My last moments from the time of when I was still me are confusing and
indistinct. I can remember only pain then urgent voices and brilliant lights
being shone in my eyes. A searing pain shots through my chest as my body
convulses wildly. Emotions ripped through me in quick succession, panic, fear
and terror.

The pain comes again and I arch my body involuntarily as it passes before
falling back. It takes a long time for the commotion around me to cease, but
at last it stops. A creeping lassitude began to creep into me, I could just
lie back and relax. Whatever happen it wouldn't matter to me now.

As I rested the pains which I had felt slowly faded away. Darkness descended
and shut out the too bright light.

One by one all my senses deserted me and I just let them. At last I could
only listen to the voices around me until they too faded and were gone.

I turned without moving and found myself facing a far gentler light than that
I had ever seen before. This, I knew, was where I was meant to go and at last
have peace.

As I was to soon discover, the peace it offered would not be mine just quite
yet.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Merior Stories Presents


With the Unwanted Aid and Assistance of
 Natsuko Motivation Unlimited (Jusenkyo Branch)


A Brand New Production



Soul of the Machine
 Part 1: An End & A Beginning



Live from

| Bubble
| Gum
| Crisis
| Universe


*Insert all necessary disclaimers here*


Author's Note:

Many apologies to the writer of Psychedelix, I really didn't think about how
similar what I had written was to the introduction of your story until I
re-read Psychedelix. Once I realized this I deliberately 'borrowed' the title
sequence. Please, please give me the benefit of the doubt and finish reading
this _before_ flaming me to death. It isn't the same story, honestly its
different. Or so it seems to me.

This story came about because of comment on the FFML that, when ever anybody
turned up in Mega-Tokyo, they always joined the Knight Sabers. Well, I decided
to write something were the character dare not go any where near Sylia and
company. I hope you enjoy it.

C&C are highly sought because they show somebody actually read this, so please
send lots to me at rdd2@st-andrews.ac.uk

------------------------------------------------------------------------------



-One-------

Slowly I drifted closer to the beautiful light. As I did so ghostly scenes and
frozen images became apparent to me. At some I lingered to watch for a while,
seeing snatches of life and love pass me by before continuing on my journey.

One scene in particular drew my attention like none of the others could.

A man stood by a panel of lights, his head lowered in defeat. To his other
side a machine in the shape of a woman lay on a slab, waiting for the machines
around her to breath life into her inanimate frame.

The panels still show the random traces from the previous try at supplying
animation, but he ignores these and laboriously resets the system for another
attempt. As he does so he alters a variable here and tweaks a parameter there
in the hope of success.

>From my abstracted view point I could it was not to be, this attempt as all
the previous had would fail. The man's path ended soon afterwards, cut off
before it reached it's peak by his own hand.

This I could sympathize with, in this I could feel for him. I wanted to do
something to help him instead of letting his life go to waste.

He growled his frustration and finished his manipulations of the controls for
this final attempt. I could not hear what he said, but I mouthed the words
along with him.

"Work." We said as one, neither able to hear the other.

He altered a setting and experimentally entered a sequence. Nothing.

"Work!"  We said as he glared at the unresponsive machine. I could almost feel
his frustration and rage at this obstacle.

Tears of defeat streaming from his eyes, he keyed in a final set of commands.

"Live, god damn you." We begged.

He drove his hand flat against the keyboard, I reached out to the body. He
wanted it to work, we wanted it to work. I reached out without arms into the
body and tried to make it move.

Contact.

The world spun and was full of pain. I was dragged from the disembodied,
detached plane I had been on and was being crammed into a material shell. I
lost sight of the light as pains which made me want to scream wracked me,
worse than dying. I could not scream because I had not yet a voice.

Birth pains tortured me. No, it was rebirth pains that were what I felt when
I returned to life in a body which was not my own.

Thoughts and memories were split in twain, now slid into then until the past
finally became just memories again.



-Two-------

The man watched with dead eyes as the console in front of him displayed a
picture of chaos. The jagged lines and fluctuating bars showed the status of
the machine which lay on the diagnostic table to one side.

This is hopeless, he thought, I should never have even tried this. He could
taste bitter defeat in his mouth as the traces which should be rhythmic and
flowing instead jumped seemingly at random.

This was what he staked his entire reputation and life on. A useless pile of
junk.

He remembered how confident he had been that he was the best designer of
Boomer anywhere. His Boomer's would be perfect and wipe the floor with the
other designs. If they had just let him prove it.

They wouldn't even let him try.

In the end he had acquired the materials and tool needed to make a single
Boomer. Only one, then they would see. He had diverted them to this disused
warehouse and once everything had been ready he had set out to produce a
Boomer.

They would have forgiven him when he showed them what he had done, they
wouldn't have punished him but rewarded him.

It was painstaking work to design and build it by himself, but he managed it.
Everything about the BU-33AS was better than they could imagine. Except it
wouldn't work.

The AI which had taken weeks of solid work to program just gave out gibberish
instead of effortlessly controlling the body he built for it.

This had been his eleventh and final attempt at activating it, each time
making small adjustment to those variables he could still alter.

He had betrayed Genom. People didn't get a chance to do that twice. If he had
something to show them then all would have been forgiven. All he had was a
lifeless shell.

Looking down at his hands he realized that he had been wrapping a length of
cable about one of his hands until it was white.

This cable is strong enough, he thought

He had made his decision.

Behind him, as he stood himself on a chair, the readout's were changing.
Gradually they were resolving into the smooth curves and steady 
fluctuations he had wanted all along.



-Three-----

It seemed to take forever for my mind to make the journey from the first
sparks of awareness to full alertness. My first proper though was to notice
the absence of pain. This was a good thing I decided.

I opened my eyes and sat up cautiously, wondering where on Earth I was. After
a moment adjusting for the dim lighting my eyes snapped into clear focus.

Unfortunately the first thing that I could see was a man dangling from a rope
by his neck. This was not one of the best things to see just after awaking up.

Restraining an almost overwhelming urge to scream. I peered at the figure's
face.

It was the man who I had wanted to help.

I frowned for a moment as I thought that, attempting to pin down the memory.
For some reason my mind seemed full of fog, obscuring most of my past. The
moment since I had died we there, but trying to remember something from before
then was like digging through mud. Exhausting and if I paused all my effort
would just disappear.

For a second I could not understand how I was here and not headed towards that
beautiful light. I looked down at myself and understood.

The body had lacked one thing, a vital force, a mind, call it what you will,
but it had been lacking that. Without my interference the body would have
remained inert. With it I had inadvertently supplied the mind for it.

At least it's not ugly, I thought absently as I examined the body which was
now my own. A word came to me as I thought of myself.

Sexaroid.

A frown creased my brow as I tried to discover where that thought had come
from to no avail. Slowly I got up and walked over to a computer at one side
of the room, feeling off balance and unused to my new form. More quickly than
I could believe my balance sorted itself out so that I did not run the risk of
falling with each step I took.

I manage to reach the console and slumped down into the chair which sat in
front of it. It had taken me more effort than I had thought to just cross
those few of meters space. 

With one hand I clutched my forehead or a moment before something seemed to
burst with in my mind. It was as if all I had heard before was silence and
now a fanfare of trumpets rang out.



-Four------

Unsure of what had just happened and what to do next I stood up again, this
time without any problems or the expenditure of excessive effort. 

Seeing a small mirror balanced by a sink I walked over to it. After wiping off
some flecks of shaving foam from its surface I peered at my own reflection.

The first things I noticed was my hair and eyes. Short, white hair framed a
delicate face and wide purple eyes stared back out at me. The combination was
startling and surprisingly attractive.

As for the rest of me, well a glanced told me three things. One, I possessed
respectable proportions. Two, the man who made me hadn't bothered to clean me
off since a splattering of gunk still covered my limbs. Three, that I was
stark naked.

Blushing slightly, I looked around the room but couldn't see anything which
even vaguely resembled clothing. What in the worlds did he think I was going
to wear? Nothing at all? I looked again and realized that there was only one
set available that I could possibly use. Gingerly I approached the dangling
corpse and started getting it down from where it hung.



-Five------

The clothes were, for the most part, a good fit. Admittedly the shirt was
uncomfortable and trouser the wrong size, but at least I could wear them
without major problems. It had taken a while, but I managed to clean the
trousers up into a fit enough state to wear. The  faint odor of fecal matter
still permeated them though. My flesh still creeped at the thought I was
wearing a dead man's clothes, but I struggled to ignore this fact.

First fetching the chair over, I sat down at the computer and booted it up. I
was unsure exactly how I did it, but within minutes I had the system at my
mercy. Calling up the most recent files I discover that they were all about me!

Well, they were about the body that was me. Digging a little deeper I discover
an overview of the project which I had become. They called it the BU-33AS. I
avidly began reading, skimming through the more technical sections.

"...potential uses include assassinations, infiltration and espionage. In
particular long term infiltration's are practical as this Sexaroid variant is
completely maintenance free and virtual indistinguishable from a human being,
under normal circumstances, even to the most advanced sensors.....advanced
hypnotics make possible. Due to its covert nature the strength and resilience
of this model is limited, but under emergency conditions can exhibit bursts of
strength comparable to that of a C-Series Boomer....semi-autonomous
specialized co-proccessors can handle combat situations with an efficiency no
other proccessor can match."

I smiled as I finished reading even though most of what I read had made 
little sense. I had no love for Genom and certainly had no wish to let them
get their paws on me.

Indistinguishable from a human being huh. Even if they knew I existed that
would make it mighty hard to find me. I had no wish to me tracked down like
Sylvie and Anri had...

Wait a second!

I'm a boomer in Mega-Tokyo? How the hell did I get here? It's just a place in
the Bubblegum Crisis series. What am I going to do, go find the Knight Sabers?

On second thought that doesn't seem like a very good idea. What would I say?

"Hi everyone, I know all your secrets and that you're the Knight Sabers. You
don't know anything about me at all, I'm not really an
infiltration/assassination boomer, but a guy who got lost after he died."
I can imagine that any attempt to go near them and explain would end with
Priss introducing me to Mister Railgun. The things that happen next would not
be...

For a second time my train of though screeches to a halt as I frantically
backtrack over something I thought about.

I'm a _guy_ who got lost after he died? I'm a guy? No matter which way I look
at it, the thought still rang true. A quick glance down at myself made me
decide to restate that point. I _was_ a guy who got lost after he died.

A noise off to one side drew my attention back from my thoughts. Glancing in
that direction I could see a solidly built man wearing a uniform and
sunglasses standing there.

For a moment he just stood there then looked first at the body of my 
maker on the ground nearby and then at me.

"Uh, hi!" I said, "This isn't like it seems you know. There's a perfectly
reasonable explaination."

As I spoke I edged slowly away from him. Or, I feared, more accurately it.
Who wears sunglasses inside?

My suspicions were immediately proved correct as the Boomer in front of me
burst out of both it's clothing and it's skin. A small part of me noted that
it looks much worse close up and that when I watched it nobody got their face
plastered by small scraps of fake skin. The rest of me was too busy diving out
of the way and scrabbling for an escape route to be bothered at a time like
this.

I tell a lie, one part of me wasn't doing either. Instead it was just wanted
to scream in stark terror as the Boomer's arm swung around towards me.



-Six-------

Scrambling hastily away I managed to avoid the Boomer's attack and the 
force behind the punch wasted itself uselessly on an expensively looking 
piece of equipment. Shards of metal and plastic flew everywhere.

Pain flared in my side as a small gash was opened by a piece of the shrapnel.
The wound itself wasn't serious, but it's implications were. It would slow me
down and at the moment it seemed that speed and agility were all that keep me
from becoming a very thin smear.

As I back peddled out of it's reach something I read earlier came back to me. 

"...under emergency conditions can exhibit bursts of strength comparable to
that of a C-Series Boomer."

Well, I couldn't remember what a C-Series Boomer was, but every little helps.
Unsure of what exactly to do I just told myself that I needed to be stronger
and to win this fight.

A kind of rumble, like that of thunder, rolled through my consciousness and
pain shot through me. It was like I had over strained every muscle in my body
then it receded and something had changed.

Almost like a puppeteer I directed my body to fight and it did. The precise
actions were beyond my control as I felt myself scoop up a long piece of 
metal in one hand as I rolled away from yet another attack. With a jerk I
found myself leaping forward between the Boomer's arms and passing over its
shoulder. The arm holding the shard slammed in to it's back as I passed.

I landed and suddenly regained complete control of myself.

The first thing I did was collapse to the floor from the pain. After a few
moments I looked up again and saw that I was not the only one had collapsed.
The Boomer was on the floor with the piece of metal jutting from its spine.

Looking back over what I had just done I realized that I had managed to sever
a control run of some kind in it's spine. Lucky shot, but was it luck? When
it happened my actions were sure and completely certain and performed with a
speed and strength I was sure I couldn't normally match.

So that was what a "semi-autonomous specialized coprocessor" is. A beserker
on a leash. I shuddered. I don't think I want to try that again any time soon.

With one arm I tried to push myself off of the floor, but gave up hurriedly
as pain spiked through my hand. It was the one I had held the shard in and
the flesh was cut open to the bone.

It hurt like hell, but I could push it away. Absently I turned the hand and
saw the lights gleam off of the metallic surface of the bone.

Reaching into the pocket of the shirt I wore I pulled out a handkerchief.
Gingerly I tied it around my palm. It may not have hurt as much as it should
have, but it still hurt a lot.

Having finally managed to tie a knot one handed and regained a measure of my
strength, I attempted to stagger to my feet.

Success!

Now what?



-Seven-----

I took my time before leaving the building. Meticulously I gathered up every
single thing I could find about the BU-33AS and sorted it out. Anything useful
I transferred on to a lap top computer which had been in one corner of the
room. Then I put everything I had gathered in a big pile in the middle of the
room. Fifteen minutes later I walked out as the fire began taking hold of
everything inside.

Once outside I almost regretted committing this act of arson. The man who had
built me surely deserved better, but he had already been dead and I needed to 
stay both alive and undiscovered. Hopefully he hadn't told anybody else about 
my creation, but that was probably a vain hope.

Leaning against the wall of an adjacent building I stood and waited. I didn't
have to wait for long until I could see a red glow coming from within and
smell the scent of smoke and ashes. The fire seemed to be intent on devouring
the building so I silently wished it good appetite and left it to it's meal.

I walked along a couple of blocks before sitting down on a bench to consider
everything. I tried to work out what exactly I needed to be able to live and
survive in Mega-Tokyo.

First up, a way to get money. Second, an identity. Thirdly, a way to hide from
Genom. These weren't in order of importance obviously, if I couldn't get the
third then the other two would unfortunately not be necessary.

An identity shouldn't be too hard to set up, the BU-33AS was designed for
assassinations and _infiltration_ . I had an entire suite of code breaking and
hacking routines sitting in my head at that very moment.

Once I had an identity a legitimate job shouldn't be hard to get a job of some
kind as I could fake the qualifications. A job as a secretary would be a bit
demeaning, but I didn't know enough myself to get anything taking and those
jobs I could get using the things I had recently, and suddenly, learnt were
either illegal or distasteful.

Frowning slightly I considered the problem. Where could I hide in a city
where no one would look? It was a tricky problem and I took care to examine
it from all sides. Then I slapped my forehead at my own stupidity.

Anybody who looked for me would start looking in the out of the way corners.
That's where anyone who wished to hide went. What I wanted was somewhere no
Boomer would go near if they could possibly help it, somewhere I could hide
in plain sight.

I grinned evilly at the idea which came to me and laughed quietly for quite
some time. In this job I could certainly use the skills which this body had.
After I had calmed down I opened the lap top and, using its cellular modem,
set to work trying to create exactly the type of false identity I wanted and 
required.

I needed it to be just perfect to go with my application to join the AD Police.



+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "Gimme. Gimme! Gimme, gimme! Give me it NOW!"          |
|   Slightly excited about prospect of Doom/SM Crossover |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Richard Drysdale (rdd2@st-andrews.ac.uk)               |
|   2nd Generation Malkavian [Don't Ask :) ]             |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "Now, Natsuko. You never said I had to work on _your_  |
|   fic... What's the bucket and chains for?"            |
|                    <Sploosh>                           |
| "Hey, Happy! Where are you? I've got a present for ya!"|
|              <Many screams are heard>                  |
+--------------------------------------------------------+