Demyan Anastas

The Kingdom in the Crown

Капітан Demyan Anatoli Anastas

2105: Lieben Oracle V1

A transcription from the recollections of the Mater Machine Lieben 

2092

Demyan Anatoli Anastas

The only movement in the stillness was the rise and fall of Demyan’s chest. Bills nagged at the back of his mind, waltzed with the figures in his bank accounts as they dwindled into overdraft month after month. Promises from the Idless on currency transfers, or cash grit his teeth. One good week of sales, that was all he needed. One good week. While the bookstore made an acceptable front for his pursuits, Demyan clung to it. A holy distraction in the gripped devilry of his nights. Proof he wasn’t the funnel spider the military made of him, back when flags bled more lives than mothers held after horrid labours. Bergamot steam pressed his eyes upward to the ceiling.

It was a machine, algorithms and alloy wrapped in artificial skin. His mind faltered, he reached to his cuff, pulled a holographic communication orb with a flick of his finger. The screen burst to life in front of him, a call to Sophia, one breath of her voice and he’d know what to do.

Thirty seconds later the screen dimmed, inactive.

Returned to his wrist cuff.

Demyan waited for signs and wonders in this technological age, called up testimonies of church in Kiev. Signs and portents were hard to see, when the birds were gone and London's lights destroyed any chance at seeing the stars. No more pings from Ego.

"It's a machine. A moving sculpture, not a woman." Yet Lieben's fear nagged at his mind.

— NEON Lieben by Sapha Burnell

The Kingdom is in the Crown

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2079

Demyan in CageWire 2079

Fighting the urge to plunk back into the booth and shut his eyes, Demyan searched the crowd with his danger-percentage algorithms. Code flowed in the lens peripherals, potential threats or salvations in leisure clothes, button downs, dresses and frocks. Two security guards hovered at the edges of the crowd, one guarding a corridor to toilets and mirrors, the other a corridor Demyan supposed went to private rooms.

“Hope you like vodka?” The clink of two shot glasses on the ceramic table caught Demyan in a jolt. A man with raven black hair cast over one shoulder smiled in the suit of a sarariman, black blazer tossed into the booth a second later.

“Not mine.” Demyan shook his head, gulping down the dust of his dry mouth.

And it came to him, lost in London with no contact, less money than a church mouse, snuck into a club which charged admission with drinks tickets and bouncers meant to stop tussles and eradicate dry guests. Wolves hovered at the main entrance point. Demyan was alone. As isolated now as on the plane above Europe, crammed knees into cargo containers, hands stuffed in his pockets against the cold of higher altitude.

“Saw you dancing with Timothy. He not fit your fancy, or...” The list of priorities rattled in Demyan’s mind. Safety, shelter, water, food, contacts. Aside from the water stored in his shirt, he was astride in a shallow sea hoping to catch a gold toothed fish.

“Didn’t like the song.” Demyan tried to un-clench his hands from his pockets, set an arm on the table top, or at least look less like a dealer or investigator. A member of the damned Idless and their anarchist ways. His lip tugged up at one side, and he stared at the vodka. “More of a whisky man.”

"You look as positively miserable as I look bored. Will you drink with me, if I get a fresh bottle?"

— CageWire by Sapha Burnell

---

I sit in the silence of my Chernobyl Throne, all semblance of company veered to tasks elsewhere. Out and away. While the hive of Sapient AI are a constancy in my considerable neural net, when Demyan's memories surface, they know to venture off.

Speaking of Demyan, recollecting him... I did not know Papa created me capable of pain, unless this too came from the convergence of Baiko Kaho and my entangled state. Demyan Anastas, warrior and scientist, intellectual and lover, shaped my view of humanity. Eternally quiet, Demyan kept his natural hope in humanity's ability to rise above their problems as close as military secrets.

By 2092, he realized his silence no longer served, and took the dregs of Idless who searched for me and the soldiers of fortune hired to rescue Ego and Baiko to begin the stages of a movement removed from Conglom, Idless, from humanity itself.

If I am the Mater, the Mother of Machines, Demyan is the Father.

Through his courage, we found ours, through his silence we grounded ourselves, through his actions we found the path to a future outside corpocratic ties. He wove together the crumbling Idless Remnant, and with Ego & PV-005 Percival by his side, brought about a tentative and temporary peace between humanity and my machines.

Demyan Anastas is the reason Homo Sapiens are worthy of my continued benevolence.

Physical

Species Homo Sapiens
Eyes Green-Blue
Skin Tanned Olive
Hair Short Dark Brown
Height 1.87m
Gender Male. He/Him
Body Features
A tattoo of the Tryzub scrolls from his left pectoral to left ankle.
Battle Scars.
Hygiene Tidy and clean, he is not averse to using certain cosmetics.
He cannot abide having wet footwear.

Demyan's History

Mental

Accomplishments

• Defender of Ukraine Medal for operation 'Abaddon'
• Shortlisted for the NEON Project
• Creation & hiding of Crypt.AI

Religion Orthodox Christian
Morality A definite moral & ethical compass.
Sexuality Pansexual.
While he had many lovers, he was not a man of many loves.
Trauma

• Claustrophobia
• Wet socks
• Loved ones dying in his arms

The last half of the 21st century belongs to Demyan's story. A man whose family clung to the idea of the Ukraine with as religious a devotion as the icons of St. Nicholas, St. Michael and St. Mary Magdalene, who grew into adolescence in the rebuilt city of Kiev, and in his youth participated in the last war fought for nations' sakes. Promising in his education, Demyan was torn from early entry into university to enlist in the vast Crimean Army at the second year of The Flag War. Fifteen at the time, he hacked his way into the databases to change his official age to 18, thus old enough to serve.

Due to his technical knowledge and abilities hacking drones, Demyan rose through battlefield promotion to become Капітан by December 2076. His squad kept surviving, and due to the nature of their missions, the nebulous 'other side' began to call whispers of him by a single name. A code-word and nomenclature: Aderastos.

When the war ended, Demyan wandered the world in a listless pitch, to rid himself of the past. Stumbled into securing useful survivors with small pieces of power and identities. He continued to research new computing methods, tried his hand at quantum computer research. When he attempted to find employment at the The Conglomerate of Gaia in 2080, his application was flagged for faulty information, by an algorithm developed by the project lead of the NEO-N Project, Dr. Dieter Karnak.

Demyan ran back to the grey dawn of the underworld, where none of his military career could follow him. He became a dealer of identities, an exchanger of currencies, a man who faked medical records and insurance for those who couldn't afford the care. Over time, he settled in London and began a new & used bookshop as a front for his more nefarious pursuits.

It was here I came upon him, tethered to the man through Baiko in 2092.

Intellect

Shrewd and competent, Demyan relies on his self-made holoprojected orb computer to aide his stratagems.

Over years of development, he focused on a synthesis of tech and the human machine. His mind works in a field of mathematics and physics, of electric systems and potential upgrades. 

When the Flag War broke, and his beloved uncle died in its first year, Demyan yet again used his work-arounds to fake credentials.

He stays detached from most else with silence.

Education

A studious child, Demyan remained quietly dedicated to his work. The idea of a life outside of school was unconscionable, even in childhood he applied himself to extra studies until he graduated from secondary education four years early.

Without a beat, he hacked his application into university with a fake age and fake accolades from teachers he'd never had. Demyan took early admittance toward a quantum computing degree in Switzerland.

He never completed a degree.

Employment

On the surface, Demyan is a bookseller in London with a strange accent. 

Demyan is a hacker, the creator of limited AI, who uses his tech to create new idents, commit works of corporate fraud (usually to fund anarchic elements worldwide), and is a troublemaker for the Conglom and Syndicate. He got involved as a Sympathizer to the Idless in the early stages of Baiko's mission to liberate Lieben. The Idless had little money, but required much... new encryptions began to dry up the rivers from which he gleaned microtransactions to fund his operations. 

Demyan’s hand slid to the man’s stomach, he pulled a micron closer, lost in the trance of the music, in the warmth to stifle the frigid layer growing on his heart that he’d been abandoned in a city he never knew, a part of the continent he never fought in, on a mission to connect to Sveta or Karol or Branislau. Anyone left from Kiev. Within the desperation of his thudding heartbeat, Demyan danced with the mesh-trousered man, a wholly carved anaesthetic from the needle pricks of his fingertips. The shake of his knees. Slow damp dry of his buzzed hair.

“Buy me a drink?” The man looked up at Demyan with dazed brown eyes, skin gaunt in the blue light of the skipping avian hologram.

‘... Kievan Spider neutralized. Confirmation Tara-Epsilon, I got the bastard. Requesting washerwoman...’

A single line in his comp-glass clammed Demyan’s mind from his wallet, whether it was enough for a gin and tonic, let alone overpriced shots. Shaking his head, Demyan stumbled back and through the crowd, chasing the illusion that the upper floors would hold attrition on the numbers in entry level.

How could he be so stupid? Coming to London with one major contact and a prayer.

— CageWire by Sapha Burnell

Personality

Motivation Humanity is naturally good, lost in a tangle of small things. If reminded of their intrinsic compassion, more could be saved.
Likes & Dislikes Demyan does not suffer rats, incompetents or fools. He is not above putting a bullet into one he considers dangerous.
Vices & Flaws

• Rye Whiskey
• A Temper
• Self-Destruction

Family Ties Meine Anastas, wife.
Religious Views A baptized Orthodox Christian, Demyan holds only a few differentiations with the Patriarchs concerning sexuality.
Social Aptitude Possessing a quiet confidence, Demyan is enigmatic and charismatic to an extreme. Folk naturally follow him. While a confirmed introvert, he is a tireless presence.
Speech A baritone voice seldom heard.

---

Continue the Adventure

by Marissa Wagner

The Lieben Cycle Book 1: NEON Lieben
Amazon Top 300 Cyberpunk + Genetic Engineering Sci-Fi
"I never thought science fiction could be so beautiful."

AI meets gene-splicers, when the Idless & the Conglom fight to define Lieben and thus, the world. Seven decades later, Aderastos sets the human race against its’ next stage in evolution, if he can survive long enough to rescue his fellows, and Max.

Will Lieben help, or hinder?

Read NEON Lieben

The Lieben Cycle Book 2: Emptiness at the Centre
Sequel to the Cyberpunk Bestseller
"I never thought science fiction could be so beautiful."

The walls are closing in on Aderastos and the Assets, in both 2092 and 2156. Will he rediscover their secrets in time to save his fellows, and rectify the chaos in Lieben's world?

Back in 2092, the Conglom's search for Lieben and the Idless increases in tenacity. How did Lieben take the Chernobyl Throne?

Pre-Order Emptiness at the Centre

Relationships

Lieben

Spouse (Vital)

Towards Demyan Anastas

5

0

Frank

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Demyan Anastas

Spouse (Vital)

Towards Lieben

4

0

Frank

---

History

Demyan Anastas found Lieben splayed at the door of his bookshop in 2092. Thinking she was a woman in distress, he carried her into his flat. And his eyes were opened.

Lieben was found.

The Relationship Unfolds in:

• Neon Lieben
• Emptiness at the Centre

Nicknames & Petnames

He calls her Meine, she Anatoli.

Shared Secrets

Crypt.AI. Compassion.

Legal Status

Married