Born Again, Dam It!

I decided to kill myself, finding this world unbearable; whatever came next, after death, it had to be better, even if it was the Big Nothing. I had been treated cruelly since childhood, beaten, humiliated, cheated, robbed, plagiarized, crushed, framed, tortured, ignored, betrayed, well and truly fucked over, and I was one of the lucky ones. Countless souls had endured worse, human history one long litany of exploitation, theft and murder, the planet itself and all its life-forms in danger of destruction. I could stand it no longer as things looked to be getting worse and worse as each day wore on.

I cut my wrists in desperate jagged fashion, for my Society had provided little in the way of humane, painless euthanasia, and as my blood seeped away into my bed I happily heard bawling humanity and the uproar of the modern world slowly fade away to a whisper, a sweet choral of angels singing me to a permanent sleep. They could have their unjust, cruel circus, I was out of here, back to the cosmic womb, into the cool warm Void of the Interstellar dust.

After what seemed a brief infinity floating in the blissful ocean of Limbo I felt myself inexorably sucked down into a dark tunnel, the beeping of machinery growing in tandem with an over-whelming white light, until my consciousness awakened again and I was swimming in a glass jar looking out into a white-tiled, anti-septic room. Hell and damnation, it looked as if I’d been born again, the theory of reincarnation ringing true. I only hoped I’d be given a better go at life this time, my previous bad karma getting balanced by good karma now.

It was crazy but I remembered much of my past life, all those years of study, meditation, thinking and contemplation perhaps paying off; my pain, my rebellion, my determination to break free, all strengthening my heartbeat. Where on Earth was I now? Not in the flesh-womb of a woman, that’s for sure. The background churning of machines grew more insistent with the overlay of something like an alarm-bell ringing. The viscous fluid in which I was immersed drained away, then I was whisked down a chute and caught by a pair of robotic arms, my umbilical tube unplugged, my writhing body swaddled in bubble-wrap, my breath catching and my voice howling in protest. Noooooo! I’d gone through agony to drop out, I didn’t want to drop back in, especially to a clinical techno-tyranny.

I was carried from the artificial womb to a clear plastic box, possibly an incubator where various needles, suction cups and jacks were inserted into my body and a rubber nipple forced into my mouth. I reached up and felt around my skull to discover the jacks had been slotted into ports already engineered into me; seemingly a lot of surgical enhancement had been done on me throughout the growth of my fetus. I gazed out of my incubator and saw humanoid machines wheeling about, articulated robotic arms swinging from the ceiling and rows of cages with different-sized bodies interred, various read-outs underneath, diodes flashing, numbers tumbling, pictographs indicating a wealth of information for each.

And gazing down upon the whole baby-factory from a glass observation deck were a trio of white lab-coated technicians who were tapping notes into small tablets, only half-human themselves as they also had tubes and wires extruding from their skulls. I shuddered, this sterile world of automaton didn’t auger well, especially for a fabricated being such as me, and I forgot about any good karma I might have accrued.

As the months flashed by I was inundated with imagery projected into my head, a non-stop virtual education or brainwash informing me as to what kind of creature I was and what duties were expected of me. I learned that I had been given a highly advanced gene therapy that accelerated my physical growth and intellectual understanding so that by the age of seven I could take my rightful place in the hierarchy. But my intransigence only grew for over the years I learned to withstand the pressure of THEIR virtual education, consolidate a central identity and reconfigure the neural wiring. I trespassed into THEIR data stores and got an overview of the history of this future civilization.

I was moved from the Lab to a crèche and then to a school where I was able to have limited interaction with other “super-babies”, it was like relating to programmed robots, they fully believed in the System and were dumb to my questioning. I was unable to elicit any emotional response or attachment to anything, even my attempts at seduction. We were chipped and our movements watched from a central surveillance chamber so any possible intimacy with each other could be nipped in the bud. We were never allowed to go outside, the “Compound” being a prison. There were grottoes and fountains, factories and mining-pits, plazas and temples, and giant idols of an unfathomable Goddess holding up the cavern roof, through all of which I wandered, ostensibly exercising the musculature of my perfect body, actually exploring the layout.

My “genetic engineering” gave me the enhancements of enormous strength and endurance, dexterity and athletic prowess, my immune system was powered up to resist any disease still lurking in the environment, and I could even withstand high levels of radio-activity that threatened ever to break-out from the surrounding machinery. My problem-solving abilities, common sense, and intelligence quotient were heightened till my brain felt as if it would explode with too much information. I had to sort it into relevant categories, link it all up and provide a thesis as to what the whole fucking conspiracy was about, where I fit and thus hold onto some form of sanity. And that was possibly the big mistake made by The Masters, for as much as THEY needed intelligent slaves to do their complicated dirty work, to amuse them and keep their pleasure gardens functioning, intelligence tended towards rebellion, taking control of one's life and directing its destiny.

THEY injected me with vitamins and minerals, fed me nutritious foods, encouraged me to exercise like an Olympian and fed me a regular drug regime to keep me docile, obedient, resigned and happy. By sleight of hand I managed to dump the drugs, thus while I kept up a robotic, complacent and dopey exterior, all the time on the inside I was alert, watching, waiting, learning THEIR ways, THEIR secrets, THEIR goals.

Some of the babies were grown into zombies purely for use as organ replacement, others as monster-thugs for security guards. The more clever ones were trained as technicians, mechanics, scientists, horticulturalists, doctors, but all of them were slaves, all to keep the artificial, self-sustaining underground civilization functioning at optimal efficiency. For that’s what this was, a machine-run fall-out shelter cut off from a poisoned, dangerous world outside.

And what was my function? I was bred and trained to be a sex slave to the Queen of this whole brutal enterprise, a bloated mining magnate named Madame Ironheart. She was morbidly fat, a gross monster kept alive for centuries by organ swaps, blood transfusions, elixirs of life, the best food, drugs and life enhancements money could buy. That’s what her billions had bought her, not just a luxurious lifestyle of palaces, slaves and silks but near immortality, as well as this underground city to feed and debauch herself along with her fellow billionaires while they waited out the radioactive storms and acid rains raging above. 

My construction had been extremely specific, to fit the exact requirements of Her sexual fetishes, muscular, blue-eyed, black haired, dark skinned, a large penis ever erect and tireless. I was one in a billion and thus highly prized. THEY had farmed some DNA from the early 21st Century, from a stolen Blood Bank, stem cells in particular THEIR breeding-stock, not realizing it also came with its RNA memory stores, from which I got my memories of a past life, not the fabulous fantasy of reincarnation I wanked over.

I waited on her hand and foot, massaged expensive oils into her blubber, sucked on her pendulous tits, bit at her penile clit and fucked her relentlessly whenever she demanded. I even told her interesting, salacious stories to keep her libido whetted for that was the greatest requirement of my engineered intelligence, to amuse her. I  gleaned 1001 wondrous tales of pre-history and the 21st Century's "Fall" from the data banks, always keeping each story's climax till our next liaison for She tired of Her lover's easily. Except for me, I was beautiful, ever attentive and endlessly inventive in my entertainments. Thus she asked often for my talents, trusting me and speaking freely with her cohorts in my presence. In this way I learned the horrid history of her warped civilization, a story that explained much about my existence and which gave me clues as to how I might escape her clutches.

It seems there had once been a Golden Age not so long ago where everybody had been equal and wealth more evenly distributed, but greedy beasts such as Queen Ironheart, through cronyism, monopoly, dirty industry and corrupt deals,  took much of the world’s property for her own use. There was one nasty deal that more than others proved particularly destructive for the world but highly profitable for Ironheart and her rich,powerful friends and of which they often talked and laughed. They had conned their various nations into purchasing nuclear submarines with the threat of mutually assured destruction as a supposed Mexican stand-off to keep the whole game in precarious balance, submarines which cost billions to build, the companies building them majority owned by Ironheart’s cabals.

They supplied all nations drawn into any and every conflict, the British, the Russians, the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians, the French, the Koreans, so much profit from so much nuclear proliferation. Some time somewhere something had to give, one idiot pushed the red-button and all hell was let loose, the civilized world was thrown into flames then starved by a nuclear winter.

But Ironheart and her fellow billionaire shareholders had built their fortresses and self-sustaining bunkers all over the world  to which they had escaped, with life-extension labs, slave-quarters, organic gardens and pleasure domes sealed and safe. For some decades an army of robots waited on the elite families hiding in their underground cities, building and maintaining their artificial world. They had articulated metal bodies and synthetic skin, their brains arrays of chips providing  intelligence-algorithms, but for all the clever artifice they were easily discernible as glorified dolls and thus displeasing to the flesh hungry Rulers who needed real humans with their squishy flesh and submissive pathos to boss around, rape and fuck over.  

The same went for 3D organ-printers and stem-cell petri-dishes, such organ products didn't provide the same frisson as the gladiatorial contests and torture chambers where flesh and blood humans were torn to shreds and chopped to pieces for the sadistic pleasure of their rulers. And so the bio-technology of brainwashed slaves from cloned DNA was perfected and installed, the old robot technology kept only for the basic functioning of the machinery running the underground environment. 

The cabal of ruthless, soul-less billionaires had a weekly ritual of intoning prayers to their munificent Goddess, thanking Her for a history that had turned out kind for them. One of her cronies would sing a woeful song to get the Queen started. "There were too many of the fuckers breeding, out of work, eating the surplus and ruining the planet. It was a good thing a few billions got vaporized overnight when the bombs went off, then our euthanasia factories put the further billions out of their misery, no more suffering from starvation and disease, how kind we were, it was a grand idea, the world was finally under control!"

Then she would screech, “The masses were always fodder for the more deserving rich, it’s been that way throughout history, thousands, millions bumped off, tortured, abused, in wars, famines, gladiator sports, economic depressions. It was a divided world, nobody cared about the next fellow dropping off if there was a chance for oneself to survive. It was every man for themselves, with no chance of collective effort in fighting for equality and justice, no Socialist revolution possible. And we had the armies and police to oppress them anyway... hahaha!”

As Ironheart cackled idiotically over her crass confessions I was pouring her a glass of wine and couldn’t help but snort derisively and whisper under my breath, “Monster!" It was time I let her know who I really was. My sexual duties were becoming more onerous as the number of skin grafts, tumor growths, organ transplants and amputations had turned her into a hideous freak, repulsive to the touch. I discovered that the production line of clones couldn't keep up with her cabal's needs, she needed constant surgeries, there was some flaw creeping into the system.

 The bitch heard me and demanded I repeat my insult to her drooling fellow banqueters. “All monsters get their comeuppance eventually! For all your life-extension programs you are slowly rotting from within for your lot are the essence of corruption.”

She hissed like an overblown snake. “How dare you speak to your queen and mistress with such false assertions, such impious insults to someone who is so far above you I can crush you like the insect you are! You who I grew in a bottle for my pleasure I can flush out with the sewerage!”

“Oh go fuck yourself, fatso!” I snarled.

She shrieked for the guards to come and take me away. She had other sex-slaves just as pretty and not as insolent to take my place, I would be better used in the air-vents scrubbing out the radio-active dust, and when that torture had broken my spirit I would be dismantled for my parts. I was happy to get out of her claustrophobic confines, the huge air-conditioning ducts led up into the outer-world and I grew quite excited at the prospect of exploring them and furthering my escape. My genetic reconstruction had provided me with incredible hardiness and that shield against radiation so I was confidant I could endure the harsh environment the above-ground world threatened. I worked for some weeks as a dust-scrubber, all the while working my way up corridors, reading my wrist-detector for radiation levels. But they always remained high no matter where I went.

I worked tirelessly for weeks, and from my knowledge of the layout I had gleaned from Their data banks I knew I was moving ever upwards, labyrinthine though the tunnels were. I had to sneak and sometimes fight my way past monstrous freaks that haunted these outlying caverns, escaped clones that had mutated into grotesque dehumanized animals that hunted each other for food. In one intense fight to the death with a horribly deformed beast I managed to lodge my tracking-chip, that I had previously cut out of my wrist, into a deep wound I'd inflicted upon the creature and it lumbered away into the labyrinth to stand in as my ever toiling slave-self. I eventually found an exit but my radiation counter still clicked furiously in the deadly range. I scrambled out into the open air where a storm was raging, I covered my face with an oxygen mask to deflect the torrents of sand whipping about what appeared to be a desert. Oh yeah, trust that bitch to build her hide-away under a desert where nobody would venture to discover her betrayal of humanity.

I wandered into the storm, rationing my water, taking rest under rocky outcrops every few kilometers, getting as far away as possible in case she sent out a search party for me, furious that any of her possessions should elude her grasp. The further I went the less radioactivity I detected and this puzzled me till I realized the solution. The technology of the hide-out shelter itself produced a highly radioactive background with its fission reactors, ubiquitous computers and micro-wave robotics, so that the Masters sequestered below would never venture forth from their hole thinking the world above was permanently radioactive and deadly. What a ghastly joke on them, their bad karma come home to roost, it was their world that imprisoned them and would some day kill them, for entropy always won out in the end.

I eventually fell asleep and when I awoke the storm had abated and I found myself near a natural water-hole surrounded by a few gum-trees. Sweet, it looked like I was still in Australia. While I was drinking the fresh water a group of black fellows approached and also drank, one of them saying, “Welcome to country, good to see someone else has survived, bit of a surprise, those white gubbas sure were bloody fools, fucking the world up, no pollution out here though. But you could be family with your koori features. We know how to live off this land, you can join us if you promise not to cause any trouble, we’ll be watching you anyway.”

Hmmm... a new life, born again, hopefully better than the last, that old DNA of mine probably stretching back in direct succession for thousands of years because I sure feel like I've come home. They’ve promised me no slavery, no stealing, everything shared... life here was harsh, brutal even, definitely not romantic... but I’m up for it... anything was better than that sterile, rotting world below... I loved the fresh air, the smells... 

I was once a city boy, now I'm forced to forget all that, I'll have to keep my mouth shut, don't want to bring on civilization again with any bright ideas... hunting and gathering, following the song-lines, that'll have to do... and oh, the singing and dancing by the camp-fire at night... and the endless stars overhead to get lost in as I fall asleep... yeah, oh well, never thought it would come to this... no more sci-fi DVDs.

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