The Erased, page 19
I nod the blonde’s head rapidly.
“Is everything alright?” he asks me.
I look him deep in those beautiful hazel eyes and force my absolute worst American accent. “Yes. I’m fine. Can we move on?” It’s her voice that Ian hears, but if my accent were to slip...
He does a double take and looks at me. Brushes a hair back on the blonde’s forehead. “It’s all going to be fine, Vanessa. We’re going to get out of here.”
Is he?
Are they?
No. Not possible. This is my Ian we’re talking about. Beautiful, disciplined Ian.
But there’s clearly a familiarity that I’m not comfortable with. I nod the blonde’s face at him anyway and take the strange android’s hand. This "Gary" has cold, clammy hands. He eyes me as if he knows something is wrong with me. Can he detect the remote session?
The woman leads the way up the flight of stairs.
"Here," she points to a door.
Ian asks, "What is it?"
She says, "This is where they keep them. Where they stay in the cubes."
A voice rings out from floors above. "Are you sure you want to go in there, Seven Seven?" The tromping of loud footfalls fills the world above us, echoing loudly. "After all, this is the moment that will determine the fate of the entire universe. The decision should not be made lightly."
We all wait beside the door, when I notice another camera is on us.
"And just who might you be, friend?" Stockton shouts up the stairway.
"I'm the one who brought you here, to this place, to this moment. And I can help you move past it."
He finally comes into view. He looks just like any of them -- the gray jumpsuit and boots. Brown hair, shaggy. His eyes dart to me but he doesn't give me away to Ian or the others.
"It's you," the woman holding Block's tête manages to spit out.
"That's right," he faces her. "Puppylove."
Ian erupts with anger; grabs him by the collar and pushes him against the door. The man doesn't struggle, but a smile spreads across his lips. "Ian, this is really unnecessary."
"WHO ARE YOU?" Ian screams in his face.
"Are. Verb. Second present singular of be. Past tense, far more interesting for this conversation. Were. Who were you, Seven Seven?" the smarmy, smiling thing responds.
I can see Ian's eyes darting back and forth at the eyes of the man pressed against the door. He doesn't say anything. Instead, he appears to press the man against the door harder.
"I can tell you who you were. You were Ian Dale Culp. You were born in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Your mother was named Madelyn Grace-Culp. Your father was William Culp. You moved to New Castle, PA, when you were 11 years old. You met your wife, Didiane Day-Culp, on a visit to New Orleans when you were 23. Today, you're accompanied by people who were named Thomas Horatio Stockton, wife Renata, deceased, sons Julio, Terrence, and daughter Corina. Rita Ann McCormick, mother Charlotte, father John. Vanessa..."
"Okay, just stop," Ian interjects. "So you know our names, you know everything about us.”
"You're not listening, Ian. That was who you were. All of you. That's not who you are, or who you're going to be after you open this door."
He releases the man's collar. None of us say or do anything. Hushed breaths in the tense stairway.
"I want you to open this door. I want you to decide for yourselves, then go fix your friend, and then all of us... we're going to leave. That is the way it is going to be," the man says. "Even you," he says directly to me.
"What about you? You're leaving too? You haven't even told us your name."
"Four," he smirks. "I'm architect number four."
"What, you don't even have a real name?" Rita asks.
"Puppylove," he responds with a smug grin. “A wise French philosopher once said, ‘It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.’ Isn’t that right, Vanessa?”
He’s quoting Descartes to me. The others all look at me, but return their attention to the more important person in the equation. The smirking monster…I fight the intense urge to use the blonde’s extraordinary strength to punch a hole in his estomac.
Rita is the one who steps up to him, in front of Ian. “And what’s to stop us from killing you right now?”
“What makes you think you could kill me?” he snaps back.
Stockton chimes in, “What is it you people are doing here?”
“They imprisoned you. Experimented on you, without your knowledge. I’m here to set you free. That’s been my goal all along. I was simply looking for the right confluence of events. The right group of people. And I knew that providence would bring you to me, because that is the way moments are structured,” he responds.
“What did you say,” a sneer of anger in Stockton’s voice, “about the ‘way moments are structured?’”
“Go through the door and find out, Thomas.”
Quatre stepped out of the way and opened the door himself. I could see through and the first thing I hear is a “Huh!” in the distance. Light talking. There’s no movement, there’s just what appears to be partitions – cubicles – where we the destitute shadows dance along the walls.
It’s Quatre who walks through. From the other side of the doorway, he asks, “Who would you like to meet first?”
The android, Gary, is squeezing the blonde’s hand tightly. Instinctively, I squeeze back. “I’d like to meet Erik,” he speaks. He releases my hand and moves through the doorway. The rest of us, slightly frightened, follow.
The modulated voice of Anthony Block speaks from the head that Rita cradles, “What is this place?”
Rita looks down at his face and puts her hand on his cheek – caressing, as you would a pet. “I don’t know, Anthony.”
I vaguely think that I hear deeply modulated singing from Anthony. Even androids can get nervous, apparently. We turn a corner into a hall of cubicles and come to one labeled Vingt-quatre. Whispering from inside: “Kapla…k-k-kapla…kuh…kah…kap…” The whispering comes from a man who shares the face of the android, Gary. This man looks up at Gary and the rest of us, but continues his fevered whispers. Gary doesn’t respond at first, his face doesn’t reveal any bit of emotion. After a minute, he says, “Hello, Erik.”
“Who’s Erik?” the man responds.
Empathy spreads across Gary’s face. His eyes soften and his head tilts – his hand outstretches to the man, staring up at him. Gary responds, “You are.”
“Huh,” is heard from over the partition.
It’s my Ian who speaks now, “Wait.” His hands press on his temples. “Is this place what I think it is?”
Quatre is behind all of us. His voice is surprisingly soft. “What do you think it is?”
“Are they… us?”
Quatre looks down and turns away. “Come with me, Ian.”
“Non,” I say. “Ian, mon amour. Non.”
All eyes come to me now.
“Vanessa?” Rita asks.
I shake my head. Block, in her hands, his deep voice echoes lightly in the silence. “I know that voice,” he says.
“Didi?” Ian finally reacts.
I can’t help myself – I walk to Ian and cup his face in her hands, then bring the blonde’s lips to his. “I’ve missed you so much, mon amour. Sabrina misses you, too.” Tears come to his eyes.
“Dee… the nurse…” the heavily modulated voice echoes again. “Perdix.”
Ian turns to face Quatre, to see if this new guide has the answers he’s looking for. “It wasn’t you,” Ian says to him. “And I wasn’t crazy.” His face returns to mine – or rather, to the blonde’s. “You were remoting into Vanessa. She really is a gynoid… an artificial woman.” I keep his face in the blonde’s hands.
Quatre responds, “Don’t you get it, Ian? You’re all artificial. You’re all androids. The numbers… they’re serial numbers. The last digits of a serial number. Thirty-four, Forty-two, Seventy-seven. The Orderlies and Nurses are your caretakers. You haven’t been able to grasp the severity of your situation due to cognitive dampener implants.”
I see Ian’s face twitch in pain. His face shakes back and forth in my hands. “No,” he responds. “No no no no. This can’t be right. I’m not…” He lifts his hand before his eyes and stares, as if in a trance. “So we’re… programmed? We’re not human?”
Quatre puts his hand on Ian’s shoulder. “No. You’re very human. Home is a very special place, where we’ve been able to successfully implant the human consciousness into the body of an android.”
His gaze remains on his hand. Stockton shouts, “I don’t believe any of this garbage.” On the other side of the partition, a voice repeats, “Huh!”
Quatre walks away from us for a moment. When he returns, he’s leading the hand of the man I’ve known and loved for years upon years. “Ian, I’d like you to meet yourself,” Quatre says. Here he is, the all-too-human man who occupied cubicle number 77. A folie à deux. Just like Ian himself had said. But he doesn’t respond. He appears like a statue - a golem returned to lifelessness. Flickering behind his eyes, the miracle is taking place.
“Ian?” I speak from the blonde’s lips.
Block’s modulated voice speaks, “Four. Four… I… want to see myself. Take me there…” He looks up at Rita, his eyes begging. Rita also appears deeply shocked… entranced. She stares down at Block’s head, no words escaping her lips. Stockton is looking at the back of his hand, but his movements appear manic. Quatre concedes to Anthony, taking the android tête from Rita’s hands. She stares at the space between her hands that once held the tête.
Stockton and I follow Quatre. He takes what’s left of Anthony to view what’s left of himself. There’s another all-too-human waiting in cubicle trente-quatre, and he appears to be lightly seizing on a small mattress… not a grand mal. Quatre lifts Anthony’s tête to see the man on the mattress. Milky tears run down his cheek as he watches.
“Thomas…?” the modulated voice asks.
“Yes, Anthony?” Stockton says.
“Kill it…”
“What?”
“Please… kill it. The thing… on the mattress… I can’t…”
Stockton whispers quietly. “I’m not going to do that for you, Anthony.”
“Huh!” I hear again, nearer to us now.
“Thomas… please… Kill him. He doesn’t want to live… he never has…”
Stockton stammers, hands at hips. “I’m not killing anything. This is all ridiculous.”
“Huh!”
Stockton turns to Quatre, who still holds Block’s tête. “What exactly is going on here? Why are they standing back there like statues? And if it’s true that all of us are androids, then whatever it is they’re reacting to should also be affecting me, isn’t that right?”
He looks down at Block, and although he knows all the answers, he’s hesitant to share them. Or maybe it’s all just occurring to him so quickly that he has a hard time articulating exactly what it is he’s supposed to say. Finally, Quatre peeks up at the journalist and sighs. “You don’t believe it. You haven’t had the headaches. Your dampeners haven’t been overtaxed, the way they had for Block or Ian. Right now he and Rita are standing back there experiencing something extraordinary. Their consciousness is expanding beyond the limits their minds were used to. If their consciousness is amplified by a machine and no longer affected by the constraints of their fragile flesh…”
“Huh!”
The interruption by the voice on the other side of the partition distracts Stockton. The seizing man on the mattress has stopped and appears to be regaining consciousness. “Who’re you people?” he asks. Quatre offers the tête to the man, who shies away from the grotesquery.
“Anthony,” the deeply modulated voice says.
“You… you look like me. What is this?” he asks, staring up at Quatre, whom it appears he already knows.
“Kill…yourself…Anthony…”
Quatre responds, “It is possible we could put you back, Block.”
“No…” the modulated voice echoes again. “I’m not going back.”
Stockton asks, “What’s happened to these people?”
“They’ve been truncated. Erased, as it were. Their brains still contain the framework for a mind, but the actual consciousness has been removed. What’s operating their human system now is something new,” Quatre says.
“You must be…” Block’s tête speaks, “my shadow…”
“Huh,” the voice rattles from the partition.
Stockton: “What the fuck is that?” He marches away from the trente-quatre cube and moves toward the sound of the voice, which seems to be echoing off a window. I chase after…curious as to what will happen when he sees. Ian still stares at his arm in the hallway, next to Rita, frozen like a statue missing some important book that’s supposed to be locked in her hands. The all-too-human sits on the floor beside them, waiting obediently.
When Stockton sees cubicle quarante deux, you can see the panic spread across his face. It’s like the exact opposite of what Ian is experiencing. There’s a feeble man with Stockton’s face staring out the window. “Huh,” is the only thing that exits his lips. “You fucking people,” Stockton exclaims. Something obviously snaps inside him… it’s like watching a malfunctioning doll. Twitching cheeks… a small electronic discharge… milky fluid leaks from his ears.
“Quatre! Something is wrong!”
“Huh,” the feeble man repeats, trapped in his broken algorithm.
Stockton’s arm swings out of nowhere. The man’s head flies completely off – blood sprays the blonde’s face. Sounds of rage locked deeply away howl from the malfunctioning android. They’ve switched his body, killed his wife. There’s a sick thud against the far wall, near where the two Ians and Rita stand, where what had once contained the consciousness of author T.H. Stockton lands. He swings at me, but I’m able to parry. Unfortunately, the sad deflection is no match for him; Stockton grabs the arm and pushes me into the wall with brute force. As he’s got me pinned, he rips the blonde’s mechanized left arm completely off.
Now it is I that howls in pain from the cognitive feedback. The opposite of phantom limb syndrome. I collapse to the floor as Stockton continues thrashing. Despite the chaos and feedback, I’m able to scurry away, back to the Ians. Quatre rounds the corner, just far enough to see the malfunctioning android. He’s smacked in the face by a flying bloody limb as the outraged Stockton dismembers his former body.
When the Transhumans took T.H. Stockton and battered his body the first time, they didn’t know they’d created this monster. He’d outed their pathetic little pastime, which somehow evolved into this terrible project, and now this monster was ready to dismantle it. The lightning. The madness!
Quatre reaches out for me, scurrying across the floor on the blonde’s one arm. As I clutch the shoulder – the oddest feeling of feedback, considering my arm is still attached, but the blonde’s is not – he helps me back toward the Ians and Rita, entranced. Stockton is tearing through the cubicles in his way, the sound of angry howls spit through his artificial teeth. “We’ve got to move them… they’re like statues… sitting ducks!” Quatre shouts over the chaos. The other shadowpeople begin to scatter out of their cubes and Stockton swings bloody fists through human flesh.
“You didn’t see this coming?” I ask the man with all the answers.
“There was a statistical probability yes. Factors including William Dunn, the Transhumans’ brutality, the death of his wife. But it wasn’t just him, this could have happened to any of them. Instead of experiencing the singularity as they are, he regressed. I was hoping it wouldn’t, but things had to happen this way.”
“You saw this probability and you didn’t prepare for it?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
Quatre convinces the all-too-human to help him move the android Ian, who doesn’t appear to want to snap out of his technological trance. He himself picks up Rita and carries her – she goes limp in his arms but that same stare of shock remains on her face. I shout at all of them, “What about Block! You left the tête behind!”
“Let it go!” Quatre shouts. People are scurrying all around us now.
“Go! Get them out of here!” I yell angrily.
On wobbly legs, wrought with feedback, I attempt to run the blonde back to cubicle trente-quatre.
Stockton’s yet to reach the cube. The all-too-human appears to be seizing again…the tête has rolled to the floor, where those now inhuman eyes regard me. The deep, heavily modulated voice tears through the madness, “Dee… Dee help me…”
I grab the tête by the hair and run, directly into the mad, malfunctioning, howling thing’s chest. His eyes lightning and fire, his face covered in milky conductive lubricant and blood. He lifts me by the gray jumpsuit and the next thing I know the blonde flies through the ceiling.
Cognitive feedback. Disconnected.
Feverishly, I work to reconnect. I can only imagine the blonde in that mess without me… she probably disjointedly regains her consciousness. I need to hurry before the singularity can take her, which will most likely occur if she discovers the sparking arm socket leaking lubricant.
Luckily, I’m able to get back into the poor gynoid. Still prone on the floor, somehow still clutching Block’s tête by the artificial hair. Stockton stands with his back to us, facing the window, which appears to be broken open. There’s shattered glass everywhere. He’s looking down, outside, when they come out of nowhere.
Ian. Rita. Quatre.
He’s dismantled before he even knows what’s happened. His arms, legs, ripped off – his artificial eyes crushed. They’re faster than sound, working quickly. At first, I could see Ian, lifting him by the shoulders, but they shred him so fast that it’s the last vision of Stockton imprinted on the blonde’s artificial eye. Quatre extracts Stockton’s head, and all that’s left is his furious howling. They look down, out the window, and my curiosity drags me across the floor to see what they…and Stockton, before his dismantling… were staring at.
