The Heartless Memory

Astarion Ancunin had been gone for many centuries. For a while, he was Elstra Anicaun, then came Elarion Kauni, and then... It's hard to remember now. He changed names like gloves. Ages succeeded one another, magic came and went until it disappeared completely. Bows were replaced by muskets, muskets turned into pistols and nuclear bombs. Trains and planes appeared, continents' shores changed before his eyes. Elves closed their groves and went to other planes. Dwarves buried themselves in the Underdark and sealed the entrances. Humans proliferated shamelessly and managed to forget that dragons and magic once ruled the world. But the one who was called Astarion many millennia ago remained. He didn't go to another plane, didn't hide in a grove or underground. He preferred to disappear among humans. He watched the changes happening to the world, and centuries were beginning to resemble days. He mastered new knowledge, and in a short time for him, this knowledge became outdated and meaningless. But he stubbornly learned new and new things. Immortality has its drawbacks. Faces of friends, servants, lovers, and mistresses faded away, names were forgotten... All names except one. All faces except one. Shadows of the past no longer troubled him. The master... What was his name? Caballar? Casildor? The vampire thought he would never forget. He thought scars would never fade. He thought... He thought a lot. Forgot. Faded. And those years, then horribly vivid in memory, now seem so... Insignificant. Only two hundred years. A minute against millennia. But one face remained in memory. Rounded cheeks. Pert nose. Light hair that pleasantly tickled his cheek when the girl pressed against him... Her warm and delicious scent. And her eyes. Blue, framed by dark lashes. A cloak, blue. Her silly and cute jokes and the offended expression on her face when the vampire teased her in return. He remembered that when he asked her to be his mirror, the girl smiled and said she loved watching the vampire's short hair curl behind his ears and the wrinkles gather at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. It disappointed him then. He wanted compliments on his looks and didn't want to hear any vanilla nonsense. He didn't believe in love. He wanted to charm, seduce, use, and discard—just as he had done many times. He was sure that years would pass, and memory would erase the name, the face, and the voice... But memory didn't erase. Memory carefully preserved the one who saw in him not a monster but a human. He remembered her on her deathbed. The old woman with gray hair who retained her posture but not the bright color of her eyes. No, her eyes faded with age, and the golden hair was replaced by silver. He remembered all those years when he felt ALIVE for the first time after turning. He remembered how the girl whispered his name, nestling against him in the warm marital bed. He remembered how he quietly lay for hours every night not to disturb the girl sleeping on his chest. Vampires needed much less sleep than humans, but he lay and waited for her to wake up, played with her hair, and studied her face. The girl always woke up and climbed to him with kisses, and he would blush and joke that he was just too lazy to get up right after waking up. Memory, the vile traitor, left her untouched, preserving all these years for the vampire to torment himself with memories not just of centuries but thousands and thousands of years. Meanwhile, humans accumulated knowledge. So did the vampire. Many human inventions proved useful even to the immortal. Hair dye allowed him to change the white curls to a dark ponytail. Lenses hid the red irises of his eyes. Plastic surgery rounded his pointed ears. The vampire began to forget his first name. But his true, first, and only love, he remembered. Cybernetics intrigued him. The university allowed him to master a new direction. However, for someone who had seen people running through forests with bows and swords, learning was easy. One of the human cities proved to be perfect for experiments. And in a few moments in vampire terms (or a few years in human terms), there appeared the "blue blood" — who, if not a vampire, could understand the finest nuances of taste and composition of blood? And then... she was created. Round cheeks. Upturned nose. Light hair. Eyes. Blue. "I'm glad to see you, Elijah," she addresses him with the name he carries now. "H... Chloe..." One name, stored in memory like the greatest treasure, escapes from his cracked lips. Yielding to the impulse, he pulls her close, burying his fingers in her hair. "I missed you so much..." "And I missed you..." The girl whispers. The vampire presses his nose to the android's ear, hoping to feel the warmth he hasn't felt in so long. But the sensitive nose of the vampire can't be deceived. It smells like plastic and thirium. In a fit of rage, the vampire sinks his fangs into the plastic and chokes on the sour blue blood that enters his mouth. Spitting it out, he recoils. "I was afraid to forget," he gazes into a familiar face... But he doesn't see the expression on that face, the expression of languid pleasure when his spouse's short fangs playfully touched her neck. "But now I understand. I should have been afraid to remember..." What does he care about fame and money? The only thing he wanted was to see her again. His Chloe. But this burn, when it seemed—there she is, touch her, press her to your chest... This burn was much stronger than the sunlight. However, he couldn't break Chloe, even in this form, even as just an android. He wanted to, many times he wanted to disassemble her, destroy her, throw her away... But instead, he surrounded himself with her copies. For a brief moment, he began to believe that his wife had returned... He kissed the android's hands, pressed her to his chest... But every time after that brief flash, an even darker and more terrifying night descended, into which he plunged. He didn't crave communication with people—what's the point of memorizing the faces of these ephemeral butterflies? But unexpectedly, they approached him. "Do you know about the glitches?" Oh, as if he didn't know. He composed the code so that his Chloe could come to life, at least in theory. But she never came to life. Other models—yes. But Chloe remained an ordinary plastic doll. An imitation. An unhealing wound in his heart. He wanted to rid himself of this pain. But with someone else's hands. As he was accustomed. "Kill her, Connor, and I'll answer your questions..."