The Growth of Konrad
My time at the Channard Institute was filled with discovery. It was the period when I would first learn to wonder about myself and my origins. As I learned the science of psychoanalysis, I also learned to question my own memories...my thoughts...my nature. Through my own studies and Channard's aid, I began a study of my own psyche, trying to understand what made me human and what made me other. I was filled with so much confusion about who I really was...especially after the violent mental trauma that separated me from the King in Yellow. Thus I strove to heal my mind...and learn the truth. In many instances the results of my inquiries generated only more questions...and in the end I cannot say who I really am...only who I could have been...should have been.Through my parentage I am three-quarters demon and one-quarter Amberite, and was raised among humans. Yet my psycho-social development was relatively unique for a number of reasons. The events surround my birth produced one simple enough result, which has much precedent in human psychology, that I never knew my parents. Typically this is not much of an issue when one is like the surrounding populace. I was a shapeshifter, however, and thus fundamentally different from all those around me...and having no understanding of this difference, was filled with confusion and self-hatred. I felt monstrous, and yet at the same time I enjoyed the power I possessed. Luckily for me, Mandor understood what was happening and new how to advise me through my difficulties. He taught me that my powers were rare, but not unique, and showed me how to avoid harming myself.
But this is all easily explainable...and is only one layer of the complexity surrounding my mental state. There is so much more. Through Channard I was able to learn the events surrounding my birth, and there I found explanations for much of my confusion, but no answers to the real questions at hand.
Had the period of my gestation not been interrupted, I might have developed normally...been born and developed a child-like form, based upon those unseen commands recorded in my DNA. I would have looked like an amalgamation of mother and father and grown like any other child. But that natural process was sundered by Mandor's violence, and my talent for shifting took over to preserve my life. But the details of what really happened are recorded elsewhere. After the conclusion of the events which took me prematurely from my mother, I was left in the Library, confused and wielding the form and memories of a young librarian named Konrad. I was an adult...with adult memories...years of history...and yet I couldn't help but feel my newness to it all.
You see, I am not really Konrad.
Konrad was a young man from some backwater shadow...an academic...his photographic memory attracted Mandor's attention, and thus he was brought to the Library to study and serve. He was just some shadow person...nothing more...or so I currently believe. And then came the child of Kianne. Taken too early from the womb, I could not survive on my own, so I bonded with him...joining myself to him like a parasite. Unfortunately, I was already weakened and confused...and so the process of joining went irrevocably astray. I absorbed his memories and his tissues...his DNA became mine...and I adapted to his physical makeup. We became one...forever.
I have always pondered the minor discrepancies of my memory...why I could not remember a period of being unable to shapeshift and still remembered a childhood when I did not use that power, though it seemed to come so naturally. Like me, Konrad was an orphan originally, and yet unlike him I knew of my mother...which he did not. And Konrad's preadolescent fumblings with his sexuality seem quite foreign to me...for I do not know sexual desire...another factor which confuses me. I remember what he/I did...but it is like reading the story of another's life...though I knew it to be my own.
I was never a child, really. This childhood I remember is not my own...not the tale of the son of Kianne. Further, the face I have always worn is not in fact my own. Rather, it bears the influence of my DNA, but is more the face of Konrad. Deep in my genetic code is locked the truth of who I am, and should I strive mightily I could learn the truth...see my true face, and yet I am hesitant. What is a face, after all? Would it provide any real answers? There are two possibilities: that we are separate and that the distinctions between us are important or that bearing his memories has made us one in every fashion. I can easily claim that who I am is the product of my memories, and so the distinction between Konrad and I is non-existent. We are one. I am Konrad. But the very crisis of self-identity must be recognized. First and foremost, the effect of my birth is that I don't know who or what I really am. For all I know, my true form may be that of a horned, scaled demon, much like my father.
I have touched so many minds in the process of my existence. I remember my mother's pain. For a time I occupied Dara's body...and then absorbed Konrad.... Later I discovered Britannica, who has become like an extension of myself...a sort of superego. Perhaps that is why I in turn created the sub-brain known as Byakhee...the personification of my id. And then there came my joining with the King in Yellow. In a sense, I have consumed their memories like any animal consumes flesh...adding their substance to my own...growing more powerful. I was part of the King for but a day, and yet the knowledge of Carcosa, shapeshifting, and sorcery that he granted me thus is immense. I read him like a book...and I do not forget. And yet in adding this knowledge I note changes in myself...a more aggressive turn to my behavior...a more cynical view...and a feeling of resentment towards the beauty of Amber. I understand now how easily he would have overwhelmed me...made me into him.
It will be some time before I can answer the question: who am I? I have only just begun to know the truth...and thus have entered a more self-identified phase of my life. The experiences I accrue now are true to me...they are the beginnings of me. I must try to take life one day at a time...treating each experience as a first...for in truth each is a first for the Konrad that lives in my mind. Knowing what I am and who I was, I can proceed unafraid.