Network Gene Evangelion
Adventure Seeker SHINJI on a cyber dungeon quest
Shinjji would never have accepted this assignment, had he known what was in store for him. Actually, he would have -- but that was before his spine was replaced (along with much of his body) in the process that turned him into EVA/SEEKER unit 01. Now, functionally immortal, he increasingly understands the reason that he must succeed.
INCOMING DATA: The year is 2323, approximately. After the Fall (known also as the Infocalypse, the Exodus, or the End of the Epoch of BABEL), all known sources of the Network Gene 'Evangelion' (phenotype indice LOG-05) have been destroyed, and the data needed to produce such a gene is contained only inside the SEELE network, for which it is required to access. Over time, the network (by was of a collective semibiological artificial intelligence known as GIS/HUR) has come to decide that mankind's frequent attempts to access SEELE without LOG-05 is an organized cracking attempt perpetrated on a large scale by several thousand biological humanoids, and has determined to send its self-healing self-generating guardians (known as ANGELs) to kill anyone attempting to access the SEELE network or get outside The MACHINE (the autonomous self-modifying Dyson sphere that houses the SEELE hardware). The NERV/e project has been sponsored by the largest corporation in the Machine, Ikari Heavy Industries, and consists of modifying human pilots (those with certain neurogenetic mutations that allow these modifications to work) into posthuman morovek-men capable of destroying the ANGELs. These cyborgs, known as SEEKERs, are a maximum of 16 years old, due to the timeframe during which the mutation first stabilized. The only human with the LOG-05 gene is thought to beEOL
EOF
Disconnected. Connection reset by peer.
Shinji (he still refused to think of himself as SEEKER/01) has been walking for weeks. He has been walking, and waiting, and wondering, and wandering, and thinking, and searching (NOT seeking). The Machine is sometimes dirty, noisy, hot, cold, comforting, or dangerous, but a SEEKER is the only one who finds it lonely. A SEEKER is the only one who is nutty enough to live outside a group, and a SEEKER is the only one quick enough to live outside a group for very long.
As he wandered through the maze of twisty little passages (all alike), he considered that the loneliness, in a way, was the reason he signed up. He had always been alone, eve in a group; he had felt that way for so long that he had convinced himself that he enjoyed his solitude -- that he wanted to be truly alone, away from others, isolated, an island. He ruminated on this as he passed a larger-than-average bundle of undulating tubes and humming machinery. Stopping, he peeked around behind the mechanism to detect danger. What he found was a clone nursery (broken, obviously) whose sold living occupant was about his age (his data lookup -- about time it came in handy -- noted that she had thhe same mutation as he did, and his eyetap filter tactfully avoided her small breasts just as he had programmed it to), with blue hair (his surrogate body replaced his natural blue with a more normal brown) and, he assumed, red eyes (like his old ones; the mutation caused albinism of a very specific type, and one of the design considerations in his body was to allow him to blend in. The eyes he was given were yellow -- not very blending, but it avoided the problem off being targeted due to the mutations, and besides, gold contacts simply work better), and she seemed to be quickly dying. Without really considering what he was doing, he extended a direct line to the clone system, and with a quick debugging and recompilation, he had fixed the girl (though it was necessary to configure it to implant devices similar to his own, to replace ruptured or improperly manufactured organs) and got the machine to do the same to all subsequent clones.
Gasping, the girl opened her eyes, and Shinji reflexively popped open the tube's hatch lock-bolt, draining the tube through its bottom as the hatch opened. She fell out, gasping for breath, and wondering what was happening. She looked at him questioningly, and in response, he made a direct hardline connection and transferred the necessary data for communication and some basic axiomatic knowledge. He left the name field empty (a null terminator). Oddly, due to another bug in the system, she interpreted her name as zero. The japanese pronounciation... it fits, strangely.
"My name is... Rei?" She asked, feeling the qualia of speaking for the first time.
"Yes."
A/N: Just an idea I'm playing with. A semi-crossover AU, with a BLAME-like universe. And yes, short chapter. If you want me to continue, say so in your review.