02: Absence

The pervasive stench of antiseptic suffocated Lain's lungs. The steadfast metronome of the electrocardiogram undercut the muffled cacophony beyond the door: a microcosm of rushing paramedics and anxious faces. In a strangely empathetic bond, she understood every spectrum of emotion experienced by the individuals inside this structure of steel and concrete, a portal between two discrete dimensions: the living and the dead. Seeing the patient next to her, who had been immersed in a stupefied coma for the past two months, she decided that perhaps the line was indistinct after all.

To Lain, this building was the epicenter of her fear. Her father's chest heaved up and down, in synchronization of his sharp inhalations and exhalations and the plastic transparent breathing mask, which half-fogged and cleared.

Although he was immersed in a drug-induced stupor, the wrinkles appeared more pronounced than she remembered. His muscles were tense in expectation of pain. Her father was apathetic about his condition ever since her parents had divorced. Lain only remembered the faintest of memories about her mother: a daisy-patterned camise, a penchant for gaudy jewelry, broken shards of vodka glass. She didn't recall a single time her mother had embraced her or played with her, and the single time they held hands, she only remembered the detached coldness of her mother's fingers. Her mother's debaucherous lifestyle had cost more than her parents' marriage, but a portion of her father's heart.

She remembered the thick smog lingering in the morning air, caused by her father's chain-smoking. Despite her memory being littered by his brief spouts of depression, her love for her father was remarkable. They shared an empathetic bond closer than father and daughter. They cared for each other mutually, but they were both fiercely independent individuals, and they both respected their privacy. In a sense, Lain's childhood had been skipped. Even as a child, her eyes glowed with a reserved, precocious cognizance that most adults did not possess. In return, her father never treated her like a child. A pupil, perhaps, but never a child.

Now she was the caretaker, and the task shook her to her very core.

Ironically, seeing him in his trance-like state, she knew that she was suffering more than he was from his pain. She endured a psychological haunting that was deeper than any corporeal damage.

"Lain..." he gasped, his croaking voice no more audible than a whisper. She jolted awake. "Take off my mask."

"You're insane." He proceeded to do so himself, and Lain had no choice but to consent. As she lifted his breathing mask, she couldn't help but notice the fatigued surrender in his dark eyes and the translucent tubes inserted in his nose.

"M-medication," he croaked. "Bag... in the right corner."

Lain wrinkled her eyebrows in hesitation. "The nurses should... If you need morphine, I'll call them—"

"Don't bother." Something felt wrong. There came a resolute silence. His labored heaving reminded her of Darth Vader or a firefighter with an oxygen mask, only each breath was chalked with struggle. Every heartbeat was a countdown.

"I know... you're not denying the last wish from an old man on his deathbed." A lump forming in her throat, she approached the bag in the corner. Her fingers fumbled when she found the tablets in the left pocket. The moment her eyes set on them, they slipped through her paralyzed fingers. Hastily, she picked them up and before she knew she what was doing, she had already inserted the tablet into his mouth.

"This world we live in... has surpassed physical boundaries." Yet here he was, so addicted to corporeal attachments that... that he didn't even regret his decisions that brought him to his deathbed amid the euphoria in his hallucinations.

"That wasn't medication, was it?" she whispered in realization. She stared into space, her eyes avoiding the inscribed Lucy on the colorful tablets. "These are... hallucinogens. Is it LSD? Psilocytin? Mescaline?" Her only answer was his arduous breathing. Her eyes were glossy with incredulity.

He made a strange clicking noise with his throat. "Viruses are particles with coded DNA. Outside of a living host, they are dead. Inside another living being, they infect, destroy and spread, programmed for survival." This was her father, all right, feeding her biological lectures on his deathbed instead of heartfelt clichés about life regrets and accomplishments.

"Words are categorizations of the limitations humans have placed upon themselves. Alive? Dead? Right? Wrong? Justice? Inequality? Virtual? Tangible? Perspective? Reality? We live in an era where the delineations of society are unraveling. Is the virtual dimension of technology so disconnected from our own?"

Her eyes glossy, Lain could no longer contain the sickening disgust in her chest. "Spare me the shit. I wish you gave a fuck about the fact that you're dying."

"I can see it in your eyes. You're a smart child, Lain. I knew it from the first time I saw your face."

"Good night, father." The door slammed.

Three years later, Lain crouched before the retinal scan. She did not flinch when a thin red laser scanned her gray iris. A light flashed green and a large keypad was revealed. The password was so familiar to her fingers that everything became one fluid motion. 93HDMW. All the security measures were expensive, but they occupied nothing but a miniscule portion of the project budget.

"Identity confirmed. Please proceed with caution."

A camouflaged door snapped open, revealing a corridor bathed in a gentle cerulean light from motion-sensored fluorescent lights. The clicks from her heels echoed in the metal-reinforced walls, and halted as she approached an ordinary high-tech luxury room: a flatscreen plasma television, automatic massage sofas, an electronic slideshow, a disguised electronic aquarium, and a personal PC. On first glance, it appeared like a typical personal computer, and it was. Hers.

Before the dazzling array of electronic clownfish, stargrass, seahorses, even rays, Lain was not in the least impressed. There were so many glitches to the program that she had invented when she was a bored child. The plants never grew another millimeter. Tropical and freshwater fish lived harmoniously. Rays of artificial light penetrated the water at all the same angles. Despite its obvious flaws, her father was so proud of her pixilated project that he took her to the national aquarium the day after she finished. Her father.

She pressed her forefinger on the crawling snail, her middle finger on a white pebble, her ring finger on a strand of seaweed, and her pinky on green algae. After holding her fingers there for five seconds, the aquarium disappeared, the panels now black and empty. Two doors slid open, revealing the faces of two very disgruntled friends.

"Gentlemen," she addressed with open hands.

"We've been waiting for you for an hour," one of the Matsumoto brothers hissed through his teeth.

"Forgive me." Her tone was not apologetic in the least. She stepped through the doors before they closed. Before her was the marvelous sight of two years of hard work. The metal supercomputer before her was more massive than most, a suspended sphere with an entangled mass of wires connecting it to five monitors. A mechanical cacophony of beeps and clicks welcomed her entrance. For Lain, this was home.

"How is Patient 07 proceeding?" She sank into a chair next to one of the massive monitors.

"Involuntarily enrolled in the psyche ward of Domino Hospital. Diagnosed for schizophrenia."

"Patient 09?"

"Escaped from his residential apartment four days ago. Presumed dead once quite an amount of blood was found near a bar."

She gave a soft but audible sigh. "This won't do. Let me see the data collected on them." After her eyes skimmed the waves of information, she removed her glasses, closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Project S632 was falling apart even though Plan A had only begun a few months prior.

This world we live in... has surpassed physical boundaries.

She understood her father's words now. A wealth of information was now present in a virtual dimension parallel to our own. In a sense, it had become alive. Technology had reached a potential where tangible reality could never compare, much less surpass.

Viruses are particles with coded DNA. Outside of a living host, they are dead. Inside another living being, they infect, destroy and spread, programmed for survival.

Her initial interpretation had been quite literal: play dirty. Use virtual viruses. Then she realized the real message: the line between life and death had never been distinct. If that was true, the possibilities were endless.

We live in an era where the delineations of society are unraveling. Is the virtual dimension of technology so disconnected from our own?

Then she understood. The evolution of humankind. The ultimate sacrifice. The key to immortality. In the beginning, she would only take baby steps. She could spare selected humans from the chains of a transient existence by digitizing their minds. Her first patient was her father's mind. Before his release from his miserable suffering, she had attached her father's mind to the supercomputer. Every one of his memories became a file. Every nuance of his personality was recorded. His neural synapses were now electrical signals.

Then she hit a roadblock. She lacked the space and the skill to solidify all the data. For now, his immeasurable data stayed only as incomprehensible data. She could not even reconstruct the tiniest trace of his identity as a hologram or image. The original plan had to be breached. An alternative was compulsory. He needed a perfect host, a new body. The transfer was what bothered her. If a single variable went wrong, her father's data could be destroyed, harmed, or deemed unusable. If the original host struggled against the invasion of the new identity, results may be catastrophic. However, she would afford no mistakes.

Guinea pigs and careful experimentation was essential. After days, weeks and months of analyzing her father's data, she imitated her father's memories from her own programs. Technically speaking, she was able to construct artificial memories. However, they were nothing but numbers and figures outside of a living host. Inside a living human already with its own experiences and memories, these false creations were parasitic. Viruses. Tweaking this program, she gathered three guinea pigs, wasted hoodlums fated for a miserable life. The first two suffered from extreme confusion, even leading to an identity crisis or amnesia. However, the third was more or less successful. After being released from an asylum for reporting conflicting memories, the virus eventually prevailed. A clean childhood, dutiful parents, and a professional occupation replaced the individual's original memories of bullying, drugs and violence.

The ability to delete and recreate memories... the possibilities were endless. An autocratic government with absolute control over the people. If her inventions were discovered, the world may collapse into chaos. That was why it was imperative Project S632 remained top-classified.

Next came something even more difficult: the manipulation of one's personality. This outcome was an indistinct mix of different variables: genes, environment, parenting, personal choices, etc. She gathered six more patients, all with a careful history of violence, drugs and sex. The virus was intended to make them more subservient towards the law. The results, schizophrenia and death, were not expected.

There were possibilities of how the virus could be destroyed and their original memories and personalities restored. For that to occur, however, they needed to attain the original hosts and link them to the supercomputer. It was a precautionary step used for Patient 05, who experienced seizures during a coma during the transfer.

Lucky Patient 03 had benefited from the experiment. The others... She decided that casualties were necessary. The guinea pigs should be honored that they were cornerstones to a deciding factor in humankind's fate. Besides, they would have succumbed to lives of meaninglessness anyhow.

She looked through her meticulously crafted program again. There were no errors. It was perfect. She could not comprehend in the least why this was not succeeding. Perhaps there was a variable she had not consid—

"Hanari, I just discovered something in Kaiba's system that you may find interesting."

She snapped, "What?" She did not appreciate her train of thoughts being interrupted so abruptly.

"I think that... Gozaburo Kaiba had his mind digitized when Seto Kaiba usurped his control."

"Impossible. Then why isn't he the ruler of the world?"

"Seto Kaiba foiled his plan. Actually, this little kid named Noah did."

"Noah?" The name seemed oddly familiar.

"Noah Kaiba. Gozaburo's real son, who died when he was ten in a freak accident. Gozaburo saved Noah's mind in a digital reality."

"Interesting."

There was an awkward hesitation. "Perhaps we can ask Seto Kai—"

Lain swerved her chair around and glared at the plump Matsumoto straight in the eye threateningly. "Don't you dare consider it. Revealing our project after we've hijacked his system is completely out of the question. This is the end of the discussion, do you understand me?" The younger brother shriveled under her hard glare and consented gingerly.

"Perhaps our patients do not have a strong enough will to survive. Maybe they suffer from emotional distress, and stronger guinea pigs are needed."

"What are you saying, Hanari?" From the pressure on her chest, the gravity of this project almost seemed physical. For a moment, she had doubts. What if she failed? What if the millions and millions that had been poured into this project had gone completely to waste? What if she made a single, irreversible mistake? Humans had been bound to their palpable lives of mortality since the eve of time. What gave her, Hanari Lain, the right to transform that?

But she brushed away the endless negative possibilities, leaving only her resolute will behind. She remembered her father's approving smile, his rough voice, and his absolute confidence in his daughter.

"Use me."

I think I'm going to tone down the vocabulary from here, in case it's interfering with the interpretation of the story. I hope it's not too fast-paced, and I'm hoping to include more of Lain's flaws from here on out.

Reviews will be more than adored, encouraging or not. If anyone has any good YGO fics to recommend, feel free to do so.