Avatar of Moonlight Chapter 1: Confusion, an evangelion fanfic

Because I have a heart, I envy

Because I have a heart, I glutton

Because I have a heart, I covet

Because I have a heart, I am prideful

Because I have a heart, I sloth

Because I have a heart, I rage

Because I have a heart,

I lust for everything about you

- Kubo Tite

(Confusion)

A flowing liquid.

A cloying warmth.

A glitter on the surface.

A bestirring of awareness.

Unbearable crimson stench.

Unfathomable terror.

No comprehension.

Merciless inescapable pumping.

Pulsating vessels, pulls of sinews and organs, objects within objects just ever so slightly out of alignment.

A concept of surface.

Sticky iron everywhere.

Dilluvial torrents of sensation.

Bare, exposed nakedness.

Visceral contraction, surging chemicals, freezing, surging spine -

No context, no comprehension, just stripped, flayed sensation breaking through floodgates of consciousness.

A frozen, plummet of shock searing into flesh and blood and bone –

These are my first memories.

...

There is so little left.

I do not know why, but I've always had that impression -

of something severed, diminished, amputated.

I do not even know if this is something that was done to me, or just what I did to myself in response.

I don't even know when it might have happaned, for as far as I look back for causes, I cannot say that I was ever without it, not unless I could have been wounded before the moment of my birth.

Unless there could be memories of heaven.

As if I had been stricken and left falling, plunging on broken, desintegrating wings,

until I crashed down into the water, falling, sinking, rapidly drifting beneath the surface,

until I somehow came to rest in the narrow tank in which I first began my existence.

The first thing I recall is a man's face peering at me,

the recognition that this was a face, and that it was a man's, though I knew not how I knew of this.

I knew not the meaning of his expression.
I would not have known the reason of his sorrow, had I known to recognize it.

I have memories of his sinking down against the glass, tears on the corners of his face.

I recall his face in his hands, his fingers idling near the delete button on his device, where he once beheld a picture,

when all these things would just have been lights and colors to me.

I recall becoming more and more aware of the larger chamber that surrounded me, its many glass tubes filled with shapes and outgrowths of twisted flesh that I did not know to be misshaped as of then.

I seem to remember his comings and goings, the presence of a second man, and sometimes a woman, though neither of them stopped much by the glass, like the first man had, so they melded for me into the scenery of glass tubes and wires and machines, the pulsing of the pipes, the lingering question if everything before this was just a dream.

But though I recall that questioning itself, I can no longer say what the dream was.

It's faded completely, if there ever was a dream to begin with.

I might have imagined it, for I have not ever seen a dream since those days.

There would have been no point in dreaming.

…

I am wheeled to another room.

I am lying on a bed.

I am laid out on a work bench.

They turn my head sometimes as they do the work, so I get to see different sections of the room.

There is writing on the walls in some corners.

There's a curtain in another.

Another has a beaker resting on a counter, whose light reminds me of something jumbled.

Garbage data in a storage that has not been filled with information yet.

There are machines, loose hanging cables.

There are many syringes.

There's the most revolting feeling just as something twitches at the edge of my vision.

There's all sorts of cables, tubes and electrodes being plugged in and out of white flesh.

I recognize the letters on the walls, though I do not know from where.

I know they form words, correspond to sounds, but I do not know what the words are doing there.

I hear the men moving here and there sometimes, the pale headed woman.

I know they are called 'men' but I had not grasped yet how they are different from the machines.

They pulse, of course, they smell of sweat and skin oil.

But the tubes pulse as well.

As does the most revolting object, the unbearable pulsing of the twitching white flesh.

…

The tubes pulse.

The light refracts.

There is a coming and going of the men and the woman, a staleness that comes and goes with their breaths.

I watch.

I do not do anything but watch.

It does not occur to me that there is anything else I could do.

Anything else I might want to do, for any reason.

The grey man and the woman come and go, no different from the clockwork of the machinery.

No different from any other part.

Many parts move; Many more don't.

I observe the parts.

It occurs to me that some of them have patterns, that some of them are only sometimes present, that they follow on another in particular order.

The men and the women are only sometimes present.

They only sometimes say words.

I understand the words.

I do not understand their meaning.

The first man sometimes stops, or lingers.

I can see his face.

I do not understand the meaning of the expression on his face.

It does not occur to me that he is looking at me.

I know he stops sometimes, watching.

I do not realize that he is watching, same as I am.

I do not realize that there is anyone watching but me.

I do not realize that there is anything but what I watch.

He says words, but I do not realize that they are directed at me.

…

In the field of my vision, there are sometimes reflective surfaces.

I sometimes catch a glipmse there, of some object I can't quite see.

I catch a glipmse of toes, the edges of a nose.

What I know to be toes and a nose without knowing why.

Reflected bare white flesh, distorted in the chrome, haphazardly covered with a strip of tinfoil when it is not being worked on.

At first, it is no different than any other machine or device, other than being curiously difficult to see.

I do not pay it so much heed as the words, simply because the words somehow have meanings.

I notice patterns there, too, words that are only used in certain context.

Words that have no clear meaning that I could access or recal, though I do not know how I recal any of them.

With some delay, I realize that those special words are not meaningless at all.

They signify something: They signify the people.

The man who watches, the man who peered inside the tank, is signified by 'Commander Ikari'.

They use other unidentified words, too, even if I do not know who they refer to.

If they also refer to people.

I watch the people because they're what is there to watch, but they do not stand out as special,

as different on a fundamental levels from plastic tubes, metal and concrete.

I watch.

I listen.

I notice one day that there is a fourth breathing noise, once that never vanishes.

I cannot say where it is coming from.

I do not connect it to the bizzare white streaks in the reflections, at first.

I connect neither to me.

…

The thing reflected in the metal is a body.

It is shaped like a person, but not.

I feel pain when it twitches.

I feel discomfort when it is moved.

It twitches and seizes, sometimes, over the course of the various doings of the men and the women.

I can't stop it's flopping, but I can make it continue.

Somehow it moves when I move.

I am moving it.

When I do not see it, it's like it isn't there. It doesn't really seem like we would be connected.

Every time it shows up around the corner, I am surprised.

I am surprised to see it appear in response to my thoughts.

I am surprised my thoughts could cause any response at all.

I thought I was only watching.

But sure enough, I can will the thing to twitch.

With time, with practice, I can will it to turn my range of sight, all on my own account, all without the doing of the people, towards where its likely is reflected.

It does not make any sense to me why I and this thing should be connected.

Why this thing, out of all possible shapes, should be the beginning point of my sight.

Why I can only effect this narrow area, this thing that twitches and aches and flops and barely obeys me. It slams down hard on the table, in the dark.

I realize in that moment that it is the source of my pain.

I do not see why I should be connected to that thing in the reflections.

It seems strange, arbitrary.

It's wide red peering obrs are revolting, its breath feeble and rasping, its stench chemical, iron and antiseptic.

It resembles the persons but if it's trying to be one it's doing a very poor job, not doing anything that the persons do.

Still, they speak to that thing, and when I move it, they respond.

They speak to it as if it was me, so I go along with it.

...

"Alright, " says Commander Ikari, his presence dark and heavy, his flesh exuding heat that is sensed keenly in the chilled room.

The humid particles of his breath leak into the room as he speaks, closeby.

"Let's run a little test. Can you state your name?"

Something clicks, responds.

It's not something I recall, it's something I know how to do.

Biographic and procedural memory are different things, as I would one day read in a book.

"I am the object that is recognized as Ayanami Rei."

The grey man and the woman were with Commander Ikari at the time.

I did not know that they looked disturbed.

But maybe I sensed it.

As even the the blind make certain basic expressions without ever laying eyes on them.

Commander Ikari isn't disturbed.

He looks on steadily.

He looks on at me.

"And your purpose?"

"To carry out the human instrumentality project."

I knew this, but I did not know that I knew. Nothing thus far had happened to induce that synapse to fire, to touch that virgin chunk of fatty brain tissue.

I always knew it. There was never a time when I found out, never a time when I reacted to learning it.

I know, like the blind would know, that Commander Ikari looks pleased.

He looks at me.

Only he looks at me.

The other two avoid it.

He stays a while and talks.

I am not certain that he talks at me.

I know that 'Ayanami Rei' always meant me, or at least, this object in the reflection, but only as he talks do the implications begin to percolate.

…

'You're replaceable, do you know that, Rei? You're just like me!'

I do not know who said this, or when.

It's a woman's voice.

She appears to be speaking to me, but she can't be, unless it were said to me before I even existed.

But regardless of when it was said or where, or how it is that I know of it, I also know it to be true.

...

With time, there are more people.

More objects, more capabilities, instructions.

Features and programs, being installed one by one.

Eventually, there are more people.

I am dressed, given shoes.

Given orders.

Told to move, walk, speak, answer questions.

Every function or feature must be tested.

Fine tunings and adjustments must be performed, calibration settings perfected.

Naturally enough, there is old data to refer to, since I am not the first.

If the activation procedures do not suceed, I imagine that they will just try again, and use the data that they gathered with me to boot up the next one.

I receive instructions.

I induce my reflection to follow them.

New instructions follow, until all of them have been carried out, or the time runs out.

Then they leave, and turn out the lights.

It is a relief when this happens.

It usually means the pain is over for today, and the effort, though sometimes the aches continue into the dark.

Even so, it means I am free to ponder and drift.

Nothing demands of me to pay attention.

Nothing demands of me to do tasks.

It means a relief from the concentrated attention, the focus on the object in the steel, a release of contraction – though I can feel it pulsing now, even if I don't pay attention.

I have gotten used to sensing it, more attuned.