Reviled: Frankenstein, #2

By Dean C. Moore

Soren emerges from his rejuvenation tank to find he's no longer technically alive. Where once he was both Dr. Frankenstein AND the Frankenstein monster, now he's just the monster.

All that remains of his higher consciousness resides in the mindchip. Unless he can reanimate his body, that's where it'll stay. But the monster is learning to block access to the mindchip more and more with each passing day.

If Soren is not to remain in this state, he's going to have to act fast, and get help. The problem is, he threatened to kill his ad hoc family of paranormals. Now they—including his girlfriend, Naomi—are running scared.

Just because Soren is sidetracked with his own survival issues—the monster in him growing darker and more powerful by the day—doesn't mean his arch-nemesis is taking a break.

Victor Truman has introduced an entity to the planet by opening a portal over Syracuse, NY that is his most unstoppable yet. People are dying en masse and suffering like never before. And so far, no magic has proven powerful enough to neutralize the latest celestial wizard to come crashing to Earth.

The one person who might be able to stop him? Ironically, it's the beast, if only Soren can learn to work better with the ever-more powerful, darker side of his nature. His journey into his own heart of darkness may destroy him, though, long before it destroys the latest threat to the planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9798215031179

Book preview

ONE

The fear, the horror in his surrogate family’s faces... of Lars especially, but of Naomi, Player, Stealy, and Natura, too, when less than a heartbeat ago they were shining with hope....

In the next second his friends were gone, fleeing like cockroaches in the night after the light had been flicked on.

Maybe it was something in the line, I’ll kill you all! Every last one of you for doing this to me! And he had meant every word.

Soren rose from the tank as dawn was breaking, the early morning light exposing him and what he’d become in all his glory. The overhead skylights of his lab, shattered by his own roar.... In one of the panes that had found its way to the floor semi-intact, leaned against his operating table, angled just so, was his reflection. The unlikeliness of the glass surviving the fall, as if only to mock him....

His once handsome face was scarred on one side beyond recognition. His ripped, tanned torso, that could cause many a woman to overlook a lot of other deficits, was now splotched with webs of nanites—as if he were all machine underneath, and the blemished regions were just where the skin had refused to grow over. Worse, these blots.... They were moving. The ordinarily microscopically small nanites—too small to see with the naked eye—looked more like tiny black sand crabs—the black versions of the ones that usually infested one’s crotch after raunchy sex. They were attempting to do their work of healing him and failing miserably.

Why?  That’s right, Lar. Soren had upgraded his mind with a shot of his own nanites, infused with Victor’s mandala magic. But under the influence of the Tillerman—a wizard whose power was beyond the match of anything they had to throw up against him on Earth—Lar had obviously been working subpar. That meant he couldn’t grasp the complexity of Soren’s nanites. So—what had he replaced them with?

Hurry, Soren. Who knows how long your access to your mind chip will last with these things crawling around inside you, snipping at your cybersystem trailing from every nerve enhancement to the mind chip?  How long before the brute is all there is?

He stepped out of the tank where the new reality just got that much more heinous. The rest of his body hadn’t fared much better. Each of his legs had the same black moving mounds, as if his cybersystem were determined to live off of his human flesh; the nanites feeding on it to repopulate themselves. That might very well be what’s going on, you fool!  Hurry. Already he could feel himself growing more impatient with himself.

They’d left him a robe to clothe his nakedness after stepping out of the tank. He reached for it, but before he put it on, he had to know. He turned his back toward the angled glass and craned his neck back. Streaks ran down his back, two on either side, like the claw marks of a pterodactyl. They ran almost in parallel with his cyberenhanced spine—the once chrome-like finish that was part of the spine-over-spine overlay, now as black as the rest.

If he wasn’t ready to throw on the monkish brown woolen robe with the hood before, he was now. As he donned it, staring into his reflection again, with his front side facing the angled glass this time, he had to laugh at the irony. Though hideous, he was still strangely beautiful. No doubt he’d be even sexier now to some, depending on what district he was roaming. If anything, the frozen-fire look of his blond hair with all its highlights seemed more justified than ever, fed now as the flames were by an unquenchable burning in his soul. The chiseled facial features and dimpled jaw might well now be provided by a constantly renewed metal endoskeleton instead of heredity; even he couldn’t be sure.

All the same, his mirror image got a fist in the face, shattering the glass, as he elicited another roar. Evidently, his sense of humor wasn’t the tonic it once was.

One of his texts had been left on his operating table, spotlit by the lamp he used to perform his cyberenhancements on others. The tome shone under the illumination like a prized possession in an art museum, as if to ridicule him. As if determined to lure him to it just so it could have the last laugh.

When he picked up the book, Soren saw just how far that mockery extended. Lar, the son of a bitch, had used Emanuel Swedenborg’s work to base his nanites on—the text written in 1771! 

Oh, death was too good for Lar. Some protracted torture, the likes of which he was exposing Soren to now, was in order. The pain threshold in Soren’s body was already approaching the limit beyond which it would be next to impossible to think.

Soren would have to work fast to undo what had been done to him. Assuming it could be undone. And working solo?  Without Naomi...?  The odds weren’t good. She could probably use her Sponger magic to morph into him so he could access all of his mental powers through her. If only he hadn’t irrevocably severed that link. She would more likely kill him now for trying to get near her.

Soren, how could you think that? Naomi said.

Wait, the voice wasn’t in his head as it usually was when she telepathically linked with him. No, of course not. That part of him was just a dead meat puppet now, along for the ride. And she didn’t know how to mind-meld with his mindchip. How then had she read his thoughts? Had she touched someone once with the ability to read brainwave emanations—whether coming from a mindchip or not? Like it matters now. The proper response, Soren, is Halleluiah!

He glanced up at the balcony. She was grasping the railing, looking down at him.

He’d put so much time into adding warmth to his warehouse space, lining it with wood, illuminating it with amber lights, building the upstairs loft for his books, which lined the walls outside the upstairs bedroom, and the bedroom itself; the books reaching up to the arched ceiling. Add in the steampunk-like devices he’d cobbled together to do his science with from scrapyards.... His entire live-work space could have passed for the perfect Frankenstein movie set. Some of that had not been intentional, but had grown out of the vintage equipment he was forced to work with on the cheap, always stretching it beyond anything it was designed for. Belonging to a bygone era, technologically speaking, the warehouse, crowded with such apparatuses, had taken on a Gothic-style, Shelley-like nanopunk vibe. To say nothing of his chair, with its brass and copper tubing and fixtures, that brought his cyber-systems back to life; or the adapted fish-farming tank, which brought his biological systems back to life, but also subjected him to intense dreaming, strange astral travels, and much more.

But with all that, the place hadn’t truly taken on real warmth until Naomi had walked into it. And looking up at her now, it was clear where the true heart of his operations lay.

Her auburn hair worn long and her jade green eyes contributed to a face that could make Ansel Adams set down his nature photography just for doing her portraits. Her mesmerizing effect was downplayed by her blue jeans and jean jacket, the rest of her casual attire, and her refusal to wear makeup. Her complexion was so white and yet so full of vitality, as if even the bloodletting of death couldn’t touch her.

So, you didn’t flee with the others? he said.

Just to a safer distance.

Why? Why didn’t you just run off? His voice carried like the lash of a whip.

Maybe because I’m growing tired of living in my own shadow. Not looking to live in yours. That’s not really the kind of recovery I had in mind.

Fine. Suit yourself.  Soren could still detect the abruptness and the lack of appreciation in his own voice. How long before he couldn’t?

Can you help me? he asked, looking up at her again in a tone that was a tad more conciliatory.

I don’t know. I can’t morph into you as you were, if that’s what you’re asking. I can’t help you like that. Not yet. Some of my abilities I lost touch with a long time ago. It’s going to be a struggle to recover them.

More so with me storming about the place like the incarnation of your worst fears, unrivaled power, unchecked.  He hammered his fist into the stainless steel bed of his operating table, denting the surface as he roared.

When he looked upstairs again she hadn’t just flinched, she’d withdrawn from the banister. Oh, this is going to play well with her mousy disposition you were trying to help her shed all along, Soren. You’re more likely to drive her timidity to entirely new registers.

Or, it’s the deconditioning program I’ve been looking for, Naomi said, approaching the banister again. Like shock therapy, until I’m numb to the shocks.

Interesting comeback trail you’re on. Let’s hope it doesn’t get you killed. If these homicidal rages keep getting any worse, as I’m sure they will, you may need the rest of the posse just to protect you.

I’ll work on them. I’ll get them back. None of us has the right to be pointing the finger at anyone’s acting-out behavior. Once they see that....

Soren lowered his eyes. All the hope in her voice, and the confidence in her manner that she could restore their fragile family unit.... He couldn’t share it right now.

So, he set his mind, or rather, his mindchip, to making sense of the book in his hands. God damn it, woman!  You gonna come down here or am I going to have to fire a lightning bolt up your ass? he boomed.

Cute. I can tell when you’re faking it.

He smiled, wondering how many more smiles he had in him.

This is some really strange shit, Soren said, flipping through the illustrations of what was very possibly the first transhumanist treatise every written on the nature of merging man and machine. These nanites pictured here.... They’re not just primitive. Something else.

He was really just talking to himself, getting in practice for when there was no one and nothing to keep him company but his own voice, when he felt Naomi’s hand on his shoulder. He had forgotten about her telekinesis, explaining why he hadn’t even heard her descending the fire-escape ladder he used to connect the cement floor of the basement to his upstairs library and bedroom.

Her touch—it was how she’d lent him strength before, augmented his powers. He wasn’t sure what good it was going to do with his biological systems dead to this world, for all practical purposes. But the pain in his body, the wracking pain, it seemed to subside, giving him a better chance to make a connection with the mindchip. Each time he lost connection with it, he lost time. The chip was advising him that these breaks in continuity were just lasting fractions of a second for now. But in this instance, the connection held without the micro-fractures in time.

The medicine of her touch was working. More solidly anchored to the chip, he was starting to make sense of the tome. These nanites.... Their designs suggest they were created by a practitioner of magic as well. There are too many cabbalistic influences. Just the cut of the individual pieces, the shapes inscribed within the body, head, and working limbs of the nanites.... I’d say the nanites are meant to respond perhaps to words of power, or the psychic will of a wizard who understands how to use those carvings to attune to this or that realm.

Are they like Victor’s mandala magic, then?

No, this is something entirely different. But the cabbalistic nanites might be able to bridge with it, if I can supply them a bridge.  He winced in pain again, and again lost the connection to the mindchip. And his temper flared. Damn it!  Concentrate! he barked at Naomi.

Quiet, you beefcake simpleton.  Her wit seemed to slice through his anger. How long before that medicine failed to work?  It’s not my concentration that’s the problem. I need to feel what’s going on inside your body better.

He fought the pain and the genuine desire to scream at her, hoping she’d get a lock on the situation soon—before the brute backhanded her across the room. He’d tried to kill her once in a similarly unrestrained moment of anger, when, during their last adventure together, she’d hoisted him out of his rejuvenation tank before he was ready. His assault hadn’t taken. Maybe he could take solace in that. If anything, in fact, the attempt on her life had allowed her access to abilities she hadn’t been able to tap into in a while. In that case....

He picked her up off the ground in one hand and choked her by the neck.

Her legs flailed and she gasped for air. And then she was half way across the room, having to pull herself back along an imaginary rope—a tractor beam of sorts, forged by her own telekinesis.

Was that good for you? Soren japed. Because I feel better than ever.

She stifled a smile, not sure whether to encourage him. Yes, it’s because when I used my telekinesis to pull away, your nanites balled up, feeling the pull. 

Some backup safety mechanism, perhaps, Soren postulated.

For now at least, they’re not stepping on your last nerve, literally. But Soren, I saw what they were doing. They’re severing your nerves so you can never feel pain again. It’s like they want to unleash the monster that’s inside you.

Wonderful. So, whoever this magician was, it was black magic he was into, then.

We don’t know that. At least not yet. She put her hand back on his shoulder, and he felt better still. Perhaps she was healing the shattered nerves, at least for now. Soren tried to ignore the arousal he felt by her touch, the animal in him keener on acting on it than ever. Rape wasn’t out of the question if he lost control of these urges—if he lost access to the chip.

It dawned on him that such primitive urges—they couldn’t be coming from the chip. Whatever the nanites were doing, they had succeeded in activating at least some of his brain matter, perhaps forging access to the reptilian brain, the most primitive component of the mind, around which the mammalian brain had evolved, and above that layer had grown higher reason; each step in evolution separated by many hundreds of thousands of years or more. Techa help him if that was the only connection the nanites were keen on restoring.

He’d regained access to the chip. Once again, he tried to make sense of the cabbalistic magic inscribed in the nanites. I’m going to have to find people who are more expert in this field than I am, he said. He slammed the book closed. But for now, I think I might know how to forge a bridge to the magic of the nanites, even if I have no idea how to wield that magic just yet.

What...? Naomi said anxiously. I saw your eyes brighten just then. They literally glowed.

Must have been the mindchip, misfiring, possibly.  He let go of the concern surrounding what the hell was going on that might explain the reaction she witnessed, and rushed over to the long lab table where he kept his older nanite machines.

When I was put in the tank after my accident, he said, "I was visited by a celestial wizard. He said I’d be able to heal myself eventually, but that he couldn’t help with that. Still, I think he was trying to assist me. These primitive devices I designed years ago— He was fondling them absently. I think he was trying to cue me that they’re the bridge to this more primitive nano." 

Soren strained to remember which device the celestial wizard had put his hands on first. He needed to remember the exact order, for they might provide him the yellow brick road back to his higher consciousness. But in his excitement to reach for the right answer, his memory was clouding. Apparently, Zen-like aphorisms like no attachments, no aversions mocked him even now. The more he grasped for the intact memory, the more elusive it became.

Calm yourself, Naomi said, as if sensing how worked up he was getting. Of course, he’d lost track of what was going on, on the surface. He may well have been roaring with frustration and hammering at things; his new baseline. His body did feel tense, like rock and steel now instead of flesh and steel.

He forced calm upon himself, or rather, the chip did, doing well in the service of a task it was seldom called upon to do. Usually the chip was associated with amping-up his abilities, not damping them down. For now, it needed to diminish his frustrations and his adrenaline. The primitive reptilian brain easily fired up with its exaggerated fight or flight response. Soren didn’t just worry about outcomes anymore from a detached perspective, he treated every fear as if it meant life or death that he acquire the resolution he wanted now.

There. This was the contraption the celestial wizard had touched first; Soren was sure of it, or at least reasonably sure. His amplified fear response was pushing out any access to certainty. It was more correct to say this was the machine that caused him the least fear of possibly being the wrong choice. Logic was also with him—it was the most primitive of all the devices. So it made rational sense that it might be the bridge he needed to 17th century nanotech.

Now, how to formulate the bridge?

His thinking was hijacked by another real concern. The swarms of crabs making their mounds on his body— What were they up to exactly? Again, logic dictated they were making babies—small enough to crawl around inside him, because if the parents tried to crawl around inside him, they’d just end up ripping through every blood vessel, nerve, and muscle fiber. And just what fiendishly clever cabbalistic symbols were inscribed on the babies?  How did they work in conjunction with their missions in life, and with respect to mommy and daddy?

With that fear running out of control in his head, figuring out how to work the first machine to get the nanites it made to communicate with the cabbalistic nanites suddenly felt like a safe haven to retreat to. At this rate, he’d be playing his own fears against one another like a symphony conductor with little else to orchestrate in order to get anything done.

Naomi had both hands planted on his shoulders now as he sat on the stool at the workbench figuring out how best to program the antique nanite machine. She was doing more to keep his muscles relaxed and foster the calm state than his mind chip, which had pretty much reached its limits on that score. She was also ameliorating his fear responses; his mind little more than a fear amplifying machine anymore.

If I can just build these nanites to communicate between Victor’s mandala-configured nanites and the cabbalistic nanites, Soren said, again speaking aloud more so than speaking to her; he was hoping the sound of his own voice would help him to think through the knot of a problem now that some of his ability to work with subtleties was lost to him. 

If they have just one function—as communication relays—this antiquated device might be able to pull it off. 

How do you plan to get mandala-reading nanites to talk to cabbalistic-reading nanites?

The mindchip, thankfully, has photographic recall, even if I don’t. And it’s writing the algorithms now that are its best guess as to what nanites might be able to speak both languages. It will deselect which of those this more primitive machine is simply unable to assemble. It will be like a first year foreign-exchange student at best, who is a long way from being fluent. Maybe if both sides just speak slowly enough and gesture enough at first, as it were...not sure that analogy works, but you get the idea.

Reminds me of how we met. ‘Me science guy, you supernatural chick—now if you can just get past the Tarzan-Jane speak, we’re perfect for one another’.

Actually, my exact words were, ‘Me, Science Guy. You, Supernatural Chick. Sounds like a marriage made in heaven to me, if you can just get past the Tarzan-Jane speak’.

He caught her smile in the reflection of one of his bottles with powders containing each of the elements from the periodic table—the ones that could be bottled, that is—sitting on his workbench.

"If you’re wondering how I’m holding up so well, it’s because you were nearly this insufferable before your accident."

Yeah, but I wasn’t nearly so handsome.

Speaking as a Goth-wannabe, I suppose so.

There, it’s done. Soren sighed relief.

You programmed the machine already?

The one modern thing about all of my devices, the one tweak I bothered to make was to allow them to receive new coding from the mindchip directly by radio broadcast.  Soren stared alongside her at the syringe container filling up with the new nanites.

Good thing this is a primitive device.

Yeah, well, you’d be less impressed if you knew the error rate associated with every hundred nanites made. I may have to cut off your arm and carry it with me to make sure I don’t break the connection with your healing magic.

Sorry, no can do. No limb regenerating ability in the toolkit, to my knowledge.

He was losing the ability to tell when she was joking with him and when she was being serious. Again, the subtleties were lost on his reptilian biological brain, too clouded with fear. He was losing connection with the mindchip again; he just didn’t tell her this time for fear she was already overextending herself. He knew she was weakening, because her healing magic was no longer moderating the pain in his body. The nanites which had gone into dormancy upon being hit by a bolt of her telekinesis yanking them away from what they were doing had evidently shed their skittishness and were back at it, remodeling him as the monster, or possibly something even worse. Naomi was right; it was too early to tell exactly what they were up to.

He could no longer feel her touch on his shoulders; he was too stiff and too sore. The pain too great—it was pushing out every other sensation.

He winced, bellowed, and gasped at once at the agony, which had grown excruciating with the latest spike. That was all the provocation he needed to pull the canister out of the machine even before it was finished filling. Close enough. The canister already had the needle attached; it was how the nanites had crawled into the plunger in the first place—through the needle.

He stuck the needle in a vein just long enough to get about a third of the nanites out of the syringe. He needed those to rush to his brain to kill his pain response. He yanked the needle, shot the rest up the major arteries in his arms and legs—because those would get to his frayed nerves a lot faster.

There, it’s done. Let’s hope these nanites are better at forging a peace than humans are with one another.  Soren was expecting some response from Naomi, a grunt at the very least, if not a small chuckle.

He turned to find her passed out on the floor.

The beast found her fetching, desirable. It didn’t care that she was passed out; it was all too happy to rape her while she was unconscious.

Soren ran for the door. He had to put some distance on the two of them. Who knew how long before that new communications network was up and running inside him?  And what it could do when both parties just spoke a few words of one another’s language?  All he knew for now was that he was losing the connection with the mindchip for longer and longer periods. He really didn’t want to wake up in the middle of a rape scene.

And he had that small matter of a wizard to find that could help him decode the cabbalistic magic of the nanites inside him. And Soren had to get to him before he lost sight of his mission altogether.

Soren glanced back at his warehouse space the moment he was out of it. Its two-story structure was derelict beyond reason; so much so that the city had condemned it. The place was so booby-trapped with pitfalls and death traps that he’d had to do little by way of security to keep out unwanted guests. Over time, he’d just added to the Indiana-Jones-style temple of doom effects with some supplemental traps of his own. He’d sectioned off a corner of the building for himself, ripped out the first and second story floors to get access to the skylights, and set up shop in the basement.

The world outside his lab was as unexpected as was the world inside. His warehouse was situated in the heart of the Victorian London reenactment district. Syracuse, New York was rife with such costumed districts where locals acted their parts to a tee. Most couldn’t survive the current-day economy, lacking the technical skills to compete with robots and transhumans—the latter coming with any number of neural enhancements to boost cognition. Both androids and transhumans had their own sectors in Syracuse, and wouldn’t be caught dead slumming it in these backwards-era districts like Victorian London.

There were enough people who—like the Amish—had carved out a slice of time for themselves, and were now permanently ensconced there, turning Syracuse into a kind of magic carpet of time, where anywhere, whether it was located in the past, present, or future, could be accessed simply by walking a few blocks in one or another direction.

Of course, all these districts shared one thing in common: magic. Reigning over each individual sector, as if their own personal fiefdoms, was one or another master wizard that had climbed to the top of the food chain by means that probably left their humanity at the door.

Some of the locals passing him by on the sidewalk—the females with their hoop dresses and twirling parasols overhead, the men with their wild, bushy sideburns that ran to their chins and elaborate suits that also required an attendant’s help to don—made the signs of the cross over themselves in deference to his monkish hooded robe and demeanor. He ignored them.

The chip had engaged again the instant Soren was out of his warehouse space, but that was more curse than blessing.

The chip, by housing the entirety of his consciousness that had been uploaded to it as a failsafe backup, had held on to some of his less desirable qualities as well, such as the tendency to perseverate over spilled milk—that he really couldn’t put back in the bottle.

As he strode through Victorian London, in his head, he kept reliving the moment he broke the water’s surface in the tank, threatening to kill the people who were the only ones he’d ever been able to make meaningful human contact with.

In no time at all, he’d erased all the good work he’d accomplished alongside Naomi, annealing a family that simply refused to be brought together. That one misstep, that one-time loss of control—in which he’d threatened to kill each of them—that was all it had taken. He wouldn’t get another one, not before a lot like this, who’d been traumatized enough by parents who acted just as he did, all nice and sane one minute, and totally insane the next—the human turned rabid animal.

Naomi thinking any differently was just demonstrating wishful thinking, or telling him what she felt he needed to hear to keep him from killing himself in that moment.

The kids in their family dynamic—responding to Naomi and Soren as elders, though they were all roughly of the same age, just a few years younger or older than one another—had given too many second chances to people just like him already. They would extend no more such courtesies, and he couldn’t blame them.

"Nice one, Soren. From Frankenstein Reborn to Frankenstein Reviled, with one intimidating sweep of your hand.

"Techa help you if you can’t win them over again. Because you’re certainly in no shape now to go this on your own." 

Letting go of the fantasy of a possible family reunion, he sighed.

You’re born alone, you die alone. That goes for your rebirths too. The first of many more to come. So fuck ’em.

That wasn’t him talking. It was the monster. Just hours out of the tank and he was already taking over more and more.

TWO

Victor Truman stood on a tongue of energy formed by his mandala magic, the interlocking geometries combining to shape the bridge extending beyond his penthouse apartment. His suite was located in the Excelsior hotel in the heart of Swank Town—the ritziest district in Syracuse. But he hadn’t exactly come out here for the view. 

He hadn’t come out here to look down on the