They dropped him to his knees and a moment later one of them ran a bayonet through his shoulder. Kym screamed in pain and put one arm out in front of him to keep himself from falling on his face.
The sound of motors made him turn his attention to the Hsiakwan Gate. Its defenders, soldiers and civilians alike, lay in dead heaps in front of it. Tanks entered through the gate crushing the bodies. One Chinese man's body was lifted up in the treads and shredded, falling back to the ground in pieces.
Move!
Kym turned to see the familiar soldier, among many others, herding a group of blindfolded men, their hands bound behind their backs, toward a clearing where blood soaked the ground.
Get down! the soldier yelled. The men dropped to their knees, their heads down. The soldier rolled up his uniform sleeves. A circular scar sat on his forearm, a sign of loyalty to the Japanese military that only a handful of men had gotten. Kym looked down at his own arm, rubbing the scar in the exact same place as the young soldier before him.
“No,” he said in Japanese, a language he hadn't spoken in over sixty years.
The soldier looked up, as if he had heard Kym speak. In his eyes Kym saw what he feared. Looking back to the prisoners the soldier said nothing, drew a sword from its sheath and raised it. He yelled and brought the blade down on the back of the neck of the closest captive. The man's head tumbled off and landed in front of Kym. The soldier—Kym in his younger years—picked the head up by the hair and held it high for all to see. He laughed and tossed it aside.
"No. No. No."
Come! the Chinese man barked and prodded Kym with his gun. Kym looked back at him. The man had been dead for a long while. What little skin remained sagged and was torn by bones poking through. His eyes were nothing more than black orbs; a gaping hole smiled at Kym from where the man's forehead used to be; his uniform was bloodied and tattered. He walked with a prominent limp.
Chinese civilians stood around him holding weapons in dead hands; their bodies decaying and barely more than skin covered bones. Dead children crawled on hands and knees, their faces missing, their bodies torn; their mouths hung open in death screams. Once pregnant women carried dead infants in their arms, their stomachs and vaginas cut open. Some of the babies dangled from still tethered umbilical cords.
They approached an area where many dead people lay, but they were not civilians, their insides torn asunder and their heads bashed in. Instead, the men wore Japanese military uniforms, both Army and Navy. Many of them were as old as Kym was. Their bodies burned but the flames didn't melt them away. Screams and moans echoed from the dying soldiers. They reached for him, thousands of hands stretched out, begging for mercy only to be beaten away by civilians carrying guns, axes, and pitchforks.
One of the civilians grabbed Kym's hand and thrust a shovel into it.
Dig!
Kym shook his head. A bony hand slapped him across the face, tearing skin and tissue. Blood spattered across the civilian and he yelled at Kym.
Dig!
Kym drove the spade into the ground as another memory surfaced of Chinese men doing the very thing he had to do. He tossed the dirt aside and continued. Several civilians surrounded him. Many of them threw stones and poked him with sticks and pitchforks. Still, he dug until he stood in a hip deep hole that was about three feet long. His arms ached, his back felt like it would break if he lifted out another spade of dirt, his legs burned.
Another stone hit him in the ribs and he doubled over. Tears formed blurring his vision. Above him the civilians taunted him, much like he and his comrades had done to them so many years before. He wanted to say he was sorry but knew it would do no good.
Kym reached down, grabbed one of the rocks they had thrown. He scanned the dead men around the hole. Only the one that had brought him there held a gun. Kym slung the rock at the civilian, striking him in the chest. The dead man fell backward, dropping the gun.
Kym tried to push his way out of the hole but his exhausted body didn't want to cooperate. He reached for the gun and turned it on the mob surrounding him. He fired off one shot, taking out one of the men with a pitchfork. The trigger stuck. Before he could look back up, a sharp pain tore into his chest as the blade of an axe ripped down the front of his old uniform. Blood sprayed from the wound and Kym fell into the hole, holding his chest.
Bury him, one of the men said. A clump of dirt landed on his lap, followed by another and another. He looked up to see several of his comrades, shovels in hand, tossing dirt on to him. Their eyes held a familiar resignation in them—one he had seen on so many defeated Chinese men, women, and children during the seize of Nanking.
"No," Kym said and tried to climb from the hole. The crack of a rifle sounded and Kym felt the sting of a bullet enter his chest. He fell back and grimaced as he gasped for breath. A scoop of dirt struck him in the face. He spat out some of it, swallowed the rest.
Kym glanced up toward the gray sky, toward the dead Chinese people. A little boy stood at the edge of the hole, his head bashed in and one eye dangling by his cheek. He held a rifle. He spat at Kym and pulled the trigger. Kym's jaw disappeared, blood and bone spattered along the ground. A hole erupted in his throat and the air from his lungs whistled out of the wound, taking his life with him.
With his world fading, Kym reached up, trying to claw his way from the grave. Though he couldn't tell how far away the voices were, he could hear the chant ringing in his ears,
Rise up Nanking. Rise up and live.
Mother’s Little Helper
by Tom Olbert
2034 A.D.: Near Williams University, Virginia
Karen Peters brushed aside a tear as she contemplated suicide. The night was dark. The crickets droned on. The fountain by which she sat reflected the lamplight in the park. The water spattered on beside her, the tears of the little stone cherub mocking her own. Glancing down at the dimes and pennies at the bottom of the pool—wishes and hopes of earlier days—she whimpered, then laughed, trying to see the humor in the absurdity of her situation. One stupid night of beers at a frat house, celebrating the end of finals. Just blowing off a little steam.
Harmless fun. That’s all it took to change the rest of her young life.
She clenched her fist, her nails digging into the palm of her hand as she curled into a fetal position. How could she have been so stupid? Letting that creep get her alone? She’d barely been able to look her mother in the eye over the vid-phone as she’d forced the words out. Her dad hadn’t been able to speak to her at all. Or wouldn’t. The answer had seemed almost a given. What else could she do? They’d spent so much. She’d worked so hard. Her whole life lay before her. All that gone in one moment? Yeah, that’s fair. The guy goes home and brags. The girl gets to choose. Good job, God.
“Don’t blame God, you stupid, drunken slut,” she screamed at herself.
She drew a deep, strangled breath, raking her fingernails across the denim fabric of her jacket, shivering in the icy wind. She imagined the one she carried. Sleeping innocently in warm, liquid darkness. Do you feel anything yet? Nerve endings fired? Synaptic pathways begun to form? For a moment, she regretted having selected pre-law instead of pre-med. Then, the idea of a soul occurred to her, and she considered theology 101. She broke into hysterical laughter which quickly dissolved into anguish.
She buried her hot, feverish face in her hands and cried. At times of crisis, like a failed test, she’d probably be huddled in her dorm room with Linda, drowning her sorrows in a brandy. But Linda hadn’t spoken to her since her decision to abort the pregnancy. Except to say she’d pray for her. She’d said it without meeting her eyes and with a coldness that had gone through her like a knife.
Everyone had treated her that way since the decision. Except for that nice young man, Will Daubson, the medical technician at the clinic where she’d had the tests. He’d looked at her with those kind eyes of his, an expression of sympathy on his thin face, and told her not to worry. God had a plan for everything, he’d said wi
th a gentle smile.
Stop sniveling and pull yourself together, she admonished herself, pulling herself straight and drying her eyes. Think of someone besides yourself, for once! Think. There was still time to alter her decision. She could still keep the baby. Would mom and dad go along? Help her financially? The state wouldn’t, that was for sure. Maybe Linda’s church group could…she started. Something furry was brushing against her ankle.
She looked down and laughed. A cute little dog. A cuddly little Yorky eagerly wagging its stubby tail. Its comical face with its upswept eyebrows stared up at her, the jaw lowering in a sharp little cough of a bark. The faint whirring of electric gears and the clicking of red lenses behind the canine’s black eyes told her it wasn’t a real dog, but an animatron. She smiled anyway, playfully running her fingers along the pseudo-animal’s back, remembering the more primitive toy dog she’d played with as a child. An image of her own little one someday playing with such toys flashed through her mind. The sight of her infant daughter’s bright little eyes and beaming smile brought a wide smile to her own face.
Yes. She would have this baby. She felt a warm wave of comfort and safety flow over her. She’d never really bought into Linda’s lame ideas about omens and God’s secretive ways, but something about this felt right.
She reached down to gratefully scratch behind the little fellow’s ears. It turned its shaggy muzzle to lick her hand, as its built-in A.I. was obviously programmed to do. The smile slipped off her face, her hand jerking back in pain, as though a wasp had stung it. She stared at the swelling little red prick mark on the heel of her hand. She looked down and caught the flash of a silver needle retracting into the robo-dog’s mouth. A drop of milky venom fell from the needle’s tip to the pavement at her feet. A few more merry little barks. The tail wagging as her head swam through an ocean wave of euphoria, the lampposts swaying wildly as she slumped to the pavement, all feeling draining out of her body. She saw the dark, silhouetted figure with the remote control unit step out of the bushes just before the darkness swallowed her whole.
***
Will Daubson smiled down approvingly at Karen Peters’ sleeping face. She looked so peaceful. And so pretty, even now. Rapid eye movements behind her fluttering eyelids indicated a slightly agitated thought pattern. He glanced at the shimmering CRT image on the console beside her, checking the graph indicator of her brainwaves. The memory loop was stable. She was reliving her entire life…all 20 years of it…on a 30 minute repeating cycle. Time was meaningless, of course. From her point of view, all was as it should be. Nothing interrupted. He couldn’t help smirking the tiniest bit.
He delicately ran an index finger along the line of her forehead where he had ever-so-precisely cut off the top of her head with a laser scalpel, leaving her brain exposed. He carefully checked the electrodes protruding from the convoluted gray mass of her cerebral cortex. Ever the worry wart, he playfully chastised himself. Everything was fine. Right down to the nutrient-rich fluid flowing through the life support tubes keeping her severed head alive. She was a fine addition to the collection. Fourth in a row of young women’s heads, all wired and plugged in and arranged in a neat row on his shelf.
He sighed. It had horrified him at first, the brutal nature of what he’d had to do. Oh, he’d never been cruel, of course. They’d never felt a thing. Still…it seemed so ugly. An iciness began inching its way up his spine, his stomach twisting. He stared in growing fear at his acquisitions, sweat beading on his forehead, his thin chest trembling. He tightly shut his eyes, forcing himself to think of their collective sin. Of the murderous intent they’d all shared. And he looked at them now. So innocent and angelic in their blissful ignorance, saved from sin before they could damn themselves to Hell. Before they could abort their babies.
He relaxed. These women were still alive. More than they deserved, perhaps, considering what they’d tried to do, but God was their judge, not he. A wave of relief flooded through him, all doubt washing away. He took a deep breath and gave thanks to his dear Mother and Father for having had the wisdom to have the M chip implanted into his brain when he was a child. The foolish law had prohibited the operation, but they’d done the right thing and had it done anyway. The morality program written into the chip set the parameters for every decision his brain could form. The motivational imperative his parents had paid the programmers to write into the chip was that he could never harm, or by omission of action, permit to be harmed an innocent human life. A Godsend the M chip was. A shield against the numerous temptations of a corrupt world. Mother’s little helper.
He made his way toward the center of his makeshift lab to check the bio-monitors. ALL SYSTEM FUNCTIONS NORMAL, the grating metallic voice of the central artificial intelligence intoned through the speaker system. Will looked up at the A.I. that was the brain of the entire system. A cold, black camera lens, the cyclopean ‘eye’ of the thing he’d created, stared down at him from the huge, grotesque assembly of wires, fluidic tubes, and wetware modules he’d constructed. It hung from the concrete ceiling, suspended by steel chains. At the center of the semi-spherical shell of synaptic computer relays was the living, disembodied brain of the chimpanzee that had given its life at the University lab to make all this possible. Its cerebral cortex, sufficiently enhanced by the interfaced computer system, was all it took to accommodate the basic functions of running the human body.
Will’s eyes followed the grayish fluids seeping through the many plastic tubes, down from the life-support system, into the four headless, naked human bodies that stood like huge marionettes, suspended by silvery steel wires. Like giant fetuses, they fed through artificial umbilical cords which led from endlessly droning pumps into their ripening, pregnant stomachs. It all formed a single, self-sustaining organic bio-system. As perfectly balanced as the human reproductive cycle, though safe from willful human interference.
As he was admiring his own ingenuity, Will happened to notice the tattoo on the shoulder of his most recent acquisition, Karen Peters. A red valentine heart with the word ‘Forever’ in black letters, a cupid’s arrow piercing the center, and a delicate border of lilies. Vulgar, to be sure, but touching in its way. She must have known real love at least once. But not with her baby’s father, apparently.
Will felt the sting of a tear at the corner of his eye. He rubbed it out and sniffed, shrugging off a twinge of melancholy. Poor, lost lamb. Such a waste. She might have been a wife and mother one day, had she remained faithful to the man she’d loved. But, she threw it all away. All for lust, the Devil’s most potent temptation. As he stared at the tattoo, his eye wandered from her shoulder, down the graceful curve of her perfect alabaster breast, falling at last on the round, pink nipple.
He quickly averted his gaze, deeply ashamed of the stirring in his unmentionable region. How dare he defile Life’s holy vessel with impure thoughts! His guilt screamed in his head as he winced in pain. By God’s perfect design, the female form existed to nurture life, not to tempt the soul of Man, he reminded himself angrily, clenching his fists in self-flagellation.
Letting his anger pass, he unclenched his fists and gently, reverently laid a hand on the burgeoning belly of one of his other three acquisitions. The first one he’d saved, months ago. He’d long since forgotten her name. Names were meaningless. Only the precious, innocent life stirring within mattered. His heart fluttered in ecstasy as he felt the baby kick. His eyes filled with tears of joy at the miracle of God’s infinite love.
***
It was a bright, sunny day as Will strolled merrily across the University campus, a wide smile crossing his face. Professor Darby had been so pleased with the preliminary design specs of Will’s life support system. The kind old man had shook his hand and smiled, lavishing him with praise. In the presence of the University President, no less. Such a brilliant student, he’d said. And so hard working. His job at the clinic, in addition to his course work. He was an inspiration to his fellow students. Will’s heart had swelled with pride. Moth
er and Father would be so pleased. He sighed, a twinge of guilt cutting into his happiness. He hated deceiving the professor. But, until the Supreme Court came to its senses, he couldn’t reveal the fact that his invention was anything more than theoretical. Someday, it would have a prominent place in the Smithsonian, of that he was sure.
As he passed the quad, a large group of students was gathered about the holographic projection that was the P.A./news display. Karen Peters’ pretty, smiling face shimmered on the boiling air. He involuntarily averted his eyes, a coldness spreading through his stomach as the announcer’s voice declared a fourth female student missing. He tried to feign disinterest, pretending to fumble with his portable computer link as he listened for any news on the ongoing police investigation. There wasn’t any progress in the case. At least, none they were willing to reveal. The crowd began to disperse as the news broadcast switched to international. He cleared his dry throat, feeling many eyes on him as he walked on. The announcer’s voice trailed after him: “The president insisted the war in Venezuela was not about oil, but about defending American values.”
He shook off the momentary doubts and fears as if they were bothersome flies. God would protect him and his holy mission, he reminded himself, the smile returning to his face.
His heart beat faster as he saw her walking towards him. Linda. She looked so beautiful. Yet, troubled. It wasn’t hard to guess why. She and Karen had been roommates. And pretty close friends, from what he could tell. He felt a bit awkward as he walked towards her. “Hello, Linda.”
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