by S. A. Tholin
Two months of smelling little but ozone and citrus, and here came all the smells of a life about to end. Organic death, raw with blood and mould. Clinical death, acrid with antiseptic and alcohol. Electric death, in the burnt-toast waft of an overheating suit. Rhys was right; the drugs did promise to take all that away, to dull his senses and make him indifferent. They promised to make his final favour to Joy the simple flip of a switch.
And still he writhed in the ash and tore at the silken veil.
"You want the pain. Men like us do. The pain of duty, the pain of battle, the pain of a bullet in the face if that's what it takes - because we know that truth is pain. Truth is as real and solid as iron. Some may take that truth and make it into a tool, and some may make art - but you and I, Commander, we know how to dress ourselves in iron and go to war."
Rhys's speech had become so garbled his HUD had to transcribe most of his words. His one remaining eye rolled in its socket.
"We need to get you back to the others." Cassimer made to help the medic up, but Rhys resisted.
"No, you need to listen. You need to see. But first, you need to be happy. One more dose - bear with me, Commander - and then no more. Maybe never again. I'll count it down and when it comes, I want you to think of something nice. Here it comes; ten, nine, eight..."
Picking the medic up and carrying him back in spite of his objections had been the plan. But his chemical euphoria latched onto the phrase think of something nice and dappled the ash a sunrise gold.
The warmth lingered, and when Rhys shared a video file, he accepted it readily.
◆◆◆
The Hierochloe logo splashed across his vision. The grass reeds swayed gently as a disembodied voice presented itself as Dr. Elsinore, Head of Research. She was warm and chatty, more talk show host than management, but so passionate about her work that it was hard not to trust her every word.
"1.5 speed, if you please, Commander. Don't have all day here."
The narrated scene split into three, each showing an identical room. Succulent plants, pastel colours and sofas that looked comfortable but had their occupants squirming anxiously. Two of them only took their eyes off the door to check the time, but the third kept glancing towards the large mirror on the far wall.
If you're wondering if they're watching; they are. Tendrils of unease snaked through the white veil. Only Rhys's urging kept Cassimer from closing the video file.
Dr Elsinore explained that each of the three subjects believed they had reached the final rounds of a job interview. As part of the process, the two subjects that hadn't already had an h-chip, had been generously granted one. All three had been told that the interviewer was running late, but while waiting, they were welcome to help themselves to refreshments. A trolley was wheeled in, the table in each room was set with an assortment of snacks and drinks.
All three subjects, Elsinore said, had been selected from a pool of applicants because of their medical history. Each of the subjects suffered health issues due to poor diet choices, and though all of them were aware of that fact, none of them had made any effort to change their behaviour. And, as expected, all three subjects did choose pastries and sweets, ignoring the healthier selection of fruits and vegetables.
The footage skipped. The same three rooms, the same three subjects. Only their clothes had changed. It was a week later and they'd been called back in for another interview (at this point the footage froze for Elsinore to comment: geez, look at their hopeful little faces; starting to make me feel bad. Do we have any positions for these guys? Davis, do me a favour and look into it would you). This time, however, the circumstances were different. This time, they'd been primed.
According to Elsinore, the h-chip was capable of sending a subliminal message to its user, which it then immediately followed up by triggering a rush of serotonin to create a positive association.
As you can see, said Elsinore, as two of the subjects opted for salad, priming alone is not enough to fully override the individual's decision-making. One subject entirely rejected his priming while the effect on the other two was quite temporary. However, repetition priming has shown very promising results. Sustained reinforcement of the message makes the subjects less likely to reject it.
The footage changed to show a surveillance camera feed of the stubborn Subject Three in a grocery store. As he made his way through the aisles, he chose only health foods, and only after carefully reading the labels and considering the list of contents. A snippet of audio overheard him asking a store employee whether the eggs were locally sourced.
The amount of repetition can be reduced by employing a proxy with a trigger phrase. For instance, Subject Three was primed only three times. Once to make the healthy choice, once to trust my opinion, and once to associate the phrase 'eating green is good for you' with health and happiness. Subject Three has never met me before, yet in this footage, I approach him unsolicited in the grocery store and tell him that 'eating green is good for you'. Without that trigger, the priming would've proven insufficient and our subject would have - as we have seen in previous trials - reverted to his ingrained habits.
Unfortunately, at this point, we have no viable method of delivering repetition priming to a large enough sample of h-chipped individuals to achieve the desired result. I understand that some members of the board have reservations about the repetition priming - calling it brainwashing - and it's true that the ethical implications are less than satisfactory. We are, after all, endeavouring to liberate mankind, not enslave it. However, the more permanent approach has proven challenging. Subject Four will demonstrate.
Subject Four was a middle-aged man in a suit that had probably fit him better twenty years ago, which was perhaps also the last time he'd attended a job interview. Subject Four looked more than anxious - he looked like a man trying very hard not to appear desperate. Tanned skin revealed a pale strip around his ring finger and his eyes were encircled by the dry and crinkled skin of someone who'd been receiving cosmetic treatments but was no longer keeping up with his appointments. His drumming feet, scuffing ugly black marks onto the floor, wore expensive shoes, but the soles were worn and the leather discoloured.
The apology trolley was rolled in and the food set on the table by the pastel-clad assistant. The same woman as in the previous footage, blonde hair falling down one shoulder in neat curls, a paisley scarf loosely wrapped around her neck. Her face was as ever turned from the camera, but judging by Subject Four's reaction, she was a beauty.
Subject Four had received no repetition priming. At this point, we transmitted a direct command to his h-chip - eat a green apple. Elsinore paused for a few seconds, before adding: In retrospect, we should've waited for Snezana to leave first.
They should have. They really should have. But they hadn't, and Cassimer watched the events of room 109 unfold to a familiar conclusion. Subject Four had been a perceptive man, for even in his possessed state, he wasted little time on Snezana, instead turning his attention to the one-way mirror. The first observer died before the last shard of glittering silver settled on the floor. The second lasted much longer, still screaming when security burst into the room; still screaming when the guards, realising that their sedatives and stun guns had no effect, ran.
Subject 4 finished with the observer and returned to the pastel room to first eat a green apple, and then what remained of Snezana. Security returned, this time armed with lethal weapons, and Subject Four died tearing a paisley scarf to strips.
Security protocols have since been upgraded, but every attempt at direct commands has seen the same results. Complete cognitive regression to an extremely violent and uncontrollable mental state. The physical damage is nearly as severe, inducing a hypertensive emergency which escalates until the subject perishes. We have had some success, in that the subjects do obey the direct commands, but the side-effects remain. Based on that, and the unacceptable casualties, it is my recommendation that Project Harmony be scrapped.
The footage e
nded, but a memo was appended to it: Elsinore, could you pass on your research to Marketing? They seem to think that within the correct framework, Harmony could still be workable.
◆◆◆
Volleys of realisation battered the walls of doctrine. It was a war between ash and iron, a blizzard of light and dark that dulled him to the chill of the Morrigan pressed to his temple.
"You could do that," Rhys said. What remained of his face had aged by half-a-century, drained of all but the colours of Cato. Red and grey; death and decay. This world displayed its nature clearly, a celestial body coated in warning colours. "Or you could listen to the voice in the back of your head, whispering to you to forget about all this nonsense. Living a lie is almost as easy as death, and your mind is ready to accept that release. Primed, in fact. You can let the lie back in, Cassimer, and make sense of the world once more. Make sense of yourself once more."
"I saw the corruption on the Hecate, Rhys. I saw it and I felt it and it was no lie. I see it still; I hear it in the silences and in the shadows."
"I know you do. And you can have them back. You can tell me to forget about all this and I won't object. I won't be able to, if I understand correctly. And you can be him once more, Commander Cassimer, hero of the Primaterre; the man who has given life and soul to the empire of the pure."
As if there were another choice. As if a man's character hinged on one decision rather than the thousands before; each another step down a path until he'd walked so far he lost sight of where he had intended to go. Once a man had gone that far, there were no more forks in the road. Only jagged fulgurite and endless ash.
"Or there's the third choice; the choice that hurts."
The twist that hurts. A dry laugh caught in the back of his throat, and he wanted to tell Rhys that the time for that had come and gone, its epilogue flashing on his HUD in a quatrain of eighty-six random characters.
"Accept that your life has been shaped by lies. Accept that your enemies aren't who you thought they were. Swallow the humiliation and endure the pain. There'll be no vengeance. There'll be no answers and no relief. But if you want the truth, all you have to say is this: demons don't exist."
"They laughed, Rhys, laughed while they killed and violated. Their breath on my skin, the smell of them, the weight of them. The Hecate died an evil death."
"You know as well as I do that it doesn't take a demon to do evil. Men kill, Cassimer. Men betray and men lie. Forget the Hecate - think of Joy."
As if he'd stopped thinking about her since the first time he saw her. As if he would ever stop thinking about her. No ash deep enough to smother that light. But she was lost, and he told Rhys that, didn't care that his voice cracked when he spoke her name, didn't care that his finger tightened around the Morrigan's trigger. He closed his eyes and thought of falling asleep in the window seat of a train.
"Not lost," Rhys slurred, drugs and tech losing their battle against the inevitable. "Not if demons don't exist."
48. Cassimer
A banneret commander led by example. A banneret commander was pure and steadfast. Above all, a banneret commander was a reminder. On worlds distant and deserted, where the ground was fertile with doubt, there was no other voice than the commander's, no other truth but his.
Cassimer's understanding of his role had changed, but its function hadn't. Piece by piece, he force-fed his team the truth, repeating it until his words cut through the veil. At first, they rejected it because they didn't believe it. Then they rejected it because they did believe, but wanted very badly not to.
After rejection came avoidance. The truth was undeniable, but perhaps it could be shunted into a dark corner and forgotten. A soft whisper told them so, a gossamer-light invitation to allow the white veil to blanket their minds once more. The temptation would be great. He'd told Joy that he was no hero, and that was true - but at least he'd been more than a pawn, more than a neatly-packaged story for the Primaterre to sell. Part of him wanted desperately to revert to that version of himself, but he couldn't, and neither could his team.
And so he told them over and over again.
"But who's doing this to us?" asked Hopewell, first to accept the new normal.
"The Primaterre." Rhys was halfway to death or unconsciousness. Nanoweave attempted to stitch his face together, but the inexpertly application made it grow ridges and lumps that had no business being on a face. The right corner of his lip touched his eyebrow, new-pink tissue stretching thin over fractured bone, and barnacle-growths clustered around his nose.
"Yeah," Hopewell said, making a fine effort of looking at Rhys without gaping in horror. "But we're Primaterre. If a banneret commander doesn't know, who does? The company chief? The station chief?"
Cassimer shook his head. Couldn't be sure of anything anymore, but it was easier to accept the existence of telepathic lichen than it was to accept that his direct superiors knew demons to be a fantasy cooked up in a lab. Station Chief Amager was a true believer, just as vigilant as Cassimer and perhaps twice as terrified, and Company Chief Vysoke-Myto cared about little other than the men and women of the banneretcy. He'd put both life and career on the line for his soldiers innumerable times, perhaps more often than he should have.
"It goes beyond the military. Beyond the government. A secret like this, it's too big to be shared by many. Hell, it's possible nobody knows anymore - it could be an automated script, running in the background of our primers since the end of the war. Imagine that, a whole population brainwashed because somebody forgot to end a process a century ago." Lucklaw laughed, the sound brittle-sharp like dark glass.
"Elkhart knew about it, though," Hopewell said. "So why turn only Somerset and not the rest of us?"
"Because an h-chip is hardware as crude as it comes. Can't even call it wetware, because it only integrates into the human body on the most basic of levels. Hacking or modding one is child's play and forcing one to receive a signal's even easier. Our primers, though..." Lucklaw shook his head. "Impossible. It'd require genius-level understanding of electronics, engineering and genetics. Without access to whatever is transmitting the original priming signal, I don't see it happening. Simply put, we're walking fortresses while Somerset was an open door."
"Speaking of which..." If Lucklaw's anger was flaring fire, then Florey's was creeping permafrost - and the target of his anger was well-within reach. A problem, but it'd have to be a problem for later. "Have you activated her kill switch yet, Commander?"
Easy to ignore his derisive tone, and easy to overlook the way Florey spat out the word 'commander'. Less easy to forgive him for avoiding her name. Private Joy Somerset, reduced to 'her', not afforded even the respect due a fallen comrade. Florey had seen fit to make a problem-for-later a problem now, and Cassimer could no more quench the gunner's anger than he could his own.
"The heat of the moment's one thing, Commander, but it's been hours. You've had time to think, time to cool off, hell, apparently you even found the time to destroy our lives. But you still haven't terminated her, have you?"
"Joy. Her name is Joy."
"See what I mean?" Florey threw his arms up in disgust. It was clear that this was the tail-end of a discussion started behind Cassimer's back. "You started a war between the five of us and a whole world, and then you handed the enemy the best weapon they'll ever have. She knows us. She knows our names and our faces. She knows where the habitat is and about the array. Hell, she knows about this place. They could be coming for us right now, armed with our secrets. How long do you think it'd take them to make her talk? Not long, I'd wager, though perhaps longer than she'd like."
"Sit down, Florey." He couldn't keep the growl from his voice. Florey was right; wherever Joy was and whatever was being done to her, she was suffering. He knew what enemies did to one another, and honest eyes and a bright smile were never enough to stay a hand set on cruelty. He wasn't the one prolonging her torment, though - the team was. The questions, yes, understandable. He had thousands of his own. But t
his disrespect, this challenge - Florey had to know that this wasn't the time.
The gunner scowled - but then Hopewell put her hand on his arm and whispered an anxious Florey - and he relaxed.
"I'll tell you one thing," Lucklaw said, "when my mother finds out, she'll tear the whole damn government down if she has to."
"No," Cassimer said, and here came the hard bit. The bit where he had to confess to his men that they could do nothing with this newfound truth, that he had taken the comfort blanket from them with nothing to offer in return. "You can't tell your mother, Lucklaw. You can't tell anyone."
The crime demanded justice. The dead demanded vengeance. But this truth was a burden to be endured in silence, a bottled up scream that would grow louder and louder but could never be released.
"If there is an..." Enemy was the word that came to mind, but he couldn't brand the Primaterre such, not yet. Better to opt for neutrality. "If there is a faction capable of controlling our thoughts, to a degree at least, what do you think will happen if you return to Scathach and start running your mouth? You know what would happen. You know what we would do if our mission was jeopardised. Don't think our slavers will be any kinder."
Slavers. So much for neutrality, but the bitterness couldn't be contained. He had to let some of it out or risk cracking. How wide the fractures had grown already. Half of him was churning chaos and the other half calm, focused, ready to move forward. One of these halves was madness, he was sure, but which?
"They'd take the truth from you and replace the lies, or they'd have you killed. One quick command, perhaps sent when you're back in Kirkclair, having dinner with the family. The entire Lucklaw clan, wiped out by demons in the very heart of Mars. That would be a tragedy they could use, don't you think? Your legacy would be propaganda; your life lost because you couldn't keep quiet. Because you thought you could take on an invisible enemy and win."