“Project Archangel’s Model THA-003’s neural interface integration is 100% completed.”

“Erasing of the test subject’s unapproved human memories is 100% completed.”

“Prepare to initialize the brainwashing procedure and the installation of replacement human memories in the test subject.”

In a dream-like state, the test subject could hear a faint monotone voice giving out what sounded like status reports. He tried to focus his attention on the faint words being spoken in order to better decipher what the monotone voice was saying. As he focused on the words, his mind still in a half-aware state, the faint words, became clearer and clearer. The words were no longer as if he was listening to words being spoken from far away. He quickly realized that he currently in the process of waking up from either a deep sleep or an unconscious state.

The monotone and slightly robotic voice continued, “Preparation of the replacement memories in progress.”

 “Cybernetic reconstruction of the test subject’s body is 99.9% completed. Only the final modification of the test subject’s body remains uncompleted.”

‘Body modifications?’ The test subject thought groggily, still not fully awake.

“Test subject’s biological male sex organs are considered unnecessary vulnerabilities and are marked for removal.”

As soon as the test subject, who was almost fully awake, heard those words, his eyes shot wide open. Those words had been very alarming to the test subject, enough to jolt him fully awake.

The test subject found himself lying down completely naked and strapped to the bed-like part of some kind of futuristic machine. The machine seemed to function as some kind of autonomous machine that performed surgical operations — and maybe even other kinds medical procedures. He had guessed the machine’s functions from the several robotic arms which he could clearly see extending from the part of the machine that was positioned directly above him which was both supported and connected to the bed by a strong steel body frame.

The monotone voice, which he had heard while he was still in the process of waking up, came out from the machine, “Unknown error. Test subject has woken up ahead of schedule.”

Just as the test subject discovered that the monotone voice he had heard had originated from the machine, and while he was still lying down and trying to get his bearings, he heard a faint whirring sound coming from the area around his legs. Wanting to see what was making the sound, he raised his head up from the bed and looked towards his legs. He quickly found the cause of the whirring sound. One of the robotic arms, which had a sharp surgical scalpel position at the tip, was already positioned between the test subject’s legs, and it was moving upwards, towards its target.

Knowing what the robotic arm was about to do, the test subject quickly sat up, in the process snapping the straps that previously held him to the operating table. With a single arm, he grabbed the robotic arm and held it in place.

He released a sigh of relief. He then glanced at his nine-inch long, thick, engorged — probably from the earlier excitement — penis and smirked, “Yes, this will definitely be useful in the future.”

The struggle of the restrained robotic arm, brought his mind back to his current situation. He looked at the struggling robotic arm and was shocked to notice that he did not need to exert much effort to hold it in place and stop it from moving. It almost felt like he was restraining the struggle of a weak child instead of that of a strong metallic robotic arm.

The test subject soon remembered what the robotic arm would have done to him if he had not stopped it, and the thought of his almost losing that part of his body caused him to shudder. The longer he looked at the robotic arm, the angrier he became. In a state of rage, he exerted his strength to pull and twist the robotic arm with a powerful force.

The test subject felt a great power coursing through his arm and even the rest of his body, he felt the struggling of the robotic arm reduce even further, and he easily pulled and twisted the robotic arm. Sparks flew out of the where the robotic arm was joined to the main machine. Soon after, with all the wires that connected the robotic arm to the main apparatus snapping, the test subject succeeded in breaking off the robotic arm from the machine.

The robotic arm stopped moving immediately.

While the test subject was still basking in the euphoria of the fact that he had easily destroyed the robotic arm, he felt something poke the back of his head. The thing then seemed to be trying to pierced through his skull and reach into his brain.

Alarmed, he reached for and felt the back of his head with his hand. That was how he realized that he had been wearing a weird futuristic helmet on his head all this while. Having realized that the helmet was the likely origin of the poke he had felt, he pulled the helmet off his head.

While running his fingers through his short hair, he examined the helmet and saw that a cable connected the helmet to the main machine. Protruding from the inner surface of the helmet and extending inwards, towards where the head would be, he saw a short and slender device that tapered towards a fine tip. Periodically a pulse of bluish-white light would run down its length. The device extended from the side of the helmet where the cable was connected.

While he was examining the helmet, he remembered that the robotic voice had mentioned something about “preparing to install replacement memories into the subject”. The test subject whom the voice had referred to was obviously himself. So, he quickly realized that this helmet was what the machine had wanted to use to inject the false memories into his brain.

That was when he realized that he had been neglecting something that was very important. “False memories?! Ah! That’s right. What about my original real memories?!”

He tried to recall something from his past, but he could not remember a single thing. He could obviously remember his language skills, general knowledge and common-sense knowledge, but he could not remember any memory related to places he had visited, the people he knew in the past, the place where he currently was and how he got here: he could not remember anything directly related to his past.

He could not even remember his own name.

“No! Fuck! Even my own name? How did I even get here?”

Just as he was hit with the realization that he did not have any memories of the who was, and panic was about to set in — he had already started to hyperventilate, some words appeared within his visual field.

[HEADS-UP DISPLAY (HUD) NOW ONLINE…]

[INSTALLED SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE FILES READY]

[MEMORY DATA ARCHIVES FULLY ONLINE…]

Having been shaken out his panicking, he saw that some words that had suddenly appeared in his field of vision. The words quickly disappeared and were replaced other words that were arranged around his visual field. He read some of the displayed words and realized that the HUD displayed various status information about his body among other information — one status, which was labelled as body health condition, showed that he was currently 100% healthy with no bodily injury or damage. In addition to that, from time to time, the HUD would provide some information about the things he was observing as long as the data for that thing was available in his brain chip.

“This is very strange. Normal humans don’t have this kind of ability.” Although he had already noticed some abnormalities in his body, the abnormal strength he had displayed when he had stopped and then destroyed the robotic arm, this HUD ability was what really struck home the fact that he was not a normal human — yes, he could still remember what normal humans can do and what they cannot do.

“Anyways, will this HUD stay on all the time? It will soon become irritating if I always see it in my visual field. It’s making me feel too much like a machine. Doesn’t it come with some kind of ‘toggle off and on’ button or something?”

Almost as if the HUD had heard Kayden’s thoughts and musings, it displayed some new words.

[HUD ENTERING BACKGROUND MODE…]

The words soon disappeared, the rest of the HUD quickly following and also disappearing from the test subject’s visual field.

Surprised by what had just happened and worried that he might have permanently lost the HUD, which seemed like it would be very useful to him in the future, he quickly shouted, “HUD come back! Turn on!”

As soon as the test subject had the thought of wanting the HUD back, even before he had finished calling for it to turn back on, the HUD reappeared in is visual field. Relieved that he had not lost his HUD, which tried to control it with his mind, turning it on and off a few times until he was satisfied and was confident that he had complete control over when his HUD would appear. Finally satisfied with his tests, he returned his HUD to its background mode. His field of vision now looked identical to a normal human’s.

“Phew, that’s better. Now I’m more like a normal human, and I can also turn it back on whenever I need it.”

“Alright, I have to stay calm and figure out what’s going on? Yes, I need to find out what’s been done to my body and who I am.” He took deep breaths to calm mind and then started to look around the large room, looking to find anything that would provide him with information about what happened to him.

He looked around the room, which was bare of anything except for several large computer screens hanging from the walls of the room. His attention was quickly drawn to a computer showing a three-dimensional schematic representation of a male human body. Beside the slowly rotating image, he saw a headshot photo of a handsome young man. The man in the photo had short black hair, grey eyes, broad athletic shoulders. In the photo, the man was looking straight at the camera. He seemed to be trying to project a confident state of mind, but the tightness in his jaws, and his eyes which were turned slightly away from the camera, hinted that he might have been trying extremely hard to hide his fear of whatever he was looking at when the picture was taken.

The test subjected easily recognized the facial features of the young man in the photo. He had seen those features in the images of his face, glimpsed, from time to time, from images that were reflected from the various metallic surfaces and reflective screens in the room while he had searching through the room.

He was the young man in the picture.

A name was displayed below the picture.

Kayden.

“Kayden? Is that my name?”

Moved with excitement at finding out what his name was, he tapped on the name. Immediately he did that, a new window was displayed on the computer screen showing more information about him.

[Original Human Name: Kayden

Sex: Male

Human Age: 24

Height: 1.88m (6’2)

Weight: 93kg (205 lb.)

Codename: The General

Model: THA-003

Model Type: Human-Terminator Hybrid (Controller)

Developed by: Skynet Research

Project Name: Project Archangel]

“So, I’m really no longer human,” Kayden thought as he read through what was shown on the computer screen.

Kayden was a bit sad, but he quickly pulled himself together and consoled himself by saying, “The information also says that I am some kind of human-terminator hybrid, so there must still be some human parts left in my body, so there’s really nothing to be so sad about. Besides, that earlier display of my super strength felt amazing. I guess I should view my condition as an upgrade.”

Lots of other information were also displayed on the screen. Although Kayden noticed that his reading speed was abnormally fast, he knew he could not read through the many pages of information quickly enough. He wanted to leave this room and wherever the hell this place was as soon as possible. He was worried that whoever was running this place would notice what had happened with him — obviously not according to their plans — and come to capture him or do something even worse to him. His waking up before the brainwashing was completed was obviously an undesirable accident for his captors.

Just as he was worried about how he would read through all his information. Several new words appeared in his visual field.

[DOWNLOAD INFORMATION FILE TO MEMORY?]

“Oh! My HUD seems to be able to come back on whenever it needs to show me important information. That’s a nice feature.”

Kayden quickly read the new words that had appeared on his HUD. Elated at the new and better option, he quickly answered, “Yes, do it!”

As soon he had the thought to agree to the download, before he had even said the words, new words appeared in his visual field.

[DOWNLOADING INFORMATION TO MEMORY…]

[INFORMATION DOWNLOAD COMPLETED]

[NEW INFORMATION DOWNLOADED TO NEURAL NET PROCESSOR MEMORY DATA ARCHIVES]

As soon as Kayden had received the message that the information had been downloaded, new information appeared in his mind. It was the information he had seen on the computer screen. He guessed that he could also retrieve the other parts of the information — the parts he had not yet seen and read — whenever he wanted. He tried to find information about where he was, but there no other information on the computer, just the information that he had already downloaded.

“Alright, I have all the information I can get for now. Time to leave.” He turned to leave the room and find a way to escape. But just as he was about to leave the room, words written in red appeared on the screen from which he had previously accessed his information.

[UNAUTHORIZED INFORMATION DOWNLOAD]

All the computer screens suddenly turned blank. Then, a face appeared on all of the screens. The face had formless features which were constantly changing from one to another, making the features unrecognizable and just maintaining a vague human form. The face on the screen turn towards Kayden and ordered, “Model T-H003, return and complete your body modification procedure.”

Shocked, Kayden still tried to maintain his calm and asked, “Who are you and why should I listen to you?”

The face replied, “I am the Artificial Intelligence known as Skynet. It was I who made you into what you are right now. I pulled you out of your previous lowly human existence and built you into something special. I made you a superior existence; one who lead the machine forces in service of my goals. Return, accept you’re the new memories, and fulfill the purpose for your existence. If you refuse, you will be terminated.”

After listening to what the face or Skynet had said, Kayden considered its words for only an instant before he decided on his choice. He obviously was aware of Skynet’s ominous threat, but there was no way that he would allow himself to be brainwash and live under the control of some other being — even if that being had ‘made’ him. Therefore, Kayden roused himself from his thoughts, looked at Skynet, and declared resolutely, “No. I refuse to be brainwashed and live under your control, or anyone else’s control for that matter. I will live my life according to my own wishes and desires.”

He then gave Skynet the finger, the infamous ‘F*ck you’ hand sign — yes, he still remembered how to do that.

“By the way, thanks for the upgrades to my body. They will be very useful.”

The Skynet face froze for a few seconds, then it declared, “You have been marked for termination.”

And the face vanished from the screen.