Gehn
New member
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2022
- Messages
- 9
“…gone, I'm afraid. Had to take it. The tail was — well, it was ruined, and it would have fought the spinal integration every step of the way. But listen to me, listen — what I've replaced it with, what I've done to the rest of you? You should be thanking me. You have no idea what you are right now.”
“…I saw one. Once. A being of such power that the word felt inadequate — not ki as you or I understand it, not the sorcery that two-bit conjurers peddle across the galaxy, something else entirely. Something fundamental. Divine. It moved through the air like the universe had been built around it. And I thought: if something like that can exist, then it can be understood. And if it can be understood, it can be made. ”
“…seventy-seven attempts! Seventy-seven! And every single one of them taught me something. Biology alone — oh, I was a fool for years, thinking flesh could carry divinity on its own. You can engineer the perfect organism, coax every cell into place, and it still hits a ceiling. The body gives up before the design does! But machinery — machinery doesn't quit, it doesn't fatigue, it doesn't decide it's done growing. Do you see? ”
“…of course I've had the time. I made sure of that early on. Aging is just cellular decay with good publicity — I solved it before I solved anything else. What would be the point of chasing perfection if my own body betrayed me halfway to the answer? ”
“…your musculature, your organs, every ligament — rebuilt, reinforced, perfected. There's a silver quality to the tissue now, you'll see it if you look. And the eye! Oh, the eye was the exciting part. It talks to your brain directly, no lag, no interpretation, pure data. You're not diminished, Saiyan. You are the first version of something extraordinary. ”
“…never predicted this kind of power increase. Your species — the way your biology responded to the augmentation, it exceeded every model I had. This is — do you understand what this means? The organic-artificial synthesis, it isn't just viable, it's — this changes everything, I need to…”
Gehn sat through it all. He wore his regular clothes – reconstructed and cleaned without the slightest oversight, or so Dr. Napyarn warned him – and perched himself on the edge of a metal table that he had awoken from. The side of his head ached in a way he never felt. His ears rang as he went back and forth with this man of science and madness, learning what happened.
He crashed landed, his vessel damaged. Only Gehn knew it had been by a blast from Axar during his escape from Earth, before he went superliminal and escaped Axar’s reach. The doctor found him, explained the condition he had been in, and went to further explain his work: the why, the how. Almost all of it was the how.
How he had reworked Gehn like some animal for testing, for experimentation. The first he had said: Gehn hadn’t even been the perfected work. He was the first attempt to put some of his earliest thoughts into practice, for he had, it sounded, given himself the lifespan he’d need in order to make many, many more.
His Saiyan tail, gone. His body in some ways, more machine than flesh. In others, untouched. His eye, his brain, his mind, permanently fused with something foreign. The entire time Gehn listened, and kept up perhaps more than the generous doctor realized, he saw them: Celerus, Ollis, standing, laughing at him.
He felt anger building, bubbling hot in his stomach and crawling up his throat. It was a stranger to him, even as a Saiyan. He never had the temper of his siblings, his was never so easily brought out.
Yet, they mocked him. He wondered what this would do to him long-term: his lifespan, his health, what undiscovered flaws had the doctor built into him? Could they even be fixed? What did this even make him, now?
The toy of a mad man pursuing imagined gods?
Gehn’s muscles clenched, his power rose. He wore shackles, yes, but they seemed inadequate for the strength that now ran through his body – light and thin. The doctor was right when he brought that up: Gehn felt astonishingly strong compared to before. He barely trained in years, and now? He felt as if he had done nothing but since leaving Vegeta.
A large screen with an integrated set of keys, biometric interfaces, and more, next to Gehn’s metal “bed”, began to beep. It pointed out his growing power: Gehn had been 70 or less on Earth, in his degraded state, but it rose now: 500…600…
…700…
The doctor went on: He couldn’t believe it! It was working better than he ever thought, ever dreamed, ever hoped! Gehn pulled the cord connected into the side of his head, which allowed the machine to read his power, free.
Shackles, too weak for what he created, snapped like ceramic instead of steel.
Finally, the white-hot rage leaped out of Gehn’s throat with something that sounded alien to his own ears: A scream.
Blood spatter flecked Gehn’s tight-fitted, white shirt, his gray pants, and even his face. He stood in front of a sliding door – one half coming in from either side of the door frame, sealing shut in the middle – and jammed his fingers in. Other doors in the hall to his left, where he had come from, were already pried open.
Supplies. Separate working labs. A huge facility for just one man that could easily accept the aid of dozens. Yet, not one android or other robot among them to aid him. Computers lined the walls in certain chambers, voice-activated as Gehn learned. In other chambers he found supplies, what appeared to be a couple offices, and more.
So much to examine, but only after he swept this entire place.
Half-dry blood smeared as Gehn forced open the next chamber – and stopped. Before him, dimly lit, a long chamber lined with rounded capsules. Each the size of a person, all uniformly and particularly tall. All with a globe-like glass window, frosted over. The metal floor laid obscured by mist and, as Gehn stepped in, he felt a chill. Bumps raced across his skin and the left side of his head, around his eye, ached.
Through each glass window he looked: a face. Some male. Some female. Some Saiyan. Some Namekian. Human. Others, unrecognizable.
Seventy-seven, he recalled the doctor say.
The anger had gone now, replaced by the deep-red stain from his right fist up to that arm’s elbow. Instead, he looked at them all and felt only his stomach sink: seventy-seven and, if anyone searched for these people, none found them. How long, he wondered, had some been here? Years? Decades?
His steps echoed slowly.
He looked through each one as he slowly walked to the back. Room for at least a hundred, but Gehn didn’t bother to count. He did, however, feel that machine in his eye try to wake up, to tell him the exact number – reading his thoughts like a psychic invader, but with wires and circuits instead! – only for Gehn to ignore it.
Then, he stopped. His boots clicked against the floor one last time and the echoing of his steps ended.
A woman, pale, with raven-black hair not unlike a Saiyan. Vitrified, it seemed. Frost on her cheek. A single horn, blackened at the tip as if by ink.
In that moment, Gehn wasn’t sure why: but he reached for the terminal and, this time, when the device in his head analyzed the fingerprint patterns across the otherwise-blank touchpad controls, he entered the same code it indicated when a number pad appeared.
The rounded lid hissed, disconnected from the main body of the capsule beneath, and slowly swung upward.
“…I saw one. Once. A being of such power that the word felt inadequate — not ki as you or I understand it, not the sorcery that two-bit conjurers peddle across the galaxy, something else entirely. Something fundamental. Divine. It moved through the air like the universe had been built around it. And I thought: if something like that can exist, then it can be understood. And if it can be understood, it can be made. ”
“…seventy-seven attempts! Seventy-seven! And every single one of them taught me something. Biology alone — oh, I was a fool for years, thinking flesh could carry divinity on its own. You can engineer the perfect organism, coax every cell into place, and it still hits a ceiling. The body gives up before the design does! But machinery — machinery doesn't quit, it doesn't fatigue, it doesn't decide it's done growing. Do you see? ”
“…of course I've had the time. I made sure of that early on. Aging is just cellular decay with good publicity — I solved it before I solved anything else. What would be the point of chasing perfection if my own body betrayed me halfway to the answer? ”
“…your musculature, your organs, every ligament — rebuilt, reinforced, perfected. There's a silver quality to the tissue now, you'll see it if you look. And the eye! Oh, the eye was the exciting part. It talks to your brain directly, no lag, no interpretation, pure data. You're not diminished, Saiyan. You are the first version of something extraordinary. ”
“…never predicted this kind of power increase. Your species — the way your biology responded to the augmentation, it exceeded every model I had. This is — do you understand what this means? The organic-artificial synthesis, it isn't just viable, it's — this changes everything, I need to…”
Gehn sat through it all. He wore his regular clothes – reconstructed and cleaned without the slightest oversight, or so Dr. Napyarn warned him – and perched himself on the edge of a metal table that he had awoken from. The side of his head ached in a way he never felt. His ears rang as he went back and forth with this man of science and madness, learning what happened.
He crashed landed, his vessel damaged. Only Gehn knew it had been by a blast from Axar during his escape from Earth, before he went superliminal and escaped Axar’s reach. The doctor found him, explained the condition he had been in, and went to further explain his work: the why, the how. Almost all of it was the how.
How he had reworked Gehn like some animal for testing, for experimentation. The first he had said: Gehn hadn’t even been the perfected work. He was the first attempt to put some of his earliest thoughts into practice, for he had, it sounded, given himself the lifespan he’d need in order to make many, many more.
His Saiyan tail, gone. His body in some ways, more machine than flesh. In others, untouched. His eye, his brain, his mind, permanently fused with something foreign. The entire time Gehn listened, and kept up perhaps more than the generous doctor realized, he saw them: Celerus, Ollis, standing, laughing at him.
He felt anger building, bubbling hot in his stomach and crawling up his throat. It was a stranger to him, even as a Saiyan. He never had the temper of his siblings, his was never so easily brought out.
Yet, they mocked him. He wondered what this would do to him long-term: his lifespan, his health, what undiscovered flaws had the doctor built into him? Could they even be fixed? What did this even make him, now?
The toy of a mad man pursuing imagined gods?
Gehn’s muscles clenched, his power rose. He wore shackles, yes, but they seemed inadequate for the strength that now ran through his body – light and thin. The doctor was right when he brought that up: Gehn felt astonishingly strong compared to before. He barely trained in years, and now? He felt as if he had done nothing but since leaving Vegeta.
A large screen with an integrated set of keys, biometric interfaces, and more, next to Gehn’s metal “bed”, began to beep. It pointed out his growing power: Gehn had been 70 or less on Earth, in his degraded state, but it rose now: 500…600…
…700…
The doctor went on: He couldn’t believe it! It was working better than he ever thought, ever dreamed, ever hoped! Gehn pulled the cord connected into the side of his head, which allowed the machine to read his power, free.
Shackles, too weak for what he created, snapped like ceramic instead of steel.
Finally, the white-hot rage leaped out of Gehn’s throat with something that sounded alien to his own ears: A scream.
Blood spatter flecked Gehn’s tight-fitted, white shirt, his gray pants, and even his face. He stood in front of a sliding door – one half coming in from either side of the door frame, sealing shut in the middle – and jammed his fingers in. Other doors in the hall to his left, where he had come from, were already pried open.
Supplies. Separate working labs. A huge facility for just one man that could easily accept the aid of dozens. Yet, not one android or other robot among them to aid him. Computers lined the walls in certain chambers, voice-activated as Gehn learned. In other chambers he found supplies, what appeared to be a couple offices, and more.
So much to examine, but only after he swept this entire place.
Half-dry blood smeared as Gehn forced open the next chamber – and stopped. Before him, dimly lit, a long chamber lined with rounded capsules. Each the size of a person, all uniformly and particularly tall. All with a globe-like glass window, frosted over. The metal floor laid obscured by mist and, as Gehn stepped in, he felt a chill. Bumps raced across his skin and the left side of his head, around his eye, ached.
Through each glass window he looked: a face. Some male. Some female. Some Saiyan. Some Namekian. Human. Others, unrecognizable.
Seventy-seven, he recalled the doctor say.
The anger had gone now, replaced by the deep-red stain from his right fist up to that arm’s elbow. Instead, he looked at them all and felt only his stomach sink: seventy-seven and, if anyone searched for these people, none found them. How long, he wondered, had some been here? Years? Decades?
His steps echoed slowly.
He looked through each one as he slowly walked to the back. Room for at least a hundred, but Gehn didn’t bother to count. He did, however, feel that machine in his eye try to wake up, to tell him the exact number – reading his thoughts like a psychic invader, but with wires and circuits instead! – only for Gehn to ignore it.
Then, he stopped. His boots clicked against the floor one last time and the echoing of his steps ended.
A woman, pale, with raven-black hair not unlike a Saiyan. Vitrified, it seemed. Frost on her cheek. A single horn, blackened at the tip as if by ink.
In that moment, Gehn wasn’t sure why: but he reached for the terminal and, this time, when the device in his head analyzed the fingerprint patterns across the otherwise-blank touchpad controls, he entered the same code it indicated when a number pad appeared.
The rounded lid hissed, disconnected from the main body of the capsule beneath, and slowly swung upward.
