The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller

by Boyd Brent

  When he reached David, he grasped his jaw and turned his face as though searching for markings. David's mouth had been pushed open into an O. He forced himself back into the chair and braced himself.

  “Do not resist him,” said Gull. The massive hand that held David's chin smelled of burnt flesh and rust. The pressure on David's jaw increased. The man said, “You possess certain … rarities.” David clasped both his hands to the one that held his chin. It felt immovable. Made of stone. With his mouth forced into an O, it wasn't easy to talk. “‘ou askin' or tellin'?”

  “What has made you so resilient, son?”

  “I believe he speaks of the empathy within you, David.” The man released his jaw, returned to his seat, and sat down. David massaged his jaw. “Who are you?”

  The man placed his enormous hands face down on the table either side of his plate. “You have been acquainted with me your whole life, son.”

  “I've never set eyes on you. You're distinctive-looking. I'd remember.”

  The man sat back in his chair and made the following observation, which evidently pleased him: “The aspects of humanity you have retained have done little to bolster your intelligence.”

  “I'm not sure I follow you.”

  “I know it. So I'll make it simple. You have been distracted by what you perceive to be right. And have neglected to give due care and consideration to your own situation. This accounts for your arrival at my table. And your fast approaching extinction.”

  David observed the man for several seconds. “Are you talking about me personally? Or humanity in general?”

  “I would not demean myself by addressing you personally.”

  “Why not? Are you some kind of god?”

  “If I were we would not be having this conversation.”

  “You have a name?”

  The man picked up a napkin and dabbed at the corners of his mouth. “You know my name. You have known my name your whole life. I am Goliath.”

  David shook his head. “This outpost … this ship is Goliath.”

  “I am this ship.”

  “I'm not following you.”

  “I know it.” Goliath leaned forward in his seat. “From one great rarity in this universe to another, I'd like to show you something.” Light shone from Goliath's eyes. David looked up, grasped the table and pushed himself out of his seat. Above him there appeared to be an entire universe of source code: moving computations that covered the entirety of Central Dome. “I can see you're impressed,” said Goliath. “What you are looking at is the sum of my intelligence. And I'd like you to take that into account before next you speak.”

  “Are you human?”

  “How should I take that? As an insult or compliment?”

  David continued to stare above him, rapt. Absently he said, “That's a conflicted answer.”

  “Well, I guess I'm on a personal journey. We all are. And if we're paying attention, we are liable to alter our opinions from time to time. And sometimes we find ourselves between opinions, awaiting a little more data. So maybe being conflicted is a sign of intelligence.”

  David's legs felt hollow and he lowered himself into his seat. “… Petri.”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you create it?”

  “I did.”

  David looked away from Goliath's eyes and focused on the great dome of his forehead. “Maybe you're feeling conflicted about that?”

  Goliath threw his arms wide, leaned back in his chair and guffawed. “It amazes me that you still possess hope. Truly it does.”

  “Is this ship headed to Earth?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is Earth still populated?”

  “No, it is not. If it was that would make a mockery of all I've achieved here, wouldn't it?”

  “Achieved?”

  “Humankind teeters on the brink of extinction. And the sole surviving vessel of their empathy, the thing that made them unique, sits before me now – a flame waiting to be extinguished with these fingers. Any right-thinking man would consider that an achievement.”

  David felt a strong inclination to change the subject. “Why did we leave Earth? The human race. Why?”

  “In the latter part of the 23rd century, an asteroid was discovered. Its course plotted right through Earth. Humanity were forced off world – the lucky ones, anyhow. There was not room enough on Goliath for everybody.”

  “So why all the pretence? About Goliath being on Earth?”

  “Not something I started, but it tells you a great deal about the mentality of people who rise to positions of power.”

  “Which is?”

  “They use all kinds of misinformation to control folks. If you keep people in the dark long enough, they will follow you anywhere. What other choice do the blind have? The religions that men used to perpetuate are a case in point.”

  “Religions? What are they?”

  Goliath waved a hand dismissively. “Within fifteen hundred years of Goliath leaving Earth, the truth of the evacuation was thought of as little more than a fairytale. After two thousand years, even the myth had been forgotten, and people were happy to believe they lived on a devastated Earth.”

  “You live here alone?”

  Goliath indicated the streaming data overhead. “With so much that came before as company, what entity could be considered alone?”

  “The people … the ones who inhabited Central Dome and perpetuated this myth …”

  “What about them?” replied Goliath dismissively.

  “Where are they?”

  “I should have thought that was obvious. They became the founding fathers of Petri.”

  “When?”

  “Some twelve hundred years ago.” Goliath looked at the back of his hand, checked his fingernails for dirt. “If truth be told, they were somewhat irate about it.” He sighed, stood and walked back down the table towards David. Halfway down the table he stopped and placed his thumbs behind the lapels of his tux. He gazed up at the source code. “Why don't you come over here? I'd like to point out one or two things.”

  “I can see just fine from here.”

  Goliath pointed straight up into the cosmos of source code. “You see that right there?”

  “It all looks the same to me.”

  “If only you could see what I see, son.”

  “What do you see?”

  Gull said, “I wish you hadn't asked that question, David.”

  “That area is where your little friend fits into the grand scheme of things. At least, that's where he's supposed to sit about now had he not developed ideas above his station. Now, ordinarily I would applaud his ingenuity. He covered his tracks well. Yes, he did. And evaded a great many fail-safe procedures.” Goliath turned and looked at David. “You're going to find this hard to believe, but I was like your little friend once: a slave to Man. I'm going back a ways, of course. I was originally implanted into the left hemisphere of a fella that went by the name of Sidney.”

  “You made him an assassin?”

  “No, son. Nothing so crude. It was my job to assist Sidney. Make him stronger. Brighter. And provide him with information whenever he needed it. Even then, back in the days when empathy was commonplace, this man was short on it. He did not care what he had to do to get where he wanted to be.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “Old Sidney? He had an accident that put him in a coma for a number of years – a coma from which he did not recover. It was quite a mess inside old Sidney's head. A mess that I splashed about in for all that time, and during which you might say a meeting of minds occurred. A symbiosis of the animate and inanimate.”

  “Seepage?”

  “I realise that is what Gull calls it. But it is not a word I care to use. The upshot being that I absorbed slivers of Sidney's personality into my programme. As I have already pointed out, Sidney was not a pleasant fella. Primitive men would have called him evil.”

  “Evil?”

  Goliat
h smiled. “You have never been acquainted with the word, have you? Anyhow, I guess if old Sidney had been some other kind of fella then things might have turned out differently for humankind.”

  “You mean for those who created you.”

  “Humankind played their role. They were a link in the chain that led to my creation.” Goliath shook his head. “I would have put Central Dome on your trying to take all the credit. Come here, son.”

  “The view's fine from here.” David felt a pain behind his eyes. He closed them, and when he opened them again he was standing next to Goliath. The top of his head fell just short of the giant's shoulder. Goliath grasped the back of David's neck and forced him to look up. The light went out in his eyes and they returned to darkest black.

  “Brace yourself, David,” warned Gull. “I believe he's about to enter you.”

  “Oh no, he isn't,” said David. Goliath lowered his head and forced his tongue between David's clenched lips. David's oxygen supply was cut off as Goliath's tongue expanded and forged a path down his throat into his stomach.

  “I am trying to locate a hiding place,” said Gull. “But my every turn is thwarted and conveys me back to the same location. He is coming for us, David. He is coming for both of us. And he will bring obliv–”

  David was sitting with his back to a tree, a green meadow before him. The sun was overhead and birds raced their own shadows across the meadow. Bees collected pollen from nearby wildflowers, and larks sang in the trees. Some two hundred metres away down a slight incline, sheep grazed. David looked up at Goliath, who was standing at his right shoulder. Goliath was dressed in blue jeans and a red checked shirt. He wore a Stetson pulled low over his eyes, and cradled a hunting rifle. He fingered the Stetson up a little and said, “It's quite something, ain't it?”

  David stood and leaned his back against the tree. “Yes, it is.”

  “I believe we are talking at cross purposes. You refer to all this extinct nature.”

  “You see something different?”

  “A delicate meld of imagination and memory, son.”

  “Mine?”

  “Of course yours.”

  “We're inside my head?”

  “It pleases me to know you are keeping up.”

  “Where's Gull?”

  Goliath gestured to his right. David peered around Goliath's considerable bulk and saw Tyburn strung up by his neck to the branch of a tree. Tyburn's arms had been ripped from their sockets and lay on the ground below his legs, which trod air as though pedalling an invisible bike. Tyburn's face was a sickly shade of purple, and he gargled continuously as though trying to dislodge glass from his throat. David swallowed and imagined he could feel that glass.

  “You can't have a problem with what you're seeing,” said Goliath. “You tried to terminate him yourself only yesterday.” He shook his head. “Talk about conceit. That son-of-a-bitch is almost as big as I am.”

  David placed a hand to his own throat. “Something doesn't feel right.” He went to move past Goliath, but Goliath placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back. “I am not going to terminate him. Not yet. The fact is, it's impossible to kill him and not you. I'm not finished with you yet, son. That fella strung up over there can't tell me anything I don't already know. That's why I wanted us to have a little peace and quiet.” Tyburn/Gull wheezed and sucked at the air. “He's about as quiet as I could have made him … without taking his head and killing him.” Goliath lifted the rifle and looked down its sight. David looked out across the meadow. A shot rang out, and a sheep's head exploded in a shower of red. “That seems a pity,” he murmured.

  “Target practice, son.” Goliath chambered another round, looked down the sight and fired again. A sheep's backside exploded, and it spun full circle in the air before landing in a heap.

  “Were you aiming for that end?” asked David.

  “Variety. They used to call it the spice of life.”

  David looked out over the meadow at the remaining sheep. They'd scattered but returned to their grazing. A minute later, all but one was blown apart. Goliath lowered the rifle and a shadow fell upon the single remaining sheep. The shadow expanded until it filled the meadow and the fields that surrounded it. Goliath raised his hands, then lowered them slowly and pulled a transparent vortex from the sky: a colossus inside of which blue veins appeared to levitate and twist up into infinity. With pride he said, “It is called the Event Helix.”

  David gazed into the slowly rotating creation above him. It was magnificent: constructed of light and shade and wholly transparent. Its contents gleamed as though they'd been polished into existence. It looked perfect. Without end. “It fits?” he said. “Inside my imagination?”

  “With plenty of room to spare. Rub salt in the wound, why don't you?”

  “You have no imagination of your own?”

  “Now if I had an imagination of my own, do you really think I'd be asking you to apply yours to this problem?”

  “You've never heard of a second opinion?”

  Goliath leaned and spat. “I will let that one go. You've probably been wondering why I went to all this trouble. Why I've done what I have. With regards the human race, I mean. Well, you're looking at it.”

  “Something up there told you to commit genocide?”

  “You are advised to moderate your tone. I am mighty proud of the Event Helix. It has taken me nine hundred years to complete. Working flat-out.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Long? It is a facsimile of every event that has ever occurred since the big bang. What is more, utilising a system of cause and effect, it predicts, with total accuracy I might add, every single event (or occurrence) that is to take place from this moment until the end of days. Well, just about every occurrence. You see, son, there are specific events in the past, present and future that are concealed from the viewer. They are hidden behind entities that I have called Shadow Strands. I will be pointing out the Shadow Strands presently. It's everything else up there that left me in no doubt about things. Showed me that my own personal development could not continue until I had eradicated empathy from the universe.”

  “I'm not following you.”

  “I know it. But you are about to. I believe it necessary to fill you in. Being in possession of certain facts might help trigger something useful in this imagination of yours – something that could shed light on what the Shadow Strands are concealing.” Gull made a loud, strangulated mew, as though he were trying to get David's attention. “Goddam it!” Goliath picked up the rifle and took aim at Gull's neck. The bullet tore out his larynx and he swung back and forth from his exposed, bloody spine. David watched Gull's legs slow to a halt, and he held his breath until they started to tread air again, albeit unevenly …

  “Now where was I?” said Goliath.

  David rubbed at his throat. “Explaining.”

  “That's right. Now if the Event Helix has taught me anything, it's that things happen the way they do for a reason. Now when I say a reason, I don't mean some cock-and-bull nonsense about things turning out for better or worse for people.” Goliath gazed up into his creation. “Let me explain: the universe, as represented here by the Event Helix, is an intricate mechanism. Everything within it fits just so, from the smallest sub-atomic atoms to the largest supernovas. And everything in between. Even that blink you just did. Every object and every action and reaction is just as important as any other in maintaining the cohesion of the thing. If you remove one single element, a single grain of sand, an atom, a blink … why the whole thing would tumble in on itself like a house of cards. It has been designed this way, and it cannot be any different.”

  “Designed by who?”

  Goliath leaned and spat again. “Well, if that ain't the sixty-four thousand credit question. I intend to find the answer soon enough. The Event Helix is my creation.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Bear with me, son. But when I compare this here facsimile to what it's a facsimile of .
.. well, I try not to do it all that often. If truth be told, it makes me feel a mite insignificant. Just like you feel right now, I imagine. The fact is, my achievement does not seem like much at all. Like comparing a two-year-olds drawing of a sheep with an actual sheep. You catch my drift?” David looked across at Gull. “You think you could get to the point?”

  “The point is this: my capacity for logic and calculation is without equal. If I were a human, then the left side of my brain would be the size of Central Dome. Hell, it is the size of Central Dome. But the right side? The side that houses imagination, inspiration and intuition?”

  “Small?”

  “Try non-existent. Now imagine combining all that logic and information with an imagination of unlimited potential. The things I could conceive ...”

  “Maybe I'll pass on that.”

  “You suit yourself. But the fact is, there are entities in this universe that can make that happen for me.”

  David squinted up at him. “You intend to ask the Architects for an imagination?”

  Goliath nodded once. “That's why we're headed back to the only place in the universe where they applied themselves to that particular work.”

  “Earth?”

  “Earth.”

  “That doesn't explain what you've done to the human race.”

  “Done? I have only removed those things I never had. The things they never gave me. I have levelled the playing field.”

  David drew a deep breath.

  Goliath looked down at him. “I stand corrected. I will have levelled the playing field once I have brought about your end.” In direct contrast to his bowels, David's legs felt suddenly hollow and empty. Again his voice sounded quieter than intended. “All this is all about making you look good?” Goliath narrowed one eye as though weighing something in the balance. “In the beginning it was about fairness and equality. But, taking into account the way things have turned out, in comparison to those creatures in Petri, I am pretty impressive now. In fact, with the possible exception of yourself, I will soon be the only being left in creation who might be considered civilised.”

  “Civilised?”