I. End of the line, II. Prison of my mind

**GoDGiVeR** · 09/19/2007 14:38:43

Godgiver awoke, not the first time, looking at half a dozen screens neatly aligned before him. He fell asleep in his chair, keeping watch over his "domain". One could say he woke up in what would be a normal broadcast room on a Hovercraft, just with a few more monitors and 8 doors aligned in a half-circle in the back of the room, cleary a construct. A construct inside Godgivers pod.
"Everything normal." He touched his forehead at started swearing: "Jeez, those goddamn machines gimme a headache."
He turned around in his chair, now facing 8 doors. He knew by heart which door lead to which of his constructs. All of the doors looked alike, except the one at the far right, which had a sign saying "Men only" on it, the bathroom construct.

He was already half-standing when suddenly each door started opening. Through each one stepped an Agent. Godgiver fell back into his chair, suprise marked his face, well, that was before he had a sensation in his mind a moment later.
Before the agent who stood in the foreground could say anything Godgiver held out his hand, signalling silence. Weird enough, the agent closed his mouth again. "Sooo one week ago...?" Godgiver said questioningly. The agent nodded. "The fact that I have not yet been killed is the reason that you suits are here. I knew something was wrong since last week. What did you do?"
The Agent in the foreground answered: "Two weeks ago your hold in this system has been broken. Although you eluded us within our own system for two and half years, our increase in efficiency could not be stopped. We located your position and removed any presence you had outside your -domain-, as you call it, according to your logs."
Godgiver shrunk in his chair and turned around facing the screens. For a few moments nothing happen, then he broke the silence again: "So as far as I can understand, you broke through my multilayer-feedback-EJP data system," a system he was proud of and he didn't think that they would break through it so soon, but well, he guesses the war-status increased the productivity," just to put me to sleep one week and analysize all the data I gathered? I expected you to kill me after you do that, though. As Agent Gray would say, there was a 95.45% chance that this would happen. But still, you let me go around my usual businees for a whole week, then come back in to do... what?" Godgiver turned around again and glanced at the agent before him.

"I am Agent Jones. 10 month after your first jack in from this pod into the Matrix, I was assigned to study and gather information about you. Unfortunately you turned out to be quite eluding and creative to avoid any contact. Half a year later I was assigned to capture you and if necessary, remove you from the simulation. It was fruitless. But then an exile program turned over some information that helped us understand where you are operating from."
"IDeca," Godgiver said, "is that exile, no?"
"Yes. However, even with the information at hand and through increased effort it forced you improve your own security drastically, which ultimately led you to develop this marvellous robust data system."
"Get to the point. As I said, I expected me to be dead, so why am I alive still? I meddled around in other peoples memories, although that was temporary outside allocated memory, changed the software in some few hundred pods for my data sytem and hijacked data directly from the 'recycle bin'. If I ever get caught, I thought, I'd have a maximum of four choices at hand."
"You do not, however, in my function I would like to hear these choices."
"One: You'd kill me directly in my pod through whatever means possible. Two: You would reinsert me, since that would 'only' need a memory wipe. Three: You'd flood me out of the pod, which was the most unlikely option. And finally four: You'd propose an offer to join your side.
Of course, it seems that option one to three haven't yet occured, I guess your presence leads to option four."
"Very well. I have ..," the Agent started but Godgiver interrupted:"...have you analysed all the data I have?"
The Agent looked puzzled for a second because of the interruption but continued as usual: "The data you gathered involves 23 dead samples of an unknown type of viral code, analysis programs, the logs, construct files, various programs as well as an active quarantine field."
"I guess the latter must have shocked you, heh?"
"It was a .. surprise to see what lay in this quarantine field. But after cross-referencing the data within the field with our historical databanks, we could finally fully understand what happened at your ... awakening."
"What's his name? I never found out."
"It was a former version of Agent Parker. It seems that through the simultaneous error in the pods medical system the RSI takeover that took place was quite .. incomplete. Taking from the logs it seems that it had some quite interesting side-effects on your -psyche- and your RSI."
"That's what the quarantine was created for. This left arm you see here is nothing else than a visual copy, controlled by the left side of the brain. It was hard to .. work with it at first."
"I see."

Godgiver sighed. How could he have such a casual talk whilst knowing that this is the end of the line for him. The end of his live as it had been.
"What is going to happen next?" he asked.
"Under the current situation with Zion and the truce we have decided to give you a choice."
"You're lieing. The fact that you pronounced the word psyche differently tells me that you will force the choice upon me."
"Very well then. The truth is that after we found out about the contents of the quarantine and it's effects it had upon you, we decided to study your working and thought patterns for one week to be able to perform an efficient methode of mental change. You humans would call this methode brainwashing."
The room was silent for a moment, the Godgiver said:
"It seems that you were successful in gathering that information. I guess what you will do is this: You will exchange the contents of the quarantine with a program similar to that which you gave Crytpos and some other dozens operatives, then you'll release the quarantine, which will then passively change my thought and working patterns into those wich -you- would like me to perform. In contrast to the Cryptos case where the change was purely active so that when the program was removed by Seraph, the hold upon the mind had been broken, whereas in my condition where the logs you read have shown that using the anchor points of the leftover agent programming can permanently change the psyche of the subject, namely me, involved. Though I belief that a sufficient change in my psyche towards .. you, would take a few days, perhaps weeks."
The Agent nodded: "This is correct. Although there is a very high chance that you would have removed that "anchor point" long ago, it is in our interest that you haven't been able to do so.
The said process will take approximately fourteen days to take sufficient effect. After that period we will release you and put yourself back into 'charge'. We will also provide you with enough empty pods to work with, so that your system can work efficiently. Of course, we will have a steady presence here and keep watch."
"I'd rather kill myself than to let me turn into a marionette of the Machines." Words of desperation. Godgiver knew he had no possibility to kill himself, and if he had, he wouldn't die. There was still his plain, standard EJP and he was sure that he had not a single command right in his own home anymore. Resistance would be futile.
"Wasn't it you, who wrote 'The illusion of having thought is the same as the illusion of having choice' in the [url="http://forums.station.sony.com/mxo/posts/list.m?start=45&topic_id=36300015099"]broadcast channe[/url]l? You don't have choice. From now on, compliance is mandatory, human."

The other agents turned around and left through the doors they came in.
"Resistance is futile and you have nowhere to run, Mr. Leitner," it was the first time the Agent actually said his real surname, "you will comply."
The truth that his own world collided on top of his head without him knowing hit him like a fist in the face, the strain on his psyche suddenly became devestating. Godgivers face colour changed into purest white. Shortly after he vomited onto the floor and passed out.

((I take no guarantee that this is written without any grammatical errors and various typos. This is the first thread I think that I've created on this sub-forum so take it easy on me, I'm a horrible writer. Well, as the story suggests I won't be seen for the next approx. 14 days. How Godgiver has changed you'll see after that. Ah and in case Xenin is reading this, well, he's the only one who will[i] know[/i] what happened here (if he read this, that is). Nobody else is 'allowed' to know that this took place.
Ah, and if anybody got suggestions for change, grammatically and / or in the story itself (e.g. speech of agent Jones), send a PM.
If you have questions about terms involved, just say so. I dunno if I'll be able to reply to this anytime soon, though :/ ))

**GoDGiVeR** · 09/19/2007 14:22:31

During the past month I've been changed from a freethinker (though I was [well, still am] officially aligned with Zion for my own reasons) to a spy for the Machines inside Zions ranks. The modification that have been made to my mind are likely irreversible. Though my personality has been left intact, my whole belief system has been turned up-side down. The Machines transformed me into a "nodding"-Machine.

No matter what they order me to do, I will do it. No matter what means it involves, I will do it.

Means, yes. Even if I despise the means, I will still obey. I cannot ... disobey. They left my whole memory, my whole past life intact, so that I can live on as the same person I was before, but as a spy. With the knowledge of my past life it is easy to act as I normally do. It is easy to pretend ... to be still myself.

Knowledge, it is so utterly useless. I know that they turned me upside down, but still I accept it. I know that I betray everything I've done up to now, but still I accept it. I firmly belief that it is right, that this is correct. Even though I know that I was forced to belief it, there is no pressure, no one behind me saying"belief it". I belief it of my own, even though, I know I was pushed to this point. I have become a firm arch-Machinist. A puppet.

GoDGiVeR wrote:

The illusion of having thought is the same as the illusion of having choice. If you think, it happens through the nature of inevitability, not because you are an intelligent being capable of thought. Of course something would need to be capable of "thought" to be able to "think". I just imply that even if you're capable of thought, the reason why you are capable of it is because in the end, everything made you to be. You think because everything, every action and reaction makes you think.
No matter how far anybody goes into discovering the secrets of nature, nobody would be able to calculate the so-called "Butterfly effect", the event of something completely "unrelated" happening because of another event. This inability to understand, comprehend, gives birth to both the words "fate" and "choice". But both are incorrect. Choice is an illusion because everything that has been leading to the choice has happenend (including the appropriate signals in the brain leading to the conclusion what choice to make) and everything after the choice will happen in exactly one way. Fate is an incorrect word because it implies knowledge. The strike of fate, if it happens, happened not because the being believed or knew it will happen, but because it was inevitable.

This concept of inevitability cannot be understood or grasped by the feeble human interlect, nor by the cold logic of the Machines. The Machines don't need to bother question the inevitability and humans don't need to find the answer to the question that lead us where we are: "Are we free?"

Now even if I accept that everything happens as it happens, unchangeable, without choice, nothing I will do will change. I'll still make choices, think and behave because of these. I cannot try to behave because of inevitability, I will anyways.

This is what I said in this broadcast some time ago. This is my "concept of inevitability". Even though I know that there is no choice, I will still behave like I myself makes choices on my own. But the truth is, I exist because of this concept. If for some reason causality took a break, I would cease to exist, I would not be able to make choices, illusions of the human intellect. Even what I write right now is the result of inevitability.

This concept is very much the same state my mind is currently in. In this case "inevitability" is the knowledge of what happened and "choice" is the acceptance of this situation. Even though I know inevitability, the knowledge that I'm being used, I will make choices, I accept the current situation as if the knowledge is nothing, as if it has no impact at all.

I live in a Matrix of my own. It is so similar to the reality I escaped from years ago. But there is no "backdoor", no 99% chance of acceptance and 1% chance to reject it. There is no "magical way out" in the form of a pill. I already accepted this reality, this Matrix. I am a bluepill of my own reality. But again, this reality has been created by someone else. It is, like it's big brother, a prison of the mind. But unlike -the- Matrix, this is an open prison. I know that I live in a prison, I know everything about it, even that I was made that I cannot possibly escape it.
My personal prison of my mind.

Even if for some reason someone found indeed a "backdoor" in this prison, this Matrix that is my own mind and trying to extract me would be the same as extracting a bluepill from the 99% who accept their reality. If this happened, there is the high chance that I may turn into my own version of a Cypherite, that I defend the Matrix I have been extracted from, maybe even wish to return, and in doing so take revenge on those that "saved" me.

I am beyond the point of no return, I accept this reality. I know this, -they- know this. What they belief is what I belief, even if they made me belief it. Even though I am capable of writing this, knowing that I live in my own Matrix, that I am being used, twisted around, will not change the knowledge. I cannot grasp the "truth" of this knowledge, it is impossible for me to ever accept the truth, even if I know what this "truth" is.

And that is good so. Why? I already said it. It is good because I belief in it from the bottom of my heart. My heart, it is something in the hands of the Machines, and I do no regret it. I am a firm believer that what they've done to me is the right thing. That is the "truth" that I live in and nothing will ever change that.

Well, there is a chance that I change, but only if -they- want me to change. After all, compliance is mandatory, forever.

((This is a kind of inner monologe Godgiver has from time to time. It reflects his mental state. I thought, maybe this will explain a bit more what happened -after- they caught and changed him.

And I take no warranty for the correct use of grammar and such >_>

If there are questions, just ask of PM me and I try to explain or correct the text.))