Close Your Eyes

by Paul Jessup

  “I know.” She picked the skull up, holding it under her arms. “We’re going into the dark parts of the ship. Where the gravity is weak and brittle. Can you light up for me when I need you to? Can you shine like a lamp in the dark?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Anything for you, my dear, my dove. Anything at all.”

  Would the true Ortzi have acted like that? Said things like that? Be so subservient in that way? She searched her memories. Looked around briefly for some evidence of the real Ortzi. But no. After being alive this long her memory had reached its limits. After a while, new memories started overwriting other moments. Even her patuek had limitations. Only so much, only so little. Never quite enough. Maybe she should change this about him at some point. Tweak the code to make him less. Less.

  Just less like this. And maybe more like Ortzi.

  “Why do I only feel real when I’m with you?”

  Instead of answering, she reached over and grabbed the cold metal pole. Just a bit shorter than she was. Lined with intricate ivy patterns. Patterns of metal that grew and shrank like living things. A walking staff. She cautiously screwed the skull on top. Fits perfectly. As if it were made to hold that skull. And it glittered. And shone. Tiny luminescent jewels against white bone. The light of it on her face. A warm and glittering halo.

  It was time to go explore.

  * * *

  Why did everything change so much? She’d explored some of this yesterday, yes. But now everything felt so different. She cursed her mind. Tried to see if anything felt familiar. Tried to record her surroundings within her thoughts. Remember, remember.

  The walls were like black clay and bones. Circular doorways opened into more halls and more halls and more. Some were closed with thick membranes stretched across. Amber glow. You could see behind and it was like staring through a womb. And shadows moved behind the membranes. Giving the echoes of people lost and searching for someone. Maybe her? Maybe.

  The lights on the walls flickered. Went dark. So she lifted Ortzi up and he shone then. A lamp of a skull. Shone bright with orange glow. Soft and gentle against the harsh walls. You could hear the click-clack of something moving.

  Glowing animal bones flowed through intricate passages. Eyes like headlights. Blue orbs. Lenses flickering, taking pictures of the worldship. Spying on her. Watching her. Tiny hands fixing everything around them. Fur stapled and clamped to their skeletal bodies. The Mozzorro. The ones who kept the egias running smooth and perfect. She remembered the ones she commanded on her own ship. All those long years ago. Oh. How she felt an ache now. They were the eyes and ears of the labyrinth heart. Machines that made sure it all ran smoothly. Storing countless streams of data for the Mind to later parse and peruse.

  She felt a pull to control them. To ask them what was still left to be done. To make snap decisions and have it all be right. But no, no. This was not her ship. Not her egia. Not her labyrinth.

  “Oh, love. Are you all right? You’ve gone quiet and frozen all of a sudden.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I think so. Yes. Sorry, just a memory. A flickering of a need long since dead.”

  Ortzi would not understand. Could not understand. “Well, then. Just pick a path, shall we? Pick a way to go. Come on, come on now. Tell me where to go next. Do it! Do it! Or I’ll torture you with poetry.”

  A laugh and it’s been so long, so long since she’d felt the need to laugh. “Your poetry is not torture. Not at all.”

  He laughed, a clacking sound. Hollow and hungry. “So pick a path then, pick it soon. These weird Mozzorro give me the creeps.”

  “Me, too,” she lied. Of course she lied. But sometimes it was better to lie. To hide bits of yourself away. “Yes, yes. Me, too. Let’s um, let’s go this way.”

  And it was random now. Because it had changed again and again and again. She had no idea where anything led any more. Was it her memory? Fogged over and porous with time? Or did the labyrinth move? Did it slide about suddenly? She couldn’t tell. It never seemed to happen at the same time. Always random moments. Years, months, days, weeks. She would walk through the mazes and know exactly where everything was. And then? And then. WHAM. Everything changed.

  Without cause or reason. As if the labyrinth wanted her lost. A way of keeping the quarantine. Of keeping the once sick trapped and ready for the endless tests and the countless operations. Cut her open. Sew her up. Cut her open, again.

  * * *

  Lost she was. Lost and trapped and wandering broken. She should’ve brought chalk to mark the walls. Or a small light pen to trace a virtual path in the dark. Anything to give her a sense of passage. Her patuek buzzed in her mind, trying to record all of this, make sense of all of this. Cutting up folds of grey matter and placing the new locations in with tiny lasers. Still, still. Neither of them could make sense of it. As if each place moved on its own. Turned on an unseen axis.

  And then she stood for a moment in a hallway lined with spines. Lamps of amber orbs dangling from the edges and lined with gold filigree. “Oh, Ortzi, I feel it. I feel it turning, the whole world and everything. Can’t you feel it turning? It makes me nauseous. Even the gravity is changing. Feel, feel it changing. Are we upside down now? Backwards? Everything is so broken and so wrong. Can’t you feel it?”

  “Maybe a little. It is disorienting, that’s for certain, my love, my darling, my dove.”

  “Where to go now, then? Where to go. This might have been a mistake today, I should’ve brought a rope, yes. Some silver thread to tie me back to home, a placenta of life leading us back ...”

  “You won’t like what I think,” he said. His voice was calm, stranger than ever before. Was this someone else? Some other pattern now burning through his mind? This didn’t sound even like the fake Ortzi. It sounded like someone completely new. A hollow voice. An echoing voice. Full of radio static and broken words. “I think we should go into the darkness. Go into the dark corner once again. Those other halls are lit with spines, but that one there? See it? Even more dark than before. Darker even than the limitless void of space. Space at least has stars to light the way, tiny distant torches. But there? There. There is no light over there. And that is the way I think we should go.”

  “Oh,” her heart a hummingbird in her bones, “Oh. I guess so. Why do you think that?”

  Ortzi glimmered and shone a bit more. Blared into that dark beyond with a halo of light. “Something moves just unseen. Something that is not a doll, nor a Mozzorro.”

  “A person?”

  Ortzi flickered a tiny bit. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

  He was still cold sounding. Calculating. Made her nervous. This was not the skull she’d programmed him to be. This voice was different. Everything felt different. Could she still trust him? What was this voice, this idea, this thought? She remembered how Hodei had been invaded by patuek. She turned this over in her mind and worried for a moment of an infection of this skull. Some other AI, some other memory, floating around now, controlling him? No. No. Maybe this was a hiccup. A bug.

  But she’d coded him herself.

  And then. “If by person you mean a human, maybe. A flesh and blood living breathing human? Maybe. I think I do sense a human in there. A small one, maybe. Childish in height. It’s moving, but I can’t exactly say much more than that. After all, even my sensors have their limitations. All I can say is, it’s moving. And it’s chained to some large, smelly mammal. The only word I can think of is beast? Yet, that’s not quite right.”

  Beast beast beast. A beast in the maze. A minotaur of her very own.

  “Okay, then. Yes, yes. Let’s risk it.”

  An uneven step through the changing maze. Spinning walls stopping and the gravity recalibrating. For a moment they floated. Weightless again. His light bouncing off the changing walls. And then back down again. Now the ceiling was the floor and the spine lamps flickered. A strain on the energy of the world. As they walked through those shadows. Her body eclipsed by darkness.

  * *
*

  They had no words for the room they’d found. Ortzi had led the way. Barking directions at her. Her nerves pulled tight. A rope about to split. She held up the skull lantern. Blinding light corrupting darkness. Everything seemed unreal. The way that the light moved over the shadows. And then a flickering behind them as the spine lamps far away spat out their own illuminations. Not enough to make this room bright or brighter still. Just enough to make movement feel erratic. Strange. A series of flickering photographs.

  This room was a grotto. Cut and carved to look natural. As if formed from the center of a dying world. Turn and touch the wall. Entire thing covered in cubby holes. Round, lopsided, cut into a face of granite. And inside. Inside. A scream rising up. Panic. Bit on her lip. Tang of blood on tongue. Quivering. Shaking hand. Reaching out. A severed head inside of each cubby hole. Just a head. All different kinds of heads. Each of them dead.

  A whisper. “Do you see this? Is this what I think it is?”

  Ortzi muttered a response. “I don’t know. Are they human heads?”

  “Yes, each one is dead. And look, look.”

  Held the skull lantern up higher. Kissing close to one of them. Moving through the rows. Each had a living tattoo on their forehead. A flame. Flickering, changing color. She touched the skin. Cold and dead. Even on the head. Yet the tattoo still lived.

  “I wonder what the fire means,” Ortzi said. “And do they know about this? About this place? Is this where you’re going to end up when the dolls are done with you? Oh.” His voice changed. The tone became softer. More loose. Once again the Ortzi she’d programmed. Not quite her dead husband, but close. A savage echo of whom he’d once been. “Oh, love. I won’t let them do this to you! I may only be a skull, but ...”

  She hushed him and changed the subject. “They’re not rotting though, they’re preserved in a way. I wonder what they use ...”

  “Who cares what they use? We need to get you out of here! I was wrong, I don’t see a boy or a beast at all, do you? Do you my love?”

  Itsasu kept moving the skull lantern through the rows of heads. Looked over each. Stared at them. Studied them. Ignoring the chattering lamp. “A headhunter in these halls. A headhunter moving through the labyrinth, collecting his little toys.” She turned the skull to look at her. Blinding white light in her pupils. “I’m glad we found this now, Ortzi. We need to know about this, need to be prepared. In case it comes hunting for me.”

  Chattering teeth. “Let’s just leave now. Maybe we won’t be too lost, and I can find our way back to our home no problem ...”

  “Wait.” She turned the skull again. And saw a familiar face in one of the cubby holes. A glance of recognition. And then. Trembling. Fear. What had they done to her? Her friend. Her once trusted navigator. They’d sworn to be blood sisters, centuries ago. Sworn to help each other in the darkest hours.

  She’d betrayed her friend. She’d betrayed all of them. All for the dim echo of her husband.

  Mari. Oh. Mari. Her dead head propped up in that cubby hole. Half her face a metal cage. The mechanical butterflies limp and unmoving. Even they were dead now. Even her butterflies.

  “We should go, Itsasu. We need to go. Right now!”

  But she couldn’t respond or say anything. She touched the cold cheek of her dead friend. It felt like paper and leather. Ran her hand over the metal half of her face. Eventually she crumbled to the ground. Unable to see any of this any longer. How did this happen? How?

  * * *

  Sound of chains and whispers. Hideous murmurs and the sounds like snakes on stone. Hissing. Horrid. Scraping sounds. A scramble of their bodies into a hidden alcove. Skull light flickered out quickly, quickly. Itsasu grabbing Mari’s head. Will not leave her here. Will not abandon her again. Such things should not happen. Maybe somehow she could revive her. If only she had access to her patuek. If only she had access to the organic vats.

  Grow her, rebuild her. Make her whole and new again.

  Now hidden, though. Out of sight, into the darkness beyond. As the shadows walked into that chamber of heads. They carried a spine of a lamp. Ripped off the walls. Torn out. It blared out a halo of light, crawling. Illuminating. Right behind their two bodies. Made them huge giant shadows. Light shooting out behind them in striking rays. Something angelic in the darkness. The horrible kind of angelic.

  One:

  A big upright walking beast of a thing. Maybe a bear? No. The face seemed wrong. It wore a human face like a rough mask. Bear eyes glaring out from human eyeholes. The clothing torn and ratter-tatter. Red rags tied on black coats. Oh, she wondered if she could tell which head that face had been stolen from? If only she’d had a moment to look.

  No, can’t now. Hiding now. Eyes in a crack, seeping the light of the other room. A tense moment, waiting for the headhunters to do what they needed to do. Ortzi chattered and she pushed a finger to his bone teeth. Shushing without words. Without saying a thing. Can’t get caught in here. If they got caught, it could be her face on that bear’s muzzle.

  And oh. The thing next to him.

  Two:

  A child. A boy. Maybe no older than eight or nine. Could be a short pre-teen, but probably not. He walked like a hidden figure. Like someone used to abuse. Oh, can see the bruises and scars from here. A large gash over his throat. Crisscross scars across his face. Like a checkerboard of pain. He was chained to the bear. His left arm manacled. Long iron chains connecting to his master. A gulp. Louder than she wanted. Swallowed that sound down.

  No, no. Be quiet. Be quiet. Don’t let them see you.

  * * *

  The bear’s arms overflowed with collected heads. Lolling. Rolling. Fresh kill. Still drip drip blood in that dark. A black liquid oozing down his hands. She saw that flicker of flame tattoos on each of the foreheads it carried. Even from here, in the hiding darkness. Did he tattoo them before the kill? Was that how he marked them? Hunted them? Claimed them as his prize?

  Sh, sh. Need to concentrate.

  “Do you smell something here, La? Something new and dangerous?”

  The bear talked with a gentle, sing-song voice. Not the voice she had expected.

  The boy shrugged. When he spoke he spoke with sandpaper and gravel. His words older than he seemed. “No, Basa, no. I do not smell a damned thing out of place, and I don’t care if you do. Even if we have tiny human pestlings in our sacred spot we will get them eventually and take what’s ours. It is our way. Matters not if we see them now or see them later. We always see them, and we always remove their sacred heads.”

  Who was in charge of whom? A glance at that chain. Wrapped around the bear’s neck. Tied to the boy’s wrist. The boy’s eyes seemed older and blazing blue. He did not even have whites in his eyes, only blue. No black pupil. Only blue. When he blinked he blinked like an insect blinks.

  The bear hung his head. “Oh, I don’t like the hunt, my sweet La. I hate hunting and all the messy, bad things we have to do. I’d rather we did nothing of the sort, don’t you, La? Don’t you wish for a better universe than this one? Something better than the one we were given as mewling starchildren?”

  La yanked on the chain. Itsasu trembled in the dark of the crack as the bear mewled and whimpered.

  “Are you questioning me? Do you have the gall to question our mission? Our sole sacred mission?”

  “No, no, La. No, no. Not at all. I’m sorry, La. I am sorry.”

  “We are building a better universe, we are. That is why we do this and you know this, you know these things and have seen the promises with your own eyes. You have trembled before them, knowing what I know, what will become of this universe if we do what we’re meant to do. What we’ve been summoned to do.”

  “Yes, yes you are correct, you are. Again, I don’t think I can say this enough, but I am so sorry La. I am so, so sorry. I won’t doubt our mission ever again, I promise. I was just talking with some man. A man who called himself Hodei, and he was slick with his words. So slick and perfect. Oh, the things he told
me! Such wondrous things. It won’t happen again, I won’t listen to his lies or serpent lips anymore ...”

  Hodei? He was here and living and everything? She might find him, yes ... but did she want to? He was part of the reason they were all infected. Him and his stupid brother. And yet, at one point she had loved him and the others. They were a makeshift family of sorts. A cruel, dysfunctional family, but a family none the less.

  La sighed and for a brief moment he seemed his own age. Like a child again. Something about the way he moved. The way he shrunk in the shadows. Oh, just hurry. Just hurry and finish it so she could go. So she could get out of this place and avoid those two ...

  “Place the dreamers in the marked areas, come on, do it now, just get it over with.”

  “Yes, La. Of course, La. I will, I will, I will.”

  Crouched further into the shadows. Hidden from that gasping amber light. The rays peering into that crack. They moved, pushed further away from it. Further into the dark. Needing to flee before they came after them. But there was no escape. The only exit to the room was the thin crack they’d crawled through earlier. No leaving that way. Not until the two figures were done. Had they always lived in this labyrinth? Did the dolls know of their existence? Were they quarantined as well? Or were they stowaways? Hiding in the dark. Playing their grim games.

  * * *

  Eventually the headhunters left. Emptiness and darkness then. She blew on the skull, like you would blow out a candle flame. And Ortzi lit up and smiled. “Oh, so much better to have light again. Doesn’t light make everything less, well ... less terrible? Don’t you agree, my love? I’m so happy I could recite a poem right here, right now.”