An End

by Paul Hughes

  An end to the tunnel, and bright lights. A room filled with other men, most holding weapons before them, most standing silently as Zero was lifted on to a hovering stretcher and clamps were secured around his arms and legs. There was a flickering undertone of communication, just fits and snatches of thought, mostly well-masked against Zero’s prying and curious mind.

  Zero’s head lolled to one side, still out of his control. A man draped in black material approached, quickly slid a needle-tipped device into Zero’s neck, withdrew it, waited for a reading. The device emitted a shrill beep. Again, the man slid the device under the flesh of Zero’s neck. Again, the beep. The man shook his head, consulted with another person who was draped both in black material and the shadows of the corner of the room. The words were a jumbled mess of guttural exclamations and smooth vocal elisions. Zero knew that it was not a human language.

  [no data on file. it has to be—]

  [don’t]

  The man in shadows stepped forward, gazed down on the disabled Zero with fire and contempt barely held placid under the glare of steely eyes. He reached out and turned Zero’s head toward him, so that their eyes met.

  [the sum of our fears. it hasn’t ended yet.]

  The words tore into Zero’s mind, a brilliant flash of tugging heated pain nestled directly behind his eyes. For an instant, he caught an image of what appeared to be two planets colliding, an image of a screaming woman trapped underneath the rubble of a shattered building, a hand so close a hand looking at looking out at his own hand wiping blood from a broken nose and feeling tasting bleeding that blood himself. The image retreated an instant after it appeared, and he was left with only those eyes steel gray eyes looking into and through him with a hatred he could not begin to describe with words.

  The man turned the aura of communications that emanated from behind his eyes directly at Zero. The experience was intimate, disconcerting, terrifying.

  [which colony are you from, son? who sent you?]

  Perhaps the most disturbing moment during the whole trip to Center Earth for Nine was the moment when the creature that was Mother looked back mischievously as he held Whistler’s considerably-larger hand and then began to skip down the remainder of the passage. Whistler had no choice but to skip alongside the Divine Merciful and Wise Mother of the Sixth Extinction, even summoning enough acting skill to let out a joyful “Hurrah!” as he skipped with her.

  She laughed as only an energetic five-year-old can, be damned the fact that she was little more than a machine-based lifeform from beyond the stars that was solely responsible for the deaths of trillions upon trillions of sentient beings in this backwater of the collapsing universe. She reached up for the doorknob to the inner chamber, but couldn’t seem to grasp it. She looked back down the hallway at her step stool. Whistler realized the dilemma, opened the door for her. She sweetly smiled, and ran into her abode, the curls atop her head bouncing playfully along. She was wearing a delightful pair of magenta corduroy bib overalls and a light pink shirt. Barefoot. She sat down in the center of the room, which had been redecorated in a childhood motif since Whistler had last been there. There were stuffed animals, dolls, a large rocking horse in the corner. Pastels with few primaries. On the floor, she devoted her attention to a stack of coloring books and a large pile of crayons, every color imaginable. She scribbled delightedly for a while, filling in the image of a duck with an umbrella an intriguing aesthetic of raw sienna and silver, ignoring the four people grouped around her, looking down in an uneasy mixture of confusion and horrifying fear. Eventually she was satisfied with the coloring job she did on the duck and his little umbrella, and she looked up, the smile gone from her cherubic face.

  [fleur, you betrayed me.]

  The words hung languidly in the air for a moment, and Fleur stumbled over her own voice, tried to think of something, anything to say in her own defense. Mother raised one hand, and Fleur fell quiet.

  [hush, little one.] The imperative was made doubly-disconcerting by the fact that it came from a five-year-old with the voice of an ancient, the voice that transcended voice, emanated from the entire expanse of the Vegas tunnel, swept across the surface of the dead planet and reached out to the void through which the Extinction Fleet once sailed on their divine mission of pacification and purification.

  [i won’t kill you for betraying me, but you may very well die where i am sending you.]

  a haze of pain beyond pain, loss beyond loss...

  The scraping had been more of a gouging and dismembering as the inhabitants of the unknown vessel cut into and through Machine to extract its precious cargo of Zero. Machine gasped a breath that was not air and shuddered a shudder of non-shudder. Such pain in this existence. The other senses were lost, but still it felt pain.

  Enveloped. Encompassed. The liquid metal of the Machine was quickly destabilizing, becoming something else. Machine sensed that Zero had been taken from his bowl. Without Zero, Machine would quickly dissolve into nothing more than several trillion tons of silver liquid biomass. Machine couldn’t hear Zero’s thoughts anywhere near.

  point of origin?

  The inquisition shot through him unexpectedly, resonating his entire being. The question echoed back and forth, forth and back in every color of the rainbow, every language every spoken and several never ever spoken. Machine, torn apart and invaded for the Cracker Jack prize of death row inmate and certified troublemaker Zero, felt at once raped and fulfilled by this new voice... It filled in the cracks, smoothed over the incision, patted the scrape and kissed it, making everything better. It was as close a sensation to le petit mort that Machine ever had and ever could experience.

  point of origin?

  Again, the question. Should Machine answer this stranger who was in his (head? mind? what are you thinking, machine?) soul? Would it jeopardize his mission? He decided that the fact that he was incapacitated and bleeding out the precious bioneural gelatin was a pretty good indication of game over, Machine. What could he lose by telling this voice everything that it wanted to hear?

  point of origin?

  Earth. Planet One of fourteen million surveyed and pacified planets.

  rephrase: point of cargo origin?

  Machine thought for a moment about that one... Where exactly was Zero from?

  Uncertain point of origin. Last planetary contact with Planet One.

  redirect: list applicable cargo contaminants.

  Again, Machine was confused by the question. He could feel this faceless voice searching though his accumulated knowledge, faint fingertips tickling deep inside of his essense.

  rephrase: is cargo contaminated with the genocidal catalyst referred to as “fleur”?

  Machine had a moment of realization. Vestigial emotions and visions of a burning city, a screaming woman reaching out, and burning silver falling from the sky. This presence was not from the Extinction Fleet. The vessel that had encompassed them in liquidspace was not from earth or Mother or the any of the Inner. This was something unanticipated, and much, much worse.

  Zero has a natural immunity to the Fleur catalyst.

  Machine felt it then, the abrupt, stabbing pain of his end, as the liquid metal voice pierced and poured through the final interior battlements he had erected in his mind as a last line of defense. Invaded and suffocated and consumed by that beautiful, lyrical presence. Machine gasped and drowned in his own liquid soul.

  [more tea?]

  Whistler was still holding the tiny plastic cup to his lips, but he looked up obligingly, smiled his patented killer smile, all sparkly whites to match his shock of curled white hair. “But of course, Mum. It is delicious.”

  Mother smiled her angelic child smile and poured more tepid water from her plastic teapot into Whistler’s cup. He nodded his approval and gratitude and took a sip. Fleur watched with mild interest as her mind wandered, rabbit in the headlights of an uncertain end. She thought with mild unease about the intricate process that was taking place instantaneously within Whis
tler as his projected form catalyzed and converted the liquid water into another part of his illusion. Liquid becomes upload becomes holographically-projected drip of water running down the chin of a man who was no more physically alive than the plastic teacup from which he drank. Whistler laughed, embarrassed at the spillage, daintily wiped the water from the periphery of his goatee. Fleur did not like to think about the technology that allowed him to exist.

  Mother sat back in her tiny chair, linked her fingers through each other, hands resting on her breast-less chest as she leaned back on two chair legs. She surveyed her guests with an air of satisfaction. She was obviously enjoying the company. Her company was clustered uncomfortably around the round wooden child’s table, sitting on low children’s chairs, sipping lukewarm “tea” from tiny pink plastic cups. Nine looked the most uncomfortable, his knees projecting up like the columns of a bridge as he maneuvered his unwanted tea between them.

  “Four on the floor, please, Mother.”

  She frowned, a petulant child and not the horrifying act of extinction that she truly was, but obeyed Whistler’s gentle instruction and leaned forward so that all four legs of her diminutive chair made contact with the brilliant green rug. Her brow furrowed in frustration, she waved her hand and the pink plastic tea set was no more, the cup disappearing from Hank’s fingertips as he placed his lips to it to take another half-hearted sip. He looked around awkwardly, brought his hand up and itched the side of his head instead, as if that were his intention all along. Fleur grinned.

  [you have nothing to smile about, little one.]

  “You’re one to talk, Mother.”

  The silence in the room was more deafening that the shriek of collapsing bulkhead that had pinned Fleur to the deck of the prison galleon and prevented her from ending this charade once and for all. Whistler and Nine looked at each other in silent agreement. Hank cleared his throat and shifted in his tiny seat.

  “Why didn’t you just have them kill me? You’ve taken everything from me that I ever wanted already. Just kill me and get it over with.”

  [not that simple, really. as i said before, i have one more mission for you before your job is done, little flower.]

  “Don’t call me that.” Fleur’s eyes burned with an intensity that cut through the dim playroom and the suffocating inhumanity of its inhabitants with razor precision.

  [but that’s what you are... the little flower. the little silver flower that blooms and blooms and chokes out all that stand before it with shining crimson—]

  “Stop it. Just tell me what you need from me.”

  Mother smiled her innocent smile. [i need nothing from you but you, dear. the human race needs you.]

  “There is no human race anymore.”

  [but of course there is, poppet! why, there are you and—]

  “Me and who? Hank? That’s all you have left of us. Me and Hank, right?”

  Hank had been absent-mindedly playing with his ancient Zippo, but he looked up at the sound of his name. He was sitting adjacent to Mother on this tiny wooden circle, and he looked down at her, smiling a nervous smile.

  [no, fleur. just you.]

  Hank’s eyes widened in the instant before Mother struck out, knocking him out of the chair and across the room, his head connecting squarely with the wall, dazing him. Mother stood, walked calmly to Hank’s side, withdrew a blade from within her pink corduroy overalls. Nine sat up in his chair, ready to spring to Hank’s aid, but Whistler grabbed his shoulder, held him back.

  “Remember who you work for, boy.”

  Hank tried to sit up, but only succeeded in knocking his cowboy hat to the floor. Mother made quick work of him, blade slashing back and forth across his throat before he could react to the sight of the armed toddler before him. His lifeblood coursed out of the ravine Mother had carved in his neck, and Hank gasped his last breath with a look of utter incredulity on his weary, weathered face. Hank slumped against the baseboard, growing puddle of red around him.

  Mother returned to the table, calmly wiped her blade on the pretty doily upon which the teacup had been resting. Bright droplets of Hank’s essence had spattered across her face, but she did not seem to notice. The blade returned to its hidden sheath.

  Tears welled up in Fleur’s eyes. “How could you—”

  [hush.] Mother withdrew a silver sphere from her seemingly endless supply of interior overall pockets, rolled it across the table. A wave of her hand and the ball flashed to life, projecting a perfect image of Hank into the chair where he had been sitting. The image immediately grabbed its throat in terror, but finding no mortal wound where there should have been one, simply glared at Mother.

  “You fucking—Mother, what the fuck?”

  She looked all-too-pleased with herself, and grinned widely. [you wouldn’t want to go where i’m sending you like that, hank. you wouldn’t last long as a flesh construct.]

  Hank was wordless. He grabbed his projector and placed it in his pocket. “You could’ve fucking warned me. Uploaded me and didn’t fucking warn me.” He looked uneasily over at his own dead body.

  [oh, hush now, hank. you’ll like this even more than being a cowboy.]

  Fleur’s eyes flashed with realization. “No humans... Just me. You killed him so that—”

  [and her eyes were opened.]

  “But we’ve cleaned everything already. There were no more systems to infect.” She began to shake her head back and forth, unconsciously denying that which she knew she could never refuse.

  [let’s just say this is something special.]

  “I can’t! I won’t do it. I—”

  [you will.]

  [natural immunity. that’s an asset, son. right now, your only asset.]

  Zero was held motionless, floating in the center of the spherical chamber to which they had transported him. It was dark, but three revolving spotlights, perhaps force generators, were fixed upon his limp body, holding him in stark contrast to the rest of the expanse of shadow. They surrounded him, these men who spoke with lips and tongues that projected nonsense and minds that projected perfect silverthought, violent in its intensity. He was struggling against the mental onslaught of hundreds of prying minds, the last of his mental defense mechanisms slowly cracking and falling.

  [we’ve interrogated your machine. you’ve come a long way, Zero.]

  how can he know that?

  The man before him smiled, his lips curling to enunciate those grinding words that were quickly surpassed in volume by the direct mind-to-mind communication that was much more effective, even if it was highly disconcerting.

  [your machine... it gave us everything we need to know about you.]

  The man walked closer. Black-clad hand reached out, gently touched Zero’s cheek.

  [so long... it’s been so long since we’ve seen you. eons.]

  Zero frowned, beyond confused. That touch, almost imperceptible as (leather?) fingertips traced his cheekbone. The man’s eyes were a piercing blue, so faded as to suggest white. Impossible blue, the blue of a life spent in the darkness of space. Zero had the most unsettling feeling that he knew this man from somewhere, sometime...

  [we sent her to populate your galaxy many, many years ago. after she stopped responding to our communications, we just assumed that the colony had been lost. but it would appear that the dear creature you call “Mother” has been busy, busy, busy.]

  The man grasped Zero’s chin firmly, locked his gaze into Zero’s eyes, and his world became a burning city, a woman screaming, looking up, reaching up, pointing into the sky, where a vessel hung, lights flickering from within, a radiant sphere of white expanding out from the interior as phase drives amplified the Fleur virus, disseminating it throughout the atmosphere, where it rained down, tiny flecks of silver, a confetti of glitter that dusted the faces of the assembled masses and spawned, spawned on and in their flesh, screaming flesh as the roar from above, the many engines of an Extinction Fleet descending from above, a tumult that was indescribably beautiful and
horrifying and—

  Zero closed his eyes, snapped his head back and forth, those alien hands now grasping both sides of his face, those alien eyes now drilling into his mind with pure white fire.

  [she sent you to kill us, you know. or maybe the beauty of it is that none of you knew. you thought it was a jihad. you thought it was civil war.]

  Zero opened his eyes and looked desperately up at the stranger, whose face was white and held a sheen of sickness and exhaustion. The stranger shook his head, cleared his throat, and the suffocating mental embrace was released.

  “It wasn’t a civil war, Zero.” He assembled his sentence very carefully, spoke the words with a childish fascination at the sound, the taste, the touch of the new language. “It was a genocide.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Zero felt all of his energy, all of his vitality pour from his body at the man’s touch. The Stranger’s touch, for that is what that silken mental embrace felt like. He was a stranger, but so remarkably familiar... “I never knew—”

  The Stranger smiled the sad smile of ancient resignation. “Of course you never knew, Zero.” He leaned in close to the incapacitated Zero, gently, tenderly kissed his forehead, tousled his hair. The gesture was so kind, so loving. Who was this man?

  With a wave of his hand, the beams of light holding Zero suspended in the air slowly faded, lowered him to floor level, where he stood, weakly rubbing his hands over the cold gooseflesh of his forearms. The Stranger’s head tilted in concern and then understanding, and he removed his black overcoat and wrapped it around Zero’s shoulders.

  “Come on, son. There’s much to talk about, and so little time.”

  [it would seem that we were a little too efficient.]