by Paul Jessup
A sad glance looked away away away.
“He’s not the original. He’s not the real Sugoi.”
A glance at all those faces. She’d been changed so much. So many body parts replaced. Those being rejected now. Was she the real Itsasu? How could she be? Any more than any of those in the tank. And were they more her than she was? It felt like that was a truth. But there was only one true and real way to find out. She had to wake them. She didn’t want to wake them. But a look at Hodei’s eager eyes and she knew, she knew. She had to wake them.
But what if she couldn’t? What if she failed?
Ortzi clacked in her lap. “We should go, we should go and keep on going ... forget this whole thing and hide out in this world ... let them hunt you my love, my dearie dove ... it’s not worth the horror of seeing yourself die a million times ...”
“Shut up,” Hodei barked the words. “Shut up! You’re a copy, a toy, a simple echo and nothing more. Shut up or I will smash you!”
Itsasu raised a hand. It was decided then. She would try. She couldn’t let Hodei smash Ortzi. Not now, not when she was so broken weak and helpless. Here’s to hoping she was real and true and the only Itsasu after all.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. What do I have to do?”
And then Hodei smiled. “Follow me.”
He had her now. She knew it. He understood her weakness and now he would exploit it just like her ship’s heart had exploited it so long ago.
* * *
Oh, was this the broken shell of the heart that once ran the ship? Was this where the holochambers once lived? Where the giant machines once pulled vibrant information and controlled everything with a powerful mind? A feeling in the air. Like the echo of long past ghosts. Ghosts of the heart haunting everything. Here, touch the egia. Feel it vibrate against her hands. A honeycomb shell of the engine’s once vibrant command center.
Smashed pieces. Wires pulled out and frayed. The intelligent nanodust sparkle dead against her hands. Oh what a sight this was. To see it all as a ruin of what once was the beating centerhome of this ship. And it had been like this for ages upon ages upon ages. She could tell. It had happened a little after they first arrived, maybe. When things were different in the labyrinth.
“What happened here ... A mutiny?”
Hodei grunted. “I don’t know, I can’t tell. But do you believe me now when I say this ship is a heartless ship? And that we fly through the black and back in a haunted house?”
No words. She had no words to respond to that. So instead she sighed. Collapsed against the side. Dust motes scattered and flew through that lone blinking orange light. “The dolls, the dolls. Do they even know? Have they all been running on autopilot all this time?”
“The truth of it all is ... I think ... they are the ones responsible for this. They are here to use us as weapons. They came here and murdered the heart and now plan to use our doubles for acts of war. What cruel madness this whole thing is now ... once, it might’ve tried to save the world. But that heart is dead, and everything it stood for is missing and broken.”
Itsasu touched another part of the shell. Sharp. Ouch. Pull hand back and suck on the fingerblood. The ghost of this heart just bit her and she realized, yes, it wanted a sacrifice of blood. Her blood. Maybe by drinking her blood it would come back to life. Hold hand over the wreckage. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Nothing.
What a foolish thought to have.
“What are we even doing here?”
“Getting the tools to wake your ghosts from their sleep, that’s what. We’re building an army.” Oh, a turn and smile. All manic. Send shivers of fear all over. She wanted to run and hide. Hide away. In the dark empty parts of the ship. Maybe find the last bit of the heart stored on some datamines, somewhere, and bring it all back to life.
“Okay.” And then, and then, she had a thought. “Doesn’t that make us as bad as they are? Using my doubles as a weapon.”
“This is different. This isn’t an act of hostility or wanton destruction. This is self-defense. This is our preservation.”
Should life on this ship even be preserved? It felt like such harmful cruelty in every aspect of it. Maybe that’s the same for all haunted houses. Even ones adrift through the infinite of space and time. The cruelty enacted on them tainted everything. Made their very existence into a perpetuation of pain and suffering.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Hodei scratched and burned around a bit more. Pushed some wires together. Laughed a bit and stepped back. “Yes, yes, yes. This is it! I’ve got it. This is it.”
A blue light glowed in that shell. And for a moment Itsasu thought of Arigia and wanted to cry. It felt like a moment that required tears. Yet. Nothing. Nothing happened at all. Just this empty place where emotion should be.
Was she even human anymore? Humans were not supposed to live for centuries. They were not supposed to breathe with lizard lungs. Walk on hollow bird bones. Be turned into such things as they’d become. Angels, demons, whatever. None of them were true or real or human or authentic anymore.
“What should I do?”
“Stand still and let it scan you.”
“Like this?”
A blue beam of light and it tickled her blood as it washed over her. Where was Arigia? Was she here, on this ship? Or had she been murdered when the heart had been murdered?
“Yes, yes. Just like that.”
And then a whispering in her mind. Mother, Mother! Do you want us to wake?
She laughed and said: Yes. We will all wake now.
* * *
How to explain this feeling? Of being so many places at the same time. Had Hodei felt like this when he carved his doubles up? Could he feel each and every thing through their eyes? She felt multiplex and strong. Every part of her was a different limb in a different body. At first it was too much, too overwhelming. And then it grew. Her mind grew. Everything expanded inside of her.
... And then she realized that this was how the sakre had thought. This was how the sakre existed. She had become that thought virus now. Oh. She was the language of her doubles. Controlled them. Made them rise up out of the water. The sakre had trained her to think in a multiplex way. Everything was like a finger or a toe or an eyeball.
She could move them all without straining her mind. They could move in unison or apart and she didn’t have to focus on one or the other. She felt infinite. Even though she knew she was finite. There was a limit to her omniscience. Only through her doubles. Only. And this reminded her of her dolls, yes. The way she’d controlled the ship before.
Tears now. She couldn’t cry for Arigia but she could cry now. That happy feeling of being all over and in a million bodies and it was just like coming home again. This. This. She missed this so much. At first it was too much again, but now. Now. Easing back into it. Like a comfortable home she’d missed and been away from for so long.
The new creaks scare and startle. But the old wood comforts and protects like a womb. She didn’t even have to talk to them or issue commands. Each one was like a different thought pattern. Each thought pattern isolated and yet communicating together. It felt electric and alive and everything else all at once.
“So what’s the plan?” Her voice felt odd. Echoing. Like it existed outside of her body.
“We stay here, walled up and protected. The dolls will be the last line of defense, I’ve got them patrolling outside right now. Now you need to get your doubles scattered through our maze and have them scout around. Searching for those bastards. They’re coming soon, they are. I know they are. It’s just a matter of time.”
A nod of her head. Hands clasped on the giant lizard’s spine. Mind fluttering about in a million bodies at once. So exhilarating to feel this all once again. It wasn’t just being alive. It was being alivealivealivealivealivealive! A chorus of everything inside of her.
* * *
“Are you okay, all right, my darling, my dove, my love?”
�
�Yes.”
“The way you’re smiling, I don’t like it. No, no. I don’t like it at all.”
“And why’s that?”
“You don’t seem like yourself. Oh. I don’t like that at all. I want you to be you and no one else but you. But now you seem ... broken and shattered into a million pieces.”
“But I’m not, Ortzi. In fact, I’m just the opposite. I am wholly whole. For the first time and forever in my life I feel complete. I am a million thoughts and a million minds. Can’t you see how wonderful that is? Can’t you feel how beautiful it is?”
“No. Not at all. I don’t like this.”
“Psh. It doesn’t matter at all what you think.”
“Oh. That hurts, my love. That hurts. Why do you say that?”
“Because the real you, the true you? That Ortzi would understand this. He would see what I’m doing and support this and love me for it, that’s why. But you. I programmed you in a faulty way, I did. You’re just an echo and nothing more.”
“Why do you hurt me like that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“But, but. My love. My dearie dove. My darling! You’re wrong.”
“I am? How so?”
“I have his memories in here, I do. And the way he felt the first time you entered your fluid chamber. The first time you became a million dolls? He was scared of you. He was scared for you. You, you frightened him.”
“And you are a liar. He never saw that. Never.”
“Oh.”
* * *
Oddly enough, Hodei was right. How could he have been right? The dolls of the ship were hunting for them in the maze. And Basa and La seemed to be controlling them, somehow. If he’d been right about that ... how many other things could he have been right about? Yet. Yet. Something fluttering inside. Deep down inside her ribs and everything else. A feeling that, no.
No. He couldn’t be right about everything. Maybe he was only telling half-truths to manipulate her? Maybe he was telling whole truths, but he was insane. And his insanity warped the real. This felt very likely.
Yet. Here she was. Sat down squat on the floor. As her mind flittered between the bodies. Moving all of her doubles through that maze inside a maze. Seeing what she saw. The dolls hunting. Basa and La. Over there, right there. La short and squat on Basa’s shoulders. Hands in the air. Orchestrating those dolls like a conductor. Those dolls with scalpels and skirts and shirts stained with blood.
Those dolls carrying body parts. Glowing entrails like lamps in the dark. Fear settled into her stomach. Fear in a million stomachs. All the doubles around her echoing her ache. She pulled them. Yanked them back into the shadows. Don’t get caught don’t get seen you are invisible you are the shadows you don’t exist ... don’t get caught ...
Because she knew and knew and knew that when they were cut, she would feel it. When they are ripped apart. She will feel it. And she has felt so much pain. So many lifetimes of pain. That was the only problem with living so long. Centuries upon centuries upon centuries of time. The pain of one’s experiences. It adds up. It weighs you down. It threatens to drown you.
... and she was was was drowning ...
“What’s going on, my love, my dove? What’s happening?”
A quiver in her arms. An ache in her chest. Thunderheart beat thunder fast.
“Shh.” Hodei’s voice. “Don’t break the spell. She’s under, see? She’s deep under. Itsasu, I’ve been there. I know you can hear us, okay? Just ignore us. We need you to scout it out and fight if you have to fight. Keep us safe and secret in the heart of the labyrinth, okay? And if your defenses dwindle and we are in serious danger? I need you to cut that cord and come out screaming. Just so we have time to live. We all need to live and keep on living.”
But did she? Did she have to live longer, now, in this painful, horrible world? A world that gave birth to a million cruel stars and planets? A world where the only thing she has left is the love of a skull filled with echoes? So much pain. Such a long life filled with a million splinters of pain. That was it. No more. Why keep going on? So another heart could rip her apart? So another virus could eat away at her mind? So she could love someone and watch them die again? And again? And again?
What was the worth of a universe such as this?
It made no sense. Now would be the perfect time. If she did this right. If she did it in exactly the perfect and right way, she would be gone and not even her patuek could revive her. Complete annihilation of the ship and the datamines. Hodei would be happy. Yes! He would be happy, too.
Because then they couldn’t use his likeness as a weapon. All would be gone.
Perfect. Perfect! Peace at long last at the end of a universe. Then she could be empty nothingness and then it would be all okay. No more pain. No more suffering. Nothing. Like a candle blown out. Spent flame and smell of sulfur in the air. And then? Nothingness. Beautiful, haunted nothingness.
And she knew exactly how to do it. This ship was filled with the most flammable object known to humankind.
Oxygen. Just the right kind of spark and it would all light up in the endless sky of space. She would be her own star. Brilliant and beautiful. Flaring out into nothingness.
* * *
Should I tell him about this, though? Should I let him in on this little secret plan of mine?
Glance around with my own eyes while controlling so many other eyes. See him there, squatting. Nervous. Still unhinged. Something inside of him ... broken. Something in this world broke him and tore him apart and now what’s left is a ragged jigsaw picture. No, no. Someone like that couldn’t know. Shouldn’t ever know.
Could see it in the twitch of his eyes. Still unstable. Would want to stop her. Would want to live somehow
But what was life? What was living?
Nothing. It was all nothingness. And was death? What was dying?
A brilliant bright light and everything. They would be entropy incarnate.
* * *
A twitch of a finger. There, they spread out. A fan in the darkness. Glowing blue flicker brightens up. And the dolls come and rip them apart. Thinking the doubles are Itsasu. When they find no glowing insides they sew the doubles up. And then carry the unconscious bleeding bodies elsewhere outside. And oh. Oh how she felt it. The tingle on a spine of a scalpel going in and out. The sandpaper hands on the insides.
It was just like before. But a million fold. Over and over again. Hands twitched. Eyes twitched. Body moving. Retreat. Now was the time to retreat. Gravity grew loose. Looser still. The lights dampen and flicker and bright. Haunted. Holy filter blue green. A shadow moving on. And on. Retreat pull back ...
“What’s going on? What’s wrong?“ Hodei’s nervous words.
“Leave her alone.” Ortzi now. “See what you’ve done? You’ve hurt her so much. Why can’t you just leave her well enough alone?”
“Shut up, you copy! You imitation! Shut up!”
A twitch again. She had to focus. “We’re retreating, we need to. It’s a massacre out there.”
“No. No you do not. No! You’re going to lead them back here ...”
A spark, a spark, all she needed was a spark, the right kind of spark ... End this now and shut him up. But soon! Before all of her doubles are out of it. She needed her doubles to find the spark. To light the labyrinth fire. She couldn’t do it. Her body was too busted up and worthless ...
“Hodei, Hodei, Hodei ... listen to me, Hodei. Are you listening to me? Listen to me. I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this right now. I feel it, every single time, I feel it and I need to retreat. I have to do this.”
“No.”
He stood up. Snapped his fingers. And then she was out of it. No longer connected to her dolls ...
* * *
Still it was all a shock, wasn’t it? Being brought back to reality like that. Abruptly. All at once. She still shook a little. Felt weary and worn down. It seemed so strange to be in just one body. Like parts of her were missing. Speak
again and words were agitated now. To be stolen away from that experience. That whole, moving, terrifying experience.
“What are you doing? What the hell did you do that for?”
That asshole. That son of a bitch. Could she ever forgive him? So close to being infinite, she could taste it.
“I’m in this whole ship, you know. I can control connections, I can remove and destroy them, if I see fit, and this time, well. It’s time you let your doubles go and that’s that.”
But no, not now. She yearned to return to them. But not enough energy right this second. Her whole life felt drained and empty. Empty in a way she’d never felt before. And yes, even her words felt hollow. When she spoke. And said, “Now what?”
At least she couldn’t feel them dying anymore. At least there was that. But how would she explode? How could she end this all like she’d planned? She was so sick of pain. So sick of sorrow and misery. And this hollow feeling. Exploding would bring her up close and personal to the infinite. She would no longer know the finite bounds of reality. She would be light. Light. Endless exploding light.
“Now we let your doubles slump over and die and hope that satiates the dolls.”
A shake of her head. “It won’t, it won’t at all. They know it’s not me and they’ll keep coming.”
A somber chuckle. “I know what I’m doing, okay? I told you they were coming, and they were. Now do as I say and all will work out for the best. I have a plan, I do. And I’m not that shit punk kid who you knew before. I’m not that fuck up! That’s not me. I’m the heart of the ship! I am the god of the labyrinth!”
Face red, lips flicking spittle on her face. Warm sick and gross.
She’d had enough. She had. She’s got a mind that can open connections. A mind trained so long in so many different egais. A mind that was full of infinite code. A tilt of her head back, back, back. Oh this was going to be beautiful, so beautiful. Close her eyes. Open her thoughts. A wide channel of despair and hope and everything else.