With the one I had returned to take from Daedalus, his last gift to me.
In general, the facility was deserted. I could see a guard shack fifty meters ahead, and a parking lot beyond that, only four cars among the spots. I straightened my back as I walked toward the shack, putting on the confident expression I had seen online when studying body language, and waved to the guard on duty. He waved back, barely looking up to see the white of my lab coat before returning to his electronic book. We were bred for docility, after all. There was no reason for tight security, for sheep that should never leave the flock.
But I left the facility, my home and my cage, and entered the parking lot.
I found Daedalus’ car without much trouble- the prior year, he’d mentioned how a tree branch had fallen on it from his driveway, and left a dent in the hood. His finger opened the door, his finger started the ignition, and his finger let me reconfigure the car to my own fingerprint. I’d never driven before, but I’d tried simulations on my computer, racing games that Daedalus had approved of to improve my reflexes. So I turned the car, a red Corvette whose engine eagerly answered the gas pedal, started driving towards the exit, and left the finger in the guard shack's letterbox.
Having only played games, I was only aware of the speeds I had achieved while racing. But it didn’t matter to me- this was the first time in my life breaking twenty five miles per hour, and I wanted to do it right.
So before I reached the highway, my speedometer topped one twenty five. I nearly drifted onto a ditch on the right side of the road twice, and hit a curb going thirty five miles per hour that could not have been good for the car's suspension. Only when I rocketed up the entrance ramp, and saw the speed sign did I slam on the brakes, matching the 65 miles per hour indicated. And I drove for hours, knowing it was only a matter of time before the body would be found when the cleaning crew would come for my body at nightfall, and then search would begin.
By four in the afternoon I reached a small lake on the side of the highway, and had begun to grow hungry. Daedalus had left a moderate sum of money in the glovebox, by my reckoning enough to feed me for a week, and I used it at a small waterfront diner.
“I’ll take the patty melt,” I said to the waitress, after debating for a half hour over the nearly infinite combinations on the menu. She looked down at me from her standing position, her eyes narrowing, her gut protruding over the table. I'd never seen fat before. It was fascinating.
“Aren’t you gonna take that off, hun?”
I looked down, and saw I was still wearing the lab coat.
“Oh, my apologies. No, it’s a bit cold here. I’d prefer to keep it,” I answered. Underneath the coat was my uniform, the identical set of clothes I wore everyday in my apartment. Clothes that I would prefer to keep hidden.
“Suit yourself, hun. And your order?”
“I’ll take the, uh, I’ll take the patty melt.”
“And for your side, hun? Hash-browns or sliced apples?”
“No apples. I’m sick of apples.”
She nodded, and left my table. And when the food arrived, I thought I could have done better after my years of cooking for myself. But there was something about not cooking for myself that made it more enjoyable. And the waitress had declined, quite rudely in my opinion, when I had asked if I could personally cook another one made up to my standards.
I left the diner at dusk, driving the car around the lake, stopping when the road traveled through only forest with no houses in sight. And I turned the car towards the lake, placing it in neutral, and let it roll down the bank.
The Corvette sank into the water and mud, the murky water rushing over its bright red exterior, and with it sank the evidence.
I walked away from the car, leaving it behind, and not looking back to the bubbles rising to the surface.
And I walked for a few hours as dusk began to fall, always traveling uphill, to the top of small mountain whose base had been at the lake. I could see many more mountains before me, a chain leading off in the distance. They were lit by the moon alone, and as I stood atop that mountain, turning to see the surrounding landscape, I heard the wolves howling in the distance.
Raising my voice, I howled with them, the wind ripping my voice from my throat and carrying it towards the heavens. There it wove among the stars, the stars that I yearned to join, the stars that pulled at my very instinct and existence. The stars that I had known all my life, though I had never seen them.
And I felt that Daedalus, sweet Daedalus, had given me the means to reach them.
Chapter 3
Part of me has always wondered how a baby knows how to cry. No one ever taught it, no one ever instructed to breathe in through its lungs, redirect the air through the vocal cords, and release noise. It didn't learn from watching other babies. There's no manual, no list of the necessary steps. They just know.
I wonder the same thing with birds that build nests - following a drive to collect twigs, leaves,and whatever other building materials available to make a circular bowl. Or beavers, how they know to construct a dam, how that knowledge seems to be hidden away within them, at the core of their being. Or salmon, how they migrate without maps, and without instruction.
And over the next few months, I felt like I could understand the baby, the birds, the beavers, or the salmon. I acted without reason, without considering what I was doing. It felt right. It felt instinctual.
Since my night spent atop the mountain, howling at the stars, I've been traveling. I go on foot, walking the ridge of the mountains, searching. Searching for something, a location, a place, though I do not know where. A place to build my nest.
But I do know where I can't build it.
It can't be near large bodies water, like lakes or the ocean, so I shied away from those. Something felt wrong when I came too close to the lake, as if I was a musician purposefully tuning a guitar out of harmony. And it should be high up, like a mountaintop, but protected from the elements. Somewhere safe. Somewhere where others won't find it.
So I walked from mountaintop to mountaintop, searching, trusting my feelings to find the correct location. After a lifetime of reason, part of me wondered why I wasn't questioning my actions more, why I wasn't trying to understand the meaning behind what I was doing. But when the feeling is strong enough, the rational mind is forgotten, it's complaints swept away by emotion.
I've never been in love, but I think that's the closest feeling to what I had. A drive lay aside thought, and to act. To forget how to behave and become a slave to desire.
I used the remainder of Daedalus' money on food, occasionally enjoying a warm meal apart from nature. But as the days passed, I grew less and less hungry, until I spent days without food. And I found myself shying away from human interaction, preferring to be a shadow of the forest and mountains.
My body had begun to change as well- the muscles that were already well defined grew larger, and I felt the need to exercise them, to strengthen them and make them durable. I started in the forest, curling rocks and logs, but quickly realized that the objects were too bulky or too light for my preference.
So at night I would travel down from the mountains, to the houses of local residents, and I would use their cars. From underneath them I'd bench them, being careful to be gentle enough not to set off the alarms. And I'd squat by lifting the backs of them, the weight a little light, but the best that I could manage in my journey.
My skin changed as well, taking on a dull green hue, and I spent at least an hour a day sunbathing, my clothes forgotten long ago in the dumpster of the last diner I had visited. Now I only grew hungry on stormy days, when the sun was blocked by clouds, and then I would sneak into the towns at night and lay beneath lamp posts, mingling with the homeless men as my energy returned. And as I walked, my feet also grew, lengthening to have a better grasp on the ground, and letting my walk turn to a run, such that I could cover forty miles of rough terrain in a few hours.
It took four months t
o find a suitable spot, as the fall turned to winter, and my breath escaped my mouth in a fog. Snow crunched under my bare feet as I reached the clearing, situated on a ridge between two mountains, a circlet of bare grass covered in snow surrounded by tree cover and open sky. At the base of the ridge there was a junkyard- I could smell it, and I'd seen it from two mountains over.
And for the first time in weeks, I rested, settling my bare back into the snow, staring above to the open sky where the labyrinth of stars resided beyond, and reveling in how right it felt. How this was where I was supposed to be.
How this was where I would build my nest.
Chapter 4
By the time I had finished, the snow had melted from the ground, and spring had a firm foothold on the weather.
I had used the junkyard as a supply shop for my tools, traveling there late at night and hauling all that I could back up the mountains. The dogs had given me no trouble, running with their tail between their legs when I approached, and watching me from underneath cars. Most of the materials I needed were easy to find- scrap bits of steel that I bent and broke with my hands, then sanded with the edges of rocks until they reached the right shape. But there were some things that were much harder- I knew I’d need tungsten, and spent weeks collecting enough dead light bulb filaments for enough to complete my task. I’d had to crack open batteries for Lithium. And I’d sought out smoke detectors among the rubble for radioactive elements, finding just enough to Americium satisfy the requirement.
Even back then, I had a vague idea of what I was doing, of what my task was. And I knew that I wasn’t the first.
It was my uncovered genes that gave me abilities, that made me smart, or muscular, or eliminated my need for food by giving me photosynthesis. And I realized these existed so that I could better do my job, so that I could focus more time and more energy on building. Without the need to forage for food, I could forage for parts. With the strength, I could do the task alone, lifting structures that should take many men. And my intelligence combined with an insatiable drive to build bound me to the task.
In the past, I think these genes have come loose in other men by accident. None uncovered the entire package as I had, but there were those who might have had a few of the hidden genes revealed through chance. Men like Andre the Giant, whose stature rivaled my own. Or those like Einstein or Feynman, who were given cognitive abilities beyond their peers. And I’ve heard of mountain men, of Bigfoot, that match my physical description, and who might have been examples of unlocked genetics. But most important, there were those that sought to build for the sake of building. The erectors of the pyramids, the constructors of empires, the travelers to the moon- all these people who had a touch more of the hidden genes within them, that were slaves to the organic chemistry within themselves.
And now, I stood in the clearing, marveling my creation - a creation to any other eyes, looked like a new junkyard, or the work of a madman.
Paths of crushed bottles were strewn about the grass, making concentric circles and perpendicular lines, symbols whose meaning escaped me. Above them were patterns of iron, copper, and aluminum, intricate shapes strung in midair between the trees, in a three dimensional lattice that had taken days to perfect and secure. Powdered lithium surrounded the clearing in a circle, the oxidized dust surrounded by another circle of table salt, which itself was surrounded by potassium chloride, or substitute salt, appearing like rings on a target.
And in my hand, I held the last piece of the masterpiece, the cornerstone of the creation. The tiny chunk of radioactive material, which belonged in the center, suspended in a brass bird cage.
Contemplating my creation, I wondered too if some of the creators of modern art had also knocked a few of the hidden genes loose. Their pieces looked similar, and they too were trash with meaning.
Then, taking a deep breath, I placed the radioactive material in the cage. I stepped back. And I waited.
Like I said, I had an idea what I had created. It was a sign, or an antenna of sorts. To explain, even the most primitive of civilizations could create a sign for those more advanced to read. They may not understand what the letters mean, but under adequate instruction they could paint them, and hang it where those who were seeking it could see. A basic radio antenna could be created in the same way, by arranging bits of metal in a simple fashion such that someone with far more advanced technology could pick it up. And the three dimensional sculpture I had created, the blend of elements with traceable signatures, the combination of glasses and metals and radioactivity, must have been a signature that, though I myself could not understand it, someone far more advanced could find. To them, it would be a beacon. A beacon whose instructions had been embedded in deep my DNA, in all of humanity’s DNA.
And at nightfall, they came.
A vertical beam of electric blue light appeared in the air beneath the brass birdcage, a beam of light the height of two men, fizzing and rippling as it widened to form a oval. Then the oval widened, and became a circle, a circle that a figure stepped through into the clearing.
Physically, he looked like other humans- perhaps a little taller, and though he had the eyes of an old man no wrinkles crossed his face, nor grey streaked through his hair. He raised his head, and inhaled deeply, sniffing the air, then nodding in approval. Then his gaze fell upon me, and he he raised a hand. And when he spoke, his voice did not enter my ears, but rather entered my mind.
“Greetings, Colonist,” He said, offering a short bow, “I am the sentinel, the watcher, the guardian of mankind. The Waker of the Sleeping. He who waits while others rest.”
“Greetings,” I answered, bowing on my own, “And what are you?”
“I am one who is most grateful, colonist. For you have saved the fate of those before you.”
“Me? How?”
“Millions upon millions of years ago, so long that even my memory strains to remember, the worlds of mankind were destroyed by an expanding star. Those who survived are sleeping, held in a type of bunker in that now wasteland. But before catastrophe, they sent tens of thousands of colonization ships, ships laden with the seeds to grow humankind again. With bacteria, with viruses, with embryos or man and animal alike- with all that it would take for a suitable planet to grow. With the early plants and dinosaurs, to create the oil needed for industrialization. With the livestock for food. And with man, to conquer them all, to tame nature, to make the planet suitable for living.”
“And this, Earth, is one of your colony worlds?”
“The first one to report back, colonist. Possibly the only one to ever become advanced enough to uncover the genetic codes to call us here,” Then the sentinel looked about again, and took another breath, “To call us to our new home.”
Two Pills
Story inspired by the following prompt: "I have two pills to take every day. One is so I don't kill myself. The other is so I don't kill other people. Today I dropped one pill down the drain. I don't know which it was”
Chapter 1
I like to think I'm normal.
I'm recently single, only twenty eight years old, and I'm attractive enough for a date with you. I live in a single apartment near the outside of my city, surrounded by a razor wire fence, one that just so happens to be facing inwards. And I have a job, just like any of you.
I'm a young professional. One of the best.
And I kill for a living.
I grew up in an orphanage, on the south side of my city. All my life I had been poor- starved for food, and starved for love. And I'll always remember that day that the orphanage director took me on his knee, and asked me a simple question that would change my entire life.
"Would you like to meet your parents?"
And, of course, I would.
We had plenty of gay couples attend our orphanage looking for a child that nature dictated they could not create on their own, but even at my age I knew something was different about the two suited men he waited for me by the entrance.
&
nbsp; "Hello, Azrael," Said one, with a smile, holding his hand out to me.
"Are you my new daddy?" I asked, squeezing his finger between my two palms, and looking upwards at his angular face.
"I am, little girl. I knew your parents too, back in their day. You've been lost for a long time, Azrael. And we've finally found you."
Then they took me, in a car blacker than their suits with tinted windows, and a back seat large enough for me to lie down on. And they raised me.
Instead of playgrounds, I had obstacle courses. Where most children had school, I had private tutors- many in subjects that never would enter into a typical school, such as martial arts and poisons.
"Name a poison to kill a man, via the respiratory system" Asked my tutor, quizzing me after a lengthy lesson.
"Hemlock, of course."
"Hemlock? Who taught you that name for Conium?"
I paused, then gave him my sweet eight year old smile, "I don't know, I guess I just kind of knew it."
And my tutor frowned, but continued his lesson. But I noticed he no longer turned his back on me when he wrote on the board.
And then, at age twelve, the urgings started. My tutor called them hormones.
"Why do any of us belong here? It doesn't feel like we fit." I asked, over dinner, both of my fathers eating in front of me.
"What do you mean, honey?" Matt asked, the one whose hand I had held that first day from the orphanage.
"I mean, well, I just feel like there's somewhere else I belong. I can't really explain it, just not here. You know."
"No, I don't know, sweetie," Said James, my other father, the fork paused halfway to his mouth.
"I just feel like this isn't the place for me. I don't know, like my body is too small, and I don't fit. And I feel like there's somewhere else you belong, too. It's just a feeling, but I want to help you get there."
Allen, The Rogue AI Page 3