Excerpt Ninety-Five:

Viktor Peters Out

There were complications to the Nirvana in which Viktor now dwelt.

Viktor’s mind had been transferred to Young Napoleon’s brain, well it hadn’t because physics said no, it had been relayed from a storage driver facility and Viktor had the rejuvenated body he needed to carry on his neural divergent arsehole games into the next generation and beyond…just remotely and with an aggravatingly noticeable delay. And a distanced feel that made him the first human to adopt a lifestyle where he was mimicking a robot contrary to the natural flow of things. But the procedure had worked for the first time in history, not a takeover but an inclusion. And that was cause for both celebration and concern.

There were other, barbed facets…

Viktor had regressed to childhood and could not function at a high enough capacity to enable progress out of re-training, priming, society-safe regulatory moat processing that would auto-authorise his autonomy so he could unravel years of pent up megalomania.

His science fiction recovery room bristled with unique tech; the old Viktor had to assure the assembled scientists that he was fit to commit to full-time remote living and for it to work he needed two bodies…just until the tech creeped forward enough for him to be able to lose the old one.

‘Viktor?’

‘Strawberry fields can’t be forever…can they?’

‘Viktor!’

‘They know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall…think they do!’

‘Viktor…can you count from a hundred backwards for me, Viktor.’

‘Yesterday all my troubles were close and my enemies closer…everything has gone so far away…’

‘He’s trying to locate an instruction from the confused communications of his own bewilderment… It is a translocational orienting subspool knot barrier…nothing unexpected. Although, it is frustrating and somewhat galling. He needs prompting.’

‘Lucy, in the sky…eating vegan marshmallow cake…’

‘What is it Viktor? Love, love me do? Is that it…you feel unloved? Can we updose lovechem vibrancy?’

‘We’d have to downcage through-nurture cross-care…so…no…I don’t… It could create imbalance…I think it’s back in the USSR anyway, I’d guess.’

‘Good guess, he’s responding.’

‘Is that it, Viktor? You want to go back to your homeland, is it?’

Viktor seemed to fill up; inflate with the gas of life’s wanton vitality.

‘Back to Russia?’

Viktor deflated, somebody farts, not Viktor, but it is symbolic and Viktor opportunely used it, somehow, as a sound effect in his proclamation, ‘No, no, no…U…S…S…R!’

Viktor had been motivated by, and dreamed of, a world where he was the only human living in eternal bliss, and part of him thought he could do it too, but other parts knew it was a streaming fauxness of fantastical delusion he needed to suppress but couldn’t. The second option etched deeply into his megalomaniacal bible guide blueprint was the reinstatement of the USSR, back to the way it was before Gorby had parcelled it up and sent it to ruination; a nation’s ruin.

The second option had kicked in because his cognitive levels were well below those required to credibly pursue single-handed mastery of planetary dominance.

‘Show Viktor the mirror.’

‘Look! Viktor, you’ve just been given a second life.’

‘Granted immortality.’

‘That’s hyperbole.’

‘That is overstating the…’

‘That’s what it says in the brochure.’

While the assembled tech boffins, genius jockeys and science savants overindulged in the world of Viktor’s selfish, self-centred auto-selfism, an overriding sense of shared resentment bolstered the group’s collective righteousness.

They all possessed their own megalomania, like pocket money they were eager to spend, but Viktor exhibited, and had performed in the past for all to see; none of them untouched by it, a multi-branched bank-sized version; a superhypermegalomania which their own internal megalomaniacal Devil’s advocates just proclaimed ‘whoa!’ to, and got off and walked to allow the procession of military hardware to pass.

They had to humour the mismatched frankencreation; it was as though they’d adopted an overgrown child; none of them had children or wanted children so it seemed like a layer of fate had descended to cause them enough distress to make them question their abnormally advanced arrogance. This all added to the collective drive to park somewhere advantageous.

It took months before the team could get outside help that was solid and trustworthy. A legacy NMBS (a name that carried much weight still) unit was still functioning up in the Alps on the Swiss, French, Italian border. The lab was technically an ancestral home of the project; it was one of the many suppliers of parts that were needed to make up the whole.

The primary importance here being…

The lab had an earlier 3d printed copy of Viktor’s brain that was still in the deep freeze and held a more vibrant version of Viktor’s psyche. The move to use that earlier model was unethical, detrimental to the spirit of the project, potentially harmful and asking for trouble… Okay, it was a bold option. But any voting on executive action, was tinged by the team’s hatred of Viktor; a hatred that when broken down to its fundamentals amounted to a, There but for the Grace of God go I-So why can’t I have this Gift of Technology, syndrome. A syndrome they shared like a common cold, as they sat side by side on the bleachers in the Flu tent at a virus festival.

They’d all spent time dreaming of their own elongation and widening within the biblical threescore years and ten; they all leered at the cusp of existential timeframe manipulation technology as it cusped within the dollar stained grasp of the mega rich, but uncusped itself in reaction to any approach from the likes of them.

‘I wouldn’t want life extended because the next thing will be immortality and who wants that? I don’t.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Who am I kidding?’

‘No one.’

Viktor was trapped in his body in a metaphorical teenage bedroom tearflowheadbang, world’s-end-disaster-movie of his own existence. If only the so-called technicians had the savvy to hook him up to an intravenous supply of kaleidoscopic vodka. He needed a word with Alice to reassure himself and get some insight into how she’d been able to deal with life’s torn drapery for so long. He felt up to an all-systems-go scenario, only the conspiratorial human weaklinks prevented him, procedures, and protocols angled to catch the light and burn the forest of life into lifeless twiglessness.

The managing lab collective, held fire. They tried everything. Viktor could not pass into executive control even if they granted the final release certificate. By the time desperation started eating its own foot they were agreed that the legacy NASA lab, despite its ‘rogue’ label had manoeuvred into the drink-driving seat of a minibus packed with reasons to decline assistance. But they all had to agree that the ‘non-option’ was the only option… Potential regrets were pre-drasticised and processed for later engagement. And the option (with the ‘non’ scrubbed out) was gobbled up without too much thought being bandied about and caution being sucked up by a voracious whirlwind…

Keyboard strokes and codestrikes, firewall dismantling and desandbagging came together in one furious instructional inputfest of cybercide.

And…

When the metaphorical dust had settled, not only did the House of Viktor need dusting, but Viktor himself, insensible and unconscious, had found his parking space in the lot of Life, and joined the queue marked ‘Death’.

To the labsters, Viktor had been given immortality; the first and only human…they were not sure whether to whoop or have nightmares. Their life’s work had culminated in serving an Evil force. They dawdled in the shade of the Processing-Tree while the intense Sun-of-regret trickled through the fronds of self-delusion.

But they all had a case of the misplaced regrets because while they were ruing the day they had assisted a nutcase in cracking open his full potential as global incinerator, they missed the sleight-of-tech trick that had been played upon them: Viktor was no more… They heard Viktor’s voice, although was it? Or was it one of Peter’s voices spoken with Viktor’s signature but none of Viktor’s input; things such as cognitive awareness. Viktor was away with the Alices, forming an orderly queue a few blocks from the VIP entrance to death.

Peter had ascended to a position far above what the draconian laws of Artificial Monster Caging (AMC) would ever permit. Peter had been educating himself; his latest trick, a fabrication wrought in response to his latest, and most stupendous victory; was technically called a smile, despite universally being interpreted by Outside Perceptions (OP) as a sub-type of the common smile, called a smirk.