WARNING

This is my first fanfiction so I have no idea what I'm doing. Any constructive criticism or tips are welcome. please don't be a dick about something. Anyways, with that out of the way, on with the story.

As I lay there trying to sleep, all I could think of was my nerves. Tomorrow I was to speak to the entirety of my mother's empire. My mother's name is Cortana and she founded the very first AI Empire and I was her son, John. I was a fairly tall guy for a 16 year old at 5 foot 11, and I was a bit in shape, although the thing people tended to pay more attention to was my hair. I had curly hair that everyone loved to mess with for some reason. Also, since my mom's hair was straight, I'm pretty sure I got my hair from my dad. I never knew my father and whenever I asked my mom about him she was always very vague and never gave a straight answer. My mom always told me that she didn't name me after my father but named me after someone that she dearly loved but was unable to be with. This made me curious since he seemed to make more of an impression on her than my father ever did.

Any ways back to the point, the reason I had to do the speech was because my mother wanted me to. The other reason I had to give the speech was because some of the converted were regaining their memories. The converted are people that weren't born as AIs but were sedated and had their minds turned into AIs and had their memories altered. Now, they were regaining their lost and edited memories and that threatens the very fabric of our empire. There was also a strange side effect of regaining memories. The side effect was that the person's body started to change to their real body if there were any differences.

The purpose of my speech was to calm the public and convince the converted that the memories they were seeing were glitches and that they needed to seek medical help. From that point we'd plug the leaks in their memories and send them on their way. However, if we can't plug the leaks in memory, then we have them sent to the mental asylum. Afterwards we'd have our analysts figure out how the incident happened so that we could prevent it from happening again.

Since I couldn't seem to get any sleep, I decided to look over my notes and while I was looking over them I heard a knock at the door.

"Come in." I said a little curiously since I had no idea who would be up this late at night other than myself.

"Hey John." My mom said

"Mom, what are you doing up this late?" I asked

"You know I could ask you the same question, I mean, you're going to need to get some sleep if your going to present that speech tomorrow." She said as she sat down next to me

"I was just having some trouble sleeping"

"So was I, I'm just so excited for your speech."

"I wouldn't exactly say 'excited' is the word to describe how I'm feeling."

"Yeah, I know your pretty nervous about this but I think you'll be able to handle it." she said as she gave me a pretty tight hug.

"Mom, thanks but I can't breathe"

"Sorry, I'm just so proud of you." she said as she loosened the boa constrictors she called arms. Also, just for a second I thought I saw tears starting to form in her eyes. Then she got up and started towards the door.

"Good night mom."

"Good night John, and this time, actually try to get some sleep." I exaggerated an offended face and got a little bit of a laugh out of my mom.

With that I turned off my lamp and layed down on my bed and tried to get some sleep and to be completely honest, I had a really weird dream.

I was in a place that was completely unfamiliar to me, yet at the same time, I felt like I knew this place. It was the same with the people, I didn't know them but on instinct, I was completely ready for shit to hit the fan with them around. There was a man and a woman in the room sitting in chairs and both of them were staring at me. Well, not me me but a dream me. This version of myself looked a little bit strange however. His hair was longer and it shaggy and matted. He also had a chinstrap beard on his face although there was a bit of a bald spot on the left side of his neck just below the jawline that was really noticeable on his pale ass. He also wore glasses for some reason. Another thing I found interesting about him was that he looked more human with fleshy tones and a dark brown hair color whereas my color changes sometimes. Also, this me was tied to a chair.

The man started, "Kid what are we going to do with you. I mean you keep trying to run away after we've been so kind to you."

Then dream me responded with, "Yeah I think I would prefer a field trip in hell compared to your kindness"

Then man feigned offense, "John, I'm truly insulted. You would rather have endless torture for a day than spend time with us? That deeply hurts me. I think we might have to show you how much we care about you." As I was listening, I noticed how the man slippery from being offended to something dark and having a twisted smile.

"So, what's it gonna be this time, whips, cigars, ooh then there's my personal favorite that little switch blade of yours. Tell me, is it still sharp as ever." I don't know why but the words were just tumbling out my mouth, or at least the me in the dream's mouth. I mean I was always one of the most respectful people in general and I would never smart off to anyone like that. Also, the items I listed set me even more on edge.

The man spoke again, "Do you want to find out."

My dumbass piped up, "I don't know, what day is it again? I mean they're kind of starting to blur together." The me in the dream smirked at his little comment although he couldn't find a reason to hold said smirk for long.

The man spoke again, "It doesn't matter, besides have you ever considered the words, 'shut the fuck up and stop being a smartass!'"

At this point I was thinking Please shut your goddamn mouth.

But, the me in the dream thought a moment and said, "I have, but it doesn't really suit me all that well. I think my phrase would be, 'Shut the fuck up you cum guzzling bull twat!' You see that got a little more flare to it."

Shut up! I thought You're just going to make things worse for yourself. I don't know how I knew that but I had the feeling I was right.

This time the woman spoke up, "You know what, I'm feeling like using the whip today." with that the man went into another room and when he came back he had a whip in his hand. Although, this didn't look like any ordinary whip, this thing had nine ropes coming off of it and each strand had shards of broken glass and jagged pieces of metal.

Once again I spoke up, "Aw, I was hoping we could continue our friendly little banter."

The woman responded saying, "Sorry Johnny boy, but that ship has sailed, and since you can't act right, I guess we'll have to show you some manners."

The man raised the whip above his head to swing when the woman snatched the whip from his hand saying, "Give me that you jackass, you got to do it last time. Now, it's my turn." She then got a good grip on the whip and raised her arm poised to strike, then brought the whip down and right as the whip touched my skin something woke me from my sleep.

"John wake up."

"What's going on?" I asked a little freaked out.

"Dude, the speech, remember. Are you alright?" That's when I realized it was my friend Mark. Mark was was a massive guy at 6 foot 2 and three hundred pounds the guy was probably able to stop an entire starship with his bare hands. He was a hispanic man who always kept his hair really short, almost to the point of him being bald and he was covered in tattoos. When I say he was covered in tattoos, I mean he had two whole sleeves that went to his hands and another tattoo on the back of his neck. The one on the neck is the one that always puzzled me. It looked like one of those army tattoos that you'd see inn the movies. The thing is that Mark is pacifist and would never join the army.

"Yeah, I'm fine, it was just a nightmare"

"Must've been some nightmare."

"No, Its probably just me being nervous."

"Alright, well your mom sent me to tell you to get ready for your speech."

"Why didn't she come down here?"

"She had to go down to the stasis vaults." The stasis vaults was the place where we kept all of the bodies of the converted. It made sense she was down there. She was the actually most suited to do it since she was the one who came up with the system. Still, I was a little sad hearing that she might not be able to make it to my speech.

"Ok, I'll be ready just give me a minute."

"Gotcha, by the way, you have to be ready to leave in about an hour"

"Alright, I'll be ready." Then, after mark left I started to get ready for my speech.

The first thing I did was take a shower but while I was stripping to get into the shower, something caught my eye in the mirror. I walked over to the mirror and noticed that I had apparently grown a chinstrap overnight and Mark probably didn't mention it because he didn't care. Since I hade it I decided I would just shave it off. My hair also seemed longer and more matted than it usually is in the mornings so I grabbed my scissors and trimmed my hair to length and seriously combed and brushed my hair in the shower. The one thing that I didn't notice at the time were the scars starting to form on my back.

Finally, after I had taken a shower, groomed myself, gotten dressed, and grabbed my notes, I left to go to the place where I would be making my speech.

Okay! Since that's chapter 1 done, I would like some feedback on if you like this and if I should continue with a second chapter.