You, Human

by John Skipp

  “Whoa. Did you say ‘experiment?’”

  “For lack of a better word. Perhaps loneliness better describes his reasons.”

  “He?”

  “Your God, Arben. Could it all have happened by chance? Could you possess something so coveted through evolution alone? Or mightn’t there have been other forces at work?”

  “What other forces? What God?”

  “Imagine two species, compatible in every way—”

  “You’re making this up. Show me this God.”

  “I cannot. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Mirilus took him. Before you were born.”

  I stared at her, mouth dragging at my feet.

  “It is truth, Arben. Mirilus took him for the very reason he is watching you now. To find some lost something.”

  “But what kind of God?” Was I drunk? “A creator?”

  “More a geneticist. The cosmos is not all that mystical when it’s broken down to the cellular level.”

  “And I’m simply to believe this?”

  “Believe what you will. You asked the question. I’ve answered it.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts, child. Buts are a human thing. It is what it is, and if you want more, then let me escort you to the exhibit and we can call it a day.”

  “Why me? Why am I so favored?”

  “The way you handled your negotiations, of course. Who but you. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Arben Vanders.”

  We passed through corridors of night and day, galaxies within galaxies, worlds within worlds. Mirilus was represented. So was Ogdoen. So were so many other realities more specific to the world that had sponsored this strange and grand enchantment. It was a sensual feast, our Cosmic Fair, and from so many perspectives, such diverse tastes. It was like the Louvre on Earth, far too much to take in, yet a sin not to try.

  I cannot say for sure when the other exhibits gave over to hers, for I was dreaming strange and wondrous dreams, seeing swirling changes on a globe, a galaxy, a universe—

  Waves upon waves of soundless, nonsensical weather patterns in the form of armies and churches and memories and intentions, banners and symbols and book pages fluttering in the strange winds of time. Marches, quests, explorations, discoveries, movements, renaissances, slaughters, atrocities, entire histories unfurling like the blood-soaked petals of some maddened cosmic flower, a woman’s own flower spilling plagues upon an unsuspecting world and universe.

  —a pool of liquid in which swam things that the world was yet to know. In them I saw him, the one to whom cathedrals had been built, working delicately at the parts which had come from her, his mate, his other, as she found my hand and placed it, symbolically, first on her belly, then on the flower from which she had taken her name—

  And in the center of it all, in the core of that first and last flower, a question … a burning, never satisfied existential question …

  Why, Ia—

  —did you dream?

  UNITY OF AFFECT

  JASON V BROCK

  I

  We see the demon god Pazuzu bring its hand down, pushing hook-taloned fingers into the eye sockets of a screaming soldier. With the other hand, the deity tightens its grip on the fighter; pulling up, the man’s head breaks open after a moment with a subdued, liquid pop—like a filbert crushed by a nutcracker. As the dying warrior’s shrieks abate into convulsed heaving, the demon scoops out mounds of bloody gray matter, devouring it eagerly. The scene fades to blackness.

  GAME OVER

  Andrew Gates reached up to adjust the sound on his headset. “Damn.” He pulled the wireless Oculus Rift-style headgear off, examining it for a moment before he tossed it onto the table. To himself: “Graphics are great, but the frame rate’s still a little shaky. And something just doesn’t … feel right.”

  He glanced at the wall clock: 7:28 P.M. He had been playing for nearly three hours, the heatless radiance of the monitor lighting his exhausted features. He rubbed his eyes, letting his shoulders relax after tense hours of using gameplay gestures; Pazuzu’s black, lifeless orbs stared back at him from behind the thin skin of his eyelids, phosphenes dancing beneath his fingertips as he massaged away the strain. Cheri was going to be irritated with him, he knew; he had promised to be home by seven most nights this week.

  He stood, stretching for a moment as he watched the screensaver fade into view: A color-shifting Mandelbrot set fractalizing from the infinitesimally small to the cosmically grand forever. He was the only one left in the testing room. “I’ll make it up to her tomorrow.”

  II

  I’ll call you later, went to the show with Airika & Jack. We’ll be late. Dinner is in the fridge. XOXO – C

  Andrew returned the note to the kitchen counter. He felt terrible—Cheri had been so tolerant with his unpredictable schedule during the entire development of Pazuzu’s Reign. Sometimes he thought he was unworthy of her patience. Nevertheless, the rewards of this particular contract outweighed the time demands for the moment. Now that the game was on track for Alpha release and The Pentagon had approved all the scenarios, the funds were beginning to flow. His team was nearly thirty months in on what would ultimately be the most realistic virtual combat multiplayer online role playing game on the planet using Andrew’s patented HYPN/OS gaming platform. Once it was implemented, tested to the satisfaction of DARPA, and fully compliant with Distributed Interactive Simulation standards, he would be free to take some vacation. Maybe Curaçao … In another few years, they could retire early.

  He opened the refrigerator and took stock, but had no appetite, instead opting for a glass of Baco Noir and downtime with a book.

  “But first, a shower.”

  III

  He awoke to the sound of screaming: His own.

  “Andrew! Andrew! Are you okay?”

  He recoiled from Cheri’s touch with a cry, still trapped in the wispy edges of the nightmare. For a moment he forgot to breathe, then took in a deep lungful of air with a gasp. Sweeping his fingers through the tangle of damp hair on his head, he noticed he was shaking. “I-I’m okay. I’m okay …” Andrew rubbed his face, the stubble rough on his palms, the sweat on his body growing cold.

  “What happened?” Even in the gloom, he could make out the concern on her gamine features as his eyes adjusted to the dim illumination from the bathroom nightlight. Sitting up, she gathered the sheet around her ample breasts; the delicate skin of her nude body seemed to glow with a milky inner luminescence.

  He shook his head, trying to clear the terrible images of death and mutilation from his mind. “I’ve been going at it too hard … At least I can work from home starting next week. We’ll finally be at a code freeze stage, just testing and debugging. But the things the Feds want us to simulate … They’re … let’s just say they’re not pleasant.”

  She reached out again, taking his hand in her own; her skin was smooth, inviting, her voice low, sleepy, “Want to talk about it, sweetie?”

  Andrew looked away, out the narrow bedroom window to the somnolent world outside. “No … It’s better if we just let it go. I’ll try to balance the workload more now that we’re hitting some reasonable milestones.” He smiled and gently squeezed her hand, changing the topic. “How was the show?”

  Cheri shrugged, drowsily touching her thick red tresses. “It was fine. Would have been nicer if you guys had been there, but Jack had to work late, too, so it was just me and Airika. Lots of dudes staring at us, trying to work their game, you know. Of course, we just giggled at them from the bar. Kind of flattering, but some of them had on way too much makeup … And way too many pounds!” She put her hand to her upturned lips, as though she had shared the world’s most appalling secret. “Once Nine Inch Nails hit the stage, all was right with the world, though.”

  Andrew laughed at the image of aging industrial rock fans in tight pleather and pancake. “I have no doubt. I’m surprised you guys can even still hear!”

 
; “Well, we did have earplugs! Besides, we decided to leave before the last encore to avoid the traffic coming home … God! How old are we now, right? Leaving before a show’s even over!” She cozied up to him on the bed. “Besides, we wanted to get home to our menfolk.” She swirled her fingers through the hair on his toned chest and stomach, nuzzling his neck. “Mmmm … Besides, you’re the best looking man I’ve ever seen; tonight only proved that to me again.” She removed the sheet barrier between them, her voluptuous body warm and soft next to his.

  “Fantastic,” he replied, kissing her throat as he caressed her, taking in her bouquet. “That’s a relief to hear.”

  IV

  Flying over the desert scene like some visage straight from the underworld city of Dis, we see Pazuzu fix its dark, glassy eyes on the man—reflecting back his fear and shock in the twin black globes of a bottomless gaze. With a great swoop of double wings, it maneuvers near the petrified soldier, blotting out the sun as it grows closer. The demon’s hideous countenance—part lion, part wild dog—gnashes its crooked teeth with an audible clack, its scorpion-like, segmented tail furiously whipping the cloudless sky.

  The legionnaire says nothing, just watches in captivated awe, his rifle heavy and dangling by his side as the demon morphs back and forth in a protean display of terrifying physical control: As the beast overtakes him, details reveal themselves by turn. First, the creature is a hideous lion-dog… then the soldier’s mother—her wrinkled, unclothed body desiccated and roasting in the blazing noonday heat; after that, it transforms into the grotesque appearance of some subconscious half-memory of a creature out of Poe, or perhaps a terrible alien deity created by H. P. Lovecraft—the features mutable, blending together in smears.

  “Shoot!” The fighter is startled out of his trance. His MORPHEUS unit is damaged; we hear that this is coming from his helmet earpiece. Once more, a hollow voice crackles over the channel: “Fucking shoot, Gates!”

  “Infidel!” the creature roars. We see that it is now in the shape of a mucid, quivering multilimbed monstrosity standing only a few hundred yards away, reeking of corruption and sewage. It seems much larger than just moments before, as though gaining power from his mounting terror. We sense that Gates now grasps that it is more than something inhabiting a desert landscape; it seems, in the mental cosmology it increasingly fills, as though its looming, corporeal vastness has become a geologic feature which actually encompasses the space they occupy instead of the reverse.

  We hear, over a soundtrack of Middle Eastern polyrhythms, as Gates’s heart hammers in time to the ground quaking footshock of the great beast lumbering toward him, its black eyes shimmering in the heat. We see a camouflaged, armor-plated transport drive into view, approaching the colossus; several men leap from the still moving vehicle, firing fully automatic Barrett REC7s and screaming in the dusty, surreal montage. Still paralyzed, Gates stares in horror while the massive creature reaches down through the heatwaves and grabs the soldiers, unfazed by the withering gunfire being laid down. One-by-one, we see it pluck the men from the battlefield—crushing them to a bloody pulp, or grinding them up in its massive jaws. It smashes a great fist onto the truck, which explodes into a fireball, then hurls it away without effort, leaving only an arc of oily black smoke as the twisted wreck disappears on the horizon. The cloying aroma of roasting flesh mingles with gasoline, flowering in our nostrils as we watch the remaining men from the truck—now consumed in an inferno—try to crawl stiffly through the burning sand; at last they collapse, little more than fiery skeletons, pieces of their charred skin carried away on the wind as ash.

  We can clearly see that in a few strides the monster will be upon Gates. Additional backup arrives in the form of Apache attack helicopters and supplementary armored personnel trucks. Swatting the copters from the sky like gnats, the great being crushes the vehicles underfoot; returning to its fearsome Pazuzu aspect, we watch the thing stare at Gates—who is still rooted to the spot, stunned by the horrific display, but also beginning to feel strangely placid, even relaxed.

  “Shoot the fucker, Gates!”

  Again, we hear a thunderous exclamation from above shatter the dry air: “Andrew Gates! I live! Infidel!”

  At last, we see the titan’s shadow fall on him, yet he is still unable to—

  “—move! ” Andrew shouted as he jerked into consciousness. His breathing was hard, ragged; the pressure on his face strange, claustrophobic. His pillow was covering his head; pulling it away, he reached up to knead his eyes with numb fingers.

  He looked over to where Cheri should have been: There was nothing in the bed except a tangle of clammy bedclothes. Glancing over to the bedroom window, he thought he saw something enormous—something dreadful—move outside. He climbed out of bed and quietly walked to the bathroom; the door was closed, light trickling under the doorframe. Andrew placed his ear to the door, thinking he heard someone speaking behind it:

  “… getting worse. You know, it’s how we keep you divided—quite easy really: first by politics, then by religion, then by race and social class … I live … Keep you scared, keep you conforming—wait, I heard something. Just a minute.”

  Andrew pulled away, turning back to the bed: Something’s wrong. The voice behind the door was not Cheri, yet it was oddly familiar. He moved across the dark room, again noting movement from the small window—the window which now appeared to be on the wrong side of the room, he thought.

  “Infidel!” It was the voice of the woman in the bathroom, but it was also not her voice; it was a much more sinister utterance: Guttural. The door burst open behind him, but he refused to look—certain only that insanity would follow.

  He kept running toward the bed, his heart beating fast, his lungs aching from the suddenly frosty air in the room … but the faster he ran, the more the bed seemed to recede into the distance …

  now we see Andrew approaching the speed of light: Each step he takes seems like an eternity… and now, time dilates, ba l loooons …

  to

  a

  near stop.

  Every breath takes a billion years to gasp, andanother billion to exhale, and the cosmos beg inStosp in overandoverIS

  he tumblingOrSTILLnot … … … aBLeTO mo v e …

  t r y to to scr e ammmmmmmi ng nnnnoooooooooooow—

  V

  “So when I came around, there I was with Cheri in the bedroom, the headset on, sort of jabbering all this crazy stuff. I’d actually barricaded the bathroom door! I think it was the ‘waking R.E.M.’ phenomenon that Pacific Data Systems ran into,” Andrew said to his boss at Distributed Interactive Simulation, Jerad Clark. “Felt like a sort of false awakening. In this case a special type of false awakening even, called a ‘continuum’ where I had fallen asleep in the sim, then thought it had ended, but I was still sleeping. Cheri said it was more than me just thrashing around … she thought I was awake, pranking her. But the fact is, I was never really awake; I just dreamed I was. She woke me up by pulling the headset off, finally.”

  Jerad sat back in his chair, forming a temple with his fingers. Afternoon sunlight dappled his office with gently swaying shadows from the trees outside as he regarded Andrew from the top of his wireframe eyeglasses. “I read about that in the PDS acquisition files. That was the thing Vincent was working on with that young lady … Drago something?”

  “Dragonović. Svetlana Dragonović. She was the one he killed before he shot himself. They were working on MISTY for PDS when DIS bought them out.”

  Jerad pursed his lips in recollection. “That’s right. Been a while. Such a tragedy about that whole situation … but, getting back to the matter at hand, what’s the cause? Can you isolate the issue?”

  Andrew nodded. “I think I understand it, yes. I mean, our team has taken this way further than the proprietary VR stuff that PDS created. There are bound to be things that crop up, just like with them. Here, in our newest simulated environs, we were using these super-detailed avatars to represent the ‘enemy thre
at’ in Syria or Iraq. They were fighters practically indistinguishable from real people; the landscapes, vehicles and so on were intensive models as well.”

  Jerad swiveled in his chair as he listened. “You mentioned problems, though—”

  “Exactly. I changed that a little; before, with the old code, the virtual reality environs, the action, the modelling was great, so we kept it. We also kept the renders of our guys as shooters so they could continue relating to one another as they would in a real firefight, and strengthened the control mechanics, such as the shared real-time biofeedback, and the oneirolinguistics.”