That body Liquid burned on the Volta... Wasn't mine. That was the body... Of a clone. Solidus. He was a perfect clone. Zero, and the proxy AIs that came after him, were convinced that Solidus was me. I was implanted with nanomachines... Kept in a state of eternal sleep... By JD the proxy AI. They had me sealed away completely... Not only physical body, but my will, too. The technology was similar to what they used to restrain the B&B members you encountered. For me to wake again... The System had to be destroyed... One way or another. Ocelot and EVA wanted two things... To bring me back to life, and to end the Patriots. That meant destroying the AI and killing the man... JD and Zero. Right before you uploaded the virus into GW... The way to JD was opened, but only through the physical manifestation of GW. That's when we finally learned the location of this man... Zero. For me, and for them... For Naomi... Nothing was more important. And it was for that they put their grand scheme into motion. EVA stole my body from them and reconstructed it by replacing the missing parts with pieces from Liquid and Solidus. And Ocelot... In order to fool the System... Used nanomachines and psychotherapy to transplant Liquid's personality onto his own. He used hypnotic suggestion to turn himself into Liquid's mental doppelganger. For all our advances in nanotechnology... Information and genetic control... They've never managed to control people at will... Let alone turn one person totally into another. Under certain conditions, someone can be made to play a specific role... Act like someone else. Cats... Do love to play as snakes. It all started with him... Zero. Zero grew old, and by the end, his Patriots were being run by a network without shape or form. [...] The proxies were only one small part of the vast cycle that Zero created. The corporations, for-profits... And research institutions that comprise the military-industrial complex were part of it, too. They operated on budgets automatically allotted to them by the proxies... Accounts maintained by the Patriots. The network covered everything from weapons R&D and investment to production and marketing. It encompassed the people, the companies - even the laws that protect them. Politics and economics became nothing more than iterations of the same oppressively uniform system. I don't think anyone realized that it was all a setup... A mere set of norms. The Patriots were those norms - a neural network reduced to its simplest form. That's what they really represented... Uniformity without individual will, without change. But then one day, those norms suddenly deviated from that pattern, and underwent a mutation. It was like the birth of a new life form... The System found a new way to propagate itself... War. The norms the Patriots had crafted for their unified state quickly became dependent on a single business... The war economy. Meanwhile, the political cause of creating a "cleaner, safer battlefield" provided a convenient catalyst. By then, the System was no longer being steered by Zero's will -- or anyone else's. It was then that the norms - manifested as AIs, the inheritors of Zero's will... Began to reproduce and take on a life of their own. Zero's original intent was to carry on The Boss's will and establish a unified world state... An inside world. But his successors failed to carry on his will. Eventually, JD became the very age itself, propagating its will as it pleased. And this age chose to act through economics instead of nation-states. Powered by the industrial and digital revolutions that came before it... this age gave birth to a twisted economic revolution - a battlefield revolution. It created a new world without substance. In this new world, there were no ideologies, no principles, no ideals... Not even the thing she treasured most... Loyalty. There was only the war economy. It was a colossal error in judgment - one Zero couldn't possibly have forseen. With the American system in a state of collapse... The Patriots' society has reverted to a blank slate. This man was the source of it all. And he doesn't even realize it. He's completely unaware of the fact that he led the world to the brink of ruin. Even with so much bad blood between us... It's funny... Now that I'm actually face to face with him again... The hatred is gone. All I feel is a deep sense of longing. And pity. Did Zero really hate me? Or... Did he fear me? It's too late to ask him now. The original members... Para-Medic... Sigint... EVA... Ocelot. They've all passed on. Only Zero is left. Everything has its beginning... But doesn't start at "one." It starts long before that... In chaos. The world is born... From zero. The moment zero becomes one is the moment the world springs to life. One becomes two... Two becomes 10... 10 becomes 100. Taking it all back to one solves nothing. So long as zero remains... One... Will eventually grow to 100 again. And so... Our goal... Was to erase Zero. Even the mighty Patriots began with a single man. That one man's desires grew huge... Bloated. Absorbed technology began to manipulate the economy. We realized too late... That we had created a beast. We had helped turn Zero... Into 100. His sin... Was ours. And for that reason... I'm taking it upon myself to send Zero... Back to nothing.
I was about to respond with about 5% of the text from War and Peace but it was such a huge block of text that Firefox crashed, so I'll just leave you with this:
"Since choice is meaningless in a deterministic reality, [nobody has ever] loved you in a way you'd find existentially satisfying."
We're prepared to give you about four dozen eggs, and let you wash it down with a roll of toilet paper, in exchange for you leaving us alone for the rest of eternity.
It was me who lured them out of the way. Sent a letter by Muggle post telling them they’d been short-listed for the All-England Best Kept Suburban Lawn Competition. They’re heading off to the prize-giving right now... or they think they are.
You're not fair
Telling me
You faked every orgasm
You've had with me
That's just fine
Now it's over
And I'm out here
Banging my head
After all the dancing
And spilling beer all over the place
I lie out here
In disgrace
You've had your fun
Kissed some bloke you shouldn't have
Right in front of me
Punched him to the floor
I could have killed him there
But I got thrown out
I'll get him some other time
When he least expects it
A copy of Grandfather's will. It's 2 months old. It says if it was ever proven Mom had children from her first marriage, even after he's dead, she'd be disinherited.
Comments
"Since choice is meaningless in a deterministic reality, [nobody has ever] loved you in a way you'd find existentially satisfying."
("The Have A Conversation With Pictures Thread" is this-a-way)
It's not really necessary, but thanks anyway.
Telling me
You faked every orgasm
You've had with me
That's just fine
Now it's over
And I'm out here
Banging my head
After all the dancing
And spilling beer all over the place
I lie out here
In disgrace
You've had your fun
Kissed some bloke you shouldn't have
Right in front of me
Punched him to the floor
I could have killed him there
But I got thrown out
I'll get him some other time
When he least expects it
What do you say?!
Re! Spect! Walk!
Are you talkin' to me?!
what The ROCK... is cookin'.
-Nope. Toast!