I down the remainder of my drink and compel the waitress to
me. I do it a bit too roughly so she is confused and off-balance when she
suddenly finds herself smiling nervously down on me.
More whiskey, I say and propel her towards the bar. Her step falters halfway there when she realizes
that I never actually spoke, and she starts to turn around.
Now, I say forcefully, and she runs to
the bar, a trail of broken glasses behind her. I’m being cruel, I know. But the
taint on my soul feels especially strong tonight and I am helpless before it.
The bitterness, the resentment, the outright hatred towards
everyone and everything. I sense that tonight will be special somehow.
The bartender gives my drink to the trembling waitress, and
yells at her for having spilled her tray. He is handsome and athletic and
carries himself with an air of self-importance. I immediately hate him. I tip
one of the liquor bottles off the shelf behind him and it shatters at his feet.
He swears and turns around. I tip another. Then another.
And another. He stares slack-jawed, watching each
bottle systematically fall in sequence. A crowd has gathered to watch the
spectacle. The waitress is watching me instead. The last bottle stops halfway
to the ground and rises again to hang in mid-air. Suddenly it hits the bartender’s
face and he drops to the ground with a howl, shards of glass jutting from his
cheek and forehead.
People are freaked and starting to panic. Two bouncers have
arrived, in identical tight-fitting black T-shirts. The first attends to the
bartender while the second, an enormous man with a shaved head and arms thicker
than my legs, scans the room with a practiced glare, looking for whoever must
have thrown the bottle. The waitress grabs his arm and points at me while
shouting in his ear. The red aura surrounding me is quite discernible now. I
seem to be running a fever.
I look down to find that my neglected joint has burned down
to my fingers. I pull out another and place it to my lips as it ignites. I
inhale deeply and close my eyes to examine my surroundings more closely. They
are like dolls, these people—animated playthings, no more aware of their
vulnerability than an insect the instant before it is crushed. Their fires are
so dim, I could snuff them out with a passing thought.
Am I truly so alone now? Are there no others left?
One of the fires approaches me. The bouncer is leaning on my
table eyeing me nose-to-nose. “You have to leave,” he says in a deep, calm
voice accustomed to inspiring fear. “Now.”
I reluctantly exhale and open my eyes to meet his stare.
“No.”
He moves to grab me and I clutch his heart, producing the
slightest of flutters. His breath catches in his throat and he collapses to his
knees. I stare deep into his eyes as I gently squeeze his heart. It would be
easy. So easy.
Something hits me aside the head and I am suddenly aflame. I
jump to my feet, toppling the table. The waitress is standing with a broken
whiskey bottle in her hand. I hurl her across the room and quickly extinguish
the flames. But the bouncer has leaped to his feet and already has me pinned up
against the wall. I look down, but it is not him that I see.
It is the Vraith’en.
It holds me casually by the throat with one hand, humbling
me with its unnatural strength as it lifts me four feet off the ground. The
battle continues all around me, but Vraith’en
warriors are everywhere. Nine feet tall and in full combat armor, they are
decimating our forces. The Vraith’en’s yellow eyes
burn into mine and its lips curl back in a snarl. A barrage of psychic attacks
hammer away at my mental shields. I cannot break free. It hisses at me in its
alien tongue. Its words are unintelligible but I understand the thoughts being
forced into my mind.
You are an obscenity. An offence to nature and God.
I kick and punch at it. I can’t break its grip.
Not of us. Not of them.
I can’t breathe. Everything is going black.
You are a monster I shall enjoy killing.
I am going to die.
Die monster. Die.
I gather every last bit of strength I have, drawing from
whatever secret reservoir might lay hidden within me. I drop my shields
entirely and focus all my will into one staggering blast of psychic force,
ripping the surprised Vraith’en apart in a hundred different places at once.
The bouncer is everywhere. The walls.
The ceiling. Myself. The patrons are screaming and
trampling each other in their flight to the exit. The waitress is lying in a
crumpled heap against the far wall, her neck at an impossible angle. I fall to
my hands and knees and throw up.
Obscenity. Monster.
Wiping my face with my sleeve, I stand shakily. I stagger to
the door and burst out into the cold night air.
Devon looks up as the three drones
fly by overhead, performing a series of complex and synchronized maneuvers.
The A.I. weapons are essential to this war—the Vraith’en cannot affect the minds of computers.
“A Team, flank left,” says the calm voice of the Coordinator
in his helmet. It’s easy to be calm, safely tucked away in orbit. “B Team,
flank right. C Team, initiate a slow advance.”
Luck, guys, says a familiar voice in Devon’s
mind. He smiles at his counterparts in A and B Teams but does not respond. They
know each other’s minds intimately. There is nothing more to say.
“Move out!” yells Field Officer Briggs beside him.
Devon holds the frog in his little
hands. It’s cold and squishy and makes him laugh. The wires running from its
skin to the machine make it look funny.
“Can you feel its heart beating, Devy”
asks Miss Gillespie sweetly. “Hmm? Can you sense it?” Devon
tenderly probes the frog, examining its tiny mind and moving on to its organs.
“I feel it,” Devon says. “It’s fast.
A lot faster than mine.”
“Very good, Devy.
You’re such a smart boy.” She switches on the ECG. “Frogs’ hearts beat faster
than ours. Now, can you make it beat a little faster? Come on, give it a try.”
Devon concentrates on the heart,
imagining it beating faster and is astonished when it obeys.
“I did it!” he shrieks in excitement. “I made it beat
faster!”
“That’s wonderful, Devy! You’re so
good at this. Now, make it beat faster still. You can do it.” He loves her
praise. He’d do anything for Miss Gillespie. Concentrating, he increases its
heart rate further. The little frog begins to struggle.
“Faster, Devy.
Make it beat faster.” Devon obeys, increasing the
pressure on the frog as it fights to escape his grasp. Devon
can sense that the little heart cannot take much more.
“Make it beat as fast as you can, Devy.
As fast as you possibly can.”
Devon balks. “It will die,” he says.
“It’s just a frog, Devy,” Miss
Gillespie chides. “It’s not alive, like us. It doesn’t feel anything.” Devon
knows she is mistaken, though. He can feel the frog’s panic.
“But it’s afraid.” He begins to cry.
“Stop crying, Devon,” she says, her
voice suddenly very stern. “So what if it’s afraid? Just do it.”
“I don’t want to,” Devon whimpers.
“Devon, I am getting very angry with
you. I told you to do something and I expect you to do it. It’s only a frog,
for Christ’s sake! No better than a filthy Vraith’en.
What if a Vraith’en was killing your best friend
Timmy, hmm Devon? What if a Vraith’en
was cutting him all up with his big, sharp knife? Would you be such a little
baby then? Not wanting to hurt the poor Vraith’en
even while Timmy lies screaming, all cut up? Of course you would kill it. Now
kill the damn frog!”
“Noooo,” he sobs.
“Do it!”
Devon sends a surge of will through
the frog and its heart literally explodes. The ECG blares loudly, showing
flatline. Miss Gillespie is sweet and comforting once
again, hugging him close. “Oh, that was so good, Devy.
So very good. I’m so proud of you,” she says, wiping
away his tears. “You did just great. You’re such a good little boy. Run along
now. Go play with Timmy.”
Briggs turns to Devon and places a
hand on his shoulder. “Watch out for us, kid,” he says. “We’re all counting on
you.” Briggs is a good leader. The men trust and respect him. He always has a
kind word to say to Devon and doesn’t tolerate anyone
else bad-mouthing him. But Devon knows it’s all an act.
Briggs knows how much they all need the Psych Officers. They protect the ground
forces from the mental attacks that decimated them for so long. They need
Psychs, but they also fear them. There is no gratitude
given to freaks. No camaraderie, no belonging. Only scarcely
concealed contempt and disgust, their total dependence fueling their hatred.
Because we are different, not quite human.
Because we have the Vraith’en in our
genes. Briggs doesn’t show it, but he’s no different than the rest.
Devon says nothing and turns away,
walking towards the enemy.
Slowly, insidiously, the spinning world slows around me as I
awaken on the floor of my dingy apartment. The memories of last night come back
to me. I feel sick. And I’m burning up. I wish I was dead. I wish everybody was dead.
It’s a strange feeling, knowing that you are going insane.
Each day losing more of your mind, more of your humanity.
Perhaps it won’t be so bad once I’ve given in and completely made the
transition. Perhaps it will be worse. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton
could not have imagined the extent of his insight all those centuries ago. For
him, absolute power meant the Pope. I have no political power—indeed nobody
knows of my very existence—but I could probably find and kill any political
leader I chose right from this very room. That’s power. Were it not for my
disdain of this world, I might actually take an active role in it. But I can’t
bring myself to care about the comings and goings of these humans. It’s getting
harder and harder for me to see them as actual entities deserving of life. They
are barely conscious of their own existence.
I don’t recall how I got home last night, how I eluded the
authorities. Perhaps I killed them. They could be at my door any second for all
I know. Let them come. Let them come with their entire army. I’ll kill every
last traitorous back-stabbing one of them.
“Retreat! Retreat! Everyone get the
hell out of here!” Briggs is screaming in Devon’s
earpiece. They’ve been overrun. The Vraith’en are upon them and men are exploding. Devin continues
running, maintaining his mental shields while firing his rifle at anything that
moves, most of which are the enemy.
“Field Office Briggs, what is your current situation?” Devon
hears the private channel by eavesdropping on Briggs’ mind.
“We’re being slaughtered! They’re everywhere! Send
reinforcements!”
“All teams,” says the calm voice on the open channel.
“Initiate a strategic withdrawal to Sector 7 to await reinforcements. Repeat.
All teams initiate…”
“We’re cut off! Send the reinforcements to us!” Briggs is
scared. I can feel the edges of his awareness coming to terms with his imminent
death.. “Repeat! Send the—” A dizzying shockwave runs
down my spine and I fall to the ground vomiting. Stupid.
It’s always that way when inside a mind at the moment of its death. Devon
turns to see the headless corpse of Field Officer Briggs at the feet of a
Vraith’en warrior holding a bloodied sword.
Devon! Tim! They’re all
around me! It was Paul from A Team.
I’m coming, Devon says getting
to his feet, only to feel his friend’s life abruptly end. Tim! Paul’s gone!
I know, comes the reply. I’m gone too. Goodbye, Dev. And Devon
is suddenly alone, his rifle energy spent. A dozen Vraith’en
surround him, approaching unhurried as they beat at his weakening shields,
forcing him to his knees. Devon realizes now that he is
worse than dead.
They want him alive.
It’s night again. Raining. The war
is over. Has been for some time, I think. Did we win? Who’s we? I am
both human and Vraith’en. And
neither. An experiment in gene splicing that has outlived its purpose. I
sit up and amble to the window. Looking out, I see tanks rolling down the
streets. Soldiers are getting into position. I can feel my scope-magnified
image in the eyes of snipers in the building across the street. The war isn’t
over after all. Not as long as I live.
Voices in the hall. They’re
evacuating the tenants from my building. I lie back down on my mattress on the
floor. I’m dizzy from this fever. I light a joint to relax my nerves. Maybe
insanity isn’t so bad. I’m coming to realize that insanity is only the confused
state one experiences while going through the painful transition from ignorance
to true awareness. I’m on the threshold of something miraculous. An
understanding flutters around the edges of my consciousness, teasing me with
its promised secrets, playfully dancing away when I reach too close. There is a
power dwarfing anything I have ever imagined, and it is almost mine for the
taking. Just a little longer.
Life is good. The war is over and the good guys won. The
rumor was that even the freaks had been destroyed. “How?” he asks one day,
playing with the tag around his neck. John Marshall, it says. His friend across
the table stuffs more mashed potatoes into his mouth and beckons him closer,
looking left and right to ensure no snooping ears are about.
“See, duh problem, as I see it, was hot to get ridda dem witout
dem knowin dat someone was gonna get ridda dem. Cuz
dey can read minds, right?” He looks about again and
lowers his voice more. “But dey planned dis from the very beginin’. Dos
big wigs back home didn’t tell no one nothing about the plan, so dat no one over here would know anything about it.” He
pauses to shovel more peas into his mouth. “Den dey
sent a message ordering all dem freaks onto the same
ship. The Trailblazer, under the command of General Martin, who dey figured was getting a little bit too big for his
britches anyway, which was why dey put him in the
rundown Trailblazer in the first place. Dose freaks, they might be a little
suspicious, being all round up like dat, but the ship
has the whole crew onboard, and they know they could take ‘em
all out if dey need to, so they go along wit it.” He
washes down the peas with a long swig of ale and wipes his mouth on his shirt.
“But then, dey send another message to the ship right behind dem, under the command of General Sheridan, who hates
General Martin ‘cuz he slept wit his wife years ago,
ordering him to destroy the Trailblazer. Which he
promptly does.” He finishes with a flourish of his hands and a snap of
his fingers. “Slick as snot,” he says sitting back with a smug smile, as if the
entire plan had been his brainchild. “I’m just glad I wasn’t part of dat crew though.”
John resists the urge to hit him. Why is he so angry? He
hated the freaks as much as anyone, knowing that they could burst a man’s heart
just by thinking about it. Why should he feel angry that they’re dead, rather
than feeling sorry for the unwitting sacrifice of Trailblazer’s crew? John sits
pondering the story, and his strange reaction, while stroking his chin. It
feels funny somehow. Like it’s not his.
“So, Johnny. Tell me. What’s it like havin’ amnesia anyway?”
The trip back from the Alpha Centauri system takes over 4
years, Earth-time. My memory returns within months. The remaining time is left
for me to fume and smolder. Having to live with those animals and not kill them
puts me well on the road to madness. It’s all I can do to stop from exploding
the entire ship. Which is in itself rather odd because I know
that I can destroy the ship if I choose to, whereas I never would have
been powerful enough to do so before.
I withdraw from everyone, especially from John Marshall’s
friends, much to the disturbance of the ship psychiatrist. The man badgers me
and badgers me, making me tell him stories of my childhood, which I pull from
his own memories of the files of John Marshall that he has read. When I fail to
provide him with enough new material, he begins to get suspicious and I finally
have to give him a heart attack to get a moment’s peace. They have a funeral
for him. I don’t go.
I still don’t know why the Vraith’en
didn’t kill me. They despised my very existence, treated me like an animal
throughout the entire year of my captivity. Drugged me and tortured me daily
with psychic attacks from five Vraith’en at a time—a
number that steadily increased with time until eventually there were 50 of them
all hammering away at my mind. It was near the end that they overlaid John
Marshall’s identity onto my own and operated on my face. He was just some poor
schmuck with my build who got captured in one of the last battles. I awoke one
morning, to see my “comrades” rescuing me from my cell after having captured
the Vraith’en stronghold.
That they were using me for something is obvious. I suspect
their intention was to send me back as their sleeper agent, whose deep
programming would be triggered by some future stimulus. Whatever their plan
was, it didn’t work. I remembered who I was soon afterwards, and I have no
intention of doing anyone’s bidding ever again.
It doesn’t matter now anyway. I’ve evolved far beyond the Vraith’en’s ability to control me. Barriers that have
always limited my abilities—barriers that I didn’t know existed—are shattering
at an ever increasing rate. A dam has burst in my mind, flooding my
consciousness with knowledge, filling my every cell with terrible power. What
am I becoming? Where will it end?
They’re calling to me on the megaphone now, telling me to
surrender. They want me alive if possible but dead is
also acceptable. It’s time. I leave my apartment and take the elevator down to
street level. I look in the mirror. I’m literally glowing red. My body can
barely contain the energy within it. I reform my face to its original shape.
Better. But it’s still a stranger looking back at me. The doors open. Dozens of
soldiers have their rifles trained on me. Hundreds more wait outside. “Yes?” I
ask, splattering them against the walls. I float through the mess and out onto
the street.
They cannot harm me. Bullets pass through me as I phase my
cells in and out of this plane. Lasers bend around an intense and local warping
of space-time. Missiles curve back to their sources. Tanks melt to slag. Drones
collide. And the soldiers—my fellow soldiers, who showed me and my brethren
such kindness—I do unspeakably bad things to them.
It’s over in minutes. The carnage is all around me. I am not
sated. All the soldiers need to
suffer. And not just them. Everyone.
The whole world has wronged me. They let this happen. They created us, molded
us, used us.
They had an obligation to accept us, and befriend us. Instead they feared us. Destroyed us. And promptly forgot us. How quickly their collective
conscience healed. We were not one of them, after all. Not really human. We
were experiments. Monsters.
My cells cannot contain the energy that fills them. I’m
glowing like the sun. I fly high into the air, above the city, above the
clouds, and finally into the cold vacuum of space. I look down on the species that
infests this planet and shall soon reap my retribution. The barriers in my head
are still falling, like an avalanche gathering more and more momentum. And then
without warning, the last barrier falls.
And all is quiet at last in my mind. Omniscience.
Omnipotence. I have become a god. But a flawed god. I know it as surely as I know what must happen
next. The taint on my soul is still there. My hatred still consumes me. It must
be quenched, and yet it never can be. There is only one resolution, only one
way to satisfy my needs. The universe must be cleansed—of humans, and me.
There are few witnesses to the final moments of the human
race. A group of scientists on the lunar base see the explosion seconds before
it shatters the moon as well. Miners in the asteroid belt see a large flash
that they initially mistake for a distant supernova. When they learn the awful
truth, they travel home to spend their last moments amid the rubble that was once
Earth.
Four years, four months and nine days later, a new star
momentarily shines in the night sky of the second planet of the Alpha Centauri
system, in the exact position of Earth, at the exact moment that transmissions
from Earth abruptly stop. No more transmissions are ever received. No supply
ships ever arrive. The Vraith’en know
why.
The human occupation of their world does not last long.
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