Chapter 0: Awakening

Dear Supreme Overlord,

I wish to conquer the galaxy in all its routes and dimensions and fall madly in intergalactic multilayered continuums with you. Show me our future and I’ll show you my Milky Way.

Your Majesty, Robot DK981

The Supreme Overlord thanks you for your correspondence and would be delighted to accept your proposal. He likes your Milky Way... 

Yours in intergalactic dominion,

Supreme Overlord of the Universe.  

Her Majesty was of course, a robot. The Supreme Overlord knew that well and had a couple of few new programmes on the side when her update was due. DK981 was a unique experiment that tried to combine IQ with sexual pleasure. Long and rich, lustrous dark hair, hazel eyes; tight clothes and nice curves. She was a little old-fashioned but could combine well the skills of a 1950s grandma and a sex machine- the one James Brown sings about. The Creator had given her an interesting sense of wit too; only a few minor faults in her Bank of Memory and Senses. She cooked and talked and sang to herself, sometimes, a little too much for his liking. And she would cook well too. She would turn David Beckam into a tubster. Most importantly, she recharged her batteries during intercourse: it was the only thing that erased old, painful data from her memory; and she had lots of those stuck for years. The Supreme Overlord cared very little about her cooking skills. All he wanted was her naked flesh. He was eager to charge her again and again and all would be well in DK981’s Sensation and Aspiration Indexes but apparently her brains were elsewhere: she planned carefully her own ‘World Domination’.

The Supreme Overlord, aka S.O. had his plan lined up already. He made the appropriate explanations to her using what he called the 3xF equation: Fuck off, Fuck about and then Fuck. She agreed. He kept on loving her, even after a while, where her tiny faults started to show. He was fully aware of her flaws something went wrong since the Creator used a human Egoplasm and completed her; her wiring and volume controls  as well as spatial and time awareness were a bit dodgy. He did not mind much, after all, he was a little uncomfortable with manual upgrades. He often thought to himself:  she’s got a high IQ, she’ll manage. When she couldn’t sleep at night he’d hug her and caress her hair. When her wires worn out he’d fix them. Slowly, he started developing a crush for her imperfections, he found them cute; she was a little toddler inside, unsure whether her automated actions were correct or not, but determined and clever. She would submit to his massive morning erection with joy and excitement. She accepted him in her warm pocket gently and he would carelessly release his lust deep inside her only to hope that one day her frozen, wiry insides will come to life and she’ll be able to give birth to a handsome Heir; much alike him but gifted with her charms; he would be a punch to their equal yet different imperfections.

Every afternoon she’d watch him bathe and rub his back. In the evenings he’d wash her long hair. New technology indeed had made DK 981 perfect. No age marks, no emotional ups and downs, no fear for the future, just programmed to love and celebrate life. Their routine involved a lot of travelling and gourmet foods. They once camped in intergalactic pouring rain, somewhere outside the area Martians call Oonwc . She wrestled him in the mud and he kept her down for more than usual. She had to plead to let her go, she was afraid that water might penetrate her skin implants and destroy her wiring. He took her back to the tent and fixed her. Then, he spent the whole night making love to her.  They were still awake in the crack of a deep rose dawn: ‘have me now, Prince, have me here’ she whispered in his ear. Their passion was beyond the mortal mind. Once, he made her recite Gilgamesh in its original language while he was feeling her breasts. He loved watching her, as she was counting in binaries and washing their dishes in the sunshine in a small hut of their private planet in the galaxy of Andromeda. When together, they were each other’s master and mistress. When apart, they both did what they knew better: try to take over the entire Cosmos. Sometimes when they were not together, he envied her female form. The physical manifestation of her desire was barely detetectable. But he would walk around like the cirque de soleil pitched their marquee in his pants every time he thought of her shape.

That night she was sitting across from him for dinner. The table was long and made out of ebony- he brought it back from one of his travels; he found it in the dark continent of a faraway planet that Earthlings called Zahare. She was taking great pride in her cooking so they had no cook, instead she would prepare all his meals. They had pheasant for dinner. It was deliciously cooked in an oven clay pot with pink shallots and the best Bordeaux. This night she was unusually quiet. He noticed, but did not say a word. While they were eating, big diaphanous tears rolled down on her face, from her cheeks to her plate. He was a little bit shocked. ‘what’s up sugar tits’ he asked’. She said: ‘I don’t know, something is wrong’. He abandoned his dinner and went over to her. She hid herself on his chest. She cried quietly on his shoulder, his top was wet after a while. He sat her on the table. Luckily he knew how to deal with her few emotional breakdowns; she refused to discuss or argue, while he refused to re-programme or format her. The only solution was to offer her pleasure, enough to erase all sorts of negative data from her body. Without any words he started kissing her face. He knew how to touch her- his hand brushed lightly over her stomach, her body quivering in anticipation. He lifted her up and sat her on the big kitchen table. She didn't keep up any pretence for long, her submission was total and absolute. She surrendered herself upon the root of his love, her legs coiled around his body, pulling him closer as they shared in her deepest secret.

Exhausted, they sat next to one another. ‘Is everything ok honey beaver?’ he asked. She nodded and then started speaking. ‘Something is wrong, she said. I feel different than before. I am in a very fragile condition; anything I eat affects me physiologically and I feel like you earthlings describe as ‘sick’. Then I get these dreams, they feel sort of like flashbacks, of a world in which nothing is offered to me easily. You are not there for me, I do not even know of your existence. You are just an ideal. I am a humble earthly woman that is trying hard to survive. In my dreams, I look nothing like now- I looked at history of the earth books and I am probably a Southern European female, living around 2000 human years after what Earthlings call the Birth of their Saviour.’ He looked at her, surprised. She went on talking ‘in my dreams, I have problems to understand the world that surrounds me, I am so weak to make judgements and I do mistakes, but I learn as I go along: sometimes it is as if I am programmed to make mistakes.

‘But the deepest desire in my heart is to dive into the crystal clear, aquamarine waters of the Ionian sea...’

The Supreme Overlord was scared. Myriads of thoughts came into his mind. Charging her did not do much at this stage. The damage was perhaps permanent. He thought over and over again. He held her hands. ‘Listen’  he said. ‘I will give you 10 mortal years to find me on Earth. I will format your brain and you will regain your Human Egoplasm memories through several thousand flashbacks; but you will keep your appearance and stature. I believe, if I set you free, you will still come to me.  You are made for me, DK981. But you must seek me among myriads of men. If you find me, then we start anew’. DK981 felt lost. He gently hugged her and kissed her. His soft, warm lips on hers filled her with panic. He wore his white robe and in an instant he was right behind her, embracing her. Then his workshop, then darkness. When she woke up she had a suitcase at hand. She looked around, dazed and confused. It was cold and rainy. She could read the sign in the big, grey building across the street: MANCHESTER AIRPORT. The digital clock had the date and time showing with fancy red letters.  It was July the 9th, 2009 years CE. She was holding an iPhone and a ticket to Athens, Greece. The name on her passport was Anna. And that's when she had her first flashback. The turmac on the ground was made by perfectly shaped round rocks, and for an instance, she thought she was walking on a beach. A pebbled beach. 


‘So this is how it all starts’ she thought, ‘feeling the rocks in an airport in Manchester and then dreaming I’m walking over sea pebbles, hot by the sun'. She was scared. Then she had this flashback-a bearded man with a kind smile (perhaps her father?), picking her up and then throwing her into the sea. 'My first memory' she thought. She smiled a little and felt anticipation flowing and glowing; like absinth from her veins and to her heart. 'I am Anna now, not DK981'. She thought. 'I am meant to act like like her: I am an individual, for the first time in my life. And I am a mortal, too'. She gazed up in the sky. Another flashback came to her. In her mind, the words of a teacher in a classroom inside a concrete building, surrounded by sunshine: 'Anthropos: it is a word that derives from Greek. Two words compose anthropos: ano, which means 'up' and throsko: 'to gaze'. A human is someone who gazes up in the sky. Hence anthropology is the study of humans. Understood?'. Saved by the bell, the class run out wildly. DK981 open her eyes wide. She looked up at the clock. She had to board. 'Athens, here I come. She thought. She opens her purse: there's a copy of the Odyssey by Homer in. She falls asleep on her airplane seat. As they fly over the sea, she dreams of it. It's all aquamarine blue with waves that sparkle in the sunshine. As they are about to land, Theobroma, the muse appears in her sleep. She is holding ION chocolates and giggles.  'Start over DK981, you might be an android, but you've got soul'

‘Sing to me muse, of the woman who is resourceful, independent, and a true warrior at heart’.

A muse is a very important entity for any author’s inspiration. Since the ancient times, a muse had to be summoned in order for a rhapsode to start singing tales of war and love. The Greeks had a muse for nearly every art. The Muses, the personification of knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music, are the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory personified). Homer pleads his muse in the beginning of the Odyssey for inspiration. Well, I, DK981, although a humble robot,  have a muse too. Too bad my muse is a constantly menstruating bitch. She's moody and cruel and she does whatever the fuck she wants with my brain. She holds me tight to the ground when my head is in the clouds.  Yet again, who can blame her? She had to change so many locations and follow me in my adventures in faraway lands from the North to the South and from the East to the West. In the Old World and the New World. She knows all my past and future secrets. She knows I find it hard to concentrate and she comes to me, laughing away, yelling at me: 'scatterbrain, scatterbrain, get yourself together, say one full story at a time'. What a bitch! Sometimes, like tonight, she comes to me late at night. She makes me leave my bedfellow and knocks me off my feet with her beauty, banter, sarcasm and wit. 'Wake up, DK981, it's time you listen to some Jeff Beck and write some'. 

She is very pretty, truth to be told. Her name is Theobroma and she smells like chocolate with roasted hazelnuts. Sometimes, she takes the form of a man. Some others, she acts like a woman. Whatever the case, she is a hard nut to crack. I can’t even begin to count the times,  I, Anna, the egoplasm of a robot tagged as DK981 in the far future, the digital girl in an analogue world (to paraphrase Erykah Badu), was happy my muse came to visit me. See, my muse is tall and pretty and blonde, like a valkyrie or a viking (when she takes the form of a man in order to arouse me). She always comes home to me, when I'm reaching for inspiration, and tries to transplant to me aspirations slightly higher than my normal life, the kind of life in which you can have a dog, a cat, a family close to you and the same group of friends for ages. The kind of life in which you save for a house, you don't inherit one. The kind of life in which one can potentially, if needed, rely on someone else, helping with the small and the big tasks, someone who rubs a tired android's feet after training. When I ask her if she has any idea about the Supreme Overlord and if he's hiding in a faraway galaxy of some sort she sarcastically recites Milton's Paradise Lost back to me. 


John Milton, opening of Book 1 of Paradise Lost:

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, [...]

And here I am. New identity, new  world again. A ticket to Greece. The weather inside the plane changes, and I feel the 40C heat reaching my face as soon as we land. I feel dehydrated and weary.  As I walk out slightly disorientated, a man is waiting for me at the airport. There are two women by his side. One is our mother, Frederica. The other is a foreigner. Her name is Xenia, which in Greek means 'foreigner' or 'hospitality to strangers'. A name that applies well to her as she is not one of us. She is Russian. She does not look like us. She has slavic cheekbones and does not smile to me immediately like the others. She doesn't reach to hug me first but stays back and waits for her turn. I cannot understand if she is too calculating or too polite. But once she hugs me I feel her sturdy hands saying more than her eyes. I feel unsure of how well I know her. My digital memory banks, however, recognise the man as Anna's dearest older brother, but I reach for my mother's hug first. She is crying on my chest. Human emotions are funny things, I feel like crying too, but I must keep it together for her sake. Something inside my heart tells me to do so. Therefore, I keep my head high and I do not shed a single tear. 'How is my father' I hear my voice, as if it is not mine. Freda cries. 'We do not know. After the stroke and the heart attack, he lost contact with the world a week ago. He is in the hospital. You will not recognise him, he has become so small. It is like he has aged overnight'. 


Daniel hugs me. A warm, manly hug. 'Thank goodness you came. We need you here, Athena, our sister is working too hard to support her own family, and well, I can't take it on my own'. More crying. It's just me and Xenia that don't shed a single tear. On our way back from the airport we are all silent. Xenia and I speak about my divorce. Was I married? Somehow I could not recall anything but a harsh, shallow feeling and a strong woman pulling me out of there. Maybe the human egoplasm does not want to remember. Unlike England, the sun is shining in Athens. 'As always, dry sunshine', says Xenia. I hold my mother's hand all the way. 'You've lost weight, she says, you look like a little corpse just like when you were a child and got a tape worm from Bobby'. Another flashback. A cute dobberman. He hides his face and sighs in the sunshine. My best friend, always. 


We go past concrete dusty buildings for a while, until we reach home. They carry my luggage up on the first floor. A small colourful flat, in the centre of a concrete jungle, overcrowded with random furniture. An ivory table brought from China, wooden trays from the Fiji, Japanese wooden chests with dragons, an Australian boomerangs and kangaroo skins, a dagger in a bronze seath, a family crest. The flat is too small and looks even smaller with all these things in. 'So this is where Anna grew up' I catch myself thinking. My bedroom is painted blue and I have a picture of a dragon drawn with charcoal on the wall above a brown russian wall piano. I have a vague memory of a tall man with long black hair handing the drawing to me. I look different in my memories, I have funny coloured hair and piercings. There are so many books in my bedroom. Books of all sorts and in different languages. Fantasy, science fiction, art, academic, all sorts. I pick a random one. It is about Sirens in mythologies of the world. 'I must have been a weird teenager' I think. Freda is calling out for dinner. I'm starving. There's pasta with aubergines on the table and lamb chops with origano and sauteed potatoes. But it doesn't quite feel like home and no one seems to enjoy the meal. They want to know about the divorce. I exhale  a few words 'the procedure takes six months if he accepts my terms' and 'do not worry, I'm issuing a restrain order'.

The same evening, they went to the hospital. Throughout the whole trip no one was talking. DK981 figured that this was the way they coped with sadness. A few harsh words here and there; tension. Then the hospital. A private clinic, paid by the state, simply because there was not enough space in a public hospital. everyone was relieved there was good air conditioning there. The big, hard Athenian sun made every rock, every marble hotter than hell. The doctors office was next to the room where Orestis was kept. Everyone waited outside to speak to the doctor, apart from DK981. She was well trained in showing no emotion. The doctor simply said 'his condition is stable, we will see'. She said: 'I will get inside, you guys stay out, I want to see my father, incapacitated, with my own eyes'. The doctor nodded. Frederica let go a sad sob. Anna walked in. There were three beds, each one with a chair next to another. On the right side of the room there was him. Her digital neurons recognised the kind, once lively face, now almost dead. A tiny, tanned man with white hair was lying on a bed, supported by machines, unconscious. Next to him, an empty chair. She sat on. She held his hand and started talking. 'Hello father, well, you don't look your best, do you?' The man shook a little, his eyes were closed. 'Can you hear me father? I am your daughter, DK9.. I mean... Anna.' The man slightly moved his left hand. 'listen' she continued. If you can hear me, I will grab your hand, move it a little'. Orestis moved his hand a little, but his reaction was so gentle, she was unsure. 'Come on, father, you can do better' The man moved slighty more, he was weak, though.  'Ok, listen. You are unconscious. You had a heart attack and a stroke. They took you with a boing 747 from the island to the capital, you lucky bastard'. The man shook a little more. She thought she could see him smiling. She held his hand again. 'Listen, all these motherfuckers out there are waiting for you to stand up. Please do, do it for me'. The man moved his left part a little, his face looked annoyed. DK981 recognised his frown, it was exactly like hers. She recalled the Spreme Overlord of the Universe. He used to call it the lion frown. She though of him for a moment, cruising inside his spaceship while she was wearing just a pair of silver boxer shorts and high heels, cleaning the common area while he was navigating. She returned to Orestis. 'Father, I got my PhD. I will never be a hairdresser, as I promised you if things were wrong. I am also divorced now'. She thought she could see the frown gone. But yet she was unsure.