The Present

by Kenneth Thomas

  ‘Nurse Rose, send for Doctor VonHelmann. Tell him one survived’!

  Panning out, he can see more incubators, many of which contain babies that don’t look quite normal; many horribly deformed. Only one looks healthy, A1, a crying baby boy. Schuurman looks joyfully down and prods him with his finger, laughing loudly as he does. His pleasure so intense at hearing him cry, ‘At last’!

  The scene suddenly returns to that of Dr Schuurman standing menacingly over the large stone. Wearing his blue and green featured headdress, his dagger dropping down on his naked body. VanWest reopens his eyes.

  Having pinched his arm, Iris asks, ‘What are you doing’?

  VanWest doesn’t quite know, muttering disconnected words, ‘Going somewhere… somewhere beyond horror, this place... place of my creation, birthplace… inexplicable evil’.

  Iris embraces him tightly again, ‘I am here for you… We will make it together’. And shakes him gently, ‘You are not a number. You are VanWest. You are my love’!

  A solemn tear rolls down VanWest’s cheek as he speaks of his creation, ‘I’m an experiment, a clone of a Martian, one of the poor souls that were murdered. His name President Van der Westhuizen. I’ve seen his face, that too of his daughter’.

  ‘Oh, my love’.

  What VanWest hadn’t known was that he was one of many such clones, ‘So much suffering’. He relives and feels their ‘painful, terrible deaths’.

  Iris places her soft hands on his cheeks, wiping away his lone tear, ‘VanWest, you are you! Shaped by your own experiences. You are the boy I kissed under the stairs, the boy I fell in love with, the man that rescued me, that started the insurrection. You are no longer alone. We’ll make sure no one else suffers’.

  VanWest kisses her on the forehead. He wonders what her father did here when Head of Science, he remembers that the cloning of Van der Westhuizen was deemed unsuccessful, could this be due to his sabotage. One voice, louder than the rest, breaks him from his thoughts, again urging him to go through the tiny door.

  ‘VanWest… tell me what is behind that door’? LeSouris asks him, having recomposed himself and gotten back to his feet.

  But VanWest instead tells him to ‘turn back’. He repeats, ‘Turn back, take my sweet Iris with you’.

  Iris is having none of it, grabbing a discarded metal table leg, ‘We’ve come this far, no way am I leaving you now. My father, Pretoria, the citizens are not just relying on you’.

  LeSouris picks up a metal bar too, ‘They rely on all of us’. Offering an ejaculatory prayer, ‘Today is fated. Let us trust in Utopia. Let it protect us’.

  VanWest looks at Iris, with her approval he places his hand against the door. Screech! It slowly opens, its noise reminding him of his chalk breaking against his, now dead, professor’s blackboard, Master Jiang. Revealing a dimly lit corridor. He closes his eyes briefly and steps inside, LeSouris and Iris following, ready with their makeshift weapons. The stench here is most foul, that of rotten flesh.

  On the right side, VanWest finds many discarded cribs stacked up, they too bearing his name, V-A-N-W-E-S-T. These are not directly clones of Van der Westhuizen, rather of him. On the left side are more metal shelves, packed with glass jars. A sharp pain shoots through his head as he looks closer, each contains a tiny organ, a human heart!

  He looks across, row upon row of hearts are suspended, floating in a liquid medium. For Iris, the sight and smell is too much to bear, she begins to gag. Yet there are more disturbing items, including a shelf full of tiny skulls, strangely painted blue and decorated with jade stones. It all makes for a most cruel collection - that of his dead clones.

  If it were not clear already, he, not Van der Westhuizen, is the forbearer to this latest large-scale cloning operation; he is the clone source. Those deemed unsuccessful, their bodies have been dissected and parts removed. VanWest cannot bear to see more but the voices, those he now figures are his clones, keep calling him onwards to the corridor’s end. Adrenaline coursing through their bodies, LeSouris and Iris continue shoulder-to-shoulder, assuming a defensive triangle. VanWest stops before the door, the voices reaching a crescendo. They all know they must proceed, their fate and that of Earth dependent on killing Dr King. He has foreseen the Interrogator, who resides on Dr King’s SCC-400, is in the lab. He knows he is close - a link to the doctor.

  VanWest places his hand against the door as he tells the others to ‘get ready’.

  As it opens, a dim blue light breaks through, followed by agonising cries that shudder down their spines. They go forward and find themselves in a large cathedral ceiling chamber, which must reach 20ft high. As far as the eye can see, there are lines of incubators, deformed and decayed bodies lying in many. A sight so awful that Iris momentarily hides behind VanWest’s shoulder. This place that he foresaw in his visions, its grimy decor and incubators, smells even more rancid - a mix of decomposing flesh and antiseptic.

  Blue neon lights overhang a number of cribs, a remarkably odd choice as blue light makes babies hyper - likely another of Dr Schuurman’s experiments. A red cross marks each, with a number prefixed by V-A-N-W-E-S-T. Their tiny, dead bodies entangled in a web of metallic tubes. VanWest walks further inside, LeSouris and Iris keeping their metal bar’s aloft, the voices call him over to the other side of this huge, dimly lit room.

  Iris and LeSouris faces turn even paler, doing well to not convulse as each footstep, however faint, echoes across. Whoever is here must have heard their approach by now, yet no one comes to meet them. LeSouris starts to speak lowly to himself, reciting Utopian prayers to give them courage, as well as to bless the dead babies in the cribs.

  As they walk further, he finds from where the cries originate, from several living and breathing babies in a row of incubators. Their eyes and skin painfully inserted with tubes and wires. VanWest hurries to them, his heartaches, their pain so intense. Each is oblivious to where and who they are; innocent and lost. As LeSouris and Iris join VanWest, the babies’ heads shift all at once. ‘Whoa’! LeSouris jumps backwards. Their eyes are not of VanWest’s, not grey; they are instead red and beady, just like that of the Space Soldiers. It is worse than VanWest thought: these babies, not wholly his clones after all, rather a genetically engineered Martian and cyborg mix.

  ‘Welcome home’!

  VanWest turns to find his lookalike with the medical bib staring at him. Albeit slightly shorter and thinner, the man is a near-exact copy, his face, his eyes the same. This one is not his clone, rather like him that of President Van der Westhuizen. It is the little boy that he remembers playing with as a child, the man standing next to Dr King during the Universal Games’ victory parade. Indeed, his identical twin brother.

  LeSouris and Iris are left completely bewildered, unsure if to swing their makeshift weapons at this lookalike or not. They look for a cue from VanWest, THEIR VanWest.

  His twin keeps smiling, almost stupidly, before offering his hand, repeating once more, ‘Welcome home’.

  VanWest doesn’t know how to react, too stunned to speak. He has always felt a presence, perhaps all through his life, but on Mars he has finally found from where it originates. But something is not quite right with this twin; physically, they are similar, mentally they are not.

  Before he can shake his clone twin’s hand, a ginger-haired man steps out from the shadows. A man he has come to see more and more often in his visions, Dr Minus Schuurman. His grin unbearably wide, his lab coat stained from blood and sweat. This man exudes only evil.

  Dr Schuurman greets him, ‘Van der Westhuizen A-one! Welcome back home’!

  Chapter 13 VanWest

  Iris instinctively steps forward to confront Dr Schuurman, only for VanWest to pull her back - it’s not safe.

  Casting his eyes over those lying in all the cribs, VanWest asks him, ‘Why’?

  Dr Schuurman continues to grin widely, ‘Welcome home’!

  VanWest asks again more forcefully, ‘Tell me, WHY’?

  ‘Patience, A-one! Let us fi
rst reacquaint ourselves. We have been expecting you, ever since New Jersey’. And then oddly starts to giggle, ‘What an effort to smuggle yourself to come to meet us. You could have just called’!

  VanWest isn’t surprised. It all makes sense, Dr Schuurman indeed knew he was coming; the state of high alert in the lab, the Inspector in the port, even the ability to reach Mars by itself unlikely given the clampdown on the Jerseyan cargo ships.

  ‘I asked you, why’? VanWest still demands an answer - even though he already knows what it is.

  Dr Schuurman still giggling, ‘Ah, you are an impatient one, well... not really one… Let me introduce thou twin brother - A-one-zero-three. You both the surviving Van der Westhuizen clones. So hard to recreate, you two not quite human are you… rather you are Martian’.

  ‘This is not what I asked’!

  Dr Schuurman finally answers, ‘Behold, for thou clones are the future. Picture Space Soldiers enhanced with your abilities, a world where deviants are caught before even committing a crime. The Universal all-knowing, all-powerful… You deserve some congratulations… Afterall A-one, your DNA is part of it all now’.

  Not only are they cloning VanWest for his psychic traits they too enhance with cybernetics, creating a new breed of Universal Space Soldier. This, the next level. Dr Schuurman points ominously at the babies, ‘Before the Universal Games, we thought your abilities, your psychic senses were not tameable. But you proved it was worth retrying’!

  VanWest shakes his head, he can’t bear to hear that their torture, the jars of hearts, the painted skulls, is all because he won the Universal Games. His ability having been rediscovered after he was injured and his mind read by the SRM.

  VanWest’s clone twin, Van der Westhuizen A103, offers his hand once more and repeats, ‘Welcome home’!

  His twin has the same grey eyes, but are glazed over and empty. VanWest looks to Dr Schuurman, ‘What’s is wrong with him’?

  ‘Oh dear, A1, you have noticed… Experiments can have different outcomes, some better than others’, Dr Schuurman replies coldly.

  Iris pushes VanWest’s hand away and steps forward, her face now bright red with anger, ‘You sick piece of roach’!

  VanWest’s twin A103 reacts to what he perceives to be an incoming attack and in one motion removes her metal bar, disarming and shoving her to the floor. Incensed to see Iris harmed, VanWest rushes at him, LeSouris in tow, striking him with a hard punch to the side of his head. LeSouris following with a strike of his metal bar to his shoulder. A103 falls backwards, less well-built having spent the majority of his existence inside this lab, he is no match for his Enforcer twin.

  Instead of being alarmed or annoyed, Dr Schuurman starts clapping, ‘Very good, very good’! Very much enjoying the fight.

  BAD VANWEST! Many voices call to him at once, upset with him striking A103. He looks into the shadows, from out of the darkness along the laboratory’s walls figures emerge into the dim blue light. He finds not 1, not 4, but 11 younger versions staring at him. All with red eyes, their jumpsuits labelled VANWEST BV73, these his newer, cyborg versions.

  Dr Schuurman’s snarly teeth showing, ‘Congratulations are in order. May I introduce thou to well you… a rather sumptuous bunch, thou children’!

  VanWest is left aghast, not only are these a cyborg mix of him but Dr Schuurman has sped up their ageing process. Their proportions that of him at thirteen years old, their arms though that of a muscular man with biceps even bigger than his own. They crowd together and move forward as one, ready to pounce as Dr Schuurman steps behind, watching with glee.

  LeSouris helps Iris from the concrete floor and gestures to VanWest to move back, towards the blackened glass on an adjacent wall. Where he spots a well-camouflaged door at its centre, thinking it to be a possible exit.

  VanWest doesn’t want to fight his clones, despite their size, he can sense they are mentally the age of toddlers. They do not fully understand what is happening, scared to disobey Dr Schuurman, they also want to know more about VanWest, their clone source A1. Unbeknownst to Dr Schuurman, they see VanWest as a sort of father figure. They, like him, also feel pain for the dead and suffering babies. They too understand at some level that this lab is evil.

  As the trio retreats backwards, the door behind slides open, sending a stream of bright light into the room. From within, two figures emerge, neither though is their target Dr King, they are however two men VanWest has come to know all too well. First the snake-like Interrogator, still wearing his amber stone pendant, and the second Commissioner Ming in his black peaked cap. Having recently arrived from Earth, the Commissioner has finally caught up with his Most Wanted. The blackened glass concealing an observation room, from where they have been watching this whole time.

  The dangling of the pendant triggers a thought, its amber stone looks remarkably similar to that the little girl was holding outside the church, in his vision during the trip to Mars. VanWest wonders if this is the other missing piece from the mural. If brighter, it would match.

  Dr Schuurman, Commissioner Ming and the Interrogator all snigger, amused to watch VanWest’s clones slowly surround the trio. Now concussed, A103 picks himself from the floor and cowers behind.

  The Commissioner speaks first, in his usual condescending tone, ‘VanWest, or should I say A-one, so good of you to grace us with your presence. I see you have met your twin brother and clones’.

  Turning to Dr Schuurman, he congratulates him on his cloning operation, admiring the BV73s, ‘You have excelled yourself. I see the oldest batch of Space Soldiers is close to ready for our return to Earth’.

  VanWest grimaces at the thought of them using his DNA, Martian DNA to commit the genocide of the Earth’s citizens.

  ‘Dear Commissioner, they are so. Unlike VanWest, thou can rest assured that his clones are much better. Their Martian weaknesses, namely naivety, are expunged and their ability enhanced’.

  VanWest’s attention stays on the Interrogator. Who licks his lips as he continues to dangle the pendant provocatively, just like when torturing him on the SCC-400. If he is here, then Dr King must be close by. Maybe even behind the one-way blackened glass, in the observation room - yet he does not reveal himself.

  Much angered by all that has happened on Earth, the Commissioner hectors VanWest, ‘Be sure, your Martian species were weak. So very naïve, inferior. I am glad Schuurman fixes your clones. Free of this Martian gullibility, they have only your one strength, your one ability’. Referring to his psychic sense.

  The Commissioner then points at Iris, ‘Her father, the Utopian deviant Mad Newton, tried to keep your ability from us. He can be sure now that the Universal is all-knowing, all-powerful. He has failed’.

  The Interrogator praises, ‘Salve, salve THE U-NI-VER-SSS-ALLL’!

  The blackened glass lights up and then fades. Revealing Gs bloodied and bruised face pressed against it, his eyes gouged out. He is dead. Iris and LeSouris wince at the sight, but for the Interrogator and Dr Schuurman, it prompts yet more nefarious giggling. Iris steps on her makeshift weapon, the metal table leg, and picks it up. VanWest’s twin A103 continues to watch from behind his master as the BV73 clones step closer. He tells VanWest - sorry.

  The Commissioner rubs his hands, excited to see them attack their Enforcer forebear. But VanWest still believes his clones can be reasoned with, he addresses them mind-to-mind and joins in their chatter, keeping his message simple to understand, Schuurman bad man, murderer.

  VanWest repeats the words, bad man.

  Although this meeting was fated, his coming to Mars and the lab, VanWest has learnt the future is not one-dimensional. Like on Judgement Day, when he stopped the execution of Iris by Captain Alpha coming true. Others such as the explosion in the UNESCO conference in 1951 Paris and the ISS shuttle in 1998 Florida never coming to pass. He knows his clones can see this too; having seen his coming and all that has, will happen. Even if they do not fully understand.

  VanWest tells them to change our future
.

  Not yet instructing to kill, Schuurman wants to scold Iris’s father further, his predecessor and former Head of Science. Walking between his clones and up to Iris, his putrid breath wafting in her face.

  ‘That liar, that deviant your father! Mad Newton kept A-one’s ability a secret. His cloning a success. He tricked me, bringing with it embarrassment. He should have known that no one can stop progress’. But the wide grin returns, somewhat cryptically in a lower voice he tells her, ‘Oh well, he gives me a wonderful gift now. I will use it well to bring a glorious new past, present and future’.

  VanWest is too busy trying to communicate with his clone children to notice and understand his words. Mind-to-mind, he repeats to them the same simple message, bad man, highlighting next the suffering in the lab, so much pain. It’s not clear if Dr Schuurman knows he can communicate with them without speaking, but the words are having an effect, their chatter intensifies as they question their master - bad man.

  Unintimidated, Iris shouts at the Commissioner and Dr Schuurman, ‘The Council’s greed knows no end, never satisfied, always wanting more, with no care to whoever gets hurt. You say VanWest is gullible, why? Because he dares to speak the truth’!

  The Commissioner sneers, ‘Oh, you fool. It’s so… well, Van der Westhuizen of you! So gullible to not see this mad deviant your father is manipulating you, just as he did Van der Westhuizen. You think he loves you… Dear poor Iris, he only cares for himself’.

  ‘You lie’! Iris objects.

  Recalling what happened on Mars, ‘Let me tell you a tale…’

  Once upon a time,

  the Council found a planet,

  there lived a mutant race

  that worshipped a green light.

  So naïve and trusting,

  they made the perfect prey.

  What nerve they had,