I Am Aqueous

I Am Aqueous - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I woke up in puddle form inside a prison cell. Instead of bar it seemed to be blocked off by lasers. There was a note written on paper in the center of the small cell floor. I walked over to the note and picked it up. It was hard to read, it was very sketchy and illegible, but I managed to figure it out. It read:

Welcome home my pet. You’ve been away so long that I had almost given up hope. Thankfully you’ve returned to your master. We have catching up to do. Just stay in your cage, I’m working in the lab, so I’ll be back sometime. No escaping now.

I read it again to make sure I understood it correctly and that was what it said. Now more questions flooded into my head, mainly from this note. My pet? What did he or she mean by that? My master? What was it talking about? Lab? The guy must have been some sort of scientist. But then it occurred to me that if I was his or her pet, and he or she was a scientist, that would make me a science experiment!
Gun was still dormant inside of me and I hoped he stayed like that. So one question was answered, what was I? Now I knew that I couldn’t have been an alien and I couldn’t have mutated because of a disease, I was a science experiment. But how could that be? What was my life before I became Aqueous? It didn’t make any sense! How was I a science experiment if I was also Ozzy Belway, a sickly kid with a family and a home? The note said not to escape, but I couldn’t wait any longer. All the answers were here. I had to find the scientist and learn. The pain of not knowing the answers would soon be relieved.
I looked around frantically for a way to escape. There were construction beams outside the force field. I decide to act like Gun and dig myself a hole through the pillar. I paced up to it and concentrated on shifting my hand and fingers into a drill like form and to keep it as solid as I could. I got the shape and I slammed it into the wall. I wasn't nearly as skilled as Gun, but my flimsy appendage did eventually break through the support and I squeezed through the whole.
I reformed and I looked around. If I was to be in a lab that created me, I expected to see a very advanced looking facility, but I didn’t. I saw that all the metal walls were slightly rusty and had grime and mildew festering along the edges. The floors were greasy and filthy, the dirt kept being absorbed into my feet and it even its shape was gross. The walls and ceilings were cracked and water was leaking through some exposed pipes. Most of the lights were blown, but the ones that were working flickered at the edge of death. The air contained water, so it was humid and I saw that it was very warm because of this. The place didn’t look like it was attacked and in ruins, but it looked deserted.
Out of my cell I saw a few branches of hallways, but fortunately the corners had signs. I searched around at all the dusty signs and eventually saw a broken sign with a test tube on it that said, “AB.” It looked like the first letter was “L” and “AB” followed so I decided that that was the correct path to take if I wanted answers.
The hallway was narrower and even grimier. The hall was used more frequently so numerous, but very crude repair attempts had been done on fixing pipes and light fixtures. The hall was so silent; I heard my footsteps, a sound that I had never heard before. It was, of course, the sound of a small splash, but the dirty floor made each step have a sticky echo. The heat seemed to cool slightly and the air contained less water the further I walked down the path, but despite the sense of revival, I felt the sense of wanting to stay ignorant.
The hall continued meter after meter after meter and my walking pace seemed to slow down more and more with hesitation, fear and uncertainty. The floors appeared to be walked on more frequently; some steps also had a pop of bent metal and the echo of dripping water being able to pool in dented footsteps. A door came in sight and my pace quickened only a little, with the thought of answers, but slowed again with the though of other answers.
I finally reached the door. The door was very large, well over a meter wide and perhaps three meters high. There was a small glass door, which I extended my legs to peer through. But I couldn’t see anything; the window was stained over with dirt, chemicals, grime and mystery. The window hadn’t been cleaned in decades at least, but the doorknob was clean, only by being turned every once and a while. I put my hand on it and I felt a human hand shaped clean spot and a dirt outline.
I turned the knob, but I didn’t pull the door open. This was my last chance, I thought. I could learn my secrets and face whatever truth I was sure I couldn’t handle or I could run and be free again. But I had to know; I had to clear this cloud. I needed to know all the W’s and the H. The door squeaked violently as I opened it.
And there he was, hunched over a workbench with flasks and papers and test tubes and mortars and pestles and only a small table lamp to light his life. He was about regular speaking distance away, but I said nothing. I got a little closer and the head perked up. The head rose in the most curious way, as if the ears had memorized every possible sound that could be heard and that I made a different sound. Soon the hands stopped working and then the back straightened. The figure turned around.
He said, “I see… Welcome back.” The man was a very frail one. He looked to be about 70 years old and there wasn’t very much meat on his bones at all. Though he was tall, years of hunching over working seemed to be idle and anything else required effort. He wore small, thick glasses and he wore a large lab coat. Underneath he wore a very dirty blue collared shirt. He had slacks for pants and had a very fancy belt buckle. His face was very wrinkly and his hair looked like it had never been washed, cut or combed in his lifetime. I figured if I could smell that he would have smelled awful.
I answered back timidly, “Hello.”
The scientist gasped in surprise, but soon after he was impressed. He raised an eyebrow and congratulated me, “That’s quite an achievement there. This will make our re-acquaintance much smoother.”
I backed away a little, “I don’t know you! Stop sounding like you know me!”
He arched his back backwards and rubbed his grey fuzz of a beard and pondered. He picked up a clipboard, scanned it, put it back down and pointed at me, “So, if that’s true, you must be Ozzy.”
I stepped back a little more and demanded, “How did you know that?”
He picked the file up again and read aloud, “Project Sol, emergency AI: Belway, Ozzy, male, aged 12…”
I took a step closer and interrupted him, “Be quiet!” I raised an arm and coiled my fingers to make a fist and I demanded, “You have a lot of explaining to do! And I want it in English.”
The scientist put down the clipboard and took off his glasses. He sighed and waved me to come closer. I stepped a little closer. He sighed, “Despite how many questions I have for you,” He stretched his back, “I’m positive that you have more for me.”
I nodded in a frustrated agreement. I pointed at him and demanded, “You better not lie to me. I can beat you up. Easy.”
He shook his head and confirmed, “I won’t lie, I would never lie to my life’s work.” I began to interrupt him, but he continued, “Well, first things first. My name is Doctor Marcus Ried and I have been the project leader of the Sol Project for 45 years.”
I asked, “What is this Project Sol?”
He replied, “Well it’s obviously you.”
I said in shock, “Me? How is that possible? I lived with my family for almost 12 years and then I turned into Aqueous and then…”
“Aqueous.” He interrupted with a sense of wonder, “It’s a rather convenient coincidence that the citizens chose that name.”
I answered, “I know why! They picked that, because it has the word ‘Aqua’ in it and I know that means water! I’m pretty much water!”
He laughed. He laughed like he never heard such a stupid remark in his life. He almost wiped a tear from his eye, but he explained with a few chuckles, “My, my, my, we certainly aren’t very knowledgeable in chemistry. It is true that the ‘Aqua’ in the word was why the people chose it, but I see the real connection.”
I looked on at his face becoming a little more uncomfortable to look at. I peeped out, “What’s that?”
He didn’t finish. Instead he kept me waiting and walked over to a large door to his right. He walked over to the side of the door, which had a keypad. He entered some sort of code and the doors swung open. He walked inside the new room and I followed. The new room significantly contrasted the previous one. The last room was small, worn and grubby, but this one was much more impressive and even frightening. The ceiling was at least three stories high and the room was large enough to hold two jetliners. Despite all that space, the center was taken up by a huge very complex looking machine with many inputs and three wide tubes that connected to three cylinder glass tubes that looked like they were made to carry a body in water. The floors and walls were squeaky clean and were tiled with shiny metal. The air was vented and cool, from what I could see and it was quite impressive to look at. But the frightful thing was that it seemed to be a dangerous mixture of a bio-lab and a factory with human sized results.
The scientist spun around with his arms spread wide. He was acting as if he was dancing in a field of grass. He shouted out and the echoes rippled my body, “You are aqueous.”
I caught up and told him, “Yes, I know that, but that’s a name.”
He stopped spinning and caught a lever of his giant machine to keep his balance from dizziness. He explained further, “In chemistry, aqueous means, dissolved in water. Although you are not water, the how principle of solutes dissolving in solvents is exactly what created you.”
I was speechless. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I knew that he was explaining to me the biggest collection of puzzle pieces I needed. I asked, “What does dissolve mean? I sort of know, but not really.”
The scientist let go of the lever and asked an unrelated question, “If my plans were correct you should have another consciousness inside of you. Could you, by any chance, be able to let it speak?”
I stopped in my tracks and even jumped a little. I shook my head and stuck out my hands in front of my face. I pleaded, “You don’t want to talk to him. He’s evil. If I let him take control he’ll kill us all!”
He shook his head, “The original will never attack its master and besides its not designed to be so violent. I trust it, so should you. Now let it take control and I’ll let it speak through my brain.” He slightly stuck out his ear.
I sighed, “You don’t need to do that, I taught it how to speak. If you want to die so badly, I’ll let you have your wish.”
His head rose with his eyebrow raised and his fingers at his chin pondering, but he order none the less to let the other take control.
Gun was actually awake and had been for a few minutes and he knew what was going on. Gun delightfully snatched control and shifted the body to his style. Although, Gun shifted the colour to his, but all the blades and spikes he usually had on his appendages, weren’t there. Gun seemed to purposely make himself look different for Dr. Ried.
Dr. Ried looked happy and said with glee, “Oh I’m so happy you’re back Sol! It’s been way too long. I’ve been in this lab for 21 years, trying to create you again, but with no success. Perhaps it was because of the bond I have with you, but maybe it’s because I need the help of the rest of the development team. Either way, things will begin looking up for us.”
Gun spoke without his accent and in a clear, almost zombified voice, “Yes, master.”
Dr. Ried asked Gun, or Sol as he knew him, “So, I hope the restraining measures worked properly. I don’t want you spreading and killing everything.”
Gun replied with the same convincing, but yet suspicious voice, “Yes it worked, master. I wasn’t able to get out of your control.”
The doctor asked Gun/Sol about what happened, “Well can you tell me what happened after the military had taken you away from me?”
Gun replied, “Yes. After the military came and took me away, put me inside a canister, which they believed could restrain me. Immediately after capture they boarded me on a cargo plane. Once the plane reached its maximum altitude, I broke free of the canister easily. I killed the men guarding me and I leapt out of the side. I descended towards a city and I landed on an elevated highway. I lost control then.”
Dr. Ried ordered Sol to let me in control again and Gun, with some anger, let me take control. My colours changed back and I immediately started asking questions, “What is going on!”
Dr. Ried finally decided to tell me the information straight. He took a deep breath and told me everything I needed to know. “If you haven’t made any assumptions just yet, that’s fine; I’ll tell you everything. You’ve probably guessed that Sol here is the original mind and you ‘seemed’ to come second. You also probably noticed some sort of time lag or sudden shift in time which you couldn’t explain am I right?”
I nodded, “Yes.”
He continued, “I’m guessing that you might have gone back to any past memories only to find out that they didn’t seem to ever have existed?”
I nodded again with anxiety, “Yes. My whole home and family was gone.”
“I suspected as much.” He lifted his head and told it to me straight in my face. “Ozzy. You are a computer modeled Artificial Intelligence. Sculpted on the molecular level with nanomachines in order to become a powder which is the solute of our unique liquid, which I might add, is a very advanced alloy of water, gallium, mercury, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, which is a very interesting substance indeed. Your mind, your entire identity, memories, personality and soul were created using a very inaccurate method of programming an AI into a solute.” He paused a little and stared straight into my eyes, “You were created solely to not be able to use your liquid’s powers, so you can prevent Sol from killing every body when it’s not under my supervision. You are nothing, you’re whole life and your purpose is to stall Sol long enough for us to find you if it should ever escape our supervision. You two switch control due to a very precise acid/base scale amongst the oxygen environments that each mind should occupy.” He turned around and crossed his arms, “Since the solute AI is so experimental and inaccurate, Sol must have been able to edit your memories and help you when your implanted memory stopped and real-time began, otherwise you would probably still be what we hoped for, a puddle. You would not have been able to get this far without Sol’s help and scientific error. Your life has been explained, do you understand now?”
What was I to think? My whole life, my whole 12 years of memory was artificially generated on a computer and imprinted onto a powder, which was dissolved in the liquid. I had no idea how I felt. I felt angry, I felt scared, I felt confused, I felt nervous, I felt like committing suicide! I was created, not because my parents wanted to have a child, but so I could not know how to use the liquid’s powers and sit as a blob until they recaptured me. It was infuriating! I wanted to kill whoever was responsible! My whole life was a lie. I just couldn’t control my emotions; I extended my arm towards Dr. Ried.
I latched my four fingers around his neck and squeezed. I demanded of him, “Why did you do this to me!”
He choked a little and explained, “You never were ‘you.’ You’re a molecular sequence.”
I squeezed harder and extended my fingers to coil around his frail neck another time. I looked into his eyes and started to lift him up above the ground, “Wrong answer. Why would you create life, so advanced, only to waste it like you did with me!”
He barely said, “I wasn’t me.”
I dropped him and released him and I demanded of him, “Well if it isn’t your fault, whose is it?”
He caught his breath for a few seconds and gasped out, “Why should I?”

I clenched his face with my four-way grip. I answered, “Because I’ll hurt you really bad.”
Dr. Ried commented, “Did you mean to say, ‘kill?’”
I let him go and I sunk my head a little and admitted, “Yes.” Travelling with Gun and witnessing all the horrors and murders I had started to think that killing was the proper way to solve everything. I knew I was better than Gun; I don’t kill. I didn’t think I killed anything on purpose yet and I didn’t want to start now.
Dr. Ried stood up after I let him go. He crossed his arms, “I have a little proposition for you Aqueous.”
“I stared at his heated eyes and muttered, “I’m Ozzy, we’re both Aqueous.”
He shook his head and explained, “Not in my case. I have something in store for you. You are Aqueous.”
I raised my head a little, “What do you have in store for me?”
“A contract assignment.” He said delicately.
“Contract? What does that mean?” I asked.
He explained in simpler terms, “Call it a deal you can’t back out of.”
“What would I get?”
“Information, anything you want, even the classified information about Project Sol and the Ozzy Belway solute.”
“If I say no?”
“I don’t think you’d want to.”
“Why not.” I raised my head a little more.
“Only three things can be dissolved in your liquid: AI solutes, a special base and a special acid. I can easily inject the acid and Sol will permanently have control.”
I got angry, “What if I run away?”
He seemed to remember something. He mentioned, “Oh yes, the forth thing dissolved inside you.”
I got worried, “What now?”
He explained, “The emergency override.”
My eyebrows popped, “Oh no!”
He broke the drastic measures the Project Sol team put into security, “If activate a specific radio frequency then the third solute in you, a override program, will undergo a small chemical change and will immediately bond with anything inside of you, chemically changing your AI solutes into useless black heaps of flakes; thus killing you.”
Thinking it was the only way; I grabbed his neck again. He laughed again and explained, “And my brain has been infused with micro radio emitters that will emit the exact same radio wave if my brain stops working. You see Aqueous, it’s useless. There’s no escaping home this time.”
I realized the inevitable truth. I released him and hung my head once more and drooped my arms and antennae over my ashamed face. My tail plopped on the ground lifeless, which is something I never made it do very often. I started to melt into a puddle. Dr. Ried stared down at with his arms crossed and he smiled from ear to ear with the cruelest intentions. I eventually lay there in a complete puddle, not moving at all. I had become a slave. Dr. Ried left me in my sorrow for a few hours while he went back into his smaller, dirtier workshop.
I eventually moved, with no other purpose but to be his slave, I flowed over to his door and slid under the crack. I didn’t even bother reforming, I was too pitiful. I spoke to him and asked him, “Can we talk about that contract now?”
Even though his back was turned, I knew his mouth grinned. He turned around and pointed at me. He asked, “I won’t talk to those who give me no respect. Stand up straight.”
I reformed slowly, but I kept my head down and my feet and tail half melted.
He demanded, “Look me in the face.”
“I can see your face’s heat. I am looking at you.”
He grunted and changed the subject, “So you’ve come to discuss the contract, eh?”
I nodded slowly.
He explained the situation, “As you might have guessed, Project Sol was scrapped. It had been started in the late 1970’s and the some of the many divisions broke off or merged to make the two major divisions: Body and Soul were their names. Most divisions and research and many more scientists left in the 1990’s. Although their research was most crucial to the successes of the prototypes and you, their labs are abandoned and in ruin, Project Sol was black and was secretly funded, the facilities were very well hidden.
“But my main point is that when Sol had escaped and our recovery teams had a very unexpected lack of luck retrieving you, so even more divisions, scientists and research disappeared. You being captured was the final straw, the whole project was scrapped, because it was impossible to obtain the canisters with lack of influence and funds. Now only a few scientists remain, I am one of them. I was the vice-president of the project, but the president, Mr. Rutherford died, so I inherited the project jest before you were created.
“But here’s the true dilemma. The remaining scientists all share a common goal, the resurrection of Project Sol! This is where your part of the contract comes in. I need you to infiltrate some facilities that I know the location of. I need enough data and supplies to continue the final goal of the project.”
I interrupted, “Wouldn’t this be best left to G… Sol? I mean, because he will obey and he knows how to use the body better and I know he’s better at killing opposition better than I think I could.”
He shook his head, “I would have injected the acid into you if I wanted that. Sol is loyal, yes, and it does know how to kill, but it is a more or less a computer program, which does what is told, doesn’t fight back and archives data.”
“Wouldn’t that be what you want?”
“No, because you will be doing all of this covert.”
“Covert?”
“Stealth, sneaking, espionage, ninjitsu, the whole spy like thing.”
“Why?”
“One obvious reason is that the facilities would be equipped with weapons very lethal to you and if another rival scientist has mercenaries inside, they can access these weapons and destroy you. The other is that I only need research data, not violence and destroyed facilities. I don’t need the possibility of survivors exposing details to the media and I also don’t want these facilities destroyed with over violence, for I won’t be able to use them when I succeed in reviving the project and again, the media will see explosions. I also want these potential mercenaries to work for me when I take over, so I don’t want them dead.”
I complained, “I don’t think I can handle this.”
He silenced me, “Don’t worry. You are allowed to kill the occasional one if things get out of hand and besides, look at yourself, you’re transparent and can shape shift; any covert operator could only dream of those features. Don’t forget you can learn from mistakes where Sol can only process them. I need to sneak now and attack later.”
I understood and there was nothing I could really do about it anyway. I would just have to trust my instincts and plan everything when I got there. Gun could help me, perhaps, but his advice wouldn’t be all that useful for being covert.
Dr. Ried stuck out his hand and explained, “Do these series of missions and I’ll tell you everything you need to know and free you.”
I was surprised and asked, “Free me? Why’d you add that into the deal?”
He smiled, “Extra motivation for you to keep your loyalty for the time being.”
What choice did I have? I clasped onto his eager hand and I shook it. My fate was sealed in this hold. My life would resolve around this man until I did what I had to do. I released his hand and I felt a little better about being free after I did his jobs. How hard could they be? I always wanted to try and be a spy.
Dr. Ried interrupted my imagination. “I still need to work on something for a few days, so I suggest you pretend to practice or something. We will leave by helicopter in four days. Maybe you should talk to Sol for a while.”