Slayven slid out of the front door and into the soft darkness of Elysia, shutting the door quietly behind him. The knee-high pink primroses brushed up against his baggy silk pants as the warm breezes blew in from the south and tiny stars shimmered above the atmosphere where meteors streaked past, leaving purple and green trails in their wake.
With a calming sigh, he took the box from under his arm and lifted the hinged lid. Two large polished blue horns sat on a bed of white silk. His horns. The same horns that were taken from him when he was a baby to pay for the crimes of his father. With a simply surgery, they could have been reattached and he would have changed back into the warbringer he was always meant to be.
But that was not what Slayven wanted. He did not want to change.
Through his life of being a slave, of being abused, of being forced to be Kalimis's lover, of being less than dirt in his people's class system, Slayven had emerged stronger. And now that he was thinking and acting on his own without a warbringer dictating every second of his life to him, he had the power to make his own choices. The first one he would make before becoming a father would be to embrace the man he knew he needed to be. Slayven was a man, free from the chains of society, free from the oppression that had weighed down on him since birth, free to live his own life.
With that profound sense of freedom dawning on him, Slayven took both of his horns from the box and threw them away into the Flower Fields, as far as he could. They were gone. The symbols of his slavery, his inadequacies, were gone. He had become his own man without them, and he would welcome a new era of his life just the way he was.
* * *
"I'm warning you, Rav. Don't do this. You know the laws that I've changed. You will be a criminal."
Rav sat across the table in his modest home in a rural province of Elysia with his arm around Leah as he stared down at the new black wedding ring around his finger. Under the black iron chandelier and surrounded by brand new stainless steel appliances, he felt at home in their new kitchen, all painted up with soft blue hues and stocked with wedding presents from Viktor.
It had been a small wedding, without any friends or family. Rav was still not in the right state of mind for anything like that. He had run away from them all for a reason. And that reason was that they reminded him too much of Vance. He had not wanted to face them, to let them see his weakness, to make Ben uncomfortable, and a long list of other reasons.
"Did you hear me, Rav?"
He blinked, looking up at the Frenchman in the tailored purple jacket with the ruffled collar sitting across from him. "Sorry, Tobias. I'm just . . . thinking."
"Did you hear what I said? If you go through with this plan of yours, I cannot grant you leniency of any kind. You may be a war hero, but you are still subject to the same laws and punishments as everyone else in this country. You will be facing life in prison or the death penalty."
"I know." Rav glanced over his shoulder at the emotionless boy sitting in the wooden chair in the corner, simply staring at the wall. "But look at him. This isn't living. He's wasting away in that shell. You had a daughter, Tobias. What if she was in this same position?"
"Then I would do everything I could to help her, no matter what consequences I may face. But you have a new wife to take care of. How will Leah feel if she loses you?"
Leah rubbed his back comfortingly. "I want Rav to do what he feels is right. I will stick by him."
Tobias did not seemed to be convinced. "There are no visitation rights for the prisoners serving life sentences. No phone calls, no letters, nothing. It will be like he died. You get that, don't you? And no getting out early or on parole. And it won't be sitting around watching television all day. You will be sentenced to a life sentence of hard labor in the desert. You don't want that, Rav. Men stronger than you have broken in under a month. These laws carry the maximum sentences available."
"But you're the president. Can't you pardon him?" Leah asked, pushing strands of her red hair behind her ears with her pink polished nails. "He's your friend, your ally."
"I'm afraid not. If I pardon Rav just because I know him, the entire country will be calling for me to pardon others who are guilty of similar crimes, whether they had a meaningful reason to commit them or not. But listen to me, Rav. As the president of Elysia, I forbid you to commit this crime. However, as your friend, I beg you to do this. Give Nemo his life back. It won't be the life he has known, but it will be a new life, a life far away from the pain he's known. Give him this. The choice is ultimately up to you, of course. Just be aware that my agents and I will be monitoring you and ready to arrest you if you do."
Rav dug his knife into the melting butter that sat on top of his untouched baked potato. "Leah, where will you go if I do this? What will become of you if I'm put away for life?"
"I'll meet up with Camille and the others. Maybe they'll have a job for me."
"And you're fine never seeing me again?" Rav asked, the words bitter on his tongue.
"Of course not. I don't want you to go away, Rav. I need you. I love you. But I know that there will always be necessary sacrifices in life in order to do the right thing. I believe that setting Nemo free is the right thing."
Rav watched Tobias opening another bottle of red wine. "We're running out of options here, Tobias. We've taken Nemo to hundreds of different doctors and computer engineers, but no one can isolate the virus without suggesting a full shutdown. The engineers didn't even begin to compare to me skill-wise, so if I can't fix Nemo, they can't either. I don't know what to do. Last night, he woke up from a nightmare, screaming about people hurting him. He clung to me and wouldn't let go. He starting throwing up because he was so upset. I was forced to give him that medicine that turns him into a vegetable just to stop him from screaming. I can't keep doing this."
"Has it gotten any better? Any at all?"
"Not at all. It has gotten so bad that I haven't been sleeping. Leah can tell you. I walk around the house all night, carrying Nemo and trying to console him. I hate giving him his medicine, but he's dangerous to himself without it."
Tobias poured himself a glass of wine then leaned forward to stare across the table at him. "Is there something you're not telling me, Rav? I can generally read people well."
Rav glanced at his wife before dropping his knife and folding his hands to hide his trembling. "A week ago, we had to take Nemo to the emergency room to get eight stitches on his neck."
"Mon Dieu. What happened?"
"He . . . he stabbed himself with a fork. We were eating dinner and he ran in here. He grabbed a fork from the table then shoved it into his throat."
Tobias leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine.
Rav traced the lines on the wooden table with his fingertips. "So, you see why I am considering taking such drastic actions."
"You will be labeled a child killer. Do you know what happens in prison to men who harm children? Hard labor will be the least of your worries. You won't get any special protections."
"I'm aware."
"You have to make sure you're willing to face the consequences for killing your son."
"It's not-"
Tobias interrupted him. "It is, Rav. It is. If you rewrite one line of code, if you remove anything or reset his system, you will be automatically convicted of capital murder of a child. There will be no trial, no way for you to get out of this, because I will be watching. I will know the second you do this. But listen to what I'm saying. I will not have you arrested until after you are finished."
Leah gave a small gasp. "Rav, I don't want to lose you. Those other prisoners will kill you in there."
"I've been thinking about this for a long time, actually. I told Nemo that I would do anything I could to help him. If it means being brutalized and killed in prison, then so be it. I'm doing this, Leah. I have to do it."
"When?" Tobias asked.
"Tonight. At sunset. I know a place Nemo will love to see before the end. I picked it out because it reminds me of some
of his paintings. I want it to be the last thing he sees before he's gone."
* * *
Rav carried his son in his arms across the soft green grass to the edge of a short rocky cliff overlooking the crystal blue waters of a glassy pond. Soft sunlight danced across the sand dunes in the distance and the misty mountain tops on the horizon. He laid Nemo down on a bed of purple violets where the tender grass had been warmed by the sun. Through the chirping of finches in the blackberry bushes and the quiet buzzing of crickets in the wheat fields below them, Rav listened to his son's shallow breathing.
Nemo turned his head to the side and let out a tiny mewling moan as his mint green eyes fluttered open to stare up at his father. "Daddy?"
Choking back tears, Rav ignored the tiny voice as he pulled out a six-inch metal probe with a barbed hook on the end and a small bottle of liquid coolant. He was not supposed to have woken up. Why was he choosing now to come back into reality and speak to him?
"Daddy, where are we?" Nemo sat up and looked around at the oranges and pinks that gilded the bottoms of the fluffy clouds above them. "It's so pretty here. Are we gonna go swimming? You said we would go swimming in the summer."
"Not today, buddy. Not today."
"What are you doing? What's that thing for?"
The probe felt heavy and foreign in Rav's hand as he coated the end with the slippery blue coolant. "I brought you out here because I can't do this anymore. I'm not strong enough to keep watching you go from being perfectly fine, like right now, to being a screaming mess or brain-dead in the corner. I hate knowing that this Nemo is under there, but he's being ripped apart by that virus. You're sick, Nemo. You're terribly sick and there's nothing I or anyone else can do to help you. That's why I brought you out here to make sure you don't hurt anymore."
The boy's glossy eyes grew wide as he tried to crawl away from him. "Are you gonna kill me?"
Rav snatched his arm and held him back down on the grass. "No. No, buddy. I'm not going to kill you. Don't be afraid."
"That's not a normal probe like people put in my ear to put me into rest mode, is it?"
"No, buddy. It's not. It's a . . . it's designed to . . . I can't do this."
"What is it, Daddy?" Nemo asked, his voice quivering. "What are you going to do to me?"
"I'm going to put this in your ear and rip out the chip containing your personality, your memories, your emotions, everything. Then I'm going to insert a new one, one that hasn't been used. It will be blank. Then after it's in place, I will perform a full reboot of your entire system. It won't be a partial reset or like sleep mode. This will be permanent."
"Why? Do you not like the way you built me? Am I a bad computer?"
Rav broke right there. He held his face in his hands as he tried to form words. "No, buddy. You're perfect. You're the best son I could have ever asked for. None of this is your fault, okay? It's not your fault. I'm doing this so you can forget about all the pain, about all the evil things people have done to you. I don't want you to have nightmares. I don't want you to go through life hiding away and buried under the pain of your childhood. I know what it's like to suffer from things that you had no control over. I won't let you be tortured for the rest of your life. That's why I have to do this, Nemo."
"But . . . but then I won't remember all the good stuff. I won't remember Mom. I won't remember my new mommy. I won't remember painting or Viktor or Uncle Vance. I won't . . . I won't remember you! Don't make me forget you, Daddy! I love you!" Nemo lunged at him, burying his face into Rav's t-shirt and soaking it with tears. "I'll be a good boy. I'll be good! I'm sorry. Don't make me forget you!"
Rav held his son against his chest as he picked up the probe once again. "Shh, buddy. It's okay. Everything is going to be okay. I promise. Just close your eyes and hold onto me. I'm doing this for you, for your future. I love you, son."
"Daddy, don't!"
Without another moment's hesitation, Rav plunged the barbed probe into Nemo's left ear and twisted it around until he found what he was looking for. As Nemo screamed, Rav ripped the metal chip from his son's brain. The boy's body instantly went limp and he fell backwards, lifeless into the grass.
Sliding the microchip into his pocket, Rav exchanged it for the new one. He made short work of inserting it and making sure all the connectors were in place, even with his trembling. Once it was securely installed, he took out a larger probe from his back pocket and shoved it into Nemo's ear once again. This time, he kept it there as he sent the reset signal and electrical pulses through the receptors in the artificial brain.
As soon as it was done, he dropped all of his supplies in the grass and stared down at his lifeless son. Everything he had worked for, all his dreams of being a father, all those years of traversing the galaxies to find him . . . it was over. In the end, Rav simply was not strong enough or quick enough to save his son from the horrors of the universe. Nemo Tillman was gone. And in his place was an empty shell, one waiting to finish rebooting into a different person. A blank slate. No memories, no pain, no nightmares. But no happiness, no giggling at two in the morning about cartoons, no enthralling paintings of space, no cuddling up against his father with his plushy spaceship and munching on chicken nuggets. It was gone. It was all gone.
Rav had failed.
"That's enough, Rav. It's time to go."
He stood up with his hands in the air, still sticky with a mixture of blue coolant and his son's blood. Tensing his jaw, he turned around to see the row of black police hovercars and the officers with their guns drawn. He met eyes with Tobias. "Give him to a good family. Please make sure he's cared for. Give him to loving parents who can raise him right and love him. Please just do that. Please."
"Once the reboot is complete and he wakes up, we will be transporting him to a pre-selected guardian. I'm sorry, but that information is confidential. Get one last look at your son, Rav. This is the last time you will ever see him."
Rav blinked through his tears to see the breeze in Nemo's short blond hair. "Goodbye, buddy."
Tobias clapped his hands together. "Rav Tillman, you are hereby under arrest for the murder of Nemo Tillman. Due to the direct witness of the crime and a confession, you are also convicted at this time with no possibility for a trial or an appeal. You are to be immediately transported to the Central Elysia Correctional Facility to begin serving your life sentence."
Rav bowed his head in defeat as the officers surrounded him and his hands were twisted behind his back and secured in handcuffs.
"You have no right to an attorney. You have no right to medical care. You have no right to visitation or to communication with anyone on the outside of the prison. You are to receive a brand on your face indicative of your crime. You will be required to serve a mandatory one year in solitary confinement on half rations, beginning immediately. Does the convicted have anything to say?"
"One thing. Don't make me into a monster. Don't let the media play this up and make me look like a child killer. I loved my son. I did this for him. I never would have hurt him. You know that, Tobias. You know that! I'll go through whatever punishment you have for me, but don't call me a monster!"
"Take him away."
Rav stumbled forward as he was shoved into the back of a hovercar and locked inside in the darkness. The only light came through the heavily tinted window next to him. With his hands bound, he could only reach out to his son's body by placing his face against the bulletproof glass. "Nemo, I love you! I love you!"
An officer shouted at him from the front through the divider. "Shut up back there, or we will subdue you."
Forced into silence, Rav simply stared out at the grassy field and the shimmering water as social workers began tending to Nemo. His breath caught in his chest as the hovercar lurched forward, carrying him away from his son. Just as the hovercar turned down a dirt road and he was about to lose sight of him, Nemo sat up from the ground and he turned towards the line of hovercars with a look of emptiness and confusion in his mint green
eyes.
Rav tore his gaze away and sunk down into the seat, letting the roar of the engine drown out the internal voice that ravaged his mind. All at once, he heard the laughter, the singing, the crying, the screaming, the quiet breathing of his son, of the boy he had ended. Resigned to his fate, his own personal hell of forever reliving those memories with Nemo, Rav closed his eyes and let the hovercar carry him away.
The story continues in The Genesis Sequence: Reboot
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mackenzie Morris writes fantasy and science fiction novels as well as short stories and poetry. She lives in Arkansas with her husband. She has a degree in Creative Writing from Arkansas Tech University.
The Genesis Sequence Books 6-10 Page 65