Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Digimon: The Silent Project ❯ The Facts ( Chapter 3 )

 

Toei Animation owns Digimon. Any original characters, ideas and themes I've written down in this story are owned by me. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Digimon: The Silent Project

 

By Jared Head

 

 

Chapter 3

 

The Facts

 

 

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

 

 

Epicurus, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Greek philosopher (341 BC - 270 BC)

 

 

 

 

Approaching the phone booths revealed the source of the thick black smoke that could be seen for miles. A shot up phone booth with a car on fire.

 

“Great,” Flame said sarcastically as he reached the apex of the dune, running full sprint to the shattered phone booth. He slid to a stop, the sand being pushed out of the way as he came to a standing stop. He looked into the phone booth to see Jorcy leaning into the door of the booth covering his head with his hands.

 

“Jorcy, what the hell happened here?” Flame asked, demanding, “Who was shooting at you?” Jorcy answered by pointing behind himself, too shook up to move.

 

Flame figured it was worth a look and walked around to behind the phone booth. He looked on something that could only have happened in nightmares. It was a digimon, sitting against the back of the phone booth. Most of the shots the pursuer had taken had found their marks.

 

The digimon was unrecognizable. Its head, arms, legs and back were completely decimated. It looked like someone had blown whole chunks of the digimon away into thin air, but that wasn't the shocking factor as Flame slowly looked the digimon over.

 

“It's still alive,” Flame said, in disbelief. The mangled mess of life was breathing shallow breaths, fighting for life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The medevac of this “swiss cheese” digimon had come and gone. Flame was now standing, talking to himself making a full report of what happened. Well, to Jorcy it seemed that Flame was talking to himself. He was talking using the throat transmitter to someone back at a command center thousand of miles away. They were writing down information, recording the conversation for further analysis and the hard drives sped up to capture all of the data needed to make a report. Flame was also arguing as to why they needed a car dropped off at their location.

 

As Flame did his “paperwork”, Jorcy looked around at what he found left. A row of seven phone booths. One shot to hell with blood spattered all over the back of it and blood drenched sand at its base. Then an object caught his eye. It was a notebook, plain and leather-bound. He knelt down onto one knee and looked at it. Slowly opening up the cover, he gazed on what could be best described as spontaneous writing. It had only four words that looked to be actually written out at a normal speed. They read, “This belongs to Edan.”

 

“You're saying that he has writing all over himself?” Flame asked in shock, “On the parts of the skin that haven't been blown away? What's it say?” Jorcy glanced over to Flame slightly, and then something else caught his eye. Writing in the sand. It must have been done by whoever this Edan is. Jorcy looked it over.

 

Keep It Silent!!! was written in the sand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Anesthetic is flowing,” one of the many doctors in the room said.

 

“Good, we'll get this under way. Just wait a few seconds and he'll be set,” the head doctor said, “Hopefully we'll have our first succesfulllllllll…uuuuuuuussssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeee,” the doctor said, his speech beginning to slow and deepen in pitch. The sound of the world faded away, and Edan was out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Jorcy!” Flame yelled at him. He snapped out of his trance like state, looking over at Flame, “We've gotta go, we have to get someone and I need you to drive for me.”

 

“But I don't have my car,” Jorcy said. Flame could see the frustration of confusion beginning to seep through on Jorcy's face, “Damn it, I don't even know what the hell is going on!”

 

Jorcy then pounded his fists into his car. Car? He stepped back a little in surprise at the car now sitting in front of him. It was exactly how he remembered it. Red paint, tan leather interior trimmed with chrome, exactly as he remembered it to be.

 

“Get in, and I'll explain everything,” Flame said as he was walking to the other side. The doors opened, promptly by the doors closing. Jorcy turned the key already in the ignition.

 

“Explain,” Jorcy said simply.

 

“Drive,” Flame said, pointing a claw forward.

 

“Explain,” Jorcy said, slightly annoyed.

 

“Drive,” flame said, beginning to become highly agitated. Jorcy then collapsed onto the steering wheel.

 

“I can't go on like this,” Jorcy's muffled voice said. It was mostly the fact he had just seen a slaughter of someone that got to him.

 

“That's what you think,” Flame said back. Jorcy's attention seemed to skyrocket at Flame's words.

 

“I'm waiting for an explanation,” Jorcy said.

 

“All right,” Flame said reluctantly. Jorcy started the car, shifted into drive, and began to move towards the nearest road. Flame pointed in the direction he should be going, and he quickly corrected.

 

“There was a society. A utopia. But not like those in your mediums of writing and visual creativity. One where problems are kept quiet and the utopia is almost always destroyed. Its inhabitants led astray. This one was a perfect utopia. Flawless like a smooth, un-fragmented plain. Last time I had ever heard anything about it size, it was at around 427,000 inhabitants. All like me, none like you, no offense.

 

“It was a town, a fairly large one in anyone's standards. It was perfect in every way, shape, form, idea and reality. Now, you didn't have to live in this utopia. There was a whole world out there to live in, it's just a few of the very thoughtful ones thought that maybe making an organized society would preserve ourselves, our way of life. Nothing could go wrong, that was, until everyone decided to try and have a shot at glory.

“Glory comes with a price, it's worse than ego. Ego infects one person and does not spread. It cripples its owner. Glory affects everyone around this glorious person, but does not affect its carrier. Ego destroys the one who possesses it; Glory destroys all who are around the carrier.

 

“Now, back to the reality of the story. This utopia was a voluntary thing. You didn't have to live in it. If you want to live in it, you could join. If you wanted to leave it after joining, you could instantly. No questions asked, no government teams of professional assassins sent out after you like in your creative mediums, you just left. You didn't have to join the society at all; you could still live outside of it. The society was for those who were social expanders. They wanted to live together. Much like you, we are creatures that need social interaction, the utopia just made it easier, much as how you have made social interaction easier with phones, e-mail, and the internet. We owe our birth to your needs to speak, see and hear. Thanks will come later.

 

“Now, as with any organized society, there was a level of control by the government that ran it. You can't have a society that has zero government control, that's anarchy. Anarchy is the most appeasing idea to beings of free thought. The idea that I make my own rules and do whatever I tell myself to do is a good idea, up until someone comes over and pulls off some anarchy on you. Ours was a Democratic Socialism. The government controls some of the companies, usually the major utilities and such while the public owns many other companies. We had no currency. Why establish one in a world where money has little if any value? In fact, most of us hadn't even understood the concept of money, as it was something that never came into our lives at any point. I was a member of this utopia of sorts, and it did change me.

 

“Curiosity is a powerful ally as well as a dangerous weapon. Just ask Dr. Ranzor about it. Not much is known about him other than the ideas he created, all of them except one helped society progress. The Silent Project: An attempt to map the Digital DNA Genome. Much like your human genome project, but even more intensive than yours, and met with little if any opposition. Now, mind you, mapping the human DNA genome with the Digital DNA genome is like comparing a corn dog to a bowl of caviar. See, the human DNA genome uses a simple sequence of letters. The Digital DNA genome is about 407 times longer than your genetic code, is written in binary code and has to be deciphered, and uses a 32 letter alphabet, 6 times more than the human DNA genome.

 

“Ranzor developed a way to speed up the process. Normally it would take three hours to decipher a single letter, but he made it now so that it was possible to decipher a whole genome in a week. Billions upon billions of times faster, and as for efficiency? Well, we couldn't even create a number for that much of a jump. But with every great idea comes several others that are dark. Ranzor knew exactly what he had done that left his equation without a solution. The faster process, called “Rapid Transfer” took the DNA code and physically split it. So now analysis focused on bits and pieces, not how long chains. Something does happen when you split DNA,” Flame said with a smile.

 

“Prions are created. Prions are an actual medical condition when long chains of protein are split into tiny pieces. They are smaller than viruses and the only way to kill a prion is to kill the host. Prions are not alive, but they are made of the building blocks of life. They enter into cells and mess up every function possible, usually resulting in slow deaths that take years to finish off the host.

 

“Now, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but these artificially created prions were being re-injected into test subjects every day. Many test subjects who had been re-injected died on average 4 and a quarter years later from nervous system degeneration. The nerves and spine essentially turned slowly into a liquid. All because of prions and there natural ability to inhibit cell function. Well, everyone started dying off. Few survived, and those who survived built up an immunity.

 

“Shifting was born from this. Those little lines of code didn't exactly all return to their rightful places. Holes were left in the DNA; this allowed other lines from other DNA codes to come in. It's not morphing. Morphing is when you change into a different visual state, shifting is when you change states physically, actually becoming whatever you shift into.

 

“Other shifters who also had holes in their DNA had one other effect. Their DNA began to regenerate, but in a highly evolved state. This explains me and why I'm stuck as a Flamedramon as opposed to a Veemon. It so happens that it's just a process the binary code making up our genetic makeup decides to take. It can either wait for influences from other DNA sources or it can begin to repair itself. My DNA just decided to repair itself.

 

“Dr. Ranzor began to work on a solution to this problem. He did call it to the attention of our government, saying in one hearing the government held that “It is an unforeseen complication that I am more than willing to work out and have been working on a solution for since our first case of this condition began.” He kept his word quite well. He did work for several months to find a solution, to help us all return back to our normal selves.

 

“Unfortunately even a Digimon's body can only take so much, and Ranzor pushed himself so far past his limits that he died of exhaustion, his death bed being one of the tables in his lab. The worst part was Ranzor knew what was happening, his writing on the solution he was writing looked as if it was frantically written, possibly he knew at that instant he was dying and hurried to get the solution complete. He was only several letters away from a solution, and that solution would never be found. We tried, but couldn't.

 

“Unfortunately, some shifters didn't exactly come to terms well with their abilities. When something of high value is handed to a being, most will become corrupt in mind and thoughts. Some of the shifters developed what you could call a high energy stress disorder. Where they would hallucinate things and this led to situations within the utopia that were deemed unacceptable. The first murder ever committed in the utopia was by a shifter, and many more followed, all committed by shifters. Suddenly, shifters became a threat to society.

 

“The utopia understood why only shifters were killing, but would not tolerate it. The members of the utopia were crying out for revenge. Driven blindly into what would eventually become their downfall. So an idea was proposed during one of the daily government meetings. Take a vote of what to do with all shifters. The choices were A) Quarantine shifters to certain areas B) Begin an elimination of all shifters or C) Do nothing. The votes came in, and sadly, the result was nearly unanimous for B.

 

“But how then, could a utopian society kill its own members? Easy: hire outsiders. There was still a small amount of beings who decided to live outside of the utopia, and they were hired to do the dirty work. Shifters were killed left and right. Initially it was those who were out in the open, who were well known for being shifters. Others were killed by others who turned them in, and many shifters took their own lives. All of this occurring within a utopia took a toll. Soon there were less than 100 shifters left after early three months of extermination, that's when things began to go downhill.

 

“To see murder committed is one thing, to see it committed when you are in a society that's principles do not even mention murder causes damage to your mentality, faith and drive. I left the utopia as soon as this idea was proposed, well before this genocide began, but there was one distinct reason I can see why we were killed, especially the shifters that were far from being hostile.

 

“We weren't perfect. In a utopia, everything is perfect, shifters were not, and it threw the balance of the utopia off and caused it too crash. I don't know how it happened, how long it took or what specifically caused the utopia to fail, but it did. That was the end of the utopia. An era long gone, oh, you might want to pull over.”

 

“Why?” Jorcy asked, confused by the sudden tangent.

 

“Well, we're on your street, right?” Jorcy looked around, Flame was right. The car was now stopped in the middle of the street Jorcy lived on. His house all the way down at the end.

 

“What the…how the…huh?”

 

“Funny,” Flame said, letting a single laugh out, “It's such a violent transfer from the Real to the Digital, but from the Digital to the Real, it's as smooth as ice. Hell, you didn't even notice it. I thought you would.”

 

“So now what are we doing?” Jorcy asked, still very confused.

 

“Well, you know anyone by the name of `Jet'?”

 

“Yeah,” Jorcy said, a smile coming onto his face, “He's my cousin.”

 

“Well, we need to have a little talk with him,” Flame said sternly.

 

 

 

Am I alive? Were his first thoughts. The anesthetic left a groggy feeling running through him. He lifted his arm to see if he was, and he could feel his arm lifting. Heavy, like metal he thought. He let gravity take his arm back down, but instead of the thump he expected to hear…

 

Clank!

 

Edan's blood ran cold at the echo of the sound in his mind.