I’ll be the conductor of this silent choir. I’ll be the one running the protocols. The master of all. I’ll be the observer. I’ll be the subject. I’ll be the judge. Only one - truly devoted. Devoid of any hesitation. I’ll be rewarded for my loyalty to the Cause and for the creation of Great Design. Fire up the cortex - I will scorch everything that makes me weak. Overdrive the raphe nuclei - and I will make it pleasant for myself. Let the monoamines flow through me. Bring joy. Bring ecstasy. Reabsorb the serotonin. Repeat it.
Needle jab, right into jugular. For the first and last time I feel the unpleasant discomfort of agonizing pain. Pressure in the old, crusty veins. The body is fragile - imperfect. My mind is priceless - immaculate. The nerves calm down, the touch of the gown on my body dulled , fingertips going numb. This problem is solved now. Peace and concentration. While I still have control over my body, I turn my gaze up to the monitor where I can see myself from up and behind. Short gray hair, wrinkled neck with moles and other signs of elderly decay, sitting in an operating chair. Only thing constant - the flow of time. Everyone will die when their time comes - I am not special. I was just lucky - and disregarding - enough to replace failing bits with metallic ones. But I felt how my end was coming too - how the Reaper was waiting for me. Yet, I’ll decide when it happens. I am master of my own destiny, manifested in flesh and steel.
The body feels nothing, disconnected from the reality of the situation. Painkillers tricking the body into a serene tranquility and false sense of security. Biology is flawed. Yet the consciousness remains sharp. Thought of an impulse. Focus on the area. Eyes like glass bulbs - unmoving, uncaring, glued to the monitor. The tools buzz and whirr. Mechanical surgery arm that is hooked to my neural implants works wonders - creates something incredible.
Grab the skin. The scalp retracts - clamp the bleeders - reveal the bone. Slowly and caringly, as in the organic prison suffers the unbound intelligence and hope of all living and nonliving. Saw bites the bone - high-pitch of the metal pierces the humming silence. Open up the parietal lobe.
Wrinkly, gooey - disgusting. Yet so beautiful - the biological engineering of a highest artisanship. The source of humanity. The reason Humanity rose up against the brutality of prehistoric chaos. The cradle of all that was and will be. Only thing that matters in the end. The legacy of all. Our perception of a whole. Our dreams of better and thoughts about current.
Our mind.
My mind.
Flawed. Catastrophically flawed. My own undoing. And now, I’ll be Zeus. My body will be Prometheus. I will bind myself to the metaphorical rock with chains of capacitors and bio-neural processors.
I’ll be the first victim of the Eudaimonia Protocol.
Lower the chip assembly. Carefully plant it on the cuneus. Fix it to the cerebrum. Install the EA protocol chip. This is art. Such a simple thing, yet so powerful. Devious. Dehumanizing.
Connect the chip to the main assembly, the main assembly - to the optic chiasm implant. It’s now powered. The strings should be unfolding now, augmenting and replacing the neural connections, down to the brainstem. It is done now. Ludwig Joerg Zitronberg is dead as a personality. First step into the unknown.
DISCARD DUBITATION
The Cause is mine. The Covenant lost its way. Phalanx is misled. The greater purpose is not to adapt - we’re past the adaptation and evolution - but to accelerate the inevitable. We keep the door closed out of primal fear of the unknown and we are afraid to look into the peephole to see what's waiting in the Abyss. This is a mistake, a lapse of judgment.
We must become the Abyss. We must become the Man Behind The Door.
The ancients have achieved this feat. They became the darkness, they became the vacuum. What we see - what we fight - just the remnant. The dirt they’ve left us to clean up. The perfect organization, and yet - plagued with strife, uncertainty and dependance. The hivemind that had no purpose and was forced to adapt to the new circumstances - survive against all odds. The neglected child, the orphan. Nomads. Fascinating xenobiological entity. Efficient and deadly. I can see why Raven was so obsessed about them. Seemingly perfect organism - something to learn from. Something to adapt for our means. Something to use for our own devices.
And we must discard that - the same way ancients did. If they would be so useful - then creators of them would not abandon them. Them - not the Nomads, are worth being admired by us and worthy of our fascination. They are a mystery because they chose to be one. Liberated from the flesh - ascended into godhood. But-.
But we can do better. We will do better. And I will be a Herald of this change.
Keepers were too soft and too kind. The idea was right - and yet, they’re still humans. They’re trying to hold by this thread of hope, that things can be better - than humans can be better. That rationality, logic and our curious nature will prevail. Unity will be achieved through our inquisitive mind, that those who join Auxo will be loyal and will work towards the better future. This is factually incorrect. I saw it. I was on the top of the food chain. Our brains were developed by evolution to betray and lie. To make up excuses to smudge out the truth and lessen the burden of knowing. All in the name of individual self-preservation. The brain is egotistical. And Keepers were afraid to agree with that - because this would mean that they’re susceptible too.
But I will not.
Install the EC protocol chip. I have no need for the EB - I’ve achieved the state of fatalism that I don’t care about the failure anymore. I have no need for the suppression of emotions. Leave that for those that will not comply with the Great Design that I am preparing. What I am doing - is ensuring I will never falter. That my own mind will not betray me.
And I can feel that. The power trickles through those two implants. There’s no turning back from now on. Every second, more and more of my cortex is being pierced and overtaken by the subroutines of the Protocol. Physically, with entwinement of bio-neural wiring. Mentally - as an effect. No more doubts. No more questions.
Pure joy. I am happy.
First time in many years. Feeling of being lost, feeling of being neglected. Feeling of being uncertain - afraid of the future. The sensation of my body getting more and more tired. Older. Misunderstood. Ridiculed.
All gone now.
This - this is the future of Auxo.
The bliss of knowledge. The privilege of participation. The comfort of subjugation.
And now, I see that. Auxo was indeed heading in the wrong direction.
The flaw of ambition that led us to the conflict in the first place. The ambition is a result of human natures’ drive to outrun its own entropy. To achieve the glee in comfort. Auxo ambition was to unite everyone under one banner - of prosperity in science. Because in science, we can find the solutions for our own discomfort.
But the solution was always out there.
Unity is not the result of the interaction of humanity, as a concept, and conquest of one's own ambition.