by Bible, Jake
Blaze wonders if they aren’t lost since it feels like he’s been in Control for close to an hour or even more.
“And it isn’t actually white,” Dr. DeBeers continues. “What your eyes are trying to process is the lack of any pigment. Similar to a polar bear’s fur. They weren’t really white, that was just light refracting from their clear fur.”
“Polar bears?” Blaze asks, barely wrapping his mind about the information Dr. DeBeers gives him. “Those are extinct.”
“Well, yes, of course,” Dr. DeBeers says. “I was using the creature as an example.” She stops and turns to Blaze. “Would you like to see what we do here?”
“Doctor? It is not advisable-” the AiSP begins.
“Thank you, AiSP,” Dr. DeBeers says. “But I think Sergeant Crouch has earned a peek into the way we work. Or he will earn it over the next few weeks as I study him.” She leans in and places a hand on his shoulder, surprising Blaze with the physical intimacy. “It’s the least I can do, considering.”
“Considering what?” Blaze asks. “What are you going to do to me?’
She only shrugs and gestures to the wall to his left. He turns and watches as the wall goes opaque, revealing row after row of shiny metal tables, each with a body laid out upon it. More machines, their arms and tools whirling over and around the bodies, hurry back and forth, each performing a specific task upon each body. It’s an assembly line of medical research. Flashes of blue static separate each station, obviously cleansing the area before the next subject moves into place.
“Are they…alive?” Blaze asks, seeing the IRISed eyes on some of the bodies, but also seeing wide open stares from others. He steps closer to the wall and the eyes of the man on the nearest table shift slightly, catching his movement. “Oh, God…”
“Well, we aren’t there yet,” Dr. DeBeers laughs. “But we hope to be someday. Life isn’t as big of a mystery as we once thought. Not when you break it down to its finite pieces like we do in Control.” She tilts her head slightly and frowns. “But Control is an affront. He is the one, the only one-”
Blaze looks at her as she stops speaking. The puzzled look on her face does not comfort him. He quickly looks back at the room before him, but there’s no comfort there either as the man on the table continues to stare at him.
Fear.
That is all Blaze can see in the man’s eyes as a metal arm hovers over his abdomen. A blue beam of static fires from the arm and the tissues across the man’s belly splits easily. The arm moves off to the next table and is replaced by two new arms. They dive into the man’s exposed abdominal cavity. His eyes widen slightly as the man’s stomach and intestines are removed and placed into a tub of liquid by the table. The tub moves off, carried by a rolling cart, and the arms follow as a new set take their place.
Tubes and lines are inserted into the man’s abdomen, replacing the connections where his stomach and intestines had been before. The arms move away and a single one moves in and fuses the man’s skin back together, sealing the flesh around the tubes and lines. That arm moves off to complete the same task on the next table. And the next. And the next.
A metal orb, larger than the one in the transport bay, hovers to the table. Its middle opens and it removes a small tank of liquid, which it sets on the man’s chest and connects to the tubes and lines. It waits as the liquid is pumped from the tank into the man then moves off as the table is surrounded by a StatShield and lifted up into the ceiling.
All of the rows of tables shift accordingly and at the far end of the room the ceiling opens and a new table, a new person, is placed in the room.
“I’d take you in personally for a closer look,” Dr. DeBeers says. “But we are on facility lockdown and I only have access to the hallways and your room.” She puts a finger to her chin. “However, I could override that and take us in. What would be the harm in that?”
“Doctor,” the AiSP says. “That would compromise all of the subjects.”
“I know, I know!” Dr. DeBeers shouts. “I’m not going to do it. Not going to…”
Blaze focuses on the new table that has been added to the room’s rotation. He knows that person.
“Ah,” Dr. DeBeers says, seeing the new man also. “Your transport has arrived much earlier than expected. That is good. The sooner we start on the Burn trash, the more we know about the transmission capabilities of your culture.”
The person on the table is the man from the Burn, the bit of Burn trash called Splotch.
“We’ll remove his digestive tract, which is where the bacteria will be housed if you transferred it to him, and study the results,” Dr. DeBeers says. “Can you tell me if your StatShield was activated during your encounter with him? That bit of data does help with our analysis.”
Blaze tries to tear his eyes from the man as the machines begin their work, but the horror of it all has him transfixed.
“Hello? Sergeant Crouch?” Dr. DeBeers calls out, waving her hand in front of him. “AiSP? A mild jolt, please.”
Blaze gasps as adrenaline surges through him briefly.
“I…what was the question?” he asks.
“Was your StatShield activated during your encounter with Mister…”
“Splotch, doctor,” the AiSP says. “The man goes by the name of Splotch, but was born Carlos William Leftowitz.”
“Sounds like an excellent mélange of genetic inheritance,” Dr. DeBeers says. “Far better to research than some of the pure bloods we pick up. And much better than the Sicklands samples.”
“Samples?” Blaze says. “You call them samples?”
“Terminology doesn’t matter,” Dr. DeBeers says, waving him off. “What does is whether you had your StatShield active.”
“Yes,” Blaze says. “I did.”
“Noted,” Dr. DeBeers says. “AiSP? Show is over.”
The wall returns to its brilliant white and Dr. DeBeers turns, proceeding down the hall. Blaze hesitates, looks about him, then up at the ceiling, and follows after.
“You keep saying we, but other than you, and the troopers, I haven’t seen a single person here,” Blaze says. “Where is everyone else?”
“Everyone else?” Dr. DeBeers asks. “Oh, they are around. You won’t meet any of them. Variables, remember? I barely see my colleagues most days. And especially not today with the facility lockdown.”
Dr. DeBeers’s voice takes on a lost, rambling quality.
“Not that I like them much anyway,” she continues. “The only pleasure I get from their company is during interpersonal connectivity sessions.”
“Interpersonal connectivity what?”
“Mandatory copulation,” Dr. DeBeers says. “Male and female researchers are required to provide fresh embryonic material for study. Cloning has never worked properly, except with the Canine Units, and the results wouldn’t be accurate if it did. You need new genetics, new strands, new variables in order to truly study what the Strains can do.”
“You fuck for science?” Blaze asks.
“Ha!” Dr. DeBeers laughs, the sound tinny and empty in the hallway. “I’ll remember that. He’ll appreciate that humor. But, yes, we do. Once impregnated, the embryo is removed from the female and cultured until it achieves the growth needed for the specific study.”
“Isn’t there risk of infection by, uh, copulating?” Blaze asks, trying to focus on the science and not the madness, although they are hopelessly intertwined. “Wouldn’t artificial insemination be better?”
“No, not really,” Dr. DeBeers says. “There are enzymatic reactions, mucosal responses, hormone shifts, that occur during natural copulation. They affect which spermatozoa reach the egg and the embryo’s development. The best way to study life is to recreate its creation the most natural way possible. It’s primitive and messy, but it works. Plus an orgasm does wonders for one’s state of mind.” She smiles and touches her armor at her chest. “What will He be like…?”
“This is insane,” Blaze says. “Way out there, comple
tely knockered the bug fuck insane.”
“Only history can judge that, Sergeant Crouch,” Dr. DeBeers says. “Ah, we are here.” The wall slides open and reveals a small, sterile room with only one table in the middle. “After you.”
Blaze hesitates. He looks inside and knows it is way too late to make a run for it.
“Are you going to rip me open too?” he asks. “Is that how this all goes down?”
“No, Sergeant,” Dr. DeBeers says. “We have a very long time before we get to the dissection part of my research. This will just be a routine examine.”
Blaze takes a couple of steps back and the ceiling opens up above him. A swirling tangle of metal arms hovers just feet from his head.
“My apologies,” Dr. DeBeers laughs. “That was my pitiful attempt at humor. You can see why I don’t joke often. Not to worry, Sergeant Crouch, you will not be dissected. We can’t waste a unique specimen like you. We need to study the organism as a whole, the symbiotic relationships between all the floras in your system. You are not just a digestive system or host to a specific strain of bacteria. You are a wonderful microcosm of life, a universe into yourself.”
She walks into the room and stands by the table, waiting.
“He knows that and is very happy your are here with me,” Dr. DeBeers says then begins to cough over and over. When she finally gets it under control, she pats the table. “Up you go now.”
Blaze hesitates, looks at the arms above him then steps forward. The wall slides shut and the hallway is once again an uninterrupted corridor of pure white.
42
Being awake and aware in a stasis cylinder is not a fun experience. Especially if claustrophobia lurks at the edges of one’s psyche.
Jersey takes several deep breaths as she hears the clanging and thumping of machinery around her. Without the real stasis system operating, she feels every movement and jostle, her world turned upside down, rotated, stomach lurching as the cylinder falls quickly then is held in place with sudden force.
She waits and waits, counting out the seconds into minutes then into the quarter hour, the half hour, three-quarters of an hour-
“Oh, thank God,” she exclaims as the seal on the cylinder is released and the top removed. “Worm we have to-”
She stops as she sits up and looks about her.
Thousands and thousands of stasis cylinders line the massive room, stacked ten to a row, ten rows to a group, over and over from end to end.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers.
Jersey finds herself on the top most cylinder on the far left stack of one of the center groups. She calculates and realizes she probably has half a mile of cylinder groups to work her way through before she can get to the wall of the room. She prays there’s a door.
Hooking her legs over the side, she turns about and tries to find purchase for her feet on the stack, but her shoes keep slipping and she panics, fearing she’ll fall the twenty feet or so down to the solid white floor.
Everything is white, but there is only a small light at each corner of the room, keeping the place from being blinding. She hates to think what would happen if they really lit it up.
Her left foot slips and she almost falls, her grip on the edge of the cylinder all that keeps her from tumbling. She tries again to get a foothold, but the stack won’t cooperate, the cylinders are too smooth.
“Shit,” she says again then shuts up as a small orb flies directly in front of her, its bottom illuminated by hover patches. She watches it closely as it bobs in the air only inches from her nose.
The standoff lasts for a good minute before the orb speeds off down the groups then rockets up into the ceiling. She begins to sigh in relief, but where the orb went, a large tentacle of metal shoots out, racing towards her.
Desperate to escape, Jersey does the only thing she can think of- she lets go.
As she falls, her arms pin wheeling, legs flailing, she rethinks her life strategy of just barreling into situations. Her relationship with Blaze, her association and position within the resistance, her trust of an AiSP that could easily have her found out and executed on the spot if he chose too. When all those thoughts rush through her head, she is amazed she’s stayed alive as long as she has.
Her body comes to a bone jarring halt and she feels a painful twinge in her neck as her head snaps back. Then she is slowly lowered to the floor and gently set feet down. She spins around and the metal arm that caught her retracts back into the ceiling several stories above her.
A slight hum behind her makes her look over her shoulder and the small orb is back.
“Worm?” she asks, but the machine doesn’t respond. It just moves a few feet away and waits.
Jersey follows.
Instead of taking a direct line to the wall, the orb leads her through a circuitous route between the groups of cylinders. A left, a right, two lefts, straight ahead, three rights- she loses track of the path and seriously thinks the orb is only trying to make her dizzy.
But as she takes a moment to glance above her she sees a dozen of the metal arms like the one that caught her, moving about the groups as one arm lifts her empty cylinder into the air. She smiles as she realizes the orb isn’t trying to trick her, it’s trying to trick the arms that are obviously looking for the missing person.
She catches up to the orb as it increases its speed, this time leading her directly to the nearest wall. Once there, she turns and puts her back to the wall, waiting for the next move as the orb just hovers close to her shoulder. The arms are systematically getting nearer and nearer. She wonders why they can’t dial in on her PSC and find her immediately, but has a feeling there may be protocols in place that block the PSC signals. A few thousand of those in a tight area could wreak havoc on any system, no matter how sophisticated and powerful.
Twenty groups away, then fifteen, twelve, eight, six, three.
Right above her.
She doesn’t move a muscle and keeps her breathing even and slow despite the sheer terror that pulses through her body. Panic threatens to overtake her, but she fights it. The orb hangs close, but doesn’t intervene.
A half-dozen arms wave around her, moving only inches from her arms and legs, from her chest. Then they leave, withdrawing back into the ceiling, leaving her alone with the orb.
She glances sideways at the orb, waiting for some signal.
The wall recedes behind her and she falls back onto her ass, quickly scurrying away from the room. Once her feet are clear the wall closes and she finds herself in an almost blindingly white hallway, the orb nowhere to be seen.
Jersey picks herself up and turns one way then the other, trying to decide which way to go. She has to find Blaze, and hopefully keep from being detected. Flipping a mental coin, she decides on a direction and starts walking. She wants to run, wants to give in to the terror and panic that taint her body, but uses every bit of willpower to stay calm.
Step by step she goes, focusing on the end of the hallway. But because of the lack of features, and total whiteness, she has a hard time telling if she is even making any progress. An eternity goes by before she gets to the far end. And nothing. The wall before her doesn’t open. It stays solid and white. She waits some more, counting again so she knows the reality of time in the surreal hallway.
Five minutes go by and she still is not set free. Turning on her heel, she looks at the impossible distance between her and the other end of the hallway.
Step by step she goes.
43
Blaze’s armor and restraints are sliced from his body as a handful of small arms dance around his body, their static blades cutting here and there. In seconds, the material is pulled away and tossed into what Blaze assumes is an incinerator chute, leaving him standing there naked, exposed before Dr. DeBeers.
“On the table, please,” Dr. DeBeers orders as she walks to the wall and presses her hand against it. A sonic slides free. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
Blaze does as he is told and gets onto
the metal table as Dr. DeBeers undresses herself, letting her own armor fall to the floor where it is quickly whisked away. She steps into the sonic and her skin pulses as the waves cleanse her. Blaze’s eyes go wide as he studies her body, seeing the mismatched patches of skin across her breasts, her belly, and the tops of her thighs.
She catches him looking and smiles.
“Many more questions just flooded that soldier brain, didn’t they?” Dr. DeBeers says.
She doesn’t give an explanation as to her appearance as the sonic withdraws and a drawer slides from the wall, offering her a clean uniform. She dresses quickly and walks over to Blaze, rubbing her hands together.
“I need to explain something,” Dr. DeBeers says. “You are now my life’s work. I do not mean this metaphorically. From this moment on, it is you and I. No one else. Forget your girlfriend, forget your squad, forget your Canine Unit. Forget them all. Until the work is completed, this room will be our lives. We never leave, we only stay and complete the work.”
“You’re kidding,” Blaze says.
“As you have already witnessed, Sergeant Crouch, my sense of humor is not sophisticated enough for a joke of this size,” Dr. DeBeers responds. “I am not kidding.” Her face clouds, changes. “He wouldn’t like that. Wouldn’t like me to…”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Blaze says, wondering how many Dr. DeBeers there are in the woman’s head. “Keeping me here forever, sure, I get that. Kinda what I was expecting once you tossed me in your transport. But you? Why will you be here with me?”
“Variables, Simon,” Dr. DeBeers says. “You don’t mind if I call you Simon, do you? After all, we are each others’ world.”
“Call me whatever,” Blaze says.
“Fine, Simon,” Dr. DeBeers nods. “I have already explained about variables. That is what we are dealing with now, the control of all variables. If I leave this room then that introduces a variable. As sterile and clean as Control is, it is still a construct set on this planet; it is still surrounded by, and populated with nature.” Her face clouds once more. “And there’s the rest of Management. They will want a piece of you. They can’t have it.”
