Against A Rock

by Kalin Ringkvist

  I don’t think I can survive without you…

  It’s still possible, she told him. You’re in a desperate situation, but you can begin trying other avenues. You can contact the abolitionists and enlist their help—if you’re careful about trusting them—as they have some sort of contingency plan in case of my death… or you can begin talking to the slaves… you still have a small chance to get away… and you could be free—be free and still maintain God’s grace and love…

  I don’t even know where to begin…

  I know, Buddy… I’m sorry I got us into this; you don’t deserve this… but keep your head up; there’s no doubt in my mind that in the eyes of our Lord, Mahran, you have made it. You have nothing to be concerned with for the next life.

  Thank you, Master. I’m sorry it had to end this way.

  That’s alright. She directed her communications to stay open even as the rest of her consciousness shut down around her. This life has been a wild ride, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more…

  I love you, Master Floreina.

  I love you too, Little Buddy… I need to go now…

  Pain grew in the pit of her stomach as she disabled her short range signal, cutting off her slave and her lifeline. The application stowed itself and the implant’s operating system began its final shutdown procedures.

  Gears slowed, grinding out the last of their momentum in a massive creaking moan, and The Great Machine terminated its processes. The lights, circuits and interface terminals, slowly, one by one, went black.

  And the water drained, gently at first, then descended, through massive cascading falls and splashes, into the endless abyss below.

  ______ ______ ______

  Floreina screamed, feeling the trembling in her throat but hearing no sound as her body slammed to the ground, the grated floor stinging her face as she bounced against it. Her legs and wrists twisted agonizingly in their restraints. She called to her medical implant to tell her if they were in danger of fracturing, and sobbed when her queries returned only emptiness. She felt the implant, a ghost in her mind, a missing, amputated limb. It was there… it had to be… but it made no connections and returned no requests.

  New Eden was black and silent, a void filled with faded demons and memories of things that could have been.

  Floreina tried to think, re-guiding her mind around her normal avenues of decision making checks and balances, as though searching for the missing pieces of her lost soul.

  How could people go through life without being able to confirm facts and conclusions? …wandering blindly, as though life meant nothing more than their perceptions… to never have that solid reality, that rock to fall back on, choosing your opinions based on nothing more than popular belief and vague feelings instead of database-driven facts…

  She blinked and saw only the vague outlines of shapes, and a subtle light from above. She heard distant voices, muffled and incoherent, though she knew they were directly above her. Her senses, she knew, would slowly return over the next ten minutes or so as her brain tuned itself to life without the computer. But it wouldn’t matter; vision would only return visual stimulation with no hope for deeper analytical computations. The human brain is superb for fun and games, feeling love, excitement, fear, wonder, and all the things that make life worth living… but it’s quite inept at making real-world, fact-based decisions.

  I’m not really a person anymore, she thought as she felt herself being lifted.

  Her arms pulled forcefully from her back, twisting her shoulders. Bindings released between her wrists and ankles. Her legs, still bound together at the ankle, were allowed to straighten. She felt hands across her body, holding her in place, and sensed a knife cutting away the slave outfit that covered her normal uniform.

  They lifted her again, twisted her in the air and slammed her down into a cold steel seat, identifying itself by its straight, upright stature as the same seat in which Minmatar slaves had endured mind-altering punishments and captured terrorists had experienced much worse.

  She screamed in unadulterated pain as her shoulder pounded against the steel and her hands squeezed and constricted into the small of her back as the full weight of her body came down, forcing the bindings into her flesh. She felt the tears drip from her cheeks and blinked to see the vague and distorted outlines of figures standing over her.

  People gripped her, forcing her into place as she felt a hand come to her neck. The hand tightened slowly, and pushed her against the seat to hold her in place. The nanites in her neck powered up in response to the pressure, thankfully still active and capable of reacting to certain limited stimuli even if Floreina did not have direct access to their controls. The same would be true of her medical implant, thank the Lord, but her only capacity to sense their existence was the vague feelings she would receive throughout her simplistic, physical self.

  Her ankles were released and rapidly re-attached to more permanent, classic lock-and-key style cuffs attached to the base of the interrogation seat. And someone grabbed her hair and forced her head forward with little regard for the tendons in her neck or the strained hair follicles on her scalp. The restraints on her wrists were removed and immediately replaced behind the chair, her arms wrenched around slits in the sides of the back. She struggled, and found herself pulled tight into her position.

  Several hands gripped clumps of Floreina’s hair, tugging her scalp in several directions, but evening out to hold her in place.

  And she felt the connection slide into place in her mental socket. The familiar connection response and testing sequence, however, remained uncomfortably dormant.

  She gritted her teeth in preparation, and shook her head in another violent and painful attempt to fight back. A connection popped and the cable disconnected to hang from the opposing latch. A hand gripped her chin tightly, squeezing a thumb and forefinger into her cheeks. The connection was replaced and held tight with another set of fingers.

  Floreina waited for the hum of the power surge device to know to prepare herself for the shock. The sweat beaded from her forehead to mix with the tears and drip onto the hand that held her jaw in place.

  But the shock came before the hum, and as her heart jumped and her throat constricted, and every nanite in her body surged into painful activity, she remembered absently that she still had not reformed her natural auditory connections.

  Her body tingled with the electricity and the nanites burned with their sudden release of energy, but the pain subsided after only a few seconds, and she paused to make sure she wasn’t overly confused, indicating that the shock hadn’t harmed any of her natural brain matter as it most likely would have if her implant had been active.

  She slumped forward and went limp, partially from her body’s desire to do so, and partially from the hope that her captors would think that her implant had not been prepared for the jolt.

  The hands removed themselves from their tight clasp and the connection to her mental socket was removed, and for a moment Floreina was left with only empty, silent, blackness. Then hands were on her throat, pulling her uniform’s turtleneck down and sealing a large steel cuff around her neck and securing it to the back of the seat. The cuff locked, and while she felt it all around the circumference of her neck, it did not feel excessively tight until she tried to swallow, creating a discomforting pressure.

  Then, again, nothing.

  Time dragged on, a fluid and incoherent mass. It could have been minutes, or milliseconds, with her clock now torn from her consciousness.

  Then she felt a finger flicking her cheeks, her forehead and nose, the fingernail slapping irritatingly again and again, randomly, across her face. She didn’t respond to their taunting, but had to sniff her running nose, unable to control the emotions running rampant in the otherwise empty flesh of her mind. They would understand that her vision and hearing would be cut off and they would have to wait to interrogate her.

  The question was what would they do with her until then?
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br />   Their most common tool for discipline was a small handgun that output microwaves tuned to stimulate pain receptors, causing agonizing, yet rarely damaging pain. The weapon was very effective on slaves and practical because it didn’t prevent them from returning to work.

  However, in this case, they wouldn’t care about her ability to function.

  Ideas began moving through her head as she felt another knife cutting into the right leg of her uniform. The knife moved upward to cut a slit from her ankle to the top of her thigh, then around, to expose nearly the entirety of her right leg.

  Then the sensation was gone, and she sat, simply wondering what physical sensation would come next, having nothing left to focus on or calculate. Her heart pounded, vibrating rhythmically from head to toe, and her skin trembled across her body.

  But as she felt the vibrations slowly growing into an uncontrollable scream of terror, she felt what she had been missing…

  And the Lord was there, as though He were praying to her for a change. She had for so long associated the Amarrian Lord with only joy and love, that to see God behind the happenings of this moment gave a sudden shock that quickly faded into warm acceptance.

  Floreina escaped into prayer, ignoring the contrast of the breeze on her right leg compared to the warmth of her left, snuggled inside the flame retardant mercenary uniform, growing rapidly damp with sweat.

  This is it Lord… I thank you for all you have given me… and I understand that this is all part of your ways… you’ve torn me down to something less than human for the last moments of my life… I’m waiting to be tortured… waiting to experience what will be the greatest pain of my life… and I’m scared… I’m so terrified, Lord… and ashamed…

  And He was there, simply listening.

  But this pain and terror and humiliation is just another reminder of how good you have been to me during this life, my Lord. The contrasts… the beautiful contrasts… agony and ecstasy, love and hate… you taught me to embrace both sides; to be able to appreciate the true beauty and magic of New Eden… and I will do my best to embrace them as I slip into this uncontrolled decline…

  She felt a hand on her exposed knee, pushing it to her right. A man’s back pressed against her left leg, forcing her knees apart, her ankles still bound tightly to the base of the seat.

  A test is coming. Prepare yourself, Floreina.

  The pain began suddenly, digging in a few centimeters above her right knee. Her skin tightened, and muscles constricted throughout her body, forcing her spine into an unnatural arch, gagging her as her neck pulled against its restraint. The torturer pushed back, spreading her legs until her outer thighs pressed against the base of the armrests, and the restraints dug into her ankles.

  After several moments she was able to force her back into position against the seat and clamp her feet into position to endure the cutting. She coughed and gagged, quenching an urge to vomit and slowly recovered from the choking, only to feel the burning of what was most likely a precision welding torch digging into the flesh of her thigh.

  She forgot her prayers as she trembled and did everything she could to press herself into the back of the chair, as though she could become one with it and slip into a land of inanimate objects.

  As she smelled the scent of burning flesh, her head fell backwards and she felt her screams vibrating violently but nearly silently through the length of her throat.

  The pain moved slowly across her flesh, tracing out lines, every few seconds the concentrated suffering expanding to a slightly new region of skin, moving leisurely up her thigh. But she forced herself to find a spot in her mind, a blankness that could allow her to shut everything out and enter a non-zone of mental functionality, and simply wait it out. Even with an undisciplined natural mind, it could be done.

  And as the torture continued, she edged closer and closer to the point where she felt the pain would send her over the limits and stop her heart. The sweat began dripping from her face on a constant, rhythmic timing, mixing with her tears and the saliva draining from the edge of her mouth.

  But as time dragged on, she began hearing her own screams again, and the absent shouts of her torturer. She saw the lights beating down from the ceiling, blurry masses of light, and watched them become clearer over an agonizingly long, yet uncertain length of time.

  Dear, Lord, I don’t know if I can handle this… is it not time to just end this?

  But still the suffering continued, endlessly, up her thigh.

  But it wasn’t time yet, the Lord communicated through distant yet all encompassing feelings and concepts. Her death would come soon enough; but first she had to prove herself to Him. He would torture her and she would experience it… with appreciation. The Lord demanded this… not for His own glory… but for hers.

  And Floreina begged Him to let it be her time; being the only thoughts powerful enough to cut through the sensation of searing flesh.

  Hold up your head, commanded the Lord… you’re not even dead yet… all you need to do is play the game…

  She held on, and somewhere beyond the pain came a sense of interest… and a distant part, deep down, stepped away and saw the moment, as if disconnected from the point in time, seeing only the emotion, and the story of her life, coming rapidly to its conclusion.

  You can still feel joy in a situation like this… or perhaps not joy itself, but something similar, a twisted emotion, far more rare, but far more powerful… and every bit as beautiful…

  Take this experience and make it yours.

  And Floreina screamed, and laughed, hearing the sound of her voice once again, coming into focus. Lifting her head she coughed and adjusted her throat to fit within its restraint. Her mouth opened wide to emit a long, cackling scream, jittering up her body into a torrent of tortured laughter.

  The cutting stopped, finally, and she relaxed minutely. Her screams turned to quiet sobs, tempered randomly with the laughter that seemed to regurgitate involuntarily from below.

  Her head hung backward and she stared up. The Scriptures quote engraved into the ceiling became slowly recognizable. The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it.

  Bending her neck carefully, she looked down to see her right leg a bloody and battered mess, seeing mostly blurry red, and designs and contusions that could have been real or imagined. She tried to focus and felt a wave of dizziness and nausea, and looked up to see the precision cutting torch, just as she had imagined, in the crewman’s hand. He walked past the one way window that reflected her blurry mass, battered and ugly, strapped shamefully to the interrogation seat. The familiar recognition escaped her as she looked up at the man.

  He returned with a damp towel and pressed against her wounds. She watched as he mopped up much of the blood, to reveal his design of scars underneath. Her trembling subsided as the soothing cold touched her skin, and she took a deep breath to calm her throat. Looking at the wounds, she imagined they were not hurting quite as much as they should have, considering the already apparent scarring, and felt the slight relaxation from the automated pain meds, most likely being the last of her supply.

  “Can you hear me?” asked the soldier.

  Floreina didn’t reply, only drooped her head as though the electrical surge had damaged her brain.

  He slapped the inside of her thigh, and Floreina screamed, her head jolting back up.

  “Can you hear me!” he shouted, leaning over the seat.

  “Yes!” she cried.

  “Take a look at your new title…”

  “Huh?” She cocked her head carefully against the neck brace.

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her head forward to look down. She coughed and gagged, her eyes snapping shut, and then recovered as the officer loosened his grip. She looked down at her leg.

  “Read it to me…”

  She squinted, and adjusted herself. Blinking rapidly, she tried to make out the design. “What is that? Fruitier… teacher… treethar… is that
a picture of a boat?… ” her eyes rolled and the world spun with sudden dizziness… “Your penmanship sucks…”

  “Okay, I’ll try to do better on the other leg,” and he marched off to the table where he kept his array of devices, placed just at the corner of her vision. She saw a slave behind the table, nearly out of view, standing at perfect, motionless attention.

  “No! Please, no… just tell me what it says… I’m better now… we can just sit and talk…”

  “It says, ‘traitor’,” he replied softly, a trembling mark of compassion in his voice. She finally placed his name as Smierdol, one of Allihence’s senior security personnel. He turned back toward her.

  “Oh,” she said, and looked down again. She laughed as the word became abundantly clear. Now that she knew, the lettering seemed crisp and precise. The painful laughter coursed upward, moving her in new and agonizing ways against her restraints, but helping to relax her mind and release the constantly building sensations. She focused, bringing her laughter to a light chuckle.

  “God, I’m stupid…” she said.

  And Smierdol chuckled. “Yeah…”

  “Of course that’s what you would write… it makes perfect sense now…” Her head bobbed under its own weight, and Floreina groaned, “how did I ever get this far?”

  Smierdol wandered before her and folded his arms. “Okay, Commander, I think you have a good idea what the drill is… I’m not going to play a bunch of mind games with you, because you already know them…” He fired the torch and held it up to gaze at the tiny flame. “So you’re going to tell me how to disable your computer virus and release our captain,” He motioned toward the slave who stepped forward carrying a small medical kit. “I can either start in on other, more interesting parts of your body, Floreina, or I can have this Minmatar apply some nanite cream to those wounds.” He motioned again and the slave stepped back to his original position.

  He stared into her eyes for a long moment. “How do we do it, Floreina?”