Page 381 of Light Leech

“Are you a Beacon?”

He looked at me and pleaded for water as if I would have any more mercy than her.

“What is a Predecessing Homunculus ?” I asked.

“A horrific attempt to resurrect the dead. I’ve seen it once. Do you remember Minney Jar?”

“I’m not that into older music, but I know him. Is he still alive?”

“Oh, he died, but they tried to bring him back. He did a solo tour a year ago I think.”

“Right, and a lot of people complained that his body was too augmented to make him the real thing?”

She nodded. “It was obvious to anyone that he was more and than human at that point. Anton went over this with me because he was considering investing, but it crashed out. I thought the market was dead, but apparently not.”

“Was Minney a thing like this?”

“They tried to cover it up, but yes. Anton showed me because he had some industry friends that warned him not to invest when the ‘resurrected’ star was nothing more than a mechanical suit of a failed attempt at a human clone.”

“Did they clone him before his death?”

“No. Did you ever see any of those old mindshows where they tried to revive extinct species by using their remnants? They used blood preserved in ancient mosquitoes, but with how far modern tech has come, they figured out how to do it with bones. They’ve done it with a couple of species close to extinction or those who recently went extinct, but in theory it should have been easy with humans.”

“But they’ve already cloned humans.”

“Species and things like twins, yes, but this was a way that pulled… I don’t remember all the neuroscience, but they could bring back the same person. Same vocal cords, bones, memories, all from bones.”

“But the bones didn’t play out for the body?”

She gestured to the homunculus. “Obviously, but if what I heard was true, they were able to recreate a portion of the brain, resurrecting memories from that being that once existed.”

“Hippo…” The homunculus didn’t have enough breath to finish its thought.

Naoma looked at me. I nodded. She fed the dripping tube into his mouth.

He spit it out.

“Ungrateful–” She stopped talking as he pointed to an open port in the side of his chest. She connected it and something within the machine turned to help the water flow.

The homunculus took a deep breath. “Hippocampus.”

Naoma snapped her fingers. “Yes! That was what they could recreate.”

“Arginine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, and cholest-4-ene-3-one.” He took a second to breathe as color returned to his skin, though he was still just as pale as me. “Used to create a mind from remnants.”

“Why talk now?” I asked.

“All I ever wanted was pleasure.” Breath. “I am a simple man. One who knows how to get what he needs. Everything I had has fallen into your hands. This,” he breathed as he glanced at the tube Naoma had connected, “is euphoric, orgasmic, and peaceful all in one. Without it, my existence is suffering.”

I scoffed.

He looked up at me.

“That simple? You do what you do just because you want to? All of this hedonism with your elite ‘friends’ is because you care more about your pleasure than anyone else’s?”

“How do you worship your God?”

I couldn’t recall saying anything to him about faith. “What does that matter?”