by Tony LaRocca
“WesMec Gov. placed whoever was left in cryogenic hives, and connected their minds to this Sage. Whenever someone dies, the automation salvages their brain, and preserves their identity in crystal storage. That way, they can live on here in virtual purgatory. Their scientists’ last great act was to switch control of the gestalt from everyone’s conscious minds to their subconscious ones, so that they only connect with it while they sleep. It helps keep the madness at bay for a while, though it is not a perfect solution. For one thing, their dreams and memories tend to meld. The survivors were not able to keep the creatures from devouring their nation, but they did slow their advance to a crawl. As a result, some bunkers, like this one, still survive.”
Matthew tried to swallow, but his throat felt as if it were full of gravel. “So why are you here?”
She sighed, and cracked her knuckles one by one. “It was General Peters of the Regular Army’s doing, to be honest. She came to me with an offer that was too good to refuse. She told us of the Burning, and that NorMec Gov. planned to use it to eliminate its Cylebs. But it did not have to mean death for all of us, it could just be you. They hated you, Lyubimiy. You refused to understand that, but we were not such fools. We knew that they would come for us too, sooner or later. We lured you beyond the wall, using your beloved slut as bait. NorMec intelligence had uncovered rumors of the Cathedral. We decided to find it, to make it our own Sanctuary, our home. Though she had served her purpose, I brought Zeta along as my plaything. She amused us… for a time.”
He tried to ignore the crawling sensation within his lobes. “What happened to her?” he asked, slurring the words.
Talya wrapped her arms around her chest, and smirked. “Is that whore all you care about?” she asked. “Look at what we’ve achieved. Brandon, Jonathan, and I did more than just seize control of this Sage. We brought purpose, order, and society to a population of insane, half–comatose sheep.”
She waved her hand, and a hologram of Brother Asher flickered into the air. Like the wooden carving Matthew had seen within the tunnels, the arrogant young man in the projection radiated emotional and physical health.
“I too made a generation of successors,” she said, “though unlike you, I was not so narcissistic as to create them in my own image. It was not as difficult as Benjamin made it seem. DNA is like an array of dominoes. Topple the right ones, and the strands fall the way you want. I chose my subjects from the intellectual cream of their hives. One of them was Dvorkin’s estranged brother. He had been a pathetic joke of an artist, drinking his old age away in New Mexico. Can you imagine?
“I implanted their bodies with flying nanomachines that will reshape the world. They can even rewrite genes and chromosomes. It won’t be so quick out there, but the results should be interesting, don’t you think? What they can do in this Sage, they can do for real.
“Of course, everyone’s minds had to be fine–tuned to accept the reality that we had designed. Jonathan, the history buff, threw in some old Civil War propaganda to keep their collective subconscious proud and patriotic. We filled them with religion, and charged them with a holy cause, to save their civilization. It is beyond saving, but the Cathedral has proven itself to be a more than adequate training ground.”
The door behind her slid open. A hovering chair floated into the lab, emitting a low hum. The man who sat in it reminded him of a giant, puffy, wrinkled infant. A silver ring, fused to a second anti–grav propeller beneath his chin, encircled his neck. It held his giant head aloft. He wore a golden robe that shimmered as his chair sailed to within a foot of Matthew’s bed. His face was a puckered, hairless mask of wrinkles, his jowls rolls of dough that folded in upon themselves. He turned his opal, pupilless gaze upon his glowing prisoner, but said nothing.
“Brandon,” said Talya, “has made fantastic advancements where their scientists failed. The mutants will feed upon the survivors’ minds for all eternity, but we can guide them. We can shepherd them… to a degree.” She patted the invalid’s arm. “His impersonation of Benjamin was flawless, was it not? Jonathan is quite anxious to see you again as well. He is amongst the people right now, cleaning up the mess caused by the current experiment. It does not matter, it always happens. We will erase the civilians’ memories. Then we’ll choose a new resurrector with a different psychological drive, and the simulation will start again. We will perfect control, it will just take time.”
Matthew strained to speak. “But the mutants aren’t under your control at all,” he said. “They’re within the Cathedral. They’re within the projections of its Sage. I’ve seen them.”
She laughed. “Those aren’t real, they’re just the security program. They will shred the mind of any citizen who tries to leave the virtual cities. It keeps the more rebellious ones in line.” She cocked her head. “They found one of your third–generation Cylebs, did they not? I understand that it was not hard for them to cease his heartbeat via his neural link.” Her grin grew wider. “Something to keep in mind.”
He tried to understand what she was saying. Had one of his third–generation brothers been here with him? Had he not come alone, but had forgotten?
She caressed his chin with her icy fingers. “Full control is nearly ours. When the mutants have breached your shield wall, they will devour the Regular Army. Then they will turn their millions of teeth upon your Sanctuary. They will eat your second and third generations, and defecate their remains into dust. And then our order of monks, immune to the Burning, will walk barefoot upon them. Any Biopures who survive will be free to join us, if their worth meets certain criteria.”
He stared up at the camera and security turret mounted above him as he gasped for breath. Its flashing red light became a fat blur. He could feel her creature alternatively sucking and slicing at his nerves. He bit down on his tongue as the crushing pain in his chest became unbearable. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice a ragged whisper.
“Oh Lyubimiy,” she said, “didn’t you listen? I told you, the Cathedral interacts with the minds of both the living and the dead. Your brothers and I have been here for so long. While we can’t have you running around out there, we are lonely for an equal. It’s time that you joined your true family once more, even if only in spirit.”
“Stop,” he wheezed, fighting for every breath. “I’m not…”
“As you said before, shush.” She winked. “It will only hurt for a little while, you will see. We will remake a better world upon the ashes of the old, but there will be much death and suffering before we are done. All because you chose them over us, my love. All because of you.”
Roger’s billows soared above the contorted cityscape as they returned him to the stone church. He could feel himself grow thicker, his plumes and wisps gaining density. He understood. Now that Asher was awake, it made sense that his will would reassert itself over all his children. But then what would happen? How would such turmoil affect his daughter? Was she dead, or alive? Help me find Tish first, he silently begged. Help me.
He found the open window he had approached before, and floated inside. The chapel, illuminated by sunlight, was empty. He flowed amongst the pews, but did not see her anywhere.
A closed door with a tiny gap at its bottom stood by the altar. He spread himself as thin as his congealing body would allow, and scraped beneath. He was still composed of smog, but he had solidified so much that he felt as if he were being sliced between the wood and tile. Once on the other side, he collected himself into a pool, and gathered his bearings.
He hovered above the floor of a hallway. A draft blew across his ashy tendrils, mixing with his curls. He roiled towards its source, and found a door that was thankfully ajar.
Stairs on the other side led down into a cool blackness, but they were just splintery, wooden slats. He poured through the back of the first one, and fell ten feet to the cement below. His body continued to gain mass, but he was still without form. Beads of moisture clung to his wisps like a clammy fog. Hurry, his mind whispered
, before you turn into sludge.
His wasps guided him towards a cinder block wall. He flowed across its surface. Why would Tish be alone in this darkness? Had someone abducted her, and brought her to this place? He had no way of telling. But if she was not here, then where was she? Had he made a mistake in coming down to this cellar? Was she in one of the rooms above? The questions assaulted his mind one by one, each bringing on a new surge of panic. Think, he scolded himself as he whipped against the wall in frustration.
It gave, like a sponge.
He reeled in surprise, and rolled his plumes back and forth against it. The bricks were cold and rough. Their gritty texture felt like that of cinder block, but he could detect another shape within their mortar, a small rectangle. The image of a door popped into his mind. Had there been one here, once?
Had someone removed it, and sealed his daughter inside?
He pushed against the wall again, growing more frantic with each passing second. It gave, but bounced back like rubber.
He churned as he considered his choices. He did not have the mass or energy to affect the masonry in any real way. Should he go outside and lure someone back to help, or should he just wait until he had transformed enough to act? That was the logical choice, but if she was in there, then how much oxygen did she have left? He fought against the raging sea of anxiety that threatened to swallow him. Cracks, he thought. Even the best spackle job has cracks. Find one.
Another thought dawned on him. The spongy facade was, in a word, sloppy. No one would go through the effort of using rubber to patch a wall, and then try to disguise it as cinder block. The job had been done in a rush by someone who could bend reality, or rather, chew it up and spit it out reconstructed to his will.
He could only think of one man who had such a power.
The rage within him whipped his billows into a storm. He spun. Was he still a cloud? Good. Clouds could be monsters. With enough force, clouds could destroy. He did not have to be a hurricane or tornado big enough to bring the church down, he only had to be strong enough to tear apart a two–by–three–foot rectangle of sponge.
He thought of Helen, of her disintegrating amidst a blast of purple light. He thought of Asher, the young man he had defended over and over from his suspicious wife, the monk to whom he had given every chance. Why had he done that, when it was so obvious that the boy was unbalanced?
Because I was afraid, he thought as he whirled faster and faster. He could sense cardboard and other bric–a–brac flying throughout the cellar in his wake. Anything else is just an excuse. I was afraid that he would take back his gift, and make me an invalid again. I was terrified that he would put me back in a chair, sucking on oxygen just to live. And still, even though I was a fool who treated him with kindness, he hurt Tish. He put her in there.
He imagined that he held the boy’s bald head in his hands. He wanted to dash the monk’s lying, pedophile’s skull against the cement floor until it cracked and shattered. Then he would take a jagged fragment, and slash at the rubbery masonry until he sliced his way through.
A whistling scream filled the room, the roar of centrifugal force pressing against a vacuum. He pulled back to the opposite corner, and rammed the wall with all of his strength.
The spongy cinder block exploded, its debris sucking into his maelstrom. The sand, cement, and stone gave his ever–changing form a sudden influx of mass. His body, now a living statue, crashed to an unyielding floor of cobblestone on the other side.
He managed to crawl a few feet into the pitch. Every inch of him felt as if it were molded from rock. He tried to breathe, but his lungs had become sacs of clay. He could feel his new heart striving to pump, but it could not move the sandy sludge that now made up his blood. The sluggish wasps within his head buzzed and hummed in their attempts to rebuild and repair him, but it was futile. Their tiny bodies were too exhausted, their instructions too confused. He raised his head of cement, every millimeter an effort. He tried to see or hear something — anything — but there was only blackness.
Tish, he thought, and, for what was not the first time, died.
Chapter 19
Asher’s bare feet thudded against the pavement. A dense fog that reeked of sulfur and spoiled milk shrouded the streets. It’s just like Phoenix, he thought. My beautiful city has become poisoned.
His lungs ached and burned. He looked up at the faded disk of the sun. It had moved a few lengths towards the middle of the sky, but it still hung in the East. How much time had passed since he had fallen asleep? Surely it could not have been more than a few hours.
He opened his wasp sacs, and probed at their insides. Their arrays of soft cavities reminded him of empty corncobs. There was not one child left within him. Why had he sent them all to attack Theresa’s tree? How could he have been so stupid?
Later, he thought. There has to be a hardware store around here, somewhere. Find it. They must have a chainsaw that you can use, or at least a hatchet. Even if you burn the tree down, some of your children will survive.
A pair of cries echoed from the darkness — melodic, harmonizing wails of pain. Another sound grew louder as well, a mixture of squeaks and clicks. He forced himself to ignore them. There was a hardware store in this neighborhood, he was sure of it. He just had to orient himself. He peered into the fog as he ran, searching for a street sign.
He tripped over something lying in the road, and fell sprawling to the asphalt. He pulled himself to his feet, ignoring his scraped palms. He turned around.
A naked man was kneeling in the gutter. His neck had melted into the curb, entombing his head in cement. His bent, hairy legs were spread far apart. A bicycle wheel was wedged in–between his buttocks. The lower half of his body had been reshaped like a tuning fork to accommodate its radius. It spun under its own power in slow, lazy arcs. It was the source of the squeaky, clicking noise, though it did not have a chain. A trading card had been stuck within its spokes. He crouched to get a better look at it.
It was a tiny print of The Forgotten Cathedral.
Was that where Theresa was, back at the old church? Was the card some sort of sign, or was it just runoff from his subconscious that had dribbled into his city’s remains?
Pull back the curtain…
A flash of purple light, at least a mile away, cut through the mist. An electrical hum reached his ears a fraction of a second later, followed by a small thunderclap. The barely visible shape of a skyscraper hung in the air for a brief second. Then it rained to the earth as sand.
He could swear that above the rancid miasma, he could smell the scent of burning pork.
“No,” he said, his voice low. “Sweet Ophanim, no.” He stood straight, turned, and came face to face with himself.
The copy was not exact. The other Asher stood at least a foot taller, with a sagging gut that hung from the folds of his cloak. Although his head was devoid of hair and eyebrows, his jowls were peppered with stubble.
“What the hell?” Asher asked as he stared at the imperfect mirror.
A few seconds went by. Then a look of surprise crossed the doppelganger’s face. He leaned in, his eyes wide. “What the hell?” he asked, his voice slurred.
Asher took a step back. The copycat froze. Then, after a pause, he repeated the movement.
The monk took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t help you right now. I have to get my children back before I can do anything else.”
The other Asher repeated his words, overlapping the last half of his sentences. Asher moved to the side, but the copy stepped in to block him.
The monk met his gaze. He felt wired, but still exhausted, as if running on caffeine. “Get out of my way,” he said, with as much patience as he could muster. “I’ll come back, I promise.”
The other man read his words back to him, out of sync. Asher rubbed his face with his hand. After a moment, the copy did the same. “I don’t have time for this,” he said.
“I don’t have time for this.”
>
“Stop that.”
“Stop that.”
Asher raised his hands. After a moment, the other monk did the same. “I want to help you,” he said, “but you have to let me by first. Why can’t you understand that?” He fought to swallow his frustration and mounting ire as the taller man repeated his words. He backed away, and the copycat did the same. He let out a curse, spun around, and walked back towards the clicking squeaks of the human unicycle.
He heard a rush of footsteps from behind. His imitator lunged in front of him, almost knocking him over, and faced him once more.
The monk folded his arms, and watched the copycat do the same. He put them back to his sides, and groaned. His impersonator’s delayed reenactment displayed just as much exasperation, if not more.
Another flare of violet lightning erupted in the distance. Asher’s chest grew tight with anger. He did not have time for this nonsense.
“Get out of my way,” he said, spitting out every word. “I don’t want to hurt you, I’m supposed to take care of you. Let me go, and you will heal in time. There’s no other way I can help you. I’m sorry.”
The imperfect doppelganger mimicked his response.
Asher let out a long sigh of resignation. It was not supposed to have been this way. He needed children — any children — but he had sworn to himself that he would not take them back from his charges. Once he started down that road he did not think that he would be able to stop, but he had no choice. He could not dance with this idiot forever, not while the Magistrate destroyed his city. He took a deep breath, and sung.
