Fragment 10

The memory ran through my head like a movie. I remember standing at Nastasia's desk, studying the pictures of my three targets. The man in the red hat didn't look like he'd pose much of a problem. He was overweight, a little short limbed and not exactly youthful. He might be able to pack a heavy punch, but he'd be slow on his feet and easy to outwit. The girl - well, if she wore an enormous pink dress like the one in the picture, she'd spend all her time tripping over it. Not a problem. It was that... thing that bothered me. What was it? It looked like some kind of spiky-shelled turtle with the head of a dragon, horns of a bull, and the limbs and tail of a dinosaur.

Turtle. Dragon. Bull. Dinosaur. I snapped out of my reminiscing.

"Nastasia? Why do I know things that I... shouldn't know?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Abstract knowledge. I can compare things with - with things I've never encountered before."

She drew her breath. "Think of your creation this way, 'k? I took a man and removed his dominant traits. His fear. His self doubt. His timidity. His clumsiness. Doing this enhanced the strengths these traits had repressed - now your strengths - courage, determination, loyalty, confidence. Then I tapped into talents that had never been used, in particular, a flair for mechanical engineering. I removed his memory and his identity, but you were still left with a library of, as you put it, abstract knowledge, and an intelligent, inquisitive mind."

I had the feeling this little speech had been rehearsed, like she'd been anticipating the question for a while. At least this more technical analogy make sense to me, and not only that, it all but blinded me with another important key.

A sudden flash of blueprints and figures shot through my mind as a major section of my memory opened up. An image formed, of a monstrous steel hull, spherical in shape, with a single jet at the bottom for flight. Two dome-like attachments concealed laser guns, which could swivel independently like the eyes of a chameleon. I could remember building the missile launcher that protruded like a nose from its front, and the boomerang-shaped blade that fitted underneath it, which, at the flick of a button, I could send slicing through the air in an arc until it returned and re-attached itself to its mounting while the machine was still in full flight.

All this, I'd engineered myself. I could control it from inside the cockpit on top, as well as remotely, from the ground. I knew I didn't have to fear the spiky shelled beast, because I was a mechanical engineer, and capable of building the ultimate fighting machine like this to kill it.

But my pride at the thought of my creation, the Brobot, standing majestically in the hangar at Castle Bleck, felt tainted, somehow. I also had the vague memory of the thing lying in smouldering ruins. Though I couldn't yet remember fighting these three people, I had the feeling it hadn't ended well for me.

"I built a machine to eliminate my targets," I said. "Did I fail?"

She lowered her eyes. "You were still in training. The Count didn't expect you to succeed. Having you create that Brobot and going into your first battle was just a test. Your targets may have beaten you, but you passed the training with flying colours."

"But I failed! I failed the Count!" I flung my head from side to side, the only movement I could manage. How could I fail the Count? I felt like a disgrace. "Please! Let me try again. I'll prove to him I'm worthy!"

Nastasia raised her hand and passed it in a downwards motion over my face, and the next I knew was the feeling of waking from a deep sleep. But instead of feeling refreshed, this time I felt drowsy; I couldn't shake the sleep away. The sunbeam, of course, had moved, but it didn't matter. All I could focus on were her glasses.

"Mr. L. Can you hear me?" Her voice was calm, monotonous.

"Yes, Nastasia."

"You will no longer fret over failure. You will not think about the person you were created from. You will not think about anything except the questions I ask. You are under hypnosis, now, and when we are finished, you will remember this conversation clearly."

"Yes, Nastasia." I could barely mumble an answer, I was so preoccupied with those glasses.

"When I showed you your targets, did you remember their names?"

"No. You told me their names."

She nodded, making my eyes follow every movement of her head. "What did I tell you?"

I repeated the words exactly as she'd said them in the office. "The man is called Mario. The girl is called Princess Peach. The monster is known as Bowser."

"After they destroyed your Brobot, what did you do?"

"I went back to the repair bay to rebuild it and modify it."

"Do you remember being called away during that time?"

"You called me to a meeting with the Count, in the dark castle... I mean, Castle Bleck, to meet my peers."

"Do you remember them?"

I tried to picture the people in the dark hall. "There were three. There was a man - a soldier, or warrior. With a beard. And a girl, with her hair in pigtails. And a man with a painted face - half black, half white, with brightly coloured clothes. Like a jester."

"Do you feel that any one of them had significant importance to you?"

It was a new type of question, but my mind felt so sluggish I couldn't figure out why. I don't know why I picked him, or why he stood out for me. I knew it wasn't just his 'look'. "The jester," I said. "Something he did..."

Nastasia smiled. "Good. We're back on track. Your memory has been jogged enough that we can continue. When I lift the spell, you're going to tell me exactly what happened in your second battle against Mario and his friends, and everything that happened to you after that."