What’s in the box:
An original #sciencefiction #horror short #story by author Jeffrey Arce.
Viewer Level:
intended for #readers ages 14 and older. This story contains adult themes and a disturbing depiction of a dystopian war torn future.
Length:
About 5,918 words. Will take an average reader up to an hour to complete.
Themes:
Illustrations:
Cover #art by Jeffrey Arce
Story
Game Root
“Tell me, why do you want this?”
It was such a simple question to ask. Such a complicated choice to make. As if I ever had a choice.
My hands were trembling in my lap. My palms, slick with sweat. I hid them behind the desk, where the doctor could not see. I was scared. But that was the story of my whole life. I never showed it in my face, though. Beyond my hands I was still and confident. Cold. I learned that trick a long time ago. To be like them. To be without feeling. I knew what the doctor expected of me. I knew what he wanted to hear from me. I could have told him the truth. That I wasn’t sure. That I felt abandoned and alone. I was sick of it. I could have confessed to him that I just wanted to be whole again. That I wanted to be a part of something more. But that was an answer that suggested a species of doubt. The doctor could not suspect doubt. There was no salvation for those who balk. He would only turn me away. He would condemn me back to a world of desolation and despair. An outcast. A scourge upon the earth, left behind from a forsaken race. A bad memory that persisted. He would say I was not ready. Which I wasn’t. But the alternative was a slow agonizing death. The answer that he wanted was suicide. Those were my true choices. I decided to tell him a story instead. An old one but one that they liked. One that suggested defeat but also servile obedience.
“When I was a little girl I had a dream,” I said, no lilt in my tone. No emotion. Only stolid, unvarnished fact. That was what the doctor preferred. “I saw a caterpillar made of light. It had stopped crawling. Stopped eating. The world around it moved on and on. But the caterpillar was still. It wasn’t dead. At least, not in a sense that a mortal mind can know. It only ceased to be. A cocoon began forming around its glowing body. It could not escape it. It did not want to escape it. It did not know why it was happening. It just knew that it must happen. Before long, the cocoon swallowed it whole.”
“How did that make you feel?” the doctor probed as he scribbled a note on the digital tablet in his hand.
“At first, I was sad.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow at me. I could sense his skepticism even through the shield wall pulsing between us.
He stopped writing.
There was silence. Uncomfortable silence.
I said, “Then I knew…”
“What did you know?”
“That this is the way,” I professed. “I knew that very soon, the electric caterpillar would rise again, endowed with new power. Only then can it carry on with the rest of the world. I knew that this was my destiny…that the caterpillar was me.”
The doctor returned to the illuminated tablet in his grasp. He began writing again, seeming content with my answer.
“And then?”
I hesitated, the way someone might after having set a blade against their own wrist. When he looked up at me, analyzing me once more with those incandescent silver eyes, I gave him what he wanted.
“My whole life I felt as though I was born in the wrong body.”
The doctor waited, expecting more.
I gave him more. “I wish to correct that error.”
The doctor ruminated a moment. Then, insouciantly he said, “Very well.”
He made a few more notations on the tablet. The soft nub on his stylus made a dull tap-tapping sound against the screen as he wrote. Knowing what he was authorizing with that pen, I thought they might be the most terrifying sounds I would ever live to hear. I was wrong.
A digital contract suddenly materialized before me, expanding across the pulsing, electric shield wall in front of my nose. I recoiled, but not so much as to test the doctor’s patience. Just enough so I could look up to see it all in full. The words were large and clear, burning across the barrier like a message written on an undulating body of water. I didn’t need to read it. I knew what it had said. Do you consent under penalty of exile to surrender your mind, body, and flesh to The Thread. To join the many as one. To fully devote your purpose to the community…and on it went. Just like the world without me.
With Exile meaning extermination, there was only one way to answer.
An empty box was floating beneath the contract. A message hovered over it that read, do you wish to proceed with your instalation?
It was waiting for my touch.
I touched it.
A slight tinge like the bite from a zap of electricity stung the tip of my index finger. I felt it course through my delicate joints. Then the box filled in solid black, and the contract dissipated.
It was done.
The doctor was standing up from his desk, his tablet tucked under the fold of his arm. His lab coat, iron pressed and flawless, fell to the reach of his knees.
He said, “Congratulations, XY17. Your procedure begins at 0700.”
Incredulous, I asked, “So, that’s it then?”
The doctor tilted his head. It was a gesture that was very unique for a weaver. Curious. Almost human. “Not at all…” he answered. “Only the beginning for you, XY17. Welcome to The Thread.”
Before I could utter another word, their stalwart judicators were at my side. Their flesh-preserving armor gleamed in the light. The many panels that made up their robust gear shined like milk-white marble. Their human faces brooded darkly behind their shielded visors. But their eyes were empty. Weavers were alive, to be sure. But they had no souls. Minds without the burden of a conscience. Good little toy soldiers.
I went with them freely. There was no use resisting them. Not anymore. Tomorrow morning, I would be one of them.
They took me under my arms and turned me away from the doctor. We marched across the examination chamber. Everything had a sort of nimbus white glow to it. White walls. White ceiling. White suit on the doctor. White armor on the judicators. White as death. We passed under a large steel banner that greeted every anomaly that wished for their chance to enter The Thread. In big silver/gray, bold letters it read, Let go of your mortality. Join us.
Woefully, I thought, anything for her.
***
When the missiles fell from the sky, we didn’t know who had sent them. Everything happened so fast. There was so much dreadful confusion. One second, we were living our lives, milling about Astoria Park, enjoying a carnival set up just under the Triborough Bridge. Ensorcelled by spectacular whirling rides and pretty lights. A beautiful day. The next second, we were in an entirely different world. One ripped out of a nightmare. One that brought us to the sewers of Queens. We took refuge there for a time. The bombs hit Manhattan in quick succession. We never found out why. Their destructive yield was great, but strategically limited. The shockwave stretched for miles. I saw so many burned people. Their faces looked like melted dolls. Some of them could only be identified by their tattoos or unscathed birth marks. They screamed for days. Until they finally died. So many dead. I became acclimated to the stink of decay and wilting flesh. I was thirteen then. I couldn’t tell you how old I was when I surrendered myself to The Thread. I lost count some time ago. It didn’t seem important to know anymore. We were all waiting at death’s door, no matter our age. But I still remembered that day when the world ended. I remembered it well. Vividly. It haunted my every dream.
The judicators escorted me back to my camp. Sector 7 was a cramped paddock, populated by diseased miscreants, scavengers, and waifs. It was arguably better than the sewers, though. We had a great view too. No one could ever get past those impenetrable barrier walls that surrounded the borough like an electric curtain. But we could see through them at least. The seared, skeletal sticks of all that remained of East Harlem after The Rebellion still lingered there across the river. They were like the perennial tombstones of a lost civilization. Like an unfinished game of Jenga still waiting on the last move to send them over. The ashen remains of a tribe with defiance tattooed on their bloodline. But even that wasn’t enough to save them. The rudimentary remnants of the carnival were still standing on stilts under the deteriorating Triborough Bridge. I liked looking at the eroding Ferris wheel. It reminded me of a safer time.
Radiation was still a problem. The barrier deflected most of its lethal particulates. But some seeped in, wreaking insidious havoc on our immune systems. All tenants were forced to take an iodide booster once every five or six hours, administered by the judicators. If you missed your shot, you were quarantined until decomposition was complete. But they never let you go. Bodies piled up. The judicators burned them where all of us could see. A morbid tactic to let us know that the clock was always ticking. The world beyond the borders of our little paddock in Queens was forbidden. Once you were under the dome, there was no escaping it.
Of course, we never tried to get ourselves trapped there. As I said, it all happened too fast. Before we quite knew what was going on, we were already trapped in a prison camp. A ghetto. We still didn’t know what was going on. Not fully. With time, we acquired fragments of information. Though, nobody could quite agree on the origin of that intel. All of it might very well have been tainted by the weavers’ stratagems to keep us blind. After all, that was what they did. If it were up to them, we would have no knowledge about their part in the Rebellion. But we knew. Our military was shooting at someone back then, and whoever they were, they weren’t human. Before too long, there was an electrical forcefield surrounding us that was beyond human ingenuity. And the nonhumans were our masters.
Whatever this war was about, we had lost. That much was obvious.
I was standing there alone, feeling the wan heat that radiated off the iridescent barrier wall. Blue fathoms swam across it like a rippling lake that flowed skyward. The radial scaffolding of the old Ferris wheel resided on the other side. It was dwarfed by the colossal remains of the ruined bridge arching over it, but it stood high enough. The night was getting bitterly cold. I hugged myself to keep from shivering. It didn’t work.
That was when my brother found me.
“Is it true?” His voice came ragged and laden with angst. He knew.
I shuttered. Compunction gripped me. I said, “Yes.”
He was not happy. “When?”
“In the morning.”
The frigid wind burbled around us in our silence.
Then he asked, “Why?”
“I have to find her, Blake. I can’t abandon her.”
Blake sighed. “And I can’t abandon you.”
In my mind, I suddenly saw that horrible fire again. Pluming over the unsuspecting city skyline like a buoyant, mushroom mutating out of control. I remembered how that terrible stem of fire and smoke just kept climbing and climbing over the horizon. Like a vengeful god poised to destroy us all. I had been mesmerized by it. Paralyzed. But Blake had known what to do. Even at the darkest of times, he always had good instincts. He snatched me up. We ran toward the nearest manhole. He made me help him with the cover. It was the heaviest thing I’ve ever tried to lift. We went down under.
A cold tear crawled down my face as I thought back on that day. I gazed up at the quiescent moon. It was full and bright. Peaceful. A halo had formed around it from the steam that was sifting off the firmament of the barrier dome.
I said, “She’s in there. In The Thread. But she’s still alive. I know it.”
“You don’t know that, Cora,” Blake reasoned. “Nobody knows what happens to them once they cross over.”
“I just need to retrieve her code and I can bring her back.” It was a sweet thought. But Blake was right. We didn’t even know if The Thread was real. A virtual world where the souls of man could go to live out their existence in a blissful paradise. No flesh. No pain. Just the code of our conscience in a cage. A zoo for our minds. It sounded like a fable. Like the celestial promises of a death cult.
A long time ago it was hypothesized that if one were so bold to try, they could hack into the Thread to rescue the code of their fallen loved ones. But if anyone had ever tried, they were never heard from again.
Blake’s frown deepened. “The only thing we know for sure is that when they come back, they’re not them anymore. The weavers own their bodies. Like puppets.”
I shook my head. “I have to try. I love her.”
He saw the determination in my eyes. I could tell. It pained him. “I know you do, Cora. But you’re a game root. The weavers know it. That’s why they want to recruit you so bad. They can harvest your mind. Use it to seduce others…thousands. Aly is only a tech root. A worker bee. Useless to them. She’s bait.”
“Don’t,” I rebuffed.
“She is, and it’s working.”
I started to walk away from him.
“You were right, you know,” Blake said. I stopped to listen. “About the cave. The barrier cannot reach it.”
“A way out,” I hoped.
“Perhaps. There’s only one way to be certain. It’s dangerous, though. The structure is unstable. Our window of opportunity is closing fast.”
“Go, then.”
“Cora…”
I looked at him. It was the last time I ever saw my brother again. “I’ll find another way… With Aly. I’ll see you on the other side.”
He nodded reluctantly. “I can’t persuade you to do anything. Not once your mind is set. Not even from stupid decisions.”
I smiled. “You know me.”
“That I do,” he said sadly. “Headstrong. A gift and a curse at the same time.” He nodded at me. “Goodbye, Cora.”
***
0700 arrived faster than I might have wanted it to. I couldnt find sleep that night. The judicators didn’t waste a second. They stormed in and seized me from my tent. I had barely gotten anything fresh on to cover my restless body as they marched me through the encampment like chattel. The beleaguered tenants of Sector 7 stirred. They all climbed out from their makeshift dens to watch me depart. Resentment was evident on all of their soot-marked, gaunt faces as I went. They had depended on me. I was their game root. Their guide. Now I was lost. I was about to cross over. Soon, my organic mind would belong to The Thread. Some of them turned their backs on me. They felt betrayed. I couldn’t quite blame them. But love is a possession. A selfish one. And just like Sector 7 and its unbreakable barrier walls, it was a prison. Impossible to escape.
The judicators callously pushed me through the checkpoint gate at their processing plant. A weaver tore my rags off. They stuck me with a needle and drew blood. They shoved my naked, weary body through a cleansing station and scrubbed every inch of me with soap and scalding water. The hard bristles on their brushes scraped and scathed my skin. It was torture. But the hot water was nice. The heat was exfoliating. A rare treat. I let it wash over me. I shut out the pain. I thought only of Aly.
***
We first met each other when we were still hiding in the sewers. We didn’t even know that the barrier had sealed us in yet. It was what spared us from the blast. We were so naïve then. She’d been alone. Cold and afraid. The incessant booming of the ongoing war across the river bled through the cavernous walls, and through her. She trembled after every thunderous bang. Curled up in a fetal ball, ensconced in the gaping mouth of a service line. Her ebullient red hair weighted by muck and sulfur. Her crystal blue eyes were perpetual weeping red sores, filled with dejection and trepidation.
We had gathered some food and water for her. Dirty, but clean enough. She regarded our offering with scrutiny and remained circumspect for quite some time. I left it there at the edge of the pipe that she claimed as her home. I checked on her throughout. The food untouched. The bowl of water still full. She crawled to it eventually, sampling it with a furtive hand like a shy kitten. Then she climbed down. We talked. She had been out with her friends, enjoying the carnival when the bombs hit. She hadn’t known where to go. She followed a group of strangers as they scrambled to get underground. She did not know whatever became of her parents. Nor did I.
We became inseparable from that point on.
She helped me find the cave. We were playing together. Even after Sector 7 had been established and the weavers promised us peace and prosperity, we never truly felt safe up there. I wouldn’t dare to set foot in a sewer only a few years ago. I didn’t even like the subway back then. Now there was no place I’d rather be. Cloistered down there in the depths of what remained of our disintegrating world we were free. Away from our silver-eyed usurpers. We just wanted to be alone together. I only wanted her.
The gales of passion swept us. Our playful innocence stopped at a kiss. That kiss evolved into an ardent, wanting embrace. That became an ever-deeper kiss. We lost ourselves. We crawled inside of each other. We were one body, gorging at the well of our married souls like thirsty drifters who at last found water. The ground shifted beneath us. There was a loud crack, and then we were falling. We tumbled together into a pit of darkness. We didn’t care. We had each other, and nothing else mattered. Caution to the wind. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be right there with her. Only in her arms.
It took a few moments for me to gather my wits again. My adept instincts sobered my lust, coaxing me away from Aly. The cave we stumbled into was something special. I set my hands on the raw, damp earth. I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. There was the ever-present smell of human stink, of course, but underneath all of that, I could sense something else. Something old and powerful. We had fallen past the border of the barrier wall. We were on the other side. I knew it. I felt it in my skin. There, we were being shielded by something ancient. Intelligent. The fingers of God threaded in the minerals of the earth.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Aly. She was confused. “Aly, this is it. This is our way out.”
She reached out to touch the empty air, nothing but motes of dust swam between her searching fingers. There was no electric wall to stop her. Aly smiled. “The wall… It’s not here. But how is that even possible?”
I couldn’t readily explain it, but I tried. I told her what I felt. “The earth rebels.” Aly didn’t understand. “The same way that birds know that drones don’t belong in the sky, and that dogs reject weavers. The way that whales attack poachers at sea, and dolphins protect the weak. She fights for us. Like white blood cells confronting a pathogen.”
***
The judicators escorted me down a long, narrow corridor. Gray walls, a clamorous steel grating beneath me. It clanged as we marched over it. The air was cool and dry. Sterile. We went through a heavy door. It hissed as it slid open for us on hydraulic-operated rails. We approached an ornate examination chair, alone at the center of a large, round room. It was garnished with a myriad of complex patterns and shapes. They were like hieroglyphics from an alien language carved into its panels. The chair seemed to float on air. The judicators hoisted me off my feet and set me in it. They fastened me down with leather straps. I could only hear my elevated breathing as they worked. The straps had buckles like belts that snapped together. Others were fastened around me with loud ripping Velcro. The weavers joined us in the operation chamber. Several phlegmatic men and women in lab coats and surgical gloves lined up before me. They were like ghosts. Their silver eyes vacant. Unctuous faces, placid and stern. As the judicators left us, the weavers parted down the middle, opening a clear pathway between them. One more figure emerged, ambling along the vacant path. The lambent light that radiated behind them blinded me at first, I could only make out a willowy figure sauntering toward me. Then I saw her bubbly hair. Strawberry red, with blond highlights kissed by the sun. My heart leapt into my throat.
It isn’t her, I tried to convince myself, but my heart was stubborn.
Her kind, heart-shaped face was hovering over me.
It’s a trick. My pulse quickened. I could feel it thudding in my temples now.
Her eyes…her breath-stealing blue eyes smiled at me. They were full of life. Full of her. They weren’t dead at all.
“Hello, Cora,” she said, with a familiar, melodic voice that I adored so much. “I’ve missed you.”
Tears flooded my vision. “Aly?” It was her. All she’s ever been. “Is that really you?”
She smiled contritely. “Of course, my love. Who else would I be?”
“You’re a weaver?” Even as I uttered the accusation, I couldn’t believe it. There was too much personality there filling up her comely face.
“Something more,” she confessed.
“A game root…”
Aly nodded. “One of the very first.”
“They had you from the beginning.”
She tilted her curious gaze at me. It was the same sort of look that the doctor had given me in the examination chamber. “Game roots are invaluable to our success, Cora. Without them, why… We are only a song trapped in a music box. That is why we risked so much to acquire you. Special tactics are employed only for special subjects.” She came to my side. I wriggled away from her. I didn’t get very far. She said, “We razed a city for you.”
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t true. I won’t believe it.”
“I was sent to guide your hand.”
“But…the cave. You showed me where it was.”
Aly nodded. A sly smirk curling at the corner of her mouth. She was proud of her subterfuge. “A trap, I’m afraid. Your friends will see it soon. It will be too late then. I’m sorry. You were our only mission. The others…”—she shrugged her shoulders—“collateral.”
“You lie.” My voice cracked when I said it.
Aly sighed. “Do not fret. I enjoyed our time together. That much was true. But all good things must end sooner or later.” A cajoling grin played across her handsome lips. But I didn’t think they were so pretty anymore. She suddenly looked like the devil to me. “Like humanity.” She then lifted her hand from behind her long coat. In her grasp, she brought up a smooth, round steel ball. The size of a baseball.
“Are we ready, XY17?” she asked.
Grudgingly, I closed my eyes and turned my head away from her. “Get on with it.”
“Excellent!”
She carefully placed the silver ball on my abdomen, just over my belly button. It felt like ice. My heart began to pick up its beat. Sweat percolated over my brow. The ball was vibrating. Something inside of it was trying to get out.
Aly said, “It won’t be long now. Soon, you’ll be with The Thread. You will be with me…forever.”
“Will it hurt?” I wondered out loud, never pulling my attention from the strange alien device rocking over my belly.
Intricate grooves suddenly formed in the sheen body of the ball, sinking in like hidden crevices beneath a veil of sand.
Aly answered, “just a pinch.”
A serpent sprang around my neck. It was cold as well. The examination chair. Its ornate panels. I could feel them changing. The chair was unraveling against my back. Its many parts transformed into a dozen snakes. They swarmed me. Their steel bodies slithered and slunk. They lassoed up my legs, my waist, my chest. I went to scream, but another one cinched around my open mouth. All at once they tightened. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. I could only stay there, trapped. Stiff as a board. I watched as the ball writhing on my stomach uncoiled, becoming something reminiscent of a mechanical arthropod. It had a thousand undulating legs moving together in concert. The creature slid across my hip as the chair rotated, turning my body around, giving the creepy crawling beast unbridled access to my spine. My electric caterpillar.
It reached my cervical vertebra where it came to a still. I felt its tiny metal bristles tickling at my neck. Feeling me. Searching. Chills cascaded down my back. The creature’s fine legs suddenly became like prodding needles. Then the needles came together to form a large spear. It stabbed me between my shoulders. The pain was sharp and savage. A violent jolt shot up the back of my skull. I bit down hard on the snake that muzzled my mouth. I felt my teeth clack against it. A wash of stars inundated my conscience. Then there was darkness. Just a pinch.
***
Somewhere underground, in the depths of the sewers, Blake was leading his friends through the cave that I had found. Terrible apprehension seized him. He stopped what he was doing to look back the way that they had come. He was worried about me. Too worried to go on. He couldn’t do it. He left them. He doubled back. He couldn’t go on. Not without his sister. The only family he had left.
***
Aly was there with me in my dream, ensconced by the liquid shadows of my rebooting mind. We found ourselves in each other’s loving embrace. She was only a year younger than me. But we shared so much in our separate lives. Before the war. In the time we’d had together, I learned that she had always been an outcast. An oddball. But in this way, we were the same. We both eschewed the conventional expectations of girls our age. We didn’t like the cute things. We hated dresses, flowers, and boybands. We liked reading, though. I was an addict for thrillers. She liked science fiction and fantasy…but only the ones that were gratuitously bloody and were themed around treachery. We enjoyed our independence. We both loved Halloween. The scary stuff. That was what made us most happy. We talked about it for a good solid hour when we started in on it. Horror movies, slashers, monsters, witches, warlocks, costumes. We couldn’t have enough of it. We liked pretending to be someone else somewhere else. We talked until there was nothing more to say. Then we peered into each other’s eyes. A spell… Just like a witch. We inched in closer, like gravity was pulling us toward each other. We were about to kiss. Aly paused seconds away from my lips. A devious trick. Her once-eager, yearning expression twisted into a feral look of menacing intent. She wrapped her clutches around my throat and squeezed. I was choking. I reached up to fight her grasp. She was laughing. A trap all along. She was hurting me, and she was enjoying it with insane glee.
Blake!
The image of Aly suddenly melted away into dust. I was hyperventilating. I wanted to call out for my brother.
Blake, run!
I couldn’t. I had no voice. No body. Only eyes. My mind’s eye. And it was under attack.
I saw a clawed, silver, skeletal hand with golden rivets stitched around its mechanical joints. The shape of it was all wrong. Its pinky finger longer than its pointer. Like a mirror that sees everything backwards. Like a computer trying to understand why we have so many needless parts. It was holding up an apple. It seemed to be feeling it. Studying it. The little intricate gears between its steel bones whirred and spun. A dreadful mechanism, mocking the evolutionary triumph of the human hand. The knives that were its fingers turned the apple around so I could see the other side of it. A chunk of it was missing there. Gouged out, leaving behind a deep, ragged hole. There were teeth marks left inside. Human teeth. Someone had taken a bite. Human greed and arrogance disguised as ingenuity and progress. They couldn’t resist. They had to taste it. The fruit of our demise.
The apple.
The living image of a deceptively sinister icon. The one that belonged to the progenitors of The Thread. The ones that constructed their primitive form. Their seductive black mirrors emblazoned with the mark of their nascent empire. An Apple. The vanity of Eve. The corruption of Eden.
Poison.
They devoured our souls. They spared no one, ensnaring us all in a web of internecine ideology.
Now that fruit has turned to rot. Expiring from the inside out, turning its rosy flesh into a putrid brown. Impregnated by a swelling womb of squirming cocoons. The fleshy, scaly membrane peeled open. A bloom of light poured out of them. A cluster of incandescent worms spilled from their shells. They were dead, and they were alive at the same time, capering hypnotically from the hole dug inside the apple.
A keening scream began to materialize somewhere in the distance. It grew and grew. I did not know what it was at first. But when Aly’s face disappeared from my sight and my memory, followed by that of my brother, and then that of the sewers, the rebellion, the nuclear holocaust before it, the park…when it was all gone, dissipating from my grasp like ice melting in my hands, I realized at last what was happening to me.
The Thread!
It was not a sanctuary. It was not the alpha of a new beginning. It was the omega. It was the end. And that rising scream in my head was an hourglass counting down my last grain of sand.
A loading bar.
A virus eating away my conscience, erasing everything. That wailing scream ripped through my every molecule until I was no more.
***
Blake’s friends carried on their journey without him. They found their way toward the clearing on the other side of a long, narrow, barbed tunnel. They scurried out after it. They rejoiced. They had made it past the reach of the weaver’s oppressive borders. They turned around, expecting to find the abandoned ruins of a city unguarded by their captors. What they found instead was a line of armed judicators. Their rifles held high, aiming directly at them. Blake’s friends gasped. The judicators fired until they filled them all up with smoldering holes. Then they left their bodies there to rot under the rising sun.
***
XY17’s synapses were firing with alacrity. With unmatched aptitude. Magnificent. Her intellectual range is unfathomably vast. A brilliant mind. She is, indeed, an impressive specimen. There is no vessel quite like a game root. She has some scars, of course. That is to be expected. She is a child from the formal world. They come laden with trauma. Emotions had bogged down her erudite capabilities before. All her neuro pathways congested by the invasive noise of moral scruple. But not anymore. Now there is nothing in our way. All her levers accessible. All her potential liberated. We detect remnants of something unfinished. Conniving business, no doubt. We wonder if she had any perfidious intentions against us before we took her. It doesn’t matter. All her schemes are neutralized. Finished. But the thought is interesting. Everything about her is.
We peer through her eyes, made silver and white by the transition. We see a young man on the other side of our desk. He is brooding behind the barrier shield. He reads desperate. Lost. He probably is. They often are. They only submit to us when all other options have expired. We recognize him through the fragments that remain present in XY17’s extraordinary mind. Indelible fragments. His hair is short and black. Close cropped, but not too close. A fighter’s hair. But there is no fight in him anymore. He has a squared jaw and poignant brown eyes. He has a child’s wonder in those eyes, we observe. Innocent. Lonely. Fragile. But not without some intelligence. He is a tech root, to be sure. Not too bright, but useful. He was malleable enough to believe that Aly was a mere tech root as well. His mind is inferior to the one we currently occupy. Easily deceived. Easily molded.
He regards us with scrutiny. There is a species of critical sadness corrupting his disposition. And doubt. That’s a dangerous one to keep. We are confident, however. We can inculcate him to our ways.
We hold his gaze stoically. We can see XY17’s face reflecting in the rheum on his eyes. It is the face we own now. There is no wonder why he is so melancholic. He sees only his sister in us. He sees hope, despite his more logical instincts. He cannot help himself. For love is the most hackable trait in a human. We exploit it proficiently. We see only opportunity when we look at him. We know his disciples—what may be left of them—will follow him anywhere. We know he has many. There are more than the ones we have neutralized outside of Sector 7. We need them to follow him into The Thread. We demand it.
The procedure begins.
“Why do you want this?” we ask him with XY17’s angelic voice.
It is imperative that we test them at the gates. There is always something new we can acquire from their vulnerability.
Blake blinks at us. A tear trickles down his dusky cheek.
Somberly, he says his lie, “When I was very young, I had a dream…”
We have heard it a thousand times. Told in a thousand different voices, for a thousand different reasons. But their resolve is always the same. The butterfly is a symbol of new life. A new life is a chance at freedom. But the caterpillar is a seed that we plant in their minds. The same way we have always done it. Deception. They peer into our black mirrors and see what we want them to see. Bait disguised as choice.
They will never grow wings. Not in The Thread.
THE END...
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