Artificial Memory (DISCONT'D BUT WILL UPLOAD UNEDITED CHAPTERS)

Chapter 0: A Rather Boring Prologue

Take everything you know about mythological creatures and twist it just enough so that you'll be able to imagine them living in a modern world. This is the world I live in.

Welcome to Lost Echo, one of four warring divisions in what used to be America.

When you look at the four divisions, you'll see that you've got Lost Echo, which is made up of humans and Dreamwalkers. Our  element, utilized only by Dreamwalkers, is fire. Oh, Dreamwalkers are pretty much just people with the ability to use fire 'magic' and as their name suggests, they can walk in others' dreams.

Then up North, there's Levels, made up of Orcs and Undead. Those guys use earth as their element, and the Undead aren't as creepy as you'd think. They're basically normal people who carry poison in their teeth like snakes and have a bit of a taste for flesh.

Go a little more West and you'll get to the coastal division of Cascade. Mermaids and Sirens live there, and obviously, they utilize water. Mermaids and Sirens develop tails when they fully enter a body of water, but have legs and human methods of respiration while on land.

Finally, if you go due east, you'll get to Serenity. Serenity is made up of elves and Faeries, who choose to live deep in the forest and use air as their element. Elves can change their form to become a forest creature and Faeries usually possess wings like birds.

As I mentioned earlier, I live in the mainly-racist, mainly-LGBTQphobic division of Lost Echo with my mother and a boy I saved a year ago.

I am a 17-year-old Dreamwalker, and my name is Distance Anderson. I am an oddity in this divided world, as I am genderfluid and choose to be male more often than the gender I was born with.

As such, I'm often bullied and my father divorced my mother for that reason.

So, being the most talked-about subject at school, I decided to give them something to talk about. I became the school newspaper reporter and for an interesting story, I chose to watch the Criminal Elimination League's, or the CEL's, ambush of the serial killer known as Eight Ball, on one fateful night.

I didn't expect it to happen so fast.

By the time I got to where the clamoring chaos and yelling soldiers were, a single shot rang out and there was a massive cheer. At first, I was pissed off. I'd lost my latest story.

However, the soldiers decided that 8-Ball's body wasn't even worth taking with them. Once they had all left, I stared at the boy's body from a distance and wondered what had happened to make a person my age want to kill people.

Fingers of blood extended from his head and stained his white bangs scarlet as I pondered this.

I had approached his body and stopped just shy of him, tapping his plastic mask with my foot. The mask skittered across the gravelly pavement and he shuddered.

I'd jumped away and waited as a moan of agony escaped him. His feet twitched.

I walked up to him and rolled him over to see that his right eye was no more than a bloody crater in his head and that the remaining human eye was narrowed with pain. He looked about the same age as me.

If not for the fact that the left eye was now green, I probably would've left the boy to die.

Except the serial killer's human eye had been yellow.

He gritted his teeth and begged me to help him, and I did.

He remembers nothing of his life before the bullet lodged itself in his brain, preventing him from being possessed by whatever demon forced him to kill.

I gave him the name 'Memory' and he kept the only fragment of his name he could remember. His surname.

So he's called Memory Tsubasa.

He and I live together in a single house with my mother, Shark Anderson, and I have never spoken to him about the circumstances that led to him being shot. I guess it's because I'm afraid that he might see his old self as a role model if he hears about what happened.

Anyways, we live a comfortable life, he attends high school occasionally, and despite having what we call an 'Aberrant Eye', he doesn't use it to force anyone to do his bidding, and he hides it behind his bangs.

Oh, you're wondering what an Aberrant Eye is?

Well, I'll tell you.

Usually, when someone has just the right amount of all races' genes in their blood, they are born with 'Aberrant Eyes'. These eyes are usually as black as obsidian and have an extremely unusual pupil and iris. Having Aberrant eyes allows you to force your will upon others.

The holder is always able to control when their eyes change from human to Aberrant.

However, Memory is an exception.

He only has one Aberrant Eye and cannot control its color so it always remains black. For this reason, I believe he had a human parent.

I know next to nothing about him, but I know he's someone I care about so deeply it hurts.

Anyways, that's enough about me and our shitty world.

Nobody really gives a shit about the prologue of a story, and I really don't care for them either. So here's what happened a year after I found Memory...