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Name: Ariel Kenna
Age:
Appearance:
- Record Number: GT.AK 12_1484
- Classification: T Clr.
- *Note:
- Director,
- Kenna produced this when asked an unauthorized question by a test subject during a training session. The subject was cleared of the memory and removed from the archology. Gabriel personally handled the situation, and before removal transcribed the following for your examination. Please advise if further steps are necessary.
- Memory Transcription 1484 (474-89-5061, G.B):
- I know what you're thinking.
- Things get hazy at the very beginning. I don't remember if my memories of my birth are something I have because I adjusted thing that I pulled out of my mother's mind or if I actually remember the cold, the fear, and the misery. I never thought of it when I was a kid, but babies forget for a reason. Quick, send a note of congratulations to God or Darwin or whomever. They did good when they designed us so that we couldn't talk until those memories have faded. Even in those modern times, the miraculous age of 2019, the birthing process was still messy, dirty, and fundamentally human. So here comes the beautiful Kenna, screaming and freezing into the world amid a gore of blood and fluid, the latest model of the ancient human line. I remember light and a vague sense of loss. Does this stir any deeply buried memories for you? Do you remember at all the feeling of being in the womb? I don't think it possible to reach a more perfect state, especially since I think I watched the world like a giant movie through the screen of my mother's eyes.
- My first three months were all impressions, mostly of myself. I saw me from every different angle. And damn if I didn't fall in love, a sturdy little ego reinforced by intimate awareness of both my parents and others, many others steeped in the sense of satisfaction and achievement. To my itty-bitty, undiscriminating mind, there were hundreds of different parents, all loving me and loving themselves for creating me. My body sometimes seemed to little to contain all that affection. Even now that I've grown there doesn't seem to be enough of me. I'm stuffed full with my own huge sense of self and the emotions and thoughts of some of the best minds of this century, the egos of my erstwhile coterie of parents. A child hoped for carefully bred, developed, the wet dream of the science fiction writers of the ages. Ariel Kenna, superstar.
- There was no other person in my awareness until my mother, half-guilty, snuck me out of the archology and into a nearby green space with a flow of people who, amazingly! Paid no more attention to me than they would any other goobering baby. I watched them pass, mute but completely understanding, my mind grasping my mother's like a translator in the hands of a tourist in a foreign country. How repugnant, and yet how fascinating this half-dumb breed, with their stinks and their quirks and their strange smell of wildness. How odd, with their lumps and bumps and false improvements. I remember a couple, her coy and him clinging, and a whisper; "I know what you are thinking." She was wrong, of course. He was watching my slim, young mother as I stared over her shoulder, and my mother, knowing through me, turned and winked. I sexuality a strange thought for a three-month-old? That man's unguarded thoughts shocked me, not because she fascinated him but because he was a careless, so open and obvious.
- Here ye, all faithful, for here is the first lesson of the enlightened. Morality is a false god; a façade designed to prevent the animals from destroying each other. My gods were given me by Gentech Corporation, my loving parents. That was one of the first gifts from Gabriel, messenger angel and general metatron for Gentech. Meeting him was an experience. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
- My mother was the result of an earlier, much more lax attempt to create a telepath. Although she was more failure than success, she can't really be blamed. Imagine how you would feel if you were a blueprint. There is an impressive set of genetics on that woman, and there is nothing like Gentech to appreciate the finer points of DNA. They scoured around for a mate that had sufficient telepathic abilities but no strange diseases, social disorders, or objectionable physical deformities. You would be amazed at how difficult it is to find someone that fits that description. Characteristics were pondered, coursed of irradiation and mutations were endured, the courtship truncated and semen was exchanged. Mix, bake, baby. She was seventeen when I was created. The semen container, my father, was much older. He was rare, a natural telepath of acceptable strength. He was definitely the Joseph of our little holy trio, the man in the background. He is still around, living comfortably on Gentech's ticker and lucky for me he has no illusions about his importance in my life.
- The moons were in alignment, the time was right, and the fact that my mother was mentally unprepared for a baby was unimportant because it wasn't hers. Ours is an advanced time, cyber this and super that, surgeons with their mechanical improvements and customers with their credit chips clutched in fists only half human. My mother maintained her naivete in this because of the sheltered nature of the corporation life and a fluke in the assembly process, the inability to undergo any type of cyber improvements. I inherited both from her. When I was bon she gained money, a small amount of fame, and a degree of freedom from the corporation. What she wanted was a baby. Something to cuddle and play with while Gentech took care of all the dirty diapers and messy training.
- Initially she delighted in our conversations, the strange and unique bond that began before my birth. What mother wouldn't be excited by a baby that could communicate exactly what it wanted and what it was thinking? We began to gossip when I was one hundred and ninety days old, and by the time I hit four months I was physically speaking to her. I never went through a stage of baby talk, that would have been ridiculous. It was then that things didn't work for her conceptions anymore. The novelty of having a baby wore off, she didn't have the maternal tendencies to sustain her through the frustrations and I thought that a mother was superfluous. She became jealous (I guess I inherited that from her as well) and was transferred out of the department. Sometimes I miss her; she was good humor. And occasionally some competition.
- And then came the Angel. I was six months old with typical physical development. I could only minimally control my telepathy but I was still the most powerful psion that Gentech could breed. What can I say. I've always been spoiled rotten, and baby can get into your brain and make you go batty. Ariel Kenna, fuhrer of the Gentech nursery. Gabriel entered my little world, smashed down my feeble attempts to turn him into a meat puppet (a favorite trick of mine usually reserved for the more weakminded) and gave me a mental smack upside the head. How shocking, and really very, very rude. I tried again and found myself pinned under one powerful hand, head held so I could look nowhere but into those angel-blue eyes.
- "Did you know that I names you, little girl? Gentech chose me even before they chose you and you were an Ariel before you were a twinkle in some lab tech's eye." Then came the first lesson, a mental sending of Shakespeare's Tempest, with special emphasis on the beautiful, enslaved Ariel. A beasty fascinating and gorgeous, not quite human, powerful and completely in thrall to its sorcerous master. Accompanying his talk was my first taste of illusion, a reproduction of the sprite Ariel's tree trunk prison, a suffocating sensation that seemed to continue for an eternity. When I was released I was dancing to Gentech's tune, helping my master to manipulate the world. Baby terror is a powerful learning tool. The meaning of my last name seemed inconsequential at the time, but I have since come to appreciate it, ken, to know, Kenna, a female omniscient. Very few people get to call me Ariel.
- Gabriel always does. He raised me up to be a holy terror, enthralled to Gentech but the scourge of the lower echelons of the corporation. He taught me things mental and social, grooming me for this or that. He taught me to be charming and witty and dangerous and bitchy and vindictive. I knew all about the outside world, understood the huge cities, the corruption, and the physical improvements, but I was never a part of it. Sometimes I'll tell you all the dirty secrets of my training but right now it's a topic that wearies me, for it is ongoing and seems eternal. Eventually they may be able to inject all that knowledge into me as well, figure out some particular course of mutation that makes the long years unnecessary. Right now the injections are more 'natural' talent, cocktails of psionic smarts that leave me feeling a little bruised. If you have a high enough clearance you can go and check everything out in the files, including Gabriel's brilliant course of education.
- Those files have entire sections on Mind Hype. In case you were wondering, Gabriel became my Angel at the same time that he became my dealer. He is the Holy Ghost, provider of the great moving spirit. The name was my gift to him, because he had taken so much trouble about me that I felt I owed him something. I'm not sure yet how he managed to get me addicted to the drug, because there is nothing there that would cause me to physically crave it. He must have somehow implanted something mentally along with the first dose. Mind Hype increases intelligence and psionic ability, and it is a very short leash indeed. The spirit came to me before my first real contact with the world outside of the corporation. Gentech does nothing by coincidence. They needed a chain, especially since I was outgrowing my little fairyland and needed a bigger playground. Perhaps they were afraid that I would call on my crafty feminine wiles and slip away from them into the real world. I could live in the sewers, the mythical waste psychic.
- I was intended to rule the world, not live in it. I don't pass for a normal person upon close inspection. If you haven't noticed, I'm fairly decorative, and I like it that way. Additionally, I have been trained for nothing but the greater good of Gentech. I need my parlor tricks to survive, and those are not without cost. They can cause disorientation, identify confusion, a sense of distance from the real world. I occasionally glow. I can generally get away with the mental stumbling blocks, because they are not all that uncommon in the general population, but the latter tends to get me noticed. I believe that these side effects are natural, or as natural as I get anyway, and that they were not deliberately implanted. I need the corporation, and I was an extremely expensive investment. But enough. There is really only one thing you need to know to understand exactly where I came from.
- And so Gentech declared, and so it was, and Gentech saw that it would bring them power. And Gentech smiled, and it was good.
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