Artifex

by Gentry Race

  Malick turned his attention to the lot of cyber-augmented men surrounding the encampment, ignoring Arthur’s babbling.

  Two women wearing black tunics broke through the pack, red scarves shrouding their faces. Arthur recognized them as Neology practitioners or Neopracts. From what he could see, they were as beautiful as they were devilish.

  “We will take it from here, General.”

  9

  The Audit

  The voxelized cell door shut tightly behind Arthur. He had done nothing wrong. Nothing to deserve to be caged like a criminal or some anti-corporation subversive. He felt angry and betrayed, but, looking across the space, it pained him most to see Elizabeth receiving the same treatment. This was just Malick making a point. Exercising his power over Arthur because he could. Justice for the deceased crewman had nothing to do with it.

  Arthur looked at the surrounding cell; bars lined a window revealing the jungle just outside. He could smell the cold-rolled steel scent that the voxel tech was producing enclosing them. Elizabeth was across from him in another cell.

  “I’m sorry, Liz. I wanted to help the expedition,” he said.

  “Now is not the time for apologies,” Elizabeth said as she looked at him staidly. “We need to get out of here. We have no water. No food. These people are barbarians.”

  “It has been a day now. They will fetch us some drink soon,” Arthur said, but deep down, he wasn’t sure, he only hoped.

  Elizabeth lifted her matted hair, uncovering her clammy neck. The temperature had risen in the past hour, and Arthur could feel the heat radiating from the freshly voxelized cemented walls.

  He wanted to tell her the truth about how he felt. How he respected her and appreciated her knowledge and her willingness to help him on this adventure, but deep down, the one thing he wanted to tell her was that he cared for her more than anything.

  Silence had killed any moment they might have shared in which he could utter these phrases.

  This silence was only interrupted when three gorgeous women opened the door from the hall and walked swiftly toward Arthur and Elizabeth. The red tunics they wore signified the level of clarity they had achieved in Neology. Each held in one of their hands a canister with wires connected to their body. Patterned electrical circuits crawled from the canisters in each hand, under their sleeve, and up to their temples.

  The cell doors opened, and each one started their audit. The third one sat on the floor, crossing her legs meditation on the results she heard.

  “Arthur Blaise, an honor to meet again,” said the taller of the three neopracts.

  “Allmother,” Arthur said, nodding his head. He had only experienced Donna and her intense audit once before during his intense interview for Enconn’s lead engineer. She was the head neopract and a spirit breaker to say the least.

  “We have pulled your record, and it seems you have been deviating from your audits. Why is this so?” Donna asked.

  “I… I have been consumed with my work,” Arthur said.

  “Yes, we know about your work on conscious uploading. You know via scripture that the soul is to remain stateless. You can’t box it in something that’s finite,” she said.

  Arthur looked down, ready to hear the usual sermon.

  “Arthur, you know well the science Neology shows us,” Donna continued.

  Arthur slowly nodded. Picturing in his head the mermaid that saved him when he was a child. The memory they had told him be rid of. Was this ‘science’ — this making sense of the world around us really helping or hurting him.

  “Hold these,” the cleric said, giving him a set of canisters.

  Arthur took the devices reluctantly as the neopract peered into a meter, reading it like a crystal ball. They watched it spike as it read the electrical signals flowing through his body.

  “What was that?” asked Donna.

  “What?”

  “That thought,” Donna said.

  “I was thinking of my friends,” Arthur said.

  “Do you fear for them?” she asked. The practiced clinical detachment of her tone was belied by her thin, tightened lips and the predatory glint in her eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, now looking at Liz.

  She was receiving a similar barrage of inquiries, along with small doses of electric shock. Tears ran down her face, as she looked back at Arthur.

  “I think they are more than just friends,” Donna said.

  Arthur thought of Liz and Autumn. If he were ever to divulge the existence of the mermaids, they would all be endangered. Who knew what these corporate loons would do if they found such mystical creatures? He felt more depressed knowing that it was his actions that had caused all this, but he couldn’t let them win.

  He gestured to Liz with his head slightly, hoping she’d understand he was asking her to not speak of the tablet he’d showed her, but he was not sly enough. Donna was keen on every nuanced gesture a human could make. It was her job to know the human condition and its flaws.

  Donna looked back at Liz and then twisted a smile, realizing the leverage she could obtain from his inner thoughts. She saw his truth. “You have feelings for both.”

  Arthur, embarrassed, looked over to see if Liz could hear the conversation, but the small shocks she was receiving drowned out any response he might have gotten from her.

  THUNK!

  The door shot open as Malick charged into the hall of cells. His face twisted with fury. Behind him was a swarm of men, armed to the teeth. The neopracts quickly wrapped up their belongings, leaving Elizabeth with cheeks streaked with muddied tears.

  The general dragged in three bodies strung together with thick rope like he was dragging a fresh hunt or catch from the sea. Arthur tried to make out the figures in the net, but they were obscured behind Malick’s large frame.

  “Looks like we got ourselves a catch,” Malick yelled as he walked closer.

  Arthur could hardly think after the attack of mental exercises and questions. As if in slow motion, he watched the general slide the three mermaid women across the ground, laying them in front of Arthur.

  Liz quickly wiped the goop from her face in astonishment at seeing the three mermaids.

  Arthur recognized them. Winter, with her black ice hair and rigid demeanor. The restless Summer, with her fiery red hair, and the one, the passive Autumn, graced with deep earthy brown hair. Each of their fish-like bottom halves were now humanoid, but iridescent and scaly in texture.

  Their pleas were muffled by cloth gags.

  Arthur’s stomach sank. They were all here, in agony because of him.

  “Captain Ellis told me about what he saw,” Malick said with an evil chuckle. “My tactical team did some investigating of our own. Looks like we ended up in Never Never Land.”

  “Malick, you don’t know what you are doing,” Arthur pleaded. “These creatures are from Atlantis. They are the keys to unlocking the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  The general walked over to Arthur’s cage and towered over him. His red-tinted eye showed his evil demeanor, more wicked than the devil himself.

  “I have spoken with the board,” Malick said. “They are concerned about your rapid printing technology, and how this island might be its downfall.”

  “We can find the aberration,” Arthur said. “These mermaids can show us.”

  “The only aberration is you,” Malick said. “Your follies have depleted most of the white matter we had for this mission. Tell me you didn’t create these creatures from the nanites,” he said. “That you’re not playing out some kind of sick fantasy.”

  Arthur bowed his head down in silence, looking at the bound and gagged mermaid maidens. Autumn looked more wrangled than anyone.

  “They are as real as you and I,” Arthur said.

  Malick sat down, his eyes on level with the scientist’s. For just a moment, Arthur could see a hint of the red light flash in his pupils. His obvious cybernetic enhancement.

  “You spoke of the mermaid protectors when I fi
rst landed. Tell me how many you know about?” Malick asked.

  Arthur was afraid to say.

  The general thrust his hand into the cage and grabbed Arthur by the neck, choking the life from him. “Answer me!” he screamed.

  “Four,” Arthur eked out in a moment of weakness. “Each one, an element of life. Earth, air, fire and water.”

  Malick looked at the tied up mermaids, inspecting the symbols each had on their seashell bra. He was counting the elements they represented.

  That leaves one more,” he concluded.

  “Water,” Arthur said.

  “By Allmother, Arthur,” Malick said. “Did you dream these entities up?”

  “What? Impossible,” Arthur said.

  “You controlled a voxelized robot with consciousness.,” Malick said. “And you mean to tell me the subconscious can’t affect the nanites at all? Hadn’t you a almost drowned when you were a kid? Audits say you spouted about mermaids. And here we are… fucking mermaids.”

  “It’s pure coincidence,” Arthur rebutted.

  “And what of your tech, this aberration?” Malick asked. “Pretty convenient for an engineer to discover an error to a technology that had no flaws to begin with.”

  “The white matter the nanites print seems to react to the island. It’s an erratum of some sort. I believe these maidens know why that is and can help us counter it,” Arthur replied.

  “This ‘prime material’ or ‘white matter’ you created allows for the manufacturing of all the molecular chain combinations we will need for the future. Enconn is betting all of their chips on this technology,” Malick reminded him.

  Then he sat back, growing more frustrated as he looked at the newfound creatures, and continued, “If there is a flaw in the tech, Enconn needs to know. Tomorrow, we will use what’s left in the white matter reserves to do another dive and find this creature. Until then, you prepare yourself, Arthur, because I’m sending you… and not with the help of your robot.”

  Arthur looked at Autumn and her two mermaid sisters as they were each lifted up by soldiers and placed in a cell next to him. Liz stared steadily at him from her cell and then at the small window above. The soldiers had left for the night. Come morning, it would be Arthur’s time to face the cenote.

  If there is going to be a chance to escape, it will be tonight, he thought.

  A few hours had passed. Arthur was laying in his cell while staring at Elizabeth in hers. The sun was setting, and he could see the dim red light cast from the windows, their long wavelengths painting the room in reds, pinks and purple.

  He looked into the cells close to him to see Summer, Winter and Autumn. He couldn’t help but notice how beautiful they looked in the setting light, despite their current condition. Were they just a manifestation of his subconscious? How could that even be possible? Elizabeth was calm now, and her eyes were dead set on the fantastical creatures before them.

  “Where are you from?” she asked them.

  All of the maidens were quiet. The most timid of the bunch, Autumn, looked at her sisters, saw their punishing stares upon her, and then looked back to Liz, responding just to spite them.

  “We are from Atlantis.”

  “What exactly are you?” Liz asked.

  “I am a melusine or what you call a mermaid,” she said. “Before that I was a little girl before our curse — before the fall of Atlantis, We had a great power—a metal called Orichalcum that came from our island.”

  Arthur knew of the fictional metal and couldn’t help but compare the location of Atlantis to the giant meteor impact that had occurred almost sixty-five million years ago.

  Could orichalcum and the Philosopher’s Stone be of the same source?

  “The metal was our pride and joy, until another island nation wanted it for themselves,” Autumn continued. “We went to war and destroyed them… and ourselves.”

  “And this curse?” Liz asked.

  “In a final attempt to destroy the invading forces and protect our legacy, the Atlantan leaders put out a summons for four maidens, who would be asked to protect the keys held at each elemental gate,” she said, now looking at her sisters. “I was chosen, as were my sisters, since we were all made of the same essence.”

  Essence? Arthur quickly deciphered that she was referring to her genetic material.

  He was fascinated by the tale.

  “It’s ironic how history can repeat itself,” Liz said, now looking at the chain of the timepiece hidden in Arthur’s coat pocket. “Like a giant clock resetting itself to tell the same story over and over.”

  His situation did feel like a giant timepiece. Cogs and flywheels spinning in his mind. Keys unlocking elemental gates. The real location of Atlantis revealed. And at the center of it all, a general wielding the infinite power of control.

  He wondered what his father would do at a desperate time like this.

  If there was a time to redeem himself, it was now. Everyone was here because of him, because of his greed to search for the truth no matter the cost. His science had led them all blindly into these cells.

  He remembered what his father used to say to him as a boy: ‘What is a clock without a clockmaker?’

  Arthur had found the clockmaker — the Atlantans. Mysteries he could never conceive have proven to show themselves to true. The Atlantans were real. A theory science had tried to disprove. His very own beliefs were in question. A tug of war between science and fantastical in his mind.

  He got to his feet. He noticed all of the women looking at him now. He mustered a breath.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  Silence filled the room. Liz looked at him with a slight smile, and the mermaid maidens shot confused looks at each other.

  “What are you asking of us?” demanded Summer, her fiery, wicked tongue as sharp as ever. “You’ve had your way with us, gotten us taken from our home, and now you want our help?”

  “Had your way with them?” Liz asked softly.

  Arthur cringed at her understanding.

  “Yes, what she speaks is true,” Winter said in a moody tone. “A seeker who unlocks the gates will obtain the Stone.”

  Arthur looked at Autumn, who was passive to speak against her sisters. She was the kindest of them, but that was her biggest weakness. But Arthur would not let his own kindness be mistaken for weakness. He had to show them he was going to be the leader.

  “Listen,” he barked at the other two mermaidens. “Do I look to be in the gaming mood? We are locked up in here. The only thing I can do is get the last key.”

  “How can you unlock us from our curse?” Summer said, kicking the hardened bars. “You lost the codex that would unlock the next key.”

  Autumn rose to her feet, never taking her eyes off her bickering sisters.

  “Sisters, we can’t get out of here on our own,” she said, mustering the courage to speak against them for the first time. “We must trust Arthur… he is my prince.”

  Arthur felt Liz’s eyes fall from him as Autumn uttered the term of endearment, but he was more caught up in how Autumn had found the strength to say something. He respected her for that.

  “I wish Eiar was here to help. She would know what to do,” Winter said.

  Arthur thought about her words. ‘Eiar’ was Greek for ‘Spring’. The fourth mermaid sister. Out of the four elements, she’d control water and would be the last factor he’d need to unlock the Philosopher’s Stone.

  Arthur felt conflicted as he looked at Liz. Will having relations with another woman ruin his chance to be with Liz? Arthur didn’t know, but he could feel Liz exuding a slight feeling of lesser interest. He hoped he hadn’t lost her respect.

  “There is one thing I can do,” he said, plopping his back against the cement.

  “Do speak, my prince,” Autumn encouraged him.

  “I must go down there and get the last key,” he said. “The codex still holds the air power to unlock her gate, and Malick doesn’t know that. This way, I can save
your sister and keep Malick from acquiring her.”

  “You just want the power of the Stone,” Summer sneered.

  The words were like nails on a chalkboard to Arthur, they were so untrue. He just wanted this to be over. Enough suffering had taken place on his behalf.

  Liz darted to the bars, but hesitated to express her concerns. Finally, she blurted, “If you go down there and… do whatever you do to them, Malick will not let you live to see the light of day.”

  Arthur sensed a bit of jealousy in her tone. Despite that, she had a point. Malick wouldn’t think twice about letting him share Charny’s fate. Ever since he had joined the corporation, Malick seemed to have hated Arthur and his science.

  “I will not let you all suffer because of me,” he finally responded. “I must do what is right.”

  Arthur felt a surge of courage glow from within as the last of the sunlight graced his face. Along with the warmth from the rays, he knew that all the women, except for maybe Liz, were eyeing him with more trust than before. They were dependent on his strength, and he was going to show them that he would not back down in the face of evil.

  10

  Water

  Arthur and General Malick’s men pushed through the portion of the jungle that the captain had earlier cut back. His own hands were cuffed behind his back. The jungle, almost as if sensing his defenselessness, seemed to do its best to trip him with the vines and dead branches littering the path. Behind him were five weapons pointed at him.

  As the dense jungle cleared, Arthur could see Enconn’s newest cash cow in the atmosphere above, a fragmented space station being assembled ever so slowly. He had helped design the station to be the savior of humanity. Pollution and overpopulation had swept the dense cities, turning them all into slums. The world had become a dumpster fire. It wasn’t long after, that Enconn had dreamt up the next step in human evolution: a space station, a jewel to crown Earth.