Chapter 2: The Nightmare Bank

After several minutes admiring the sinister beauty from the other side of his window, Aster quickly realized the time and grabbed his holopad in a desperate panic from his bedside cabinet. He stopped. Suddenly he remembered. The Memory Bank. He replaced the holopad softly onto his bed and walked slowly to the other side of the room to a big, white contraption. He sat down in the chair with great care and elegance. A hoarse voice rose:

"Memory Retrievement program activate"

A few coughs followed as Aster cleared his throat of the unwelcome morning gunk. After a quick rasping of his throat, he said again clearly:

"Memory Retrievement program activate"

"Thank you, request received. Opening program. Please apply headset"

A softer voice replies him, more human than machine but still with a hint of roboticness that will never be removed no matter how much they mess with the "Hybridity" of the program. A hologram of a girl appeared. She was beautiful beyond imagining. Long brown hair just fell past her waist, so smooth and shiny. Her piercing, emerald eyes stopping Aster's heart just for a second. Finally her lips, so soft, so kissable. But Aster realised this is just a hologram. He thought it made the whole machine process seem a little more human. Eventually tearing his eyes from the girl, he punched in a quick sequence of letters and numbers alike to bring up another hologram. A soft blue this time. His eyes scanned his options before he reached his hand up and just softly touched the surface of the menu, stroking strings of letters, flinging them across the screen. He then brought up his other hand and used both index fingers to drag air into a box shape from the menu choice. A window appeared. Download sub-conscious matter He quickly tapped the box after looking at the clock. Damn nearly time for class, ill have to hurry. Small wires trickled down from the roof of the machine. Aster placed them. Then unplaced them. Then placed them for the final time. Being a perfectionist, he wanted to make sure the receptors and effectors were corresponding. A rectangular blue bar, vertical in nature, sprung from the depths of the screen. Then another window opened, bigger this time. After a quick syncing message, imagines slowly started to form. Suddenly his room lights went off. Power failure Aster thought. Lucky this runs off a backup source.

Grotesque images started to form into videos and still images as the machine recovered his thoughts and memories. There was a baby crying in a cot across the room. Aster didn't want to go forward but his legs had a mind of their own. Aster used the full power of his body to reject and override the commands given by his nerve impulses but to no avail. His hands slowly began to rise to the side of the cot wrenching himself closer. Finally his head hovered above the cot, not daring to look. For once he wanted his eyes to stay shut but again they do the opposite. He fought with his eyes for power in a few seconds that seemed like several minutes. Until finally they were ripped open by the sheer force of his consciousness. There was nothing there. The sound still remained, even stronger now. He heard someone moving on the floor above him. He looked up. It was not someone on the upper floor. A small rat like creature stood on the ceiling, upside down and parallel to the ceiling. It was crying softly to itself. Aster may have referred the size of it to a rat but now it looked more like the size a newborn baby. It turned to face him.

There was a baby's face, innocent but the flesh was torn by blade or finger or maybe by stretching of the skin as the skin has burst outward. Blood no longer flowed from the wounds suggesting that they had been attained for a length of time although the dark pink flesh was clearly visible through the translucent skin. The baby smiled as its back, bent and broke, snaps were audible as the baby writhed and screamed in agony as its spine bowed into a arch, bones snapping and twisting into place causing the baby to howl with pain. New blood ran from its tear ducts, drenching the floor and cot in blood. The legs retracted and bent outward to make a four legged digitigrade creature. The crying ceased suddenly as the baby began to laugh. A shrill high pitched laugh that sent a cold shiver down Aster's spine as he stared disgusted at the infant. The laughter rose as three protrusions appeared from behind the baby's complex spinal structure. Three long tentacles growing longer and longer, twisting and thrashing. The creature was undergoing the final stage of mutation. The baby's jaw bone snapped as the bottom half of the face was broke away and the bottom jaw line flipped 180 degrees until it remained hanging loosely under its chin before falling to allow three small tentacles to slither down its chin. Blood rushed down as the check muscles were torn and ripped apart even further. This seemed to intrigue the creature as its top lip curved into a grin as that too was ripped and deformed. Lastly, long, silver barbs burst from atop the tentacles, growing sharper and more sinister, each moment that passed. Its eyes sparkled with evil as an innocent little baby was transformed into a monster. Aster found himself again as tears ran down his face onto the creature. He had no fear of the creature. I'm sorry Aster sobbed. I'm so…so sorry a final tear trickled down his check before he bowed his head and accepted death as the creature lunged at him, firing barb after barb into Aster's back.