*
As we left the strange room the temperature began to rise to a more pleasant level than the icy cold temperatures of the membranes.
We were moving through a strange network of glass corridors suspended within a huge cube. Sean had informed me that this was the biomedical hospital and that it had been designed to simultaneously treat the entire population of Ascension should anything happen to them.
To me this seemed an odd way of thinking, it was unnecessary, as though anticipating a disaster.
When we reached the end of the corridor we were confronted with a door. It was made out of a substance that I did not recognise. It seemed to project light without reflecting it. A blue screen blossomed into existence in front of me. The text read please provide security clearance to bypass quarantine procedures. Beneath the white text was a rotating symbol that looked like a series of curved lines arranged around a central point. Each line pointed outwards.
I turned to Sean and asked ‘I don’t suppose we have the clearance?’ Shaking his little body Sean stared right into me, and I understood. ‘My adaptations right? That seems to be everyone’s solution. So what? I just push the button and the door open?’
‘George there is much that you don’t know. The inhabitants of this station, well, they all had the same modified genes as you.’
‘So there were inhabitants?’ I asserted with conviction.
‘Yes George, I am sorry. In the DCN room I didn’t have access to that information. Unfortunately the Eternis Systems programmed the information on a delay.’ I just looked at him.
He continued, ‘according to their records Ascension was built to be a paradise.’ He bobbed upwards drawing on the motion for emphasis. ‘All throughout human civilisation people have been seeking out Utopia’s. Some created garden cities. Others devised means of a national collective sharing. All failed. The truth of the matter was that there was a single common denomiator between every failed Utopia. The people were not ready for it.’
I nodded, unsure of where this was going.
‘It was thought that you could not have paradise, without first becoming a god.’ Sean spun away from me and moved along the doorway to the console. ‘I do not know what the Artefacts are, or what they do. What I do know is that at some point after the inhabitants first gained their modifications the society seemed to gain some small amount of extra power, longer life, faster healing. The Artefacts came second. I really don’t know much else.’
He hovered slightly lower meeting my eye-line. ‘Ascension is programmed to respond to the genetic code you possess. That’s how things were done here. You became a citizen once you were modified. The system respond selectively, so only citizens have access to the stations infrastructure. Your modifications make you look like a citizen of Ascension. Ultimately Blue Dawn has the final decision over command and control procedures.’
‘So how do I open the door?’ I inquired shakily.
‘Most of your genes are dormant, therefore Ascension will not be able to recognise them. You must, in essence, activate them. We should try one of the machines in the hospital. Historical resource suggests the correct system can identified by a double helix surrounded by a yellow ring. This is the department that we need to enter.’
I scanned my eyes about me. The glass cube should have offered a great view of the biomedical facility but the lights were too dim. By squinting my eyes I could just about make out the symbol I needed. It was very close, perhaps one hundred metres away. I moved towards it pensively. Sean floated behind me and resumed his humming.
Shortly we arrived at the arched doorway, away from the glass cube and into another, well the only was to describe it would be a sector. I pressed my palm against the door screen. A metrical chime flowed from the light emanating from the screen. The screen itself turned from red to green as a symbol rotated.
The door opened upon a room filled with darkness. Turning to Sean I looked for encouragement and found none. I braced myself and walked into the darkness.
As I entered the doorway the doors slid silently shut behind me and lights began to activate one by one, revealing more and more of the room. I walked in procession with the incoming lighting, as if being escorted by it. Another door was ahead. Again I went through it, and wished I hadn’t.
The room ahead was indeed well lit. But what it lit upon was scarcely what I had wanted to see. The room was circular. It was full of glass screens that appeared to have been blackened by some awful event. Pipes and cables hung frayed and loose from the ceiling. There was equipment, as incomprehensible as anything else, strewn across the floor. Tables and work stations had been upset. There was smashed crystal everywhere. I carefully treaded across the room, glass crunching beneath my feet. The occasional spark flashed from broken wires, the snapping sound made me jump.
Turning to my right I noticed that one of the consoles was still active. I approach it cautiously. The lights flickered, appearing to lose power. After a moment of darkness they surged back into life with a crack. There was a chair by the still active console.
The light from the console washed over my field of vision and just for a second I though I some a presence. There was something sitting in the chair.
It was blackened, charred almost, and it did not move. Walking around the chair I jumped back and gasped with horror. In that chair was a body. Whatever it had been was clearly dead. It appeared as though it had been burnt by something of awesome power. It’s hands were outstretched in front of it, as if in an attempt to ward off the coming threat.
What I noticed most of all was that it was missing his eyes. As with so many things in life in such a situation your mind naturally looks for what is missing. Unconsciously I realised I was looking for its eyes.
They were in front on me the whole time, of course, nailed to the console I was looking at. That was why it was flickering. The nails had pierced the screen.
I noticed that they were not blackened, they were fresh. The vacuum that was in the station before activation must have kept them preserved. I realised now with growing horror that the eyes must had been removed before it had been burnt, how else could they have escaped whatever had happened to its body.
Even Sean’s humming had stopped. I spun in the alarm caused by the silence to try and find him. Sure enough ahead of me was his blue light. He appeared to be scrutinising something ahead of him. I cautiously moved to where he was floating. About two and a half meters from him was another body only this one had not been blackened.
I walked a little closer. I felt my heart surge as I realised what I was looking at. This was no body. It was a person.
It was hunched over. The figure was gently rocking back and forth as though it was in a trance. Its right hand appeared to be moving over its left with some force.
As I got closer I realised that this was not a thing. This was a man. I could scarcely believe it. Another human.
Something about him wasn’t right.
Each time his right arm moved, it appeared like a saw-like motion. He exhaled in a tortured growl - the first sound he’d made. I could only watch. I didn’t dare disturb him.
The figure’s breath was increasing and growing more laboured. With a crunch something happened, I moved from my present vantage point to get a better view. I saw something silvery in his right hand. Breathing out carefully I saw what he was doing. He was cutting at himself. He was cutting his own flesh. He was carving into himself.
He had just as he cut off his own hand.
Whatever he was now looked down in confusion at the saw that he was holding and the blood gushing from his left hand, as though observing some new curiosity.
His lips curled up in a captivated smile. He was enjoying it.
The figure reached into his right pocket and numbly pulled out its contents, as though discovering he had pockets for the first time.
An ID card scattered towards me and he threw the contents of his pockets aside.
&nbs
p; I could just make out the name ‘James.’
James seemed unconcerned by the loss of much of the contents of his pockets, James had found what he was looking for, another silvery blade. It glinted as he picked it up.
He performed another motion for us now. It almost looked as though he was shaving his moustache only it was far more violent and jerked heavily upon each stoke as though catching on something.
After each deep jerk of the blade blood surged from his upper lip. Dropping his knife James pulled his right hand to his face.
With barely stable fingers he pulled upon his bloodied and loose lip. It peeled away in the most violent manner, catching occasionally upon flesh that had not been fully cut through. Finally it gave away with speed as the sound of dripping liquid filled my ears.
Still smiling James looked down upon his remaining hand.
He was holding his severed lip in what seemed like great amusement. He brought his upper lip back to his face and placed it into his mouth as though it was a detachable accessory.
Giggling in glee, with a mouth filled with his own lip, he rolled onto his hands and knees and began to chew on it.
His body began to move in and out as he grew into a fit of full laughter. He almost choked as he swollowed that freshly torn piece of himself.
But there was something more in the way he was laughing. Some growing level of perversion. He started screaming with laughter now. I could sense him losing even more control of himself. What was left of the sounds he could make between the spitting of blood became more like the noise of an animal.
He was starting to gargle now. He put down the knife and picked up his severed hand with his remaining one. That severed hand he placed into his mouth. James wriggled in glee as he say the reflection of the hand protruding from his mouth in the reflection of the blade.
As the wriggling faded he lost interest in his hand and tossed it aside. Blood was pooling around him in thick puddles. I could barely breathe.
His attention had been captured by the knife again. He picked it up and in a moment too short to count he plunged the knife into his throat. Yet still he laughed. It was uncontrollable not. Each rush of laughter made him rock. He spat out blood with each coming rock of laughter.
Losing breath he curled up and onto the floor, put a finger from his one remaining hand into his mouth and concentrated on me. I had tears in my eyes and realised I was holding my hands towards his, pleading with him to stop. He kept staring and staring at me, until the gargling sound stopped and his eyes grew grey and lifeless.
He never stopped staring at me.
Sean looked up from the dead man and at me. We exchanged a hopeless glance. I turned shaken from Sean and staggered further into the debris strewn room.
The more I saw the more I knew that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. There were more of those blackened bodies. But there was no smell, the vacuum had dealt with that.
I moved past a machine in a dreamlike state - not exactly sure what I was looking for. ‘George,’ said Sean in a whisper, ‘it’s here.’
I looked towards his position and nodded. I couldn’t seem much for the tears in my eyes though I noticed that the machine was effectively a bed with instruments hanging around it.
I looked for some kind of control interface and then found a slab of crystal slotted into the side of the machine. I picked it up. As I did so it drew itself, courageously, back into life. I checked the screen. It displayed an empty bed. I could only shrug my shoulders in disbelief as I climbed onto it and lay back.
Holding the screen above my head I noticed that a skeletal image of myself had appeared and that a faint humming had begun to emanate from the bed. Whatever I had been feeling vanish as a dull sense of fear began to take control of me.
I stared intently at the screen and noticed a double helix begin to wind its way along the diagnostic pane.
Genetic analysis complete asserted the odd shaped lettering on the screen. The active window on the screen collapsed to have another larger one superimposed upon it. After some working, mainly touching, rubbing and rolling everything within my field of vision, I found the option I was looking for. It was called Project Ascension.
‘So that is what it means,’ I muttered to myself. Pushing the button I was told to lie back by Sean.
The screen protested. It wasn’t happy about not being placed safely back into its dock during the procedure. With more than a little apprehension I put the screen where it wanted to be and waited for the procedure to start.
I had always hated medical procedures, particularly ones that were voluntary.
After a period of several minutes, with little happening, I became more comfortable. It was as this comfort was beginning to set in that I noticed that the bed had ceased to hum.
All of a sudden something crashed into my leg, at several points. It was sharp and it hurt like hell. I looked down in panic and saw that several large needles had swung their way into the bones on my leg. It felt as though it was pumping acid through me, into me.
Struggling against the machine I tried to lift myself away from the bed.
Crying out I found the machine had circled restraints about my hands and head. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t escape.
Light boomed into my field of vision and immediately knocked me out. I dreamt of home. I dreamt of him.