The Long Tomorrow
That should have been my first clue that there was more to Aylenmyr than met the eye. But alas, I was set upon my path, and when the mind focuses with such precision upon any task, it is often at the exclusion of all else.
I encountered difficulty in determining the patterns of behavior, though this task ultimately proved possible. Aggression, loyalty, timidity, and independence could be altered with the relative ease of a sliding dial.
However, by no combination of my existing revelations, could I determine the condition of which I most desperately sought. I needed to go further, to find that part of the mind which defined the broader vistas of intelligence.
The years passed and, despite all experiments, no closer did I come to achieving my goals. Finally, it was on a night in mid-winter, when the wind howled around the hill, and the snow
blew thick, that all my frustrations came to a head. I determined that if I could not create what I sought, and return even a glimmer of what had once been, then I did not deserve to live my pitiful existence.
Through the blizzard thick, I climbed, scrambling over gargoyles and past ancient stained glass windows, to the top of the library, the fall from which–I had determined–would grant enough force to destroy the steel and flesh that kept me alive.
There I stood upon the precipice, taking a last glimpse of the town that was to be my resting place. It was then, through the snow and wind that I saw those illusive memories with perfect clarity once more.
I fell back onto the roof in shock.
I had not stopped in Aylenmyr merely out of desperation. I knew this town. Something had drawn me to the place. Some hidden memory or force of nature, I knew not which, had longed for me to return to this town in which I was myself made and thence to set out upon my wretched task.
In my mind’s eye, I saw it, the face of my maker, clearer than ever working in his laboratory.
Of course! How stupid I had been! He had built this library. He had amassed all of this knowledge. He had been the one to create me, and yet… and yet…
Why was it that I could not find even the most meagre scrap of information on the genesis of biomechanical minds? Had he hidden his research before his death?
I descended back down to the library, taking far greater care this time; for now, I had a reason. It was a vain hope, a fool’s hope, and yet, I saw in my understanding of the man whose name I still could not remember, a glimpse of an idea. If he had seen what was coming, if, when that terrible malediction began to enfeeble the minds of all around him he foresaw the inevitable future, would he not have formed a plan?
As I have said, it was he who engineered my immunity. Why do such a thing if only to leave me to a world in ruin?