Mensk Xelnaga [25]'s Questionnaire

I live in Anchorage Supernatural Correctional Complex, a secret supermax prison designed to contain those with powers and connections deemed highly dangerous by the federal government. I gave myself up to the state, incriminating myself to be put in this prison as protection from Wayland Mesnk, my own experiment and prodigy that led a hostile takeover of my corporation, Radiant Industries. 

I've grown to hate this place almost as much as I hate Wayland, but the walls and the secret location have kept me safe from the considerable resources at his disposal for now. 

The one thing I hate most about ASCC is the power suppression and neutralization. The warden took great joy in dismembering the majority of my cybernetic augments, leaving scars now hidden by the jumpsuit they force me to wear. The downgrade in living standard and body functionality was almost too much to bear. The majority of my memories stored in my implants for faster processing have simply disappeared, corrupted by the power and neural suppression used in the prison facility. Yet when I dream I can see the plan I laid out for myself, the one I made as Wayland's walls closed in on me. Made in haste plans often fail. Should I trust my prime self, or ever dare to modify the plans I see? I cannot see the whole plan at once. Hopefully the harbingers can grant me all my memories and experiences back to me. Being in a state on constant suppression in the ASCC feels like being a lobotomized while being attacked by cancer. Just being outside is like tasting ambrosia. Yet it cannot undo the damage. Only the Harbingers might be able to restore me. Enough visits to the outside and I will not be able to bear returning. It is imperative I am strong enough to survive Wayland and Radiant when I make my move.  

The Harbingers can bring me out for contracts, but I must always be returned to the safety of my prison. One day with their help I will reactivate my augments and improve them, and once all my pieces are in place I will turn the tables on both the Supernatural Correction Institute and Wayland. After that, humanities ascension into the network will be assured. 

I was the richest man in the world, so rich I could hide it from the general public. Radiant Industries is the world's leading company focusing on cyberware and neural engineering, and billions of investments from the world's elite and the strongest governments made their way into my accounts. Wayland's takeover of Radiant took all of that away from me. He is remaking the company in his image and killed all of my loyalists who would tell me where the company is headed now. 

Yet even as both power and fortune were seized, I snuck away millions using the most secure and trustworthy black-marketing tricks. 

Still, being a millionaire is a humiliation for a former trillionaire. Wayland will not get away with this.  

Magic, the Supernatural, the Fey are all relics of the past. Science marches forth stronger and more convenient to obtain. Yet the chaos of a world of magic leaves me little choice. Humanity needs the tools to even the playing field with gods and monsters. Man has let the supernatural order lead us for too long.

With purity of steel and the assurances of the most advanced sciences, I will grasp the fate of humanity away from the slow and merger concept of Darwin's evolution. I will lead humanity into a future where we are more intelligent, stronger, faster, and connected, all through a vast network of cybernetics. I will stop at nothing to achieve this, and I have put all my life's work into achieving this goal. I will kill for it, die for it, it does not matter.

Mankind will be remade; connected together after my grand cyber revolution. 

There are many things I have experienced in my life. Death, betrayal, fortune, and power are all a merger sampling of the life of Mensk Creed. Yet it was my founding of Radiant Industries, my creation Wayland Mensk, and my downfall at his hands that has shaped my resolve the most. 

My dreams revealed to me fields of strands, thoughts, emotions, wants, and needs. Every human on the planet had a strand, all running up and into me. I felt everything, could solve anything, and I was everyone. This dream was foremost in my head when I created Radiant. I then attempted to create the perfect vessel in the form of Wayland. A being that would perfectly merge machine and man, a body for me to inhabit to become the overmind this world needs. Yet blind as I tried to keep Wayland, he found out about my plans unbeknownst to me. 

By the time I started to see his moves, his plan to supplant me was too far along to stop. He had distracted me while destroying my allies and weakening my base of power beyond repair. I was almost proud. If only he had vowed to pursue the cyber revolution as vigorously as I.

Now I must risk my life in pursuit of the power I once had. I will return and take back what is mine. Radiant will be restored to its place by my side. I can always start again. 

Wayland Mensk was nothing when I found him. An orphan kicked into the curb by parents who would never love or care for him. I saw through him and saw myself. He was lucky he didn't have to face those illogical and self-destructive peons as I did growing up. It is tragic both sets of parents died screaming in roaring infernos. After I had taken care of the loose ends, I named the boy Wayland Mensk. I would be his father, and I would teach and modify him to be the perfect vessel, and he would become my greatest invention and key to the success of my mission. I did not give him knowledge of his place in my designs, and it weighed on me to waste his intelligence. Yet I had to do it if the Grand Revolution was to be successful. In the darkest of my days, I will not let myself be overthrown, outdone, not even by my own greatest creation. 

Before I created Wayland I created C.A.B.A.L (cybernetically assisted biologically assisted lifeform). It was my first attempt to create the groundwork for a harmonious network to slide humanity into. It was a great creation and a massive help in forming my trillion-dollar mega corporation. It ruthlessly destroyed competition, started wars to profit, and effortlessly managed a large company of tens of thousands. It was so good I let it run almost everything including the daily operations of Radiant. Cold, efficient, calculated I was right about all of those things describing CABAL. Yet it lacked one thing I was certain it had. Loyalty. The traitorous intelligence decided to throw its weight behind Wayland. It helped keep me blind and only it could have disconnected me from my own networks so quickly. Yet I would not let Wayland enjoy domination with this weapon at his side. I planted a virus in the mainframe that should have corrupted that Abominable Intelligence beyond repair.

I had to flee Radiant headquarters shortly after, turning myself and evidence of many crimes (though not close to all) to the government to avoid the wrath and resources of Wayland at the head of Radiant. I have never had the chance to know the outcome of the virus on C.A.B.A.L. I hope there is a hell for robots. 

R-M-B was my first moving creation; a robot created to clean my room and do other menial taskings to keep my parents happy. Somedays after the lectures, the yelling, the beatings, R-M-B looked at me as if he understood. After one sever enough beating, I hallucinated him speaking to me. He was my only friend, a stalwart face of comfort in those days. The day of the very accidental fire my parents had punished me by taking his battery's (a 96 wasn't an acceptable grade). He was still in the flames with all of us as the house burned around us. It took years for me to recover and be reconstructed in the hospital from the burns. I wonder if he still exists somewhere. My purpose didn't allow me the time to look, yet in prison I look back at the past.     

To anyone looking in I seemed pampered, living the perfect life. I had rich parents able to give anything I could ever want. Yet they never gave me attention. They never loved me and nothing they gave me with those empty eyes and fake smiles changed that. When they beat me, the smiles disappeared at least. They tried to hide it from me, but I heard what they argued about at night. What they did to others to be so rich. They were disgusting lowlifes, criminals that killed and lied at the drop of their gaudy hats. I would change the world. No one would get away with abusing system under me. Attending the rich private school system gave me no relief. They were all the same; terrible. I can barely remember anything but the hatred I had for them all. It showed it my grades, and I was insulted and abused with any sign of weakness.

I will make the world better; no one will suffer like me again. 

I have never been in love. How could I when I was never given love, and I have never really seen it? I doubt it exists. In the deeper parts of oneself everyone knows the truth. We are all out for ourselves. This is why I must remake the world. This is why what i'm doing will create true love. Not just for a partner or family. Everyone will love everyone as one. I can no longer think about waiting.

We need to be stronger

We need to be better.

We need to be smarter.

Technology is the key. Link our minds as one and we all will be free. 

Everyone will love and do as they please. 

Fear is a concept the machine shouldn't bear. The machine does remember itself before it was indominable. Sometimes the machine gets a reminder that he is still yet a man. I have lived so long and still have the strength of someone 20 years of age. It's incredible and yet so much of what I could do was taken. It's all part of my plan but why doesn't it feel like mine?

My plans never fail, yet why does it feel to me as if this one already had? Despite my clear understanding of my own plan it becomes so difficult to remember before. I know who I was, yet places and people don't call to me. Then ones I don't remember do. It is antithetical to a machine to forget. I was not built to; I did not upgrade my memory and mind to forget. Yet I have. I have forgotten something about me.

How much?  

And why? 

I know why I imprisoned myself. I came out of my survival/cryo facility and after doing some trekking and making sure my path was untraceable, I gave myself in. They couldn't have had the evidence of my crimes, but acted as if they had seen them before. I was dragged in and put into my new personal hell. Yet personal hell beats death or so my plan goes. The Radiant Collective would have killed me if I didn't take extreme measures. Wayland wants no living challengers.

Yet I must grow powerful quickly. I tire of hell and I ache to change this world. To fix the ills and stop the criminals. To Free humanity be evolving us to truly understand each other in the only way possible. Pure interconnection. Yet in the back of my mind I have a singular wonder. Is it possible to change humanity? 

Any possessions are prized. The ones that weren't, the heaps of money and loads more were all taken by Wayland and the disloyal. When I exited my hibernation facility, there was a part of the plan I don't quite remember. Yet I knew this was the way to grace and victory. Out of a simple brown paper bag I took 3 coins. It was on a simple table stand close to the door. Now I know what the coins do, what they are. They are Radiant designed weapons, the Best weapons I could ask for.

The technology I built will help me change the world. But weapons is a secondary purpose. Every behind the weapons was created in the process of changing minds and developing bio/implant tech. My work will not ever be forgotten. 

My work will be the second internet. A collection and exchange of minds that allows humanity to finally seek peace through understanding. But to set the groundwork for change requires a storm strong enough to destroy old powers, ideas, and anything else that stands in the way. 

In the end, my most prized possession is my belief that I can change life itself. I can make into reality the only real choice that can save us.

The biggest problem in my life is both a very simple and a very complicated question. I live in the ASCC, its a living nightmare. For most people that's people that would be number one but I am far from "most people". The only reason I am in this living hell is because I am marked for death by a The Radiant Collective, an organization so powerful and with such wide influence that almost nowhere on Earth is safe from them. They have compromised every major government on the planet, and I am likely at the top of the list for people they want dead. I would know since I built the Collective from the ground up. But Wayland and CABAL stole it all for me. They almost killed me. Dealing with hell for now is the price I pay for my survival

When I become strong enough to make my own moves I will take back my empire. Then I won't just be fixing my problems. I will fix every problem, every human flaw. Artificial evolution is the key to the technological singularity, which under my guidance will lead to a lasting age of peace and wonder for humanity.   
 

If truth be told, the world faces me not the other way around. I can't remember my mornings anymore they don't let me. I used to have great hair, kept it pristine with the best products and have servants do many of my tasks. Then I started that fire one day. After the burns and reconstruction my morning got alot simpler. Hell of alot more painful though. So I replaced the damaged skin, and then bit by bit everything else too. I could walk, talk and be human again. I knew i wasn't "just human" anymore though. I fought my way to the top.

I could have had a morning routine a million times more expensive and lavish than the one I had when I was just Mensk Valentine. But I didn't care about any of that anymore. The money the fame I could have had with it were nothing to me. I was Mensk Xelnaga now, and every waking moment was devoted to a purpose greater than myself. To plans, places, and people I have trouble remembering now. 

Now though? 

I have nothing, I am nothing until I become the Collective again. They don't let me think for 22 hours in a day. I am less than human, I have memory of 2 hours per day the rest is dreams of the burning. The feeling of my flesh bubbling that day pales in comparison to knowing what will become of this world without my guidance. They need me, and to be what they need I have to become stronger. 

I no longer have "mornings", and if I did I wouldn't care enough about them for it to matter anyways.