Cultwick: The Science of Faith

by J. Stone

  “I can’t believe he’s already gone,” Pearl said.

  “Max hasn’t been one for family meals in quite some time,” Erynn explained.

  “Apparently,” Pearl replied.

  “So, since Max isn’t here… would you mind if I took this to go?” her companion asked with an apprehensive smile.

  “Yer as bad as Max,” Pearl said. “Go on.”

  Erynn gave Pearl a kiss on the cheek before slinking back toward her workshop with the food.

  “At least I tried,” Pearl told herself with a little laugh. “How did Germ manage it?”

  Chapter 6. Germ’s Orientation

  He felt naked. Looking down, he found that to be because he was. The genetically engineered rat’s typical clothing involving a simple black suit was absent. He couldn’t remember where he was, how he got there, not to mention why he was naked aside from his grey fur. Looking around at his surroundings, Germ found himself in the mansion, but it wasn’t the mansion. He was surrounded by the familiar wooden walls, but there was no ceiling overhead. Instead, the walls simply disappeared into nothingness at their peak, and a black sky had replaced the roof. The view above was full of shooting stars. The lights, however, streaked through the vast blackness with an unusual abundance and alacrity, crisscrossing their burning tails and casting an illuminated net of their radiance across the sky. There was no need for lights in the pseudo-mansion, as the stars above shone brightly enough to illustrate his surroundings.

  The rat tried to gather his thoughts and memories in such a way that would explain his current surroundings, but they didn’t come together in any cohesive form. He couldn’t recall how he had come to exist in this strange place. He remembered being inside the Halcyon, Olivia’s skyship, and finding Erynn foolhardily diving off the Terrace Building. He knew that Rowland had cured her of the awful genotoxin that had been injected into her, and he remembered a great deal of pain and exhaustion. Olivia set down the ship, and Erynn left to retrieve her companion, Pearl. Germ thought that he had fallen asleep while waiting, but he wasn’t sure. Everything just went dark, and then he was in that strange mansion.

  Was it death? Was this his afterlife? There was something about Rowland crying rattling around in his head, but it didn’t quite align like he expected it to. Germ had never been particularly religious, which might have come from the fact that the professor had been so obstinately opposed to it. Erynn had been no different, both preferring their own branches of science to any faith-based concepts. Perhaps if he had read more from the various religions he would have understood where he now found himself and why it was so familiar to the life that he had led. Did this place conform to his own life experiences? Was it just a reflection of what he had seen in his time? Questions flooded the rat’s mind, as he tried to understand what was happening.

  He looked around, trying to find some clue as to what was going on. He was in the foyer, and aside from the strange texture that everything seemed to have taken on, it looked like what he would expect. Turning around to face the door leading out, he caught a glimpse of the windows. They were composed of thick darkness, with not a trace of light peering through their veil. He walked closer, putting his paw against the windowpane, but quickly jerked it back. The glass was freezing cold, and he instinctively tucked the afflicted hand under his other armpit to warm it back up.

  “Don’t touch that again…” he reminded himself.

  “Oh, hello there,” a familiar voice echoed behind the rat.

  “Master Rowland?” Germ asked warily, turning around to face the direction of the sound.

  There stood the image of his master, Maxwell Rowland, in the distorted form of what appeared to be an apparition or specter. The man was not wholly formed and looked to be of the professor when he was some years younger. The spectacles and respirator that Germ had come to know Rowland to wear were absent as well, signifying that whatever it was that was communicating to him was quite old… or rather young. The rat was exceedingly cautious as he walked toward the speaking duplicate.

  “I am afraid I have a bit of bad news for you,” the image continued, unphased by Germ’s movements toward it. The professor’s eyes seemed to never quite meet with his own. “Do not fret, however, as there is good news as well! This world you now find yourself in--” Rowland gestured outward and looked around before continuing. “--was built by none other than myself and my colleague. It is a pocket universe formed painstakingly to house those experiments that we have deemed… unsuitable… for life in our own universe.”

  “Unsuitable?” Germ echoed back, confused and more than a little offended by the word. He also was quite unfamiliar with who this other colleague could have been, but he disregarded it for the moment and focused on the image’s message.

  The professor’s doppelganger appeared not to have heard the rat’s response and kept going with its explanation. “This pocket universe, which I simply refer to as the Pocket, serves as a repository of all our failed experiments over the years. If you are hearing this message, it means that you have suffered a fatal defect of some caliber. My apologies that you were unfit. But! As I said, there is good news. This Pocket will serve as your world for what may very well be an eternity. It is built upon rules that, while we do not fully understand, should be quite amenable. We have devised it to allow you to live out your days unending and away from the outside world. You are safe to continue your existence here without threatening the safety of those I find myself in close proximity with. There is no death in the Pocket. You are welcome.”

  The professor stood there a moment, appearing to be in thought, before he finally reached to something not in the vision and dispersed suddenly. No death, Germ thought. Was that why he found himself in this alternate world? He remembered feeling ill before he awoke here, but why would Rowland have sent him to the Pocket? It seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do with a few chemicals and a syringe. He had saved Erynn from the genotoxin that she had been injected with after Germ retrieved the pure sample for him. The rat recalled how quickly he had tossed it together after he and Olivia returned it to him in the mansion.

  Surely, the professor would have been able to fix a simple malady, he thought. He remembered what the empire had been dealing with last he heard though. The city had been rather dangerous thanks to Fiona. Perhaps she had something to do with his possible death. Or maybe the skyship could have crashed. Germ struggled to recall anything additional about how he came to be in this small and custom-built world. Nothing new came to him, but he felt the agonizing sensation that he was within inches of remembering all that had happened in those final moments, like it was a word on the tip of his tongue.

  Staring down at the floor beneath his exposed paws, he realized for the first time that the wood paneling was covered in discarded and wilted flower petals. The colorless petals were in great abundance, seeming to have been there for a significant amount of time. Though they had come closer to death, none looked to have completely died.

  It seemed unreal that he hadn’t taken notice of it earlier, but wrapping itself around nearly every vertical surface was a vine-like plant with sprouting flowers along its long body. Germ instantly recalled the plant from his time tending Rowland’s mansion. His one attempt to cut back on the excessive growth had been a fairly poor experience, and he could never forget the strange types of weeds growing on the property. The vine was one such plant. One of the many experiments performed by Rowland over the years, it had apparently been deemed unacceptable. Germ couldn’t disagree with such a verdict after his encounter, though Rowland must have missed some of it, when he sent it into the Pocket.

  The plant seemed to have grown in the remarkably unsuitable and inhospitable environment of the inside of the mansion with no problems. The vine had taken over the entire stairway leading up to the second floor so much so that it seemed he might have to trim the growth if he wished to make it up to where his room should be located. If there truly were no death inside the Pocket, the
n that would certainly explain why the plant seemed to be one continuous vine sprawling throughout the entire area. The experiment simply wouldn’t die despite the lack of nutrients or sun. The rat wondered what other unintended effects Rowland’s universe had wrought. He’d seen plenty of experiments performed by the professor that he simply didn’t think had a place in the world. He feared what he might find in a universe of experiments that even the professor found dangerous. Realizing that he might need to proceed with a bit more caution in this strange world, Germ looked around to ensure that he was indeed alone.

  Whether it was a sudden bout of paranoia or there was indeed something to it, the rat felt eyes on him. The intermittent light above didn’t allow for reliable vision of his surroundings in the mansion, and he found that shadows were being cast everywhere. The walls seemed to inch closer, pressing inward on him. His heart raced, as a surge of heat overwhelmed his body. His vision unreliable, Germ fell back on those senses that had guided him in his former life as a simple sewer rat in the depths of Cultwick.

  Over the years, he had learned to suppress the smells his nose was capable of picking up. Ignoring the sense had become akin to a switch being toggled off at will, and his sudden use was nearly overwhelming. Dozens of unique and new smells flooded his nostrils, as he shifted his snout side to side and rustling his whiskers. Shutting off those natural abilities had become more of a necessity than anything else, and every time he relied upon its use was jarring. Each smell seemed to have a visible shade of color associated with it, and everything he was seeing in this alternate world was slightly or even completely different from what he would have normally expected.

  The aroma permeating off the vine sprawled across the room would have normally been a dark green or perhaps a bright pink. Instead, it seemed a sickly yellow color, like discharged mucus. The wood paneling beneath his paws, which smelled right to his recollection and should have been a light to dark brown, was a slightly darker color than his memory of it from the real mansion. His own grey fur gave off a hot red colored scent though he couldn’t imagine why that was. Whatever Rowland had done to create this pocket universe, things were somehow different from the world that Germ was accustomed to. Even his underused senses could pick up a hint that things were just a little off. Reliance on his sense of smell in the Pocket proved to be more off-putting than it normally was.

  Snout or not, Germ inherently knew that he was potentially in danger in this new environment. With what Rowland could have stored here, it was only a matter of time before he ran into something more threatening than the invasive weed covering the entryway. He had to make a decision on where to head to next. Staying in the foyer was too much in the open, and he’d prefer to go somewhere that could offer better cover from any potential experiments that might wander upon him.

  His room, he quickly decided. That was the place he was most familiar with, and if this place truly were a copy of the mansion he was used to, it would be the one he’d like to spend his time in, while he waited for Rowland to retrieve him. That would mean slipping upstairs and through the bramble of weeds though, and that seemed like quite the task. Standing at the footsteps leading up, he took a deep breath and prepared to move upward toward what he hoped would serve as a sanctuary in this unfamiliar landscape.

  Chapter 7. Viola’s Coronation

  It was an ostentatious ceremony, of that she did not deny. All pomp and circumstance, without any real substance. She was seated in the back of a carriage carried slowly forward by a pair of horses, one white and the other brown with spots of black. The carriage itself was deep black with gold filigree and trim. The metal spokes of the wheels had even been coated in the gold color. The glass windows were wide and open, so the crowd that she was driven through could clearly see her. Many of the citizens of the empire had come to witness the ceremony, and she hoped that it was due to their understanding of her as a new kind of leader.

  Viola wore a special gown for the occasion. The dress was a long flowing purple fabric that went down to her heeled shoes. Wrapped around her waist was a silky black sash tied in a bow and hanging asymmetrically on her hip to one side. The black shoulder straps were fashioned to look like vines and leaves, which also came down and covered some of the chest of the dress. A pair of black arm stockings covered her hands, up to her elbows. As always, she wore the orange necklace with the horned figure around her neck, but it was not the only piece of jewelry she had donned. Balancing on her head was the completely symbolic crown. A gleaming gold piece of shaped metal, it was adorned with jewels of every color possible. Wearing the thing made her feel false, but growing up as the empress’ daughter, she had done many things she didn’t want to do.

  Her whole life had hinged on the ability to play her part, none greater than that which allowed her to work her way into her present condition. Spanning from the creation of the Chromework Confederacy to her mother’s infection and ultimate death with dozens of seemingly insignificant events in between, she had worked the circumstances in favor of her own plans without stepping out of the bounds of her station. Though she was not always fond of those she had to work with or the methods she was forced to rely upon, Viola could not argue with the results she had manifested.

  Science had apparently found its own way of foreseeing the future in the young boy, Simon, but the practitioners of Vaseevoo had known for generations of how to scry the portents that occurred naturally in the world. Seeing the future was all a matter of simply reading that which the universe freely provided. Though Viola had certainly not mastered this ability in her time studying the arcane art, Kyra had developed a greater capacity for its delicate rituals, as it was her magical focus. For years, Viola had relied upon her handmaiden and secret teacher for advice from the fickle winds of fate.

  She had always been somewhat skeptical of the power, but in recent days, that doubt had vanished. Never had she had such hesitance as when she submitted Erynn Clover’s name to the lottery program, which she herself had now dismantled. The woman seemed such an innocent, but what was one life weighed against that of the whole empire’s future. The ends would justify the means, Viola had told herself. Everything else would simply have to fall by the wayside in her endeavor to right the wrongs that she found herself born into.

  And here she was, taking that next step into the multiyear spanning plan to seize the throne from her mother. Exiting the carriage and walking up to the base of the Sovereign Tower, she could now see truly how many people had come out for the ceremony. If she thought she could, she would forgo the entire process and just begin the work to rebuild and restructure the empire for the better, but she also knew that it was more of a display for the people than anyone else. The event was a way for them to see that their future was certain and that it was strong in her hands. For that reason, she put up with the ceremony. She was at least grateful that it was one of the few that did not have any connection back to the Church of Biosynthesis. She definitely would have avoided it if that were the case.

  The ceremony was instead one of historical inspiration. Every emperor or empress that had taken the throne had undergone the very same rites beginning with her ancestor Nero Arkmast. After he seized control of the region that would become the Cultwick Empire, each of the leaders of the former city-states had come and knelt to the new emperor. Since his time, the empire had grown in size, specifically with the exploration and colonization of the western frontier, but the principle remained the same. What had once been kings, despots, elders, councils, and all manner of leaders were now democratically elected (though often illegally) mayors of each of the empire’s cities.

  Aside from some of the smaller and less controlled cities in the west, each city was represented. A row of chairs lined the stage, with the mayors seated in each and every one. All of the leaders had been in their position for some time with the exception of the new mayor for Pendulum Falls, where the Chromework Confederacy had put down roots during their rebellion. As one of Reginald Maynard’s
final acts before returning to her, he had the former mayor, Harlan McKay Jr., killed only a couple months into his tenure as its leader. He had sided with the rebellion, and Maynard felt it prudent to eliminate the man, replacing him with someone Viola could trust. She probably would not have dealt with the situation in such an excessive way, but she didn’t have the privilege of being picky with her allies. Prior to wresting the empire from her mother, there were few that she could trust and fewer still that she could control.

  McKay had been replaced by a meek individual that seemed all too timid to be in any position of power. Nolan Smith was a man that struck her as all too ready to bow to a new master for even slightest of table scraps as reward. Maynard certainly knew how to scrape out loyalty from his people, but she wondered if that loyalty was to her or the former rebel leader. If things went according to Kyra’s plan, it wouldn’t matter for long anyway, she told herself.

  Beside Nolan sat the mayor of Ash Cloud, Lara Conrad. She was another puppet placed in the outer reaching frontier aimed to control the populace of what essentially served as the capital of the west. This puppet had been operating on the orders of Viola’s mother, as had the vast majority of leaders, and each of their morals would have to be tested in this new world she was establishing.

  Next were the mayors for Chrome City, Dust Grove, Stonebrook, Red River, and Willow Switch. Aside from Dust Grove and Stonebrook, each of these western cities served as a valuable asset in the west, giving way to Mary Elizabeth having established nothing more than a malleable mouthpiece in each location. Dust Grove and Stonebrook had been seen as useless in the grand scheme of things due to their small population and lack of resources, so they had been largely overlooked by the former empress. Viola was amused to consider that the mayors of the two smallest settlements in Cultwick might have had some of the most power over their cities.