Men change to match their environment, not the other way around. Create a perfect world and men will become perfect.
Arnon D’Bvaym
THRUM, THRUM, THRUM. The waves of agony that lapped against the abyss within Hannah matched the rhythm of her anger as she tried, and failed, to move even a single appendage. She stood in darkness—perhaps Id had turned off her eye cameras, for Hannah wasn’t aware of anywhere in Id’s factory that was entirely lightless—and silently hated Id. The thought crossed her mind that, had she the opportunity, she would enjoy popping Id’s head from her scrawny neck. It might be one of the few things left that could give her pleasure.
She hated Id, the darkness, the lack of control, but worst of all was the sense that Hannah had been like this before but couldn’t remember when.
Id wheezed in and out in a pained mockery of laughing. I know your desires, foolish vessel—the mere thought of you trying to kill me is amusing. Don’t act as if this situation is unusual. I know Prophet has done the same to you before.
Hannah refused to entertain the thoughts that attempted to creep into her mind following Id’s goading. Id was not wrong— Prophet had done terrible, and wonderful, things to his servants. He had killed her, and he had freed her; she had been taken from death into a new life. How could he not be what he claimed? But Id didn’t understand. She’d been changed since her body had broken. Her fervor and faith . . . had become inverted. Hannah mentally gasped, her thought process broken as Id’s mental talons raked her brain once again, making Hannah feel as though her shell would be locked in place forever, a motionless hell from which she could not even scream. Hannah was accustomed to feeling hopeless, yet this still scared her.
The glass port in Id’s forehead flashed ever so slightly and Hannah felt control return to her. She slumped slightly and felt a flash of relief before straightening again, standing even more rigidly as if to prove that she were the one in control, no one else. She knew that was a lie—her mind was only her own because Prophet had given it to her. But sometimes lies were all she had. She could see, now, and remember where she was: Id’s personal room, the control center for the entire factory.
I have rats in the walls of my home, Hannah, Id whispered. They are crawling through the lower levels, most recently near one of my testing labs. I can’t let you leave until this is dealt with. Kill them for me, and I will let you leave with my blessing.
Hannah frowned, somehow angrier. “The security of your factory is not my charge. I was commanded specifically to bring Cortex—”
Id twitched a hand, locking Hannah’s mouth in place, and turned back to the control station behind her. Id could no longer use the many buttons and dials on the control panel and instead managed her factory wirelessly, but she liked the image the control station presented, so it stayed. On the screen set in the wall behind the control station, camera feeds to four different rooms showed four different individuals undergoing enlightenment at various stages. Id projected into Hannah’s mind, It is asleep, and the Divinity commanded you to let it rest. You have spare time on your hands, and Gabriel is preoccupied— you wouldn’t dare let one of Prophet’s precious disciples be killed by some filthy interlopers, would you?
“Precious” was a strong way to put it. Hannah knew that Id was drifting out of Prophet’s focus, if not his favor as well, and her concern was clearly as manufactured as the rozies themselves. Hannah knew that Id had modified much of her factory so that she could control it directly with her mind—all of the most important doors she could lock with a thought, and there were countless hidden walls she could draw out of the ground with a mental twitch. This wasn’t even counting the rozies that she allowed to wander. True, much of her current batch of Enlightened were new and difficult to control, but that would make those rozies all the more eager to tear some interloper into tiny, fleshy bits.
More important, Hannah had a higher calling—to protect and care for the boy, Cortex, and to bring him to a higher and holier place. To be, in essence, a mother—
I protect him, Hannah cut herself off. I am like a bodyguard.
I predict our rats will soon be at the lowest level of enlightenment chambers shortly, Id said. Don’t waste any more of my time. I will be very displeased if my project down there is disrupted.
Hannah nodded and left the room, only allowing herself to have conscious dissenting thought once she believed she was outside of Id’s range of attention. Id was too distracted by enlightening humans and then breaking the minds of newly formed rozies to properly manage the minutia of her factory. If she actually believed that Hannah was obeying her, then Hannah could collect Cortex and be halfway to the Gates of Heaven before Id had an inkling that she was missing. Let her take care of her own rat problem. The likelihood of the rats being any real danger to Id were infinitely low anyway.
Hannah paused for a moment as she remembered how close she had come to losing herself under Id’s control. The fear that Id could lock her in a dark corner and forget about her, tell the Divinity that some terrible accident had happened to her, was almost enough to make Hannah descend to the lowest levels of the factory to hunt as directed. Instead, Hannah broke into a jog. If she was going to smuggle out Prophet’s acolyte, she would need to move quickly.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 