by Ben Woollard
Finally we came to a large warehouse building with soft light barely visible through the windows. It was surrounded by a barbed fence, with guards all around it.
“Fuck,” Franz said. “Those fortifications are new.”
“How are we gonna get inside?” Sheldon asked, panting heavy to my right, everyone hiding behind a half fallen brick wall. Franz looked out at the building and the guards that surrounded it for a while, then turned to us and whispered quickly.
“We need a distraction. If a few of you can divert the main guards attention long enough we can take them down while they’re distracted. Lure them into the alley if you can and deal with them there. We’ll rush the front from that side, over there,” he said, gesturing at the alley to our left. “Once we’re inside, hide the guards and make sure no one comes in. Take their uniforms if you can so no one passing gets suspicious.”
“How are we supposed to lure them into the alley?” Sheldon asked.
“There’s not supposed to be anyone out here, just showing yourselves should be enough to get them to come over. Everyone clear?” We all nodded, and me and Franz went around to the alley on the left, while Sheldon and the rest snuck around the other direction. We hunched and waited. We heard Sheldon yelling, taunting the guards who yelled back, but were unable to get Sheldon to approach, two of the three that stood at the main entrance walked over to investigate. When they had disappeared into the alley we heard the sounds of struggle, and saw the remaining guard was looking intently in that direction. We sprinted from our hiding place, Franz at the lead. He charged the guard, who had no time to draw his pistol, or even attempt to defend himself with the club he held before Franz had hit him over the head, sending blood along the ground and knocking the man unconscious, if not dead.
There was still another guard at the entrance to the building who had seen us. He yelled at us as I rushed him, jumping over the guard Franz had felled, and tackled him before he could draw his own pistol, hoping their was nobody close by to hear his words. We rolled around in the dirt flailing at each other until the others arrived and beat him over the head too. With all the guards taken care of, me and Franz approached the entrance of the building while the others hid the bodies.
“Put on their uniforms and take up their positions so none of the passing patrols notice,” Franz instructed the others quickly before opening the door that led into the building. Inside everything was dark, except for the light that came out of the lower levels, hidden behind further doors as we descended down a stairwell. My pulse was beating rabid and I could feel something up ahead, like the air was growing thick and hot the closer we got to The Device. We passed through swinging doors and found ourselves face to face with a man in a lab coat pacing back and forth upon a mezzanine with a clipboard in his hands, muttering to himself as he walked. He looked up at us, and I saw fear flash in his eyes at the realization that we weren’t Gov troops. Looking closer at us, he recognized Franz.
“Goddard,” Franz said, and grabbed the man by his collar. Franz started to drag him down the stairs, and I looked down from where we stood to see, in the sunken center of the room, The Device that had driven the Singulars to murder one another, nearly killed my family and now drove the madness of the UCG. I thought I could see heat radiating from it, and I felt a presence there, the same one I had torn from Franz’s head, and I knew from the waves of hate radiating from it that it could feel me too; it was waiting for me.
“What do you want?” Goddard asked, his voice ringing clear with terror.
“You’re going to help us,” Franz told him. “My friend here wants to connect to The Device.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Just do what I say.”
I sat down on the cold metal chair in front of The Device and placed the helmet-like attachment on my head. The feeling of rage coming from it was tangible enough to make my skull feel like it was burning. I looked at Franz and nodded.
“Turn it on,” he told the captive engineer, whose eyes were wide and bloodshot. “Turn it on!” Franz yelled, pushing the man towards the control panel and waving his baton. Goddard placed his hand onto the panel and, glancing between me and Franz, started The Device.
At first I felt a tingling, then I heard a sound like tearing cloth, and panic stung at the walls of my stomach at the thought that my skull was being ripped apart. Slowly the room around me disappeared, replaced by a darkness tinged deep red. Before me came into view a void like an endless pit from which no light could escape, and from it came the sound of beating wings and a sensation of hate and cruelty that threatened to crush me with its weight. Around the edges of that void I could see the shades of figures standing with their backs turned, and from where their heads and spines connected I saw tendrils leaching out and descending down into the darkness of the chasm.
The sound of wings grew, turning all the air around me to a storm, and everything was turmoil as the creature came into my sight. Its eyes were scarlet gems with blackened pupils, and from it came a feeling like every sorrow that I’d ever felt. It reached out to me, though not physically. I felt it approach my mind, assaulting my awareness. Everything around me reeled. I had the feeling of being pulled downwards, and inside my mind a voice began to speak, deep and croaking. It showed me every fault I’d ever had. I saw Shiloh’s body laying bloody in the dirt.
“You killed your brother,” the voice said to me, and pain consumed me. I saw Momma and Grandpa hauled away to rot and die in dungeons, and there they whispered curses towards me. “You abandoned your family,” the voice spoke inside my head. Guilt and shame seethed within me, and I felt I’d drown in it. Dismay began threatening to break in and fear that I’d been wrong, that everything was lost and I’d be eaten by this thing. All the grief and suffering that’d ever built its way into my life grew thorns thick inside my blood. My head spun with nausea, and it was all I could do to keep myself from vomiting.
The feeling grew and I was sure that all was gone and that I was being buried. It was only then, in contrast to all the vines of loathing and misery that I felt the stillness at the center of me, and focusing upon it, the peace that had long now kept me sane began to grow. I threw myself inside it, my breath slowing. My mind began to ignore the graveled words and visions summoned by the winged form in front of me.
I delved further into the growing center of myself and balanced deep within it, watching from this void emerge a growing, blinding glow. It spread out in netting patterns, and where it touched inside my body all grief and sorrow burned away, leaving only humility and reverence for that which was so far beyond myself. I closed my eyes and saw the beast before me as it really was: a writhing worm that sought only to consume me, screaming now at the touch of that expanding web. I saw steam and smoke arise from where it burned away the feelers that had reached into my mind.
“You have no power over me,” I said, and anger filled the breaking presence that was locked into my own.
“I can give you power,” it told me. “Everything will be yours: all the growing country, every woman, every man will serve you. Riches will be yours. I will even give you immortality.” Still I ignored it, and focused on the growing light, which held the creature bound to me, though I now felt it try to tear itself away.
“You’re only a shade that blocks the sun and hates its rays.” I didn’t know where these words arose from, only that they seemed the right ones and I said them automatically. The webbing in me thickened, and the creature screeched and flailed itself in desperation as it tried to pull away. The wind around me was a storm, and I opened my eyes to see the beating wings begin to bleed. “You have no power over me,” I said again, and spirals of light filled the space between us, cycling outwards at the writhing bird.
“You can’t kill me!” it screeched. “I am endless! I am hordes of crawling filth and joy at blood and horrors! I am the child eating mirth of darkest instinct, the endless hate that fills the naked halls! I devour homes and nations, churn the earth a
nd kill the planted seeds! I am war and blitzkrieg, cannibals of joy! I destroyed pacific cities, and killed the people of the land where you now live! You cannot end I who live within you all, that pounds upon the floor on which you stand. You cannot collapse the caverns where I am endless hateful rage. You cannot close the door that every person owns and longs to see the other side of.”
“Maybe so,” I said, my voice calm, my blood and body passive, my head and eyes clear as day, radiating light that now poured forth from the deepest center of me. “But this pit’s to be destroyed, and the vines you’ve grown are poison to be cut down, and so you’ll whither in the zenith sun, and the place you’ve tried to kill will bask while you’re banished back below.” I felt I was watching from a place far above where these events were happening, and still my words seemed foreign to me, their vibrations coming through me as a tunnel. The image of the scene became blinding as the light expanded out. I heard the screaming creature as it was forced back down into the pit it had crawled from, crumbling to close, the tendrils sinking back, pulling those who stood about the cavern with it.
Strangely I felt pity then, for the fallen form and for the doomed that fell alongside it, but I was drifting up where everything was radiant and still. I couldn’t think, and seemed to float forever, the whole vast ocean of all being now far below me. I wanted nothing, heard nothing, was nothing but a portion of that light that spread out endless in all directions. I grew within it until I saw it all, the whole creation spread around and in me. I became all joy and bliss, and yet even this broke and I went yet somewhere higher, where all was nothing yet still was. I was gone, drifting there forever in that space that is no place, yet is all places. Blind and dilated were my eyes, gone all semblance of self, everything a spreading endless light and somewhere way above a place I could not see, but felt as a warm and moving darkness. I stayed there, all things indescribable, until I finally started the long drift back down to the place from where I’d come.
I don’t know when I returned, but at last my eyes did open, and I saw Franz holding Goddard from behind, looking at me anxious. I smiled at them both. I felt clear and open, and even the small and dingy warehouse room seemed to me a cathedral worthy of all praise.
“It’s done,” I said. “Let’s end it while we can.”
“What do you mean?” Goddard asked us. “You don’t mean you’re going to destroy it! You can’t!” Franz took of his belt and tied the engineer’s hands with it, then took from the bag strapped to his back the tools we’d brought for disassembly. We tore the panels off The Device and saw the wires and complex circuitry that filled its metal bones. We pulled it all apart and broke its pieces on the ground. When we’d finished, piles of metal stood before us, and I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of how excited I’d have been to have scavenged such a haul.
“We should go,” Franz said. “Troops might be on their way.” I nodded, and we tied Goddard to a post so that he couldn’t follow us.
“You should kill me,” he said. “Shilk will if you don’t.”
“Shilk is gone,” I told him. “A new cycle has begun.” We left as quickly as we could, gathering the others who still stood guard outside. We snuck back through the streets until we came to my old house, where I opened the door with a key I’d brought and let everyone inside.
“We can hide here for the time being,” I said, glancing at the sky, slowly beginning to brighten with the coming sun, then shut the door and pulled the curtains firm across the windows.
Chapter 14
The Memoirs of Franz Thompson
I couldn’t believe that we had managed to do it. I sat in the home Sam had led us to as if in a trance. Part of me had been sure that we would be killed, that our mission was ultimately suicidal. We huddled in the small living room, wrapping blankets around ourselves for warmth. Everyone was relieved, but we dared not speak above a whisper for fear that patrols out in the street might hear us.
“What do we do now?” Sheldon asked, everyone glancing around at each other, looking uncertain.
“What did you mean when you said that Shilk is gone?” I asked Sam, who was sitting calmly on the floor without a blanket.
“I saw him fall down with all the others who were connected through that void. I’d imagine they’re all just like the Singulars now: simple empty shells.”
“If that’s the case then we should do all we can tomorrow to figure out what’s going to happen in the UCG. Everything pivots around Shilk; without him, it will start to crumble.”
“What happened in there?” One of the settlers with us, Grigor, asked. I looked at Sam, but he only smiled and seemed to be looking past the room where we sat, his eyes out of focus and an airy look upon his face.
“Sam?” I asked. “What did happen in there?”
“I don’t know how I could explain it,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was lost; I was sure I’d drown until...” he broke off and closed his eyes. We all sat there looking at him for several minutes before he spoke again. “I- I don’t know how to say it. Whatever that thing was, it’s gone now, by some power I can’t explain.”
“You mean you killed it?” I asked.
“No. I don’t think something like that can really die. It’s weird, but I got the sense like it was always there, waiting for an opportunity to break into our minds and steer us to its will, like it’s a part of us most people never want to see. In fact I’m sure of it. In a sense it was already working through Shilk before he started using The Device, only more subtle, like an impulse.” I thought about the presence that The Device had tied me to, and the exhilaration I had felt in the early stages of it, the power that had emanated through me in those moments.
“I think there’s something that attracts people to it,” I said, my voice soft and carrying across the darkened room. “It offers you something real, something that can’t be easily gained any other way. If you let in, really let it in, it’s like you’re invulnerable; everyone and everything’s beneath you, and you can do anything without the slightest sense of guilt or horror. Of course you would have to kill, or at least bury, whatever it is in us that feels those things.”
“That doesn’t sound like it’d be too hard of a decision to make for a lot of people,” another of our party said.
“I don’t think it is. I think the world is full of people who have opened that door and gotten drunk on the power they found there, or else everything welled up inside them until it broke out into insanity and rage.”
“But why would there be something like that in us?” Sheldon whispered, glancing out the window to make sure that no patrols were walking by. I shrugged my shoulders and stared down at the frayed rug that was laid on top of the cement floor.
“It’s just how it is,” Sam said. “There must be some reason for it, though it’s probably something bigger than we can grasp. Sometimes I think all people are are the instruments of larger forces that run through us and everything else.”
“But what about a person’s choice?” Grigor asked.
“Mostly people choose to follow the direction those forces push us, though we all have the choice to go another way. Maybe that’s why we’ve got things so dark within us: to test us somehow, to make us understand why we should choose to act in accordance with the other powers. I think we need the need the darkness that lives in all of us; everything is built on top of balance. Try to ignore the caverns in ourselves and the things that live there break through and wreak havoc on us all. I saw it happen with the Singulars; an entire group splintered and destroyed themselves. At the same time if we ignore the light then there’s no more responsibility and we may as well enslave the world for our own gain.”
“You did see it, didn’t you?” I asked. “The place that that thing came from.”
“Yeah, I saw it. But I saw the other place, too, just after. I don’t know how or why, but just before I came back, I went up and saw it.”
“I thought we were just talking metaphors
,” Sheldon murmured.
“Maybe it is a metaphor,” Sam said, “I don’t know what it is, I can’t even explain what it was like to be there. My memories of it already seem rusted and inadequate. But I know it’s real, just like the void is real, just like here is real. It’s all real, everything. I don’t know, that probably doesn’t make much sense.” We all fell silent, the air outside steadily beginning to gain light as the sun rose onward over the horizon. One by one everyone fell asleep, and before we knew it we were waking up to the sound of an afternoon announcement over the loudspeakers. I recognized the voice: it was Davis, a member of the cabinet that Shilk had made obsolete when he transferred power to himself. Listening to it, I was struck by the man’s sobriety, and realized that opposition to the way Shilk did things must have always been there, running like an undercurrent. It was only in my Sanglorian isolation, Shilk whispering in our ears unendingly, that I had been so convinced of the authority of belief that Shilk held over everyone. We were all rigid as the speech went on.
“Today the UCG has undergone a radical change that none of us could have foreseen or prepared ourselves for the coming of. The man who for nearly a decade has led our Government, as well as a vast amount of soldiers and high ranking officials, have all been stricken by a type of illness that has yet to be identified. Each of them have a suffered complete psychological collapse, from which we do not believe there to be any hope of recovery. In the absence of a leadership, the cabinet, of whom I am representing, and for so long has been forced under the heel of Shilk’s dictatorship, has been placed in power.”
