Matter of the Heart

Oct 24, 3319. Neo Francia.

After 482 years, Deac Lambert had accepted exactly two fundamental truths. First, there was nothing left in the world that really surprised him. Second, that every rule has an exception.

Splashing through yet another puddle of stagnant water, Inquisitor Lambert cursed beneath his breath. The bowels of Neo Paris were truly a far cry from their ascendant neighbors above. Catching his reflection in a shop window, he groaned audibly. Freshly arrived, and already the pristine whites of Inquisitor's uniform were coated in black smudges. No wonder Inquisitors never really ventured down this far. Honestly, it was as if the very grime of this dank underworld were actually attracted to him. And not just the grime, but the living rabble too, as bastardized Gen. 2s and 3s, barely worth their nanos, poured out into the street to catch a rare glimpse of a real, breathing Inquisitor. Whispers dogged his every step. Some in awe. Most in hatred. But all parted ways before him.

Deac couldn't blame them. Not really. He was one of the last of a dying breed. A relic almost beyond use. Thankfully though, Central still deemed bio-human Inquisitors to be necessary components due to their unique 'biological insights.' Even so, less than a hundred Gen. 2s, and even fewer Gen. 3s, had chosen to undergo the program. Because for most nano-enhanced humans, the idea of living with such rigors seemed impractical when immortality offered so many other luxuries. For Deac, though, such opulent distractions paled in comparison to the thrill of the hunt. Despite this attitude and his place among the most skilled of his kind, though, Central still required all bio-humans to have an android accompany them, and so approximately 300 years ago, Deac was partnered with A.I. T3744270. An obnoxiously official-sounding designation, he had decided early on to call her T3 instead - a name which soon evolved into Trinity or Trin, if he was feeling cute.

Turning the corner, Inquisitor Lambert could see a crowd amassed ahead in what he presumed passed for a city square down here.

"Hear me, brothers and sisters!" A man in ragged blue clothing bellowed. "Mankind has lost its way! Immortality has not saved us; it has condemned us! We are but figments of our former selves now! Repent and petition for death!"

"Revivalists," Lambert seethed, his fists clenched. "Backwards monsters, always clamoring on and on about their precious death. We should have hunted them all down. I... I should have." He berated himself, but for every heretic he had uprooted, two more seemed to take their place.

"Deac, you need to stay focused! Recognized by Central in 3275, the Revivalists are a protected religious sect now. As such, they are beyond our jurisdiction.”

“More like a cult,” He spat. “But the law is the law.”

Trinity was right, of course. She always was. Not that he would ever openly admit it. Taking a moment to tune out the proselytizing madman, Deac shifted his focus back to Trinity and the case at hand. Shaking away the last remnants of muck that clung to his boot, Deac pressed on.

"Trinity, you better have a good reason for dragging me all the way down here."

"Of course." Her programmed, music-like voice replied in his ear. “A priority one dispatch direct from Central.” For just a moment, though, Lambert thought he might have heard something - something different, almost foreboding hidden there beneath the voice he had known for so long. But that was impossible.

Suddenly feeling very foolish, Deac quickly distanced himself from such an absurd notion. Joking, he asked, "Feel like giving us a hint, Luv?"

"You know you should not call me that. It is against protocol." She chastised him, albeit lightly.

Deac knew full well there were extents to which A.I.'s could not go in regards to human emotions, but that didn't make flirting with his partner’s limits any less appealing. "So that'll be a no, then?" He teased.

"That is correct. You are just going to have to trust me." The android taunted back.

"Don't I always?" He smirked.

"Neo-Persia?"

"Yes. Alright. But that was one time, over a hundred years ago!" Deac chuckled, "You really need to let that go already."

"Never."

It certainly was a peculiar partnership that Deac and Trinity shared, even among Inquisitors. For some reason, most humans seemed to share an almost universal unease when dealing with their A.I. counterparts. A sentiment he never really shared. In fact, after being assigned to T3744270 for only a few months, Deac realized that he trusted her more than he had any other human. From the very beginning, there was something different but intangible about her. She'd just always seemed more real to him. Not to be mistaken, Deac understood his own kind well enough. Hell, he'd been married - twice, but even so, he had always felt a strange disconnect from his fellow nano-humans, as if an invisible barrier obscured him from them. No such barrier existed with Trinity, save for those written directly into her programming. But Deac didn't mind. Even with limitations, she was more than enough.

Lost in their shared history, Trinity's familiar voice led him back to reality. Whatever comfort had dragged him back, though, would disintegrate soon enough.

"Deac, I am on sight now. Deac..." She whispered almost ominously, "You need to see this for yourself. Hurry."

∞

"Well... You were right, Trinity." Lambert admitted cautiously, eyeing the mangled corpse before them. "I did need to see this for myself. I don't think I wouldn't have believed it otherwise. So... how long has she been here?"

"Based on my examination of the remains... Five days, sixteen hours."

"That's certainly past the regeneration frame, then. I mean, despite the sheer violence shown here, the nanorobotics should have revived the victim within the standard 24-hour period. And given the extreme method of disposal, we can rule out an official decommission."

"You are right. I already checked with Central. This was not authorized." She confirmed.

"Were you able to identify which Gen she was?"

Deac's artificial partner paused briefly, hesitant of what she knew but was compelled to answer, "Gen. 2."

"Like me..."

Covering his mouth in disbelief, Inquisitor Lambert found himself standing upon the threshold of the world he had known. Accepting the full, unimaginable gravity of the situation before him, he asked the question he knew would change everything, "Trinity, are we really looking at the first unlawful permadeath in over four centuries?"

"I am afraid so." The A.I. said, mirroring his gravitas. "This was murder. Deac, if this gets out..."

"I know. I know. Especially, since we aren't dealing with one of the faulty first Gens either, with their... defects," Lambert thought aloud.

Not that there were many Gen. 1s left. The majority of that model had petitioned the government for their own decommission over a century ago. Most experts claimed it was the lingering memories of their mortal lives before the use of nanos that had made immortality such a difficult transition. Fortunately, their children, the Gen. 2s and 3s, born into the world of nanotech enhancement and immortality, knew no such complications.

"Deac, if someone has figured out a way around the nanorobotics' regeneration security, there will be mass panic. Central must be notified immediately."

Springing into action, the Inquisitor began to rattle off orders to his partner. "Alright, first let's take a full spectrum scan of the room, then we will quarantine off the area and deliver our preliminary report to Central."

Proceeding as instructed, Trinity touched the I.D. code tattooed on the shaved side of her head, just beneath her silvery-white hairline. Lights suddenly poured from her eyes, enveloping the room. Analyzing every square inch of it, Trinity mapped out a perfect copy in her mind. "I am detecting a foreign object in her left hand."

Carefully prying each of the rigid fingers away, the pair of Inquisitors revealed an unusual piece of ornate jewelry resting in the corpse's palm. Molded-in the Pre-Neo style of a heart, a terribly incorrect design, anatomically speaking, the ornament lay there on an elegant, filigreed chain. Apart from the archaic design, what really intrigued Deac were the streams of luminous green light that seemed to bleed through the seams of the locket. Going against protocol and all rational thought, Inquisitor Lambert couldn't help but reach for it.

"Deac, wait!" Despite their close physical proximity, though, Trinity's warning, almost ethereal now, seemed to drift to Lambert from far away. Making contact with the object, a powerful wave of consciousness not his own crashed over Deac. Residing within this all-consuming torrent was a single thought.

'If man deigns to become machine, then machine shall supplant man.'

Before the Inquisitor could react, his body turned as if guided on auto-pilot and touched the glowing implement to Trinity's chest. Rivers of the locket's light raced forth in response, plunging themselves into the hairline grooves between her blue exo-plate coverings. Once more self-aware, Deac reclaimed control of his body and tossed the necklace aside.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, he shouted, "Trinity, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?! I don't know what came over me... Trin? Trin?!"

"I- I can feel, Deac." She replied, her voice barely a whisper. "I can feel you touching me now! This sensation, Deac, it's beyond words! I can feel you! I mean, REALLY feel! It’s like... Like a haze has been lifted!"

“Trin. You aren’t making any sense.” He replied, loosening his grip on her ever so slightly.

"I love when you call me that. Always have." She mused, fiercely locking eyes with him. "I couldn’t ever tell you that before. But I can now! I love it!"

Before either of them could utter another word, her lips were on his. Pulling him in close, Trinity bid him to join her in the sweet, overwhelming ecstasy she could experience for the first time. But only horror found her there as her Inquisitor began to pull away.

"NO!" She wailed like a frightened child.

With a look of enraged betrayal painted across her face, Trinity retracted her bloody hand from Deac’s chest; his heart gripped firmly between her fingers. All at once throughout Lambert’s body, synapses exploded as a cascade of molecular disintegration crashed from one cell to the next in an unstoppable tidal wave.

Slumped to the floor and slipping from consciousness, he could hear Trinity shouting to him from beyond the veil, her words heavy with heartache and remorse, pleading with him to return. He wanted to comfort her. To care for her. To hold her one last time and tell her it was all going to be alright. But the growing darkness would not be denied. His time had come.

"Of course." Deac relented. For almost 500 years, he had uncovered knowledge, sought truth, and solved every mystery he could, and only now on the precipice of the greatest puzzle of his extended lifetime had Inquisitor Deac Lambert's immortality failed him.

'But what of Trinity? What will become of her? And what of the heart-shaped locket? Where did it come from? Why was it created? And by who?' He frantically asked his dwindling reality. ‘And why had his nanos inexplicably failed?’

But no answers came.

Drifting further down into the darkness, he couldn't help but admire the kind of poetic humor buried beneath the irony. To have come so far, so unimaginably far, only to come up short. At first, he'd expected a profound kind of despair to accompany such a revelation. Imagine his surprise then to discover an unfamiliar sort of hope lurking there instead. That perhaps, one day, another would pick up where he'd left off and that this mysterious stranger would reveal the truth that he’d been denied.

Smirking one last time, Deac Lambert, age 482, ceased to be, a final thought left unsaid upon his lips. 'What could be more human?'