The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller

by Boyd Brent

  David squinted up at him. “I'm not the Son of God. I'm not Christ.”

  Sirius smiled. “Has he lost his mind? Or should that be His mind?” The four laughed. Sirius held out a hand and one of them handed him a wooden sword. He cast his gaze over it and said, “Mad or not, tomorrow is your big day. So we'd best return your senses.” He drew back the sword, stepped forwards and smashed it into David's face. David dropped to his knees and blinked at stars. Another blow landed on his swollen shoulder and snapped him from his malaise. “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Sirius rested the tip of the sword in the ground and leaned his weight on it. “Is he possessed?”

  “Sir?”

  “Possessed. By one of those demons his people are forever bleating on about. You've not heard of them? They blame them for any questionable behaviour.” None of the four looked any the wiser. Sirius shook his head and motioned them forwards. They crowded about David and spun him on his back, then tied a wide leather belt about his waist. The belt had four separate rings and each man attached a chain to one. They stepped away to create a square and hoisted David into the air. David was bent backwards with his toes skirting the ground. He tried to raise his head, but it felt like a cannonball with other ideas.

  Sirius observed David, suspended, mid-backwards topple, and said, “Our rehearsals have not been in vain. Your people have chosen to free a common thief, which means all eyes will be on your journey to the cross tomorrow. Scholars are to record it, and that's why we're going to put on a fine performance.” The sun seemed to pass over David's head, and his eyes rolled as he passed out.

  Water was hurled from a bucket into David's face. He came round, looked up into that doughy face with its big leering eyes and murmured, “Son of a bitch … I’ll kill you.”

  “He is besieged by demons today.”

  One of the four joked, “Maybe you should listen. They say he is to return from the dead like a phantom.”

  “Is that what they say? About a man who can't even raise himself onto his knees? Get him up and lead him around the ring. That's it. Keep the chains taut. Support him.” In the centre of the four, David stumbled forwards. As they made their way around the outside of the arena, another prisoner was led out from the dungeon. Sirius swiped his wooden sword left and right, limbering up his arm.

  As David walked he watched Sirius walloping the prisoner as though trying to launch him into the stands. When he was unable to get up, Sirius called out to David, “I've been instructed to go easy on you today. Such an important man will need his strength for tomorrow. I'm going to take much pleasure in supervising your death. I intend to drive the nails through your hands personally.” He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. “Then Sol will do His job … and roast you alive.”

  ***

  David was woken by the sound of a cock crowing … or maybe he'd dreamt it. Hours before, he'd been brought a roast chicken. The guard had stood over him, arms folded, while he consumed every last mouthful. Halfway through this heavenly feast, David had looked up at the man and asked if someone had a guilty conscience. The guard replied, “Once you reach the city outskirts you must carry your cross to your place of execution. You'll need strength for that.” David had paused mid-chew, his fists stuffed with meat, and thought about throwing it all up. All things considered, he stuffed another fistful of meat into his mouth.

  Now, hours later, his guts ached as much as the rest of him. David stood carefully and limped back and forth between the beds. He impersonated Gull's relaxed voice. “David?”

  “Yes, Gull?”

  “The best thing you can hope for now is that a vessel has made it here intact.”

  “And why is that?”

  “It might burst from the crowd and terminate you quickly.”

  “Is that the spirit, Gull?”

  “The spirit?”

  “Of opportunity. I'm told it is often found in the jaws of defeat.”

  “It appears the jaws of defeat are wide open and poised to swallow us whole.”

  “Have I lost my mind?”

  “Yes, David.”

  Twenty four

  David was taken upstairs to a room across from the supervisor's office. Inside, the four sat at a table. They stood as David was brought in, and approached a wall of hanging chains. Above the chains a window rattled in the resonance of the outside din. Chants of “BRING OUT THE BLASPHEMER! BRING OUT THE BLASPHEMER! BRING OUT THE BLASPHEMER!” rose above the wails and shrieks of the grief-stricken. The world has become an asylum. A portent of what's to come? thought David.

  The four remained silent as they attached David's chains. “Am I the only one to be murdered today?” One of the four, a man with a mole on his upper lip, tugged on a chain and David stumbled forwards. A steadying palm was slapped against David's shoulder. “Of course not. Many more are to receive their punishments today – men who don't claim to be Messiahs. Men who can be kept in the regular jail. You'll be hearing their death cries soon enough.”

  “You think there'll be enough security along the route?” another of the four asked.

  “Relax. This rabble is all bark and no bite.”

  Heavy footfalls could be heard in the passage. The four paused and glanced at one another, then redoubled their efforts. Sirius entered the room. “You hear that, gentlemen? That is the sound of pantomime. The Judeans like nothing better. Boo, hiss! Boo, hiss! So that is what we shall give them.” He went to a wall rack where a selection of whips hung like circular rats' tails. He reached for one. “Nothing but the best for the son of God.” He turned, crossed his arms and tapped the curve of the whip against his lower lip.

  David met his gaze. “What?” he asked.

  “Your back. I left it unscathed for a reason. It is to become my canvas today – a place to depict the suffering of Judeans with delusions of grandeur.”

  David glanced down. Thick chains criss-crossed his chest and ran down his legs into ankle bracelets. Absently, he said, “Sounds like you have delusions of your own.”

  Sirius rolled his head on his shoulders. “I have risen up through the ranks quickly. Why do you imagine that is?”

  David looked up from the chains. “You're a sadistic bastard.”

  Sirius smiled. “I can't argue with that. Can I, men?” The four shook their heads.

  A path had been cleared outside the guard house, lined on both sides by Roman soldiers. When David emerged from the building the crowd found another level of hysteria. David felt his shoulders stoop as though under the weight of it. He scanned the crowd, a disorientating blend of hateful and sympathetic faces, for the white eyes of an assassin from the future – a man who would breach those soldiers' ranks and put an end to this pantomime. Surely any sane man would welcome this. Proof of his own insanity, perhaps? He cast his gaze over this division of humanity: those who possessed empathy and those who fed off the suffering of a helpless man.

  The four created a square with David at its centre. The man front left nodded to the other three, and they began to walk. David took a step and was caught unawares by the shortness of the chain connecting his ankles. He stumbled and took a number of quick steps to stay on his feet. Laughs and cheers erupted from the crowd. David bowed his head and raised his chained hands in fear of a missile striking his face, but he could raise them no higher than his collar bone. Then came a reminder that the threat lay behind him, as Sirius's whip tore into his back. It stole his breath and he collapsed to his knees. The four hoisted him back onto his feet, the chains gnawing at his armpits and thighs. A second crack of the whip struck David's neck. His head flew back, and the rest of him followed only to be yanked forwards by those chains. Chants of “Kill the blasphemer! Kill the blasphemer! Kill the blasphemer!” rose from the crowd. David blinked the sweat from his eyes and spotted a giant amongst them – a man so preposterously tall that he stooped to conceal his size. A red hood covered his head, but the face that watched him from within it was unmistakable … Goliath. David shook his head a
nd looked again … Goliath was gone, and in his stead a child with a red hood stood on her father's shoulders, clutching his raised hands. It wasn't real. You're seeing ghosts. The whip struck again, and David tripped over his own feet and plunged to the ground. The chains were yanked and David sprang to his feet like a marionette.

  Crosses lay on the ground by the side of the road and snaked around a rock face. They lay on David's right-hand side, their 'arms' reaching to touch the next. On David's left, soldiers lined the route every thirty paces, and behind them, as though held back by an invisible fence, a mass of mourners and gloaters trudged up the hill.

  David's cross lay flat upon the ground. He stood over it with the sun behind him, his shadow falling to half its length. Once raised, it would be three times his height. As the four removed his chains, David looked to his right and saw the other condemned for the first time. The sad troupe were shackled together by their ankles. David's abundance of chains came off quicker than they'd gone on, or so it seemed. David felt suddenly weightless. He closed his eyes and willed his feet to float from the ground, but they remained in the scorching dirt. He felt something being lowered onto his head, and it brought with it a pain that forced him to his knees. Sirius was standing over him, pressing a crown of thorns upon his head. The thorns bit into his skull and blood ran into his eyes. The pain was maddening. He sprang up and rammed his head into Sirius's chin. Teeth clopped together and Sirius stumbled back, landing on his backside. David ripped the crown of thorns from his head and managed half a step towards Sirius before the four bundled him to the ground. Sirius gazed at him with the eyes of a madman. “This is your god of love? Behold the barbarian!” Scuffles broke out amongst the crowd, and the soldiers closed ranks. Sirius got up and cracked his whip over their heads. David was revealed as though by a conjurer. As he sat up, lashes rained down but he would be damned before he cowered. Flesh was torn from his shoulders, neck, abdomen and scalp. One of the four began to plead with Sirius. “Enough! Enough! How can a lame man carry his cross! Commander! Enough!” Sirius halted his attack and wiped the blood from his mouth. A semblance of sanity returned to his face. And vanished when his gaze fell upon the crown of thorns upturned upon the ground.

  Twenty five

  David stooped under the weight of the cross that bore down on his back. A plague of flies had descended and were hell-bent on devouring the mucus about his nose, eyes and mouth. David had shrugged off the cross twice, but Sirius had whipped the prisoner behind – a frail boy in his teens. So David struggled on, the burden on his back increasing with every step.

  A woman broke from the crowd and bellowed “Blasphemer!” into his face. She hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat into his partially open eye. Momentarily blinded, David lost his footing and his cross slid onto the ground. He stooped, simian-like, as though still burdened by its weight, and peered up at Sirius. Sirius turned and lashed the boy behind. David slid a hand beneath his cross and tried to lift it. A man emerged from the crowd and gazed about as though confused but on some secret mission. He crouched beside David and helped him lift the cross from the ground. A woman ran and knelt before David. She held a cup of water between her trembling hands. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her expression pleaded with him to drink. Sirius's boot flew into the cup and sent it skyward and the woman onto her back. The cup landed with a clunk and rolled back down the hill. David watched it bounce and skittle away to be crushed under a soldier's boot. Is that to be humanity's fate? The good Samaritan lowered the cross gently onto David's back, and he trudged on…

  They emerged onto a plateau where a line of crucified men snaked away into the distance. The din of the crowd would have masked the groans of the dying but they had fallen eerily silent. The pleas of men being roasted alive mingled with the buzzing of flies, the trudging of feet. A weak voice above David asked, “Are my sins forgiven, Lord?” David turned his single eye up at the speaker and through a tangle of hair and blood he saw someone whose faith decreed that a single word from Him might ease his suffering. David said, “Ye…” The lash felt as though it had torn a hole in his side through which his ribs would clatter to the dirt. “…Yes!” said David. The man's head slumped onto his chest. Taken leave of the painting? A luxury that neither I nor humanity can afford. He imagined he heard Gull's voice: “It appears the jaws of defeat are open and poised to swallow us both, David.” This ground must be the bottom edge of that jaw, he thought. And the crosses above the teeth. The ground looked so close now. Am I crawling over it?

  The line of crosses with their dead and dying had stopped some time before. David was told to halt beside a post in the ground. A soldier lifted it out and told David to lay his cross there. David turned towards the spot and felt Sirius's boot in his back. Two soldiers grabbed him, turned him over and lay him on the cross while two more seized his arms and stretched them over the horizontal parts of the cross. Sirius loomed over him with a mallet in his hand and two eight-inch nails in his mouth. They looked like silver whiskers. David clenched his fists and called not to God for strength but to “GUUUUULL!” The centurion pressing his left arm to the cross looked over at the other kneeling on his right arm and said, “Did he just call for strength from Gull?”

  The other shook his head. “God's strength.” Another soldier loomed above David's head and bound his right arm to the cross. Sirius took the nails from his mouth and placed them on the ground. “Let's be quick about this,” he said. “My knees are beginning to smart.”

  David screamed, “Guuuuull!” with a fury that made the flies scatter from his face and return a split-second later. A soldier peeled back David's fingers and Sirius placed the tip of a nail against his palm. Sirius was handed a mallet which he slammed upon the nail – David felt as though he'd caught a heavy ball one-handed – and then another and another and another. David looked away. In his mind's eye he saw the blue-hot flame of a blow torch open a hole in his hand. He threw back his head and gasped at the cloying air. He felt Sirius's bulk manoeuvring over him to his left side, then the scratch of nail and the thud! thud! thud! of that ball. David's legs were lashed to the cross and his feet given purchase on a lip. The smarting of his hands had reached its zenith (or so he imagined) when he felt his body rising sideways from the ground. The cross rolled over and David slammed down onto his front. Behind him, the nails in his hands were hammered sideways.

  Next came a sensation David knew well: the splash of water (in this case salt water) thrown from a bucket into his face. David opened one eye and gazed down from his cross. He saw a bald patch on the top of Sirius's head, and beyond Sirius the crowds that had come to watch him die. It felt hotter up here, as though the three metres he was raised from the ground were three million. Even the flies skittered about his face as though it were too hot to stay in one place. David shook his head and all those tiny feet took flight only to land again a moment later. He turned his head to his left, looked down the line of crucified men. The ones closest to him seemed to gaze in his direction, but he could be sure of nothing now, the slit he peered through so narrow and the flies so ravenous in their pursuit of the fluids that leaked from it. The noise of the crowd had grown increasingly distant. But not the buzzing of insects. Are my ears filled with flies?

  David thought about his parents. They were taken away when he could barely walk. Were the memories of his mother pinching his cheeks, his father carrying him on his shoulders, real or imagined? David looked to his left and tried to focus his vision on the man beyond his hand. The nail sticking out of which gave the man a rusted, upturned moustache. David shook his head to disperse the flies and opened his eye as wide as he could. The man was looking at him, although he wasn't a man. Just a boy. “The boy who was behind me.” David's mouth was so dry that when he'd finished speaking his tongue stuck to its roof. My thirst has become glue. David tried to dislodge his tongue but it was too firmly stuck. The boy pleaded for water – not for himself for Christ. David tried to tell the boy that that was not his name, but
his tongue would not budge from the roof of his mouth. Again the boy pleaded for water. “Water for the Son of God!”

  David felt a wet sponge fall gently against his lips. His chin fell onto his chest and he looked below him. A woman held a long stick with a dripping sponge at its end. David could not focus on her face, but he imagined it to be a kind and sympathetic face. The boy beside him said, “It's the Holy Mother. Your mother.”

  “My mother?” David's tongue came loose from the roof of his mouth and he drew a deep breath. Mary touched the wet sponge to David's lips and the water tasted like manna from heaven. Behind Mary were several men that David recognised: Judas, Peter, Haystacks, and the man with the staff. A pantomime? David's vision grew darker, more tunnelled, and any attempt to open his eye only closed it further. He laid his chin on his collarbone. Even the buzzing of the flies sounded distant now. Only his consciousness had any strength and any freedom of determination. David willed his consciousness forward into the darkness. Away from this place. This pantomime. Shapes appeared ahead of him – hollowed-out shapes that moved towards him and brought with them a sense of peace. David willed his consciousness into these shapes so that he could pass through them. Keep moving forwards. To where, he could not say and did not know. He wondered if he might see a light to guide him. He saw no light, but it didn't matter. He must continue on …