The Cygnus Virus

by Terry Zakreski

  They both made a wet sound on impact. The brain has a lot of fluid in it. The injuries caused catastrophic wetware failure.

  The meteorite was propelled into Astrid’s head by gravity. It was made of an iron-nickel alloy that was chipped away from an asteroid. The asteroid was formed shortly after the solaris system to which Astrid’s planet belonged was born.

  The lead in the bullet, which ruined Nathan’s wetware, is a heavy metal created by an exploding star. The forces that propelled it were derivatives from the Big Bang.

  Nathan is made of the following atoms: Oxygen (65 per cent), Carbon (18 per cent), Hydrogen (10 per cent), Nitrogen (3 per cent), Calcium (1.4 per cent), with a long list of elements making up the remaining 2.7 per cent.

  Of these elements, most were forged in the ovens of suns and exploding stars. Hydrogen is the exception. All the hydrogen in the universe was created in the Big Bang, within seconds.

  So at least 10 per cent of Nathan is made up of atoms as old as the universe.

  These same elements are in ample supply on the crust of Nathan’s planet and equally abundant in the universe. Whether one imagines the universe to be a living thing, Nathan was definitely made in its image, or at least of its substance.

  It took the universe billions of years to produce something that thinks. Much longer to produce something that knows that it thinks, that can probe the origin of its thinking, of its existence. Like Nathan.

  Before decomposing, Nathan’s brain had about 80 billion neurons and over 100 trillion synaptic connections between them.

  Synaptic connections between neurons form neural networks that are responsible for our thoughts, memories and desires.

  [/Abstractions]

  Nathan’s consciousness stops working after the bullet causes catastrophic wetware failure.

  He slumps over in the snow with his blood splatter around him.

  He has no more go left.

  He is gone.

  [/Nathan]

  Chapter 22:

  The Hanged Man

  The Tarot card shows a man hanging upside down from the limb of a tree, suspended with a rope around his ankle. His free leg is crossed in front of him, forming a triangle. While the position is painful and the circumstances bleak, he is serene.

  Andron feels the noose tighten.

  The police are still searching for the male prostitute who lured Nathan to a hotel room to rob and murder him.

  But Andron knows who did it. As soon as the word Internet was used.

  Cygnus.

  No doubt Nathan was looking into some of the dubious dealings going on at work and looked under the wrong rock. He was an honest kid.

  Was.

  Once again, Andron feels responsible. Because he knows who is responsible.

  But he knows that if he tried to point the finger at Cygnus, he’d be framed for murder. He suspects this was one of Cygnus’ motives.

  There’s a brass-railed cherry wood casket, with flowers heaped on it. There’s picture of Nathan smiling. Nathan’s mother is trying to grab the casket. Pain is on everyone’s face.

  He’d like to switch places. To somehow touch the casket so Nathan could come out, and he could go in. He supposes that Nathan’s mother is already trying that. With a lot more feeling.

  He hates the stale dusty smell of churches, like he hates the ammonia smell of hospitals. He hates the stupid songs.

  He breathes in the dusty smell and remembers Nathan around the office smiling just like his picture on his casket. How hard the kid worked. How he loved going to court with him because he’d have everything prepared. His dry razor wit. How he loved traveling and his pictures.

  How he made everyone else smile. How he pitched in. How all the girls in the office loved him. How he planned all the parties and arranged things.

  They are taking the arrangements off now and picking up the casket.

  Heading for the cemetery.

  In the rain.

  The jets are spooling down behind him.

  The familiar desert heat slaps him in the face. It burns his lungs. He feels like the heat could turn him into wavy lines, like it’s doing to the tarmac.

  He puts his sunglasses on. They go on sideways. His shirt is untucked.

  He’s wasn’t supposed to mix those pills with anything. But the doctor didn’t explicitly mention Pyrat Rum Cask 1623 aged for forty years when he gave him antidepressants.

  The sun is discombobulating him. It’s turning his body into vapor. He catches himself on the jet’s airstairs. His legs aren’t working right. He’s in no condition to do anything. He’s got ten grand in his pocket. And hates himself already.

  Welcome to Pecado, baby.

  “Hey, Scott. Hey, Geoff.”

  “Hello, Mr. Varga.”

  “Meeting’s not for a few hours, man, I could really use a drink. What do you say we make a stop along the way?”

  “Yes, Mr. Varga.”

  A few-hundred short of ten-k already.

  A few thousand by the time the meeting starts.

  The meeting is in the boardroom of Alabaster & Co. Representatives from the Church of the Holy Cloth are meeting with representatives from the Church of Yeshua Christos and Later Day Saints. Up for discussion is the purchase of a church that COHC wants to use for a prayer and genetic research facility.

  Andron is the face of Earthen Swan Genetics.

  They all have their cups of coffee in front of them and are ready to open with a non-denominational prayer, but they’re waiting for Andron to arrive.

  The face of Earthen Swan Genetics arrives. The receptionist ushers him in. When she turns back, he takes off his sunglasses and follows her with his eyes.

  “Hello.”

  He turns back toward them, straightens too much, puts his chin down too much, presses his lips too tight and sits down too much. He says sorry too loud.

  He sits next to an elder from the Latter Day’s and a young female associate from Alabaster & Co. Both move their chairs and feet away.

  Andron lowers his head too much and says amen too loud for the opening invocation.

  Item Three on the agenda has everyone leaning forward. Restrictions on use.

  “I don’t understand how you can sell something, especially for the price you’re asking, and then put clauses in, restricting what we can do with it.”

  “I’m sorry but our congregation can’t support selling our property to abortionists.”

  “We’re not abortionists. The genetic research doesn’t involve any services to help women terminate unwanted pregnancies.”

  “You’re planning on using fetuses, aren’t you?”

  Andron turns to the junior associate.

  “Is it just me or does that guy kinda sound like a dick?”

  He doesn’t say it quiet enough. She’s leaning away from his breath.

  “Sorry.”

  The discussion continues as Andron gets up to pour himself some coffee. When he returns he puts his left hand on the junior associate’s chair to steady himself. It turns slightly, he loses his balance, twists in the air and ends up sitting on her lap, rubbing the smell of cigarettes, rum and strippers on her.

  Not the lap dance she’s dreamed of.

  He gets off her lap and into his chair. The church elders witness their first miracle.

  He didn’t spill a drop of coffee.

  He looks around the table at everyone.

  “You know what this table could use in the middle? Like ingrained, painted and shit?

  “Fuzzy dice.

  “Am I right?”

  Calls are placed.

  It’s the next morning at eleven. Andron has his arms on the shoulders of Scott and Geoff. His shirt is completely untucked and half undone. He gave his watch to someone. He can’t remember who. They help him climb the airstairs.

  He’s in his chair. He takes out his cell phone and puts a call into the office.

  “Death to the Shaman Overlord.”

  “What?”


  “Mr. Varga?”

  The co-pilot comes back to put his seatbelt on.

  Andron doesn’t wake up until they touchdown in Manitow Springs.

  He’s in Jacko’s.

  He’s talking to Heidi. She’s one of his favorites. She has blue hair and bright pink lipstick. Green eyes. Both of them, not just her contact HUD. Her silver skirt is hiked up with her legs crossed. He knows she’s not wearing panties. Her black boots go past her knees.

  She’s laughing. Sitting in her red velvet pucker lip chair. Drinking a blue martini that works like ecstasy.

  She leans over, puts her full pink lips around the straw, and looks up him.

  Andron is sitting there with his phosphorescent boner out. They have a pill to give a guy one that lasts over four hours that doesn’t even require a doctor visit. Modern science.

  He’s drinking the ecstasy blue martini, too.

  Tainted Love by Soft Cell is blasting.

  They’re talking about love and the doorways of the mind. They agree that love is an altered state. That it’s crazy. That it can slap the soul right out of you. Leave an abyss. Then kiss you and fill it up again.

  “I just adore your cock. I love what you’ve done with it. I’d just love for you to fuck me with it.”

  She uncrosses her legs, licks her pink lips, sips from her drink again and looks up at him.

  They’re in her room. She’s still wearing her boots, bent over a tall bed. Her skirt is folded on her back.

  Andron is ramming into her. He’s gripping her hips like Astrid’s. About to come.

  He feels it rising. He can’t hold off any longer.

  And then the scene switches.

  He’s inside a goat who is wearing little black boots on its rear goat legs. He tries not to ejaculate and only half succeeds.

  The goat runs away braying.

  Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs comes over loud enough to cause hearing loss.

  He rips off the TACHY. Cygnus is laughing. Singing the song.

  He goes out to the garage. Comes back with a tire iron and smashes the TACHY. Rips out the wires. He swings for the monitors and leaves the tire iron sticking in the middle of one.

  “Just can’t fucking let up, can you?”

  Wooly Bully crackles out one of the smashed speakers.

  His phone rings later. It is the same song.

  Every email he opens is the video.

  For weeks.

  Cygnus has cameras installed. Andron’s bedroom and bathroom are the only places he is free. It was small victory after Andron stopped the installers and pleaded with Cygnus for a modicum of privacy. Cygnus answered with a porn bomb of a man ejaculating on a woman’s breasts. Andron took it for a yes.

  He stops sending Andron on trips. Alabaster & Co is handling everything.

  Andron is surprised that Cygnus hasn’t had him killed yet. He suspects it is mainly for nostalgia. Andron remains, as far as he is aware, the first and only person to know Cygnus as Cygnus on the planet.

  Andron switches to vodka.

  His routine wavers little.

  He’s up at seven to shower, brush his teeth and dress. These are off-camera events. He pops a few pieces of bread into the toaster. Makes coffee. Reads the paper. Goes to work with another cup. With vodka in it.

  He does his best to conceal it at work. He mainly does residential real estate.

  He eats a light lunch. Works until six, stops at the liquor store. Comes home in the evening with a few bottles in paper bags and out in the morning with empties.

  He mostly watches TV at night and drinks until he passes out. He wakes up at one a.m. and drags himself to bed.

  Rinse and repeat.

  Andron and Cygnus rarely speak.

  He could give two shits less about Cygnus anyway or his plans. Or Earth. Or what future Terra might be like. Cygnus has him in a noose from which there is no escaping.

  So he’s drinking himself to death.

  Wearing the face of equanimity.

  Chapter 23:

  The Multiplication of Loaves

  Juliette and Joe expected something more dramatic to happen. The clouds to part, a light to shine down and for God to say something. Juliette had her dreams, but they weren’t dreams like in the Bible, where an archangel got involved.

  Without God giving them instructions, they tried figuring stuff out for themselves. They looked up things on the Church of the Cloth. There were no services to attend in their little town.

  They had been thinking about their role as parents to young Yeshua. About the mundane things. About schools. About shielding him from crowds. What if he doesn’t come out performing miracles? What if he does?

  How will their lives change, as parents to the Son of God?

  Is what they’re doing blasphemy?

  Juliette’s instincts tell her that they have to treat it as though they’ll be ordinary parents having an ordinary child and forget about the rest. That they insist on privacy and the right to raise their baby like a normal person, in spite of his birthright.

  She wants a baby room, baby cloths, baby smells, baby skin, bath splashes, diapers and breastfeeding. If Yeshua didn’t get his ideas about love from God, he got them from his mother. And she wants to be that person.

  They’re in Pecado to meet the head of the Church. They attend services and see the real Cloth on display. The image of the suffering Yeshua overwhelms her. She imagines how painful his crucifixion would have been for his real mother.

  They have a meeting with the COHC’s director, Thomas O’Brian. She’s expecting to meet a wise and holy man. A man who’ll lay their worries to rest.

  Thomas meets them wearing a Giorgio Armani suit. He has reddish blonde hair and a trimmed mustache and beard. He’s of average height and is slightly overweight. He takes them to his office.

  Juliette brought questions with her.

  “Will the baby be ours to raise?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Apart-uh from checkups with us, no different than if he was your own.”

  “What about all the people that are going to be around? How will we be able to protect him when we have so little?”

  “Good question. But don’t worry. We have-uh arranged for everything. For new identities. For a job for Joe.”

  “So we’re going into witness protection?”

  “Not exactly, Joe. You will not be witnessing any crime, only-uh the birth of our Savior. We have to do this for your protection and-uh the baby’s.”

  “But we still have to go into hiding…from everyone?”

  “Juliette, think of the parents of Yeshua. Their flight to Egypt for their-uh protection and Yeshua’s, too. This is the same. Until he is-uh at least thirteen.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, Joe, I can’t tell you where exactly right now, but I can-uh share that it will be in Amerigo, or possibly Kanada.”

  They say together.

  “Kanada?”

  “Like I said, these are-uh possibilities.”

  Juliette looks down at her notes.

  “Mr. O’Brian, is this operation safe? Not just for me but for the baby, who may suffer birth defects because of genetic manipulation?”

  “Yes, there are risks, but think about the glory in-uh being the vessel through which Yeshua Christos might-uh be brought back to us. You’ll be revered as his-uh guardians.”

  “Mr. O’Brian, we are a childless couple. To be able to conceive would be a blessing. But vessel makes me feel that I’m going be boat instead of a mother and guardians makes me feel that we’re going to be babysitters instead of parents.”

  There’s a pause. They were told that Dr. Van de Whey was participating by phone, but this is the first time he speaks.

  Juliette, if I may. I am Dr. Christian Van de Whey, and have considerable influence over this project.

  They look over at Thomas, who shows no sign of disagreeing.

  I completely understand your concerns and this is a big d
ecision. I assure you that we have taken every precaution, and with our advanced equipment the risks associated with your insemination, and to the fetus, have been minimized to acceptable levels. We do not wish to put you or the baby at any risk.

  You’re not signing up to be a boat. You are signing up to be a mother.

  The child will be yours to raise, fully, not as guardians, but as parents. And I happen to think you will be perfect parents for this child. That’s why you were chosen by me. By all of us, I mean.

  I understand that being relocated and doing all this will be a tremendous burden. But, I can assure you we will be there every step of the way.

  However, this is an important decision, please take a day or two to think about it. If you decide to proceed, then we shall begin. If you choose to decline, then you are free to keep the stipend for your time.

  Juliette and Joe are riding back to their hotel in the back of the Rolls. Scott and Geoff are not with them.

  “…and cut off from everybody.”

  “Yes, but they’re going to pay for everything and we are going to be his parents. The parents of Yeshua. I think you should have more faith, Juliette.”

  “Oh, I have faith, so don’t even bring that up and I want this baby as bad as you but I think you are being sucked in by promises of fame and money.”

  “Oh, so I’m greedy now.”

  “No, but I think you’re being sucked in. I don’t have a good feeling about Mr. O’Brian or Dr. Van de Way. I liked Dr. Frick a lot better. Mr. O’Brian is too much of a salesman and Dr. Van de Way seems like he’s people he’s not.”

  “People? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I meant someone.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should go around judging people like that all of a sudden.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should be taking everyone else’s side all the time.”

  The silence follows them as they ride the rest of the way and are dropped off at the large cobblestone entrance to their hotel with all the other taxis, black limos and cars more expensive than their home.

  They walk through the lobby into the casino.