Soul Hunter

by Drew Briney

  How quaint. I’m rolling my eyes and noticing that I did that subconsciously, laugh at myself for making that observation, and continue reviewing my memories.

  I started practicing my powers in private, though, wondering whether or not I could do something useful with psionics if I really put my mind to it. I tried all sorts of stuff ranging from changing the path of running water to pounding things really hard like the dumpster to shaking trees to make leaves fall.

  At the time, it surprised me that these activities created unexpected side effects. Given my research into neurosciences, I no longer find that so surprising but at the time, I was nothing less than shocked to find myself listening to other people’s thoughts from time to time - not on purpose, mind you. I dispensed quite a bit of effort to stop whenever I noticed it happening but to be honest, that was really hard. Like I said, I have an insatiable curiosity streak and who doesn’t wonder what other people secretly think?

  Some of us just say things like they are, but most people? Well, not so much. That is never more evident than when you accidentally hear them venting about something in silence. Absolutely shocking. I had no idea. I began losing my trust in humanity, which was reason alone to quit listening to other people’s thoughts. At least, it was reason to try. Call it a lesson in futility, an impossible task, or a learning experience - it doesn’t matter to me. Despite all of my best (and sometimes begrudging) efforts, I never was able to stop.

  I did learn that I could shut off one person’s thoughts by shifting my attention to someone else, but inevitably, I had to acknowledge that sharing other people’s hidden musings was far too addicting to simply quit. Besides barely controlling it in the first place, it became monumentally challenging because of one of those lack-of-desire-things. Curiosity binges increased. I was hooked.

  I find it hilarious looking back at that time period with my first body. All of my memories are fairly fresh right now. My AI chip writes them into my new body right away so they are especially vivid for a while - as if they all happened yesterday - so I’m acutely aware of how much my perspective has changed since these early experiences. That makes these memory reviews particularly amusing, like looking back at yourself being a toddler and saying all sorts of stupid, yet charming things.

  I have to review my memories anyway because something about how the AI chip writes them in a new body is susceptible to random erasure if they are not utilized fairly quickly. You know, it doesn’t seem to matter how much we learn about the body, there’s always something quirky lurking around the corner, waiting to be discovered. This particular glitch has plagued me throughout a few lifetimes but since technologies like this are banned just about everywhere, it’s difficult to get good research on these pesky wrinkles without dedicating a whole lifetime to ironing them out.

  I don’t have that kind of time. I barely have the discipline to review my own memories so I don’t lose them.

  Technically, my AI chip is like an organic, oldschool, psionic zip drive. Once it unzips, it takes me a few weeks just to get my strength and wits about me and several weeks more before my powers grow brag-worthy and then, sometimes my host body gets so sick that I become hyper-vulnerable. I’ve died twice like that. In my line of business, you just can’t risk a reboot to regain memories lost to laziness.

  So, I temper my humor about how I was losing faith in humanity because I kept overhearing other people’s thoughts. I tune in all the time now. That’s my primary means of research. Back then, I just couldn’t stomach that sort of thing and I only retained hope in humanity because of my dad. When I heard him thinking from time to time, he was always trying to figure something out, to make life better somehow. Occasionally, he silently groused over his frustrations with mom’s regular grumblings over petty things but generally speaking, his thoughts inspired me. They gave me hope for a better world and belief in myself.

  Needless to say, that perspective didn’t last.

  He died in a freakish accident when I was about sixteen. I say “about” because some of these memories are more than mildly fuzzy. It’s entirely plausible that I was eighteen. In fact, some details make more sense if I was eighteen at the time but I remember the number sixteen so I’m sticking with that. For whatever it’s worth, I’m probably wrong - but I’m something of a purist and unwilling to compromise my memories in any way.

  Mom always maintained that dad died at the hands of some conspiratorial group, someone trying to steal his technology, blah blah blah, but I can’t remember any details surrounding her paranoia. I lost those memories several lives ago - before I’d worked out memory bugs: how to reliably restore original memories without alterations from new host bodies (every memory recall creates some corruption but some bodies modify foreign memories more dramatically than others, which can be quite problematic), how to separate permanent backups from short term backups, etc.

  In short, I reasonably believe the memories I’m retracing are generally accurate but there is no way to be absolutely sure. A certain logic suggests they are reliable in substance, if not detail.

  I tell myself I don’t really care but my AI chip chimes in to remind me that I’m lying to myself. I appreciate that function - it keeps me from pursuing inaccurate modes of thinking. I’ve grown to realize, however, that some of the lies we tell ourselves really do keep us from enduring pain that doesn’t serve us very well.

  I digress.

  Mom lost it after dad’s death. She took off the day after he died, supposedly scared for her life. She maintained that I was safe but I was old enough to see what was really going down. She’d had a fling. Some women will tell you they really want the good guy, the loving father type, the loyal, doting type. It sounds nice. It sounds honorable and it creates that pretty facade that makes them feel better about what others think of them. Those women believe that’s what they’re supposed to desire - the loving, loyal, nice guy - but a certain corner of their soul deeply craves someone who will help them explore their darker desires. Forbidden fruit is sometimes too overpowering, too delightfully inappropriate and enticing to deny. True, not everyone is like that. My mom was.

  I’d like to say that I was guessing about that, that this is some cynical imagining of my mind to excuse away my anger at her for abandoning me in a time of need but I can’t. I read her mind months later. That’s when I donned my eternal name, the one that I use no matter which body I’m using.

  Darkmind.

  It fit. Everything I experienced, everything I thought was consumed in shadows, unChristian imaginings. I’d changed.

  I didn’t attend my father’s funeral - not out of some sort of overpowering weakness, not because I didn’t want to see anyone or receive their pithy-well-wishing-mantras of “I’m sorry for your loss,” “I know how you feel. I lost my …” or “It may seem hard now but you’re strong. You’ll get through this,” pansy-niceties, but I didn’t go because I was furious at my father.

  I hated him.

  Not for dying. No, that would have been too easy of a self-deluding security blanket to don even in the weakened state I was in. I hated him because I found a letter my mother wrote. I wasn’t intended to find it. I know that because, as I mentioned earlier, I pilfered through my mother’s memories later. I’m not convinced my memories of the contents of her private note-journal-entry-whatever-it-was are precise anymore so I review the summary my AI chip engraved in my new host body, the same summary it’s used for several bodies now.

  Brighton is disfigured, his arm nothing more than a flap of skin covering a lump of useless flesh past his wrist. I warned Greydon to stop beating me while I was pregnant but he wouldn’t stop. He had to throw one last kick at me while I was on the ground. I moved to dodge the blow, but one of us miscalculated. I felt the baby stop moving about the same time he came to his senses.

  If there hadn’t been more to the letter, that would have been enough to make me angry at my father for a lifetime. Without fanfare, my unyielding admiration imploded and my
immediate decision not to attend his funeral or ever speak about him again buried itself in fertile soil. Unless forced or pressed upon, I didn’t speak about him for another two or three bodies. I don’t remember for certain.

  If that sounds unforgiving and cold, try living without one of your hands for a day. Good luck with that. Then, imagine what life would be like if you were picked on at school for years on end, day after day, month after month, just because you were different, handicapped for reasons beyond your control. Try enduring chronic pain where your appendage flops around uselessly whenever you use your arm despite multiple surgeries that would supposedly “fix everything.”

  Fair enough, I also got picked on for not throwing tests graded on curves but sometimes, life with a handicap sucks - and while plenty of people rise above all that and accomplish great things, that wasn’t me. I have great respect for those people but to be honest, I’ve never had strength like that. Despite monumental efforts to live the life my father would have been proud of, I always found myself on the verge of breaking, plunging into mental chaos. Learning about his beatings allowed me to embrace that chaos instead of fearing it.

  You see, it’s one thing to blame a benevolent, all-knowing god for allowing your deformity for some wise purpose, some great plan of making you stronger and more perfect in his eyes. Believing it’s all somehow for your good and for your growth makes your suffering more tolerable, gives it powerful purpose. Having faith gave me courage to strive to overcome it. But that’s all it ever was: striving. I never overcame anything.

  Finding out my flipper-hand grew out of my father’s foul temper changed everything, hindsight notwithstanding.

  True, I don’t have any memories of him ever being abusive. I couldn’t have imagined any such thing before reading my mother’s note. I would have told anybody who said such a thing that they were a compulsive liar beyond credibility. Had the note been anything but secret, had I not found it rummaging through her things trying to make sense of her leaving after father’s death, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

  And there was more.

  Greydon told me he had connections that would ensure I wouldn’t lose the baby, that it would be born healthy and strong. I knew he networked with the underground and my hope that somehow, I could bear a healthy child clouded my judgment, so I agreed to whatever treatment was necessary.

  The medicine didn’t look nefarious. It didn’t glow. It wasn’t shiny. It wasn’t some weird color with a metallic sheen. It was nearly clear with a slight yellowish hue when light shone through it from the side. I later learned the serum, whatever it was, made me susceptible to suggestions using triggers or certain words to prompt my obedience. I only recently learned this after rummaging through his notes. When I said the trigger words to myself, my heart filled with horrible dread.

  Somehow, I need to escape. I don’t know if Greydon is controlling Brighton as well, monitoring his thoughts like he monitors mine, keeping us always believing he’s this righteous, godlike man when really, he’s a monster, nothing like the loving god I worship. But I don’t know how to leave and even if I get away, how could I ever be certain he wouldn’t find me, gently coerce me into returning to a prison I don’t even understand, a jail I barely recognize.

  Sometimes my heart brims with joy and I count myself blessed above all other women but then, when I remember the triggers, I don’t know if that happiness is real, whether my fond memories are true, whether I’m even the woman I believe I am. It’s the most frightening thing in the world not to be able to trust your own mind.

  I nearly forgave her affair when I read the note. I almost admired her bravery for trying to secure an escape route, a safe house, some sort of delivery from bondage. Hell, I even felt a smidge proud that her prose wasn’t overly dull as she flooded the paper with her emotions.

  I discovered the notes the morning of the funeral, literally a few hours before I was supposed to speak and tell everyone how wonderful my father was, how I looked up to him, how he’d given me strength in the face of looming darkness, how … well, you get the idea.

  This was the second important memory from my first body and it was undoubtedly the most defining moment from any of my lifetimes. I look back now without any emotion. I disconnected those feelings from my memories a few bodies back. That female body responded so viscerally to that experience that I fell into a useless stupor for days, probably lost several memories that would have greatly served me that lifetime.

  That’s why, generally speaking, I hate emotions. They’re mostly useless and they cause a great deal of trouble. True, they can be a sharp blade when used against enemies so they retain tactical benefit. I just don’t like them in my body.

  I roll my eyes as I remember crying over my shattered paradigms and broken beliefs as they crashed all around me. Nothing I’d experienced until that moment in time prepared me for a revelation like that. My hero was a villain. My admiration belonged to the most vile monster I could imagine. Every loving, beautiful memory I held may have been nothing more than a memory implant, a glorious facade covering an otherwise empty life, a coerced thought fabricated by a conniving father. Every belief I had in god, the prophets, and the good portion of humanity evaporated like fine mist sprayed over a scorching desert stone. My sense of identity, my religion, my experiences, and every minutia of knowledge was now suspect. Anything could be true. Anything could be false.

  Nothing felt real and my only escape was to find some vice, something my dad taught me not to partake of, and to do it lots.

  So, I got drunk.

  It may not seem like much but at the time, it was the most rebellious thing I could think of that didn’t seem too scary. It took me more than a few efforts touring the seedy part of town, wearing a hoodie, and trying my own hand at mind control before I finally scored an entry into a nasty little bar overseen by a manager so consumed with thoughts about his troubled life that I swept past his oversight almost too easily.

  Despite being ecstatic about my first success brushing someone’s mind to do something inappropriate, I was such a newbie and so torn between shame, anger, and fear of getting caught that I slinked myself into a corner - far enough from the exotic dancers to maintain some sense of discretion while close enough to experience whatever that type of place might promise. When a nearly middle-aged waitress slinked up to ask me what I wanted to drink, I cringed, absorbed the surprising eye-full of her minimalist bikini-like-top framed by skin worn and thin from years of rough living.

  “What’ll ya have sweetie?” she asked.

  For all of the details I could have retained from this experience, the precise recollection of her inquisition remains riveted into my permanent memory better than any number of delectable visuals that would have delivered fonder amusement today. I audibly grumble as I recall the memory. It’s so irreparably disappointing that I consider having my AI chip implant some fanciful, tantalizing details but it immediately rebukes me before I finish formulating the idea, not because it disapproves of any content, but because I have a strong code I live by and this is a violation of that code.

  True, my self-prescribed code of honor was carefully crafted after ancient minimalist methodologies but this is a cardinal violation: never deceive yourself.

  My answer to the nearly wrinkly waitress (who I think was named June) apparently didn’t qualify for anything intelligible. She raised a brow, sized me up quite carefully, and suggested a beer.

  I agreed.

  “What kind sugar?”

  I remember how she said that super-accurately as well. It rubbed me that she kept calling me names and it left me terribly embarrassed that I couldn’t recall a single name of any brand of beer. Sure, I’d seen signs. I’d seen ads. I’d seen cans on the street but my mind was blank, pure and innocent as could be.

  I laugh out loud as I watch myself fumble for an answer.

  “The strongest kind you’ve got,” I blurt out, trying to sound experienced while triumphantly
expressing my naivety instead.

  “Okay,” she answers patiently with a coy smile. “Should I top that off with a shot of whiskey while I’m at it?”

  “Sure.”

  I probably would have erased the rest of my memories from that experience except I find them exceptionally amusing and to be honest, sentimentally meaningful.

  I began, perhaps for the first time, deliberately and meaningfully listening to other people’s thoughts. Initially, I was trying to figure out what they ordered so I wouldn’t feel stupid when I asked for more drinks but it didn’t take long before what I once considered the dark part of humanity shone insanely bright and cheerful. There were some nice people present and a few innocent loners drowning the ache of meaningless solitude with the forget-everything-unhappy nectar-of-the-gods and eye-candy masquerading as an achievable fantasy.

  But there was a new sort of individual here I hadn’t experienced in my normal social sphere.

  It’s one thing to hear how ungrateful and unhappy people are with one another - especially when you compare that to what you actually hear as a normal person. It’s quite another thing to step into the mind of people who entirely lack self control and who fly off the handle from time to time. This wasn’t a respectable kind of bar. This was as lowlife as you can find so there were sordid characters scattered everywhere my brain snooped.

  From some of the movies I’d watched, I wasn’t too shocked at some of the things they’d done. Thefts, beatings, fraud, rape, and things of that ilk are universal among every country and culture. It’s hard to begin contemplating new ways of being bad that haven’t been imagined before. I know. I hiked that adventuresome trail for many decades. But seeing into their minds as to why they did the things they did - that was a whole new level of life experience.