Usu (9 page)

Someone is writing weird stuff in you Dee! They write a bit like me, but nuh-uh, I know my Dee back to front! Though, some of them are nice to read. I’d like to pretend me and Snow really did do some of the things written down.

So even if it’s a lie, it’s a nice one.

But you know what’s even nicer?

We totally had a date, like grown-ups! I was all “Rain has present!” He was all glowing red and then he took me out to say thank you! He was a little mad at me for hurting my fingers so much knitting it for him, but that’s just because Snow cares, Dee. Snow even sleeps with it by his pillow now! But he still notices when I try and sneak in, I’ll have to make the next bunny waaay bigger.

If anything ever happened to me, you’d be there for him, right Dee?

Harmony, while a fairly simple concept, exhibits a contrastingly complex execution. There is harmony in death, chaos in life, and in between both there’s a considerable amount of scalp shedding. Still, at its prime, The Hatchery aimed to personify both harmony and creation; concepts that its denizens could not truly fathom at the time. Creation is born from the very dissonance they saw themselves elevated above, yet even so, the hammer of history falls ever hardest on those who dare stand tall and defiant.

There were some, however, who would crawl through the very mud and muck of Genesis itself to see a small dream born. Amidst the drones of flesh and the flicker of liquid crystal, two women had worked tirelessly, very much aware of the doomed world lingering above, but unwavering all the same. They had lost someone even more precious than each other, and they would fight even their own sanity to bring them back.

Pustules of organic matter and yards of fiber optics had littered their lab; screams had become dull to both, a meager side effect when gathering parts. Their laboratory, long cut off by both rumours and steel plating, stood as a rotten core of an even more befouled fruit. Their actions cruel and deviant, but their motivations pure as any life they took. The section they had laboured within was named 'Olive', and it was the very same one Rain and Usu found themselves entering.

Immediately, with little pause for puns, a dank, humid and dreadfully thick excuse for air burst past them. The pressure of the room had presumably not come to terms with the rest of the building, releasing itself as a pungent, sweaty haze that overrode most of their senses. Despite a complete absence of light, they took slow, blind steps inward, making sure to hold hands because it was only touch that they could trust at the moment. Touch did not lie as far as most senses go, but held itself as a rather blunt instrument for delivering the truth, ever more so when undesired. Unfortunately, touch also included a soft squishing from beneath their footfalls. They continued, the squishes grew louder, and each could feel some form of liquid beginning to hit ankle depth.

You, being a seasoned reader, probably suspect that liquid to be blood. You also thought that last piece of cake wasn’t going straight to your hips and we both know who was wrong there. It was oil. Mostly oil. Oil and blood, but we’re really focusing on your failure here so keep your mind on the oil part.

Yet both failure and creepy squishy noises only serve to make some stronger. They continued, slowly encroaching on what must be the center, with Rain hoisting Usu to sit up around her shoulders as the viscous liquid reached bunny-hazardous heights. Then, with a graceful sort of clumsiness, Rain stumbled onto something, falling face-flat onto a cold, hard and somewhat unwelcoming granite slab.

“Booo!” echoed the room as she pulled herself up, Usu trying to help despite basic physics disagreeing with such an idea. Like so much in this building, their actions were not without consequence. Dripping sounds began as Rain managed to sit up, soon turning into a roaring downpour until, less than twenty seconds later, stopping completely. Time seemed to crack around them, and faster than either could comprehend, the room was lit with a dizzying brightness that poured forth from antique lamps in each corner. Below them the river of oil and blood became blatantly visible, only made gentle in comparison to the grafted flesh polyps they had evidently been stepping on. Neither fancied the idea of getting off that slab now, wondering if a few hundred more years might help all that icky nonsense dry up like a right mess should.

But there was little right in this space.

The scent of death had long permeated there, perhaps a small consolation that they didn’t know the smell from any other foul muck, yet it held no saving graces for the victims of the past. Victims who had been torn apart piece by piece, dematerialized and reconstituted without a passing sweat. The room had given birth to many, but torn apart scores more, all to appease the ambitions of the pair who had mastered this butchery. A pair who, through sheer force of digitized will, found themselves appearing before Usu just then.

Wailing, the likes of which a banshee might blush at, made the liquid ripple in response as two wisps of light took form. Each a young woman, one bespectacled while the other had presumably opted for contacts during her breathing years. They stared at each other for a good moment, something warm seemed to pass between them until they set their eyes on Rain. “Oh, dear Catherine, it’s one of the failures again,” said the bespectacled hologram to her partner who was frisking her own digitized hair in discomfort.

“No, no, Catherine darling, we made sure to dispose of all of those, remember? This surely can’t be one of ou―” She leaned in and squinted her eyes before letting out a shrill squeak. “Number Eight! Why it
is
Number Eight! Remember her? Oh, she was a tricky one my love, but a failure nonetheless.”

The two morally impaired and apparently identically named holograms persisted at each other. “I’m sure we put her in the disposal section like the rest, quite a shame, she took
so
many parts, after all. Not sure how she survived, not for much longer though, her switch has been triggered. Hmm, why did we put those in them again?”

Glasses Catherine checked her lab-coat for any digitized faults before bringing her attention back. “Mutiny darling, mutiny! The administrators were all fine and dandy sending us meat to work with, but heaven forbid the children learn how to make each other! Well, a bit late for that I suppose.”

Equally startled by the disturbingly illuminating situation, Usu and Rain peered back ever so quizzically until Rain let slip, “Failure? Number Eight? Pfft, Rain is Rain!” A proud statement made all the more firm by Usu folding his arms and crossing his brow as she said it. It had impact, it had emotion, and it had numerous other things the lab fiends before them had struggled to understand even in life.

Swiftly, an exchange passed between them once more. “She’s been named!” “She thinks she has a name!” “Only dear Olive deserved a name, silly thing.” “She’s certainly no Olive.” “Neither were numbers nine through four hundred though, a shame really.”

Rain, ever more flummoxed by their use of vocabulary and vague story scraps let out her loudest “Booo!” to try and gain attention, turning to Usu and declaring, “Rain doesn’t want help from crazy ladies! Can we go Snow?”

“She’s talking to the doll?” “The doll is moving darling.” “So it is! Hmm, odd that.” “Oh very.” “Do you suppose we should show her how we made her?” “For proof or giggles?” “Both, as always!” A sweet glare shot between each of them, veiling a far more sinister intent. Before Rain or Usu could get off the slab, a screen entered their vision, the display lighting up one liquid crystal at a time until something altogether unimaginable began playing. Granted, their most recent experience with digital displays had been rather nightmarish so they both elicited immediate fear, pursuing the contents with one apprehensive eye each.

Before them, they saw what looked like the room they now occupied with a pristine sheen far removed from its present condition. Tiles of white were baked into every corner, and the slab they now rested on was of similar colour. Yet, as it played, the image skipped, skipping again thrice more until steadying on the same scene but with a middle-aged man strapped to the slab, both Catherines dancing to a distant piano as he screamed in agony. He began frothing at the mouth as his body thrashed against the restraints until Glasses-Catherine simply leant backward in her waltz, effortlessly injecting him in the neck. The piano grew louder, the screen flashed again nearly a dozen times, and in one brief heartbeat Usu was sure he saw what became of that man, pieces of him lined neatly across the slab, every limb scrutinized.

But that was not meant to be seen; instead the scene settled on two young girls squeezed down to fit the same table brace. A cybernetic limb on each, one an arm another a leg, but neither seemed to be conscious as the dance continued around them. The piano did not stop, but their dance did. Seconds later both could be seen lifting up each arm, measuring them, comparing them, counting the parts in their cybernetic attachments. Crows pecking at tied prey, made only truer still when the entire screen was coated in a dark brown colour edging on red. Images quickly flickered forward once again.

Then, as if to show the secret behind a magic trick, there were no more illusions. The image was clear, walls had been speckled, floors coated, and two dancing mistresses of the carrion could be seen spinning, cutting, sawing, gagging those that screamed, and putting to eternal rest those who dared wake. Pieces of people lined each screen, hollowed out skin shells of torsos stuffed with machinery and stitched together. And yet, the more macabre and decrepit the scene, the more at peace they seemed to be. Every cut was a step and every stitch a twirl. They danced with their hands soaked in blood. Time flickered forward still, and soon they were piecing together something; something that could not be human. It begged for death, and so Number One’s short life ended. They sought perfection in their mania. They needed to recreate 'her', their Olive; a daughter born from their own two hands so long ago. They would find the pieces that made her again, they would find a way to bring her back. To bring back the only thing they had loved unconditionally in their twisted lives they were willing to soil a thousand chopping blocks. But they had to be better, Olive had been a mere robot who outgrew her own A.I. and wished for humanity. They intended to give it to her, building a cohesion of man and machine in a continuous stream.

The number eight flashed across the screen, Rain couldn’t look away from the ticker-tape horror. She saw herself, her skin stolen and her organs replaced with mechanisms; it was a sight that would prove sour to any constitution. She saw them hold pictures next to her, trying to talk to her, and with little effort at all issuing a disposal order. Rain’s pupils shrank, for the first time terror took her face as she struggled to turn her head. Her eyes welled up, her lips forced each and every movement before she froze, she could only let one cry loose from her heart.

“I’m sorry Snow.”

Today… Snow didn’t come back.

Rain waited and waited, I’m not sure if it’s tomorrow yet or not, just that Snow isn’t where he’s supposed to be. He isn’t messing up my hair, hauling bags of stuff into the workshop, or even just telling me stories of how things used to be before either of us were born.

All I have is a note, scribbled worse than me with words that feel wrong, Dee. Words… words Snow shouldn’t ever have to say, words that make it seem like… like this isn’t just some nightmare

“I’ll come back for you, I promise.”

Catherine and Catherine had both known a child was impossible, yet each possessed such skill and finesse that they could craft what their bodies denied them. They created Olive from simple parts and a simple frame, yet perhaps most extraordinary was their choice of a blank slate. She was not programmed to love, to care, to speak, or even stand. She would grasp each concept as would a newborn, rapidly growing in knowledge day by day. She proved to be a kind girl, who would wait for both her mothers' return each day, not once leaving the apartment which many in that same colony would have killed to have. If she looked outside? Her only thoughts were with them, she hoped they were enjoying themselves, she hoped they were happy, she hoped they would be back soon. Her affections could not help but be appreciated; they had what they wanted, a daughter of their own, loving them by choice and not code. Stubborn and firm, but caring twice so. In her, they saw the best of humanity, an ironic notion which reality took little time to disprove.

Neither had ever thought much of their own species and their separate journeys into engineering only shadowed that notion even more. One got into more fights as a child than your average tavern drunkard, the other spoke to none but herself and still found a distaste for the concept. They wanted nothing to do with the world, and less with the people in it. That is, of course, until they met. Words were not needed, and a seething hatred was dispelled. Something to live for existed in each other. As one crawled out of her shell, the other lowered her fists and sheathed her fangs. The pendulum clung one last time, never again separating from what it had become. Yet they wanted more, they yearned for the sum of their whole, and Olive had granted it. But she wasn’t supposed to, she was an idea, a brief flurry of emotions made solid. She was supposed to be a simple test of their potential, and she surpassed that by measures they could not define.

However, she was not built to last. And she didn’t.

Rage found each of them anew, and a perverse passion drove them to try to replace her. They would use every piece down to her joints, but never could they capture even a fragment of that fleeting soul.

They broke.

More than ever, they could deal with no other. Only one another existed in the small world they had retreated into, a small lab where they wouldn’t be bound by the morals of others nor the ethics of man. The very same lab where now their bones lay wasting away in a pool of waste as their virtual preservations mocked the lives that stood before them, unaware that they were hurting the closest things to what they had been searching for.