Dark Designs

by Flowers, Thomas S.

  Anyhoo, this all meant that I rapidly became the go-to guy for intel on certain weird forms of sorcery, as described by old Abdul. I was paid an obscene amount of money for the work I was doing, but I had to earn every penny. To be honest, I couldn't see why it was so important to national security. At least, not then. I later found out it had started some years back, with a CIA report, apparently.

  During the “War On Terror,” some grunt-level researcher in a hidden-intelligence division noticed the Necronomicon was originally translated from Arabic. Well, duh...

  It was written by a man who was theoretically a Muslim (to about the same extent that a McDonald's burger is Scottish) so someone with a buzz-cut figured the Kitab al-Azif might be used by fanatical Islamist terrorists to mount an attack on the West, by channelling a multi-dimensional entity. I thought the whole idea was a crock of squid-crap. My arguments were lost on Homeland Security.

  The way I saw it was this. No matter how suicidally fanatic, devout Muslims weren't going to go around summoning Great Old Ones or praying to Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. Even if their interpretations of the Koran were as mad as a box full of Deep Ones, they did still believe in Allah and not, for example, Shub-Niggurath. I argued that it was like saying “The name 'Lucifer' comes from Latin. The Roman Catholics use a lot of Latin... So that means there may be devil-worshipping secret Satanic societies hiding in the Vatican, pretending to be part of the church.” When I pointed this out, my new “employers” laughed at me. How was I to know there really are Satanic orders hiding within the Vatican? My supervisor could have told me rather than just sniggering. And if I'd realized then that half the leaders of Islamist terror cells had been possessed by the beings known as The Lesser Empty Ones (so were no longer technically human, let alone Muslim) things would of course have been different.

  But hey, we all live and learn, huh?

  Well, maybe not all of us. Just those that are still broadly not dead and who haven't been driven insane, with the learning-centres of our brains irrevocably burnt-out by sights never meant for the gaze of mortal man... It happens more often than you'd think, in certain departments.

  Anyway, I was tasked with making a completely fresh translation of the Kitab al-Azif (AKA “The Necronomicon”). My pay-masters felt that the classic Greek, Latin, Mandarin, Old Norse, and Sanskrit translations of the book all had some serious flaws. Not that this should surprise anyone. Medieval Arabic isn't the easiest language to translate. Especially not when written as cryptic poetry. And poetry that was composed—here we get to an important point—by a man who was stark raving mad.

  MAD. M. A. D. MAD!

  I don't think this point can be stressed strongly enough...

  I wasn't trying to translate directions to the local supermarket, you know? It was more like reading through the debased Arabic of Abdul Alhazred and then trying to produce English descriptions of how frozen purple smells when it is turned inside out, twice, backwards.

  And I had to translate it well enough not just to impress a bunch of professors, but so that it could be relied upon to be accurate if “deployed in the field.” Now tell me I didn't deserve the money...

  But it was an interesting job and I was mostly left alone to live on campus at the University, study endlessly in the Library and get on with my work in peace. Until the day I was asked to come in to “head-office.”

  I was given a grand tour of the facility. I know they didn't show me everything. Not even close. And that's really worrying when I think about it–so I don't. I drink and take Rohypnol instead.

  Given the things they did show me, I don't want to imagine what they keep in the 17 levels below the building. Don't ask. And don't forget what I said about the cellar.

  What I saw there that day was terrible, despite all the mental shielding that's in place. People use expressions like “It nearly took my breath away” and “It almost blew my mind” all the time, without thinking what they literally mean.

  One section was doing DNA research. Once-upon-a-time that might have been unusual but these days everyone's at it. Give it a couple of years and you'll probably be able to buy a “Junior Gene-Splicing Kit” at Toys R Us for fhtagn's sake. Even so, the type of research I saw was, something else.

  They'd cracked triple-helix mutation a decade ago. All it required was molecular re-bonding with mixed reptilian-mammalian DNA, spliced with samples dredged up from the depths of the Atlantic, then transcoding it at a sub-quantum level. Or something like that. I was never much good at science.

  I've since developed a suspicion that some of the experimental subjects they used are still around, down on level nine. But I'd rather not know for sure. Just in case what's really down there is worse...

  I'd found all this a bit unnerving but then they showed me the current research. Fortunately I hadn't had time for breakfast, so it was mostly coffee I vomited across the lab. No one seemed to mind. They were used to it. It happened all the time.

  I remember the computer model of the DNA sequence they were working on. I'm hazy about the rest. I think my mind is sensibly trying to suppress the memories of what I saw later. At first I thought it was a double helix on the screen. Then I realized that it wasn't made up of two twisting spiral strands, the way DNA is usually shown. This was a single line, twisted over and over again, joined to itself like a Möbius strip, with no beginning or end. Even as a computer model, I couldn't look without my stomach churning. It was eternally moving, turning inside and out as though both consuming and creating itself. I couldn't think of it in scientific terms. I kept remembering myths...

  ...the Phoenix bursting into flames and leaving behind an egg which hatched into a Phoenix which burst into flames... Or the Ouroboros, the great snake, devouring its own tail... wrapping itself around and around and around the earth... like Jörmungandr the Midgard serpent, that terrible wyrm that waits within the depths of the ocean, until the end of the world, when it will rise to herald Ragnarök...

  I'd probably have been OK if they'd stopped the tour then. But, like the idiot I am, I asked what would have DNA like that? And the damned sadists took me to the secure section to show me.

  The bastards. The complete and utter bastards.

  It was something they were working on for the military. Naturally.

  I can't describe it. Not really. I've done my best to mentally bleach and scrub my mind free of what I saw, but I'm kidding myself. I'll never be able to forget it. Fortunately I was too busy heaving up caffeine and bile to get a good look, so mostly I remember it as an opening. It was clearly organic. It was floating in mid-air.

  I suppose you could call it a mouth, but it might have been a vagina or an anus. Or all three.

  It was an orifice. A hole. A hole in our world. Or a hole into our world.

  It seemed to be simultaneously consuming and producing itself, all through this single orifice. It was like it was devouring itself, fucking itself, giving birth to itself, shitting itself out and sucking itself back into a void, all at once. The cycles of creation and destruction had gone mad – there was no difference between them, not even a way of separating them into opposite parts.

  The whole thing hovered there, vomiting and swallowing and birthing and excreting itself in and out of existence. Again and yet again, in a twisted cycle that had no beginning and no end.

  That was when I passed out.

  It was obvious to anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size that I needed to recover. I sat quietly and talked to someone from R&D.

  She was probably trying to be nice to me, telling me how they used computers to do the number-crunching on most of their projects. Not because they were necessary from a mathematical-modelling perspective, but to avoid humans having to think about the concepts in too much detail. Apparently, when this was first introduced, it halved the suicide rate in the lab. I didn't find that reassuring.

  They replace the computers on a weekly basis – something about having to avoid a meltdown and getting the processor
s exorcised – but that's a lot better than what happens to a human brain when it thinks about all this for too long.

  Then I did something really stupid. I asked a question. Just to be polite, I said, “What are you working on?”

  And she went right ahead and told me. The heartless bitch just told me. Never mind the risk to my sanity. I wondered later if it was a reverse psychology approach to security? On day one they let you ask any question you want and they'll give you a full and honest answer, because that way they'll be sure you'll never want to find out anything else ever again.

  She sat there, all hair and smiles, telling me how most of the known ODEs (that's Other Dimensional Entities) exist in more dimensions than ours. They can't be measured just by height and width and depth, you need (according to latest estimates) at least nineteen dimensions in order to begin to comprehend them.

  Still smiling at me, she told me that she was involved in the other end of research. Most of the threats we'd encountered came from EDEs (Extra Dimensional Entities). Someone had the idea to try and contact their opposites to see if we could form an alliance. I wondered what the hell she meant by “opposites.” Before I could stop her, she told me. Entities that exist in fewer dimensions than we do. So far, they'd got “as far as making initial contact with a being that exists in at least nine dimensions less than ours.”

  My first thought was, What, in the name of Yyu-Chorazatep, the Gibbering Lord of the Burning Mist, do you mean it exists in nine dimensions less than we do? Are you saying it exists in minus-six dimensions? That it possesses a negative-number of dimensions? What the hell does it look like?

  Then my self-preservation instinct started screaming,

  NO! DON'T ASK!

  DON'T TELL ME!

  For Fuck's Sake, please, please—DO NOT SHOW ME!!!

  That was when I knew that there are not only things I don't want to know but which no amount of money could persuade me think about.

  As the day wore on, I realized they'd brought me in specifically to show me first-hand some of the things my work was dealing with.

  We “specialists”—whether geneticists, quantum-physicists or non-scientific types like myself—were all here using our expertise to try to cope with things that humans were never meant to understand. I recognized several faces I knew from the Miskatonic University Library, and others still I'd seen around campus. None of us were smiling.

  We were here not from a burning scientific curiosity (well, at least not in my case), nor from a sense of patriotism (ditto), or greed (well...) but basically because we wanted to carry on living.

  At least I did and I suspect the others felt the same. We all knew that there was nowhere you could run that was ever going to be far enough away to be safe.

  Eventually I was introduced to my Bosses. They wanted me to use my knowledge of the Kitab al-Azif for something specific. I didn't ask any questions. I didn't want to know anything I didn't need to know.

  They told me that their idea was to create a way of protecting a person from possession by an ODE. The idea was that I, using my knowledge of the Al Azif, should come up with something—a sigil for example—to protect a person from possession.

  That basic idea had been around for ages of course. And I do mean ages. Millennia in fact. It's also why so many police departments still have pentagrams on their badges. And why the United States has the Great Seal with the Eye in the Pyramid on its currency (to protect the money supply).

  But they wanted to take this a stage further. Physical objects used as talismans come with a weakness. It is always possible to steal someone's ID card, remove a ring, even erase a tattoo. It was harder, though not impossible, to find a subcutaneous microchip implanted in a subject, even one encoded with ritual enchantments (now you know what ID chips are really for... well, part of what they're for).

  But the real game-changer was the development of nanomancy. You can thank Miskatonic University for much of the pioneering work on that too. It's now possible to use pre-programmed nanites to re-encode specific strands of DNA to do pretty much anything you like—in this case to protect against possession. Not even an ODE can take over someone whose DNA has been rewritten to guard against it.

  Of course, when they told me about all this, it was presented to me as being a defensive measure. It was sweet really. I think they were worried I might have had moral qualms if they'd told me how this project got started...

  Do you remember when all the kids were playing with insects with remote controls wired into their brains? Little cyborg-cockroaches, flitting about the place, scaring the crap out of grandmothers?

  The military applications were obvious. Targeted plagues of locusts that could decimate an enemy's crops. Inexpensive insects used to replace million-dollar drones. It can be hard to get a drone into an underground bunker. It's easy to guide in a mosquito. One little insect, with the ability to bite and inject genetically modified malaria, HIV, Ebola, or anything else required. But that was all basic CIA stuff.

  It was when the occult applications became apparent that things really got interesting. If you can bite a target, you can inject a payload of anything you want. That includes nanobots. Nanites that have esoteric applications. Such as the ability to summon an ODE to possess the nanite's host.

  But the problem with any advance in military technology is that if you can come up with an idea, before long, so can your enemy.

  It was decided that before we started to use this tech to possess “hostile targets” around the world, we'd first better make certain our own leaders couldn't be possessed in the same way.

  It was a great idea. On paper it was foolproof.

  Naturally the whole thing went spectacularly wrong.

  Before you ask, it wasn't my fault. Whatever the inquiry said.

  There was nothing wrong with the sigil I designed. It was fine when it was sent off to be miniaturised and implanted in the nanites. I've no idea how the design got inverted during the process of nanocising—or should that be nanofication? All I know is it caused the mother of all nanofuckups.

  The thing about the sigil I created is that it's very complex, almost impossible to read, made from multiple Arabic characters overlaid upon each other, creating a design that looks almost symmetrical. And the thing about nanotechnology is it's really, really, really small. So it's easy to miss a couple of tiny little details, like a sigil being 3D printed upside-down. OK, technically I did approve it, but I still say it's not my fault.

  The animal trials went OK. We used mice. This was before we realized that mice have some kind of natural immunity to possession. Or that nothing is interested in possessing mice, even if it can. That certainly wasn't my fault.

  The human trials went OK too. It would've been easier if we'd been able to tell the test subjects what we were doing. But we didn't. For reasons of national security (You can justify anything with those three words. It's like a “Get Out of Jail Free” card). Also because it was cheaper if we did the tests without telling the people involved. One of our departmental mottoes is:

  “There's no-one to sue if they don't know it's you. No blame? No Claim!”

  I don't know if we'd have spotted anything if we'd run the human trials differently. We hadn't realized that this form of possession was a slow process and took months to complete. We were under pressure and in a hurry. Everything looked like it was working.

  And that's when it was decided, in order to stop any chance of possession, to use the nanites to recode the DNA of the entire governments of all NATO countries. Perhaps we should have told them what we were doing... But, as I said, we live and learn.

  Some of us.

  Accidentally encoding the inverted sigil into the DNA of all of the West's leading politicians had some undesirable side-effects. Rather than protecting against possession, the sigil actually summoned an ODE into each host. They slowly became possessed, at a genetic level.

  We gave up on the idea of exorcism after we'd scraped the first dozen
test subjects off the walls.

  On the bright side, the military are delighted that the inverted sigil has such potential for “other” uses. So it’s not all bad. They've been testing it in Russia recently.

  And now you know most of it.

  When someone tells you that all the politicians out there are nothing but soulless monsters without an ounce of compassion, a hint of decency or a shred of humanity between them, you can nod and agree wholeheartedly.

  I suppose you're wondering why I've been telling you all this? Well, it only seems fair.

  We've had a few ideas about how to undo the DNA recoding. Or rather how to recode the recoded DNA. Some people are quite keen to get the President back to a state where it could pass for human—so far, the media haven't noticed the tentacles.

  We're on the human trial stage, but there are still a few teething troubles. And yeah, we still don't ask people before we use them as test subjects. I'll admit it was my idea to recruit “volunteers.”.. That poster asking for help with a research project? Yes, that was one of ours.

  The thing is, and you might not be too keen on this part, it's time to activate the nanites and do a full test. First putting them into “Possession” mode, then doing a quick DNA re-write as we switch them over to “Banish.”

  So I'll tighten up these straps, and you try and relax.

  This won't hurt much.

  Probably.

  THE OBLIVIONIST

  Alex Kimmell

  "Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers.”

  - Unknown

  Subject 003: Bethany Maines

  Female

  19 years old

  Blonde Hair

  Green Eyes

  Approx. 120 lbs.

  Hometown: Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.