by Bō Jinn
Faint murmurs through the dark brought him back to being.
For what seemed like hours he was a dead vessel of sensation rousing, not knowing where he was, whence he’d come or wither he was going, and the resonances of steady footfalls and a steady monotone in the background were all that were until the light came in shallow pulses of white. The pulses brightened, then dimmed and then brightened more still. When his sense of equilibrium came and his vision cleared, he realised that he was on his back.
The lights winked from the passing ceiling and the faint murmurs grew into blaring echoes. It may have been another nightmare, but there was no way to tell the difference between one hell and another anymore. Thoughts flitted through his mind in an incomprehensible flux, like pieces of a shattered pattern.
When the ceiling lights passed, he could see the shadows of the marching figures on either side of him, stretching and receding on the walls. He wanted to rise, but his body would not start to impulse.
The shadows stopped when the lights went out. The footsteps departed and he was alone in the dark. There sounded an electromechanical hum and he suddenly felt another shift in equilibrium.
Though he knew his body was being moved, he felt nothing. It was a strange, ghostly feeling, as though his mind occupied a space that was not his own. And since he had, at present, no memory of being alive, he supposed he must be dead.
The long intermission of soundless gloom could have gone on forever.
Suddenly, a broad beam of pale light beamed down from the ceiling, lighting up a five-yard circle of bare floor. It was only after the light shone down on him that he realised he was upright, and that the bed on which he had been lying had someway morphed into a seat which hugged the whole of his body mould-like from head to toe.
Dead from the skull down, unable to move his neck, his eyes flitted about in their sockets. His flesh was bare and flayed to the point that the blood-red insignia on his arms blended into raw skin and his chest rose with involuntary breaths, squalling with each inhale as a mask fed the air into his lungs with intermittent wafts.
He willed to move again. Not even a twitch of a finger.
Through the shadows beyond the column of light, he saw what appeared to be a host of vague silhouetted figures sitting above, behind and around him. The outlines of their grim and overlapping heads were all directed at the centre of the chamber. Directly ahead of him was a wall of pitch black.
A frame of light appeared through the wall of black as a door opened. A dark silhouette momentarily appeared against the backdrop of light before the doors closed again. The sound of evenly tapping heels approached and terminated when the ominous figure stopped directly before him. The figure lifted its head. The shadow over his feature receded and the round lenses of his pince-nez were opaque through the glare of the overhead light.
“Welcome back, Saul.”
A sudden murderous impulse engulfed his thoughts at first sight of Pope, who silently removed his glasses revealing a very different, more explicit air. The smile on his face was clear and his azure eyes flashed with purpose.
Low, feral growls rolled with his steady breaths. He was powerless.
“Neural blockers,” said the neuralist, shortly. “Drugless sedatives. They work by shutting off neural signals directly at the brain.” He stepped forward and began to pace around the circle of light. “Don’t worry,” he continued, “your lucidity will not be affected in any way. You should know, however, that it is within our control to shut off your brain at any time and that we shall do so as soon as we feel you are no longer able to continue with these sessions, however long they may last – hours, days, months … years. There will be no way for you to tell. You will have no comprehension of the world beyond this space until our time is at an end.” Pope stopped pacing as soon as he came full circle. “Now, before we begin,” he concluded. “You may ask your questions.”
There was a seeming deliberation in the neuralist’s every gesture, down to the inflection of his speech, as though it were a re-enactment.
The air rushed into Saul’s throat and a wraithlike voice proceeded from his mask.
“How am I here?” His throat rasped and burned as though he were breathing fire.
“You came here,” said Pope.
He paused for air to refill his lungs.
“What happened to me?”
“You were found wandering the desert some seventy miles west of Dolinovka. You must have followed the sun for three days…”
Pope’s voice faded into the visions, which returned to him in flashes: The mountain of smouldering corpses, the blood spraying his face and the howls that shredded the walls of his throat until he was mute. A flash later and he was alone in the wilderness and the sun rose and beat down on bare flesh by day and the cold ravaged the rawhide by night. He remembered the grinding aches in his joints and the dehydration and the cracks and tears forming in the exposed skin. By all the laws of blood and soil, he should have been dead by the third day, but still he marched on, following his shadow by morning and the setting sun by noon, the moon and stars by night; never stopping.
Why had he begun? Where had he been going?
“Do you remember, Saul?”
The visions disappeared and Pope was standing over him again, hands crossed at his back, the bleak, frigid blue orbs shining through shadow. His eyes peered around the room again. His vision sharpened and he could just about make out the obscure faces of the onlookers around him. He was sure he could see Eastman across the floor, lying back in his seat with his head rested on his fingertips.
“Where am I?” he asked
Pope took a deep breath and exhaled.
“The final resting place of all defectors,” said the neuralist.
Up to that point he had only had a sense of what was going on.
Just kill me and be done with it, he thought.
The smirk curled in the neuralist’s lips.
“You should have killed yourself when you had the chance, Saul. But you didn’t. Why?”
The question blindsided him. And then – just then – he remembered. He remembered why he began the long march in the desert, why he did not take his own life in spite of his every impulse to do so. The promise.
“Naomi…”
Pope hummed and shook his head and began to pace around again.
“She has … obliged you to live.” It was the first time he heard the neuralist snicker. “The irony of you never ceases to fascinate me, Saul.”
“Where is she?”
“You ache for the release of death,” the neuralist continued as though he had not heard the question, “but as long as she lives, you cannot die. All this time and blood wasted chasing an illusion of freedom. Now you would beg us to take it all away from you.”
“You lied to me.”
“No,” Pope exclaimed, his voice deepening severely. “All we did was foster your own defective will. The rest you achieved all by yourself. Fate brought you to us. You will come to understand all of this soon, and more – much more. We tried to warn you this would happen, but you refused to listen. You would not trust us. Even now, reduced to the point of embracing your own demise, you still perceive us as your enemies.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I am trying to save you.”
“Why?”
“A reasonable question.” Pope began to pace around again as he explained: “The UMC derives no benefit from your death, Saul. Every life lost anywhere, except the warzones, is a life wasted. Economic efficiency demands that we extract as much use from you as we possibly can by the means available to us. Not to mention the fact that rare oddities such as you provide us with valuable data for future research. Even if we fail with you, we continue to perfect our methods. We learn from your mistakes. That is progress.”
“Progress…” he repeated with revulsion.
“Yes, progress.” Pope had stopped pacing with his back turned. “Efficiency – quantifiable impr
ovement – the continual refinement and unfettered expression of free man. Progress. It is, fundamentally, the only thing that matters. It is our purpose. Or, rather, I should say, it is our fate.
Pope turned on his heels to face him again and drew the long pen from his inner pocket. He raised his hand in the air and pressed on the end of the small device.
Suddenly, something began to rise from the floor between them: A small cylindrical pedestal. And as it rose, the light from above shone over a hollow set exactly in the middle of the top.
“Survival,” Pope pronounced, stepping forward, “the final adjudicator of truth.” He tucked his hand into his inner pockets and continued to speak. “We are, by definition, machines for the propagation of D – N – A. That sole purpose finds its root in our primordial beginnings down to the very last cell. From that premise we infer the only viable definition of insanity.” At this point, Pope drew the silver, cubic device from all their previous meetings, and set it in the hollow on top of the pedestal and little veins of light instantly shone along the outer shell. Something glimmered like gloss through the gloom, something broad and high – the same distinct gleaming shimmer that followed the moment after a holoscreen was switched on.
Pope crossed his arms at his back and sauntered away, enunciating:
“A firm and righteous determination toward feelings or beliefs consistently proven to lead to self-destruction, all the while expecting a different result: That … is insanity.” He stopped on the last word and, with his back turned, continued. “You are here because you have failed the test of reason set by your very genes.” He began to pace around again. “Oh I know what you are thinking. Why go through all the trouble of trying to change what is already inscribed in fate? Well, the simple truth is: we do not expect to change you. We never have. Like progress, change can be abetted. However, we realise that no one can truly change what they are – not ever…”
“You are wrong.”
An impregnable silence settled on the theatron with those three words.
A rush of air filled his lungs.
“We can change,” he said. “The world can change.”
Pope’s head rose.
“How?”
Saul fell silent again.
“I see,” purred the neuralist. “… Love.” He began pacing around again. “That is what you believe will change the world, is it not? You believe that love is something more than mere natural impulse, a force for some greater good, perhaps?”
“It has to be.”
Pope stopped.
“And why is that, Saul?” he asked.
“It changes people.”
“You believe that it has changed you?”
Pope came full circle again and stopped before him with new deliberation.
His eyes wandered around the room and then fixed back on the neuralist, whose visage grew more ill-omened by the minute.
“Do you recognise this place, Saul?”
A strange foreboding bubbled up inside him.
“What if I told you that it is the sixth time you have been here?” Pope stepped forward and the shadows extended over his features.
His heart stirred and the air flow through the mask quickened.
A long silence later, Pope raised his head, turned away and pronounced loudly: “Apollo. File; zero – zero – zero – seven – one – seven – one – six – six – one – five – zero – triple-eight.”
The string of numbers was followed by a pulse of blue light rippling across the holoscreen. When the wave of light diminished, the photons rearranged into line after unfurling line of text across the 3-D display, and a number of rotating images. It was a bio file from the UMC Nexus.
Pope drew the pen-shaped implement and pointed it at the screen, amplifying one of the holographic images so that it extended across the whole display.
“Do you recognise this woman?” asked the neuralist.
New visions – glimpses of forgotten nightmares – instantly flashed through his mind again through a haze of red, when the image of a dark-haired, red-lipped sapphire-eyed woman appeared before him and the words “ubit menya” repeated in his mind like a litany.
“Who…” he faltered between breaths. “Who is she?”
“The last person you … loved,” Pope replied. “She was a walker. The rest of her identity has since been lost. No record remains of anyone deceased in Sodom, as you know. You had begun cohabiting with her exactly one hundred and thirty-four days before your previous cleaning.”
His thoughts stopped on the words “previous cleaning.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“You killed her.”
Pope’s expression assumed its usual severity, as he looked from the cold blue eyes to the nameless woman, and the same unsourced dread which marked the beginning and end of all his nightmares flared up inside him again.
“You are lying.”
Pope, seeming to anticipate his words, bowed his head and gave his back.
“Apollo. Subject; Jason Solomon. Day seventy-three – sixty-two – three hundred and fifty hours.”
Pope’s instruction was followed by another ripple of light across the holoscreen. The image of the sapphire-eyed woman disappeared and another took its place. A low and steady monotone filled the chamber. And then, voices:
“Jason … Jason…”
“Where am I?”
Pope appeared as a figure of light pacing around in a holographic reproduction of the same chamber they were in at that very moment. Since the second speaker appeared a few seconds later, seated in the same chair and in the same position that he was now, it took a moment for him to realise the second voice was his own.
“Jason … do you know why you are here?”
“The nightmares –”
“Focus, Jason. Why are you here? Do you remember?”
“She is dead. She is dead.”
“Who is dead, Jason?”
“I could not stop myself.”
“No. No you couldn’t.”
“What is wrong with me?”
“There is nothing wrong with you. This is what you are”
“I loved her.”
“Don’t worry. As long as you are alive, you can always start again. We will clean you.”
“I loved her … I loved her.”
Pope raised the thin pen-shaped device in the air and the recording stopped.
“Jason Solomon,” he pronounced. “One of your five predecessors. Each one of them came to us the same way as Saul Vartanian.”
Saul’s eyes shot to and fro behind tightly closed eyelids. The visions returned like a chain of explosions: visions of things he could not link with either dream or memory. And he kept coming back to the same default assumption.
Pope is a liar. All of them are liars.
“Is it really so hard to believe?”
He opened his eyes again His thoughts began to fall into place, slowly making sense of things.
“This is … my past.”
“No,” Pope replied, swiftly. “Like Martial Solomon, each of your predecessors all perished along with their pasts.”
“We are the same person!”
“No.” Pope slowly shook his head. “People are the collections and collocations of memories. Nothing more, nothing less. No memory remains of the individuals who preceded you, either in your mind or anyone else’s. And just as they have been eradicated from existence, soon, so will Saul Vartanian.” He stopped, as usual, when he came full circle, as though the act of forming circles with his paces was meant to convey his purpose. It was all rehearsed. It was all a scheme.
“Why am I here?”
Pope came forward, a second between each step.
“You are here because we are about to clean you,” he stated, categorical gaps separating his syllables. “You are at the edge of the abyss, where living or dying makes no difference, where the only thing keeping you alive is the resilience which defines you as a martial of your
caste. However, as is the case with all virtue, the same thing that makes you strong also makes you stubborn. You desire to be cleaned, but your commitment to this illusion you call ‘love’ will not allow it – that is why you could not kill yourself. That is why you want us to do it for you. But that will change. It must change. That is why you and I are here, Saul. It is vital that, before we clean you, you submit to us as you have done before. And we know that you will not do so until you know the truth. Under no circumstances may we violate your freedom.”
“What difference does it make!”
“All the difference in the world,” the neuralist replied, quietly. “Freedom is the sole condition of true progress. Nothing can flourish if it is restrained. Your unreserved cooperation, procured utterly without force, is what we want.”
“What you want will never happen.”
“Ah but it will. The will to die is already there. The final illusion is always the last to fall … Love … The girl…” he whispered and raised his eyes up high. “She has brought you to this point of limbo – neither willing to live nor willing to die. The paradox is less unusual than you might imagine. And there is only one way it may be resolved – only one way to dispel the illusion.”
“The truth…”
Pope started to pace around again.
“The truth,” he echoed. “Tell me, Saul. What is truth?”
He detected in the tenor of the question that Pope already knew what his answer would be.
“Everything that is and was, in all places, everywhere.”
“That would include the past.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And yet you fear it now more than ever, don’t you?” Pope stopped again and fixed on him with a piercing stare. “Yes … There it is. That fear. Again. I can see it now as vividly as that first day. It is the thing that turned you against us: The fact that we know the answer to your darkest question.” He paused that the question would be marked: “What – brought you – to – our – world?” Pope bowed his head and the shadows formed over his eyes again.
His pulse soared. The air pumped into his throbbing chest. He swirled and scrambled alone in his skull, a whirlwind of consciousness, and the room began to spin with him. He blinked rapidly, squeezing his eyes shut. Then, suddenly, it all stopped. His eyes flared open. And all reality sunk back into the two points of Pope’s hollow eyes, flashing through the shadows.
“Do you remember … Vincent?”
“Vincent.”
Whispers shot through his thoughts:
Vincent
I do not want to remember
For how long have they sentenced you
Life
Freedom is all that matters
Freedom
Will not change what I am
What I have done
We can, Vincent
We can
We can
We can
…
“Saul.”
He opened his eyes and looked up.
Pope’s harrowing gaze still fixed upon him from behind the glare of the round lenses.
“Do you remember,” he asked, taking one step forward, “why you are here?”
His breaths had now become so rapid that his body started to lurch from the mould of his seat and the sweat broke over his brow in a thin film. All of the fear and dread climaxed to a point beyond even the imminence of death. It was the imminence of truth.
Pope turned his back again and pronounced:
“Apollo. Subject: Vincent Caine. Day one.”
The light from the holoscreen stirred, the images ran with his thoughts and the jumble of chaotic visions fell into place, seeming to focus along a line of coherence in memory so that, for the first time, something quite vivid and quite real played out before his mind’s eye.
