Memories are our most potent weapons, and false memories cut deepest of all.
— GENERAL AGAMEMNON,
New Memoirs
He was a prisoner without a body, trapped in limbo. The only break in the monotony of half existence came from occasional bursts of pain, images, or sounds when the other cymeks bothered to apply thoughtrodes to his sensor apparatus.
Sometimes Quentin could see the actual horrors around him; on other occasions, in his bath of pure electrafluid, he found himself adrift with memories and ghosts in a sea of longing thoughts.
He wondered if this was what life had been like for Wandra for so many years, trapped and disconnected, unable to respond or interact with her surroundings. Buried alive, like he had been on Ix. If her experience was anything like this, Quentin wished he had given her the blessing of a peaceful end long ago.
He had no way of telling time, but it seemed as if an eternity passed. The Titan Juno continued to speak tauntingly yet soothingly, guiding him through what she called “a typical adjustment.” Eventually, he learned to block the worst of the phantom pain caused by nerve induction. Though it still felt as if his arms, legs, and chest were being bathed in molten lava, he had no real body that could experience the suffering. The sensations were all in his imagination— until Agamemnon applied direct inducers that sent waves of agony through every contour of his helpless disembodied brain.
“Once you stop fighting what you are,” Juno said, “once you accept that you are a cymek and part of our new empire, then I can show you alternatives to these sensations. Just as pain is now readily triggered, you have pleasure centers as well— and believe me, they can be most enjoyable. I remember the delights of sex in the human form— in fact, I indulged in it quite frequently before the Time of Titans— but Agamemnon and I have discovered many techniques that are vastly superior. I look forward to showing them to you, my pet.”
The odd secondary-neos who had once tended the Ivory Tower Cogitors trundled about their business, beaten and discouraged. They had adjusted to their new situation, but Quentin swore that he would never submit. He wanted nothing better than to kill all of the cymeks around him, even if it led to his own death. He didn’t care anymore.
“Good morning, my pet.” Juno’s words thrummed into his mind. “I’ve come to play with you again.”
“Play with yourself,” he responded. “I can offer plenty of suggestions, but they are all anatomically impossible, since you no longer have an organic body.”
Juno found this amusing. “Ah, but now we’re also freed of organic flaws and weaknesses. We are limited only by our imagination, so nothing is truly ‘anatomically impossible.’ Would you like to try something unusual and enjoyable?”
“No.”
“Oh, be assured, you could never have done it in your old meat, but I guarantee you’ll like it.”
He tried to refuse, but Juno’s articulated arms lifted toward him, and she manipulated the thoughtrode inputs. Suddenly Quentin was awash in a whirlpool of exotic, breathtakingly pleasurable sensations. He couldn’t gasp or moan, couldn’t even tell her to stop.
“The best sex is mostly in the mind anyway,” Juno said. “And now you are entirely mind… and mine.” She hit him again, and the avalanche of ecstasy was even more intolerable than the spikes of incredible pain they had inflicted on him in his earlier punishment phase.
Quentin clung to his loving memories of Wandra. She had been so alive, so beautiful when they’d first fallen in love, and even though that was decades ago, he held on to the recollections, like beautiful strands of ribbon from a priceless gift. He had no desire for any form of sex with this vicious Titan female, even if it was all in his mind. It corrupted his honor and shamed him.
Juno sensed his reaction. “I can make this sweeter if you’d like.” Suddenly, with a pulse of vivid awakening, Quentin saw himself with the ghost of his body again, surrounded by visual input painted directly from his past. “I can stir your recollections, pet, reawakening thoughts stored within your brain matter.”
As a renewed wave of orgasms rocked the core of his brain, he envisioned nothing but Wandra, young, healthy, and vital, so different from the frozen mannequin he had seen for the past thirty-eight years in the City of Introspection.
Just having her in front of him again the way she had been gave him more pleasure than all the eruptions of stimuli that Juno playfully and sadistically released into his mind. Now Quentin reached out to Wandra, longingly— and Juno maliciously cut off the sensations and images, leaving him suspended in a dark limbo again. He couldn’t even see the cymek’s walker-form in the cold chamber.
Only her voice came, taunting and then seductive. “You really should join us voluntarily, you know, Quentin Butler. Can you not see the advantages of being a cymek? There are many things we could do. Next time perhaps, I’ll even add myself to the images, and then we’ll have a remarkably playful time.”
Quentin could not shout at her to go away and leave him alone. He was left in a sensory-deprived silence for an interminable time, more disoriented than ever, his anger stalled against an insurmountable barrier.
He kept replaying over and over again what he had just experienced, how he wanted to be with Wandra again in the same way. It was a perverse thought, but so powerfully compelling that it frightened and delighted him at the same moment.
* * *
HIS TORMENT SEEMED to last centuries, but Quentin knew that his grasp on time and reality was suspect. His only anchor to the real universe was the thought of his previous life in the Army of the Jihad— and his passionate search for a way to attack the Titans, to hurt them even a fraction as much as they had hurt him.
As a disembodied victim, he could not escape, would not even try. He was no longer human, had lost his body, and could never return to the life he had previously known. He did not want to see his family or his friends. Better for history to record that he had been killed by cymeks on Wallach IX.
What would Faykan think if he could see his brave father as nothing more than a floating brain in a preservation canister? Even Abulurd would be ashamed to see him now… and what of Wandra? Despite her vegetative trance, would she react with horror to see her husband converted into a cymek?
Quentin was trapped on Hessra while the Titans hammered at his thoughts and loyalties. Despite his greatest efforts to resist them, he wasn’t entirely certain how successful he was at keeping his secrets. If Juno disconnected his external sensors and pumped false images and sensations through his thoughtrodes, how could he ever be sure of himself?
The cymeks finally installed him inside a small walker-form like the ones the neos utilized to go about their business in the towers on Hessra. Juno lifted her articulated arms, seated Quentin’s brain canister in the socket of a mechanical body. She used delicate digits to manipulate the controls, adjusting thoughtrodes. “Many of our neos consider this to be the time of their rebirth, when they are first able to take steps in a new walker.”
Though his voice synthesizer was fully connected, Quentin refused to respond. He remembered the pathetic and deluded people on Bela Tegeuse, who could have been rescued long ago; instead they had turned on their would-be rescuers, summoning Juno, willing to sacrifice even comrades for the chance to become cymeks— like this.
Did those fools have any idea? How could anyone ask for this? They believed that becoming a cymek offered them a kind of immortality… but this was not life, just an unending hell.
Agamemnon entered the chamber in his smaller walker-body. Juno stood beside the Titan general. “I’ve nearly completed the installation, my love. Our friend is about to take his first steps, like a newborn.”
“Good. Then you will see the full potential of your new situation, Quentin Butler,” Agamemnon said. “Juno has assisted you so far, and I’ll continue to be your benefactor, though eventually we will ask for certain considerations in return.”
Juno connected the last of the thoughtrodes. “Now you have access to this walker-form, pet. It is a different sort of body from what you are used to. You spent your former life trapped in an unwieldy lump of meat. Now you’ll have to learn to walk all over again, to stretch these mechanical muscles. But you’re a bright boy. I’m sure you can learn— “
Quentin unleashed himself in a frenzy, not clear how to guide or direct his body. He thrashed with the mechanical legs, lunging forward, lurching to the side. He threw himself at Agamemnon, clattering and striking. The Titan general dodged out of the way as Quentin went berserk.
But he could not control his movements well enough to inflict any damage. The limbs and bulky body core did not move as he imagined they would. His brain was accustomed to operating two arms and two legs, but this vessel was an arachnid form. Random impulses made his sharpened legs jitter and strike out in the wrong direction. Though he struck Juno a glancing blow and drove himself forward again into Agamemnon, his minor success was purely accidental.
The Titan general swore, not out of fear but annoyance. Juno moved forward swiftly and delicately. Her articulated arms extended, and though Quentin thrashed about, the female cymek succeeded in disconnecting the thoughtrodes that gave him motivational power over his machine body.
“Such a disappointment,” she scolded him. “Exactly what did you hope to accomplish?”
Realizing that she had accidentally disconnected his voice synthesizer, she applied the appropriate thoughtrode again, and Quentin shouted, “Bitch! I’ll tear you apart and pierce your demented brain!”
“That’s quite enough,” Agamemnon said, and Juno disconnected the voice synthesizer again.
Her looming walker-form pressed closer to the optic threads Quentin used. “You are a cymek now, my pet. You belong with us, and the sooner you accept that reality, the less misery you’ll endure.”
Quentin knew deep inside that there could be no salvation, no escape. He could never be human again, but the idea of what he had become sickened him.
Juno stalked around, her voice warm and flirtatious. “Everything has changed. You wouldn’t want your brave sons to see you like this, would you? Your only opportunity lies in helping us achieve a new Time of Titans. From now on, and forever, you must forget your former family.”
“We are your family now,” Agamemnon said.