Project Anima

Project Anima

Chapter 1: Booting Up

"So what's in it for me?"

"Besides relaxing for a few hours and a new experience? C'mon, whatta ya say?"

He pulled up a mug of coffee to his lips, already cold from denying himself the time of day to relax and ease off the strenuous amount of work. He forced an old tired friend of his from off the infamously familiar keyboard in front of him and onto his head to give him a little rest. He passed that hand through his robust short brown hair to shake off the loose strands that clogged up his sight, and more importantly, productivity.

"Get this, I was reading the newspaper yesterday and I came across a very particular article about relaxing and taking days off from work. Hold on to your trousers for what I'm about to say..." He created a short moment of dramatic silence. "It doesn't make money, and possibly gets me fired. Go figure." He would have laughed at his friend's expression of bitterness from his sarcasm, but that would shed off seconds from productivity, something that his friend was impeding him from a lot lately for the past week or so.

"Just... please Mark, the thing is going to be tomorrow, you don't know how much this means to me." He kept insisting.

"Oh, don't worry, I do know. You only ask me every day and every other hour of it."

"Then why haven't you agreed?"

"You of all people should know my situation, you should have had a clue six days ago." He turned back to the computer screen to resume his endless typing. "Besides, if you hadn't interrupted me for so long, I might have been able to finish already and possibly not join you either way so I could get some rest, which I need thank you very much."

"Then you should have gotten that rest every night instead of staying up late to watch that little girl's cartoon." Oh, that was a cheap shot.

"You stay away from those accusations. I hope you aren't trying to make me not go for good, Jarred."

"Look, Mark, if this is about money, I will go out of my way to repay whatever you lost from your paycheck for the measly day that we are going to take off. I'm basically paying you to have fun for once and I will put a word out for the boss. Deal?"

Mark looked almost surprised. Now that was something he could sink his teeth into. "Now if only you could repay me all those annoying hours of you asking me to go."

Jarred laughed amusingly. "Well maybe another time, I'm not the richest man in the world myself, but I can pay for one day off, since I know you'll be asking for more than you'll let on."

"You know me too well. For your sake, you best hope this will be worth my time."

"Oh, I know it is."

~~~

Mark sighed to counteract the all too familiar creaking noise of his front door. He wouldn't fix it any time soon though. Required too much work and too much time. It wasn't like he was trying to impress anyone, no one ever visited his home anyways, and it showed. The door opened to reveal and equally disturbed apartment, a small living room was the entrance and to the left and equally if not smaller room for the kitchen. Things lay about the carpeted floor, dishes needed cleaning and were stacking up, and were he would iron his clothing every morning was now littered with clothing he used the day before and to sleep, only to throw them quickly to the ground and try to do everything as fast as possible as he rushed to work the morning after.

Aside from this mess however, everything stayed relatively clean. Once a week he would put off everything he usually did the hour he came home before he slept, and within that hour, he would have everything neat and clean again. Today however was not one of those days.

He walked over the small restroom that rested in the middle of the two small rooms. He looked towards the small mirror the sat on top of the sink. His features looked almost as worn out as his hand did and his robust dark brown hair was now beginning to fade in color. His green eyes as restless as his body, for being only eighteen. He walked back to the living room where a small couch lined the wall and to the opposite side rested a small television.

He sunk deep into the one single cushion couch he had that faced the relatively old television and turned it on manually by hunching over. The apartment itself was very small. He sighed once more as commercials lined up the air time as he had turned it on. Worse yet, when the show finally appeared, it wasn't what he wanted to watch. Of course, the show he wanted to watch was half an hour from now. In this time, he could clean up around the house. Which was what he would have usually done, but today was a special occasion.

He stood back up to his feet, realizing what needed to be done. Today was a special day. Today marked an anniversary, one that he could never dare to let it pass. On March ten of every year, he would have grown a special type of flower to commemorate this special day. A Lunaria annua, also known as annual honesty, one that she loved and grew faithfully every year...

Strange how fate worked... This day marked the time were he began a care free life brimming with happiness, but it also marked a day to the beginning of the life he lead now. The life of solitude, of working endlessly to be able to live, a painful life. It began how it would end.

He lost his mother as he was born into the world, and lost his father when he was still young, a car crash in a densely foggy day. Adopted by his father's close friend, his new father was unmarried and a poor man, yet he had accepted Mark without a second doubt the day Mark's father had died. Even then Mark had known the weight of his own life and disciplined himself at a young age.

His step-father was a generous and kind man and he did not wish Mark to trouble himself in his concerns as he tried his best to make ends meet. Mark began to work in what he could, day in and day out trying to earn his keep and alleviate his father's financial troubles. He loved his step-father very much as he was his inspiration to what he would do. He worked hard to earn his step-father's last name, to earn the name of Mark Dylan.

He worked hard, in school and in the jobs after school that he had. Through this regime, it was no coincidence that he was able to land a good job after graduation. It was at this point were his life finally began to improve. He was able to pull both himself and his father out of the poverty-stricken life that they had for so long, and at last his life was finally bright.

Then she came along. Her name was Scarlette Reygard. The features of an angel. Light brown hair and green eyes. A bright smile that warmed him from the inside. It wasn't all of this that particularly took him aside. It was her good-willed nature. She was as nice as they would come, as gentle as the flowers she grew, and as lovely.

He wouldn't have noticed her to be truthful if it wasn't for what had happened the day he met her. He was never the type of person to bother with too personal emotions, it kept from productivity, from more important things in his life. He would have ignored her all together and kept on walking on that rainy night in the city of Baltimore if it wasn't for his morals and his aspiration to be like his father. Well, maybe because she was the only one outside at the time, curled up in a ball by a bench near a bus stop in the outskirts of town, a grocery bag in one hand and no umbrella on the other, wet and shivering. He just happened to walk on by and by a force of fate, he morally convinced himself it was the right thing to try and help her.

He didn't know what to say, or what to do, so instead, he just held out the umbrella to cover her even if meant getting wet himself. She uncurled from the fetal position that she was sitting like and looked up at him.

"Need any help?" He remembered saying. She only nodded at him. Turned out, she was looking for a store that sold flower seeds, but not just any kind. She told him how she had wandered off on her own trying to find them, but she had gotten lost and decided to wait by a bus stop to be able to return home and it was then it began to rain. Had she walked a long way into the city to find such a store he did not know, his first impressions was that she wasn't very familiar around the town, maybe a stay-at-home person?

"Well, I was walking over to a small store not far from here, I believe they have a green house there, you might want to try looking there." She responded to him by saying she did not know the way. And so, he lead her there, she hanging all too close to him due to there being one umbrella. Sure enough, they were able to find the specific seeds she required, placing them into a bag the grocery bag she had, which was filled with vegetables and other assortments of greens. Then it came up to his job again to lead her back home. Surprisingly, he knew exactly were she lived. Mostly because she wasn't very far from were he lived, but also because he had worked for the man there. How was she able to get lost so close from home?

It turned out that the man he worked for was a rather wealthy man who worked as a doctor and specialized in lung surgery and research. He remember working for him for almost a year or two every month to cut his lawn, occasionally talking to him about his job when he was around, a very nice man too. It was the most money anyone had ever payed him, and then one day, he stopped answering his calls and he was never home. The grass was always kept strangely tidy after then. That was ages ago however, when he was eight or nine at the time. Now he was eighteen, a month going into nineteen. The girl before him looked no younger or older than him, and she wasn't.

Coming from a rich parents, he wondered if this girl was too pampered to even know her way around town? Accusations in his minded started early, but it wasn't until he began to involve himself a little more until he understood why. Her father was waiting by the roofed porch expectantly and even ran out into the rain when he saw them walk into the driveway of the small mansion-like house. He ran to hug her, bombarding her with questions on why she had left or where she had been. It was only until the question of how she came home that he noticed him when she answered that she was guided by Mark.

He recognized him immediately, the small poor boy who did his best to keep both the lawn and the man happy. Of course, he left a lasting impression, he talked a lot with the man, he was almost like a second father, up until the point he vanished. He thanked him profoundly and Mark couldn't help himself but ask why all the commotion? As it turned out, the girl was indeed a stay-at-home person, and with all good reason. She suffered from a hereditary lung cancer and that she was ill-advised to be away from home all her life.

Mark returned back to earth from all those memories, large gaping holes across his heart and throat and tears beginning to swell up his eyes. He brushed them aside, all there was to say was the he had lived a good life with her and it had ended... four of the longest and only years of his good life... but everything has its end...

He held the flowers in his hands and went outside into the chilly night. He walked over to an empty lot of dirt and planted them, sitting silently beside them looking over at the night sky. She loved the night, and that was something that grew on him too. With his step-father in a nursing home, life slowly draining from him now that he can't walk and barely even able to speak, Mark payed the expenses for the nursing home, pays for his father's debts which had grown very large from the years of poverty, and paying for his upkeep to be able to live, it was hard seeing the world beautiful anymore. The night, however, suffice to say that it could never lose its beauty, no matter how much life has already put him down.

He was shot and wounded, barely able to drag on. All he had left was hopes that his life would change... or end... whichever came first, it did not matter to him anymore.

He got up and walked back inside to stop himself from dragging his mind into dark depths. Despite all that, he did his best to stay in the best mood he could, even it meant having that dreaded scowl of his every day as he walked to work, ignoring everything else. He repeated a mindless routine, and that was all he had left. Work was his life now.

He stopped at the doorway for a bit to take a last look at the night sky and sighed, walking in and shutting the door behind him. He sunk himself into the couch once more and turned on the television. His luck must have been turning, because just as he did, the interlude before the theme song for a new episode of MLP: FiM had barely began. So, okay, not all things were as grim as they seemed.

Despite his now colorless life, this show had given it a little color over the past few months, and it had lightened up his mood drastically. His life was now pony-oriented, and he wouldn't have wanted it any other way, even if it meant taking in ridicule from his best friend, who didn't put him down because of it. Seriously, these ponies were so cute and nice and... everything about the show just gave him a warm fuzzy feeling. A guy could lose himself in a wonderland like this... or at least a guy like him.

He'd often catch his mind wandering into the depths of thought, creating with his imagination scenarios that included the multicolored ponies. It reminded him that his life still had some importance to it. That it wasn't all grey, like his cubicle at work. He wouldn't hesitate to be able join in such a paradise. If only for a few minutes... he wished that he could get away from it all...

~~~

"Larry! I need to speak to you, asap." A strange middle aged man wearing an lavender lab coat yelled across the small lab-like lobby.

"I'm right here sir." A normal and young looking assistant stood up from his desk, a laptop in his arms and thick glasses on his face.

"Have you double-checked all the participants for tomorrow?" He asked.

"Done and deal, manually filtered out the two-hundred entries and narrowed it down to seven participants."

"You made sure none of them are idiots?" He scowled at the response.

"Um, sir, please refrain from that sort of language else we get the project shut down by the feds."

"This is my damn project, if they want their share later on than they'll have to put up with it. Don't you dare tell me what to do." He narrowed his eyes at the already nervous boy.

"And yes, I did make sure none of them are below the expectations."

"Because see, if we get stupid people, this test will be harder, and you know how important this is. Dumb people don't know how to follow instructions, and if they can't follow instructions correctly, the test can't go right! And if it doesn't go right, then my life's work has gone down the drain!! And if it goes down the drain, then you'll have a very angry Joseph Clarkson!!!" His voice had gone from dank to dankly aggressive.

Anyone else would have backed down, but Larrison Clarkson knew better than to fear his own father. He was generally a very nice man, with anger spouts and all with good reason. He was the driving force of an important operation. This man... oh this man was a complete genius, and it had taken his entire life to do what he has done, he understood his impatience well, and that is why Larrison, or Larry for short, has always worked to meet his demands and make him proud.

"I know Dad, trust me, I wouldn't be telling you that I've found all the candidates appropriate if my life didn't stake on it."

Joseph sighed and looked towards him with a warm smile on his face. "Thanks son, I'm just a little worried is all. How do you find it to be so patient with me?"

"How do I find reasons not to?" He hugged his father and began walking away.

"Wait up, tell the team to boot up the project. Tell them to test run the systems one more time, and leave them on for tomorrow, I want some of the men stationed there to check up on all progress at all time."

"Isn't that a little excessive? I mean, wouldn't that make some of the guys drowsy, what if they can't work properly for tomorrow?"

"Well then give them energy drinks or something. I don't care about the details now, I just want someone to overlook everything. I'm heading to bed."

"Well... okay." He knew better than to question his crazy father. Larry was almost exactly like his father as he commanded every man in the testing rooms to start booting up the system. He felt like a police guard directing traffic, better yet a commander giving out orders in the heat of battle, a battle against electrical wiring and computing, and it felt damn good. Everything began to sound off just like it was supposed to. He looked into his notes once more to make sure everything was correct.

Alias: Project Anima.

Status: Beta.

Physical Condition: Operational and secure. Up to optics.

Description: Prototype organic subconscious emulator. Translates dreams and thoughts and projects them into the human cerebral to create conditioned scenarios. Allows for safe mental conditioning and rehabilitation. Specific use for Project Anima, entertainment.

Beta Testers: Jarred Liam, Evan Lorso, Mark Dylan, Catiline Brush, Sebastian Marion, April Rosella, Athema Hendricks.

"Systems operational!" One of the men sounded off.

"Integration in both inputs are working as intended."

"System software is running smoothly and are running insight scans for immediate reports. Project Anima has successfully booted sir."

"This is very good, very good indeed. Job well done men." He stopped for a brief second and smiled widely, finally being able to say it. "All systems are go."