by Lamb, Robert
Yorke can still hear the in-skull sound of his teeth scraping against chipped bone.
They told him it was a miracle he'd survived.
A miracle.
***
The rest of the Orthodoxy, those born after or outside the war, never realize the truth. EVA doesn't just make you crave it. EVA makes you love it. EVA completes you in a way that dims everything else in the universe.
In his dreams, he rejoins the feast every night. Sometimes it skews into the fantastic: each of them seated at a banquet hall table, lit by neon Imigran brilliance. The aliens themselves sit naked and twisted into a thousand forms among them, each silently smoking a long cigarette. Their skin is grey. Their eyes are distant. He wakes up screaming and shaking and for a good twenty minutes it's like a train's slamming into his body at a million miles an hour. Over and over again. Every five seconds. And then it passes.
Somehow it passes.
Yorke walks on through the empty Imigran tunnel. His footsteps echo loneliness into the darkness ahead. He passes a dead Spider Miner, its great spindly legs forged of the same plastiflesh used to remake his missing parts. The Orthodoxy had no problem approving super-human strength for these. Each of its eight legs ends in a razor-sharp scythe. Its mandibles are Gatling lancers.
There's no sign of the Imigran dead. The thought makes him jumpy, but he doesn't dare show it. He moves closer to the wall so that his shoulder lamp catches its black hieroglyphics: pyramids and mazes born from the endless twisting and eversion of the human form. Prolapsed angles emerge from monstrous orifices, flesh merges with flesh. Each carnal act blurs the lines between murder and creation. Imigran nudes flow in rivers, join into oceans.
He thinks back to all the alien horrors that Earth Age man once envisioned. Hulking green monsters with multiple arms. Little grey rapists and parasites. Evil empires. Monstrous hives. Grotesque things part man, part machine. Of course, none of it existed -- at least until man engineered it out of necessity.
Earth Age Humans were obsessed with the idea of terraforming. The dead, cold reaches of Mars? Melt the ice caps and turn that shit into vacation homes. The poison pressure cooker of Venus? Wind back the clock and make it ours.
Those dreams changed when their knowledge of the flesh surpassed everything else. Over the course of generations, they woke up to a necessary horror.
Only a slim segment of the population was naturally suited for microgravity living, so scientists began to engineer their best-case scenarios into the genes of the chosen. But why stop there, right? They bred their own space-faring subspecies: pale lanky creatures with low-calorie requirements, minimal gastrointestinal distress and a natural immunity to bone mass loss. They called them the Navigators.
Then came the abhumans of pre-colonial Mars, cold golems engineered to thrive on the red planet's freezing surface with only basic auxiliary breathing equipment. Their lives were brutal and brief, sacrificed in the gaping pit of the Valles Marineris to build a future for their human masters.
The change came to other planets and moons as well, each time a mere temporary solution. Give the vat-grown apes time to terraform the fucker, then gas the lot of them and let the true Earthlings claim the prize.
Easy as pie.
But what's a handful of planets and moons compared to the cosmos? Only an interstellar species could hope to survive the ages, so Earth Age Man perpetrated what the Orthodoxy called the Great Blasphemy. They rolled out their Explorer Class abhumans, Methuselah species capable of hibernating for millennia on voyages to distant worlds. And to ensure they could set straight to work upon arrival, their architects engendered them with rapid evolutionary adaptation.
But that was all ancient history now, gone with the Earth itself. The slave races finished their labor on the nearest worlds and where rewarded with extermination. Later, the Orthodoxy came to dominate the post-Cataclysm colonial societies. They raised the Cross of Iron and set out to reclaim the distant worlds.
Occupied by mere stone-age squatters, the first few planets fell without incident. The Orthodoxy massacred them to the last man. Then humanity encountered the Imigrans. Somewhere in the wide black yonder, these Explorer Class abhumans had encountered just the right environment to evolve into something different. They became masters of a dozen systems and advanced scientists in their own strange way.
We became them and they became… this.
Yorke scans the artwork that runs beside him. Etched in the wall, a figure climbs free of its skin and lifts its own burning heart to the cosmos. Another dead Spider miner partially blocks his path up ahead, this one with an obvious wound. A black hole the size of a child's head blemishes its smooth thorax.
He's safe here, of course. That's why the Djarum Company hired him. As far as anyone knows, the Orthodoxy only came to understood one thing about IVA. First, they learned to seal it away inside the remaining Imigran Sphericals with an onslaught of Spider Miners. And secondly, they learned you can only contract Impelled Viral Autosarcophagy once.
Yorke can still remember the words of the female doctor back aboard the Orthodoxy medical ship.
"You've already survived the worst thing that can happen to you…"
But at the time, all he wanted was to chew the rest of his tongue off.
***
The grave robber passes more fallen Spider Miners, some wounded but most merely battery-dead. He emerges into yet another vaulted chamber and his heart pumps even faster. No ceiling in sight. The neon is as dead as everywhere else, but here silent rings of gargoyles watch on from perches atop slender pedestals.
Some are fleshy and curvaceous, others emaciated frights. Some are formed of multiple bodies. The one nearest Yorke is grey and sculpted to appear more feminine than male, with long slender legs folded under in a crouch. It leans forward, slight breasts staring down at him with nipples shaped like stars. The ghosts of embossed veins haunt its stone flesh. Ribs poke against the skin, the head of each swelling into an unmistakable glans. Its lone article of clothing, a tall tiara, bears a totem pole of additional faces, each emerging from the skull of the last.
The Imigran statue only has one full arm. A quick glance confirms that this is by design. The other terminates in an intricately decorated nub. Scar tissue and language.
Somehow he is not surprised when all eight of the statue's eyes open. His heart leaps but he cannot move.
Blue irises. Red irises. Two sockets are empty.
He feels IVA shudder through his body -- not the hunger but the knowledge of what webs through his every cell.
***
An impression of narrowing. A spiral descent.
***
He doesn't know why he follows her. He doesn't know why she is alive or why he himself is alive. The walls are so close that his shoulder lamp brings all the embossed artwork into sharp contrast. Women giving birth to themselves. Men swallowing their own serpentine members. Adults shriveling into goblins and crawling inside wombs, eggs and ripened fruit. Everywhere things sprout wings: from mouths, eye sockets, ears, nostrils, rectums, vaginas, penises and wounds. Especially wounds.
And then they emerge into yet another vast atrium. The floor below them drops off into a pit. He hears the echo of falling water and, indeed, there's a hint of shimmering water down there in its depths. A crimson lake.
A narrow, un-railed bridge spans the abyss, leading out to an island pillar in the center of the vast atrium. There is indeed something like a cask out there, a great barrel turned on end and no embossed with a million Imigran mysteries. It's as tall as three men, as wide as a dozen standing shoulder to shoulder. Unlike the rest of the Spherical, it emits a faint flow.
He follows the one-armed Imigran, watches as her movements betray a vastly alien musculature. Extra bones. This, he reminds himself, is but another Aspect of the Manifold Soul. What spiritual truth does its three-faced tiara exude?
As they approach the Cask a curious humming fill the air, like the beating of hummingbird wings,
and he notes first the designs etched in the Cask's surface, then the objects surrounding it on the island.
Little piles of china-white ears and noses, phalluses and unidentifiably patches. It's all plastiflesh, all left like an offering at the base of what can only be described as a giant cask.
He feels the Imigran's long-nailed hand move down his chest and grip the void suit's clasp. There's a slight hiss as it opens.
He pulls of the helmet off himself and gasps at the first inhalation of cold, stale Imigran air -- his first in two decades. IVA, now harmless to him, courses into his system to join its dormant kin. He climbs out of the suit, naked once more in an artificial world.
The prosthetics are not designed to come off, but the Imigran manages with a single touch. The pieces seem to fall from his body, tumbling into a new offertory pile of ivory nonsense on the tiles. There is more than a little blood as well, but he barely notices. He doesn't feel so much as a sting.
He stares into the central image on the great cask before him: a double anatomical heart burning in the center of a swirling galaxy. And the galaxy is made of tiny people, the people made of stars.
Something is inside the cask. He can feel it breathe against his soul. A grey, Imigran hand caresses his bare chest, and then sinks long nails into his skin. It feels like ecstasy, the blood mere leavings of orgasmic bliss. It sinks through the ribcage and grips the pulsing meat inside.
***
No rescue crew will find him this time. The Djarum Company, if it truly exists at all, will only hire more Children of IVA and in doing so send them home. No human ears will hear the sound of strange feet padding through the darkened hallways or the slap of flesh against flesh and the groan of alien passions in that ball of night. No Orthodox explorer will kneel before a cluster of plastiflesh body parts and wonder what molted and left them behind.
The dancers dance as one amid the dead Spider Miners. They call out in a gurgling howl and read the language of the walls as the sound waves return to them -- the thousandfold meaning of each holy Aspect.
It loves itself. It knows itself. It is many in one and one in many. Above all it is patient. It is the child of humanity. It is the offspring of God.
It saturates itself in passion as the universe outside wars, conquers and steadily dissipates into a forgotten dream.
Subway Mandala
The slightest of subworld breezes wafts through the station, carrying with it the ozone stench of trains in their burrowing, the oil of lubricated tracks and a million dark miles of spooring mold. Vortices of litter rise wearily and die. Rodents scurry through the littered waste. And all the while the subway stalactites drip, drip, drip their grey waters and it’s anyone's guess what oceans they drain to.
Rondo, scruff-faced and bag-eyed, is in full lean against a tiled cylindrical column, tiles that steer one's mind toward questions of color. When does green end and grey begin? It's the faded pigment of hospice wards and communist bath houses. It infects the whole station, even the two strangers waiting by the platform.
Fuck, maybe it's contagious?
Rondo shakes away the thought and jabs the nozzle of his aspirator up his left nostril. He pulls the trigger. Inhales.
Feels.
His.
Mind.
Go.
Tight.
He realizes he looks quite suspicious in his current garb. After all, his grubby trench coat is enormous, swollen with the bulk of his many personal effects. He takes inventory.
One duffle bag stuffed with sour-smelling garments.
One toiletry bag, mostly full of supplements and enhancers.
The ragged remnants of an extremely plaid bed roll.
Two synesthesopes: one working, one busted.
A digital recorder
The sketchpad
Cache of pencils
Fuck gun
Luckily, he's never had to use the fuck gun. He's always fled when the Red Cops bustle into a station and he can all but turn himself invisible when they move from car to car.
Still, it gives him a certain confidence: Foot-long barrel, flat black, one aluminum charge canister locked into the butt. He tested on himself after he bought it just to make sure it would do in a pinch. Ever black out from an orgasm? Aim for the brain, not the junk.
The synesthesope is the cornerstone of his research, though. He has the busted one sheathed on his thigh, nothing more than spare parts at this point. He keeps the functional model strapped to his belt. The processer hums and vibrates ever so slightly. He feels its warmth through three sour layers of clothing. Sometimes it slides around to the front of the belt, inevitably stirring an erection. A tube runs up from the processer, down his right coat sleeve and the synesthesope's sensor module itself coils around his wrist.
All he has to do is lift his arm. Aim it at some stranger or object. See what's really there.
Of course, he has to reach into his coat with the other hand to adjust the settings -- which creates the ever-problematic illusion of public transit masturbation. An earpiece whispers him the analysis data. Sometimes he has to clutch it, tilt his head to hear it above the train noises.
But the machine works like a charm, slicing away layer after layer of cross-sensory metaphor. It turns sound back into sight, smell back into vision and taste into language. And as long as he stays dosed on the right stimulants, the audio it pumps into his ear gives him flashes of The World as It Is.
The revelations fade fast, so he sketches any pertinent findings straight into his little notepad with all the other sketches -- mostly torturous phalluses and vaginas like unfolding orchids. The occasional goblinoid or cydunk enhancement.
Rondo checks his wristwatch and sees it's nearly time for his meet up with Bomb Tet. Tet chronicles the transit system's various food carts. Which ones sell actual food? Which ones deal in reliquaries and black market organs?
Tet has seen what the hot dog vats actually contain. He has unfolded a jelly bomber and uncovered the vile secrets of its filling. He's now a devoted vegan.
Rondo glances at the watch again. It's still a little early, but he has to wee. To the rest room.
Abandoning his pillar, he shambles off toward the nearby alcove. Engraved in the stone above the archway is the unmistakable -- and rather graphic -- toilet glyph. He passes beneath it and gives a quick glance to the left and right hand doors, to the bluntly anatomical symbols painted to represent the two primary human genders.
But he's interested in neither.
Rondo stares instead at the blank wall immediately facing him and switches on the synesthesope. He raises his right arm.
He winces as the piercing whine fills his ear, but then the sound bleeds out into raw sense data. The stench of the station dims. The lighting dissipates and colors moan like banshees. For one glimmering moment, he glimpses a door where there wasn't one -- and this one's emblem features a humanoid groin with an X over it.
He grasps the knob before it can vanish and cracks the door just enough to slink through into the restroom beyond.
The synesthesope flash wears off rather swiftly. The door shuts and the restroom is once more washed in illusion. It looks just like any other, except it boasts 108 toilet stalls.
No one else is here of curse. Only his fellow chroniclers know about the secret restrooms. The most important rule, obviously, is never ever attempt to use any of those 108 toilets. Piss in the sink if you have to. Shit in the corner. But each stall only appears to contain a normal toilet. Give it a blast with the synesthesope and you'll glimpse monstrosities of porcelain and steel, plumbing conceived by a madman to drink from thoroughly inhuman orifices. One of them, Bomb Tet assures him, may actually serve as a telecommunication system for a species whose language consists entirely of defecation.
It's Rondo's area of study. Not directly. But a great deal of his work involves synesthesoping strangers on the train for alien reproductive organs. So far he's chronicled 33 non-human genital arrangements, all sketched in blac
k pencil. But are those truly 33 separate species? How many are different genders of the same thing? How many alien? Mutant? Surgical or cybernetic enhancements? Countless others remain uncatalogued.
He occasionally doodles human wangs just to remind himself how much the anatomy of a single species varies.
The thought summons the urge, so he walks over to the sink and whips it out for a quick wee in the sink.
But it's all just one piece in the grander puzzle, isn't it? What is the World as It IS and why is the Great Illusion coating it so mundane? Why does reality seem a vast public transit system and where is everyone fucking going? To work? Home for dinner with the family? Sure, those are the sort of answers you get when you whip out the small talk on your fellow commuters, but when you actually follow them -- as his fellow Chroniclers often do -- you find they never wind up anywhere.
There are no homes. No places of work beyond the transit system. It's all endless wandering, all naps on the train and gobbled fried foods. Every last one of the saps is forever waiting on the next transfer, the next express that will take them to some fabled destination.
What is happening?
Rondo shakes out the last droplets of piss and then turns the water on and off to wash it down the drain. He shifts his gear around and reaches into his cloak for his canteen. Takes a quick swig of lukewarm water.
Then, fuck it, another hit from the aspirator.
Just.
For.
Good.
Measure.
His mind jerks back to the three best spots to forage food in this portion of the train world.
The tempura cart at Mantago Station. The seafood items are all actually vegetables. They're also reliquaries for a nature cult of some sort -- Tet could tell you more -- but the transubstantiation makes for good eats.
The mold on the wall at Eight Points Station is actually an edible garden of some sort.
Selected newspapers at Trollington Station are actually scrolls of meat or fruit leather. Read the opinion pages to decipher which is which.