The Church of the Transhuman

by Joe Plus

  “Odd though the customs of the Pyreneans are,” she said, “or farther north, Great Britain perhaps where they have the best astrologers, or farther east, from the Levant perhaps, although they tend to be a bit less inclined to travel nowadays.”

  Eventually after all the dragging and nattering they reached the room where they had been sleeping earlier.

  “Just toss body on the bones under the tree,” said Gideon.

  In the firelight John glanced at the paintings on the wall; one a spiral pattern topped by a crescent of dots, the crescent turned upward like the horns of a bull. John pulled the body to the pole in the center of the room and saw the tangled mess of Tele’s three bodies. John sat down next to the bodies and warmed himself by the fire. Being surrounded by dead cadaver’s from when he was a child he felt no nausea when confronted with blood and death. He was accustomed to the sight of decomposing bodies; all part-and-parcel of his father’s grand resurrection plan.

  “The dead shall indeed walk the earth thanks to CoT+ technology,” said Bob during a sermon, and John would overlook the sea of seated angels in their white outfits and hoods, hiding a multitude of mutilations, scars and cruel illnesses, and he would wonder what sort of resurrection this would be. Would it be lab grown, seeded body parts to satisfy the vain cravings of a mad Transhumanist?

  “When I die, burn me the way the Romans did, on a pyre,” John had once said to his mother while she tucked him into bed.

  “My darling, if you die, I promise to give you everything you need. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  He had stared into her chocolate drop eyes and guessed her next move. He had to be careful, he wanted to keep all his parts and not end up chopped and changed and apportioned around from lab to lab.

  “Death no longer exists for us. We in the CoT+, one day we will live forever.”

  “One day,” he said, and he puffed out his cheeks.

  Chapter 41

  Scrunch walked along the corridor, stopping at each security gate. He was forced to pause - stop his flow before the doors opened - and it irked him every time. There was no such delay for the other scientists and lab technicians. The doors opened immediately for them, with their heads down and their eyes at their feet as they milled about, unaware and unconcerned. He had noticed the delay ever since the rollout of the access control update.

  Why hasn’t the helpdesk dealt with the problem I submitted? When was it? Last year sometime? he thought.

  He was agitated because Augusta’s expedition subvoxes had disturbed him. He muttered along his stop-start journey. He paused, plodded a bit, paused, plodded some more, paused. There was a minor commotion and he looked jealously at one of his direct reports being chased by a shoal of junior lab staff.

  Pilot fish, he thought, and continued to grumble until he eventually made it to Roach’s lab. Roach was as close to a pilot fish as Scrunch would get, being reasonably deferential – though not grovelingly so.

  It was a Biosafety level 2 laboratory, so no one entered unless appropriately attired. Scrunch tightened up, his hypochondria made it difficult for him to concentrate on anything other than imagined diseases. A receptionist ushered him through to a changing room where the simple one-piece suits, hairnets, shoe covers, and disposable paper masks were provided. He completed putting on his suit, including hairnet, and saw through the panes into the lab that no one was wearing a mask today so he would look foolish putting one on. He took from his pocket a small tin of menthol deodorant and wiped some onto his philtrum. He signaled to a lab technician that he wanted to enter the lab, and she nodded and operated a control panel. A door to a lock slid open. Scrunch stepped into the small airlock and the door closed behind. There was a minor adjustment in air pressure and the door to the lab opened.

  “Hi, where’s Dr. Raacher?” he said to a young, rosy-cheeked lab technician.

  She pointed to a far off corner where Roach was sitting at a terminal surrounded by a curved aquarium.

  Scrunch walked over to Roach and called out: “Hey Roach, how is it going?”

  Roach raised his frame of spindly arm and leg and curved spine, a hunched arch supporting narrow rounded shoulders and a huge balding head, and turned his gaze and grinned.

  “Come and take a look at this,” he said, “aren’t they marvelous?”

  “What are you working on now?” said Scrunch, taking a cheap plastic chair from a vacant desk and looking at the monitor. To Roach’s left sat three completed Rubik’s cubes in a plate, one of which was a miniature. Scrunch gave Roach a quizzical expression.

  “No, in the tank,” said Roach.

  “Oh. The squid,” said Scrunch with indifference. “Great, but I want to talk to you about the DNA tests.”

  “No not squid, Octopuses, and they are quite remarkable.”

  Scrunch suppressed a sigh.

  “Go on then,” he said.

  Roach pointed to one sitting in a shell.

  “That one’s Kelly. She’s an amphioctopus marginatus, or more commonly, a coconut octopus; a clever thing. Only the other day she escaped into that tank over there and ate all our bait.”

  He pointed to another tank occupied by a single Octopus, yellow with blue and black rings.

  “And that’s Smurfie, a Blue-ring, quite a beauty and also very, very smart. She’s poisonous enough to kill a human. Like Kelly she has modified DNA, but Smurfie can solve a scrambled Rubik’s cube. Want to see?”

  “How long’s it take?”

  “Oh. A minute or two.”

  Scrunch scratched his head and said: “O.K.”

  Roach took the smaller cube from his desk and spent a good half-minute rearranging the colors and then, when satisfied, stood, lifted the aquarium lid and casually plopped the cube into the water. Immediately Smurfie swam over and grabbed it during its rebound from the bottom. A tangle of blue-ringed skirt and tentacles and a flash of bright colors swirled for a good minute until Smurfie nonchalantly tossed the completed cube onto a rock.

  “Good lord, sixty-five seconds, fastest time yet. You deserve a treat for that young lady,” said Roach, and he threw a dry looking piece of fish into the tank, which Smurfie took and ate. Kelly coconut octopus leapt from her shell and attacked the glass.

  “Ooh, someone’s a bit jealous,” he said.

  Roach took another cube and made a simple rearrangement and said: “Come on, doughnut brain, give it a try.”

  He passed it through a lockable sliding hatch and let it fall into the tank.

  “She’s not so good, she needs time. Something I intend to give her, or at least her modified clones.”

  “Oh? Modified clones? An oxymoron,” said Scrunch.

  Roach pulled a grimace: “A figure of speech, an abuse of language, everyone gets the sense. During preparation of a clone you make genetic modifications. Simple. Now, to test the octopus’s potential for learning, we must ensure they live longer than the usual one or two years. Sex is the big killer for the octopus. Once they breed the male dies soon afterwards, and once the female lays her eggs, she too dies. Those that never breed are fortunate if they live to two, rarely three years. I am trying to change all of that.”

  “Hmm yes. Mother nature can be incredibly wasteful,” said Scrunch. “Just a few years you say?”

  “Give or take a few months,” said Roach, cautiously.

  Roach did not like too much interference in his research, and Scrunch had given him carte blanche. Roach was aware he had to give some tidbits in return; Scrunch was known to toss aside favorites of the court like fishermen’s chum.

  “Well,” interrupted Scrunch, “our priorities are with the Borneo data, so please keep that in mind. I can tolerate these cephalopod projects of yours, so long as it has some real benefit and is not detrimental to the pipeline.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. This is part of my playtime. I am interested in the possible link between analytical intelligence and Autism. Let’s go into the Crick room shall we.”


  Roach had mild Asperger’s and was obsessed with finding the cause, if not a cure – he didn’t really want a cure, just a sense of closer. Scrunch tolerated the odd diversion or two – up to a point. The problem with an intelligent Asperger’s sufferer like Roach was no matter what was going on around him or whatever the current direction required by the CoT+ ministry, he would continue single-mindedly with his obsession, and that obstinate behavior needed tough management.

  Roach took a workpad from his drawer and led the way. They walked past various laboratory instruments that stirred, burned, pipetted, and spun away, until they entered a small meeting room at the end of the lab. It was a bare room with a strip light overhead, one table and six easy chairs. For some reason the ventilation system was not working and Scrunch was soon beginning to yawn. Roach started up a presentation, and began. Within minutes Scrunch was both stunned and more excited than he had ever been in his life. It was immediately clear that the Borneo expedition had been a success, a new species of human had indeed been confirmed, an aquatic human, and this species shared with us the same ancestor from a mere half a million years ago.

  “They are able to stay under water for up to 15 minutes – at a push, and have adapted in other ways,” Roach explained. “Their eyes have evolved so that they adjust for water and land vision. In fact they have better eyesight than our species above the water line, as well as below. And they have better hearing, greater physical strength, can run faster, have tougher skin, better resistance to various diseases ,and so on.”

  “Amazing,” said Scrunch.

  “Indeed it is. The list of possible enhancements to our own species is huge.”

  Roach continued, describing how, like us, they had forty-six chromosomes, with X and Y sex chromosomes.

  “But the divergence, although relatively recent, was so dramatic it is clear the two species are sexually incompatible. With divergent species you might obtain sterile offspring. You know, Ligers and Tigons, Mules, that sort of thing. Even with differing numbers of chromosomes hybridization can, on the rare occasion, be possible, but there are other factors that indicate incompatibility, zygosity for instance. The differences are more like those between a chimp and a Gorilla, or a Lion and a Tiger, than say a Common Chimp and a Bonobo. As a consequence of reproductive isolation on the Island of Borneo, speciation has resulted to such a dramatic extent that in my opinion we are incompatible with these aquatic humanoids.”

  “O.K, so?” said Scrunch.

  Roach pursed his lips and said: “Interordinal hybridization between different taxa is routinely accomplished in the laboratory, even on a production level scale. DNA are selectively shared and have been for decades between many other species,” he lifted his arms histrionically and smiled, “and perhaps this has already taken place. But in the wild? Not possible. The offspring will either be dead or sterile, and even dead or sterile offspring are unlikely. But I don’t know what goes on in this organization. Nobody tells me anything.”

  Scrunch laughed and said: “You know everything you need to know. You ask and I give you what you want.”

  “You are indeed a perfect source of complete information,” said Roach with a frown and a tight smile.

  He continued his presentation with a list of benefits that included enhanced memory, the elimination of skin cancer, a heightened orgasm and, finally, a poorly conceived cost-benefit analysis of numerous projects that Roach thought would constitute a program road map for the next five years.

  “It’s a cherry tree loaded with fruit ripe for the picking,” said Roach.

  Scrunch laughed at business case after business case for each possible benefit, the outcomes ridiculously speculative, the cost for each more so.

  “There is one other strange trait, one that needs further investigation, and it is linked to memory. It’s got to do with the way memory is stored.”

  “Keep at it. Could be useful,” said Scrunch.

  “Just think of it,” said Roach, “the benefits to mankind will be spectacular. Induced evolution could go into overdrive.”

  “Maybe,” said Scrunch, “It needs further investigation.”

  They continued to throw around ideas; possible benefits from identified traits and means of approach, until Scrunch stood to leave for his next meeting. The two walked to the lab exit, chatting excitedly.

  “The world’s your oyster Roach, and you must definitely test with hybrids. You tell me what you want and I’ll buy it, just for you.”

  “Hmm, to create some hybrids, now, what would I need?” said Roach.

  Scrunch got a call from the head of the Reticulum.

  “A minute,” he said to Roach.

  Malcolm’s men had spotted a possible location of the Ang during a flight.

  “All those drone hunts and in the end we accidentally stumble on them,” said Scrunch irritably.

  “Perhaps you will get your women back,” said Roach.

  “Yes,” said Scrunch, “and what a tale they will have to tell.”

  Chapter 42

  John turned from the reeking pile to go outside for some fresh air. He was hungry and could think only of food, in particular a large slice of bread with a chunk of cheese and pickles. His stomach growled while he exited the passage onto the white spiral path. Nelli skipped along by his side.

  As they wandered past the throng John said: “These Neanderthals are much more sophisticated than I expected.”

  “Because you don’t keep up with the latest archeological findings. They farm, they herd, they mine, and they build. They are the Basajuan of the Pyrenees and the Trollen of Northern Europe.”

  “Right,” he said.

  They continued on silently until they joined a huddle of priestesses chattering excitedly. John listened to their conversation and soon understood that they were discussing the attack earlier. What they were most interested in was the gun. The high priestess turned to Jimmy who was sitting on a branch overhanging the altar and said: “Perhaps you can explain to us the magic this imp possesses and why did you not warn us of it?”

  “Well, I was not aware that he had been granted such power. Am I the Goddess?”

  “But you sit on her shoulder, she whispers to you ear, you hear her thoughts, yes? And you said that this imp, this sickly, slovenly imp, fulfilled the role well enough for our needs, true or not? Well, your claims seem vindicated to me, but I did have my doubts initially. Such an odd, weak looking fellow.”

  “Hey, I’m right here guys,” said John.

  “Yes, but,” Jimmy paused, “Gideon and Tele are more familiar with him, in his world that is. Why don’t you ask them,” and he flapped his wings nervously.

  “Where are those two?” said the priestess, “fooling around I suppose. Nelli, ahh you are here, behaving yourself for a change. Please would you get the two lads, at once – chop-chop.”

  Nelli turned and ran back down the spiral path and into the hill doorway. The air was beginning to chill again and a north wind began to blow.

  “Hope the sky stays clear,” said a young priestess.

  “Oh it will be, I prayed for lovely weather,” said another.

  The high priestess remained silent and gestured toward a log.

  “Goodness me,” she said as she was assisted to sit. She descended carefully, placing one hand on a priestess’s shoulder, and her other on the small of her back. “That’s better. More people will be arriving soon and we still have a lot of preparations.”

  “What if the invaders come back tonight?” said a priestess.

  The high priestess did not respond. She smiled broadly at Tele and Gideon when they raced up.

  “My boys, good to see you again.”

  She indicated that they sit at her feet.

  “Tell me, who is this graceless imp, and why is he here?”

  “Great Mother, forgive us for not having introduced our dear friend John Blessing,”

  “John who?”

  “John Blessing, he is the answer to your pray
ers, the one whom the Goddess promised she would snare in order that he might serve you.”

  The priestess’s eyes widened and she sat up bolt upright.

  “Sorry, which prayers were they again?”

  “The prayers you made last year around spring time, when the postulants were kidnapped while gathering in the forest.”

  “Ah yes, now I remember. Terrible, terrible,” and looking perplexed she said, “and so cruel, so unnecessarily cruel”

  She frowned and looked at John.

  “And he has a special power I see. Moon power too, fires bolts from his hand, that is what they tell me. Can anyone show me the one killed in this way?”

  Tele volunteered to run back for the corpse. In the cold wind there was the chatter of the crows and the faint murmurings of a gathering crowd at the foot of the hill. They all stood quietly and waited until Tele returned with the body over his shoulder, the man's hands clasped between Tele’s sharp teeth. He dumped the corpse face down at the feet of the priestess and she leaned over and turned him over to inspect his face. She placed her finger into the bullet hole and muttered. She looked again at the damage to the back of his head where the exit wound left a torn space the size of small apple. She pressed the spongy bloodied hair; bone and blood seeped out.

  “Nasty,” she said, “but most definitely the power of the Goddess.”

  She turned to John and summoned him over to her side. She took his hands and looked into his eyes. He was surprised by the strength of her grip.

  “You look a little like them,” she said gesturing to the corpse, “with your thin nose and round ears. How long have you communed with our lady? Hey? Tell me about your relationship with her.”

  John tried to speak but could not think of what to say. Then he said: “I shot the guy. Sorry, I have no idea who your lady is…”