The Soul Consortium (31 page)

Administrator Orbane chimes in. “Such as?”

“Such as duality of thought,” I tell him. “You might experience the subject’s own thought processes but also your own in subliminal form. The result will be a kind of inner conflict or a feeling of disappointment that you are unable to meet your own moral standards or expectations.

“It may also manifest in sporadic feelings that you are being watched and you are not alone, especially in situations of isolation. It is a mild psychological rejection of the overlaid subject’s mind pattern. Coincidences, déjà vu, and perceived premonition may occasionally be experienced during buffering of data, but probably the most significant side effect will be the sensation that life has a deeper significance than the one you are living—a sense of egomania in some cases or a feeling that the world revolves around you, then subsequent guilt at experiencing this feeling.

“However, in most cases there will simply be a vague feeling that you are not fulfilling your true purpose or potential in life. Again, this is a mild psychological reaction to the dampening of your real senses.”

The lecture continues for three more hours as further questions draw me into matters of schematics, bulk production, ethics, and accuracy, and at the end, I make the announcement everyone is waiting to hear.

“Qod, prepare the WOOM for the first immersion.”

“Administrator Orbane,” says Qod, “do you sanction the immersion?”

Orbane steps forward, circles the organic shell as the slit widens to invite its first user. Silver fibers quiver outwards in readiness to infiltrate a volunteer, then plunge them into its dark folds. “I do. All-See,” he says, turning to me, “are there any predicted dangers with immersion? How will you select the first volunteer?”

“The procedure should be safe, but I have been certain before, and the failures of my past still haunt me: Kilkaine Nostranum’s mind never recovered from my original experiments. I cannot therefore ask any of you here to volunteer.”

“Then what do you propose?” he asks.

“I would have thought that was obvious. Me.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds as though you have already given this a great deal of thought. Have you also chosen a subject?”

“Oh yes.” I look down, wondering if I still have the courage of my conviction. I could pick a different person, avoid the suffering. But the choice is perfect justice. I have to.

“Whom have you chosen, All-See?”

“Again, this should be obvious. I have chosen Kilkaine Nostranum.”

“What?”

The murmuring of my audience grows louder.

“I created the conditions for his suffering, and it is only right that I should take responsibility. What better way than to know what he experienced? And what better way to test the WOOM for residual side effects? And isn’t it true that history still remembers me as the Butcher of the Terran Galaxy? Nostranum’s suffering should therefore be my suffering, especially considering the ironic nature of his own decision to live out the fictional tortures of Prometheus.”

Orbane stares at me. Qod is silent. The crowd watches.

“How long did Nostranum live?” Orbane asks eventually.

“Nostranum’s body was terminated four hundred and twenty-three years into his life,” says Qod.

“If you truly wish this, Oluvia,” he says gravely, “you may proceed with the immersion, but we do not demand the type of justice you believe you should receive. Qod,” he says, looking up, “can you make sure that Oluvia is only immersed into the final year of Nostranum’s life?”

“I said the immersion has to be for the full—”

“No,” insists Orbane. “A year is enough. The decision is made.”

I fall back in silent acceptance, but in truth, the full term would be a kindness to me. I cannot imagine a greater torture than to live another day here, knowing Salem will live his life without me. “Qod, select subject 1.12137E+9, Kilkaine Nostranum.”

Seconds later the silvery cords snatch me away, and as the people watch, the fibers drag me backward inside the WOOM.

Subject 1.12137E+9: Select.

Subject 1.12137E+9: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

“Farewell, Oluvia. See you in one year.”

D
awn at last. A pause for clarity.

The sun wakes over the snowcapped Caucasus Mountains, bringing with it a soft violet glow and the caress of warm light before it exposes me to its full violence. I weep over my situation as I do every morning, questioning my sanity and my original motives for this self-inflicted experiment in suffering. I cry out to the same empty landscape I cried to yesterday at the same time, mourning the madness and the next dispensation of torture that will soon steal these few minutes of lucidity. The effort of another scream burns hoarse like hot sand tearing my throat, and the relentless ache of muscle and sinew reminds me I cannot escape. I can hardly even move.

I am crucified. I chose the method of torture precisely for its barbaric reputation, wanted to find the most excruciating form of execution on record. And I found this. Crucifixion.

Two hours ago, while the cold night layered frost over my naked body, two savages wearing black robes and joyless expressions came for me. They raped me, ignoring my muted howls of despair through their silencing hands, beat me with rods strapped with shards of glass, then threw me sobbing onto the cold rocky floor where my bleeding back broke against a wooden beam. I made no attempt to escape but pleaded with them to stop.

They used a viselike implement to drive rusty nails as thick as fingers slowly between the tendons in each of my wrists, through to the rough wood of the beam, their foaming mouths with yellow teeth and stinking breath laughing malice into my face all the while. They did the same to my ankles, expertly driving another huge nail between the tendons and vessels to secure my feet to the bottom of the cross. Then they raised the wooden frame in preparation for dawn and worse torture to come.

They left me in the dark of my own personal hell.

And there I wept in agony until the sun came up.

My suffering is just beginning. And never ending.

I meant for these few moments between each episode of torture as a way to reflect on what I have learned from the experience so far, but I am overwhelmed. As a child of the Seventh Golden Reign I had never experienced pain before, had no frame of reference for that kind of tactile sensation. I only knew these things as vague concepts from a forgotten era of mankind’s history. I was content, yet I yearned for the same thing as all the others: a need to know that there is more to life.

Many of my peers believed the next level of experience must exist beyond death, but I thought the key to true enlightenment was through suffering. Real suffering. How could I achieve this enlightenment without knowing what suffering actually was? And so, against all counsel to the contrary, I pored through the existing literary files of the ancient times and found well-respected quotes from various philosophical sources. Almost all of
₃
them promoted not only the necessity of pain and suffering but the benefits too. Fascinated, I sought out a means to discover it for myself and found it in the skills of a young neurologist named Oluvia Wade.

She and her team had been experimenting with artificial memories, and as a willing volunteer, I tasked her with the challenge of reconstructing a combination of ancient fables that centered around human suffering. I was to be immersed for one standard year. But I had no inkling of what it would be like. None at all.

The reconstruction is seriously flawed. Though my bodily sensations are convincing and my mind has tried to compensate, the world is distorted. The sun rises and falls, but time seems stretched into aeons, not days. The mountains, though beautiful, are warped as if painted onto the inside of some vast glass dome. The rivers run viscous; sounds are too close to my ears; the air vibrates in cold and hot torrents. And to seal the insanity, pain is delivered. But what if this pain is as distorted as everything else? Has any of this brought meaning to my life? How can I reflect on such a thing?

But I have no time left to ponder; the next wave of torture is coming. Inky black crows are approaching from above. At first they fly in circles above my head, cawing and screaming in anticipation of their next meal. Then they gather into an arrowhead formation too perfect to be natural—the distance between each bird exactly the same, their wings beating the air in the same fraction of a second.

For the next several hours they are not so precise. In a flurry of chaos, each bird lunges downward to burrow its beak into my flesh. They always start with my side, stabbing beneath the ribs, plucking out scarlet pulp and gulping it down with ravenous zeal. And slowly, piece by piece, morsel by morsel, they consume each organ, and with my clawed hands pinned into the wood of my cruciform, I can do nothing to stop them.

The pain is more than I can take. My shredded nerves are exposed to the elements, and I can feel every movement of the crows’ claws as they gouge and tear for purchase. In a normal life I would die from the anguish, but here in this generated hell I can do nothing but feel it and suffer it until, after hours of agony, the feast is over and the shredded, wraithlike remains of my body fall from the cross as a broken husk, left in the cold of night, slowly healing, slowly regenerating, ready for the return of my gaolers.

How I wish I had never read the tale of Prometheus.

D
awn at last. A pause for clarity.

The sun wakes over the snowcapped Caucasus Mountains, bringing with it a soft violet glow and the caress of warm light before it exposes me to its full violence.

C
erebral rape. That’s what it feels like. And I’m screaming as the system releases each neuron in a searing flash of white energy, dragging me like a newborn babe from the womb of another life into this place of ugly reality.

“Welcome back, Oluvia.”

Administrator Myru Orbane’s gray face peers up at me from a mountain ledge. The rest of his body is obscured, as if seen through warped glass smeared with grease.

I study the distortion, vaguely recognizing its shape but not quite placing it. It’s hard to focus with so much pain coursing through my chest and limbs, but I see it now. It is the ovular opening of the WOOM. But why am I still surrounded by the Caucasus Mountains? Why is the light of the early rising sun blinding me?

I lean forward, sobbing, still feeling the agony of Nostranum’s convulsions, still tasting the acid of vomit in my throat. Pins and needles flood into my arm as I try to swat away the cables piercing my skin, but something stops me. Metal clamps tighten around my wrists and ankles holding me within the WOOM.

“Oluvia? Can you hear me? It’s Administrator Orbane.”

Panicked, I wrench my hands from the machine in a spray of blood, reach for the fine wires piercing my skull; there are so many, like metallic hair flowing from my scalp up and out into the dark folds of the beating mechanism that cradles me. I feel the blood trickle down from the roots as I tug at them, but the safety mechanism is preprogrammed to ensure nothing can interrupt it, and the roots drill deeper. I writhe and kick, trying to free myself even though I know it’s futile.

“Be calm, Oluvia. It’s over,” Orbane says. Then, “Release the clamps quickly!” he shouts to someone else. And I feel the difference in my arms almost instantly.

“Something … is wrong. Very wrong,” I cry through another shock of pain in my wrists as I try to reach forward. My hands, though apparently free, still feel as if they are nailed to a cross. “I can still feel everything. Still see and hear everything.”

“What?” Orbane steps closer, his body out of place with the environment and no sunlight reflecting off his clothes, only a faint aquamarine glow. “The immersion is over. You are no longer attached to the WOOM.”

I try to move my feet, but the enormous nail that the gaolers drove through my ankles still holds me in place, and with a sickening jolt one second later, I feel cool metal strike my cheek. I’m sure I have fallen. Solid ground is against my body, and Orbane’s tall form is standing horizontally in the air above me, yet my eyes deceive me; the mountain range is still in place, and I am upright.

“All-See,” he says suddenly, then looks from side to side. “Help her up.”

Hands grip underneath my armpits, and only then do a man and woman come into view right next to me. My balance shifts as I feel them lifting me, but still my vision lies to me, and without warning my brain rebels, sending vertigo messages to my stomach and then to my throat. I can’t even see the vomit as it leaves my mouth, but I can taste its acidic bite.

“A neural flush,” I choke. “There needs to be a neural flush.”

“Neural … flush?” Orbane repeats, shaking his head.

“Something to purge the subject’s file from the user’s brain while still retaining the memory of the immersion.”

“I see.” Orbane looks confused. “But the immersion worked? You experienced the life of Kilkaine Nostranum?”

I want to reach for him, for anyone, but the nails in my wrists stop me, even though I know they aren’t really there. Pain burns through my blood as I feel tearing flesh. Then Orbane is gone, and in the distance I see the crows.

“No! No! Stop this. Get me out. Get me out!” I scream.

Invisible hands grasp my arms and legs. The gaolers. No!

“But they come at night, don’t they? They come at night. Not like the crows. They are coming now. Coming now. Help me!”

“Restrain her.”

The first crow lands at my feet, cocks its head, and observes me before stretching upwards into a dark, cloaked form. A black-robed figure without a face, only the golden heartless eyes of a bird staring out at me from beneath its hood. It caws, then reaches forward with its taloned hands, flexing.