by Aaron Bunce
Anna nodded without word and hesitantly extended a hand, as Lex noted, towards her and not Soraya.
“Just place them anywhere in the nose or mouth. I will do the rest,” Poole said, now hovering over Lana. The technician looked paler than before, a sickly, dark pallor creeping around her eyes, nose, and mouth.
Lex reached out and accepted the second swab, Soraya bristling in response.
“I don’t feel right about this. Not one bit. Doesn’t anyone else feel like they should have the right to choose if this happens to them or not,” she said, as Lex turned and moved towards Lana.
“Did any of us really have the choice? Did any of us really know what happened?” Anna said quietly.
“Yes, we chose to be with Jacoby. Although we didn’t know about him,” Soraya argued, gesturing towards Poole with her head. “But, come on! What gives us the right? Just because it happened to us, it doesn’t make it okay to decide for them.”
“The right? What does that have to do with anything? They’re hurt, we have the ability to heal them…right here in our hands,” Anna argued, holding the cotton swab up in the light. “What is worse, that we have the ability to help them when they cannot speak, or that we have the ability to heal them and let them suffer or die?”
“It is more than just helping or healing them, and you know that, Anna. It will extend beyond whatever injuries they sustained and will be with them forever. Like we said before, he is an alien STD.”
“Ladies, I would normally scoff at the slander, but now is hardly the time. Can you argue the merits of consent in a life-threatening situation later?”
“They’ll be giving over any sense of privacy, autonomy. And let’s be honest, I still don’t trust you.” Soraya said, turning to look at Poole, but Lex wasn’t entirely certain that she was just talking to him.
“Trust. I’d like to think by now we’ve been able to build up a little trust and good will in each other…” Lex argued, Poole giving her an appreciative nod in response.
“But why them? Why do we have to choose who receives this…help, and not the others?” Soraya argued, “Doesn’t that feel wrong to you? Like standing over four people and deciding who lives and who dies?”
“It’s called triage,” Lex whispered, moving closer to Lana. She watched as the brunette slipped further away. The rise and fall of her chest was shallower than it had been even moments before, and the color continued to leech from her skin. She’d seen enough dead bodies in her time–most friends and buddies, to know. Not all of them were even dead yet, just people stuck in that horrible spiral, waiting for the end. “Triage means you help those that you can help. And unfortunately, in our situation, we help the people that we need the most. The ship needs Lana. Shane and Erik need Emiko. Call it cold, but it is the truth.”
“It doesn’t feel right. I hate it,” Soraya argued, “I mean, I get it. Emiko can help them. Lana is the worst off, but what if you give the microbes to her and Poole can’t save her? What if we are better served giving them to someone who is in better shape?”
“If I were in Lana’s shoes, I would want someone to take a chance on me. We don’t know how much pain they are in, or how much more they will have to endure before they either pull through or fucking die. I’m not going to sit here on my damned hands and watch her fight that battle. Not when I have the power to help. I am here and I’ve got her back, damnit. I’ve sat next to too many friends and held their hands when they died,” Lex spat, her desperation at their situation and anger with the others finally breaking containment.
Before anyone else could speak, she reached down and peeled Lana’s lips open and gently pushed the swab inside. That was all it took, pushing a long-handled cotton swab into her mouth. She might still die, but now she at least had a fighting chance. And if she came through, their odds of fixing the ship greatly improved, and Lex really didn’t want to find out whether they would suffocate or freeze to death first.
Anna moved towards Emiko. Soraya only hovered in her way for a moment, before sighing and pulling herself off to the side. Damn they were a mess, but like combat squads and families, they would only grow closer because of it–if they didn’t die first.
Someone groaned and coughed behind her. Lex half-turned to find Erik’s eyes open. He gagged audibly, then reached up to cover his face. Shane was moving, too.
“What do we do now?” Soraya asked.
Lex reached down and started pulling the monitors off Lana’s finger and arm. Soraya came forward suddenly and grabbed her hand.
“What are you doing?”
“They’re in Poole’s hands now. Grab that bag over there,” Lex said, pointing to the medic’s tote floating towards the dark corner. “Let’s find out what those drugs are and use every tool in our disposal to make the others as comfortable as possible. Besides, it won’t do them or us any good if we just sit around and stare at medical monitors.”
“Okay. Yeah, that sounds good.” Soraya pushed off the ground and snagged the medical tote, immediately scooping the loose supplies back inside. Anna helped, although the two women refused to make eye contact or speak. Lex’s gaze lingered on Anna’s split lip–the only lingering effect of Soraya’s disturbingly fast jab. They would have to sort that one out on their own. Hopefully, after they sorted more pressing matters first.
She turned and moved to Erik, the hot, acrid smell of vomit getting stronger with proximity. He groaned and spluttered, but as she drew close and her shadow fell over him, he seemed to notice and pulled his hands away from his face.
“What…happened?” he muttered.
“We’ve got major problems,” Lex started to say, and paused. She’d overheard their shouting match in the battery room earlier and got the gist. Erik felt isolated. He didn’t believe their story. And he was paranoid. Telling him too much now would just feed the latter and push him further away from the group. “And, well, the ship is all busted to shit. Feeling up to some thankless troubleshooting and repair?”
Time to build
Manis spent an interminable amount of time floating amidst the voices, the hundreds or more splinters of humanity that made up Layla, or her benefactor’s super consciousness. They moved around him like water currents, some pushing him this way, others registering less contact than a wisp of smoke or fog, and yet some, much more incessant, wrapped around him and tumbled him about like a gale wind.
He tried fighting them at first, then sought to block them out, but it was all beyond his control. Manis eventually grew to not only tolerate them, but started to appreciate their strange and disturbing songs, their gentle, almost familial caress and the faint, fragmented memories that accompanied them. They were alive beyond death, existing individually as part of a greater whole.
Then they changed, several of the voices growing closer and speaking with more intensity. The voices modulated, one starting where the others stopped, many contributing to speak as one.
“Awaken…”
“Prophet…”
“It is time to…”
“Go forth…”
“You are reborn…”
“Prepare our coming…”
He tumbled free of the psychic cocoon and immediately became aware of his body again. He was warm and weightless, floating in a thick fluid. Manis pushed forward, his enclosure stretching with his hand and rebounding. A sudden need–for air, to see, stand, and move, burned inside him, and he pushed forward again.
His fingertips broke through and he pushed harder, his hand, then arm disappearing beyond the barrier. He clutched at the hole with his other appendages, ripping and tearing, and in a chaotic, cold moment, tumbled free of the womb.
Liquid splashed all around him in the darkness, the sound impossibly loud in the close air. Manis managed to push up onto his hands and knees, his muscles, still raw and new, trembling beneath him. The urge to breathe burned brighter yet and he tried to pull on the air, only to find no room in his lungs. He pushed, a stream of the thick, amniotic f
luid rushing out of his mouth and splashing against the ground.
Air rushed in. He coughed and spluttered, pushed more of the syrupy mess out, and gulped down another lungful. Soon he would not have to worry about petty acts like respiration, but change came at a cost, and he knew that patience would be his greatest ally.
Life was all about the assimilation of new organics, evolving around his weaknesses, and continuing. To continue was to live. To live was everything. That was it…their purpose, and now, his.
Pushing off to stand, Manis looked around the space, his eyes changing, flexing, and morphing inside the sockets. Details started to appear from the almost lightless space. He was in a large ducting interchange, a dozen vented chutes heading off in all six directions. Red tendrils extended over the metal above, growing over the surface like ivy.
Manis turned to take in his cocoon from which he’d just fallen, the sizable fleshy growth affixed well off the ground with more of the organic growths. Hands, arms, and legs extended out from the almost undistinguishable mass, those previously human appendages now like opaque, hollow shells. He moved in a little closer and let his gaze linger higher, where a horrible and disfigured head hung. Not just any head, but his.
The last thing he remembered was jumping on the technician in his room, not re-entering the vents, not adhering himself to the wall. None of it. But then he wondered if he wanted to.
“What is this?” he croaked, alarmed by his voice. It surely wasn’t his voice, not as he remembered, but deeper, stronger, and far less human. He’d envisioned Layla changing him, yes, modifying his body to make him stronger and faster, but how could that be if he was looking at his hands, arms, and legs…his body stuck to a wall like some strange insect shell? If that was his body plastered into place, then what was he now?
“Collect diversity…”
“Shed old skin…”
“Shed old weakness…”
“Become perfect…”
The chorus of voices echoed into his head.
“Layla, are you done with me?” he asked the darkness.
There was no response, no tingle up his spine, or slithering, slapping sound of approaching tentacles.
Manis shuddered and gave the grotesque, mangled pile of his former body one final glance before looking away. He trembled for a moment, rubbing the hard, almost alabaster skin of his forearms. The contact startled him. He’d expected soft and body hair…perhaps softer and not rotting, sloughing chunks. But this…?
He held his arms up in the darkness and turned them over to examine his hands. His fingers and palms were covered in hundreds, perhaps thousands of tiny, black holes. It all looked like him, but not the old him.
He walked quietly up to the wall opposite the cocoon and placed his hand firmly against the metal. With only a thought, it stuck firmly in place. Manis pulled himself up, pressed his other hand higher up, and started to climb the smooth metal.
It was as natural as walking, and in a flash, he pulled himself up to one of the vents, ripped off the cover and slipped inside. The opening was small, but he fit easily, his body automatically contorting to the space. He moved with almost no effort, as if he were incredibly strong, or his new body had no weight.
I could get used to this, he thought as he moved down the dark expanse quickly, marveling at how little noise his passage made. Around a T-junction he went, then up and around another. Manis caught a scent on the air and stopped. No, he didn’t smell it. In fact, the concept of “smell” felt foreign to him now. Manis was well beyond smelling things. He saw and even felt the odors.
Small particles drifted through the air, effervescent, and almost glowing in his vision. He followed, stopping at a vertical junction, paused to catch the trail again, and continued.
A caged fan blocked his path at the next intersection, but when he stopped and listened, he managed to catch the faintest hint of a voice echoing beyond. It took Manis the work of several minutes, crawling upside down, around service junctions, and up one painfully tight chute, but he found his way around the fan. The voice was close now, the drifting particles so thick in the air it looked like snow.
He processed the odors as he moved, breaking down the body odor into its root hydroxylated fatty acids, and parsing it from the obvious and prevalent stress hormones. Someone was in distress. And he didn’t need to hear them to understand that. He felt it.
“No…I don’t want to. Let me do something else. My hand, I’m really good with that.” The voice was low and strained, as if the speaker was trying to be quiet but not quite in full emotional control.
“No. I want it or nothing. That is the deal. The only deal. If you don’t like it, that’s not my problem. Remember? You said, ‘I’ll let you fuck me for a med fix’. Your words, not mine.” The second voice was deeper, stronger, and free from the first’s tension.
“Don’t ask this of me, please. Yes, I know I said it. But I’m really struggling right now. I just need a little hit, ya know, something to take the edge off. I need it, but not for that. Show me a little mercy. I’m hurting. I don’t feel right, haven’t for a while, and that’ll just make it worse.”
The hormone saturation increased around him, a combination of anger and hunger igniting in response. The trail led him into an unfamiliar part of the ship, the ducting smaller and the surfaces coated in a slimy layer of grease and dust. The small duct smashed in around him, his arms and legs brushing and tapping against the slick metal.
“Fuck this. You stim-junkies are all the same—say one thing, try and do another. You know what, sit here and twitch for all I care. I’m leaving and taking my pain patches with me. And if you think you’ll be able to get these from anyone else onboard, think again. My Id is the only one that will unlock the med locker in the infirmary.”
“Wait! No,” the first voice hissed, and it was close now, echoing just beyond a vent ahead. Manis was so close he could feel them, the proximity of the two bodies, their warmth and driving hormones infecting him.
“Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll do it. Please don’t leave. I’ll do it. Just be gentle, cause I hurt. I hurt all over. I just need something to take the edge off. Those stims, the backburn, it’s killing me. I’ll do it. Please. Look…see, I’m taking it off. I’m getting ready.” The woman’s voice was scratchy, trembling, and he visualized how she shook with the withdrawals. It suddenly made sense why the air was afire with hormones. Her body was in revolt, fighting itself in the absence of artificial stims.
The man cleared his throat and then a zipper opened, the metal on metal, mechanical movement painting a clear picture in Manis’ mind. He folded his arm over itself in the tight space and started working to remove the vent clips–so very slowly, methodically. A heavy weight shifted in the room beyond. Something moved, and then it fell to the ground.
“No, all the way off. And turn so I can see your face. I want to see your face. I want interactive, not that bury your face in your arms and pretend to be somewhere else, crap. I can get that from a sex drone.”
“Okay, just go slow….” the woman said, her voice tensing as the man groaned. She started to sob quietly then as skin slapped against skin. The man’s breathing grew louder, more intense.
“I told you it wasn’t small,” he grunted, “tell me it’s big. Tell me how much you like it. Tell doc how good it makes you feel. Do it!”
The woman only sobbed and sniffled.
“Say it!” he growled, and the slapping became more violent.
“Oh. Big. You’re big, Doc. Ow, please…that hurts,” the woman cried.
“Ah, no. You want your pain to go away, then you’re going to take it how I want. This is a transaction, remember. You get what you want if I do first.”
Manis undid another fastener, and then another, his strength unwavering, his patience infinite. He blocked off his olfactory receptors, as the air became saturated, a distracting mix of one person’s arousal and another’s pain.
The last clip slid free, the vent cover
popping free without a sound. He pushed it forward an inch, turned it sideways, and pulled it into the duct beneath him. Then, inch by seductive inch, Manis pushed his form out into the open air.
One hand pulled free of the vent, shoulder and elbow joints swinging slowly back into place with only the faintest hint of a pop. The other hand followed, his head, contorted strangely against his chest, slid free next. His vision corrected to the brighter space, sensory input flooding into his brain. His skin was opaque, the pumping blood and strange tendril-like alien workings moving beneath the surface.
Fascinating.
He was facing the ceiling at first but managed to swivel his head almost all the way around. Manis was in a storage room, half the lights shut off, while both walls and most of the floor was covered with racks or sealed crates, a steerage room perfect for seedy deals. One similar to the space where they had strapped him to a table.
The man and woman were almost directly beneath him, the woman sprawled on her back on a crate and naked from the waist down, and the man on top of her, clutching tightly to her hips as he thrusted and grunted excitedly. Her eyes were closed, her face a mask of grim determination.
Well, Doctor Munson, Manis thought with cruel recognition, noting the round glasses and prominent balding patch. We will see who is worth saving now. We’ll see who has this last laugh. The memory of the doctor’s face hovering over him, twisted with obvious disgust and apathy, burned fresh in Manis’ mind, the chorus of voices swirling around it, breathing its fire hotter.
He slipped the rest of his body out of the vent, hugging the ceiling and creeping forward. Munson moaned suddenly, the clapping of skin increasing in intensity. And then he started to splutter.
