The Gardener of Man: Artilect War Book Two

by A. W. Cross

  The Gardener of Man

  Copyright © 2017 by A.W. Cross

  Published by Glory Box Press

  British Columbia, Canada.

  www.gloryboxpress.com

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For information regarding permission, write to Glory Box Press at contact@gloryboxpress.com

  First edition

  Epub edition

  ISBN 978-1-7751787-1-2

  Cover Illustration by John Kim, johnkimblogspot.ca

  Cover design by Glory Box Press

  Interior design by Glory Box Press

  Editing by Danielle Fine, www.daniellefine.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  I suppose that what happened to us could be told in the story of Frankenstein. Do you remember that story? It’s not one of mine. Victor Frankenstein was a young man, who, like many others of his time and ours, witnessed those he loved sicken and die. His grief over the tenuousness of human life was devastating, as it was to us, and his mind turned toward alchemy and immortality to ease the sorrow of the human condition. And like the scientists in our time, Victor discovered the secret of life.

  —Cindra, Letter to Omega

  The dream changed when I changed. When I became. The green grass of the emerald sea decayed and fell to a wasteland, an endless graveyard of what we once were. I stumbled over the others who lay beneath me as I ran, the splinters of their bones opening the soles of my feet.

  I was no longer a child. No longer even human. Everything that had once held me together now swarmed: my bones, my skin, my flesh, my blood; I was undone. My hands-that-were-no-longer-hands were empty, my kite gone. I mourned its loss as the pieces of me ran toward the tree at the center of the barren earth.

  It still lived, though only a single green leaf remained. He stood at the base of the trunk, waiting. As always. Only, this time, he wasn’t expecting me. Instead, he anticipated the end. His end. Ours had already come, and he no longer saw me.

  His face wasn’t as I remembered it. He’d covered it with metal, and his mouth, once mournful, was gone. I reached out to trace the lines where his markings should’ve been, but I wasn’t present enough; neither of us felt the other anymore. Only when he raised his hand in farewell did we finally meet, the fragments of me embedding in his new skin.

  Something moved in the corner of my eye, distracting me, and when I looked back, he was gone. He’d taken the splinters of me with him; he’d never forget, and he would return. Always.

  I found my kite at last, propped up against the withering trunk of the tree. He was still a man, but not a man, his featureless face bowed to the ground. His skin was no longer smooth and shiny, and the silver ribbons that had streamed behind us like shooting stars as we’d run were gone, crumbled into dust.

  I took hold of him, to see if, after all this time, he could still fly. What remained of my hand touched a chest that moved, a chest that was warm. As the ghost of my fingers spread over his beating heart, he lifted his head and opened his eyes.

  With every pulse of his heart, my flesh knitted, and, finally, I knew pain again. I cried out, but all that came was a flood of tiny machines. They flowed from my mouth into his, and I was restored.

  At the base of the dying tree, a seed took root.

  They’ve finally come home. Five of them, it seems. We’d almost lost hope. To be safe, I will implement protocol Alpha-6. Only then can we bring them in. I’ve told Lexa not to expect too much, that we have no idea what they’ve become, but she won’t listen. Even now, she’s in the kitchen, rifling through rations, trying to find treats with which to spoil her children.

  —Mil Cothi, personal journal; June 23, 2045

  “Does it change the future if I do this?” Oliver asked, kicking a rock into the deadfall at the side of the path. He snapped a dry branch off a nearby tree, the crack echoing through the woods like gunshot. “What about this?”

  “Oliver, don’t you have anything better to do? Or is being an asshole the only thing on your agenda today?” I asked. He’d been taking jabs at Pax ever since we’d broken camp—only twenty minutes ago, but I was surprised it had taken even that long. Oliver’s obnoxiousness was a finely-honed skill.

  He laughed. “Just trying to figure out how this ‘future-path’ thing works. I mean, God forbid I be the one to finally end the world.”

  “Well, you’ve already given it a damn good try,” a deep voice growled behind me. Tor. He trailed after the rest of us, ostensibly to keep watch. The real reason was more complex.

  Our relationship was complicated. We had strong feelings for one another, but we were linked by a bond we hadn’t chosen and didn’t yet understand. This bond gave me power over Tor, and had made trust between us difficult. He’d even tried to leave a few nights ago, stealing away in the dark as I’d slept. But whatever bound us together had stopped him, incapacitating him as he’d crossed some imaginary threshold.

  I knew this, because I thought what he thought, saw what he saw. Felt what he felt. My mind was connected to his, and to each of the others. It was my ability, manifesting when I became a cyborg. Tor’s was physical power. Pax calculated the future from the present. Oliver was annoying. The fifth member of our little group, Cindra, had yet to discover hers.

  Oliver raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I was happy where I was. If you and your puppet master had left me alone…well, let’s just say that certain events could’ve been avoided.”

  Tor stepped toward him, his hands curling into fists at his sides. The tattoos on his face contorted, and Oliver took a step back.

  “Oliver! Can you come help me, please? My pack feels unbalanced.”

  I mouthed a silent thank you to Cindra as Oliver smirked at Tor one last time and sauntered over to her. She winked at me then flashed Oliver her blinding smile. How she could stand him was beyond me.

  Of course, her history with Oliver wasn’t quite as checkered as mine. He’d sworn a vendetta against Tor and me for destroying his godhood—a godhood he’d achieved only through deception, but to him, that was a minor detail.

  “Tor? Are you okay?”

  He’d already turned away, his shoulders stiff.

  We were all on edge. And why wouldn’t we be? We’d woken up five years after the end of the world, nearly been executed, and were now living rough as we followed a mysterious signal to god-only-knew-where.

  Fingers tugged on my sleeve, bringing me back to the present.

  “Are you okay, Ailith?” Pax asked.

  “Not really. Are you?” On the outside, Pax seemed fine. His coppery hair was unkempt, and he had dirt on his chin, but he showed no physical signs of the torture he and Cindra had endured at the hands of the Terrans.

  “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

  “Pax, after what happened, don’t you feel…I don’t know, anything? Regret? Sadness? Anything?”

  He scratched his nose, smearing more dirt across the bridge. “I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t want it to happen, but it had to. I—” For a moment, he looked lost, his jet-black eyes wide. “If I let myself feel bad about it, I won’t be able to keep us moving forward.” He put a hand over his heart, pulling on the fabric of his coat. “I’m sorry.” Pax had known we would massacre the Terrans, had even contrived to make it happen. It had
, he assured me, been crucial to keeping us on a path that would prevent a terrible future.

  I tugged his hand from where it plucked at his coat and squeezed his fingers. “No, Pax, don’t be. We’re all…we’re just trying to do our best, right?”

  “Except Oliver?”

  I punched him playfully on the arm. “Except Oliver.”

  “Ailith, can you see anything about where we’re going? I feel like we’re almost there.”

  “No. Ever since the sonic pulse, my connections have been…erratic.” The connection between my mind and the other cyborgs’ often happened spontaneously, but since our escape from Oliver’s disciples, I’d stayed firmly inside my own brain. “I mean, the threads are still there, they’re just…quiet. I don’t mind, to be honest. After everything, it’s nice to have only my own thoughts for a change. I’m sure it won’t last.”

  “Maybe you’re just gaining better control of them,” Pax said as we emerged into a clearing from the patch of bare forest. “I mean, that would make sen—”

  Everything went dark, like blood, flowing thick and fast.

  PMCP Omega-117 Stage 3 results:

  Subject Status

  O-117-9791 – female, alive, 22-27 yrs

  O-117-0988 – male, alive, 22-27 yrs

  O-117-6887 – male, alive 24-29 yrs

  O-117-5643 – female, alive, 21-26 yrs

  O-117-3476 – female, deceased

  O-117-6799 – male, alive, 18-23 yrs

  O-117-7900 – female, deceased

  O-117-6677 – male, deceased

  O-117-2223 – male, deceased

  O-117-8977 – female, alive, 20-25 yrs

  O-117-3324 – female, comatose, 22-27 yrs

  O-117-6778 – male, alive, 27 yrs

  O-117-5545 – male, deceased.

  —Mil Cothi, Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega, 2045

  Early sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtain and danced in filigreed patterns across Ella’s skin. She still slept, though it was nearly nine o’clock, her face peaceful and carefree. How was she so calm? Tomorrow, we were going to Pantheon Modern, to undergo the cyberization procedure.

  “I still can’t believe it,” she’d squealed last night as we’d gotten ready for bed.

  I couldn’t either. The odds of both of us being accepted had been so low. I’d only applied because Ella had insisted. I didn’t actually want to become a cyborg, but she was so excited about it, about us doing it together, that I didn’t have the heart to say no.

  “I love the idea of it! Just think, tiny machines entwined with our own organic elements. It’ll be like your art and my code combined into a living, breathing entity.”

  Ella loved to merge contrasts. I knew damn well that my darker skin against her bone-pale complexion was what had first attracted her to me. Even her presence in our neighborhood was a juxtaposition: a software engineer stowed away in a district of artists. We’d met here, my fused metal-and-clay pottery charming her as much as it did the chi-chi ladies whose businessman husbands paid Ella good money to keep their online indiscretions secret.

  But I couldn’t share her enthusiasm. It wasn’t the cyberization process that worried me, although I certainly didn’t think it was going to be the romantic phoenix-rising-from-ashes experience Ella was imagining. But then, she also adored controversy, and the idea of being a female pioneer was too tempting for her to pass up. After years of admiring other women breaking barriers, this was her chance.

  Me, I didn’t see the point in becoming a cyborg. When Ella had first come to me, her face glowing with excitement as she’d told me her plans, I’d refused.

  Then, she’d promised to put a ring on my finger.

  “Why did they choose us? What could we possibly have to offer? It sounds too good to be true. And what about those Terrans, and the Cosmists? They’re already at each other’s throats. How do you think they’ll treat us?” I asked her.

  “That’s just your nerves talking. Stop worrying about it.”

  Not worrying came easily to Ella. And why shouldn’t it? She’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted, and this was no exception.

  I was going to do it, for her. It was a terrible reason, but either we both did it or neither of us did. Anything else would drive a wedge between us.

  I snuggled back down beside her, my face in her neck where the perfume of her hair was strongest. She was right. It would be fine. The world was changing. We would be innovators, like the women before us. And once it was over, we would finally get married, down by the ocean, the sunlight glinting off her golden hair as she laughed and said, “I told you so.”

  And so Victor created a being in his own image, recklessly and with all the passion of God. But instead of a dream fulfilled, reflected in his creation was his worst nightmare, a condition far worse than human mortality. The implications of what he’d begun became clear, and he turned his back on his handiwork, abandoning the life he’d created to the mercy of the world. Likewise were we and others of our ilk forsaken when some of humankind perceived us as monsters.

  But a monster is never more dangerous than when you turn your back on it, Omega. Both Victor and humankind soon found this to be true.

  —Cindra, Letter to Omega

  “Ailith? Ailith, can you hear me?”

  “Pax?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pax, what happened?” I was blind, Pax’s disembodied voice the only anchor in the void. “I—” Tor. The others. I couldn’t feel them. Their threads weren’t dark; they were just…gone. Panic unfurled in my chest.

  “We were talking. And now we are here.”

  “But where is here, Pax?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was slipping. Everything that had once held me together now swarmed: my bones, my skin, my flesh, my blood; I had come undone.

  A roar built at the edges of the blackness, dark clouds about to unleash a tempest.

  “Ailith!” A voice in the real world. I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t even feel them.

  The air around me shifted; I was coming back.

  “Stop! We—” an unfamiliar voice pierced the dark.

  “Ailith!” The roar became human. More than human. Tor.

  My body had substance again. There was something covering my mouth, filling my lungs with pure oxygen, and I was restrained.

  What’s happening? Tor would never— No. Not Tor.

  I forced my eyes open. The world was a blur of shining steel, beige walls, and bodies moving with unnatural speed.

  Am I in the hospital? Was it all a dream? Was Tor? A trick of my mind, trying to cope? Are the doctors trying to save me? They know they can’t. Why would they try? I pressed against my bonds, trying to raise my hands and claw at my mouth. Get it off. This is wrong. We were walking…

  Impure air, carrying the smell of antiseptic and Tor’s fear, burned the back of my throat as the mask was ripped free. Tor touched my forehead, his fingers gentle over the layer of gauze. He looked the same as he always did, dark and wild and strong.

  He also looked furious, the gold in his eyes burning like embers ready to ignite.

  “You’re real,” I whispered.

  His free hand gripped the bed rail, and as the unfamiliar voice spoke again, his knuckles whitened. I braced myself.

  To my surprise, he remained calm, turning around slowly, deliberately, putting himself between me and…them.

  A man and a woman. They looked vaguely familiar. He was older than my father, his features coarse and skin heavily lined. Tufts of silver and steel-gray hair protruded haphazardly from his head as though he spent a lot of time worrying them with his fingers. Gray eyes peered out from beneath his bushy brows, a slight dullness on their surface making his expression difficult to read.

  She was younger, perhaps in her forties, her hair a pale, braided mass wound around her head. As she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, her dark eyes darted between Tor and me.

  They both looked clean and
healthy, like they belonged to this room of neatly-made beds and soothingly bland walls. Their clothes were both unremarkable and unofficial, simple cargo pants and t-shirts, but the telltale heavy white linen of a lab coat was draped over a chair next to my bed.

  They stared at us in silence. The woman drew her hand away from her mouth and pushed her palm outward, as if she couldn’t decide whether to placate Tor or defend herself. “Please, we—”

  “Who are you? Where are the others?” Tor’s broad shoulders were tense as he spoke, his back sculpted from iron. Wires trailed on the floor in front of him, and with one quick movement, he ripped them from his chest and dropped them. The woman’s eyes followed them as they hit the linoleum with a soft rattle, and a flush of pink blossomed on her cheeks.

  We were both naked, Tor clearly impressively so.

  “They’re right here.” A strong, feminine voice rose from behind the couple.

  I strained to see around Tor’s width, but my arms were cuffed to the side of the bed. Without looking back, Tor reached behind him and tore one restraint then the other free, easily, as though pulling off a Band-Aid. I knelt on the mattress and skated my hands up his back for support. The muscles in his shoulders shuddered, and he wrapped one arm around me as I peered past him.

  The speaker stepped further into the room. She was tall and leanly muscled, and one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. There was something almost obscene about her beauty. Her skin was the golden brown of demerara sugar, her hair a glossy black that fell in a curling wave over one shoulder. Perfectly sculpted eyebrows arched over heavily-lashed brown eyes. Clearly, being in the middle of an apocalypse worked for her. Her generous lips pursed in a familiar way.

  Kalbir Anand. I’d been a passenger in her mind twice before, once reliving the memory of her sister’s wedding, and once as she found the immolated bodies of Ros and Adrian. She had the same mouth as her mother, whose hand I’d held as they said goodbye.