Somewhere en route from Paris back to Singapore with Poliphilos’s “Landscape Fantasy” in her headphones it hit her:

she had been here before.

The views. The sounds. The fusion kitchen and the Krug.

All of it had meant something for someone many years earlier.

But was that someone her? Or someone else?

She couldn’t decide.

And this was her problem: her own memories had started blending with those of someone else after the surgery.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Hello.

My name is Maya.

I used to be a little girl but not by that name. Then I grew up, life took a turn and I found myself on the streets.

Then the company found me.

Then it’s all a blur to me for many years, until there was a crime.

Was it mine or someone else’s doesn’t matter now because I was busted and the others were not. There was an explosion, that much I remember.

They kept me in jail. A long time. And if it had been just that it perhaps could have been bearable. But there were withdrawals from what they had put in my food.

They were the worst kind. The kind you get from the cheapest Cambodian synthetic Flash in Bangkok.

It did give a hit. Then it let you down. Then it made you want to kill someone for the next hit. Until the company owned your life.

I crawled on the floor until my nails broke and until my knees bled.

All this time they were watching me. I didn’t know it back then, because the only contact I had with the outside world was a measly meal once a day handed to me under the door. No human contact.

After an exceptionally bad night they obviously decided it was time.

The door opened.

A woman appeared. Chinese. Tight red cheongsam. What a stereotype! Perfect English with a twist. Hong Kong? And something about a deal. “If you do this, we’ll make it stop”, she whispered.

“Make it stop”, I whispered.

Two men.

Black suits. I was picked up. Dragged through corridors.

Next memory: on my back. Bright lights. Instruments being used. A beeping sound. Hospital?

I went out.

Time passed.

Then I woke up.

And I felt… different.

Sunlight.

Birds chirping.

Was that the sound of a water fountain somewhere?

I stood up.

It’s been a week. How did I know that?

Hey, no headache! No vicious need to kill for a hit. No…. nothing.

Except power. I felt powerful.

She stepped in. “You’ve healed nicely”, she said.

The same Chinese woman.

“Where am I?”, I asked.

“Singapore”, she answered. “Welcome to your new life. Let’s get to the point. What you should know is that you have been altered. Chemically, mechanically, electrically, and a number of other ways”.

“I have been what???”, I stuttered.

“No time to discuss now”, she answered. “Facts: you are now working for Mitsuba-Genève, an international cybertech company that provides solutions for enhancing the body’s…”

I didn’t hear the rest, because all of a sudden a memory blinded me: I was on a bicycle driving in a valley full of vineyards. A nice looking chap cycling further away waving at me. Was his name Jacques?

“Hello”, Lina asked. “You hearing me?”

“I hear you. I will go through extensive training and put on Mitsuba-Genève assignments in the emerging markets of polymedicine…”, I replied.

“Wait a minute! How do I know all this?”, I snapped?

“Later”, Lina Mei Chen said.

“I know your name too!”, I said.

“Yes, and many other things. Benefits of your new enhancements. Also, whoever you were does not matter. From now on you’ll be called Maya. And, you’re as ready as you can be”, Chen continued, “and we don’t have any time. A plane will leave in an hour. You’ll be on it. Your coach will tell you everything you need to know on the way.”

“Ready for what? And on the way to where?”, I asked.

“Dakar. Manaus. Reykjavik. Inari. Paris. And many other places”, she answered. “Follow me”.

…….

The above was delivered to Poliphilos the day after.

“She’s on her way”, Messenger, my assistant, said.

Poliphilos nodded while writing the song frantically.

When something wanted to come out on paper this fast, it meant someone was coming. Someone important.

Poliphilos’s own world had lately been one of melody and rhythm, where the vibrations of the guitar strings seemed to resonate with the very fabric of his being.

As a singer-songwriter, Poliphilos had always been drawn to Saigon’s underbelly, where the streets pulsed with a raw energy that fueled his creativity. His small studio apartment was a testament to this, with guitars and music sheets scattered about, and a view of the city’s neon-lit skyline that seemed to stretch on forever.

Poliphilos spent most of his days writing songs, performing at local clubs, and observing the people around him.

He was fascinated by their stories, their struggles, and their triumphs. And he often found himself weaving their tales into his music, trying to capture the essence of their experiences, and not giving a damn over whether they ended up on any hitlist. Instead, he collected the stories to create musical “preservation capsules” in fight against organized memory manipulation.

Anyway, later that night, while Poliphilos was performing at a local club, Maya indeed stepped in. She walked in like a breath of air, her eyes scanning the room with a mixture of caution and curiosity. Poliphilos couldn’t help but notice her, even amidst the crowd of familiar faces. There was something about her that seemed… different. Somewhat… Were those mechanical movements?.

“It’s the new cyberware”, Messenger whispered.

“Ah”, Poliphilos nodded expectantly as he finished his set with “Ancient Manager”. While packing up his gear and signing autographs for some japanese fans that all looked like Agent Smiths from the Matrix franchise, Maya approached him with an air of quiet confidence.

“You’re Poliphilos,” she said, her voice low and husky. “I’ve heard your music.”

“And I take you’ve decoded the messages in them, otherwise you wouldn’t be here?, Poliphilos asked.

She had.

They took a walk to Dragon’s Den.

That was a completely unpopular bar, where she told him her story – about growing up on the streets, about being recruited for jobs that often went sideways, about being operated on by Mitsuba-Genève’s doctors and given cybernetic enhancements that left her feeling like a stranger in her own skin.

As she spoke, Poliphilos listened intently, sensing that there was more to her story than she was letting on.

“So, it was until I received a call from an unknown number the other day that ended up in me being here. A voice offered me a new gig that was outside of my usual… thing. And on that gig things started to unravel.”, she said.

“The job was supposed to be routine”, she continued. “Infiltrate a high-security facility and retrieve sensitive data from their servers. Ok. Sure. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done that. But as I delved deeper into the mission brief something didn’t add up. The pay seemed too good, the risks too low. And then there were whispers in The Net – rumors really – about Mitsuba-Genève experimenting with human subjects.”

“You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than yourself”, Poliphilos said.

They agreed to have her scanned in the clinic upstairs. Which is why Poliphilos books the Dragon’s Den for these kinds of meetings.

Upstairs, Messenger did his thing and whistled. “Lady, what you are carrying in there is some cutting edge wetware! This is next generation! Even more, I think this is a generation after that generation. There are a VERY few on this planet who have access to this!, he said.

“I know”, Maya said. “It’s MG-27. It’s not even yet off the drawing board. And it looks like my actual job is to be the walking test bed”.

“It… certainly looks that way!”, Poliphilos agreed, looking at the monitors displaying lines of code as well as blueprints and schematics.

“Any side effects?” Poliphilos asked.

“Only memories which are not mine. It’s screwing up my own thinking”, she answered.

Indeed, Maya wasn’t just any ordinary operative. She was a prototype – a test subject-cybernetic experiment gone wrong. But my god was she fantastic!

What Mitsuba-Genève had created and were testing was an advanced AI entity that resided in Maya’s brain.

It was capable of manipulating memories, emotions and actions without the wearer’s consent. And the more they dug the more sinister became apparent. They’d been controlling Maya all along manipulating her every move and every decision using artificially implanted memories making them believe they were hers.

But now that Maya and they knew the truth, they vowed to free her from it once and for all as Poliphilos himself had a small, shall we say, debt to pay to the Mitsuba-Genève.

After sleeping on it for a day, they got to work.

They spent countless nights pouring over documents, hacking into secure databases trying to uncover the extent of Mitsuba-Genève experimentation. Along the way they discovered other test subjects. Some successful, some failed, some trapped forever lost in their minds never finding their way back.

“Poor bastards,” Poliphilos sighed. “I’ve seen them. A few of them were in Bangkok last week. Not a pretty sight”.

With each passing day Maya became more determined to take down Mitsuba-Genève. They devised a plan to infiltrate a Mitsuba-Genève Rotterdam facility to gather the final code part with which they could dismantle the Mitsuba-Genève AI control systems holding Maya captive.

The mission went well and the Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics standing at the gate never knew what hit it. In addition to everything else, Poliphilos’s Messenger is a brilliant coder. “Atlantean code. Completely invincible and unbreakable”, he told them.

Then, finally free from the shackles of Mitsuba-Genève Maya was free.

There was no big fanfare.

Nobody came.

No alerts.

Nothing.

They had managed to completely make Maya’s digital footprint vanish as if she had never existed.

Thanking the dynamic duo, Maya then chose to leave the city life behind, opting for a simpler, quieter existence in the French countryside surrounded by nature and new loved ones she had found after settling down.

It was a far cry from the dark days and shady dealings of her past life.

She did keep the wetware, though.

“You never know what they’ll come up with next”, she DM:d me the other day.

“Also”, she continued, “I’ve had no false memories lately. But I found a melody in one of my last memory banks I audited. A nice tune and somehow having something to do with London in the early 1980s. Perhaps you can use it in one of your songs. See the attachment! Love from the blue fields, Maya”.

I opened the attachment, and… there was “Red And Blue” waiting to be published.

Maya, this one’s for you.