My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  ::But it wouldn’t be her::

  ::No, it would be a clone, but not if we can capture her essence, the mental states in her mind, and then restore them to a new body at a later point in time::

  ::You’re mad::

  Yes, mad, thought Praz, and yet he could see Sasha was willing to entertain his madness.

  ::Ignoring symbiotic microbes, human bodies are formed from roughly forty trillion cells. Their cellular replication is so rapid, they would double in size every six hours if it weren’t for some kind of natural attrition. Their skeletal structure alone forms two million oxygen-bearing cells every second, replacing the millions lost each second, maintaining an astonishing equilibrium, and that got me thinking. I’ve had the L2s run diagnostics on the isotope ratios of carbon in the corpses to date their cellular composition. The results are fascinating. Their bodies are almost completely renewed every half-dozen or so orbits around their star. Various organs renew at different rates, but even their skeletal structure changes so they are almost completely different creatures by the time they die::

  ::Almost?::

  ::From what I can tell, there is one portion of their minds that never changes at a cellular level. There’s a sheet of neurons that wraps around the brain, a sheet thinner than the fabric on her spacesuit—the cerebral cortex linking to a tiny component their anatomical guide labels the claustrum::

  ::And you think this holds her consciousness?::

  ::Given the rapid cellular change within her body, it’s the only structure that spans her entire life::

  ::And if you fail?::

  ::She dies anyway::

  ::Do it::

  Praz dissolved the replica, absorbing it back into the assembly wall.

  Construction tentacles reached out and took hold of the astronaut, seizing first her hands, then her legs. She struggled, fighting to free herself with the jets on her MMU, but Praz held her firm.

  ::You’re scaring her::

  ::I know. I know::

  Praz had no time. Based on the analysis of the corpses on the Copernicus he could see she was within minutes of death. He had to act now or it would be too late. He pried her hands from the controls and began dissolving the armrest forks.

  ::We’re going to need to recycle her own biological material to make this work::

  ::Is there nothing you can do for her?::

  Praz panicked at the fight put up by Jazz. Such a procedure should have been planned well ahead of time, with meticulous care given to the finer details, but he feared she would die before he had even a rudimentary execution plan in place. He had to act now, but the impetus meant he was clumsy. He was hurting her.

  ::Can you do something to take away the pain?::

  ::No. She has a hundred billion neurons, forming a hundred trillion interconnections in her mind. There’s no time::

  ::Meld::

  ::You want me to go in there with her?::

  ::Yes, Praz::

  ::We don’t know if that will work::

  ::We don’t know if any of this will work::

  Praz was preoccupied, still trying to run the complex calculations required to isolate the cerebral cortex at a quantum level, when Sasha took over. Nanobots flooded through Jasmine’s body, with the bulk of the swarm assimilating her flesh while an advanced, specialist group moved through her bloodstream and began mapping her brain.

  Before Praz knew what was happening, he was standing on an alien world. The pull of gravity felt strange. The sight before him was hazy and indistinct. There were colors and flickers of motion, but nothing was in focus.

  ::Memories?::

  There was no response from Sasha, but Praz understood what he was seeing.

  ::Dreams::

  Jasmine turned and looked up at him with tears in her eyes. Praz had little or no direct control. He was being dragged along by Jasmine’s subconscious, acting out his role according to her expectations. Jazz stopped swinging on the wooden bench seat as he knelt down next to her. There was a moment’s silence. It seemed her subconscious somehow recognized his presence and allowed him to speak.

  “Jazz,” Praz said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Praz wasn’t sure what Sasha had done, and he suspected she was doing some serious data crunching in the background to be able to sustain him within Jasmine’s mind. Somehow, she’d diverted Jasmine’s conscious awareness away from the assimilation process.

  Jasmine looked around, confused by where she was. As she did, those areas she looked at came into focus. Praz could see a burst of colors as the local star sat low on the horizon. Water dripped from some strange, mechanical device lying on what appeared to be neatly cut vegetation. There were fences, poles, trees.

  Praz felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of right-angles around him. Being in a gravity well, there was a need for load-bearing poles to be perpendicular to the center of the planet, but he’d expected more curves, more soft lines and aesthetic shapes rather than boxy squares and rectangles everywhere.

  This must be where she lives, he thought. There were humans moving around inside, preparing for some kind of communal activity that must have revolved around gaining sustenance.

  “Come,” he whispered softly. The activity in her dream state focused on what was happening inside the house, so Praz felt he should lead her in there. So long as Jazz felt safe, Sasha would be able to maintain the illusion while the nanobots deconstructed her mind.

  “Jazzy,” a soft feminine voice called out from inside the house. “Dinner’s ready. Time to finish up out there, Honey.”

  Praz was fascinated by Jasmine’s recollection. Jazz had retreated to a memory she held dear.

  “I—ah,” she said, getting to her feet. Her head darted around. Regardless of where she looked, subtle details came into focus. When she looked away, they blurred and faded. Her eyes settled on an electronic device with a crack in the screen. Moments ago, it hadn’t been there. Her subconscious was ad-libbing, adapting to her desires and fears, actively constructing what she wanted to see.

  There was a message on the screen: Stay with me, Jazz.

  ::Sasha, she’s slipping::

  ::Get her back!::

  “Jazz, please,” Praz cried, but the hollow form before him seemed lifeless, just a shell. “Jasmine. You’ve got to trust me. Stay here with me.”

  He grabbed her, trying to stop her limp body from falling. There must have been something unexpected about his motion, something about his touch that jarred her back into the dream.

  “Trust me.”

  “Are you? Is this?”

  Praz smiled, but to Jasmine, this was Mike looking at her with warmth and affection.

  She looked dazed.

  Jasmine looked past Praz through a window and into the aging house. Praz could see two men, they had to hold meaning to her as their presence anchored her in the moment. Gently, he led her through the door, never straying more than a foot or so from her side. When the dream had started, Praz had been compelled to act out the dictates of Jasmine’s imagination, now he had autonomy. At some level, she’d granted him that.

  A strange hairy creature scampered out of the house as he held the door open. Whatever it was, it too must have had some meaning to Jasmine.

  “You OK, Baby?” her mother asked, setting a large bowl of green beans on the table. Jasmine screwed up her face. Either she didn’t like the food or something her mother said, but this was good. Jasmine had immersed herself in the role-play, giving Praz something to work with.

  “Ah, yeah. I’m fine,” Jasmine said, tucking her hair behind one ear.

  ::This is good. Keep her calm::

  Sasha interjected into his consciousness, but that made it difficult for Praz to focus on Jasmine’s dream state.

  Praz was fascinated by the inside of the home. The six internal surfaces of the rectangle that made up what Jasmine recognized as the dining room had been treated in distinctly different ways. Polished wood lined the floor. The walls were covered in a thin sh
eet of paper with repeating patterns providing an ornate relief, while the ceiling was white. Where the rooms in the Arc Explorer were multifunctional and unidirectional, the rooms within this home held a warmth Praz had never known.

  An older lady wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. This had to be a family unit, Praz thought, a group of humans bound by common descent. She handed Jazz a bowl containing a pulped material.

  “Put this on the table, would you Jazz?”

  Jasmine reached out to take the bowl, but it fell through her fingers.

  ::No!::

  Sasha screamed at Praz.

  ::I’m losing her::

  Praz was frantic, but there was nothing he could do. Nothing was real.

  The bowl shattered on contact with the floor. Ceramic fragments and soft, fluffy material shot out in all directions across the wooden floor. Jasmine looked at her hands in shock as they faded from view.

  ::What’s happening?:: Praz asked

  ::There’s too much sensory input. I can’t block all of it::

  A fog descended on the room. The bright colored flowers on the table, the pictures on the walls, the light from the kitchen, they had all seemed so real moments ago. Now they looked dull and indistinct.

  Jasmine collapsed.

  ::You have to keep her there::

  Praz caught Jasmine, grabbing her by the shoulders as she slumped toward the ground. She felt so heavy, as though she were pulling away from his grasp. Gently, he lowered her so she sat on the floor.

  “Don’t fight this, Jazz. For once in your life, don’t fight.”

  There was no response. Her eyes looked glassy and lifeless.

  “Hey,” Praz said, seeing her cheek twitch, and he understood that this was what she wanted. He could see she was trying to escape reality, to hide in her dream world. Deep down, she wanted to be here with him. Remembering the phrase on the phone, Praz whispered, “Stay with me, OK?”

  “Don’t you worry about anything, Jazz,” her father said as the sharply defined details within the dream world came back into focus. “We’ll clean this up.”

  “What? No!” Jasmine cried. “How? Where? Where am I?”

  “You’re at home. It’s your birthday, Honey,” her mother said, already wiping up the mess as her older brother begrudgingly held a bucket for the broken pieces. “Don’t you worry. Mistakes happen. It’s nothing to get upset about.”

  “I—I,” she began, gesturing to the twilight stars appearing in the sky beyond the clean glass window. “I was out there.”

  Praz pulled a chair from the table and helped her up, sitting her at the far end of the ornate, polished wooden dining table. Her subconscious overwhelmed him, and before he knew what he was doing, his lips were touching gently against her cheek, kissing lightly against her skin. Praz understood what was happening. This creature needed some kind of physical reassurance, some intimate form of contact to hold her in the moment.

  He whispered, “Everything’s going to be OK.”

  “Henry,” her mother said. “Can you go and get the washing off the line?”

  Praz was surprised by the intricate detail in Jasmine's dream-like recollection.

  “Do you remember?” she asked him, briefly glancing sideways at her parents. Her eyes were so expressive. She was confiding in him, trusting him. She was looking for any recognition in response to her words.

  “Hurry,” the mother yelled after the one called Henry.

  Jasmine whispered, “Do you remember any of it?”

  “Any of what?” Praz asked, trying to sound neutral.

  “Bestla? Saturn?”

  Before he could reply, three beeps sounded in the dream world. Jasmine turned her head. The sensory alarms in her spacesuit were breaking through. Praz rested his hand gently on her thigh, wanting to provide some competing stimulus, and Jazz relaxed into her seat.

  “What’s wrong, Honey?” Praz asked, mirroring a term of endearment used by Jasmine’s mother. Sasha’s translation routine had identified honey as a partially digested, regurgitated organic molecule comprised almost solely of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Apparently, the vomit of a tiny flying insect was somehow desirable to humans. Praz realized a significant cultural idiom must have grown out of the consumption of this substance, and he only hoped he’d used the term appropriately.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “None of this is real.”

  “Of course it’s real,” her mother said, wiping her hands on her apron and joining them at the table. “Why would you say that? I think you’ve been studying too hard. You push yourself too much, Jazz. I do worry about you.”

  Her father added, “You do have a rather active imagination, Honey.”

  Praz noticed the term honey was used more than either her name or her affectionately abbreviated name: Jasmine or Jazz. Praz had blended in nicely by employing that term.

  “What was that beeping?” Jasmine asked.

  ::Keep her distracted::

  Praz knew Sasha was under pressure, desperately trying to keep Jasmine from waking.

  “Why that’s the microwave,” her mother replied. “I’m heating some gravy.”

  Praz spoke, saying, “I picked up some Black Forest cake for your birthday. I thought you’d like that for dessert.” He hadn’t, of course, this was a dream, but in dreams the rules were what you made them. Sasha had passed on a number of key words and phrases retrieved from what appeared to be the pleasure center of Jasmine’s brain. Desserts had strong positive connotations. Black Forest didn’t translate to Praz, it seemed a hollow, meaningless phrase describing a dark woods, but he trusted Sasha’s analysis.

  Jasmine smiled at him. It worked.

  “And Mom’s baked an apple pie,” her brother added. Her own subconscious was working in step with Praz and Sasha.

  ::Mapping complete. Consumption in progress. You should see her conscious perception start to drift any moment now::

  Praz noticed the details around him fading, but Jazz didn’t appear to notice. Light levels fell. Colors blurred. Shadows deepened.

  ::This bit is dangerous. Her skull cavity is open. If she moves, we lose everything. Don’t let her realize what’s really happening::

  Praz retrieved more details from Jasmine’s memory, saying, “You can have both for dessert if you want. And there’s some vanilla bean ice cream too!”

  He had picked vanilla bean ice cream simply because it was four terms strung together and was related to the pleasure center of her brain. From the associations in her memory, it seemed appropriate, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “Sounds yummy,” her father said, taking his seat at the head of the sturdy wooden table. Praz glanced at the faces as they faded. Everyone was smiling. It was working.

  ::Almost there. Snapshot is ready::

  “Doesn’t that sound good?” Praz asked, desperate to avoid Jasmine waking to the reality of her brain being dissolved by dozens of writhing tentacles probing the melted remains of her skull and her shattered helmet. Her body twitched, but Praz could see that these motions were involuntary. Sasha was able to limit them to Jasmine's lower torso, keeping her head stationary. Globules of blood floated around her shattered body.

  “It does,” Jasmine admitted as the light faded and the room took on dark grey hues. She barely noticed as the darkness washed over her.

  Praz waited in the inky black silence until Sasha spoke.

  ::It is done. She is dead::

  ::Will it work?:: he asked.

  ::Either way, we did all we could—a mercy killing with a chance of redemption. Given the self-contained nature of her genetic instruction set, teasing a replica of her body from cell samples should be simple enough. The challenge will come in reconstituting her neural state at a quantum level. That could take a number of stellar orbits, but if it works, she will simply awake after having dreamt about dinner at home::

  ::And the energy budget?::

  Praz was very aware he’d overstepped the
bounds in pushing for the assimilation of Jazz.

  ::After the consumption of their ship, we are net-positive by two orders of magnitude. We are able to maneuver. We will repair the Arc and journey on to their home world. You did well, Praz::

  ::Given all we have endured and the cold, lonely years, it seems only right to have fought for life. I’m relieved we could save one of them::

  ::One of them? No, Praz, there were two. We saved two of them::

  ::Two?::

  ::Yes, we were able to upload another member of the crew—Jason::

  The End

  Afterword

  Thank you for supporting independent science fiction with the purchase of My Sweet Satan.

  I’d like to thank my editor, Ellen Campbell, and several people that helped me with early drafts, Brian Wells, John Walker and Ken Zufall. With over a hundred beta-readers, it’s impossible to thank everyone that had additional insights and picked up typos, but there were a couple of readers that provided additional feedback: Oné Pagan, Janice Mann, Jae Lee, Tomi Blinnikka, Graeme Tindale, Kat Fieler, Bruce Simmons and Erwin Bodde.

  In the 1970s, the concept of backmasking arose, where subliminal messages were supposedly embedded inside songs to hide their devilish meaning. Such a notion is, of course, ridiculous, and yet at the time the paranoia was very real. After rebounding from the counter-culture of the 60s, music was seen as corrupting the youth in the 70s. The conservative distrust of the upcoming generation was perhaps best captured by David Bowie in his song Changes.

  Back then, music was caught in the midst of a cultural war for the minds of the young. Subliminal messages were supposedly destroying our youth. Conspiracy theories were rife: the Moon landings had been faked, Castro had killed Kennedy, Henry Kissinger was the Antichrist, satanic rituals (apparently) swept through California, the Soviets were intent on destroying the world in a nuclear apocalypse. Adding fuel to these paranoid fires, someone played Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven backwards and heard Robert Plant speaking of “my sweet Satan.” Having grown up in that era, I wanted to capture some of the confusion that came with the uncertainty of those times and the spread of rabid, conflicting, unsubstantiated facts.