by Neil Clarke
Luo Ming was the first human police officer to arrive on the scene.
Total chaos.
Those were the first words that came to his mind. As he entered Cabin 35, he had a hard time imagining what the mountain of flesh and blood he was seeing used to look like.
“What happened here?” He regretted not donning a filtration mask before coming in. He lowered his voice as he spoke to his “assistant” Edmund, an AI that was invisible to the naked eye. Edmund was his most dependable companion.
“Ms. Lin Ke, who filed the police report, suffered a heart attack from shock and is now being treated in the hospital.” Edmund’s voice emitted from a speaker inside his ear. “She complained that the cultivators breached their contract and canceled her order.”
At a loss, Luo Ming said, “I think we’re looking at a lot more than a breach of contract here.”
Viscous blood was still seeping onto the immaculate white floor from a pile of organs three meters in diameter. In some places, the blood had already congealed into a pitch-black patch. Some organs in the outermost layer of the meter-tall flesh pile still looked fresh; a few were even twitching and wriggling—the rotting smell in the air had to be coming from something deeper inside the pile.
As he imagined what the inside might look like, Luo Ming felt his scalp tingling. “We’d better make sure that there are only cultivated organs here. God forbid that this mess is hiding a murder scene.” Luo Ming commanded Edmund to scan the room. Edmund took control of the police droid via the wireless remote, overriding the droid’s visual system to complete his assigned task.
“I’m always a little unsettled by how easily you take control of them,” Luo Ming muttered. He could, of course, issue commands to the police droid directly, but then he would have to waste time organizing and analyzing the raw data himself.
“Please don’t grumble about your misgivings concerning AIs to me,” Edmund replied. “I believe I’ve found something that’s even more unsettling.”
While Luo Ming had been griping, the scan revealed that two arms and half a head were also buried within the mountain of organs. The Adam matrix absolutely could not have created those three body parts.
“Alright, looks like we’ve just added a dismembered corpse to the case,” Luo Ming said, sighing. “The Eden Daily is going to have a field day with this.”
Luo Ming had Edmund scan and record the details of the scene in the cabin; then, he answered First Officer Qin Wei’s videocall. Qin Wei was the spaceship Eden’s head of security.
“This is perhaps the worst case I’ve seen on my one hundred and three years aboard this ship.” As Luo Ming spoke, his gaze fell on a pair of human eyes that dangled from the ceiling. His voice shook. “You—you’d better come take a look.”
2. Echidna
And in a hollow cave she bore another monster, irresistible, in no wise like either to mortal men or to the undying gods, even the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth.
—Hesiod, Theogony 300-305 (as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)
“Excuse me, are you—” After observing me for twenty minutes, the woman beside me asks timidly, “Typhon’s lead singer Evan Lee?”
“No.” All that feels like a past life.
She blurts out an apology and follows up with, “You really look like him.”
I channel all the cold disinterest I can muster into my voice. “Is that so.”
So ends that conversation. The flight attendant soon comes around with drinks. I ask for a glass of wine, followed by another. The cramped economy seat constricts my body, and terrifying words throw heavy shackles on my mind: “father,” “responsibility,” and so on.
When I was still Evan Lee, my days of pleasure and riches seemed endless—until she left me, taking with her half of my possessions and all of my musical inspiration.
For a long time after our separation, I constantly thought of her, analyzed her, studied her. I flipped through old tabloids, gathered paparazzi gossip, replayed our wedding video again and again to pick up each of her frowns and smiles, and examined every picture and recording of all the times she appeared with me to support my publicity efforts. During that darkest period of my life, these were the best benefits from my once-great fame—plenty of materials for me to study. And so, bit by bit, I got close to the monster beneath her perfect shell, the serpent-half concealed beneath her beautiful appearance. But there was one part of our life together that I could never understand.
Her pregnancy.
The pregnancy happened only because it was part of her plan. During the first three years of our marriage, I told her many times that I wanted a child, but she would always brush me off with a “no need to rush,” plus a session of hot sex. When she decided it was time, she didn’t think to discuss the decision with me at all.
“Evan, guess what?” That was the first night after the end of my tour. When I opened the door to our home, a festive atmosphere greeted me.
“What kind of surprise does my little sweetheart have?” I cupped her neck and kissed her lips.
“A baby.” She laughed, her eyes curving with joy. “Darling, we’re going to have a baby!”
I was stunned. After three years of begging, I had all but given up on the idea.
“It’s already three months old.” She put my hand on her flat stomach. “Right here.”
My palm detected absolutely no movement, but, in that moment, the word “father” entered my mind. Every cell of my being filled with joy. Two months later, Typhon released its last single, “Fire by Lightning.” Music critics felt that its “every note was imbued with love and joy.” Then, on the day our hit single won the Golden Melody Award, my wife changed in a way that I never could have imagined.
On that day, her labmate called me and said that she had suffered a nervous breakdown.
Impossible. My wife—for whom even an “off mood” was rare—had suffered a nervous breakdown?
Nothing like this had ever happened before. I rushed to campus. Her laboratory was at the end of a boulevard shaded with trees. The rows of Chinese parasol trees had already shed their leaves, leaving behind only branches full of round, dangling fruits. As I walked into that red-brick building, one of her students recognized me.
“Mr. Lee, finally!” His expression was a mixture of agitation, worry, and curiosity, but he prudently suppressed his emotions under a veneer of politeness. “I’m Edmund. She’s in the third-floor animal room. You should hurry.”
“Thank you, Edmund,” I said in a rush.
Although the campus was where we first met, that was actually my first time in her lab. The sparkling floor was like a hospital’s; there were rows and rows of metal shelves, each neatly packed with plastic cages connected to a central ventilation system. This room must’ve held a thousand, no, ten thousand rats!
I found her behind the shelves full of rats. She was cradling her head as she crouched in a corner, her hair a mess, her shoulders shuddering, but her cries were inaudible.
“Honey—” Seeing her like this frightened me. “What’s wrong?”
The moment my hand touched her, she let out a screech. I stepped back. “Okay, I won’t touch you. What happened?”
Slowly, she raised her head. I had never before seen such panic in her eyes. Her parted lips trembled, but a long time passed before she uttered my name: “Evan.”
“Yes, it’s me.” I chastised myself. “I should’ve held you back; I shouldn’t have let you go to work. The baby’s already almost six months old—”
“No!” she shrieked. “No! Don’t bring it up! Don’t—”
“Alright, we won’t talk about the baby.” I reached out and tried to get close to her. Her whole body trembled, as though she were struggling to escape. Defeated, I could only call upon my own specialty: “Honey, let’s sing ‘Titans’ toget
her, okay?”
She stopped struggling and looked at me blankly, like a helpless child.
“A singer in the wilderness, recounting tales of the gods . . .”
It was a gentle song, and also her favorite melody. I sang as softly as I could, so soft the words were almost inaudible. Music turned out to be more effective than language. She listened until I was halfway through the song, sniffled, then threw herself into my arms and sobbed. I stroked her messy hair and tried to soothe her terrified shivers.
“It’s okay, it’s okay; I’m here.”
She slumped against my chest and, with great effort, uttered a few disconnected phrases: “It’s a . . . parasitic . . . parasitic . . . monster . . . ”
“What?”
“I don’t want the baby. Evan, I don’t want that parasite inside my body!”
Shocked, I asked, “What happened? I don’t understand.”
She wiped her nose on my sleeve. Finally, she could speak in complete sentences. “The baby is taking over my life; it’s a parasite in my body. It’s controlling my thoughts, commanding me to eat what it wants to eat, telling me to go where it wants to go, demanding I do what it wants to do. It’s a parasitic monster in my body, a monster! It’s devouring me, do you understand? I can’t control myself anymore! I can’t stop myself from thinking about it! I can’t focus on what I want to do. I can’t understand my own notes. I don’t care about my papers, either. The only thing in my mind is how I can make it feel more comfortable! I’ve been possessed by it; it’s already wormed its way into my brain—do you understand?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “My silly girl; this is a normal reaction to pregnancy. It’s because you love the baby—our baby.”
“No!” She stared at me with alarm. “This is absolutely not normal! Not normal at all! You just don’t get it because it hasn’t possessed your body!”
I held back my laughter and said as sincerely as I could, “If it were possible, I would bear the baby for you, but I can’t. Chin up; you’re a mother now.”
She stopped crying. For a few seconds, she stared at me in an unfamiliar way, as though I were the one who had lost my mind. But she soon became her usual self again. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, then looked up and giggled sheepishly. “Oh goodness, I really did go nuts today.”
“It’s a very common anxiety, honey.”
She leaned against my shoulder. “You’re right. These are normal feelings for a new mother. I need to get used to them.”
In the months that followed, there were a couple more incidents in which she was dejected and depressed, but there were no more episodes as intense as the one in the lab.
But I started to be more vigilant, canceling a new tour so that I could spend more time with her. Around the 39th week of her pregnancy, I stumbled upon a file in her computer that recorded in detail the “conversations” she had with her unborn baby: when she went to the restroom, dreams, favorite foods and kinds of music—all trivial things. Reading these notes, I began to understand what she said that day in the lab. The things she noted were not her own habits or tastes, but someone else’s.
The baby growing inside her was using her body to do what it wanted to do. Once she realized this, she was terrified.
If she had been a typical mother, perhaps she would have used “love” to explain her behavior. But she couldn’t do that. Emotions to her are a kind of camouflage, something to let her blend in with others. So she could only understand everything from the baby’s perspective: this was a monster that had possessed her body and taken control of her so that it could survive inside her.
Maybe the plane’s air conditioning is too cold, but suddenly, I shiver. I never thought I’d come to understand why she’d abandon her own child: If she didn’t, she’d always be under Tony’s control, forced to give up on having her own life—just as I have.
“Please fasten your seatbelt, Mr. Lee,” the flight attendant says. “We’re about to land.”
As we descend, a city surrounded by an oasis blooms in the vast expanse of desert outside.
B. Eden
After completing a genetic survey of the scene, Luo Ming received Edmund’s interim report: the limbs and head in Organ Cultivation Cabin 35 belonged to three deceased passengers. Terminal illness was unquestionably the cause of all three deaths; furthermore, they had all chosen to donate their bodies to science to advance research on those illnesses. Edmund’s discovery allowed Luo Ming to unfurrow his brows just a bit.
“It’s not murder,” he said to First Officer Qin Wei, who had rushed to the scene. “That’s good news at least.”
Like Luo Ming and the majority of the passengers aboard Eden, Qin Wei was close to a hundred fifty years old. He had just gotten a scalp replacement: only an infant-like layer of fine hair covered the top of his head, lending a comical air to his overall appearance.
“Thank goodness.” Qin Wei was distracted, and he muttered as though to himself, “But . . . how’d these limbs even get here?”
“The body parts should have been sent to the medical research center under Deck Seven,” Luo Ming said.
“Should have been, yes.” Only now did Qin Wei look at Luo Ming. “The organ cultivation cabins are the most heavily monitored and secure part of this spaceship. For something like this to happen is unbelievable. You might not know this—even the police don’t have the clearance to view documentation about Adam.”
“Sharing such information could greatly help my investigation.”
“I’m very sorry, Officer Luo, but those documents involve classified information about the very heart of Eden,” Qin Wei said. “Since there aren’t any suspected murders, I’d say this investigation has come to an end. Why don’t you let me and the Adam overseers tie up any loose ends?”
Luo Ming read between the lines. “So you’re saying that this is just an ordinary accident?”
Qin Wei smiled noncommittally. “The ship has experienced severe organ cultivation failures before, you know? Malfunctions in the cabin’s temperature control.”
Luo Ming studied his expression and let out a small sigh. “Alright, sir, I understand.”
Only a day later, as he sat in his office, Luo Ming received an info packet from Edmund concerning Adam.
“You’re a genius.” Luo Ming sighed with approval and opened the document. As the unredacted details filled his view, Luo Ming gasped. “This ship’s security system must have serious flaws for such classified data to be so easily accessible.”
“Or perhaps it’s your fault for illicitly bringing an AI aboard, hmm?” Edmund’s voice was a cross between pride and smug derision.
“Well, no one’s discovered you over all these years.” Edmund was a gift Luo Ming had received a long time ago, and after years of working and living together, he had found the AI indispensable. Even after hearing about Eden’s ban on AIs, Luo Ming still chose to implant the terminal into his body and smuggle Edmund aboard the spaceship.
“That’s because the intelligence systems here are far too primitive,” Edmund said. “But you don’t need to worry about the security of the ship. Its core systems are sealed off from outside networks. I haven’t found a single entry point.”
Luo Ming nodded and returned his attention to the documents. It appeared that Eden was actually a research vessel that provided replacement organs for its several hundred thousand passengers, allowing them to extend their lives indefinitely. At the same time, it transmitted the residents’ health data back to Earth, so that people back home could learn first-hand about potential complications from a large-scale organ replacement program. Eden followed a comet’s orbit in the Solar System so that its path crossed with the Earth’s once every four years, allowing the ship to dock at a space station and exchange both personnel and information.
“I always thought we were heading away from the Solar System,” said a surprised Luo Ming. “And nobody ever told me we could leave the ship!”
Edmund said, “Looks like
they’d gone to a lot of trouble to hide the truth and prevent you all from discovering that you’re actually laboratory mice.”
In light of this new-found knowledge, the organ cultivation cabins really were the soul of Eden. They were often called “Adam” chambers, after that figure from Christian lore who used his own rib to create humanity’s other ancestor. But, to be more precise, every mucous membrane pouch in the organ cultivation cabins that bore a human organ—those were all Adams. They were distinct, each carrying different passengers’ genes, cultivating different organs.
When Eden was first designed, the Adams were separated from one another. But, as time passed, the Adam overseers discovered a strange phenomenon: after a few Adams began cultivation inside the same room, cells would start growing along the feeding tracts until all the Adams were connected to each other.
However, this connection did not delay or corrupt the growing organs; rather, organ cultivation in all the Adams became more efficient as organ maturation time decreased. Some researchers believed that this “genetic networking” created a system among the Adams for exchanging growth signals and hormones, accelerating organ development.
As a result, when the cultivation cabins were renovated forty years ago, the overseers installed passages that allowed all the Adams to connect to each other, resulting in an awe-inspiring effect—while each passenger’s genome was still preserved as separate and complete, the vast majority of organ cultivation times were cut by at least half. Even the development time for lungs, the slowest organ to cultivate, was cut down by a third.
“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with our case.” Luo Ming felt agitated. “I keep feeling like we missed something at the scene.”
“I recorded a complete scan of the room,” Edmund said.
“Perhaps—” Luo Ming pondered. “The problem may not only be inside the cultivation cabin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember the dispute between the woman who filed the report and the Adam overseer?” Luo Ming asked.