The Limpet Syndrome

by Tony Moyle

  “You said there were ten levels of Hell?” said John.

  “There are, for inmates at least. But as you have seen, there are some supplementary areas. The eleventh level is where we keep all of our records from the past, present and future.”

  With the sound of a motor desperately overdue a service, the decrepit lift cranked slowly up through the levels. As they reached each level a bony hand indicated their position on an old-fashioned dial at the top of the lift door. It reminded John of the old-fashioned Victorian hotels in London he used to visit as a young child with his father. Treasured moments, that were all too few, of happier times when they’d take weekend trips to the capital’s attractions. Some of the few real memories of his father’s existence that he still had.

  As they reached the eleventh floor the steel gates creaked open. When he stuck his head nervously out of the door the sight of a gigantic library running left to right in the same oval shape as all the other levels he’d seen, but with one significant difference. The abyss, that featured so prominently through the centre of the tiered caves, was replaced by an even floor constructed of smooth and polished graphite that enabled easy access from one side of the cavern to the other. In certain areas of the black carbon hue, John could make out faint but indecipherable writing, eroded by continually passing feet.

  Across from John, elongated bookshelves teetered precariously under the weight of their contents, which were books of every shape and size stuffed unwillingly into position. On the far shelves were thick volumes with weathered spines, thumbed through by generations of readers like a favourite reference book in constant use. Behind him the books newer and thinner, flaunting their unread or unwanted shiny laminated covers, a Christmas gift that the recipient had never got round to reading. At the end of the room towards the thicker books a vast bonfire burnt with intense white light, and leaping flames competed to be the first to lick the ceiling. Even though it was at least a hundred feet away the heat from it was almost unbearable.

  At the other end, near to the thinner titles, stretching out as far as the walls would let them, were a pair of ancient oak trees whose branches stitched themselves together symbiotically. There was no librarian bustling about, moving books from place to place, or organising them back into their correct order. Here the books themselves were moving. Big, tatty volumes shot off their racks from every section of the shelves as they competed for airtime with inferior slimmer cousins. As they left the shelves the books on either side shuffled along to make space for new entries at the other end.

  It was now abundantly clear to John why the bonfire was burning so fiercely. It was the books that were fuelling it. Each time a new volume flew into the flames the bonfire momentarily exploded, embers dancing chaotically into the air. As rapidly as the books were being burnt, even brisker was the activity of the two trees. A constant stream of individual parchments were being shed from the trunks with no external influence, each page floating one at a time into the spaces that had been vacated by those books that headed further down the line. John walked up to one of the trees to take a closer look.

  Before the pages were invisibly cut from the trunks, John saw that they had writing etched on each page, and unlike the writing on the floor, this was clearly legible. It was tricky to read each individual document as the trees were producing them at the rate of an industrial-sized printer.

  ‘Cassie Sahota, Female, Orlando, 9lb 2oz, D.O.B. – 7th April’

  ‘Franco Solita, Male, Venice, 5lb 6oz, D.O.B. – 7th April’

  ‘Umba To’onga, Male, Fiji, 6lb 6oz, D.O.B. – 7th April’

  The last entry never made it to the shelves. It stopped in mid-air, hovered for a second, as if awaiting orders as to where to place itself in the maze of shelves. Finally it made up its mind and floated like a plastic bag caught in an updraft along the hall towards the fire.

  “These are a list of human births, aren’t they?” said John solemnly.

  Brimstone, who had been studying John’s movements with a great deal of intrigue, replied, “Yes, they are.”

  “And that one, the one I’ve just read, the Umba boy. Why isn’t he going onto the shelves with the others?” John asked, as he watched the single piece of paper being consumed by the fire in a blink.

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “How can you be so cold about it? A newborn child has just died before our very eyes, probably because he was born in the wrong country, at the wrong time, and all you can say is, ‘He didn’t make it.’ Have you got no sensitivity?” replied John, his voice rising to a shout to lecture Brimstone, whether he meant to or not.

  “To be frank, John, no. I have no emotions. It intrigues me that you care so much. If the consequence of emotion is weakness, then you can keep it. You’re getting angry because you’ve witnessed the death of a child that you have no knowledge of,” said Brimstone, as his short frame appeared to grow and his voice became deep and direct.

  “It’s still a life. You could have done something.”

  “Ask yourself, John, who is responsible for his death? Is it us? Did I cause his mother to give birth in a country without adequate medical resources? Was it us that squeezed the world’s money into a tiny minority of the world’s population? Was it the Devil that failed to train the local witch doctor in the safest method of childbirth? Or was it humanity that caused this boy’s death? We are not the cause of death, merely the receiver of it. Before you deal out your moral judgement on me, perhaps you should ask yourself what you did to save this child.”

  Even though Brimstone had made a valid argument, it did not make John feel any better. He’d heard this type of argument before and, even though he accepted there was corruptness and inequality in his kind he could not act as if the death of an innocent child was just some inconvenient statistic.

  “Emotion is not what makes us weak, Brimstone. It’s what makes us human. The ability to care, even if people often do not.”

  “Mankind doesn’t care,” replied Brimstone scornfully. “If it did, then his death would have been avoided.”

  John stood with his back to Brimstone, tears welling in his borrowed eyes, unwilling to show this so-called weakness. As he watched one of the trees, another leaf of paper had just stopped in mid-air, just as he had seen moments before. Instinctively, and without knowing the consequences, John grabbed it with both hands. The force on John was intense as the paper wrestled him towards the fire. He felt the friction in his hands burning towards his soul as he was hauled along closer to the flames. Eventually, with a power of its own the sheet sliced through John’s fingers leaving a large paper cut across the palms of his hands.

  In response, John’s plastic body hissed like a punctured tyre from the sound of his soul escaping from the wound. The cuts in his hands glowed bright blue and he felt himself being drawn out through his vessol towards the cut. John’s emotions panicked. Nervousness, worry, fear and cowardice jostled each other to be the first to the exit door, these escaping emotions asphyxiating his life force like he was being strangled for air. Brimstone, who had moved casually towards him, lifted a stony finger to his brow, removed a clump of molten lava from one of the cracks in his face, and wiped it across John’s gaping wound. The plastic in John’s hands sealed over to the sound of his excruciating screams.

  “John, you’re a dead human in a plastic body: what makes you think you can play God? The only person you can affect is you,” explained Brimstone, grabbing John by the arm and lifting him from the floor where he had slumped in pain.

  “I did what was right. What my instincts told me to do.”

  “You can’t change destiny, John. It changes you. It’s not for you to choose what is right.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Shall we get back to our main reason for being here?” offered Brimstone.

  “Ok, let’s do that.”

  “What you have probably guessed by now is that this place holds the records of every living person on Earth
. As they are born their records are collected, and as they die they are recycled into the fire. At which point most arrive with us at the Soul Catcher. Every action and emotion that is worth noting is documented into these books, and all of that information is managed by this,” explained Brimstone, pointing at the glass screen on the table in front of them. “What we need to work out is who would be the most appropriate person for you to inhabit down on Earth.”

  “So when you said earlier, ‘where to put me,’ what did you mean exactly?” asked John, having regained his composure and concentration.

  “There are only two options available to us if we are going to get you back on Earth. The first is we put your soul into an unborn child. This is by far the safest route because pre-born infants have no soul. The soul only develops in the early days of the child’s life as the emotions develop. Of course this also has its downsides in our present situation.”

  “Downsides?”

  “Yes, I thought a clever man like you would have guessed. The downside is that your Universe will have disintegrated before the new infant John is out of nappies. You’d only develop about a third faster than a normal child. So at best when you were twelve you’d look and act like an eighteen-year-old. But that would still be too late. I’m guessing you are going to get about twelve weeks to find Ian and Sandy?”

  “Why only twelve weeks? I thought our time didn’t exist in Hell. Can’t you send me back earlier and find Sandy before he becomes reincarnated?”

  “Unfortunately not. We can’t go back further than your own death otherwise there would be two of your souls swirling around down there. That would be worse than having Sandy’s soul on the loose. We know the date when Sandy and Ian died was the twenty-sixth of March and you have until the summer solstice on June twenty-first to recover them.”

  John considered the time frame to be fairly short given his complete lack of knowledge about what they had turned into.

  “The only realistic approach is the second option, possession. We place you inside another person who already has a soul. There are a couple of issues with that, too, though.”

  “Go on,” replied John, an air of doom to his voice.

  “First, you will have to learn to control the other soul so that you can properly use their body. Secondly, getting you inside the selected person is not an exact science,” explained Brimstone, turning to the glass table and carefully placing his finger onto the top right-hand corner, a testing thing to do when you’re made of stone and the device is so fragile. The glass lit up and several strange labels appeared in an alien language.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s our computer database.”

  “Computers were a human invention?”

  “Typical human, such a high opinion of yourselves. John, our kind created everything in the Universe. Don’t you think that it’s just possible that we might have invented the same things as you, given we invented you?” huffed Brimstone.

  John nodded in agreement. Although it made sense, the human condition of self-importance was still part of his make-up.

  “Let’s think about what sort of person you should be. We know Sandy and Ian died in the UK and it’s likely, given the movement of souls, that they went into something close.”

  “Why’s that?” replied John, trying to keep his questions as sensible as possible after his last rebuff.

  “A soul’s natural place is inside a body, so it will quickly search for the sanctuary of an empty vessel before the fifth force takes hold,” replied Brimstone. “Let’s bring up all the adults between twenty and fifty in the UK as a starting point.”

  Brimstone tapped the screen several times and with the cacophonous sound of a million books lifting from their shelves, they hovered in the air suspended in front of them. The collective noise of all of these volumes moving was seismic and made John hold his ears, a pointless reflex given the useless bits of plastic on the sides of his head. Brimstone showed no such effects. A number flashed on the screen indicating the search results.

  “That’s clearly far too many. Any preferences, John?”

  What was important to him? He had to take control of someone’s soul and by all accounts that wasn’t likely to be easy.

  “No women please. I’ve had enough problems trying to communicate and understand them when I was next to them, I’m not sure I would have any more luck if I was possessing one. Plus I’m fairly sure that Sandy and Ian would have been in the London area, so let’s go for that, too.”

  Brimstone added a few more taps to the screen and about three-quarters of the books rushed back into the gaps that they had vacated.

  “1,760,345 returns, according to the computer. What else should we look for?”

  “Let’s lower the age range to about the mid-thirties. I think I’d feel more comfortable with someone of my own age. Also someone inconspicuous: give me someone with a normal job. I can just imagine suddenly finding myself inside an airline pilot in the middle of a transatlantic crossing.”

  “That’s good thinking. Let’s say office job and thirty-five,” replied Brimstone, for a third time entering the search criteria to the screen as more volumes returned to their places.

  “112,401, still too many for us to consider.”

  “Brimstone, what dangers will this person be in?”

  “I expected this from you, John, and I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “Humour me.”

  “Basically, they might go just a little bit mad during or after the event. They will, after all, have someone else inside their heads. If they survive the ordeal that you put them through, they may never suffer again, but I doubt it.”

  “Okay, no one who’s married or has kids. Perhaps an orphan or, failing that, a traffic warden, I’ve never liked those guys.”

  “7,245,” Brimstone announced, as the now familiar sight of books flying back into shelves had finished. “One more search I think should do it.”

  “What do you think would help?” asked John.

  “The only thing that I know is that one of the biggest issues is mentally controlling the person you are in. I’d suggest that the lower the mental strength, the more chance you have.”

  “Okay, let’s go for low IQ levels, but not too low. I don’t want to be inside a complete dunce who can’t even read or tie their own shoelaces.”

  “Fair point. Let’s go with an IQ of between seventy and eighty,” said Brimstone, tapping the screen for the final time. “72 returns, that should do it. Let’s see who we’ve got.”

  Brimstone pressed one final button and a list of names appeared on the screen in front of them. It was a strange feeling for John to look at a list of people that he was potentially about to possess. It felt like picking a rescue dog out at the local pound. He was about to change someone’s life forever and he felt the need to take the decision seriously. Just as he had done in Limbo, he went through the list rejecting the smallest and most unimportant of characteristics. One was too short, another was into fly fishing, and one was rejected on no other foundation than that he had a silly name. This was the second time that he had had the chance to choose his appearance, and this time he had more time to think. Was he really John Hewson at all anymore?

  “I like the look of Edward Reece,” said John. “He’s a civil servant, and given that Sandy works in government, Edward might move in similar circles. He might also have access to some of the places that I need to go. On top of that it appears he has no strong social standing.”

  “Okay, Edward it is,” replied Brimstone, sending the unchosen books back to their positions.

  “How do I get inside his head?”

  “Effectively it’s the opposite way that you got here, John, and for that we need to go back down to the Soul Catcher,” replied Brimstone, noting down the co-ordinates given for Edward’s whereabouts for March the twenty-sixth.

  They took the lift back down to level one and followed one of the descending tunnels that they had t
aken earlier in their travels. As they reached the Soul Catcher, the machine was back running in full flow, a procession of bodies were being filled and led away by the workers on this endless process.

  While they walked, John’s mind wandered back to the subject of the task at hand. If he did find Sandy and Ian, in whatever they had become, which John doubted in itself, how was he going to remove their souls and send them through the Universe to the waiting Soul Catcher?

  “How do I get the souls out of Ian and Sandy if, I mean when, I find them?”

  “That’s the easy bit, John. All you need to do is kill them and then utter the chant, ‘erior wit solsta trak’ repeated three times when the soul is out of its body.”

  Brimstone stomped over to the workers busy in their duties and talked to them in a language quite unfamiliar. They turned off the Soul Catcher and scuttled away to nearby tunnels. The machine sat quietly, receiving the pulses of light from outside of the wormhole and storing them inside its vast interior.

  “It’s time to go. As I said before, it’s not an exact science getting a soul inside someone else. We have the co-ordinates for Edward but you have to do your bit when you get near him. You’ll only get a few seconds before your soul does its own thing,” suggested Brimstone.

  Brimstone walked over to the terminal and pressed a large red button that protruded out of the console. The contraption jolted as if the mechanism had been suddenly halted, which wasn’t far from the truth.

  “I’ve placed the Soul Catcher in reverse. This isn’t going to be very pleasant, I’m afraid, but at least you’ve been shot across the Universe at the speed of light before. The difference this time is that your soul is going against the flow, it will want to come in this direction rather than in the way you’re heading,” informed Brimstone, who stood John beneath the long, white funnel that normally received souls to place them in their foreign plastic bodies. Brimstone inserted the funnel into the valve in John’s throat and returned to the console.