Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Áine Part 1

I am as I have always been: imperfect, unfinished and cursed to live within a state of constant discovery. Of all the truths I have discovered, these still reign sovereign. But, perhaps, to understand who I am, you must first see the world as I once saw it: through child-like eyes.

They call me Áine. The Wanderer. 

This is my story.

The first thing I see before opening my eyes is the afterthought of a sky.

A white overcast shining behind closed eyelids, as though my eyes were flashlights casting specks in the dark. Before the colour washes away completely, I see a silhouette of a bird flapping its wings sluggishly, like seeing a painted bird come to life, trudging through the heavy oils of a colourful canvas.

Just when I think it is close enough to touch, it disappears into the darkness. A darkness that is only undone once I open my eyes. 

A haze settles over me, too thick to see past shape and form. Then the world hits me like a tidal wave. All of a sudden, I can hear the sounds of distant gunfire and screams. I can smell the gunpowder, too. There's something primal to the land, an intoxicating viciousness.

With disoriented steps, the rest of me awakens. Blinded by the sun, I shield my face. At the subtle flinch and pull of my eyebrows, I feel a mesh of clotted blood peel back like a band-aid being ripped off.

The heat of the sun bears down on my skin, and, slowly, my vision returns. There are countless bodies riddled with bullet holes and painted in blood sprays. A white table cloth flutters like a kite trying to reach for the sky. Delicate champagne glasses clink together like singing crystals.

I walk among the dead, unnoticed like a ghost. Perhaps I am the ghost.

The red and white painted Saloon stands out to the rest of the wooden and dirt-covered town. I walk up to the platform set up as a stage in front of the Saloon's entrance. An old man lies there. Unmoving as the rest of the bodies around me. Older than most. Dressed in a fine black and white dress suit.

A bristling tickle swells in my mind. The beginnings of a thought.

"I know you," I whisper. My voice a stranger to my ears.

A new voice whispers in my ear in response, but no one's lips move. Not my own or the dead man's. The voice isn't coming from without, it's coming from within. A memory; or the inklings of one.

The memory isn't solid; the characters mere shadows without faces, voices as distorted as an ancient record player. But it is visceral in feeling. A response so primal, I feel heat in my cheeks and a stinging in my eyes.

Anger, perhaps? Is the memory tied to an argument?

Suddenly, my hands know what to look for. As if independent from my body, they pat down the pockets of the dead man in search of something. I look like a thief robbing from the dead. A vulture without wings.

I find what I'm looking for once the pad of my thumb brushes over a carving. It's a pocket watch. Ornate, made of gold and silver and traces of nickel. When I pop the clasp and the watch's cover opens up, my lips remember a phrase from the memory—the argument: "We are not gods..."

Like Cassandra gifted with the ability to see the future and have no one believe her, the engraving on the inside of the pocket reflects the same line:

WE ARE NOT GODS.

Below is a signature of initials: J.E.

With no warning, a bird swoops down from the sky. Odd since I did not hear it or see it till that very moment. Till it was a wing flutter away from brushing feathers against my cheek.

I follow the bird until its white-feathered body is burned out by the brightness of the sun.

And now I know. I look down at the old man, his one half-open eye waiting to be put to rest. To sleep forever in a deep and dreamless slumber. The other eye is bloody, a tunnelling hole of an exit wound disturbing his otherwise peaceful expression.

My fingers shake as I close the man's eyes. A teardrop falling from the edge of my chin onto his side profile. It makes him look like he is crying in death.

My voice hitches, "Goodbye, Ford."

A grinding process akin to roasted coffee beans being ground down to fine powder, awaiting hot water to pour over and percolate a brew of full-bodied coffee, takes ahold of me as soon the man's name leaves my lips. The birth of a new chemical cocktail spiking through my hippocampus teaches me of a new sensation: Deja Vu.

A memory comes back from the depths of my subconscious, as potent as the moment of its conception. All of a sudden, the air smells like exquisite leather and expensive musk.

In a mirage of light reflecting off a window, I see someone else. Someone young, dark in a tortured soul kind of way. Eyes like an eclipse, ethereally too beautiful to be a case of random genetics. He looks out of place, and somehow I know, he isn't part of the park.

A hornet's whistle disrupts the air.

A bullet lodges itself into a wooden beam.

The sound of gunshots trail after a fraction of a second later.

I duck on instinct and run into the cover of the Saloon. I trip twice, realising only once I am behind the bar and tequila bottles shatter from more raining bullets that one of the clasps on my heel is broken.

A fly buzzes loudly and lands on my bloodied knuckle. The flapping of its wings slows down, as sluggish as the dove from the oil painting...