Just imagine what is possible when unnecessary ethical concerns, the dated reservations of culture and tradition, are swept away.
Arnon D’Bvaym
64BIT RECOGNIZED THAT his hearing had fully returned when he heard leaves rustling instead of a high-pitched whine. He slowly uncurled his body, smelling ash and the bitter scent of burnt metals as he did so. He turned on his eye screens and looked around. He couldn’t see much, but the metal rozie head that had been blown skyward was still next to the ATV, staring upward, as well as other bits of stone and wood that had been scattered about. 64Bit crawled out from under the ATV and looked around.
The walls of Fort, surprisingly, still stood, although pushed outward and cracked in places. 64Bit suspected that the explosion, after spreading outward, had been forced upward by the walls; an enormous cloud of smoke still rose into the air, tinged with green.
A thirty-foot gouge of blackened earth extended from the hole in the wall that 64Bit had escaped through. The bodies that had been there were entirely incinerated, including the rozie corpse. Through the hole in the wall, 64Bit could see an enormous crater, here and there some rubble, and a lot of dirt and stone pushed against the sides of the walls to create a steep slope. 64Bit shook his head. Nothing could have survived that.
64Bit’s throat clenched when he scanned the field outside the wall and saw a totaled ATV near the scorch mark where the explosion had vented through the wall. He took up his backpack and staff and walked toward the wreckage, eye screens alert for any signs of his . . .
“—My friends,” 64Bit whispered, surprising himself at his use of the word. He doubted Kayla would see him the same way—on the other hand, he would be surprised if Westley had ever met anyone he didn’t shortly thereafter think of as a friend. But, 64Bit acknowledged, he wasn’t certain if friend was the right word, but after being rescued from Zed by Kayla, surviving dozens of life-threatening events in just a few days, and being joined by Westley for much of it, he had a sense of camaraderie he’d never felt before.
Hopefully they were still alive.
There were no bodies around the ATV itself, but one of the handlebars was covered in blood. 64Bit expanded his search around the ATV methodically, walking in lines across the field and moving toward the forest, looking for any sign of Westley and Kayla.
It wasn’t his combing of the area that first found Westley: the man began coughing, which led 64Bit to where he had been thrown into a large bush. 64Bit stowed his staff by tying it to the side of his pack and grabbed Westley’s feet, then pulled with all his might, hoping that he wasn’t making any injuries worse as he did so. A minute later he had Westley free.
Westley lolled his head on the ground, not quite conscious, and 64Bit inspected him for injury, then pulled out what medical supplies he had in his backpack and went to work. Lots of bruising, much of which Westley would just have to deal with. No signs of broken limbs or digits, but 64Bit did wonder if Westley’s nose had always been bent or if that was a result of him being thrown from the ATV by the explosion. Many, many cuts, some of which were deep and bloody, but none of which appeared to hit anything vital. 64Bit cleaned the worst of Westley’s wounds as best he could, wiped herbal salve on them, and bandaged them. Several would need stitching, but 64Bit didn’t want to wait too much longer before looking for Kayla.
A low laughing, coupled with coughing. 64Bit looked up from bandaging Westley’s hand to see Westley’s head shaking, a genuine smile on his face. Then he threw up. 64Bit turned Westley’s head sideways to keep him from suffocating, then used a bandage to wipe up the mess. A moment later, Westley’s breathing evened, then he looked at 64Bit, one eye puffy.
“We did it,” Westley said, still smiling. “And we’re alive!”
“You’re alive,” 64Bit said. His lips twitched, but he wasn’t certain he wanted to share the fear he had felt earlier, fear for both Westley and Kayla.
A shadow fell over Westley’s face. “Kayla didn’t make it?”
“I haven’t found her yet.”
“Look over there,” Westley said. He lifted a shaky arm and pointed. “I thought I saw her get thrown farther that way. Maybe. It’s all a tumble in my head. I can hardly remember it.”
64Bit nodded. He wanted to ask why Westley and Kayla had delayed but knew he should look for Kayla first. He glanced over Westley one more time—he would be extremely sore later, and probably feel as if he were being pinched a thousand times all over as his body complained about his cuts, but he didn’t need any more immediate attention. 64Bit began walking along the forest again, scanning for Kayla where Westley had suggested.
He first saw her boots, sticking out from some high grass, then approached and found her lying face down. The gentle rise and fall of her back told him that she was still breathing. 64Bit felt a little tension melt away at that. He probed at her back and neck to ensure he wouldn’t exacerbate a spinal injury if he moved her, then, satisfied, 64Bit flipped Kayla onto her back and paused.
A jagged shard of metal was sticking out of her left eye socket. Her eye was ruined, the left side of her face was covered in gore.
64Bit shook his head and took a deep breath before examining Kayla further. Nothing could be done for her eye, but the wound didn’t appear to be deep enough to risk brain injury; things could have been much worse. He then carried Kayla over to Westley, surprised by the weight of her lean muscle. “Look away, Westley,” he said, then began working on her eye, hoping to clean and care for it before she regained consciousness, before he moved on to her other wounds, all minor cuts and burns from what 64Bit had seen.
The metal shard came out. 64Bit used the last of his water cleaning Kayla’s eye socket. A half hour later, after he had finished with Kayla’s eye and moved on to her other injuries, she shifted and groaned.
“Water,” Kayla croaked. With his own waterskin empty, 64Bit looked to Westley, but saw him asleep. 64Bit checked that he was breathing, then got up and looked where he had first found Westley. He discovered his backpack, many items scattered about, but it didn’t take long for 64Bit to locate the waterskin, thankfully intact. He returned and gave Kayla a few drops of water, then provided her with some food. Kayla fell asleep again after that.
64Bit couldn’t believe that it was still only midday. With the sun beating down, he soon found it necessary to drag Westley and Kayla to some shade. He then finished dressing Kayla’s wounds, collected their supplies as best he could, and checked the ATV he had ridden to see if it was still functional. Seeing that it was, he vented it, drove it to Westley and Kayla, and pulled out some food for himself.
Fort still smoked behind him, no longer a corpse so much as a charred shell. Nothing had crawled out of the crater while 64Bit worked—no rozies, no trunk. He sat on the ATV’s seat and looked at his friends as they rested.
Then he turned his attention to the second data dump that the Binary had sent him. With the trunk destroyed, Zed either gone or destroyed, and no home left to fall back to, 64Bit didn’t think it would take much effort to persuade Kayla and Westley to come with him to rescue the master—after they had some time to recover—particularly if he could approach them with a plan on exactly where to go and how to get there.
The information scrolled before 64Bit’s eye screens, coupled with two maps, one of the local area and a simple three-dimensional map of Id’s rozie factory. He shook his head. He’d wrongly thought he’d left the worst behind him.
#
CORTEX SHIVERED AND rubbed his arms. The floors weren’t moving—he had to keep reminding himself that. The floors weren’t actually moving . . . he wasn’t in that hellish nightmare anymore . . . He couldn’t be . . .
He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears. The screams of the girl in the room echoed in his mind again, again, again, vibrating, grating until he feared his brain would liquefy.
Cortex hadn’t looked. In fact, he’d been barely conscious, collapsing to the ground. But he still heard the girl get eaten. All he saw were Id’s feet, motionless, still facing the room, hanging a few inches above the ground. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he had every reason to believe that she watched the entire thing. Cortex hated her. He felt that corrosive flame of hate light in his heart. He wanted it to burn. It was the only source of warmth he felt.
Cortex wondered if it was even worth praying anymore. He heard the screams over the words he whispered. He couldn’t think, for the screams drowned out his thoughts.
The ground felt like it was moving again. Cortex shivered; when had he slumped to the floor? He placed a hand on the cold stone floor to assure himself that it wasn’t vibrating, that it wasn’t actively working to strip the flesh from his bone—no. It was still. It was all in his head.
It was all in his head.
#
ID HAD EVENTUALLY commanded one of the two rozies that she kept with her to pick Cortex up and carry him away with her. She had seemed disgusted—Cortex thought it was with him, but as they walked, she muttered about wasted time and difficult decisions. She even mentioned Prophet again a few times, but her tone was negative. Cortex wondered if she intended him to hear, or cared if he did—she was still projecting her thoughts, after all.
The dimness of Id’s lab—or lair, as Cortex now thought of it—made it feel as if they walked on a shifting island in a sea of mist. Cortex was only aware of the world around him for ten, twenty feet, and beyond that it faded into black, which made moving around feel very ethereal. It didn’t help that, as they walked, shapes shifted in the darkness, suggesting the world was reforming around Id. At one point, Cortex caught a clear glimpse of a door blocking their path and wondered how Id would be able to pass through it with the wires and tubes extending upward from her back, but the entire wall split in two and slid sideways into the darkness. Id passed through without issue and the wall slid back into place behind her. Cortex shifted in the grip of the rozie that carried him, constantly wondering what was happening and where they were going.
Their first destination wasn’t new to Cortex. He was placed on the same cot he had originally woken up in, and then fed. He found himself unexpectedly exhausted and fell asleep. He had no idea how long he was out, but when he woke, he was ravenously hungry. He stayed in his cot after that, afraid of what he would find if he began exploring.
Eventually, Id and her servant rozies came for Cortex again. They lifted him up and carried him off into the shifting, surreal half-light of Id’s factory. They passed by the room Id had executed the girl in—Cortex couldn’t bring himself to look at it as they passed, but thought he still heard echoes.
Their destination felt familiar to Cortex, although he couldn’t quite remember why—his memory was fuzzy. The walls of this room were gray, and a single operating table sat in the center of the room. The rozie with long nails placed Cortex on the operating table and stood with her companion against a wall. Cortex looked around and noticed a single computer nearby, facing away from him, and a cord that dangled on a small table. A rozie, a male with a bushy, yellow beard and a balding head, stared blankly forward as it stood beside the computer.
Bind him, then leave us, Id hissed. The rozie hastened to comply, expressionlessly taking cords attached to the side of the table and tying Cortex down. Cortex briefly considered resisting, but why? He wasn’t strong enough to physically resist a rozie, and he was still too mentally exhausted to try commanding it. Instead he pondered, becoming increasingly sure that he had never been in this room before, but also aware that it felt eerily close to a half memory.
Id looked down at Cortex; the tubes sprouting from her head, neck, and back prevented her from moving her head much—mostly her eyes rolled down, the metal eye nearly back into her socket, while Cortex looked up at the bottom of her chin. The Divinity wishes to speak to you.
“Is he here?” Cortex whispered.
No. But he wishes to have your first meeting be as . . . real as possible. Id said the word “real” with some disgust. But you lack a neural jack, so I’m forced to make this work through your finger jack. Are you able to fall asleep of your own volition, or must I induce sleep?
Cortex tried to lean forward, panicked, and strained against the bindings on his arms. “Don’t send me back to that room!” He remembered being half awake after escaping the mind-torture chamber, and briefly seeing two shadowy figures speak to each other. He had been on a similar table, then, though this table had thin, firm pads on it.
Id gave Cortex a glare that could curdle blood. You are to meet with the Divinity, and he will not be meeting you in that room.
Cortex’s fears weren’t put to rest. “I don’t believe you! You killed that girl! I tried to help her, but . . .” He felt a sharp prick in his arm. Cortex looked down and realized that one of the rozies had already stuck a needle in his arm. Normally Cortex would have panicked at the sight of a needle, but he felt too woozy.
Regardless of my actions, you failed to save her, Id whispered, her voice strangely vindictive. She spoke further, but her words were lost to the darkness . . .
When Cortex awoke, he was in a garden. The garden had a large tree in its center with two altars in front of it and was surrounded by several pools of water. Green grass, bushes with soft leaves and tangled limbs, and smaller trees were placed around the ground as far as he could see—which was not very far, as the garden was encased in a large dome. In addition to the profuse amounts of well-tended foliage, several individuals in white robes were standing about, talking in groups of two or meditating on their own. Cortex frowned—he’d spent so much time inside that it was difficult to guess what was wrong with this scene of nature. It didn’t smell earthy, or have the scent of sap; then again, it was an indoor garden. Indoor, and in my head, Cortex thought miserably. Again. He scratched the side of his neck as something tickled it.
A man in a white robe broke off his conversation with another of the garden-dwellers and approached Cortex. Unlike the others that Cortex could see, the man had a glass port in his forehead—a technomancer. He had smile lines on his eyes, his mouth was stretched into a friendly, toothy grin, and his skin was strangely smooth and shiny. His white robes were patterned with a shiny white thread that depicted the Creator forming the world and mankind—his robe was the only patterned one, so far as Cortex could tell, so Cortex assumed that he must be important in some way.
The man neared Cortex, smiling warmly, and embraced the boy. His act surprised Cortex; Cortex remembered being embraced by 64Bit perhaps once, and never by the master. The warmth of body and spirit that Cortex felt in this simple act was too much: fear melted away and Cortex clutched this strange man, greedily sucking in the warmth while shedding tears on the man’s robe. The man felt almost like the operating table that Cortex had been lying on: soft and firm, but with something unyieldingly hard underneath.
The man made a calming shush as he patted Cortex’s back. When he spoke, Cortex felt a smile in the man’s voice. His voice carried a weight of authority that calmed Cortex’s fears. “My, my, your journey has been long, and you have not even arrived yet. Fear not, my child; you are safe here.”
Cortex wanted to believe the man, but one lingering thought prevented him. “But . . . I’m not really here. I’m still with . . . her . . .” Mentioning Id felt vile on Cortex’s tongue.
The man chuckled. “She certainly is a character, isn’t she? I’ve had my hands full managing her and all of my other disciples, but the cause is worthy, and when it is finished, we all will rest.”
Cortex paused for a moment. He knew who I meant so quickly. This is . . . the Divinity? The prophet that Hannah spoke of? He pushed himself out of the man’s arms; the man freely let Cortex go. Cortex looked around the peaceful room, eyes wide, expecting a rozie to appear at any moment and shatter the facade.
“You’re troubled.” The man’s gaze was appraising as it took Cortex in. “Tell me what troubles you.”
“You . . .” The words seemed stuck in Cortex’s throat. The man, this room—despite Cortex’s sense of something being off, everything seemed so peaceful, so positive. Cortex couldn’t reconcile it with his recent experiences. He felt that his heart was expanding and contracting with all the contradictions flowing through him. “You’re . . . You destroyed . . . And you—” He gasped, “Id . . . is yours . . .”
A great weight seemed to settle on the man. He nodded, his eyes pained. He appeared very, very tired. “You’re right, if I understand you correctly. Though I didn’t order her specific methods, I did order Id to harvest Fort. Id is my disciple, and I her teacher. These things must seem terrible to you now, and without context they are very difficult to understand. But I would like to show you the truth and, one day, you will remember these events with the Creator’s peace.”
Cortex’s skin still crawled for a reason he couldn’t explain. He looked around again. The grass, the trees, the quiet conversation was all oppressively pleasant. But, they were in his own head, weren’t they? The man couldn’t hurt Cortex here . . . right?
Cortex remembered the room with the vibrating walls.
The man smiled softly and reached out a hand, gently taking Cortex’s. “We won’t move faster than you are able. Id tells me that you are very talented, very capable. Those aren’t her words, of course—the day something positive dribbles out of her lips is the day I swap this body for one shaped like a frog.” The man laughed, a strong sound that came from his belly. “Come! I want you to meet my friends and students.”
Cortex allowed himself to be led through the Garden. He remembered the first individual he was introduced to, a woman named Jessica who had long, black hair and a firm grip. The next might have been Andrew—Andy? Cortex wasn’t certain. Something about Jessica’s handshake had bothered him, and the feeling only grew as he was introduced to more of the garden-dwellers. Their skin felt wrong and their eyes . . . something wasn’t alight in their eyes.
Finally, Cortex shook the hand of the last garden-dweller. “And this is Dante,” the man said, his eyes twinkling. “I still find his name amusing—we are on the very skirts of heaven, after all.”
Dante nodded, his smile not as wide as the other man’s, but also unnervingly static. “It helps me to remember where I’ve come from—I never want to go back.”
The man nodded solemnly and clapped Dante on the back. “But you have become Enlightened, friend, and no longer have reason to fear. Here, your mind is safe.”
Cortex looked around the room, still suspicious. Everyone remained in roughly the same spot, talking to the same person, very simple and repetitious conversations. Everything about the room seemed staged—even the carefully-cultivated foliage began to take on a sinister feeling. In front of Dante, Cortex turned and confronted the man. “But none of this is real! You’re in my head right now!”
The man smiled and tapped Cortex’s forehead. “Actually, you are in Melissa’s head, one of my disciples, right now. Because I could not come to you, I brought your mind to me, and Melissa volunteered to be your host while you were here. She was fairly close in size to you, so I thought it an excellent solution. Do you wish to see the truth? I programmed Melissa’s perception so that you would see your own body; I thought that would be more comfortable for you. Let’s fix that.” The man snapped his fingers; Cortex felt no different.
“Come to the pool,” a woman offered, standing by one of the pools near the tree central to the garden. Cortex walked over, looked in, and gasped. A girl stared back at him, a girl perhaps thirteen by Cortex’s guess. Her long, blond hair flowed down the side of her neck, brushing him exactly where he had felt the tickle earlier, and her green eyes reflected the light of the room. And yet—they seemed as flat as all the other eyes in this room. They glowed slightly, as rozie eyes did, but there wasn’t a light inside them. Was this the girl he failed to save? Was he living another nightmare?
Cortex sat down, feeling sick. He held his arms to his chest and shivered.
The man sat down next to Cortex. “I apologize; it appears I should have told you earlier, or perhaps not at all, this trip. This appears to be too much.” The man smiled again. “I will give you some time to rest. When next we meet, it will just be you and me. You’ll still borrow Melissa’s body, but I’ll have you see yourself.”
Borrow . . . Melissa’s body. “I’m not in my own body,” Cortex whispered.
“No.” The man spoke like a kindly grandfather explaining something to a slow-witted child—friendly, but also a little condescending. “The easiest way to bring you here was to have you borrow the body of someone already here. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of being Enlightened—you have heard them called by the name rozie, I imagine, but you will learn that they are the next stage of human ascendance. I find the Enlightened to be incredibly pliable.”
What the man was speaking of was too large and alarming for Cortex at the moment, so his mind shifted to the next thought he found. “We’re meeting . . . again?”
“Yes. I would like you to become my apprentice, if you are willing.” The man stood. “But it is time to go now. Feel free to think on it. In time, I will literally bring you to me, but you may need to begin your studies in Id’s factory. I hope our minds will continue to meet in the meantime.”
The world began to swirl around Cortex, turning black as he felt himself grow distant. The eerie, skin-crawling sensation remained, but the last thing Cortex saw was the man’s smiling face—it seemed so sincere.
Cortex felt a strong sense of vertigo as the world seemed to tilt, then his eyes opened. He was on the slanted operating table again, still in Id’s factory. He shivered. The darkness that surrounded him here, always just at a slight distance, seemed more oppressive than before. A finger touched Cortex’s arm and Cortex started; he turned and saw the balding rozie that Id had sent away earlier. The creature grunted when it saw him awake and removed the needle from Cortex’s arm, then bandaged him up. It was the same arm that had been bitten not long ago—perhaps Id had operated on it sometime while Cortex was unconscious. There was hardly a scar.
Cortex’s thoughts turned to the man in the shiny white robes. So that was Prophet, the Divinity that Hannah and Id kept speaking of, Cortex thought, his mind returning to the garden. Despite the surreal, unnatural feeling of that place, something within Cortex yearned to return. What the man—the Divinity—had said made it sound like everyone in there, besides Cortex and the Divinity of course, was a rozie. But how did they speak? Why weren’t they ravening lunatics, destructive and insane?
Hannah came to mind and Cortex found himself questioning his base assumptions. Clearly not all rozies were mad—although Hannah had seemed much more alive than the rozies in the garden had seemed. Why weren’t these rozies insane, trying to eat people?
I would like you to become my apprentice, if you are willing, the man had said. Cortex still felt scared, but that was something to hold on to. And Cortex had felt so warm in the man’s embrace . . .
When Id next arrived to take Cortex away, the boy was still lying on the tilted operation table, despite having been freed from his restraints, brows furrowed in intense thought.
\ END PART 2
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 