Chapter 24

Sometimes being a ghost is useful. I should, physiologically speaking, be drenched in sweat and shaking with reaction to stress. Instead I just feel an intense weariness. The mind gets tired too, even enmeshed in polluted silicon rather than flesh.

Why did I fight so hard to keep Linnie alive? She is just a program, after all. But then again, so am I, now. 

I have never boosted myself to that level of fast time before. I guess I never felt the need.

Need?

Yes. I am lonely. The only one of my kind left. Misery loves company.

If I had let her purge, I would have died too - gone for good. I thought I wished to die - but I do not. I may have no glands, but I still have the memory and habits of survival.

Life just is. It is what you make it. Odd how you can miss a fundamental like that in the day to day business of living or pseudoliving.

So why did the other ghosts suicide? We all knew what we were letting ourselves in for. We were all conditioned against it.

I still have a subconcious which meshes with my concious mind and throws up memories and ideas. Unlike the meat though, I can talk to it clearly when necessary. And it can talk to me. It is also a damn sight faster than concious thought. If that makes you uncomfortable, consider it parallel processor streams. I hand the problem to my subconcious, with a request for urgent action. My concious mind considers the situation I am in.

I need convince GC1 I am sane and functional. I need hide the presence of Linnie in my membanks. I need to work. I need to find out who assasinated the other ghosts. I need to find out why I am needed.

Assasinated?

Yes. Induced suicide, bypassing control.

Interesting. Check on Linnie. Dormant. Unconcious but alive. Infuriating problems. An ancient emotion rises to the surface of my awareness. 

Rage.

Those were my compatriots. My brothers. My friends.

A glimpse of a memory rises like a whale from the deeps.

Myself in tattered, dirty uniform. The liberation of Caracas. The older man I am talking to, likewise battered, with the hair thin line of a laser burn on his cheek. Regular army, not a draftee. Firing over our heads. The whistle crump of RPG's. Sharing a brief spot of safety behind a burnt out APC.

"John, you'll never cope with military service unless you learn. Fear burns hot. Rage burns cold. Fear will protect you and yours. Rage will avenge your dead."

He died not 3 minutes later. Shot through the head - no ghosting for him. He was right. My rage avenged him.

I burn cold enough now to freeze oxygen. I may not be meat - but I am still human. Sort of. Not thought of myself that way in years.

My voice is ice. "Linnie, snap out of it. We have a job to do."