29 Minutes

Eight

This was surely the end of his life. Clew was sure that there was no way that he could escape this with his life intact. The General... nay, his Papa, was the main architect of his life being a miserable one since birth. How was he expected to take this all in as truth? The man who resembled his Papa could have easily been a machine created by the real monsters in this world of theirs.

Yes.

That was the truth he wanted to believe. Even though that was not the truth that was true.

"Prepare the transfer of data, Nico," The General spoke and Nico saluted his understanding as he left the room. Clew wanted to ask what that order meant but his Papa beat him to it.

"I'm sure you are wondering what I'm doing here?"

"It's crossed my mind."

The General laughed lightly at his quip and made his way towards him. Clew was scared, and there was no shame in admitting it to himself. For all he knew, this could be the reanimated corpse of his father staring back at him. But it seemed unlikely. Technology had advanced, but not to that level.

"Well... I'm only here because of you, son."

Because of him?

"Yes. You have done well with the instruction I left you. Your mind is sharper than I would have expected it to be even with the Neos tech I injected into you at birth."

Injected? At birth? Clew was trying to keep up, but nothing was making sense here. He had not known his father for more than a year before the war made him, Mama and Grandma move to the Outer Division. What clues did he live him?

The Journal! Yes, he had been curious about some of the things inscribed in the book. Most of them seemed to need human trials and he had only restricted himself to doing thing with machines. In fact, the Cell Degeneration Inhibitor had required Neo tech to be administered orally for a period of time before use of the machine. He had thought that was too risky and resorted to letting the machine take all the risks.

"Your work with the Neos tech is revolutionary. But I don't think you truly understand what you have created," He said and made his way to a wall opposite of them. He placed his hand on it and the panel glowed green to outline his palm before it parted way to reveal another room that resembled the one they were in save for the panels of holograms there.

"Many people remember me as the Scientist who cracked the Neos tech formula. That is true, but only partially," he said and the closest table to them emitted a hologram of a machine with three heads and eight tentacle-like hands. Clew had seen what Neocallers looked like so it did not scare him that much.

"My work with the machines made me uncover a very interesting detail about them. Their biological genes were almost similar to ours. They were a living organism encased in a system that controlled all their activities. The only way to truly understand them was by going to their source. Their leader had much to tell me. His genetic code was the key for me to create what you all know as the Neos tech."

"But of course, I could not create it without a test subject. So I fathered you for the specific reasons of knowing if I could survive merger of the Neos tech and my own genes. Well, it worked out better than I expected because here we both are," he chuckled at himself and moved deeper into the room.

"We had won the war and everyone was over the roof with joy. But I was not. I knew that our battle with them had caused the start of our extinction. We needed to evolve in order to maintain our existence. I didn't come back to you. You were of no use to me as you were at the moment. I had to create a world here first."