If the customer is happy and the product is good, then there is no need for competition. I see no reason to support the bill expanding access to technological-human-body research. Competition would prevent experts from doing their job anyway.
Arnon D’Bvaym
CORTEX SAT ON the edge of his cot, feeling miserable, head hung low. The shock of being taken to Id’s home had worn off a day or so ago. Even the pain he felt over the murdered girl had faded—but only when the girl wasn’t actively fleeing through his mind. Cortex still felt as if the walls or floor were moving on occasion, but it didn’t usually bother him when he kept his mind occupied. Which, as it turned out, was a surprisingly hard thing to do in here. After Id had taken Cortex to visit Prophet, she’d left him in this room, his only company the occasional rozie that brought food and water or took him to the bathroom.
Footsteps sounded to Cortex’s right. They were more even than usual, but still Cortex didn’t look up. Maybe this rozie functioned a little better than the others. Cortex heard the rozie approach him, then stop. After a few seconds, Cortex asked, “What do you want?” He heard silence in response. His mind began to wander again.
It wasn’t that Cortex hadn’t tried to keep his mind from dwelling on his traumas, but he’d simply run out of new things to occupy himself. For two days, Cortex hadn’t heard a wheeze nor slither from Id; she had seemed preoccupied when she’d sent him away. Mostly he was left alone in the center of a large, dark room. He was surrounded by computers and what appeared to be lab equipment, but none of it responded to him when he touched it. He’d wandered around the room a bit, but never far—some instinct warned him not to get lost. An instinct, and the occasional echoed scream that sounded like it was coming from far, far away.
Even Prophet hadn’t spoken to him again, despite his promise. So, Cortex sat with conflicted feelings warring inside him: rejection, along with being glad to be left alone in the gloom and darkness. He heard the rozie’s feet shuffle and this time looked up. The rozie that he saw didn’t have eyes that mimicked regular human eyes; instead, her eyes were silver spheres with red camera lenses in their centers. Hannah.
A spark flashed to life in Cortex and died just as quickly. He stared at the floor again. “Are you here to feed me and leave, too?”
“When Prophet is ready, you will be taken to the Gates of Heaven.” Hannah knelt and viewed Cortex at eye-level. “It was my original promise to take you there, and this will also return me to my master. I intend to see the job done.”
Cortex felt a flick of annoyance inside him. What was he? A package to be ferried around? Just a job to complete? A convenient servant? The Divinity’s offer for apprenticeship felt too much like life back in Fort. Cortex turned his back on Hannah and sat on the other side of the cot, but instead of feeling miserable like he had for so long, he fumed. When would his life ever belong to him?
He heard Hannah sit down behind him, her weight causing the cot to bow noticeably; Cortex chose to ignore her. He continued to stare forward, feeling anger build inside of him. Her stare—he knew she was staring, for he’d never seen her blink and wasn’t even sure she’d been built with synthetic eyelids— burned into his back.
“What are you doing here? You’ve given me your message. If we’re not leaving now, go away,” Cortex snapped.
“We have at least a day before we must take our leave,” Hannah said, something in her voice distant. “Id forbid us from leaving earlier than that—she is very busy with the harvest. I asked if I could keep you company during that time.”
Cortex already had a sick idea of what the “harvest” entailed. Surely, Id was feeding more people to rozies, making sport of their deaths. She was a monster, inside and out.
Hannah continued. “That harvest is delaying our preparations. Something happened in that city you came from. There was an enormous explosion; the Enlightened that stayed behind were all destroyed. I had advised Id against allowing so many to remain, but she was already exhausted from commanding so many rozies from such a distance. It became necessary to expedite the enlightenment of others.” There was no emotion as Hannah spoke; so far as Cortex could tell, she was just relaying information.
What Hannah implied was even more chilling than what Cortex had imagined. “Does that . . . Are they being turned into rozies?” Cortex asked.
“Yes.”
The fire in Cortex burned out. He felt a drop of rain strike his arm—but he was indoors. That couldn’t be rain. Cortex reached up and touched his cheek; he felt tears flowing freely. He was crying. Mourning for his people and the life he lost. He didn’t like his old life, but—well, at least there was a lot less pain associated with it. Cortex gave himself up to the surge of emotion and wept, holding himself tightly and rocking back and forth as the dams within him burst. He didn’t even fight when Hannah lifted him up and held him close. Her body was stiff and cold, but Cortex didn’t care; he buried his face in her shoulder.
Hannah didn’t whisper encouraging words or stroke his back comfortingly, but she held Cortex close and let him go when he gave his last hiccup and pushed away, rubbing his eyes. He looked around, angry again, and tired. He muttered, “This place is terrible.”
“Yes, I much prefer the Gates of Heaven,” Hannah said.
Cortex ignored Hannah and stood, then wandered around. “I hate this! I don’t . . . I don’t know where I want to go, but I want to leave. I want to see the sun. I want to run away. I don’t want to go to the gate place. I want everyone to go away!” Cortex flopped to the ground and slapped it, face red.
Hannah cocked her head. “I cannot take you outside—Id would know, and she would forbid it. But, come,” Hannah held out her hand. “I can show you this place.”
Cortex sniffed and looked around. Id’s factory faded into darkness a few paces beyond his cot, a gloom that he knew he could only see in when his eyes adjusted, but from the dim light surrounding him, it looked black as pitch. He was tired of stalking the same area and feeling the same mean, painful thoughts rummage through his head. But he also remembered the rozie room, where Id fed people to rozies. Cortex shivered. What other horrors might this factory hold? Scared and intensely lonely, Cortex looked at Hannah and remembered how she took him out of Fort and protected him from the chaos within. He remembered when he had considered running away, but then he got attacked by a rozie and she saved him. But she had also disappeared, for some reason, after bringing him to Id. Perhaps she was just doing her job.
If she was, Cortex would enjoy the attention, while it lasted.
Cortex stood, walked over to Hannah, and took her hand. “Just . . . show me the interesting stuff, but nothing evil, okay?”
Hannah smiled. “Nothing evil.”
#
CORTEX COULD NOT tell where the ethereal light that just barely illuminated the area around them came from, but there was always just enough light where he and Hannah traveled to be able to see. They traveled through hallways and rooms of metal and stone, all with a gloomy color palette, and with ceilings that faded into darkness high above. They encountered very few doors—Hannah informed him that doors and walls could rise and fall from the ceilings and floors in areas Id travelled often, but the factory as a whole wasn’t capable of this. She also pointed out bulges in the wall that looked almost like gray bubbles; she told him that these were cameras, but that Id’s attention was too divided to pay them much attention, particularly now. That was partly why the two of them were free to roam around; it was unlikely that Id would notice and get angry.
“Id told me she wanted you to stay where you are,” Hannah explained. “But she is not my master, and I know my master would see you in better mental health.” If it were possible, Hannah’s voice became even less emotional, more distant. “I wished to do this earlier, but something stopped me. I don’t remember what it was.”
Cortex wondered why a stranger would care about his mental health, but he decided to save the question for later as his eyes absorbed Id’s factory. Each room had new machines, scanners, computers, and lab equipment: an absolute wealth of resources that made the master’s cobbled-together collection in Fort look pitiful. Some rooms were fuller than others, and Cortex could rarely tell just by looking what everything did, but the technomancer part of his heart was stirred at the sight of all the beautiful technology that Id’s labs presented.
Hannah explained as best she could, but her knowledge of what the machines did was very limited. “This . . . Well, I think that’s an organic 3D printer. Hmm? That machine? I do not know. The one next to it . . . I think that one measures radioactivity.” And so forth. There seemed to be no particular organization, or even general theming, to Id’s many labs.
Against all expectations, Cortex managed to enjoy himself just a little bit as the two wandered. There was a simple joy to be found in exploration and discovery, a joy that Cortex could feel emphatically, though the broth of anger simmering in his stomach never entirely cooled down. During long walks down hallways from one room to another, or down stairways from one floor to another, Cortex could not help but remember that he hated Id and he hated her lair.
Hannah and Cortex reached the bottom of the rozie factory after crossing several different floors and going up and down various levels and down different lonely stairways. They were greeted by a low hum that rumbled Cortex’s bones and made him think uncomfortably of the mind-room. Cortex tried to free his head of the thought when suddenly his stomach rumbled loudly; at the same time, he became aware of how dry his throat was, and how tired his legs were. He had no idea how long they had been walking. Cortex rubbed his stomach before sitting down on the hard, uneven floor. Hannah looked down at Cortex, her face expressionless.
“My legs hurt. And my stomach hurts,” Cortex announced, looking around the hallway. Decor was not on Id’s list of skills— everything seemed to be made out of the same matte metal, or else carved directly from stone. But something about this entire floor seemed rougher than the previous levels Hannah had shown him. In fact, as Cortex thought about it, everything about this factory seemed to have been put together with less and less polish as they delved deeper.
“Our final stop is just in the next room,” Hannah said, motioning down the hallway. “I will carry you, if you prefer.”
Cortex’s stomach growled loudly, but Hannah didn’t seem to notice. Cortex felt like nothing in the world was more important than wandering back upstairs and finding some food, but he stood and grumped, “Fine, but you’re carrying me until I get something to eat.”
The hum grew louder as Hannah carried Cortex into the deepest pit of Id’s factory. Cortex looked around, wide-eyed, his hunger temporarily forgotten as he took in the grand site. On the far side of the room, pressed against a stone wall, sat two machines, both boxy in shape and about as tall as Cortex. The machines had conveyor belts extending from them which carried lumps of ore and other materials from each machine to a hole in the far wall, where the ore disappeared into darkness. Several rozies mulled about the room, all of which had enough synthetic skin stripped away to look like silver skeletons with human eyes. One rozie with a bent leg occasionally took material from the conveyor belt and carried it away for reasons that Cortex did not understand. The humming emanated from the two machines, strong enough to make Cortex’s teeth chatter.
“These are—” Hannah began.
“—synthesizers!” Cortex finished. He wiggled out of Hannah’s grasp, his hunger and fatigue forgotten, and ran up to one synthesizer and touched it. “Subatomic reorganization! Feed in one element, out comes another! This is amazing! The master—I bet he would have killed for one of these things.” Cortex frowned. “I had hoped to make one someday. I thought that would make him notice me. How did Id get these? I didn’t know they could be produced by anyone but the Binary anymore.”
“Prophet lent them to her.” Cortex almost sensed a hint of pride in the rozie’s voice.
“So that’s where her material for making more rozies comes from,” Cortex whispered. And then, just as quickly as excitement had lifted him up, a depressing weight threw him back down. Cortex looked at the lumps of ore being funneled out of each machine; even though most were no larger than one of his fists, if these machines produced the material quickly enough there would soon be enough metal in this factory to build an army. And if Id had sophisticated enough 3D printers, or other manufacturing processes, she could build the shells for that army in a week.
“That is where Id has been spending her time.” Hannah said. “Not here, but in the ritual room, preparing new shells and using them to create future Enlightened. It is good, is it not? Enlightened do not live forever, but we are preserved many years beyond what a mortal body will see before crumbling into dust. We are stronger, tougher, and have the potential to be wiser. It is how mankind will be lifted to be like the Creator,” There was some sincerity in her voice, but mostly it sounded rehearsed.
Cortex wasn’t certain how to respond. Too many warring emotions flooded through him, and he was beginning to feel tired again. A strange weight settled on him, deep in his bones. He wondered if this is what it was like to feel old. Cortex looked at Hannah and said, “I’m ready to go back now.” Hannah nodded, lifted Cortex up, and left the room. Cortex looked back as they left, his gaze lingering on the synthesizers until they were out of sight.
Hannah’s words haunted Cortex as she carried him up several flights of stairs. She moved at an easy pace, giving Cortex plenty of time to mull over his thoughts. It sounded like a horrible condemnation, a hell on earth, to spend decades wandering the world in blind madness. How could such a condition ever be referred to as . . . enlightened?
But then again, Hannah wasn’t mad, so far as Cortex could tell. Mostly emotionless, perhaps, but Cortex didn’t see that as a downside. Was every rozie mad?
Was the world’s future to be a technological ascension into near immortality? The thought boggled Cortex’s brain and warred against what the master had taught him about the Creator’s work. Technology existed to bless man and nature, not to replace it. Then again . . .
Cortex sighed. “It’s a future I won’t live to see.”
Hannah seemed to understand what Cortex was referring to. She kept her easy pace as she wandered down hallways and responded to Cortex. “You are yet young. You may experience enlightenment yet.”
The thought made Cortex shiver. “No. Technomancers can’t be turned into rozies. The process always kills us.”
“But Prophet is both Enlightened and technomancer.”
Cortex paused. “That’s not possible. It’s been attempted— mad technomancers have tried as long as they’ve existed. But it’s never worked.” The implications were concerning if Hannah was speaking truthfully. A technomancer as strong, fast, and hard to kill as a rozie, rarely needing rest, far more easily able to augment his body with technological improvements than a normal technomancer. If technomancers were thought of as wizards among men, such a being would be more akin to a demigod.
Hannah smiled. The expression on her face was very mechanical, betraying no true mirth. “Prophet is the first. He is Chosen to lead this world from darkness into light, to save it from its fallen state. The Creator speaks to him.”
Cortex thought of the man he had met in the vision. His face had smile lines and his teeth were large. His robes were large, white, and shiny—they looked very ceremonial. And Cortex had felt warm in his embrace, unlike Hannah’s. But, then again, what Cortex saw had been projected into his brain—supposedly he’d been piloting a rozie’s body. How could he know what had been real? The room with the vibrating walls had felt real.
The man had wanted Cortex to be his apprentice. Why?
“What are you doing?” Hannah asked.
Cortex snapped out of his storm of thought to see a rozie standing before him, the same balding one that had been serving him the last couple of days. The rozie spoke slowly, slurring each word slightly like a drunken man. “Id requests the presence of the boy.”
Something in the rozie’s tone made Cortex’s skin prickle with gooseflesh. “Where?” he asked.
“In the ritual room. She wishes for him to witness an enlightenment.”
Cortex expected to feel dread, but instead he found himself smiling ruefully. He was hungry, he was tired, he was angry—this was just more fuel for the fire, he supposed.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 