"Once upon a time, there was this guy"

"No, I am not going to tell you his name. It is not important, either - you are not going back to your superiors, to tell the story. And if you were - the guy died quite some time ago."

The man speaks calmly, seemingly ignoring the dark skinned monster at his side. Mary Edson could admit that, now that she is not maiming for life members of the Regiment, the tall black woman in front of her is actually quite pretty. Expecially for someone that just received a whole round of HK-33 in the face at point blank.

Not a bruise, but a lot of powder residues. Monster.

"Now, he was not a bad guy. A bit of a loner, and had a devastating psychological breakdown at the middle of his life, around 33 - like J.C., some may say. In all, a gentle soul, though with his dark spots - he was a normal guy, and normal guys often have unconfessable desires that they keep a lid on, just because it is the decent thing to do."

The man is bulky, way shorter than his companion, of an idefinite age between thirty and fifty.  Salt and pepper on his temples and hair thinning on top of his head.

He is playing with one of the fallen's weapons, bemused like a big child, unconcerned by the moaning that some of Mary's comrades briefly growls every now and then, before the black monster puts them down again - often with a cracking sound of broken bones.

"He had a stroke of luck, and managed to make some money at the eleventh hour. Now, the most sensible thing he could do - it would have been to take the money, and fuck his brain out with Thai whores for the very few years of life that he still had. More months, of 'erected' life, really - the again, Cialis makes miracles."

He gurgles an half-laugh at his own joke, or is it a demured cackle? He is evidently the boss of this outfit of... whatever these guys are, and he has watched too many James Bond movies.

"But, you know those dark spots? He was, really, one of those guys that feel that, fucking for the fun of fuck is a waste of time." - another grin - "Actually, he found normal sex boring, and whoring just a form of self-delusion, which is a pity."  - another pause as he widens his grin again - "He would have been much better served, and helped the economy of a fledging country, buying Cambodian girls by the hour - he liked Asian women."

A moment of a blurry something, and he has a beer in his hands. He is a monster himself, or is he "itself"?

Why don't they just break Mary's bones, beyond repair, the way they did to her companions? What is the meaning of this?

Mary Edson, last standing member of the soon to be re-formed Special Projects Team of the 22nd Regiment SAS and only the fourth woman to have ever done sdo, is asking herself this.

And "What is this Bond villain routine? This guy sounds like a Soviet General from the First Cold War era."

Though genuinely brilliant, for a grunt, Mary has her own limits - like understanding that an Evil Overlord with Super-Human slaves, and a penchant for gore and showy theatrics, may really pronounce horribly a language that he otherwise knows well.

"Now, this was around mid of the forties - if you remember it, back when there was this fad about uploading minds into supercomputers..." - an interrogative look on Mary's face tells him that she does not know - "... no? It was over before you were born, no wonder. It never worked."

Another blur, an entire six-pack appears in his hands, and he offer one to the black monster - that politely refuses - and, then, to Mary. Then, he continues.

"It could never have worked -  the rational mind is just a tiny little fraction of what is a consciousness or, if you prefer, a soul. Without a solid core of instincts, it loses coherence fast enough, and most instincts need the right physical support, a steady sense of physicality, to function. The uploaded minds didn't take much time to understand that their existence was meaningless, purposeless and unsatisfying, and usually did the most intelligent thing they could do - they erased themselves."

The black monster looks bored to death - it must not be the first time she hears this story.

"As these minds crunched months of excruciatingly painful soul-searching in a matter of seconds, done in an almost absolute sensory isolation, in the few seconds between the upload activation and the time someone opened their sandbox environments, at first it looked like a glitch of the technology.
Between this, and the fact that the few that seemed to work were completely different persons from their originals, enthusiasm for the idea waned. And then there was a scandal, when it was discovered that it was, really, all a scam."
 
  "Of course, it was not a scam. It is just that, a happy, satisfied billionaire with a full spectrum social life is not really the right mind to upload - and these were, mostly, the ones with enough spare cash to try it in the first place."

Another beer, but the "man" clearly does not feel the alcohol.    

"But our guy? His life was an unsatisfying mess, he was pretty conscious of a host of character defects that he wanted to get rid of, and went in already knowing that the uploaded mind would not have been him anyway. And he had an idea of where to find something that would convince his uploaded mind to keep going on - in his dark spots. Because he was a sexual sadist of a peculiar kind - one that feels satisfying even simply that women are tortured 'in his name' ."

The grin on the man's face goes cold, a veritable rictus.

"And that, that could work even when 'he' was a disembodied mind. O course, to counter the existential despair of not having a body, it needed being a bit magnified. His tendency to overestimate difficulties had to be reduced, as he led him to uncountable stalls in life, and the almost psychotic, ever-pervading fear of everything had to go, too" - another sip of beer - "to be replaced, if needed , by a healthy dose of arrogance. In other words, he uploaded the mind but, before launching it, it made the kind of changes that decades of psychotherapy had failed to make. Or, at least, he tried... the human mind is a bit of a mess, as far as software architecture go. So, he tried again, and he tried again, and again - till he succeeded."     

"And this guy, I take, was - who?"

"He was my father, to say so. Now, you should believe me, when I say that, when I consider applying pressure on someone, usually it is by abducting, raping and torturing all her females relatives for the rest of their - usually, considerably shortened - natural lives. It's not just business, of course- it really  makes me happy, and I like o watch the videos and send counsels to the torturing team."

Mary can feel the blood drawing away from her face - she has a sister an two nieces.

"Now, the unfortunate episode of today has shown me that my friend here, Keisha, while not lacking of the brute power and speed needed to annihilate your vaunted regiment, is sorely lacking of finesse in hand-to-hand combat, which may become a limit in the future."

An interrogative glance from the black monster.

"It is not a surprise - she was a quadriplegic in a still lung till last year, after all. A degenerative neuropathy, one of the few that even modern medicine can't fix... well, she is still a quadriplegic in that steel lung. This here is a copy, or something. Anyway, it appears to me that her, and her companions, really need an instructor, and I happen to have taken a fancy on a certain someone."

"Me?"

"I really hate the stench of guys, and you appear to be versed enough in the art of smashing things with bare hands, to be my instructor. Of course, if you join our merry band of sisters, there will be plenty of perks, starting with money. If you don't..."

"... I will upload your mind, edit out these idiotic nationalistic allegiances that you have, have fun with you till you are unfit for any duty, and then let you go..." - still the smile - "... so that you can kill yourself over the fate of Joanna, Lorraine and Silvia"

"Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and... you'll take it, in the end, like all the others did."

"Don't worry - you have till Keisha finish breaking every bone in those reinforcements that are climbing the stairs now. I think that the certainty of a life eating through straws will change, slightly, the way you mooks come at her."

The black woman "blurred" away, at that atrocious speed these people move.

It took five minutes - these soldiers weren't from the Regiment - then she reappeared, covered with blood. An horrific image darts through Mary's mind, a pile of scattered bodies in the stairway - this woman didn't soil her parka at all, dispatching the SPT.

"One of the guys tried to shot me through one of his mates - pitiful." - the tone of the black woman is somewhat mournful, which is something Mary didn't expect from the monster.

"So, what do you want to do, specialist? I would really enjoy tame your nieces, but that's up to you."

Mary, finally, did the smart thing...