by Linda Taimre
He paused and looked Lady Trinh. “I know this sounds absurd. But it is based on the best knowledge we have available.”
Lady Trinh raised her eyebrows. “Of course it sounds absurd. But no less absurd than human beings evaporating into nothingness at dusk. Please continue.”
“This knowledge has allowed us to work on theoretical ways to destroy BX59.”
“Theoretical?”
“Yes. I will be clear about this, we have no way to be certain that any of our ideas will ever work in practice. But the Melbourne office has worked hard to eliminate as many variables as possible. I have faith that…” General Doloran closed his brown eyes, his voice trailing off with exhaustion. “Long…”
She could see the truth of his situation, the hopelessness he felt and she was suddenly terrified. If Moorak’s strength was failing, there was precious little hope left. She spoke calmly, soothingly strong and forthright in her reply. “General Doloran. I have no doubt that the theory will hold strong. Let’s fight this together. Let’s destroy BX59.”
Katherine Leandros. I want to feel you now.
The pain in Katherine’s body lessened, enough for her to take a deep, ragged breath. Her heart was beating unnaturally fast, pounding the blood with a force that she had not felt for a long time. She sat upright, her hands resting on her knees lightly. For all the world she cut a picture of calmness, of the quiet moment one takes after waking from a nap. There was no evidence of the creep of fear Katherine felt, no external sign of the adrenaline that was pumping through her veins.
Something had spoken to her. In her. She had felt it, and it made her afraid.
Katherine Leandros.
Katherine yelped, then laughed instinctively at her own undignified noises.
Katherine Leandros why do you laugh?
“Where are you?”
I am inside you. I can hear you. I want to feel you now.
“Who are you?”
I am Joe.
“Joe.”
There was silence. There was nothing she enjoyed about this .Either I’m going crazy, or… There was little alternative she could conceive of.
You are not, from what I can see, crazy, Katherine Leandros.
“Yeah, well, that’s just what a crazy voice in my head would say, wouldn’t it.”
Would it?
“…Yes. I don’t know. Why are you inside me?”
Why? Why. It is where I am drawn to feed. The energy inside you is intense. I want it. I can hear your energy. I now want to feel it.
“Did you say feed?”
Yes.
Katherine slowly, delicately, started moving up and away from the couch, as if that were the source of the voice inside her head. She rubbed her eyes, feeling yawn-tears and brushing them away. I need to comms Harriet.
Harriet thinks of you too.
“What? You can talk to Harriet?” Katherine whipped around in the kitchen, turning to face the fridge, desperate for something external to talk to. How quickly you believe that this thing is real, this thing in your head.
I am real. I am real outside the Earth on Earth. I am not yet inside the Earth on Earth.
“I… don’t know what that means.” There was a silence, a pause, though Katherine now realised it wasn’t silence, it was the time this thing was taking to think. Somewhere nearby, atoms buzzed as electricity shot through them. Katherine could feel the activity in the silence, she could feel the energy in her blood and the rising of the excitement as Joe began to form an answer.
I am. I know I am. I know I am outside the Earth on Earth. That is my place. It is forever. It does not end. But I want to be inside the Earth on Earth. I am so close. The boundary is thin, deteriorated, damaged. It would be so easy, could be so easy to slip through.
“Can you see us from outside the Earth? Can you see inside from the outside?”
No.
“Can you see outside from … inside me?”
Yes. When I am inside you, I am you.
Katherine had a caring streak, a curiosity and empathy that extended to even the most bizarre of creatures. In the back of her mind, she knew that there should be an element of panic about her situation, that most people would be less eager to question the parasite that had taken up residence in their own body. But Katherine couldn’t help it. If she was going to die anyway, she may as well invest all she can in learning and expanding herself rather than running and crying. It was much more fun. So, she started to learn. “Are you just in Australia?”
What is Australia? Wait. I can hear what Australia is. No I am not just in Australia. I am in. The world. All the countries.
“Are you just on Earth? Not other planets?”
Planets. Mars. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn. Neptune. Uranus. Pluto. Not Pluto. No I am not on other planets. I am on Earth. Earth has a broken atmosphere, it is easy to enter. And Earth has what I need.
“So the planet Earth has a … separate zone. An area. That you live in.”
Yes.
“Is it close to us?”
Yes.
“Is it close to everyone or just to us?”
It is close to everyone.
“Does anyone else live there?”
Again Katherine heard the silence as a thinking pause. The answer came slowly.
No one else lives here. No one else ever has. No one else ever will.
“Are you lonely?”
I am alone.
She paused. She took her hair and tied it up in a ponytail, relieving her neck of the heat and sweat.
“So what do you feed on?”
Your thoughts.
“Are you feeding right now?”
No. There is preparation to be done first. I can sense them but I do not need them yet, so I am waiting.
Maybe kind of like us smelling food, Katherine thought to herself.
Yes. That is a parallel that can be drawn.
“Okay, that’s creepy. Don’t do that.”
Do what?
“Answer my thoughts! I don’t mind you talking to me if I talk but not if I … think.”
Talk. Think. I do not understand. Talk think. Talk think. There are different humans who talk differently. But you all think the same. I can hear that. I can hear that now.
“Does it seem the same to you? How interesting. So, sorry to keep coming back to this, but I’m sure you can understand that it is of some interest to me personally: when are you going to feed?”
Soon. I shall need to feed soon.
“And will you feed on me?”
Perhaps.
“Okay.” Katherine took a few steps aimlessly. “Okay. What will happen to me then?”
I will feed on your thoughts. And then on your body. And then you will be me and you will be with me outside the Earth and I will become more inside the Earth.
“Okay I gotta tell you, Joe, that doesn’t sound too great for me.” Silence followed Katherine’s quip. “I wasn’t kidding.”
I can hear that you were not kidding. Why is this not great for you?
He doesn’t understand. He seems to really not get it. Katherine frowned slightly and stretched out her hands absently.
She. I am a she.
The deliberate precision made Katherine grin. “What did I say about answering my thoughts?”
It is not easy for me to know the difference. Both are vibrations. I shall try harder.
“Thank you. Now, what can I tell you? When you feed on people, when you feed on me, it causes pain. It hurts us, greatly. And then when we are taken, when our bodies are gone, it causes pain to those who love us.”
Love. Harriet Braxton loves you, Katherine Leandros.
With a rushed gasp, Katherine felt tears stream down her cheeks. There was something unbearable about the thought of Harriet at that moment. The reality of being parted from her hit her in a wave of terror and melancholy, the most profound sadness that she had ever felt.
Katherine Leandros! Your thoughts are soft, low, slow, blue, down, d
ark, you are in pain. Do you not want Harriet Braxton to love you?
“No, Joe, no, it’s not that. Love is the best thing and the worst thing in the world.”
What does that mean?
Laughing and sniffing to stop her nose from running, Katherine blurted out, “I have no idea really. I just said it because it sounds like something people would say.”
This pain you thought of, Katherine Leandros. Is it bad like this pain of love?
“Is that the only pain you have heard, or felt, before?”
No. I think. I think I heard other pain before. I wasn’t sure what it was. I didn’t know it was. Like this. I have felt scared before. It is like that feeling, but bigger, sharper, harder. I do not like it. I could not hear it clearly. Now I can hear it. I can feel it.
“How quickly have you been changing?”
I do not know. I have not been alone for very long. I have not been alive for very long.
“So you began with The Fading?”
I have heard this thought before. Yes. I am what is known as The Fading. But I am not The Fading, I am Joe.
For a moment, Katherine’s professional, GrowForth-self rose above the pain and the depression and the weirdness and started to connect the nuggets of information. The first recorded case of The Fading was about six months ago, but she’s already grown so much. Perhaps because she can focus on the consciousness only, she does not need to spend any energy on a body? Katherine absentmindedly looked for an infoslide to jot notes down to help her understand the puzzle in front of her.
It is that, yes, Katherine Leandros. I become older with each feeding.
“So every time you feed you gain an entire person’s consciousness. There is so much within that brain already that you can subsume without needing to experience it yourself.”
The body also.
Katherine’s hand tensed mid-note. “The body also. Why do you take the body?”
I need it.
“But you feed on thoughts.”
Yes. There are thoughts within the body.
Katherine stared blankly at her infoslide, trying to understand.
Katherine Leandros, there are thoughts within your body. Your body has experienced much. It has urges. Instincts. It has so much to teach me, so much to feed me. It is nourishing, satisfying, it makes me complete. And.
Joe stopped thoughtspeaking abruptly. Katherine waited, hand poised to make more notes.
“…And?”
No.
“No what?”
No I will not say.
“Won’t say what, Joe? Okay. Why won’t you say it?”
I am afraid. I am afraid.
“Of what?”
I am afraid it will not be true.
Katherine understood. A quintessentially human experience: fear of naming the thing you most desire lest it is out of your reach, lest it is embarrassing, lest the attempt to gain it fails and you are left with nothing. “Joe. I have felt that before. That is a fear that will pass the moment you tell me. Tell me what it is you want.”
She searched the silence for an emotion, a hint of Joe’s inner workings. Katherine now thought she could feel Joe inside her mind, like a strong memory, like the smell of someone you have known for 15 years. Though that could just be me creating a face out of a faceless entity.
Katherine Leandros. The bodies. I need the bodies because they will make me mine.
“Your… body?”
My body. Your bodies will make my body and I will then live inside the Earth on Earth.
“You will live here?”
I will live inside the Earth on Earth. And I will not be alone.
Katherine sighed as she pushed the infoslide across the bench. She shook her head. Sometimes, Katherine, you can be too kind. “You understand, Joe, that your body will come at the price of an immense amount of human suffering? You will cause pain again, and again, and again, not just to your … food, but to the humans who love them, the humans who surround the ones you take.”
Pain.
“Yes, pain. Emotional. Physical. You’ve already caused me pain, and plenty of it.”
Katherine Leandros I have caused you pain. I have hurt you.
There seemed to be a genuine note of distress in Joe’s thoughtvoice, an edge to the slow vibration that surrounded Katherine’s brain.
“Yes. You have caused me pain. And you have caused Harriet pain too.”
Harriet Braxton.
“Yes.”
I do not want to cause you pain.
“You don’t?”
I do not want to cause you pain. You feel differently to me.
Katherine let go of a breath that she only then realised she had been holding. She patted the kitchen bench gently, then turned to find her communicator. “Thank you, Joe.” I’ve got to call Harriet now, this conversation – if you can call it that – has been extraordinary.
Why do you thank me?
“Because you said you won’t cause me pain. That is a relief, Joe, that is something that makes humans happy, the absence of pain.”
I did not say that.
Katherine stopped mid-stride to the bedroom, letting her hands fall from her head where she had been adjusting her unwashed hair. She thought frantically, then hesitated to respond. “What did you say, Joe?”
I said I do not want to cause you pain.
Fear creeping back into the corners of her mind, Katherine had a sudden image of the shrug of a gangster’s shoulders, the lift of the hands, the deferral of responsibility with a genuinely sad tinge in the voice.
“But you will.”
I have to.
An inescapable wave of horrific nausea gripped Katherine, her insides revolting against the tugging of her cells. She fell to the floor, gasping, retching, clutching at her throat and fighting to breathe. She saw stars, and the stretching of the walls as they extended out into eternity, revealing an endless space in which she had no weight beyond her tiny, tiny mind.
Be calm, Katherine Leandros. This will be better for you, better for me, if you are calm.
Katherine staggered towards the bedroom, then turned, remembering the gun on the couch, half pulling herself with her arms, half falling over her own legs with each searing stab that ran through her limbs.
Stop. Please stop Katherine Leandros. I can hear you screaming.
Laid low by an almost-physical blow to her left side, Katherine fell to the floor with the wind knocked out of her. She pressed her hands to the walls on either side of the corridor, trying to stabilise herself, trying to give herself a point to hold onto throughout the madness of her brain, the overwhelming amount of white-hot pain that was burning each cell as Joe started to grab hold and tighten her grip.
Katherine Leandros. I can hear you. Please stop.
I can’t stop, but you can stop Joe, you can stop this.
Katherine Leandros I must feed on you, I must feed on your body. Yours is a rich life, I can hear it. It will help me. I must have you for my body.
Scratchily screaming through tense vocal cords, Katherine tore at the walls with bloody, tightened fingers. There was no sound coming out of her, such was the pain that it took her breath away, almost stopped her heart. Something enormous was coming for her, rushing towards her from a vast nothing, consuming her, burning her neurons.
Katherine Leandros please stop I can hear your hatred, your darkness in your mind. Please stop.
Fuck you Joe fuck you fuck you fuck you
No please stop Katherine Leandros .
Don’t say my name while you kill me
I am not killing you Katherine Leandros I am embracing you, you will be alive with me. Please stop screaming in your mind.
Katherine’s heart felt a sudden stabbing that would have made her pass out if Joe wasn’t keeping her awake. Katherine’s fear was complete, overwhelming. She couldn’t think of Joe any longer, she couldn’t think of her own existence, all she could think of was the nightmare, this nightmare, and Harriet. Harr
iet, come home, come home come home come home.
Harriet Braxton.
“What?” Harriet’s hands gripped the steering wheel.
Katherine Leandros is calling for you. She is asking you to come home. Please Harriet Braxton, come home. Katherine Leandros is screaming and I want her to stop.
Harriet shuddered and gasped in air as tears filled her eyes instantly, blurring her vision. With trembling fingers she brushed them away, trying to focus on the road so that she didn’t kill Kiah and Leena. Kiah put her hand on Harriet’s knee.
“Harriet what is it? What is she saying to you?”
“The monster is hurting Katherine, she says Katherine is screaming and that she wants, she wants me to come home. Stop hurting her, stop it do you hear me?!”
I hear you, Harriet Braxton. I cannot stop. I must have her, she is rich in nourishment.
“Take someone else, anyone else, please stop, just stop, just stop!”
I cannot stop now.
Harriet veered wildly to the left, pushing her foot down with little thought to the other drivers. Leena held the door but didn’t say anything. Harriet breathed heavily, helpless and angry. Her eyes focused on the road ahead, which gently followed the curve of the groggy river outside the protectorate. There was little beauty left in it, any trees were withered and brown, decaying in the filthy air.
“Joe.”
Yes, Harriet Braxton.
“If you won’t stop –”
I cannot stop.
“If you can’t stop. Can you make it go quicker?”
Kiah looked at Harriet. “But we’re so close, Harriet.”
“She’s in pain, Kiah, Joe said that she is screaming. I can’t let her be like that.” Harriet looked briefly at Kiah. The helplessness was shining through her tears, there was nothing that Harriet wanted more than to be next to Katherine, holding her, stroking her beautiful hair and kissing her face, touching each tear and healing with each caress. But her need to touch Katherine was overshadowed, infinitely overshadowed, by her inability to have her in pain. She would protect her fully, finally.