This is a kind of sad part of Loop 9. You’ve been warned. You can skip it, but then you wouldn’t truly understand my psyche. This Loop might not seem so bad to you, the reader, but to me, Caelus, it was tragic. This is the point where I began my true decline into madness.

Loop 9 Year 14 Day 66

Chelsea and I are in an argument. She shouts at me for not being in the room. I lose my temper. I shout at her for being a whore. Honestly, I know she isn’t. We both agreed to have her try to have someone else’s baby. I just hated that it worked. As soon as the words leave my mouth I regret them.

She leaves me. She shouts that she’s been sleeping with the man that donated the sperm, and storms out. After a few moments of anger, I have the supercomputer look through all of the footage stored of Chelsea. The footage of the entire vault can be stored for up to a year. Since the cameras are set up in every room, I have the potential to know everything that happens.

The computer came back with a negative. The only time he was in our room was to do the routine maintenance of the magnetic field resonator. Even then I was there. She has never entered his room. Nor were they alone in a romantic way at any time. I knew I had done something bad, but the anger was so fresh in my mind. They were together a lot though. Having fun, laughing, just generally being happy.

I should explain a bit about how my memories work. Over the past several decades I have learned to manipulate it. I can perfectly recall any event that I have ever experienced. I don’t remember everything at all times though. I do remember anything that has to do with my current situation though. I remember EVERYTHING that has to do with whatever situation I am in. I can intentionally ‘forget’ facts though. Basically, I lock the memories away and they only come up when I intentionally call for them.

That is what I do with most of my memories. Like this one. I lock it away as soon as it is over. I don’t think about it anymore. I even locked away the anger I am feeling. With that gone I don’t constantly think about the argument. I push my mind towards the AI again. I am determined to finish it during this Loop.

Loop 9 Year 14 Day 70

Chelsea has gotten together with another man. I find this out when I come out of my lab for the first time since the fight. It only took her four days!? Really Chelsea? REALLY!? She is having a great time with him. She lets him come in to her room according to the video camera.

Their baby is being watched by one of the ‘housewives’. That is the term we give the people, mostly women, in charge of child rearing. They are responsible for teaching, and rearing the children. Some families want their children to be reared by their actual parents, but the convenience of it is too much even for them.

That night I did something I’ve never done before. As I watch Chelsea and the man get intimate with each other, I noticed myself get aroused. I pull down my pants, and start touching myself in time with their love making.

When they were done so was I. That was one of the lowest moments of my life. I didn’t enjoy it, in fact I hated it. I hated myself, and I hated Chelsea. She was just doing that because she knew I would watch! No. I know she doesn’t know about the cameras, even if she does suspect them due to my personality before the bombs dropped.

I don’t come out of the lab for days. I don’t eat for that entire time either. I just waste away for a while. I just intently stare at the coding of the AI. I drink the water provided by the system, but that is only because I made the system refuse to work for me if I don’t have at least an adequate amount of water.

Loop 9 Year 14 Day 86

There is a knock on the door to the lab. I open it up, and a teenaged girl gasps when she sees me. I used to be chubby when I first entered the vault, but now I am barely more than a skin wrapping for bones. I look down at myself. I really do look bad. I am dirty from lack of showering, and my bones are showing. The teenaged girl screams as she runs away. An envelope drops from her grasp as she goes.

It’s an invitation to a wedding. Whose wedding? I think to myself. Then I look at the names. Chelsea and some guy! I let myself remember the horror of what had happened. I don’t go. I angrily lock myself back in the room.

Loop 9 Year 18 Day 165

I barely eat anymore. Just enough to keep me alive. I have long since had the robots hook me up to various machines I’ve made out of their brethren. It keeps track of my bodily needs. It periodically gives me various injects of foods in liquid form. It gives me water when I need it, and carries the waste away when I need it to. Basically it takes care of all of my needs. I only focus on making the AI.

By this point I am done reading every scrap of data I have on creating Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Intelligence, Pseudo-Intelligence, and any other type of life creating crafts you can think of. I’ve repurposed some robots to be able to interact with correct phrases given a certain situation, but they are just acting out a code. They can’t change their own coding or way of thinking.

Today I watched the past week on the cameras on fast forward. I have experimented a bit, and noticed something. By watching something at 24 times speed, I can perfectly recall the details. The cameras don’t have speakers, but I can’t recall sound that fast anyway. The quickest is about 10 times.

I don’t understand the videos as I watch, but as soon as they are done I am able to digest the information my brain has processed. It is a great talent to have. I watch the public/private channels. I have a secret button I push to flip my workroom wall, into a large amount of television screens. There are a total of 50. Which is exactly the amount of cameras in the rooms, bathrooms, and game rooms. Those are the public/private rooms. The security rooms are everything that must have clearance to enter.

I notice something that happened yesterday. Greg, the loser that married Chelsea, seems to have had a power manifest. There was a leak in the pipes that transferred the energized APG. His kid was about to put some of the APG that dripped on the floor, into her mouth.

As soon as the kid reaches for the gel a giant arc of electricity shoots towards her. Greg stuck out his hand as he yelled, ‘NOOO!’. I don’t think it will do any good, until I see what happens next. Greg actually manages to pull the electricity towards him. As soon as it comes in contact with him, it dissipates.

Hold on! That was enough electricity to fry a bear into a crisp! Now I’m not saying I’m disappointed that he didn’t die, but I wouldn’t have been sad if he had.

I have the ‘AI’ I’ve been working on take control of one of the robots. The robotic AI finds Greg, and confronts him. The robot grabs him, but he sends several sparks of electricity at it, frying some of the circuits. Nice choice in guys Chelsea. I thought to myself in a sarcastic voice.

I sigh as I put on my gas mask. Ever since the second Loop I’ve outfitted this place with a mega-failsafe method. It shoots pure sleeping gas into every chamber but the food factory. I continue making the gas shoot out for about four minutes. It would have been ok if it was just a few seconds, but I wanted to make sure. I can shoot the stuff for about week total anyway.

After I am sure everyone else is asleep, I send some robots to pick Greg up, and have the ‘AI’ fool the camera in the president’s office into thinking that it was a gas leak. When Greg arrives, I have him put on a special table. The table is made entirely out of stone. He is not in the main room with the electronics, he is in a faraday cage I specially built for myself.

The faraday cage stops any sort of wave, even electricity, from going out into the word. It also stops anything from going into the room. At least as long as the door is shut. I give the command to tie him to the table then leave. After the bots transport the stone slab into the faraday cage, they tie Greg to it, and leave.

I wait for about a week. I set a reminder on the computer, and intentionally lock the fact that I have someone locked in my faraday cage, away. That way I don’t have any pangs of consciousness.

Loop 9 Year 18 Day 172

By the first week the people of the vault demand to look around my room to make sure he isn’t here. Chelsea believes I killed him. I allow them to enter, and they don’t find anything. Why would they, I didn’t do anything.

I continue my study of the ‘AI’.

Loop 9 Year 18 Day 193

It’s been four weeks since I locked Greg up. I only remember this after the reminder on the computer goes off. I unseal the information, and sure enough it’s right. I decide to go pay little Gregy a visit. He should be dead by now. I feel bad that I killed a man, but it was already done. I can’t change it now.

I can’t stand up on my own at this point. I have my personal robot push me into the room with the body. After I go in, I notice the foul smell. The body has already started to decompose. I hurry and put on the garb the robot has prepared for me.

Using the robot as my hands, I dissect the body. I am looking for any irregularities from normal human bodies. Everything seems normal. After having the robot dissect every part of the body, I tell it to take me back to the main room. I take a sample of the blood with us.

I have the robot look for anything remarkable in the blood. Everything seems normal. There is nothing that the robot can see. The DNA is a perfect example of a double Helix. It’s not even so perfect as to be questionable.

Finding nothing wrong, I have the robot take the body through the secret exit and dispose of it. I make sure that the cameras watching that area are changed by the AI. That way nothing will come back to bite me.

After finding nothing wrong, I do get interested though. What is it that gives us our powers? Why do only those that are immune to the irregular’s disease get powers? Why the hell am I not an irregular!?

Thinking back on it I realized it was just under 14 years in loop 8 that I turned. What does it mean that I’m not turning yet?

I carefully think about the events that led to my turning last time. The obvious answer is that no irregulars had shown up this time. That would make sense if the irregulars had any contact with me whatsoever. Nothing about them, not their breath not their bodies, not even their charred remains, got into my vault at that time.

How was it then, that I had contracted the disease. I replayed the memories, but nothing substantial comes up. I am having a hard time actually coming up with something that would make sense. I have nothing to test it on. Come to think of it, I don’t technically know how the virus spreads.

All I know is that a large part of the population was infected very quickly. It was most likely transferred by touch or was airborne. But if it was airborne then I had an immunity to it. If it was on touch, well I didn’t touch any of them.

It could be that it was airborne and had a bunch of strains, like the flu. If that was the case then the problem is that nothing gets in the bunker unless the door is open. Even then, everything is sanitized, and decontaminated multiple times. Plus I hadn’t had the doors open since long before the zombies came. I didn’t open the until the day I died either.

The incubation period could just be ridiculously long, but then there is no way of knowing when I got it. After a bit more testing, the robot declares that Greg is free from any discoverable diseases. So there is no way I can figure out why this one random guy got a power? I think to myself.

I start to go through the information I have on all things biology related. As soon as a learn a topic, I seal it away. My learning speed is insane. I can view an entire week of video in only seven hours after all.