Subject: Mortimer | Classif.: Sirath

  The ungodly screeching in the room almost shattered their eardrums. The glass windows weren’t so lucky, cracking under the intensity. It was a scream that came straight from a nightmare.

  It was a scream that was all too familiar to Tim.

  He started to understand how the ID Distributor worked. It was a magical object that illuminated with a specific color depending on who touched its surface. Supposedly. The fact that it was screaming when it had no mouth or speaker meant that it just tried to read his soul. Despite lacking any sentience whatsoever, the Regalia still paid the price for attempting to pry open his Aberration side.

  Betrayed by its own function, the ID Distributor felt pain for the first time in its unlife. By trying to perceive knowledge it was not privy to, it was essentially trying to kill itself. Its checkered surface turned non-Euclidean. And with each excruciating wail, the design of the surface warped into unspeakable shapes. Geometrically impossible patterns.

  He pulled his hand back right away. He was in contact for only a moment. And yet, it was as if the device had been tortured for an eternity. Now released from its suffering, it reverted to normal, but the damage has been done. The windows were barely hanging on for dear life. The fireplace had been extinguished. Tim had to go around the room, putting his hand on Mia, Lynn, and even the doctor, just to undo the damage they suffered.

  The ladies’ ears stopped bleeding. They could finally open their eyes and catch their breath. As for the mech-human, it was a lot more complicated. "Healing" a damaged microphone meant Tim had to sync the metallized diaphragm to his eardrums. But the moment he healed it, instead of his eardrums bursting, his entire body vibrated with the frequency of the screams. Echoes consumed each cavity. Membranes rippled. Sonic distortions disfigured his organs from within.

  The gatekeeper’s blunt force trauma was a lot simpler to heal in comparison. It was many times larger than Dr. Awesome, with a more straightforward internal structure. Tim was also much less familiar with the inner workings of a robot’s auditory system. The increased difficulty of this surgery taxed his regeneration tremendously. It was successful, but healing the doctor left him sweating, breathing heavily, and somewhat nauseous.

  Despite the discomfort, he now had no doubts about it. The gatekeeper. The doctor. The robot Mia met in the woods—all three had traces of Byzantium’s DNA. Their biochemical makeup. Patterns in their macromolecules.

  It was faint, but he could “taste” their distant connection. Like his old friend, they weren’t mere machines. They were sentient. And though they lacked souls, they were as alive as any other living being.

  They were as human as he was.

  “Oh great Tim, you saved me!” Dr. Awesome was overjoyed.

  Lynn immediately lashed out once she reoriented herself. “What in the king’s name did you do?!”

  Tim looked at the ID Distributor, panting. It took a few seconds for the entire world to stop spinning.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  He gave a reassuring nod to Mia, though he wondered if he could do the same for the Regalia on the table. It looked normal on the outside. But the insides might be a different story altogether.

  The doctor gave the side of the box a good slap. With a bit of whirring and humming, the device breathed to life once more. It was like fixing an old CRT TV. The checkered pattern on the surface shifted, white and black merging into a solid shade of gray.

  “There you have it!” The doctor beamed, as if the deafening noise from before never cracked the windows. “Your ID is #353E43. Gunmetal Gray for short. Pretty fitting for an old soldier like yourself!”

  Tim felt his bones creak from that last statement.

  With the exact shade of color identified, the surface of the ID Distributor returned to its original chessboard-like pattern, eagerly awaiting the next person to be scanned.

  “Are you all still deaf!?” Lynn’s protest grew louder. “What just happened?!”

  The doctor answered, “Hmm… that side effect might be due to Ti—I mean, Gunmetal Gray being an Aberration.”

  “And you didn’t bother to warn us beforehand?!” The pressure in the air seemed to rise with the intensity of the princess’s tone.

  “I’ve never tested this on an Aberration before, but now that I do, I’ll be certain to soundproof the room!”

  Tim envied the doctor’s positivity. For a moment, he felt it was Byzantium who was speaking those words. The kind of words befitting someone who could look straight into the abyss and smile.

  Though his descendants were nowhere near him in terms of combat prowess, Tim was glad they inherited the parts that made him human. Not the sides of the mindless killing machine that he was initially programmed for. This was what he would’ve wanted.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Now now, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy!” The doctor scooted over to Lynn, practically glowing, having replaced the fireplace as a source of light. “You’re a normal flesh-human, ain’t cha? Then you have nothing to worry about!”

  “I am NOT putting my hand on that—”

  The ID Distributor was gone. Not a trace of it left on the table.

  By the time Tim turned back to face Lynn, her hand was already on the surface of the Regalia. Even she was shocked, stumbling backwards, wondering how it even appeared, intercepting her large hand gestures.

  It took a few seconds to register with them that the Doctor had sprouted an extra pair of arms from the back. Like its legs, the arms could also extend and retract freely. These new limbs crept on the floor, picked up the device, and shoved it into Lynn’s hand while they weren’t looking. Good thing he became a doctor, Tim thought. If things don’t work out, he’d have a bright future as a pickpocket.

  The room radiated a warm reddish-brown gleam emanating from the ID Distributor. It was muted both in color and sound (thankfully), and a lot less fancy than Lynn’s golden-brown hair. It was as if the color of her soul was a rusted version of it.

  “See? Flesh-human or mech-human, it works just fine!” Dr. Awesome reassured. Putting the device back on the table, it returned to normal as he read out the color of the princess. “Your ID is #996666. Copper Rose. That’s pretty metal. Actually, both of you are metals. Thinking of getting married soon?”

  The mere suggestion of that stunned Tim, caused Mia to explode in laughter, and made Lynn draw her sword, the blade hovering inches away from the doctor’s neck.

  “I-I guess not, huh?” Clear liquid leaked out of the doctor’s shiny head as if it were sweat.

  “Marry? Dad? Hahahaha!” Mia slapped her thigh.

  “Mia!” He shot her the look of parental disapproval. “That’s not funny.”

  But as her laughter died down, a menacing smile twisted its way onto her face. “If anyone wants to marry Dad, they’d have to get through me, first.”

  “Nobody would want to marry your father,” Lynn said as she sheathed her sword.

  “Good,” Mia stated as a matter of fact.

  Tim watched in terror as the two ladies were in agreement for once. But what was more frightening was his daughter; he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Especially that last line. Memories of a certain overpossessive, borderline psychotic Council member flashed past. While Mia didn’t explicitly use the word “kill” like her, he definitely felt it somewhere.

  “Don’t worry, Mia.” He said just to be safe. “You won’t be getting a mother any time so—I mean, ever.”

  The girl nodded. “I know. You already have me. That's enough.”

  … She was probably saying that because she was perfectly happy with the current family dynamic. No need to rock the boat with another family member. That much was certain.

  “That’s right!” The doctor wheeled over to Mia’s side. “Gunmetal Gray is a strong, independent man! He don’t need no woman in his life!”

  “Except me.”

  “Except you.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” After a bit of nervous laughter, the cheery bot brandished the ID Distributor once more. “Now it’s your turn, only woman in his life.”

  Mia touched the checkered surface with her hand. But this time, there was no reaction whatsoever. Confused, the doctor gave it another bit of percussive maintenance in the form of a slap.

  “Give it another go.”

  With the doctor’s prompting, Mia placed her hand against it once more. And like before, the pattern on the surface remained unchanged.

  Lynn chimed in right away. “I didn't break it. Don’t look at me.”

  “Don’t listen to Copper Rose.” The doctor advised while testing the ID Distributor. It glowed the same shade of red as the bot’s eyes. #ff2052—Awesome. The small box was working as intended. “C’mon. Third time’s a charm.”

  Taking a deep breath, Mia did something different. Positioning her palm onto the top of the board, she channeled magic into it. The same way she practiced with the steel ball in the car. This time, the ID Distributor worked. Just not the way it was intended to.

  The Regalia radiated neither shine nor shadow. Chromaticity in its purest, unfiltered form. Every single gradient surged and swirled into an everflowing mandala. These colors spilled out of the surface of the ID Distributor and into the very air itself. A psychedelic blend of rainbows and chromatic waveforms. It was as if Mia was painting with the Regalia, the literal space around her her canvas.

  Everyone, including the artist herself, watched the fluctuating dance of colors around them in stunned silence. Gradually, the doctor began to mumble, naming every single color combination in its vision. An unending string of alphanumeric codes became the rhythmic beat of this hypnotic performance.

  Mia smiled in childlike wonder as her magic transformed not herself, but the environment. Each hue and tint ebbed and flowed in response to her feelings as fantasy bled into reality. Her thoughts and imagination were transposed into a vibrant, evolving spectacle. Even the princess was in awe of the mesmerizing display.

  But Tim saw something else. He began to understand his daughter’s painting. To see the inner workings behind the artwork and the paintbrush that was the Regalia. As vibrant as it was, what made it truly beautiful wasn’t the visual phenomenon, but pareidolia. Even though it was Mia’s psyche made manifest, the viewer saw what they wanted to see.

  For himself, he saw alternate futures. “What ifs.” The many mistakes he made that never happened. Hidden between the spectral wavelengths were regrets that never came to fruition. An ideal present born of a stainless past. Did Mia and Lynn see something similar?

  If he had to guess, this might be a glimpse of the evolution of Mia’s Gift. An extension of her ability to shape what people see. The only reason why this was visible was due to the Regalia. By trying to read Mia’s soul, it portrayed both the formlessness and infinite nature of her being through this shifting panorama.

  He was so proud of Mia. To glance at her potential. To witness what she was capable of. And as if to reward his faith in his daughter, a new color was born. Amid the harmonious stream of palettes and pigments, a tiny fractal caught his eye. It was breathtaking, but it also gave him pause.

  A color unknown to reality. An Aberration.

  Upon being noticed, the entity vanished. Whisked away alongside the 16 million other colors given life by the ID Distributor. The device itself crumbled to dust. Even the doctor fell back in fear, paralyzed by what just happened as sand slipped between its fingers.

  “What happened? Where did it go?” Mia asked in a panic.

  “You broke it with your magic,” Tim said. Not with a condescending tone, but with pride as he hugged her.

  But he lied. Wherever it went, he didn’t want to know. That thing wanted his daughter. The “curse” of his mother was growing stronger.

  And for it to be broken, he had to die.