Tara
Tara
Of all The Conglomerate of Gaia's experiments and continued operations, the manipulation & creation of women called 'Tara' is the worst. The mental leaps required to create a behavioural program which twisted women into pliable dolls was more sick than creating me as a helpmate. At least I was artificial. Programmed to become what I had as an originating point. These women, who matched their faces and their lives, willfully became beautiful monsters.
No woman is disposable, but this is precisely the point of Tara. A beauty with vulgarity, a whore and wet-works specialist, who kills and interrogates without restraint or ethics. A bodyguard in heels and haute couture. Tara is a woman none are meant to know, but all ought to desire. Cinched in, clipped and sutured by a specialist team of plastic surgeons to maintain the 'perfect Tara' look.
She is a woman erased, one who has no name but the one given to her at the end of her process. She allows herself to be erased, becomes the True Believer. I am convinced this is the only way Tara's loyalty and consistency can be maintained.
Only one of the legion of potential Tara's is active at a time, and she receives her graduation by bullet.
In order for a Tara to activate, she kills her predecessor. In the case of those Taras, who die premature to this unforgiving bullet, they must be confronted by the previous Tara's death. A macabre and unwelcome education which creates these women.
It was the first act which needed to go, during Regenesis.
I tried for two decades to find the women behind the name, to put an identity to the woman who killed my father (Neon Lieben), yet the Conglomerate did their task too well and I have been unable to find predecessor names for any but three of the women I've known as Tara.
Tara-Epsilon: 2077 - 2086
Unknown
The woman I should call mother. After all, she both nurtured Papa while I was being created and hit the button which began my systems in earnest (Neon Lieben). She also shot Papa in the elevator. Her reward was a bullet to the brainstem by her replacement.“My liebchen is not meant to be you.” Fabric hung in his clenched fist. He growled out a sigh, and swung the white coat over Tara’s shoulders, already pink with cold. Collar flipped to coil along her neck, Dieter’s hand rested on her collarbone until Tara’s fingers met his.
“Pity, she’d sell more units if she were. We’re all whores, Dieter. We all sell to something, it’s part of community. I get you see more out of this, meaning in the mechanics, but... hopes and dreams need to be fed. Sir isn’t entertaining your eccentricities because of your witty Germanic asceticism. Don’t you want the profits? Your name in history, Dieter, don’t fuck with the chance to build that utopia I know is in your head.”
“Are you using that for branding?”
“I might.”
Tara-Zeta: 2086 - 2092
Rachel Iversen
She hunted us from Vancouver to London, relentless in her pursuit of Baiko and The Obsidian Necklace. After Baiko's death, I used the NEO-W's she hated to end her life.
After her death, Dr. Robert Dunlevy found a secret set of files on his personal mainframe (Emptiness at the Centre). The Tara he knew, the one he spent years with trying to reverse Karnak's mess was a former teenaged runaway named Rachel. A kid from a small town in Northern BC, who wanted to make it big.
“Gee. You... huh. I... don’t like you being human Rob.” Tara slapped a large skin coloured bandage over her stitches. They clung to the connection, each silent in their own way. Robert’s eyes blindly searched data tables of the anomalous behaviour. Tara searched his frenetic gaze. The slope of his shoulders and huff of breath. Slowly, nothing remained but the gaze between them, rivals and unwilling cohorts, whose work alone kept them both from the void. “Ego reacted. Baiko was nutter-buts, but Ego reacted.”
“Huh?”
”You’re asking for help, Baiko was in some sort of seizure slump. Until she did the hand-thing, she was barely conscious. But the second I mentioned his legal name, told him the kids missed him... he reacted.” She leaned against the side of the hard hotel sofa, rubbed her filled lip with her index finger. “Bobert? I don’t know fuck about machines. But I know people."
Tara-Eta: 2092 - 2092
Unknown
Tara-Theta: 2092 - 2094
Afua Hesse-Angolo
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Gender Identity
Sexuality
Education
Employment
Intellectual Characteristics
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Vices & Personality flaws
“I fear you.” The engineer pursed a flask to his drone-lips. He threw his hand accusingly at Lieben’s empty visage. “I fear you and the board’s spin doctors will turn meine liebchen into a toy.”
“Isn’t that what she is? A play thing for the upper classes? Wasn’t that what we were supposed to build?” Tara pushed into the Cloister, sat on Karnak’s work table. Stroked the metal top with her thumbs, shoulder dipped in feminine allure. “You want her to be a real girl, aren’t we toys too, Diet? All little girls grow up to be some body’s toys.”
“Did I treat you like a toy? Before I knew your touch was paid for by the Chairman?”
Neon Lieben by Sapha Burnell
Hygiene
Relationships
History
A sexual affair lasting several years, after Dieter's wife Sarai locked herself in a virtual cocoon.
History
Tara arrived in Robert's life at the tail end of Dr. Karnak's betrayal. They worked in tandem for years to sniff out Baiko & Lieben, slowly engaging in a look here, a glance there. A soft hand on a shoulder. He hated her, she was indifferent. As time continued and the pressure from the Chairman became a living entity in the room, they connected. Learned a hazy trust, which grew until the day...
Commonalities & Shared Interests
Finding Baiko & Lieben and returning The Lieben Files, Lieben and The Obsidian Necklace to the Conglomerate.
Shared Secrets
Da'at
- English
- French
- Japanese
- Mandarin
- Cantonese
- Twi
- Spanish
- Urdu
- Hindi
Redacted Failures & Embarrassments
- The Death of Dr. Dieter Karnak
- The Loss of Lieben
- The Death of Baiko
Redacted
Morality & Philosophy
Whatever the Chairman asks.
Taboos
Failure. Tattoos.
Contacts & Relations
The Chairman of The Conglomerate of Gaia.
Family Ties
None.
Religious Views
None.
Social Aptitude
High levels of charisma with a learned capacity for etiquette in multiple cultures around the globe.
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