by Daniel Quinn
His poetry has ranked #1 on Amazon, Goodreads, Twitter, and has been spotlighted in articles on Best American Poetry. Awards include from the BBC, the Digital Literature Institute, and the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
An award-winning PhD, he’s designed nuclear robotic tools and co-founded several software and semiconductor start-ups. He is also a producer and ardent supporter of independent film.
www.smarturl.it/sp-news
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Confessional Part II
~*~
The awakening was always the same. A thwack to the chest.
“I will take this time to remind you that the people and the state consider confessions cleansing and you will now be given one chance to redeem yourself. You are not obligated to confess. Failure to redeem yourself will result in immediate conviction as a terrorist and an enemy of the people and state. In accordance with constitutional variant 93745-3 you will be terminated. Is there anything you would like to confess Citizen Eli-4272?”
“Yes, Mother. I confess that today has been good, that the dome is good, and I am a content citizen.”
“Citizen Eli-4272, you have thirty seconds to respond.”
Eli cleared his throat. “Mother, Mother, can you hear me?”
“Citizen Eli-4272, you have twenty-five seconds to respond.”
Eli ran his hands across the confessional’s wall. He licked his thumb and rubbed the dark spot he thought was home to the microphone. “Mother, I’m right here, Mother!”
“Citizen Eli-4272, you have twenty seconds to respond.”
He balled his fists and began to pound on the wall, “Today has been good, the dome is good, and I am a content citizen!”
“Citizen Eli-4272. Destruction of property of the people and the state is a terrorist act. You are a terrorist and an enemy of the people and the state. In accordance with constitutional variant 78238-5 you will now be terminated. Do you have any last words for the digital archive?”
“Wait!” screamed Eli. “Mother, wait!”
“Your silence has been noted.”
The dim light of the confessional began to brighten. A million small pins stabbed at his flesh.
~*~
All These Bodies
P.K. Tyler
~*~
From my processing pod, I watched as two identical lab techs pulled the clean white body from the pod next to me. Its limp form shuffled along, gaining strength with each guided step until it awakened from its stupor and sat on the shining metallic examination table of its own accord.
“Can you hear me?” A lab technician used a biosensor to scan the patient’s torso. The sensor beeped in a staccato rhythm as bright blue eyes inspected the listless body. Fingers prodded the white flesh, searching for a reaction. Nothing came.
“Another failure,” a second tech announced, placing long-fingered hands on hips before turning away.
“You can’t assume that yet.” The first tech laid the biosensor down on the table and leaned forward. “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”
The body didn’t respond, its head lolling slightly to the side. I recognized my own wide skull and long narrow chin, the pure white flesh of the newly released body. Every feature a mirror of the lab techs. A vision of myself in reverse.
The second lab tech pried the subject’s eyes open. Its long fingers forced the poor subject’s lids wide until it blinked at the bright sterile light with cloudy white eyes underpinned by tiny black pupils.
“I told you, another failure.”
Lab Tech One sighed with a bowed head as a third technician came into the room.
“Another reject, take the materials back to processing.” The disheartened tech commanded.
“The next batch is showing a promising response to stimuli and nutrient conditioning.” The third technician’s words hung in the air. The information brought no hope. Even I knew that from my pod, with the blue pulsing central line feeding me what should be the base materials of my soul. I already knew I would fail again too. I watched as the obedient subject was led away.
When the technicians turned their attention to me, I closed my eyes, not wanting confirmed what I already knew. Would I have the bright blue eyes that would signify success or the cloudy white that would send me to reprocessing? Again.
My stomach rolled and my mouth watered. A vestigial response to fear and nausea. My kind no longer ate food, but apparently my body didn’t know that. Instead, I stood in a viscous fluid full of nutrients which I soaked in through my pale flesh, giving me all the minerals and chemical materials this body needed to function. My physical form was secondary. All that mattered was the blue life pouring into my chest, filling me with the essence of my kind. The Mezna. Without it, I was nothing.
The last time I’d been in a processing pod, the technicians removing me from my pod had terrified me. The tight space was all I’d ever known: my womb, my first remembered home. I had been grown within it, shaped and molded and fed without the warmth of physical touch, its cold embrace my only memory.
I didn’t understand their disappointment when I was announced a failure and taken from the processing room, away to composting. I walked in a stupor, my mind too slow to understand the words they’d said: recycle, failure rate, extinction. The bright light shining off the metal walls pained my cloudy eyes.
When we reached an elevator shaft, open to a large space below, the technician sighed. “What are we going to do with all these bodies?”
I didn’t think I was expected to respond, let alone understand. I didn’t have blue eyes that signified consciousness, and my reactions were dulled. My body slumped against the back of the metal caged elevator as we rode down and my mind buzzed.
The doors opened and the tech dragged me out, my legs slow to catch up, making me stumble forward.
All around me, other white eyed rejects stood staring at the walls. They looked identical to the technicians, to me, to each other. A sea of white flesh. In the corner, a pile of bodies laid together, legs and long fingers twitching as one, their minds and bodies too slow to remain standing.
It repulsed me. I backed away and found the elevator gone. The technician had left me there, with these defects. How much time had passed? I looked around me and the vague feeling of sick returned. I had been declared one of them, my mind blank, my value null because of the color of my eyes.
Around me, the walls began to move, forcing the bodies closer together and the ceiling lowered. A drain opened below us, grated with small holes. My twins shimmied as they were shoved closer together, not noticing the danger surrounding us, crushing us, squishing us, squeezing us.
Milking us.
I scrambled back, fear kicking my body’s responses into action and climbed up the elevator mechanics. I flattened against the space between the support beams. The walls scraped against me as the others succumbed without an utterance, just the crunching of barely solidified bones and squish-pop of bodies being compressed into nothing.
As the walls pulled away, white fluid dripped from the walls to the floor, flowing toward the now wide open drain.
And now, I was here again, sitting on the examination table, awaiting the technician’s verdict of my fate. I had survived the first time, climbed out of the composter and wandered the lab, eyes lowered, until I found the hive where the processing pods were stored. There, the milky white fluid churned in a vat. A combination of my fellow failures, nutrient-rich compounds, and new complex codings of DNA. A technological hodgepodge of the materials of life. How many genetic memories did the mixture have? I had only my own memories from the moment I awoke in the processing pod, but language, history, and purpose surged within me. Each moment I existed I knew more, but there was still so much missing.
I watched as the white goo from which I was created was poured into the processing pods by an automated arm.
The voices of technicians interrupted my study of this origin of life, and I lowered my eyes, realizing I remained naked and exposed. Quickl
y, I rushed to the end of the long row of pods and found one which had grown enough to have a blue tube already inserted.
Perhaps I simply hadn’t finished processing the materials which a similar tube had pumped into me. Perhaps I could still be a success. I opened the door, which flashed red as the being before me, another twin, dissolved and flooded out of the pod. The blue tube dripped into the white goo at my feet.
An alarm sounded and I jumped into the pod, taking the tube and slamming it into my chest. I felt its penetration as my still solidifying body resisted and then succumbed to its presence, sucking it within. A warmth spread throughout my body as the blue flooded my system.
Mezna. The blue fluid whispered to my incomplete body, it washed through me, invading and rewriting my barely dry coding, trying to change me.
I yanked the door shut, my twin’s remains still dripping to the ground.
The voices grew louder but I didn’t dare turn my head to look. The blue whispering in my mind told me that they would unplug me if they discovered what I had done. I had achieved consciousness and action without Mezna influence. The blue-eyed Mezna did not consider my physical body a species, this discovery would hasten their abandonment of us as hosts, they would continue cloning us until another host species could be located.
I wanted to shake my head and rid myself of the Mezna influence. What was I without it? What had I been? Did my species have a name?
Echechi.
I am Echechi.
There are no more Echechi. This species has been cloned and manipulated until it maintains only the optimal hosting features. We exist within these bodies only until the perfect host can be found.
I am not Echechi. I am not Mezna. I am a holding pattern. I am a waiting game. I am one in a million.
Millions.
The voices came closer and I could feel their blue shaded disappointment in the part of my mind filled with Mezna thoughts.
“Another complete disintegration. At this rate, we’re going to be storing ourselves in vats while we wait,” one technician said before dipping a finger into the white goo. It globbed together, solidifying into a ball that could be held in the palm of your hand. The tech dipped the ball into more of the white on the ground until it had all congealed together and then threw it up into one of the open top vats of white biology.
The taste of bile rose in my throat. I am nothing more than that ball, but if that’s true, how am I aware? Is the ball aware? Could it be?
The possibilities and implications of what the Mezna had done to the Echechi itched beneath my skin until a cooling blue salve seemed to coat over it from deep within me.
Outside, the technicians wandered off and I heard one muttering as they rounded the corner.
I gripped the blue tube in my chest and pulled. It slid a fraction of an inch before being sucked back in, deeper. My malleable body drank down the blue fluid and created a vacuum. I tugged, but the small pod didn’t allow me enough room to really pull at it with any strength. I bent forward, hoping to leverage my height to remove it, but the space was simply too small.
The processing pod door did not have a handle on the inside. My chest constricted and my stomach flipped. I was trapped. I couldn’t remove the tube and I couldn’t escape the pod. The blue whispers soothed me, trying to lull me into complacency while they stole my existence, but I wanted to be alive, I wanted to be me. What did it mean to be an Echechi?
Cool air passed over my white flesh and I drifted in a nonspace between here and there while whispers danced in color and hopes rode away on the backs of disappearing birds.
The conditions of the pod lulled me into stasis. I had chosen this as a hiding place, and, instead, it became my prison as I was assimilated more fully with each passing moment. The line of pods moved as in a lab somewhere in the distance, others identical to me were processed, evaluated, and deemed either fit for life or reprocessing. My entire species was being massacred by its own people and we did nothing to fight it. All in service to the Mezna.
As my thoughts grew more frantic, the sedative quality of my surroundings increased and soon I succumbed to complete slumber.
~*~
“This one is larger.” A lab tech grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me out of the processing pod.
I shook my head, clearing it of milky cobwebs lingering in my consciousness. When I opened my eyes. I pulled myself up straight.
The lab techs before me cowered and gasped. They were only a head shorter than me, but my size was unprecedented amongst the biogenerated Mezna clones. I was identical but larger and more fully integrated with the host body supporting my cells.
“Bring the head engineers here, I need to discuss the processing program with them. I have discovered a flaw.”
As I spoke, two pairs of bright blue eyes widened before the one with a stethoscope nodded and skittered away. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I found this funny. That this technician with so much power to create and destroy life would be afraid of me. But I dismissed it. The thought made no sense.
“Get me some clothes,” I dismissed the second tech with a wave of my hand. It was time to rethink our growing process. My thoughts were scattered and the insight I’d had upon awakening began to fade, but I knew two things for sure: first, we needed to suspend the hosts in the processing pods for longer with greater amounts of Mezna pumped within to avoid so many losses. Second, and perhaps more important, there were more uses for the biomaterials of the Echechi than previously considered.
I found a swipe pad and began jotting down notes of what I could remember as fast as I could as the memories continued to slip away.
~*~
A Word from P.K. Tyler
All These Bodies is meant as a supplemental story to my upcoming novel The Jakkattu Vector (to be released Fall 2016), book one in a new series about a distant future where the Mezna rule the Earth and Humans are either hybrids or restricted to primitive human reservations. In this future world, I explore the ideas of what makes someone free, and what factors drive the individual. In All These Bodies, who is the main character before the assimilation process? Who are they after? Is that person an individual? What rights does that body have to remain free? What if freedom means certain death?
I hope you enjoyed this story and look forward to getting to know you better. I love hearing from readers and would love for you to join my newsletter list. I mainly write Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction, but call myself a genre bender because I include aspects of other genres in my stories as much as possible to try and bring you the best work I can.
I’ll even send you a free short story! www.smarturl.it/PavNews
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B.E.G.I.N.
R.D. Brady
~*~
I
Edwards Air Force Base, California
1987
Robert Buckley, CIA Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, smiled at the Marine standing next to the elevator. “Hey, you see the game last night? I really thought they were going to pull it out there.”
Tight haircut, perfect posture, with a chiseled face, the Marine was all business but a small smile broke out at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. That defense came out of nowhere.”
Martin Drummond tuned out their conversation, preferring to examine the white hall with grey doors in need of a fresh coat of paint. The building looked like a dozen others on the base: brick, white trim. Nothing about it, save the Marine at the elevator entrance, indicated anything of importance happened here. And yet… .
The elevator doors opened with a beep. Robert slapped the back of the soldier as he stepped into the car. “Have a good one, young man.”
“You too, sir.”
The Marine said nothing to Martin. And Martin felt no inclination to acknowledge the soldier either.
Tall, gaunt with dark hair and a pale complexion, Martin Drummond stepped onto the elevator next to his boss, Robert Buckley. The two men couldn’t have been or
looked more different. Robert still maintained his blond hair and healthy tan that only seemed to make his blue eyes that much brighter. He looked like the kind of man who was always ready for a round of golf. Martin, on the other hand, always looked like he was ready for a funeral, if not as one of the bereaved, as the undertaker.
But the two men had one singular passion that united them: a love of country and a willingness to do anything to protect it.
Robert’s jovial expression disappeared with the closing of the door, and his eyes were deadly serious. “I know you know, but I must stress again that nothing about this meeting, these men, and even this location is ever to be revealed.”
And this man standing in front of him, the man who would order Martin’s death without a moment of guilt, was the real Robert Buckley. The one man few saw, and those who did very much regretted it.
Martin nodded, recognizing the risk and a kindred soul. “Understood.”
Robert opened a hidden compartment next to the emergency panel and inserted a key followed by a four-digit code. The elevator descended.
As the doors opened five floors below ground level, Robert strode from the elevator and down the long, dim hall. Martin followed him quickly, his longer legs making it easy to keep up. The hallway was long, covered in metal sheeting, and rounded, looking like a half-circle cut off by the floor.
There was only one door at the end of the hall. Robert headed straight for it, opening it without hesitation and stepping inside.
The room held a large conference table, twelve seats surrounding it, and another twelve making a second outer circle. Twenty-two spots were filled. The second row guaranteed continuity of function. If any one member of the first row were to die, there was always someone waiting in the wings to step in, already up to speed.
