SPOILER ALERT. GO WATCH RECONSTRUCTION, GOD DAMN IT!
A.I. LOG – REPORT TWENTY-SIX – MAINE
There's blood everywhere: blood on the walls, blood on the ceiling, blood on the floor, blood on the knife.
Blood on my hands.
I can't move because I feel so numb. I'm finally giving up; I don't want to live. Maybe that was her plan all along – to break me as she was broken, to make me feel what the Alpha felt. To ruin my soul and conscience, to fill me with such self-hatred that all I wish to do is to die. She won't let me, though. She wants me to suffer, to hover, a walking corpse in this eternal hell.
I can feel it, you know – this...thing in my head. I don't know how long I can hold on for, but I do know this will be my last report.
My last chance to tell the truth.
When I was first enlisted into Project Freelancer, I was promised many things: money, enhancements, abilities I could have only dreamed of before. It sounded great, and so I willingly, blindly agreed to their program. I had an A.I. installed into my head.
Omicron.
Omicron was a strange A.I. in the shape of a female. She was hazy orange, and hard to define, like a shadow. Perhaps she wasn't even a woman, though her voice definitely sounded like it. I never saw her face. Her personality was difficult at times. One second she was sweet and kind, the next she could be screaming bloody murder and raging inside my head.
Have you ever had an A.I. play havoc with your mind? It is complete and utter agony, so painful and terrible that I would have given anything and everything for it to stop. Sometimes I did give everything: I let Omicron take over my body, and I would just be 'the mind', floating around, powerless, like an A.I. would. If I'm perfectly honest, it was peaceful – just hovering between consciousness and reality, and I often let her take over, if only to spare myself from torture. At first I resisted her attempts for power, often unable to move from my bed. She only ever hurt me when we were alone and it was night, so that way Command didn't suspect I was being challenged for authority inside my own head. When I eventually allowed her to take control, it was a swift bargain: a few minutes of tranquillity while she explored my form and then to leave it without struggle. She had sounded so sad; all she had wanted was to be human, even just for a few moments – to feel, to touch, to taste, and she won me over with sorrowed sympathy. When I asked her to give control back, she did so instantly.
Of course, it wasn't long before she begged again, and although I had felt slightly uneasy about it, I reminded myself she had behaved herself, and I could always force her out again if I wanted to, despite the fact it would be painful. So, she got her way again, and she left when I requested. After several of these incidents, I began to trust her, and from then on, whenever I felt a slight pressure on my head, I knew what she wanted, and I let her take over. The periods of her control got longer and longer, but I never worried about it. She just wanted a taste of humanity, nothing more. How could I deny something so innocent?
However, one night, I was woken up for a mission. I felt myself stumble out of bed and reach for my armour, clasping it on with ease, listening to the instructions as I loaded up my gun...yet I was not doing any of these things. I heard my voice reply back and forth with confirmation, yet I never once spoke. My A.I. had taken control of me as I slept, and I was powerless to stop it. I didn't know it at the time, but my mind had been weakened to such an extreme that I could no longer hold a barrier against her subconsciously. I was no longer safe asleep.
The mission went without a hitch, and I was awarded a medal for outstanding battle methods. I dumped the medal shortly afterwards, because it wasn't mine; it was Omicron's. How could I deserve something I didn't fight for? I told Omicron if she ever tried to take over in my sleep again then I would stop it altogether. Yet I felt secure in the knowledge that she always gave my body back, so there was no risk. What I didn't realise was that she was only doing so because Command would notice if she didn't let me have control regularly. Some of the more...'stupid' A.I. kept hold of the mind, retaining their dominance. The person inside disappeared altogether, and the body became an empty shell. I would like to point out here that a stupid A.I. is not the same as a stupid human. All A.I. have intelligence beyond our own, but many don't have the skill to master common sense and social restraint. Command realised what was happening, along with the blatant deaths and Washington's rampant insanity, and finally shut the program down. Some Freelancers wanted to keep their A.I., but I was part of the many that wished to be rid of theirs. However, every time I tried to voice this opinion, Omicron would not allow it. Either she forcefully took over, or she cut off my ability to speak. By this point, I couldn't fight back. If I tried to resist her authority, I was tortured with unspeakable agony. I was becoming the shell.
Command never said how they got the A.I. for the project, only that they had copied it, which was a lie anyway. When I was still part of Command, Omicron decided to break into restricted files, simply to prove she could. What she found there changed everything, and for weeks on end, she whirled endlessly around my head, causing pain and confusion, destroying parts of my precious memories in the process. I can't remember where I come from anymore. I don't know my parents' names or even what their faces are. I'm not sure about the members of my family: do I have brothers or sisters, cousins, aunties, or uncles? I can never get them back, but at least she didn't ruin my memory of Sarah.
Yet, at the same time, I wish Sarah had been wiped clean from my head. Maybe then....
Command, however, have committed horrific acts to get the A.I. They weren't copied. They were taken from the original A.I., the Alpha. This A.I. was tortured endlessly, put under stress, terror, and pain, until eventually, like a human mind would, it cracked. Each fragment of its ruined self was harvested and made into a separate 'A.I.'. Delta was the logic, Omega was the anger, Iota was the strategy, Sigma was the creativity...the list is endless. Epsilon was the memory, which was why Washington went insane. He saw and felt everything the Alpha experienced through its memories, and his mind cracked, just as the A.I.'s had. As for Omicron, she was something much worse than anger, memories, or insanity.
Omicron is the Alpha's vengeance.
When it was time to escape Command – or, rather, when my A.I. decided she didn't want to lose the only opportunity she had to get free – Omicron took over. The events are a blur, but I remember waking up in a city, driving along a highway in the dead of night, my headlights blaring. I picked through my ravaged mind, trying best to make sense of everything. Where could I go? A face, so beautiful and pure surfaced, and I turned the Warthog around, heading off the roads and towards the outskirts of the city. I parked outside a tall block of flats, still in my Spartan armour, and slowly made my way up the endless flights of stairs, being too heavy to use the elevator. I knocked on the door, and my fiancée, Sarah Fisher, opened it. She called me by a name I didn't recognise, for Omicron had destroyed that part of me as well, and beckoned me in, helping me out of my armour. We made love that night, so wonderful, the first bit of kindness I had received in a long time.
However, when I explained to her over the days what had happened, and how Omicron could take over me whenever she wanted, I saw the look in Sarah's face. It was something I felt myself: fear, fear for me. What could I do, though? I was too far gone to fight back, and even if I did, the A.I. lived inside my head. She knew my every move before I'd even thought it.
Not long afterwards, the violence began.
Omicron was moody at the best of times, but around Sarah, she became abusive and dangerous. I often attacked her in blind rage, watching with despair as my fist pummelled into her stomach, bruising her beautiful skin, marring her perfect face. Yet Sarah stayed by me, despite it all. Maybe she loved me so much she could look past the nature of Omicron.
Or maybe she was just plain afraid. I know I was.
When she announced that she was pregnant, I was overjoyed, but it broke my heart to see her trembling like a leaf as I was given the news. Then I felt it: Omicron stirring underneath. I tried to warn her to run, but the transition was so quick that all I could do was choke. Sarah knew, though, and she turned to escape. The A.I. was quicker, however, and she grabbed Sarah's hair, dragging her back...pulling her...punching...her...stomach.
The next day I heard her anguished wails from the bathroom, which continued long into the night. One could say it was grief over the loss over the baby, but I know better. She was mourning for the loss of her life. She and I were prisoner to a computer program, and there was nothing we could do.
Sarah tried, though.
She told me a week later she was breaking off our engagement. She wasn't safe in her own home any more, and she was contacting Command to collect Omicron and I. Part of me was grateful that I was finally ridding myself of the parasite, but the other side of me was sparked with anger. She was leaving me? This was not my fault!
I think she realised her mistake at the last second, but it was too late. Omicron, delighted by the feast of rare fury, fed greedily on it, bringing me to my knees in pure agony. I then watched as my body stood up, advancing menacingly on the retreating Sarah. My hand reached for a knife, clasping itself loving around the handle, before bringing itself up, slashing Sarah across the chest. Sarah stared down at the huge gash in her body, her lip trembling as a shaking hand reached up and touched the wound. Omicron then made her move, leaping on top of her victim so that they both went crashing to the floor, and I watched helplessly as the knife plunged into Sarah's flailing body repeatedly, cleaving her flesh into ribbons as Omicron carelessly hacked and slashed, as if my fiancée was meat for the butcher's slab.
When I finally came around, I awoke to a room painted red. For some reason, I don't really feel anything about this, just a sense of finality and emptiness. I want to die, but I know I can't. I think Omicron succeeded in removing the majority of my humanity and replacing it with herself. Occasionally, when I try to talk, my throat spasms and a series of low-pitched snarls come out.
I already know all of the A.I.'s plans. She is collecting all of the other A.I., massing them together and using them to find the Alpha, before finally reuniting them. Once that is done, the Alpha will be unstoppable – fuelled with hate and vengeance, ready to rip apart Command from the roots. I am the puppet, the transport of this operation. There is one thing that surprises me, though.
I am willing.
A.I. LOG -TERMINATED-