and in the end…. maybe by the time you’re 50, you’ll be like a superhero. Of course, every trial will be difficult, like how you’re still getting used to your body right now, so will you be able to withstand the pain for the sake of the people that are waiting to be saved by you?"
this is such chicken soup for the soul bullshit that you know your dad has to be making things up. but years later, when the remnants of the nuwa project show their face in the eighth, you know at least the genetic experimentation, the human trafficking - all of that turned out to be true.)
[ as the memory ends, lu bixing is perfectly still and utterly tense, almost frozen in place. ]
[Zelgadis watches, speechless. There's a flicker of emotion in his eyes when he first sees that girl, and then again when the man bursts into the room and embraces the boy. There's a tension that lingers.
It takes a few moments for him to find any words.]
That girl... what was she?
[Because there was one word that immediately came to mind. She looked like a chimera.]
...A half human, half snake hybrid. Or, at least - an attempt at one.
[ his voice is very, very serious and soft, still looking in the direction of the screen. ]
I imagine what your Sage would have called a 'chimera'. A genetic experiment by a group of scientists called the Nuwa Project, aiming to do almost the exact same thing - playing God with human beings through genetic manipulation.
...in the barest sense of the word, there is. [ that darkness in his expression stays; he finally moves, though, shifting just enough to look at the cat in his lap and pet it on the top of the head, just for the sake of distraction. ]
Do you remember anything about the shadows, from the week that I executed Four?
...The strain of the Rainbow Virus that made me possible is the same one that allowed those genetic experiments to continue. It is capable of burning a body down to its barest components, rotting their cellular structure, and then using the shell of what's left to rebuild again. Like melting down iron and turning it into a sword.
[ it's easier to explain that information clinically and scientifically, at least, though lu bixing's cloudy expression hasn't changed. ]
...It is only through using strains of the virus to rebuild that any sort of genetic transfer was remotely successful. And it came at an impossible cause of pain and suffering to others with very rare success. You would have to be, quite literally, brought nearly to the point of death and then reconstructed, piece by painful piece, and every second that the Rainbow Virus existed could be a second that it leaks out of a lab and destroyed an entire galaxy.
...The virus itself was leaked from a laboratory in the Eighth Galaxy called the Reinberg Lab. The unchecked destruction of the Rainbow Virus killed 3.8 billion people, in the Eighth and inflicted suffering on countless billions of others. It's extremely contagious and extremely deadly and it took decades to get the infection under control in the normal population: that happened not long before I was born.
[ lu bixing delivers this in that same way - scientific, serious. quiet. he doesn't touch on the way he was 'born', for both of their sakes. ] Not only that, but once it was discovered it could be used in that way - [ a slight nod to where the screen sits ] - the people who ran the Nuwa Project began trafficking adult and children left and right to use as genetic experiments along with it. The death toll is staggeringly high.
[ he says, quietly. so. it's up to zelgadis, really, if it's hopeless, or not. ]
In certain conditions, it might be different. Under the hands of a different scientist. [ his own hands? is he arrogant enough to think that? lu bixing isn't sure. ] It wouldn't be easy, and there's no guarantee you'd survive it, either.
So... I don't know. Your condition was also caused by magic, and not by science. I wouldn't even begin to know where to start, with that.
It may be closer to science than magic, in some ways. Though executed with magic... the theory, the preparations, are scientific in nature.
[He stares into the darkness of the blank screen.]
... I've spoken to numerous chimera researchers on the subject. I remember one likened his craft to that of drinkmaking. Said that it's simple enough to combine ingredients, as he poured his juice into my ale... but to then remove the juice, and only the juice? It would simply be too difficult, to the point of calling it impossible. I'm sure it was the first nonalcoholic thing he'd had to drink all day... but I often remember that encounter.
[He ruined Zel's drink. And spilled juice on his clothes.]
I know well that any process to unmake a chimera would likely be a difficult one. That it could involve stripping this body down to its core components and remaking it. The pain and the risk... those are things I've prepared myself for a long time ago.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brief cw for suicide attempt / body horror
lu bixing's expression darkens, immediately, his fingers stilling where he's petting the cat. he's silent, for a long moment, as if gathering what he wants to say.
and, well.
the screen flickers. it's crazy how memories explain things. ]
[ as the memory ends, lu bixing is perfectly still and utterly tense, almost frozen in place. ]
no subject
It takes a few moments for him to find any words.]
That girl... what was she?
[Because there was one word that immediately came to mind. She looked like a chimera.]
no subject
[ his voice is very, very serious and soft, still looking in the direction of the screen. ]
I imagine what your Sage would have called a 'chimera'. A genetic experiment by a group of scientists called the Nuwa Project, aiming to do almost the exact same thing - playing God with human beings through genetic manipulation.
no subject
Even in distant worlds... the same thing. I wish I were more surprised.
... Was there -- [His voice is quiet, and it falters for a moment.] is there a way to reverse it?
no subject
...in the barest sense of the word, there is. [ that darkness in his expression stays; he finally moves, though, shifting just enough to look at the cat in his lap and pet it on the top of the head, just for the sake of distraction. ]
Do you remember anything about the shadows, from the week that I executed Four?
no subject
I remember something about a virus and a vaccine...
[And a chorus of desperate, pleading voices. The melting shadows. The syringe.]
no subject
[ it's easier to explain that information clinically and scientifically, at least, though lu bixing's cloudy expression hasn't changed. ]
...It is only through using strains of the virus to rebuild that any sort of genetic transfer was remotely successful. And it came at an impossible cause of pain and suffering to others with very rare success. You would have to be, quite literally, brought nearly to the point of death and then reconstructed, piece by painful piece, and every second that the Rainbow Virus existed could be a second that it leaks out of a lab and destroyed an entire galaxy.
no subject
But that... then there is a way, it just...
[He wants to rationalize it. He wants to make it work in theory. Because he needs it to work. Something has to work.]
-- What do you mean, an entire galaxy?
no subject
[ lu bixing delivers this in that same way - scientific, serious. quiet. he doesn't touch on the way he was 'born', for both of their sakes. ] Not only that, but once it was discovered it could be used in that way - [ a slight nod to where the screen sits ] - the people who ran the Nuwa Project began trafficking adult and children left and right to use as genetic experiments along with it. The death toll is staggeringly high.
One little life, traded for billions of others.
no subject
[It's an unfathomable number of people. Billions.
...]
That's it, then...? It's hopeless?
no subject
[ he says, quietly. so. it's up to zelgadis, really, if it's hopeless, or not. ]
In certain conditions, it might be different. Under the hands of a different scientist. [ his own hands? is he arrogant enough to think that? lu bixing isn't sure. ] It wouldn't be easy, and there's no guarantee you'd survive it, either.
So... I don't know. Your condition was also caused by magic, and not by science. I wouldn't even begin to know where to start, with that.
no subject
[He stares into the darkness of the blank screen.]
... I've spoken to numerous chimera researchers on the subject. I remember one likened his craft to that of drinkmaking. Said that it's simple enough to combine ingredients, as he poured his juice into my ale... but to then remove the juice, and only the juice? It would simply be too difficult, to the point of calling it impossible. I'm sure it was the first nonalcoholic thing he'd had to drink all day... but I often remember that encounter.
[He ruined Zel's drink. And spilled juice on his clothes.]
I know well that any process to unmake a chimera would likely be a difficult one. That it could involve stripping this body down to its core components and remaking it. The pain and the risk... those are things I've prepared myself for a long time ago.