Disclaimer: Does anyone ever get tired of these? I know as a writer I do. So, blah, blah…Shirow Masamune, not me…blah, blah, blah. (at least it's different)

Chapter 10: Paradigm Shift

"Talking"
Thinking
(Cyberspeaking)
(Figure it out)

There are really only two places I've ever gone to think, and fishing wasn't going to do it for me today. Leaving my car at the observation point, I hiked down to my second one. The sky looked like it would stay clear for the evening. "Even if it doesn't, I can always break in and sleep inside."

Stepping into a clearing, I walked past statues of women, down beside a neo-modernism styled home, and into the woods that were filled with tall hardwoods. I knew the place I was looking for, and I followed my memories exactly. Coming around the trunk of a tree, I saw it. There in the middle of a ring of tall ginko trees was a white cherry tree. The blossoms had long fallen off, and the leaves were a dark green against the lighter green background. I found the spot at the base of the tree that had always welcomed me. Although I know that trees do not form around the humans that visit them, this spot fits me perfectly.

I find it ironic that after my transformation, I feel more comfortable around non-sentient beings. I wonder if it's because I'm now less sentient myself. However that works, this spot has allowed me to have some of my deepest thoughts. Today those thoughts are mostly missing. I didn't expect to find them in a day. As I watched the deepening purples of the sunset, I knew that today was one step closer to my answer.

sssss

It was the grumbling of my stomach that woke me the next morning. Although I do not get hungry like a human would, when my energy stores start running low, my system sends waves to my brain that my stomach is empty. I was reaching into my jacket pocket to pull out a high energy bar when my fingers got entangled in a piece of material. Pulling it out, I unraveled the green ribbon I'd found in my safe-house. I shifted around to get into my other pocket and I studied the ribbon while I opened an energy bar and ate.

There are very vivid memories of me picking up the ribbon as it lay in the black tresses of the little girl with green eyes. She was hooked up to fluids, and I was waiting for her to wake up. I left the door open so she reflected in the mirror because every time she'd ever had a body swap, she'd woken up looking at herself. That was how she most clearly identified that her world had changed again.

Was I having a dream, or was this actually a memory that had somehow been supplanted by other memories? And if it was a memory that had been supplanted, who had done it, and for what reasons? I could almost see the answer when I was distracted by the sound of tiny clawed feet approaching.

Squirrels are not intimidated by cyborgs the way they are by humans. I don't know if our sweat smells differently or what, but they are just not scared of us. Sitting very still, I amused myself by watching a grey-colored squirrel climb over my knee and down my thigh to steal the remaining part of my granola bar. It sat there for a moment, cheeks pouched out with my breakfast, and chewed. Suddenly it heard a noise to the left of me and skittered off, leaving little claw marks in my pants.

The noise to my left was big, but moving in a way that told me it was a human out for a stroll rather than a bear out for lunch. I continued to sit there, ribbon held between the fingers of my right hand. A young woman walked out from behind two trees and stopped automatically when she noticed me. She had blonde hair pulled back in a pigtail and I could tell by her clothing that she was a foreigner to this area.

"Oh, hello. I didn't know there was anyone here." She didn't come any closer.

"I was just enjoying a day of reflection."

She took in a couple of leaves that must have fallen on my head during the night. "I've always thought about sitting out here under the stars. What's the view like?" She set her pack down and knelt at the edge of the circle. Not close enough to feel threatened by me, but close enough to be friendly.

"Not very good from here. The ginkos block most of it." I looked at her petite form. "It's really not wise to go hiking by yourself."

"I'm not by myself." She sat Indian-style and dug in her pack for a bottle of water. "You're here aren't you?"

"Yeah, but I could be a criminal, waiting for your arrival."

"Mmm…if you sat here all night waiting on me to arrive, you must have been overly optimistic. I only decided to hike this morning." She unscrewed the top, setting it on her left knee.

"Good point." I brushed a loose leaf off of my shoulder.

"Anybody else come by here? Maybe this is a well-traveled area." She took a big gulp of water, watching me over the top of the bottle.

"This is actually private property" at her raised eyebrows, I continued. "But the owner doesn't mind hikers. You just missed a squirrel. He wanted me to tell you that he appreciated being scared off before he realized he'd just eaten out of my hand."

She laughed, a light twinkling sound. "A squirrel actually ate out of your hand? Was it suicidal?"

I smiled. "No, just hungry. I had a granola bar."

"Ah, are you the owner of this private recluse?" She stood, putting the pack back on.

"No, but a friend of mine was. She would welcome anyone who cared for her lands and enjoyed the peace."

"Sounds like someone I would have liked to meet." She turned to leave.

"Yeah, she was someone special."

"Good luck finding what you are here seeking. Just remember that a bird may learn to swim, but it will never be a fish."

I shook my head, trying to figure out what the hell that girl was thinking. I listened to the silence for a few more minutes until the normal noises of the forest began back up.

It was several hours later before I realized that I had talked about Kusanagi like she no longer existed. Why would I do that? Then I started thinking back to other things over the last few days. If Kusanagi is no longer around, why don't I feel that sense of loss?

But then why do I feel wrong when I'm talking with Motoko herself?

"Why can't she open my link when it's been turned off?"

Because she's not the real Kusanagi?

"If she's not the real Kusanagi, then what happened to her?"

It was as if that one instance of coherence caused everything else to click into place. Suddenly I remembered getting my arm shot off when I put it out to stop the bullets being shot at her head. I also remembered the black-market body I'd procured. It was a young teenage girl body, the cast-off of a girl that had upgraded to an older version when she turned twenty. The body was very simple in design, no special features to distinguish it except for the green eyes. Kusanagi had always favored dark violet eyes, and this had been a major change for her.

"This body seems to suit me for I am neither the person you knew as Motoko, nor am I the Puppetmaster. I am a combination of both of them, I look at the world through a new lens."

"Will I ever see you again?"

"I will be there when you need me."

"Yeah, in my head only."

"So…if the Major isn't really Kusanagi, who is she?"

Suddenly the truth of everything that had happened struck me in the face and I found myself standing and shaking in anger. There were no words to describe my feelings. Doing what I do best, I hiked my ass back up the hill and got in my car, tearing down the mountain road on my way to the office.

When I arrived, the gates were down and the guard opened the window to look out. "Hey Batou, did you get called in for something?"

"Why is everything closed up?"

He hid a yawn. "Sunday. No one works on Sunday unless there's a problem."

"Is Aramaki here?"

"Let me see…" The guard's name was Behni and he had been a member of Section 9 for two years. During that time he'd seen lots of strange things, but he'd kept his tongue to himself. Aramaki had an open door policy with his team, so this question was not a new one. He poked his head out. "Yup, he's been here about an hour."

"Fine. I need to see him." Behni opened the gates and I drove through, screeching up the ramps until I reached our designated parking area.

I waited, one foot tapping, for the elevator to reach the parking deck, than paced the elevator until the doors opened. I erupted out onto the floor and stomped down the hall and up the stairs to Aramaki's office. I banged on his door, knowing Behni would have informed him of my arrival.

"Come in."

I threw open the door and marched up to his desk, planting both hands on it and leaning forward into his face. "You Mother Fucking Son of a Bitch!" Well, that didn't do much to alleviate my anger, so I started pacing. "You put a fucking bug in my head to erase all of my memories and make me think that imposter was the real Motoko. How the fuck do you sleep with your conscience at night?" I turned, breathing hard in my anger, hoping he had some pearl of wisdom.

"No one was willing to come back without her. I have exhausted all efforts to find her. I had very limited options."

"I never fucking said that I wouldn't come back."

"No, you said that no one would ever be able to fill the hole left by her disappearance."

"That's what I said." I was remembering lots of shit now.

"And I clearly told you that you had been her top pick. She would have wanted you to be in charge, despite your volatile temperament."

I turned and looked at him. "What?"

"She chose you as her top pick, over anyone else in the department. Over any other cyborg in the system."

"Over Ishikawa?"

He shook his head in an affirmative.

"Why?"

"Because she saw the same thing in you that I'm seeing currently. You look for truth. You search it out even when it has been deliberately hidden from you." Aramaki turned to look at the painting. "Do you recollect me telling you that in order to protect the forest I had to examine every tree?"

I was still highly angered, but I was calm enough to talk rationally. "Yes. You examined this tree and found it lacking."

"No. I did not find you lacking. YOU found you lacking. I cannot have a team leader who doubts himself. You doubt yourself. I needed the Major back in order to kick you all in the ass."

I frowned. "How?"

"She's an android, loaded up with Motoko's memory backup from her last brain transfer. Then Dr. Akai and I recreated everything that'd happened since her last backup and loaded that in."

"And the bug was used to modify our memories."

He turned back to look at me. "No. The chip that we had implanted is exactly what I said it was. I would never modify your will like that. We ran a subroutine while installing the chip that would lay a new set of memories over your existing ones. The true ones are still there, that's why you were able to put the pieces together."

"By laying a new set of memories over my existing ones, aren't you modifying them?"

"We left your memories in tact. We just put a second layer over them, one that felt more substantial. You can remove those memories and be left with only the true ones."

"And the chip?" I was calming down a little.

"I don't want to lose another one of my team-mates." His eyes focused on some far away thought for an instant before honing back in on my face.

"What if Kusanagi wanted to be lost?"

"Then it looks like she obtained her wish."

I pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. "You cannot leave an android in charge like this. You know as well as I do that an android is incapable of making the correct decision in a crisis. An android can only look at the probability of the outcomes and determine the best course by the numbers. An android cannot decide that because Saito has had to take care of a relative for the last three weeks, he's a little off his mark and needs to be closer to the target. An android also would not give Togusa preferential treatment because he is a human and more susceptible to damage."

"I'm listening." He leaned forward, giving me his undivided attention.

"A cyborg is human, despite what people believe. We have human minds and human souls. That gives us the ability to understand that we can overcome great odds through determination. It also gives us the ability to modify our actions mid-flight. We cannot be lead by a puppet without one of us coming to harm."

"I agree. That's why I only gave you two weeks. You had to come to this realization on your own.

"As much as I hate to make it final by stepping in, if the Major had me picked to lead in her absence, I will step up. However, I would like to put this to the team. They may have a better solution than either of us."

"Fine. We will meet with them tomorrow morning."

"Without the Major?" I stood.

"Without the Major."

I turned to go, but Aramaki's words stopped me. "A fish may learn how to fly, but it can never be a bird."

I nodded. "Nor can a bird become a fish." The doors opened and I walked out into the corridor.

A/N: Ah, the joys of grad school. Between homework and CNN, Twik hasn't gotten much sleep, and is behind schedule. Gomen nasai for being two days late on the update. (egads, that rhymes). Hope everyone has a great week, I hope the flood waters recede and we can all start putting lives back together. -TK