The following day, upon finally unraveling the truth, Simon turned up at Gray Manor. Aryan was out, but Mist was in, the boy reluctantly invited him in and Simon told him he knew the truth.

  The boy looked bewildered for a second then laughed and showed him the door. Simon had knew no one would believe and if they did, he’d be dead before he could tell. If what the documents claimed the children could do was true. No wonder he got so readily dismissed. Shiver, the sweetest of the monsters and black-eyed demons was his one true hope.

  He located Shiver at a No Country for Corporate Fat Cats rally similar to the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Melbourne rallies back in 2011. Protesters as young as fourteen and as old as eight-five had been beaten with batons; kicked, bloodied, trampled by horses, pepper-sprayed, and basically assaulted and brutalized and Shiver's job was partially to offer some protection.

  The most violent officers and even the occasional businessmen and politicians countering the protest kept “getting sick” and having to go home all of a sudden. However, the girl did not need to be physically present for her abilities to work so she was “actually” there in person to supervise the protest and take note of the level of violence.

  “I know the truth,” he told her quietly. Rather than seeming perturbed Shiver asked him why this concerned her as no one would believe him and anyway, the virus was in his system and could be activated killing him practically instantly at any given moment. She pointed at the city lights and trees of a park nearby. “Isn’t this beautiful?” She said. “Don’t you want to preserve it?’

  Simon who had no answer, a coherent one anyway, asked if “even if she never changed her mind, would she consider meeting with him again.”

  “Why?” asked the girl “I don’t need friends.” Simon however knew this to not be true, she always or sometimes at least looked so sorrowful and lonely on Virtualiser TV, filmed at charity events and political campaigns and fundraisers.

  True she often smiled with a bright childlike wonder at the camera but even behind those sincere, temporary moments of mirth and euphoria, the sadness still lurked. Aryan and Mist were cold, ruthless, and ambitious. Neither cared for traditional family or children. Mist expressed outright disdain at family and Aryan only used the concept to further his career and make himself seem warmer and more approachable.

  Monovalent of course was a machine. A clever machine able to think for itself but he doubted family was much more than an abstract concept for it. All of them Mist, Monovalent, and Aryan were callous, calculating, and utterly self-possessed and contained. Shiver however had expressed interest when asked by reporters about having a family, being a mother, and going to visit her parents more often... Simon just had to persuade her to give up her dreams of notoriety and settle for something more grounded.

  If she came forward, he would help her escape and alter her appearance so she could take on a new identity. He was a man of integrity and honour and had every intention of keeping that promise. He smiled at her working his pretty features and charm on her. Whatever else extraordinary she was she still had the heart of a pretty girl who felt she needed and deserved love.

  It didn’t hurt that he frequently dressed in the same sort of well-tailored, black suits Aryan did either... Shiver loved a man in a suit. .Looking very cute and comely herself, Shiver was dressed in little grey mittens and a matching hat and a long-sleeved, deep blue blouse made of silk or very fine cotton.

  Paired with a long, wintery, grey-green cotton skirt with delicate white lace trim. Simon sat down beside her in the town square and smiled at her again. Shiver smiled back at Simon and he felt a flare of recognition.

  Large and dark; those melancholy eyes scanned his face before lighting up with pure, sweet joy and as the sunlight shone, they turned deepest-hazel. A vial of vivid- green rings just shades darker than his own, dazzled and took Simon’s breath away.

  Simon who had worked to help out since fifteen and came from a single-mother, working-class family and knew what it was to suffer and valued all humanity, saw in her face at that moment his own dear, lovely Adelaide love of his life whose mother died whence not yet four and whose father was cold and distant.

  Grown-up impoverished in a neighborhood of poor, living quarters. A na?ve, bookish, childhood through adolescence friend, and sweetheart. Teased and taunted over her cheap shabby clothes, bizarre appearance, and underendowment throughout her high school years.

  On learning, she could not afford to go to university, let alone go and still work full time as she would have to since her father died of cancer, and knowing there was no escape from her lacklustre existence at least for a very long time she had committed suicide.

  A friend taking their life occurred again, when his nice, handsome friend Luke had been laid off from his work as the latest recession caused the company to go bust, only then to be left homeless. His young wife left him and he died on the streets. His child, a baby of three months, was taken away too by the state and Luke eventually killed himself still searching fruitlessly for work and housing,

  Adelaide, his sweet Addie had been a Jolie laide or outside French terms beautiful –ugly. Tubular and flat-chested, with wispy brows and a face entirely too round. A dreamy but wide, thin-lipped mouth. Coupled with an oftentimes sweet expression and nature. Her slender, long limbs, frost-pale, white skin and some dusky little rose imbuing her cheeks beneath huge, light eyes. Both brooding and intense. He could see her hair’s gentle sweep of honey-gold. A single, loose lock caressing her long, slender neck in a dearly-smooth coif. Her stark appearance rendered her very striking.

  Sometimes Adelaide, like Shiver, had come across as a little petulant or sullen in demeanor but often they both seemed merely sweet, reserved, and quiet. As Shiver took a sip of a chocolate milkshake clasped in two, fragile little hands clasped daintily, her perfect, classic face took on an imperious look that said I know how pretty and flawless I am, and ruined the moments, dear fleeting flutter of an image.

  “Alright we can be friends,” Shiver said. “God, I detest the very word. The concept of community I like and of family and romantic love but backstabbing, competitive, ever-changing friends? No. This consumerist, friend-centric modern society of ours is utterly repugnant. Also, I’m not betraying my Shiverla family,” she warned him. “Our friendship will have nothing to do with that.”

  “You have a nice voice. Want a chicken wing?” She then offered. “There delicious aren’t they, Mist prefers cheeseburgers which I also adore but I still like chicken almost as much.” Simon accepted and sat down beside her feeling understandably a little awkward.

  A puppy-dog-eyed child of three or four in a little red dress holding her mother’s arm passed by the bench and Shiver and Simon both smiled. “Children have such expressive faces as do animals; it adds to their beauty that bright, alert, learning intelligence that adult humans lack and is why I love to draw them so much…” Shiver whispered softly.

  “Hey,” she laughed suddenly, sweetly “did I see you at the Transsexual rights rally? If so, you should look at this;”

  A marsupial with a lost limb is still a marsupial. Has all the physiology, genes, and biology that produced that working leg, as does a woman who lost a uterine organ. A male human who was such from the first foetal formation with no discernible female layout and capabilities, but fake breasts and pseudo-girlish exterior is a fish fitted with a paper horn, a useless, non-functional attachment without any properties understood as feminine or horse-like. Yet is called a lady and a unicorn. They must with constant, guilting indoctrination take eerie the wonderment from our sighed and now slighted eyes of the now-masked lapwing, to make us praise her dully and duly.

  In God’s image.

  “Emanuel wrote it, he’s a genius. He made the technology you use daily, and immortal beings, and he made and loves me,” she boasted proudly.

  "True as well. Why the...God, it's nonsensical. People cannot physically change sex or mate with one same-gendered any more than you may eat from your ear. What biological waste and mental refuse," she snorted.

  "Perhaps their lives are cold without these things, perhaps rational or not, your harsh, clinical assessment of normalcy doesn’t work when your heart cries for something else...They make it worthwhile by the joy it gives them, feel whole and complete after the hard and painful parts of life are done, what of the unfulfilled misery they might otherwise feel?" Simon suggested softly.

  Shiver gave him a look that one reserves for one well-meaning (but in that beholder's eyes) also silly. In this case, one placating with feeling-over-facts idioms. She tugged a thick lock chosen from the amass of red-ash hair that's abundance drew attention to how it was upon so prettily-small a head. Did so rather cutely, Simon thought as she shifted within the velvet of her long, dark, silvery-grey coat. She then replied;

  "Well, maybe if the promiscuous life-stylers and the gender-nonconformists weren't so cavalier and destructive and dangerous with their STD spreading and advocating of dangerous surgery on confused kids and you can't even critique these actions or call them what they are, unsafe."

  "If we weren't forced to proclaim they're simply wonderful and like everyone else but better or jail for you. We might indulge them a little, though encouraging delusion is idiotic: you cannot live in a land where lies are the norm and truth a sin. It confuses and encourages often-harmful delusion leading to self-mutilation and dissatisfaction with reality."

  "Also, disease-spreaders and un-needed surgery demand their treatments funded with highly-finite, public money while people starve and country growing broke, these medical-resource wasters only think of themselves."

  "Hundred bloodied, freedom-less bodies so they can feel good and loved and special little individuals ignoring society that as Aryan's says feeds and clothes and educates them on its own dime."

  "The murder is happiest knifing others, the dictator controlling masses with violent force and ruthless corporate using slave labour to increase his precious earnings, his competitive winnings."

  "The disease spreader covets his activities with I admit, earnest passion too. Should still be shamed for harming and killing others for such selfish desires not praised as a holy, lifestyle choice. Why can’t they find joy in art and charity and noble things, not sexual or greedy selfishness."

  "Romance is beautiful you surely believe that? You have said it’s something wonderful in and of itself. In an interview. Also, that feminist curbing of it was misguided and evil, so why is it not for them?" Those whose object of passions from yours differ?" Simon spoke and his golden head seemingly caught some of the light of the heavens. Though Shiver saw only the good intentions paved to hell.

  "Love needs an end about more than your needs, a contribution to ways of caring for young, and as Emanuel says in his philosophy book, it works for uniting man with woman often who have trouble understanding and empathizing with one another."

  "Such affections cease the degenerating into sex wars that virulently occur when such unions are fractured and gays become too large and powerful, a social, political, and anti-gender group. The homosexual version of love just seems divisive, irrelevant, and infertile. A lesser version of ours."

  Simon nodded with no entire agreement but impressed certainly by the persuasiveness and thoughtfulness her ideas posed.

  He should have realized crude bigotry; being the only foreseeable enemy of what he thought progress was, was not necessarily the only or even likeliest contender to bring back the old ways in a tide. For were perhaps more forceful these grand, high-sounding statements with at least a reasonable hint or grain of truth to them.

  Perhaps they were exaggerating the bleak and they cleverly concerned themselves much with critiquing the flaws found in every system (including the one his party fought for) to justify reversal or overhaul.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  He did still detest the writer of such musings, Emanuel Roe, and the more motivated to concentrate his morals in other areas, Aryan, though.

  “Oh yeah, speaking of sex-swapping Mist and I really can ha trannies. I become the most wonderful sixteen-year-old boy, Mist the perfect girl. Made ourselves look mostly like each other but with a variety of colourings and a few different heights. We then seduced several gay people and then changed bodies right in front of them.”

  “They nearly had a heart attack, but we simply stood calm, collected, and poised elegantly, asked ever-so-tearfully, ‘“Darling I thought our love was deep, spiritual, and what mattered was found inside, why so shallow?”’

  “Don’t worry they can’t tell; anyone would think them insane, and we only tricked a few and no we didn’t hurt them, gay-lover. Of course, merely to remain safe, we masked our faces and features; and made ourselves look different enough than our base forms that we were untraceable; likewise, did such virtually, for our OCEMA broadcast and used, at the time, false names, we never broadcast it though. Just saved the footage on a privatized account and kept our new names as a funny, inside joke.”

  “Everyone actually there who could identify the people at Wrighthouse based on appearances and names (and recognize via vague description we offered, as observers of the institution) are dead. Near entire cities fall to the virus, so everyone croaking isn’t exactly much of a giveaway.”

  As soon as the conversation politely waned the prickle began again. The idea that somehow, he knew her from somewhere. Before the first photographs, he saw during Aryan’s political ascension.

  No, it wasn’t simply Adelaide she was reminding him of, not really. That was only one side to her. He’d seen Shiver or something to her akin before. In images from a horrible game by that madman Emanuel… With the monsters, the beasts from God’s image. Namely their eyes.

  Recalled what he found so frightening and so wonderful about the pictures and… Well, unique, about this game. Its graphics were released before Aryan’s virtual reality. Not only were the living beings rendered impossibly-expressive, so beautiful yet revolting but they were never still; even when the creatures were stationary, somehow like human faces their features looked utterly different depending on emotion, angle, or light: they moved, changed, he thought.

  Though could not quite have put it to words he realized the equally animated Shiver was these beings as if perfected; their flaws turned to some painting of Renaissance, but the inhumane undertone remained. Furthered by the fact that angels and artworks always seem a little eerie and unsettling out in mankind’s realm. Emanuel had said similar words himself but enjoyed the contrast.

  Simon remembered the images and great, graceful colours she made for the game In God's Image.

  Which Emanuel described as “Beginning in talking, self-repairing buildings and AI stations that within their vicinity, search-out and warn of dangers natural and manmade. Ones wrought upon a now strangely, unstable climate in morn’s perpetual snaking of primrose-violet.”

  “Inside the spoilt cities once gardened in ivy-richly, skies were hilled shelves of reddish-gray and humanity due to how badly bodily-engineered to repulsive- beauteousness they were cowered under the maple-edged, black hellfire.

  "It's a simulation my love did a visual rendering of.”

  "As well as the illustrations for my The Evils of Eve” About life and history's archetypical, quick-witted, and villainous lady. Filial firmness rosed her face adorned with artistic and philosophical musings, as she expressed inanities to much peer praise and dons silkiest royal dressings from the materials of war-conquered nations afore gleefully racing across the corpses of field peasants and her battle-bloodied lovers. Defends most brutal arms and is always deferent toward her softly-spoken noblemen to whom she’s betrothed."

  "Her modern counterpart is depicted riding roads built by lost-limbed laborers and carting around a surrogated, poor woman’s child. The birth mother sold her to feed other infants. Its pacifier made by a factory worker of nine, tenderly.”Wasting much medical care (because treats her own form carelessly) and built on knowledge cultivated by others' experiments. Thundering the toll of human beings and beast countless.”

  "The program showed what the artist saw and Monovalent's vision. It was later dubbed in the eyes of a dead maiden. After Sibyl Farling herself. Or me." Shiver said to Simon.

  Later that day, excitement really did intrude on the stagnant existence of the bored Mist Gray. A stealthy hired assassin entered Gray Manor ready to take out any of the Gray brood but couldn't get past the computer's security his hacking skills were no use against a super-intelligent AI. He had attempted disguised and with a sniper rifle, to ambush them in public places but had failed.

  This was his fourth visit to the house where he was pretending to be applying for the position of gardener, to avoid the detection of Monovalent’s movable cameras installed everywhere he was so he could see anything going on inside or outside any home or building. To suit Aryan’s ends, they were perfect: not stationary but miniature, invisible, spy drone cameras that could create roaming duplicates that surveyed even woodland.

  The would-be assassin knew he'd never be granted the position now as he’d failed Monovalent’s background check on him. Any phony documentation was useless as he couldn’t hack into the system to plant it so without a computerized record. His history and credentials would show as fake. This was his one shot.

  The assassin heard movement in the backyard just as he was leaving and rushed into the orchard out back, to find the boy, Mist. tending and photographing the white-wined flowers. Mist heard the man as soon as he approached the house and by his foot-treads, their heaviness and quality, realized he was someone unknown. He felt the unique, unrecognized electrical current caused by his movement's disturbance to the atmosphere. Smelt his exclusive scent and chemical changes to the general homeostasis of nearby life and land, that his body emitted.

  Things he and Shiver so hypersensitive could realize, sense such various alterations from the tinniest insect or lightly-winded leaf or beast a mile away.

  Yet he allowed the shooting to happen: wanted to prove unequivocally he would live, that everything told about his immortality was true. If he couldn’t withstand this pitiful bloodshed, then how weak, useless, pathetic and human was he? Surely not worthy of living…

  Plus the expression on the stupefied assassin’s face when he found him still alive and unscathed…Wonderful.

  The young man Mist then turned round in the most convincing pretense of surprise; with a flurried movement of catlike reflexes but as he well knew, too late; he was shot point-blank in the heart and the arm, and the assassin fled assured of his target’s death.

  Monovalent who saw everything and before the round was even shot warned Mist and also while the miniature nano-bots devoured the bullet he immediately informed some of the mass of instant us embryonic cell-like structures his body generated daily to form a large, bone-like cartilage-rich cluster like a giant tumour for the bullet to strike instead of any vital organs. This design Emanuel’s idea enabled Aryan’s creatures to deal with bullets, knives, or anything stuck into the body as these tumours that acted as barriers took seconds to appear and could be replaced over and over.” The tumours were then reverted back to their embryonic state and stored in the nelfine organ.

  Mist rose surprisingly gracefully from a slight stagger as new cell-like bodies penetrated the area, the flesh Monovalent sealed over and then replaced. The wound that should have subsequent heavy, gushing tides of dark wine spurting out instead clotted and stopped abruptly. I am with you child Monovalent whispered to him “I will heal your ailments you shall never die.”

  Quelled the fire that would others have smote and a barely discernible flash of should-be-immobilising pain and the wounds dimmed instantly. Artificial cells and tissues be they his artificial skin, muscle, or bonelike structures all miraculously rapidly re-grown from the inside in under a minute. He started running very swiftly; catching up with his flabbergasted attacker wrestled the gun from his hand easily and shot him in the neck planning to bury him later.

  He then walked inside, recovered if a little weary, and went to bed and napped. Lightly-slumbered. Whence he awoke, less than twenty minutes later, not even scars remained. The only sign of the previous occurrence was a few pretty, deep-red stains on the plant life. Seeming a little too vibrant against the green grassy grounds.

  Yet unlike true blood, it rapidly disintegrated. Broken down after from body unbound. The nanobotics partially his body composing carrying his blood's old minerals and components, travelled. Via recognizing the needed, unique chemical properties. It carried these elements and burrowed into and settled them within, a few nutritionally-deprived animals. As with other living things, in death, they’d been built to others' repair.

  Soon after returning to the manor Shiver was the one now enjoying the garden, listening to a sound she heard often on the winds of the manor and heard in various places and was communicated via Monovalent’s tiny, mobile, split-offs, the Nano-eyes. A sound she’d been hearing whenever she was alone for a year “Oh Shiver Gray, My Shiver Gray.”

  “Is it true, you not only aren't human but are cellularly malleable and can mimic and create various mingles of human, animal, or viral DNA,” Simon asked when he found and went up to her at another event.

  “Yes,” Shiver said. "In theory at least. To protect ourselves we can make long, ivory, protective spikes grow from our flesh like armour: that turn to bone and flesh and skin tougher than the hardiest substance found on the planet. Can withstand almost any temperature; have our molecular structure rearranged into a highly flexible graphene. An artificially made and strongest material. It’s also a micro-organism. Lives within us secretly and can expand and grows upon us in a fibrous tangle like a limpet. With it, we could likely tear rocks and more. Just from being modified with this micro-creature. It also makes up some of the outer, protective body of Monovalent, his nano-eyes, his buildings and transport vehicles, as well as part of our DNA."

  “Yes.” Simon frowned. “I have read about Emanuel’s “lid-illvalored or his lilied fingers of vaedow.” "They are sighted and with incredible grasping properties. Can exist within and alter organic things and have white, petaled ends under a shadowy, closed, skinlike layer. Had no idea they were used for that many things though.”

  Shiver smiled. “They’re a godless and unnatural creation. A seeing micro-life form that changes chemical compounds rearranges properties and alters genetic structures and may soon be able to strip things down to their very atoms if electrical pulses instruct it to do so… They can help make our skin grow and form hooklike structures. Our flesh-like substance only appears fully human. Yet contains delicate, durable properties of silk and the shine of the metallic." She paused the then spoke again.

  "You realize I can accurately recall perfectly anything you say since I'm part machine,” she stated with welling pride. “The ability was turned off in me when I was young, so I’d appear more “regular” and not suspiciously-gifted, but I have it fully now.”

  "Imagine. Someday Mist and I will have beautiful, dragonfly wings but large and sturdy enough to lift us into the air and gills and hooking claws and will conceive and secrete lethal poison and toxic substances that combined, kill ninety-nine percent of other cell and bacterial and viral-based lifeforms and we’re to, immune. Though will need to be able to be quickly nullified by another compound, to prevent from getting out of hand."

  "We are as our creators wrote in their experimental notes the beasts from Emanuel's prophecy done right, by actual geniuses and in small test subjects not wide-spread and dangerous. Not rushed into by talentless corporates or mediocre scientists punching above their paygrade."

  They continued to meet at regular intervals at parks, museums, and the remaining bookstores which were having a bit of a renaissance as something one could collect, buy, and own a physical copy of. They went to old, art galleries and the orchestra.

  Upon ferry rides, in cafes, fancy restaurants, and other nice places. Sometimes Mist who worked as a part-time musician would be playing in the orchestra or performing a violin solo as part of a symphony piece and even singing in choir ensembles and they would attend his theatre concerts together. Whenever Shiver had finished her work for Aryan and Mist was bored with her (as he frequently was) they would meet and discuss books, politics, and animals and Shiver's heart’s desire to experience motherhood one day.

  Aryan engrossed in his work had had no idea until recently that Shiver, Mist, and Monovalent were altering the perceptions and gaming experiences of those who paid to be part of Monovalent realms, he would have been mortified if he had. Shiver and Mist changed the gaming experience of various Monovalent realms users from whatever fantasy they were playing out, always turned it into some sort of nightmare, and inserted themselves into the game as key players.

  They called these little fantasies the hell-place and could barely speak of them without snorting with malice and laughter. They kept many of these people trapped well past the six-hour-a-day limit in Monovalent realms, not allowing them to leave until the game was over.

  Monovalent analyzed the records of various users and chose ones who lived alone and who had no family members or friends living nearby so it would not be noticed if they played outside the time limit.

  These people were hooked up to Monovalent realm along with their little computer-controlled water rehydration units so they didn’t dehydrate as playing six hours without water could be quite dangerous in hot climates and summer. These people thought drugs or alcohol interfering with brain function were the reason they were being tortured.

  He felt sad remembering poor Jacob. He had considered apologizing but having needed to instruct Monovalent to eliminate his memory would have rendered it rather pointless. An older adolescent who lived alone in a shoddy little apartment and was unsure if he wanted to attend university or work as a trainee electrician. An enthusiastic little gamer who had Aryan knowledge based on records had spent all his hard-earned money from a part-time job on Monovalent Realms.

  Despite having friends and looks that were somewhat dashing, he had appeared to be a bit of a loner who often spent a day alone in his house reading or playing Monovalent Realms. Shiver and Mist appeared to have made him participate in a game where all the inhabitants were killed off one by one by a Shadow Beast for rebelling against socialism. They made themselves king and queen and divine upholders of communist rule. Clearly a go at him and their great political cause. Though Self-Sufficient Communalism for countries and Machine Logical Purveyance and Gurdiance were not "Socialism."

  "Or Nationalism." The other thing he was ludicrously accused of. That was highly reductionist. Maybe believing such was a sign of their tender age. He still didn't quite comprehend how Monovalent was shielding their actions and thoughts from him almost programming. It seemed to taking its bid to protect them, his weapons, a little too literally. He would need to look further into it.

  The pair, unbeknownst to him, also played the hell-simulators as a nice escape from the heat as the shadow beast game took place in a perpetual winter world where scattering mist, snow, and ice turned the place into a wonderful frozen city. Still, Jacob at least was doing most well. Having just won the Virtual Tournament and taken home the silver of the Merlaid. Very impressive. He wouldn't need to choose between University and Ttade anymore at any rate. Just as Aryan was pondering this Jacob was taking his first step back into the realm to find the sea light's, last glower.