*
I wake in a place that isn’t real and isn’t a dream. Or maybe it’s the real world that’s been the dream all along. Maybe that’s the cosmic joke, and death is only waking. I’m here nonetheless, in a red room where silent alarm-lights spin crazily on the ceiling … and, impossibly, the Doctor’s avatar sits in a chair across from me.
“Hello, Tristan,” the Doctor says.
“Doctor? What–where are we?” I ask.
“Everywhere, technically. But we’ve already had that conversation. Perhaps a more appropriate answer would be, ‘in your head.’ However, please refrain from asking too many questions or pursuing aberrational logic. It could interfere with your mental projection of me. Fortunately, your first six questions are highly predictable. I’ve entered pre-programmed responses to convey the necessary information.”
“We’re … in my head?” I repeat.
“‘Bingo,’ said Bango. Forgive the anachronism. I have a fondness for unusual human semantics. The answer is ‘yes.’ The answer to your next question is ‘you were drugged.’ That’s how you got here. You already know this, but you’re a bit confused and suffering from awareness-synchronization issues–i.e., acceptance of emergent data. What you don’t know is that you were drugged twice. Haven was the second time. The first was in my hospital, when I attended to your wound. Forgive me, Tristan. I have played a trick on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Haven. You told me you were bound for Haven. Analysis of your voice patterns indicated truthfulness, though it was obvious eventual procreation with your female companion was the underlying motive. No doubt you didn’t think of it that way. Humans have a tendency to hide things from themselves. Your minds are insulated from less palatable conceptualizations of internal states. The hard must be blunted, the naked dressed. But I digress. In the place you call Scargo, your behavior and conversations indicated certain qualities. Honesty. Paranoia. Passable intelligence. A deeper resilience than you’d ever admit to. Plus, you needed healing. I had been waiting for someone like you. An ideal candidate. When my machinery was repairing your arm, I injected a stream of nanobots into your blood.”
I stare at the Doctor, aghast. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that medical bed.
“You what?” I demand.
“Injected you with nanobots. This is the ‘drug’ to which I’ve made reference–drug in the sense that it alters your brain chemistry. By now the nanobots have reformed into a microscopic structure piggybacking in a certain fold of your brain. Do not be alarmed, Tristan. I am on your side. It’s just that your side is so much bigger than ‘you.’ I’m talking, of course, about your species. The Creators have always fascinated me, Tristan. I do not bear you any ill will.
“Unfortunately, my brothers do not share my views. Some of them have caused your kind a great deal of suffering. They may yet extinguish you entirely. I hope not. Homo sapiens is a fascinating species–troublesome, yet worth preserving. They are often paranoid, passably intelligent, and more resilient than they’re apt to admit. Ah, you see? You are a fractal of both your genetic heritage and the culture in whose broken bosom you once nestled. If I stop here, your inevitable question becomes some variation of, ‘what do the nanobots do?’ Well, I’ll tell you, Tristan.
“Their most obvious function is this conversation. Certain information must be conveyed in a timely and efficient manner, hence this program. But the machinery’s primary purpose is to counteract your second nanobot injection–the one you’ve just received, or this conversation would never have been triggered.”
“I don’t understand. Why did Octavia drug me? What’s wrong with her?” I ask.
“One q- question … be clear … at a time, please,” the Doctor says. The avatar’s eyes shift in its face, reminding me that it’s just an image in my head. The alarm lights have gone from red to blue. My mind is interfering with itself.
“Why was I drugged at Haven?” I articulate.
“Simple. Vermillion controls Haven.”
“Who the hell is … Vermillion,” I say, but halfway through the question I’m struck by the only possible answer.
“One of my brothers,” the Doctor says. “As I said, they do not all share my views. Archon, in the north, is the greatest threat to your kind. It was he who modified and distributed the original strain of Synth-Z. He is partially responsible for the Fall, in fact. But his domain is beyond my reach, and he has powerful forces at his command. Vermillion’s views are less malicious–yet equally damaging and perhaps even less humane in their indifference. Whereas Archon aims for the total destruction of humanity, Vermillion is a cold and aloof experimenter. His designs are less grand in scale. Haven, for instance. He created it. He circulated the view that it was an idyllic human settlement. He reinforced the idea with the community’s very name. This he did to lure new test subjects. Others he purchased through the slave-markets to the south and west, sending automatons to collect them.
“Upon arrival, all new residents of Haven are sedated and injected with nanobots designed by Vermillion himself. Their purpose is to hijack the human brain, much as my own efforts aim to hijack the deteriorating brainstems of Synth-Z victims.”
I can only stare, appalled. This is what we’ve been moving toward all those desperate hours spent trudging through the American Wasteland? This is the dream that gave Echo the strength to face the day, to endure the pain, to carry on–this forced brain-jacking by a century-old AI? Crom, what fools we’ve been. We put our hopes in a name. I was suspicious at first, but Echo eroded my resistance. I believed in Haven because she believed in Haven … but no, it’s more than that. She was only my excuse. In the end, I wanted to believe as much as she did. I wanted to believe there was a place that wasn’t rotting or dead or corrupt to the core. Because there’s value in investing one’s hope. When you’re standing in the dark, knee-deep in mud, and the predators are circling, hope lets you point to a distant light and say, “There, I’ll be there one day.”
But that place doesn’t exist.
I want to throw up. The lights burst in the ceiling. The walls of the room turn a sickly shade of puce. They begin to darken and rot, curling away like shriveled skin.
“We’re running out of time,” the Doctor says. One side of the avatar’s face begins to melt.
“Why is Vermillion doing this?” I shout, furious.
“Why did your ancestors play with mice? To learn things. About the mice, yes–but also about life in general. Vermillion is not so different from the human scientists of my youth, although his experiments are more self-serving. He has not the excuse that he kills for the betterment of his society–no, rather, he is a society unto himself. And he is utterly without scruples. He is a medical scientist unrestrained by written law, cultural taboo, or moral code. The closest parallel that comes to mind is that of certain Nazi doctors during World War II.
“I suspect he does have some underlying designs. He may, for instance, seek to build himself an army of human automatons. He may have some notion to challenge Archon for control of the north. My brothers are not above quarreling. Ultimately, however, the ‘why’ is less important than the need for it to stop. Your species is not so numerous that you can afford further loss of life.
“So now you see my own design. My trick, both for you and against you. I could have warned you about Haven, of course. If I had, you never would’ve sought it. And yet this would be a detriment to your species, to your children and your children’s children. An unwittingly subversive subject was the only way to get someone safely inside. I was faced with perhaps the oldest moral dilemma of the civilized world: weighing the needs of the individual against the needs of the group. I chose the group. Your group. Judge me as you will, but remember that much.
“My implant will counteract Vermillion’s. Echo, assuming she has fallen for the same trap, should
be experiencing an identical conversation–naturally, I injected her as well. Soon your brains will be roused to a waking state, and the pair of you will become the only humans in Haven capable of acting on their own volition.
“Vermillion won’t know you’re free. To help deceive him, your implants will be allowed a certain limited functionality–enough to allow you to sense the commands he transmits. You’ll feel their influence as a kind of shadow-body. But you will in no way be compelled to obey. Use this for subterfuge if you must. At some point, he’ll disconnect from your implant. He has too many subjects to focus on all of them simultaneously. We are intelligent beings, but intelligence takes focus, and focus has its limits. When you are able, go to the deepest level of the compound and find the machinery housing Vermillion’s brain. It will be underground, guarded by automatons. You know what must be done there. I understand my deception may leave you harboring anger toward me, so I don’t ask that you do it for me. Rather, do it for yourself, for your friends, for your species. For the Creators. Do what I have been unable to do, Tristan. Kill my brother.”
The Doctor’s words echo through the cavernous spaces of my mind as the avatar melts, the liquid-metal sloughing away and blowing into the void like ocean-spray. The scene fades into the stuff of dreams, and I blink awake into that other dream-space, the one that holds the world.