Kingdom

by Anderson O'Donnell

  Jael’s voice grew more intense, more passionate as she continued to explain the Order’s experiments, her trademark air of lethal, detached cool fading. The tunnel began to narrow and twist, the turns coming more suddenly, and at harsher angles and Campbell found himself struggling to match Jael’s pace.

  “But that’s not even the most interesting part,” said Jael, her voice drifting out of the darkness toward Campbell. “Some of these experiments revealed similar, unusual OAA activity in regular people. And by that I mean people with no specific religious background or training: not people who spent hours meditating but construction workers, teachers, lawyers, guys stuck working 9-to-5 in tiny white plastic cubicles—anyone. Some of these regular people reported feeling only a tiny surge of emotion—perhaps just a momentary elation; certainly nothing they would consider spiritual or religious—but something nonetheless. Each of these moments occurred at random intervals and across a wide spectrum of experiences: For some, it was a particular piece of music; for others, a moment when they found themselves alone under a sea of stars. Some of the others though…They were described—and bear with me here because this sounds like mumbo-jumbo bullshit at first—as experiencing a fleeting apprehension that there was something ‘more to life,’ and something ‘ancient and fundamental and bigger than themselves.’ These descriptions were vaguer than those offered by the mystics and clergymen who comprised the original study. But this discrepancy made perfect sense, as the OAA activity in these laypeople was nowhere near as intense as the explosion of activity in the monks and clergymen. But each and every person tested was found to have some constant level of inexplicable OAA activity.”

  Campbell’s head was spinning, trying to make a connection between the Order’s brain scans and the Project Exodus data stuffed in his jacket pocket. Fortunately, Jael made the logical leap for him.

  “At least,” she said, “that was until the Order ran the OAA test on some creatures recovered from landfills in the New Mexican desert, as well as the ones recovered from the shantytowns, the ones a certain biotech company ‘imbedded’ with the transit populations living on the outskirts of major cities.” Jael paused, and Campbell could hear the anger in her voice rising like a slow boil.

  “The rumor was the company wanted to see if these creatures could handle social interaction. Even the most normal of these creatures—they were definitely not human—would last a few weeks, maybe a month—before the mutations began to manifest themselves. Until that point, these poor fuckers looked like everyone else. And that’s when the men would come and either take the creatures away or, if there had been too much interaction with the population, kill everybody—humans, creatures, everyone—then burn the bodies and make it look like a gang-land thing. But it didn’t even matter—no one was paying any attention. No one ever pays attention. That’s one of the reasons they picked the Southwest. All those transient populations living along the borders, along the outskirts of major cities—these were expendable people.” Jael seemed to snarl rather than speak this last sentence, the venom tangible and terrifying.

  Campbell opened his mouth to protest but Jael cut him off.

  “Yeah, yeah. You didn’t know. I get it.”

  “Are you telling me the Order rescued those creatures, the ones from Morrison’s lab, only to run more experiments on them?” Campbell asked.

  “Hardly. The Order has always been interested in the soul’s progression. As part of this interest, this belief in the human soul, its members are called to service. This service has always been one of the cornerstones of their belief system. Let me put it this way: These guys are walking the fucking walk. So at first, they were just doing what they do—taking care of society’s refuse, the discarded, the forsaken and forgotten. The Order is committed to the idea that looking for the soul is futile unless the searcher’s own ego has been subjected through meditation and through service to the suffering. But it became apparent that while these creatures’ physical deformities were the source of tremendous agony and suffering, there was something else going on, some kind of medical anomaly—many of the monks were skilled physicians and medical researchers and yet, these deformities and diseases defied all explanation. Something else was killing your brood. Something the Order had never seen before and couldn’t stop. And given that most of these creatures were being found in the shantytowns and slums near Morrison Biotech, they started to get suspicious.”

  Your brood. The words echoed off the tunnel walls, repeating the accusation over and over until it reached the darkness sprawled out in front of them. Campbell realized his feet were wet; that a pool of water had collected in the middle of the tunnel and he was standing in the middle of it.

  “The Order spent years trying to figure out what was killing these poor creatures. As a last resort, they started looking at brain scans,” Jael said. “Their brain scans revealed zero OAA activity. At no point did the monsters you helped create in the laboratory ever demonstrate any OAA activity.”

  “And you think this is what killed them? Lack of OAA activity?” Campbell asked, his tone aggressive, skeptical, as if disproving this one assertion might somehow absolve him of everything else.

  “Actually,” said Jael, turning away from Campbell and resuming her march down the tunnel, “I do. But it’s not that simple; it’s not just the lack of OAA activity in the brain that’s killing these creatures—that’s just the symptom. No, there’s something else, something that’s missing.”

  In that instant, it was suddenly so clear that Campbell could barely get the words out.

  “And the Order thinks it’s Project Exodus’ missing gene. The Omega gene?”

  “They used to. Only they don’t refer to it as the Omega gene. They call it by its more traditional name: the soul. This was only a theory at first: That these creatures were dying because as close as he, or anyone, might get, Morrison will never be able to exactly replicate the human genetic code. But we can still fight him; the Order can still work to lessen the impact he has on this world. And that’s why you’re still alive.”

  Campbell had lost track of time. How long had he and Jael been weaving their way through the maze of tunnels that would lead them back to Ramoth? It could have been minutes; it could have been hours: Each tunnel fed into a seemingly identical tunnel, the only indication they had made any progress was the fact that the isolated pools of water had now congealed into a steady stream, a miniature river of ancient, polluted rain water and raw sewage running down the middle of the cracked stone floor.

  As they pushed deeper into the tunnels, Campbell began to notice giant holes in the walls and, once, when the beam from Jael’s flashlight cut across the collapsed concrete, he saw a mattress and a pile of books and what he swore was a dollhouse and he remembered stories he had once heard about men and women, about entire families, who lived in abandoned subway lines or sewage systems under Tiber City. Most of these people, Campbell had been told, were junkies and drifters, hustlers who would work the streets above, then retreat down below. But then there were others, the families who had drifted across an America they no longer recognized, chasing phantom jobs for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles, all the way to Tiber City. And then there were those for whom life—modern existence—had become too terrifying, too enormous; individuals for whom the city was a beast of steel and neon and noise noise noise, a ravenous wild creature so far beyond their control or comprehension that they fled underground, finding solace in the basic art of survival. These were the whispers Campbell heard in the bars at night; these were the messages Campbell had seen scrawled in subway stations and posted on Internet forums—missives that, until now, he had dismissed as urban legend.

  But there was no time to investigate and Campbell pressed forward, following the sound of Jael’s footsteps, the frantic yellow beam from her flashlight. His brain returned to Jael’s stunning revelation: The Order not only believed that there was an actual human soul but that the soul was Project Exodus’ final miss
ing genetic puzzle piece. He was intrigued, but he was also skeptical—after all he was still a scientist and old habits died hard.

  “Jael,” Campbell said, calling ahead into the darkness. “Let’s say for a minute that this gene is the soul. Even if that’s the case, why can’t Morrison replicate it?”

  “Can’t say for sure,” Jael replied, “But the Order has a theory. Forget about the cheesy popular notion of the soul: This has nothing to do with the afterlife or what happens when we die. Instead, think of the soul, your Omega gene, as a biological radio transmitter that, despite varying levels of reception and static, is always working to receive a signal—a divine transmission. And when I say divine, I am not talking about any specific religion. As far as I am concerned, religion is irrelevant: Buddhist monks, Franciscan nuns…as OAA brain scans indicate, a particular religious belief isn’t even necessary to obtain elevated OAA activity levels. But individuals capable of not merely reaching, but maintaining, these elevated activity levels for a sustained period of time are the outliers, mystics who are way ahead of the evolutionary curve with regard to their ability to access and process this divine transmission.”

  Campbell’s mind was racing, but his limbs felt heavy and his mouth was dry. The Benzedrine buzz was wearing off and he needed something else. He patted down his pockets in the dark: nothing.

  “The most important thing about this transmission,” Jael continued, “is that it requires a receiver tuned to the same frequency. Whatever happens when man recreates this gene, you lose that ability, you somehow tune it internally to a different station. That’s not to say this gene is entirely divine. Think of it more as a middleman, a way of mediating the strictly natural with the supernatural. The gene does it through a process that cannot be manufactured in a laboratory.”

  “Let’s say this is all true. Every last word—right on the money. What is this transmission? Why does it matter? Why do people without this gene unravel?” Campbell asked.

  “This gene is the thing that keeps us connected to one another,” explained Jael. “It allows us to taste those sweet moments when the world feels as though it’s aligned and everything else around us fades away and we are aware that there is something more, something we cannot express, something even the most talented wordsmiths and poets have trouble describing. But it’s undeniably there. You know these moments I am talking about: You’re walking alone late at night and you look up into the heavens and the wind sweeps over you and at that moment you apprehend IT; I have no idea what IT is…it’s something divine, something that’s larger than you or me or Michael Morrison or anyone. But it’s also something that forms a common thread between all mankind; it’s accessible to anyone, except those poor bastards you helped Morrison create. And that’s why these meltdowns occur: These creatures are forever severed—utterly and completely—from their fellow man.

  “What message is this divine transmission sending?”

  “It’s not a message—it’s just an apprehension that there is something else. It’s a connection, or at least a reminder of the original connection between God and mankind. And this taste, this teaser, does marvelous things to the human brain, things science is only just beginning to understand. That’s why, when the signal starts to fade a bit, you can feel that something is wrong, that something is missing—that there’s a void you can’t quite put your finger on even if, superficially anyway, you’ve got all your fucking ducks in a row. So you try and fill that void right? Pop some pills, go shopping, shoot up in bathroom stalls, work 19 hours a day; these are all variations on the same theme: trying to fill that strange void. Most of the time, these substitutes, while inflicting long-term damage to the soul, to the ability of this genetic radio receptor to apprehend the divine signal, work well in the short term. Just think about MDMA; synthetically, it produces the same sensations reported in many of these transcendent encounters. Same thing with peyote and other hallucinogens. However, when you’re experiencing these emotions, that OAA section of the brain never lights up like it does for the mystics and monks when they’re having a religious experience. And the next day you feel like shit because you tasted a cheap approximation of the divine and now your soul is even hungrier than before for the real thing.”

  Campbell fell silent, listening to Jael as the terrain continued to dip and rise, the cracked, broken concrete crunching in the dark. Sometimes Campbell could hear the city above them, nothing specific just a dull, distant roar that faded in and out as the tunnel pushed ahead. The noise a reminder of a city on the brink of something terrible, or, even worse, nothing—just endless expansion, the past buried under the shiny bright promise of an impossible future.

  “When people lose the signal for too long, and all the substitutes aren’t cutting it—that’s usually when shit starts going wrong. Sometimes people just commit suicide. But others…when that link is severed for too long, people can freak out in a different way. You’ve read about it on the Web—those moments when people just snap, normal men and women freaking out and eating their neighbor after frying their kid in the microwave. So why do otherwise normal people, who are capable of functioning at a socially acceptable level, cannibalize the nice lady next door? They’ve lost the signal for too long, that’s why.”

  “That’s pretty extreme,” Campbell remarked.

  “No shit,” Jael said. “But it’s the most vivid manifestation. And I’m not saying that every homicide out there is the product of this soulless disconnection; there are mental illnesses, things like that. But society is sick Campbell; you don’t need me to tell you that. And so many of the things destroying us, the things that allow us to be swallowed by greed and indifference and violence—they are the product of this lost connection.

  “Now, consider what life must be like for someone who hasn’t lost that connection but was never even able to make that connection in the first place. Think about what life must be like for your Exodus experiments.”

  They had done brain scans as part of Exodus, the same scans Jael was now describing. But when Exodus conducted these scans and saw that the activity had vanished, Campbell assumed he had helped take man one step further; that he had pushed evolution forward at his pace. The idea that this brain activity was communing with something else, something that could not be replicated in his laboratory; that thought had never crossed Campbell’s mind. He was a scientist—had been a scientist. The scientific method his catechism. The notion that there was something else, something unveri-fiable, would have been heresy. But Campbell the scientist had died in the swirling, radioactive sands of the Chihuahuan desert, only to be resurrected as Campbell the servant. And Campbell the servant, he believed.

  He opened his mouth, his brain struggling to bring order and form to the thoughts racing through his skull, but before he could say a word Jael stopped, raising her right hand, the one holding the gun—an indication Campbell should do the same. The beam from the flashlight quivered then steadied, the pale light trained on a metal door with no handle, the center of which was marked with a dark red stencil: the asterisk symbol. Jael put her hand down; Campbell heard the safety from her gun click off. He felt her tense; something was wrong. Jael shifted the flashlight and Campbell saw the metal door was open. There was a two-, maybe three-foot gap between the wall and the door.

  Jael pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and punched a series of numbers into the glowing handset. She held the phone to her ear; Campbell could hear the number ringing on the other end. It rang over two dozen times before she slammed the phone shut. That’s when he noticed it: the smell of rotting meat, faint but unmistakable. He heard Jael swear under her breath and then she took off, shooting through the narrow opening into Camp Ramoth. Campbell took a deep breath, and then plunged into the dark after her.

  Something was very wrong.

  Campbell had followed Jael through the back entrance to Ramoth, the entrance that was supposed to be secret, the entrance that was left wide-open like some suburban screen door. They
passed down several poorly lit hallways, his fear growing with every step. He had never entered Ramoth through this route, but he knew that nothing was as it should be: No one appeared to greet them; the doors were all unlocked, even the rudimentary security systems were offline or disengaged. The only sign of life was the blinking security cameras mounted on the wall. Campbell shivered as memories of New Mexico and Morrison’s underground laboratory dragged him into the past; the smell of rotting flesh smacked him back into the present.

  He and Jael passed through another doorway—no security, no locks—and into a round room that was empty save for a series of gamma cameras—the imaging devices capable of recording brain activity—arranged in a loose circle around a single mat laid out in the center of the room. The cameras looked like props out of some cheap 70s sci-fi flick—the sensitive equipment hidden under a beat-up-looking hard-plastic shell the size of an old pillbox hat and mounted on a two-legged steel gantry. Thick black wires ran from the cameras into the wall where fiber optic cables would carry the data to computers located in other rooms somewhere in the underground warren that was Camp Ramoth. Instantly Campbell realized where he was: This was one of the rooms where the Order did its research; where, according to Jael and Sweeney, the monks would spend hours, days, weeks losing themselves in prayer and meditation while others watched the data as it projected in 3-D across massive computer monitors.