Space Eldritch II: The Haunted Stars, page 7
They can never fill it.
It can only be filled by Me.
I see you for what you are.
You are a riddle to them, Phai.
But I understand you.
Soon, you will understand Me.
***
Phai woke up and, for the first time in weeks, he could see clearly.
The hospital room was clean and spartan, but the bed was nice enough. A doctor stood over him in ward robes, clean and brilliant white smart-fabric. The nurses wore more mundane scrubs, probably a paper fabric, of different pastel colors. There were two of them, one big with a wide, friendly face, the other pretty and severe.
“The surgery went well,” the doctor said. “The brainware had a calibration feature. It should have integrated itself into your nervous system while you slept. How do you feel?”
The friendly nurse reached over and carefully removed his bite guard. Phai coughed a moment then worked his jaw. He felt... normal.
“Good,” he rasped.
The friendly nurse smiled and the severe one just nodded. The doctor winked at him.
“That’s great news, Phai.”
Phai was a bit startled that the doctor didn’t call him “Father,” but then again, he wasn’t a Father anymore, was he? He wasn’t even a full person. And yet he carried in his head irreplaceable tech from before the Collapse.
“Sacred and profane,” he whispered.
“What was that, honey?” the friendly nurse asked.
“Nothing,” Phai said. “Um, what am I now?”
The doctor didn’t give the obvious answer. Everyone in the room would be aware of his new status of less human than human. He looked down at the electronic chart as if he hadn’t been the surgeon who’d overseen the installation.
“You are a human recorder,” the doctor said.
“What do I record?”
“Everything you take in through your senses. Maybe your emotions as well. The brainmod was probably designed to replace cameras, to record sense-sim and the like.”
Sense simulation had been banned since the Collapse, but cyberware like that had just been repurposed. The last several users had probably functioned as aides, lending their masters perfect memory.
“Is there still data in it?”
“No, it was wiped before being turned over.”
“How do I use it?”
“You shouldn’t have to,” the Doctor said. “You’ll just have perfect memory now. It might take a bit of adjustment while it acclimates itself to your biological memories. I’ve heard of people having vivid flashbacks during the breaking-in period.”
Phai reached up to touch his head. The piece had replaced a large wedge of his forehead. It didn’t fit right, having been sized for a centuries-dead owner.
The friendly nurse handed him a mirror. He examined it. They’d shaved his head but when his hair grew in, he would have a very uneven hairline. The hair might mask the bulging mismatch of skull, though. It looked a little like the right side of his forehead had been replaced with a bulbous metal tumor.
He set the mirror down and looked at the nurses.
The friendly one’s face had melted away, leaving bleached bone and bits of desiccated flesh exposed to the air. The pretty one had been burned into a mass of char.
“What’s wrong, honey?” the friendly one asked, her tongue black and bulging with maggots.
Phai screamed.
***
Hushhhhhhh.
***
Phai couldn’t stop screaming until the doctor sedated him again. When he woke in the evening, the friendly nurse was there, the flesh restored to her face. They called the doctor and the man entered with an easy, confident air.
“How are we doing?” the doctor picked up Phai’s chart and scrolled through the data.
“The nurses turned into zombies.” Phai looked at the nurse sideways. It didn’t matter how much his rational mind told him the effect had been in his head.
“I gathered from all the screaming. I warned you that there might be flashbacks.”
“I have never had a corpse speak to me before. How could that be a flashback?”
“‘Flashback’ might be an oversimplification. The mind is a complex thing. You’ve seen dead bodies before?”
“Only in holos.”
“And have you ever seen a zombie in a holo?”
Phai nodded.
The doctor smiled. “It’s hard to predict how your brain will react to the cybernetics. We need to be ready for an adjustment period.”
There was a slight reticence beneath the surface of the doctor’s manner. Phai opened his mouth to call the man on it, and then it hit him. Ah. The doctor didn’t know.
It made perfect sense. They hadn’t been able to make implants like Phai’s for centuries. The doctor dealt with what he had on hand, and they had said this one had been newly salvaged. He probably wasn’t even working off his own knowledge. Instead he’d learned the side effects from a tech serf who carried a cybernetics database. Perhaps the same tech serf was able to interface with the medical equipment used to implant the memory aid. The doctor would be little more than a bystander in his own operating theater.
“How long?”
“It will get worse before it gets better. I’d expect a month or more before things start settling out.”
“When can I go home?” And where was home now? He was sacred and profane. He didn’t know if anything official had been done, but it probably wasn’t necessary. He’d been effectively defrocked the moment they attached the first neuron to the implant.
“You can go home now, Phai. Medically, you’re fit for discharge.”
“And psychologically? Spiritually?”
“Psychologically you are better served by being around others who can relate to your issues.” He meant other tech serfs. “Spiritually, you already have a much more solid support system in place than we could provide here.”
As he said that Aristeides walked into the room. He’d probably been waiting for the line. He’d always been good at recognizing a cue. “I’m here to take you home, Phai.”
“But I’m a tech serf now.”
“I know. The Church will take care of you.”
They gathered Phai’s things and checked him out of the hospital. None of the nurses went through any transformations as they made their way down and into the ground car. Phai settled into the passenger’s seat and closed his eyes. A tech serf. What did that leave him with? He’d dedicated his life to the Church, and now, like that, it was all gone.
Aristeides pulled out into traffic and Phai didn’t look at to the glittering glass buildings and steel girders, all so much lower tech than the little piece of electronics now turning him from holy man to unhallowed saint.
“You were always a brooder, Phai.” A woman’s voice, but there wasn’t a woman in the car.
“Aristeides?”
“Yeah, Phai?”
“It’s starting again.”
“What is?”
“This time I’m hearing voices.”
“I’m sitting in the back seat, Phai,” the woman said.
“The doctor said that this wasn’t anything to worry about,” Aristeides said.
“I know. I just wanted you to be aware in case I did anything funny.”
“I see. Reconcile yourself with the voices in your head, then.”
Phai looked into the back seat. She sat there, dark and lovely, wearing the same clothes she’d worn the last day he’d seen her alive, gray slacks and a simple white top. Her hair was back in a tight ponytail and she stared out the window at the passing cars.
“Frona,” Phai said.
“You left me out there to die, Phai,” she said without looking at him.
“I didn’t leave you anywhere.”
“It’s Frona?” Aristeides asked.
“Yeah.”
She said, “Tell Aristeides he turned out all right, even if you didn’t.”
“She sends her regards,” Phai said.
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” Aristeides said.
“I didn’t leave you anywhere, Frona.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You abandoned me for the seminary.”
“You left me.”
“Because you’d decided that being a priest wasn’t good enough. You decided you wanted to be a bishop as well.”
“I mean physically,” Phai said. “You were the one who left for a border world. We were out of striking distance of the Russians. You were safe where we were.”
“You were supposed to stop me,” she said. “I had it all worked out in my head. You were supposed to realize that you couldn’t live without me. You were supposed to stop me, marry me before becoming ordained. Never be promoted, sure, but happy as a priest with a wife, like most priests.”
Phai turned back and looked at the sleek metal bodies of the oncoming traffic. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t even what Frona would say, if she were a ghost and in the car right now. This is what he thought she’d say. This is what he feared in his own head. It was just the implant.
“You’re in my head.”
“I always got in your head.”
“You’re just the implant, processing data.”
“That’s right, Phai,” Aristeides said. “You tell that damn brain who’s in charge.”
“I can’t believe you just said that, Phai,” a new voice said behind him. “I raised you better than that.” He closed his eyes again. He didn’t need to look to know it was his mother, dead from cancer all these years.
“Mother, you shouldn’t butt in like this.”
“You know,” Aristeides said, “maybe you shouldn’t engage them.”
“I taught you to be good to the women in your life, and look what you did. You leave this girl and force her to go out to some godforsaken colony, and look what happens? The Russians probably took turns raping her before she died.”
“Mother!”
“Don’t worry, Sarra,” Frona said, “I died from a gunshot wound. No rapes.”
“Of course you’d say that,” Sarra said. “You were always trying to spare his feelings.”
Phai squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to hear them back there. He would just let it all settle out. In a month, they’d be gone. He’d be alone with his thoughts.
Alone.
Aristeides pulled into the garage of the Church residence and parked. For a time they sat there, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine. Then Phai sighed. “What am I going to do, Ari?”
“You’re going to play the hand God gave you. It’s what you always do.”
Phai got out of the car. A priest and his wife were walking down the aisle of cars. The priest smiled woodenly, but the wife looked away, uncomfortable in the presence of a tech serf.
Phai straightened and entered the residence, essentially a large apartment building. Aristeides walked him to the elevators, and neither dead mother nor dead girlfriend followed him. He started to press the up button, but stopped himself. He didn’t live up there anymore.
He pressed down.
“I hear you’ll live like a king down there,” Aristeides said.
“I just can’t come in through the public entrance.” Phai’s hand rose to touch the smooth metal of the implant.
“That’s not how it is.”
“That’s exactly how it is.”
The door opened and Phai looked right into the silver visor of a Russian soldier, some six-and-a-half feet tall in full articulated combat armor. He carried a rifle at the ready, and as the doors cleared he raised it to fire.
Phai spun and pushed, missing Aristeides’s chest but knocking him sprawling, clear of the door. He then spun to throw himself the other direction.
But the soldier was gone.
Phai stood there, shaking. Gone. Not real. He’d been thinking of Frona and the Russian had appeared like a boogey monster. He was all right.
Then he heard the choking.
Aristeides had managed to flip onto his knees and one hand, in a crawling posture. He clutched his neck and spit and gasped. Phai had hit him in the throat.
“I’m sorry,” Phai said. He had to get out of there. He threw himself into the elevator and pushed the button for the first subbasement. Aristeides. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears in his eyes as the door closed.
He’d punched his best friend in the throat. He could have killed him. He needed to get a hold of himself. He needed to get lost. He needed to seclude himself until he couldn’t hurt anyone again.
The doors opened and a tech serf stood there, as if waiting for the elevator. He had one mechanical arm and a wheezing mechanical leg, too short for his body. A large portion of his skull had been replaced with a blinking, asymmetrical piece of hardware. All the left side.
“Hephaistos Ganis?” the man asked.
“Yes?” Was he real?
“I am Paulus, and God is dead.” He gestured around himself. “Welcome to Hell.”
Phai stepped tentatively out of the elevator. Real, maybe. That was a little too on-the-nose to be a hallucination. “I don’t think you’re allowed to talk like that in here.”
“Maybe not up there,” Paulus said, gesturing toward the ceiling, “But you aren’t up there anymore, are you?” He turned and limped away with at rolling, painful-looking gait. “Follow me to your room.”
They had lush carpets and indirect lighting. Paulus led him to a door at the end of the hall. “Just call on the intercom if you need me.”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s been my experience that you won’t want to talk to anyone for the first few days.”
“Oh.”
“The apartments are fully stocked,” he said. “If you need to speak to a damned soul, just look around. There’s a communal living area, a sort of rec room, and a communal dining hall. After we get used to our lot in life, many of us like to eat and socialize together.”
Phai nodded dumbly and opened the door. It had already been keyed to his touch.
Inside he found the nicest apartment he’d ever lived in. Only the richest leather chairs and couches graced the place. Fine art hung on the walls. He stepped in slowly, noticing his entertainment unit on one shelf, the pictures of his mother on a mantel over a fireplace. The carpet all but caressed his feet as he walked. He glimpsed his bedroom and didn’t need to go inside to guess that the sheets were the highest thread count and the finest materials.
He turned to the kitchen and found a man standing there in an immaculately tailored silk suit. He was handsome to a fault, with black hair and piercing grey eyes. He nodded in Phai’s direction and gestured in welcome, the movement graceful almost to the point of being effeminate.
“Hello, Phai,” he said. His voice was beautiful beyond imagining, deep and melodious and ringing with the hint of bells.
“Hello. Are you my next hallucination?”
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
“I am the Great Deceiver, Phai,” the man purred. “I am the enemy.”
“Ah. You are my doubt and fears,” Phai said. “I’m starting to process the times I’ve felt myself losing my faith.”
“I wish that were true, Phai,” the Deceiver said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t. I am real. This is all real. You aren’t seeing hallucinations.”
“Then what am I seeing?”
“You are seeing the truth.” The Deceiver smiled sadly. “Of course, you’ll never take my word for it.”
***
Do not listen to them, Phai.
I am here.
They are trying to steer you wrong.
I will not let them if you accept Me.
Open your heart to Me, Phai.
I will bring you home.
Do not deny Me.
Do not lock Me out.
***
The visions continued throughout the day, but the Deceiver was thankfully absent for most of it. Instead Phai saw a series of ghosts from his past, some off-putting, others friendly, most of them nostalgic. He began to believe that the doctor was right after all. He was just integrating memories. As a priest, it wasn’t so much to accept that one of those memories might be his relationship with the Devil, was it?
On the next day, he left his room. The other tech serfs didn’t approach him. They would meet his gaze, smile and nod whenever he looked their way, but they didn’t make the first move. It was as if they knew he wanted to be alone, and they just wanted him to know that he was welcome whenever he was ready to reach out.
He found a dining hall with gourmet foods ready and hot, along with several selections that looked more like industrial paste... probably for the tech serfs whose cyberware gave them more specialized dietary requirements.
How were tech serfs treated by other organizations? Was it just the Church that acknowledged the divine aspects of their being as well as the profane?
“I don’t see why I can’t have some,” Sarra said, popping into existence beside him. Phai didn’t answer, just looked down at the fine white tablecloth and the porcelain china. “Is it because I’m dead? I shouldn’t be denied a proper meal just because I’m dead.”
This was all exactly to be expected. He just had to muscle through it.
“Seriously, what are you going to deny me next?” his mother asked. She appeared as she had been before she got sick, a slightly matronly forty-year-old. He didn’t look at her.
“Are you going to speak to me?”
He needed to occupy his mind. He just needed to get through this. If there were only something to distract him.
He stood. Paulus sat to one side, eating baked capon with Champaign and a side of caviar. Phai walked over to him. “How do we track cyberware?” Phai asked. ”As a people, I mean.”
“There’s a database,” Paulus said.
“Is it in...” he gestured to the people around him.
“No, it’s just a computer. We have access. All of us need to look sooner or later. Most sooner.” He shrugged. “Knowledge is your God now.”
Phai ignored the Blasphemy. “Where is it?”
Paulus shrugged and rose from his meal. He led Phai to a room down the hall from the dining room and to a large desk with a comfortable chair. He called up a query. It appeared he had had it ready before Phai asked, and the wall above the desk vanished into a giant view screen as a record displayed.
