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    PROLOGUE:
    I am Mixer, originally named Neve, a 52 channel, over-100-year-old mixing console near the end of its run, but see, I wasn’t always this way. In fact, I used to be like you; a walking, breathing heap of flesh with parents, family, a girlfriend at school, and all the other drama you humans seem to take a liking to. I learned very quickly, however, that such things would have no relevance to my purpose of existence, and nor do they matter at all.

    It all started with my fourteenth birthday party at the local skate rink in Tucson, Arizona. There was a man that I noticed standing in the far back corner. He wasn't a member of our party, but we all thought he was just a janitorial employee, judging by the stained coveralls he wore, and the mop he held clutched in his thick hands. We paid him no heed, and went on with our festivities.

    CHAPTER 1: In the Beginning...
    TWO MONTHS LATER...

    I woke in my bedroom to the loud, piercing squelch of my alarm clock. Hitting the sleep button, I rolled out of my sheets, and made my way downstairs to retrieve my laundry. Two police officers stood in our living room, questioning my father about the whereabouts of my mother.

    My mother had gone missing sometime during the night. The stress of the situation wracked me, and the information the police spoke of seemed surreal. I wasn't sure what, if anything, I could do. I had seen this in movies before. We were going to get a VHS tape of my mother tied up, being prodded with a taser gun with a creepy voice belonging to a black-clad man asking for ransom.

    My hopes were lost when, three months later, the police gave up their search. Something within me told me to go look for her. Stupid, yes? Well, I was young and relatively stupid. I packed up all my things that I'd need like a change of clothing, a blanket, and some food, then hit the road. I didn't know or realize just what I had until I lost it. I swear I will never diss a homeless man. The first night out away from home, I slept in a pile of garbage. Luckily, it was in an alleyway behind a bedding mart, and there was an entire matttress and pillow set waiting there for me. That mattress seemed like a cloud after walking what seemed like a hundred miles in the scorching Arizona sun. Regardless of how tired, or overheated I had become, it all had a greater purpose... I was just unaware of what that purpose was.

    On the fifth night, I returned to my sleeping place behind the bedding mart, only to hear a man's voice. I scurried over behind the dumpster, and watched through a rust-laden hole in its side. He looked to stand almost seven feet tall, and was dressed in stained coveralls, carrying the sleeping silhouette of a woman in his thick, calloused hands. The man crouched down and laid the woman on the very same mattress I had slept on for the past four nights. As the moonlight bounced from the woman's pale skin and into my eyes, I realized two things. The woman was dead, and the woman was my mother.

    I screamed for help in a shrill, half-hitting-puberty voice that carried on the wind like sand. The man stood up instantly from his kneeling position, and glared toward the dumpster. He marched powerful strides toward me, and lifted me by the collar of my shirt. His only words were to tell me that he had to eliminate all eye-witnesses. Pulling a thick hunting knife from his belt, the man stabbed me four times, twice in each leg. He marched off, leaving me there to die. After what seemed like hours, I passed out from bloodloss.

    I was dead... but something miraculous happened. I woke up, and looked around. The pain in my legs was gone, and in fact... everything had gone numb.

    I scanned the area. It seemed that I was on the top bunk of a hospital bed... but hospital beds never had bunks. The room was palely lit, and for some reason, I couldn't smell anything. I felt like I was sitting on a very tall shelf. That's when I tried to get up. I couldn't move. Was this hell? Was this the punishment received for running away, and not leaving a note? I worked up the inner gut to try to move... to try to find out where exactly I was. I lurched forward. It was an oddly smooth movement; like when the gas pedal of a car is tapped lightly, and held. I moved at this towering height. My eyesight was different. It was blurry, having no better quality than a cheap home video from the eighties... but somehow, I could still navigate. I could, in a sense, hear where everything was. My sense of sound had become like radar to my brain. As I began to make sense of my surroundings, I realized that I no longer saw the brown fleshy tip of my nose in front of my eyes, but instead, saw the broad, dial-laden control panel of a massive mixing console that now appeared to be my face. I stood there, both frightened and amazed at what I had evidently become that I barely noticed the ringing of footsteps beyond a door to my left. An old man entered who stood about half my height. I only noticed him when he spoke, "Good morning, Benjamin." I turned. He looked to be in his late seventies, a pudgy, crotchety old man with thick spectacles and a bald head.

    "Wh-..." I started to speak, but realized that not only had my entire physical structure changed, but my voice had as well. "What happened?" My tone was that of a low bass singer, and I had lost all ability to enunciate consonants properly. The man looked toward the ground, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose until their lenses pressed into the wrinkled, sagging flesh around his eyes.

    "Come with me." He spoke quietly in his gentle, warm tone that would make anybody want to come with him. He had a certain feel about him that told me he was safe. I lurched forward, and followed him clumsily, ramming into the doorframe before realizing that I had to turn sideways to fit through. "Benjamin, I had to save your life." It wasn't an instant before he finished that sentence that all of the memories of my mother's pale, dead face came back to me. I backed up, and had only one further question I was willing to ask.

    "What am I?" I asked quietly, realizing that all of the sliders and dials on my control panel shifted their positions to create intonation and fluctuation in my voice. The man sighed, and took me by the thick, metal slabs of my left hand. Three of which I had on each hand, tipped with black enamel. My hands resembled large, three pronged, electrical plugs, and were the size of the man's head, if not larger. He led me to a room down the hallway where an array of computer equipment was set up that took up the entire space. I tried to focus my vision enough to figure out what all the equipment was, but my attempts failed.

    Again, the man spoke, "Allow me to explain. My name is Timothy Clarke, I am a specialist in cybernetics, quantum string theory, and essence transfer technology. I discovered a way to move your quantum consciousness, or the strings of your brain, from their fleshy casing to the artificial central processing unit you have now. You are the world's first human to be fully transformed into a machine. However, I did this to save your life. I found you eight months ago in an alleyway next to another body that was already dead. You were still breathing. I brought you back here, and tried to nurse you back to health, but you had a serious infection in your wounds that was going to kill you... so I took a drastic step, and performed my new procedure to save your life."

    Eight months. I had been out of it for eight months. What had gone on in that eight months? Where was my family? I had so many questions, but somehow, I couldn't conjure the words to ask them. Timothy brought up a file on a large screen mounted to the south wall of the room. "Benjamin, as of right now, you are no longer Benjamin Li Javhri," he spoke as he began to type, "you are now Neve Lee Behringer ASMX-5203A. I am forced to change your name because your family, and everybody around believes you to be dead."

    Timothy brought up the front page of the local newspaper with a headline reading, "MOTHER AND SON MURDERED IN TUCSCON BACKSTREET," I backed up at the sight of it, and realized what Timothy had done. After moving the 'strings' of my brain to my CPU, he placed my body back in the alleyway. Timothy then brought up a video clip. It was a video of my funeral.

    "I do not have to see this," I spoke quietly, turning my broad self away slightly. Timothy turned it off, and walked up to me, looking upward into my thick, glassy optical lenses near the top of my 8'6" height.

    "I am terribly sorry, Neve... you cannot go back to the Javhris."

    "Mr. Clarke! They are my family! They will not! ... " My sentence faded as I realized what type of man my father was, and what type of people my siblings were. They would never accept me like this. I, for one, had lost all chances of procreating, and that was a key element to a Hindu family. Even though my father was a strict Hindu, and strongly believed and tought that reincarnation was real, he would never believe that his only son was reincarnated into something that could not reproduce.

    I reluctantly, but rather instantly, began to view Timothy as my new father-figure. He explained to me what exactly I was, and what everything that I now consisted of was for.

    "You are a sound system. You are able to move by a cabinet-like mode of motorized transport wired into your CPU. Your hands are not only hands, but a means of self-defense. They double as high powered tasers. The fluffy oblong objects mounted on either side of your control panel are high-sensativity shotgun microphones that act as your ears. Your antennas are a com system, this allows you to tune into any CB channel should you find yourself in trouble. Your speakers are also a self-defense mechanism. Your voice now has enough power to blow down a building." Timothy went on and on.

    My fourteen year old boy mind began to think, "Maybe this is not so bad. I'm like an X-Men. I got powers. I'm a superhero." That feeling didn't last long, however, when I was constantly reminded by my computer-like memory of my great loss, and the thought of never seeing my family again.