One wish, two interpretations.
Everything stemmed from that. One thought order and control were all, and he grew obsessed with exercising total control. He amassed a fortune through countless wars. His words influenced decision-making all the way up to the Oval Office. He believed people’s inner selves could be governed by an outer force—the System.
The other was angered by the obsession with limitless control, a vision far remote from what had once drawn them together. He launched a battle against the would-be global control.
At the end of the Cold War, this second cold war broke out.
None knew of its full scope, and none could possibly comprehend its real meaning. This world, so out of phase with our own, could only barely be perceived by slightly shifting the meaning to each war, conflict, and incident.
Big Boss’s battle was put down by none other than his own son. After he was defeated by Solid Snake, a man with his own genes, Zero recovered his battered body. Big Boss had once been the icon of Zero’s movement. He had once been Zero’s friend. The fallen man represented everything Zero had once believed in, as well as the inevitability of betrayal.
Zero was no longer willing to place his organization in the hands of the next generation.
He built four AIs—GW, TJ, AL, and TR—to be the final centerpiece to fulfill his mad aspirations.
There was one more artificial intelligence, a core unit called John Doe, or JD, that regulated, monitored, and controlled the other four. Our efforts on the Big Shell resulted in the destruction of GW, but the remaining AIs continued to set forth the future envisioned by the Patriots.
EVA and Ocelot began working to free Big Boss from Zero’s clutches. They enlisted Naomi Hunter, an authority in the field of nanomachine research, into their organization. They helped free Frank Jaeger, the test subject of exoskeletal research who lived a cruel existence, in hopes they could use him to kill Para-Medic, the head of the Patriots’ cybernetic exoskeleton research. And EVA and Ocelot prevailed.
Ocelot infiltrated FOXHOUND, getting close to one of the Snakes, Liquid, and helped them on Shadow Moses. There, he killed Donald Anderson, the DARPA chief and the man at the core of the development of Metal Gear REX—also known as Mr. Sigint.
Liquid had raised his army in rebellion and demanded Big Boss’s body in hopes that with it, he could do something about the genetic disease that afflicted his men, the Next-Generation Special Forces, who had been genetically enhanced with Big Boss’s genes.
Of course, Ocelot had given Liquid the idea. Ocelot’s sole purpose was to use the island’s capture to kill Donald Anderson, and if he could get Big Boss’s body at the same time, all the better.
But with that mission came the end of Ocelot and EVA’s alliance.
Ocelot lost his right arm on Shadow Moses, and when he grafted Liquid’s arm in its place, his body was taken over by Liquid. Now entirely alone, EVA had nearly lost all hope when Raiden came to her with GW’s data and gave her a new path.
Among the data was the location of Big Boss’s body.
✦ ✦ ✦
Snake and Big Mama walked out the front of the monastery and into a courtyard.
The rain had stopped. The stones in the courtyard were still wet, sparkling in the moonlight, and smelled of the rain.
The fog had lifted and few clouds were in the sky.
Big Mama walked Snake to the back of a van. Two identical ones, droplets still clinging to their black paint, were parked on either side.
“They look like hearses,” Snake said.
“This is his pyx,” Big Mama said, “his Holy Ark.”
Slowly, she opened the van’s rear door.
Seeing the figure inside, what Snake felt wasn’t anger, much less hate, but pity. He felt a sadness akin to despair toward the man, who even in his current state was considered alive.
Big Mama stepped back. “His body is alive, but his consciousness is locked away by nanomachines. So technically speaking, he’s not really brain dead.”
Snake had trouble appreciating the difference.
Covering the body was a translucent black sheet of sealed plastic that seemed to Snake like a body bag. The man inside was without limbs—a sadistic sculptor’s idea of a bust.
Judging from the missing left eye, and the shape of his face, he had to be Big Boss.
The skin Snake had burned away in Zanzibar Land had been stitched together with skin grafts so completely that no seam showed. But his cheeks were deeply sunken, and his lips had lost their fat, taking the shape of the gums beneath. If someone were to slap a layer of skin over a bare skeleton, the result would likely look about the same.
Medical equipment installed inside the van kept those skin and bones in a state of life. The dutiful machines regulated the breaths of the man who would never be able to breathe on his own again.
Snake muttered, “Why did Zero keep him alive?”
Why had he gone to such great efforts to cling to this body, the body of the traitor, the enemy who had hindered his great aspirations and the man he had grown to hate?
With a sad smile, Big Mama said, “People need legends.” She looked past Big Boss and into some distant place. “Zero wanted to create a messiah. A legend that would never die.”
She closed the door, and Big Boss was again shut away inside with his ventilator.
As Snake followed her back to the church, he pondered his fate. Perhaps committing suicide would be a better end to his life than the eternal quasi-death Big Boss suffered.
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, in Nomad, Naomi had disappeared.
✦ ✦ ✦
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