Chapter 18
“I know you put Bruce's intestines in me,” I called to Dr Thorn as I entered her lab. Duncan was there by her side.
She seemed to smile. The truth was finally out. “He was dying,” She called as I walked over, “We knew you were compatible - Bruce’s intestines and you. He was unique. He thought he was human. He thought like a human.”
“You always planned to do this. That's why you wanted me here.”
“We believed you were compatible. We never planned on doing it without your consent but, before we could get you onboard, events happened. We had to know we could trust you and you us.
Bruce hastening things like that - well, that was unexpected. After surgery, when we explained to him, he agreed to hide the changes from you. At least until we could help you understand. Your scar.”
She pointed towards my abdomen.
I lifted my shirt. A large wound stretched across my stomach, stitched together with coarse black thread.
“Bruce helped hide the truth from you. Stopped you seeing - stopped others seeing. You’re equipped with a fully cognitive, telepathic intestine. Together you can do things that Bruce alone was incapable of. Together you can learn to fight back.”
Duncan spoke up, “Ernum, I know you must be angry, but I have to ask. You are happier this way, aren't you? You do want this?”
I started to hear the background hum of the world. I could hear all the bodies of all the people sing and groan. I could touch them and Bruce would let me touch them. He was a cooperative symbiant who wanted to serve.
I decided that, for now, Dr Thorn and Duncan would be happier if they didn't remember me or Bruce, and as I willed it, their bodies sang to that tune. I was finally starting to understand Bruce’s power.
Bruce told me of Duncan’s entry for the competition for the Halloween edition of the company newsletter.
It was about a man called Orin Staller. Orin Staller was born into wealth. He had servants to cater to his every need. From being a child he had servants to wash him, servants to feed him, servants to wipe his bottom. Life for him became very slow.
By the age of seventeen he came to a complete stop. His servants carried on, barely noticing. They cleaned his static body, they spooned food into him. He never made any motion, not a shudder.
On day, aged twenty-seven, his servants got a shock. As they reached towards him to deliver him his breakfast, his body wobbled and morphed out of the way, as if liquid.
The servants became overwhelmed with giddy joy as they discovered they could run their fingers through his gelatinous body and their fingers would run straight through. The flesh parted a couple of centimetres before the swipe and reformed the other side. Orin’s eyes just stared outwards, unmoving.
One servant held a tray inside Orin’s neck. The head just hovered there severed from the body. Then the servant squealed with excitement as he wafted the tray up and down. The flesh shifted around the tray at speed, always maintaining a distance, always returning to its original state.
Scientists pondered over this for almost a year before they came to any kind of conclusion. Physical contact with Orin Stabber was simply impossible, his body seemed to warp and distort to avoid any impact, and then it would spring back to position, as if nothing had happened.
Eventually it was realised that Orin Staller had decelerated to the point where he had broken the slowness of still.
At slower than the speed of still, the known laws of physics lose meaning. He no longer needed feeding as his rate of energy use was lower than zero. You could feel the slight static charge, crackle, as you ran your fingers past him.
People couldn’t touch him because the energy required to accelerate his speed up to static was so great, space time would distort itself rather than allow him to accelerate to a static speed. He was no longer affected by physical laws such as gravity or friction. He was just there. Floating without movement, in his house.
If you were to imagine yourself on a train, traveling slower than the speed of still, people standing by a station might mistakenly think your train was static. However, from your perspective the station and everything else is stretching off, further and further away - further and further out of reach.
It took another nine years before people realised the threat Orin Staller had become. The cause of his groundbreaking deceleration wasn’t understood, but if the process was ever to reverse - if he was ever to return to a static speed - it would mean our doom.
You see, traveling at slower than the speed of still, he gained energy and mass without eating. He wouldn’t increase in size, that would be movement. He wouldn't increase in weight, as gravity no longer had any affect on him, but he would increase in mass.
By the time people realised this, he was estimated to have the mass of a small star. He’s believed to have tripled his mass since then.
We make a constant effort to maintain his surroundings, undisturbed, in the hope that nothing changes. Should he ever accelerate back to static, faced with the pull of gravity, he would fall straight through our universe - dragging our planet with him.
We hope, one day, we’ll have the technology to emigrate.
Duncan’s mind, like Dr Thorn’s, was being stripped, layer by layer, of the countless memories that had accumulated during a year’s worth of research. Little lies ran through the gaps forming a coherent structure; little messages telling him not to wonder about, or notice, that he had accomplished nothing over the time he’d spent working here. It was beautiful to watch the intricate ways in which his intestine reshaped every aspect of his life.
Dr Thorn was more resistant. I saw the strain in her eyes as she tried to hold on - hold on to something. That little scrap of truth. Eventually she forgot why she was straining, and relaxed. Whatever it was it had gone - slipped from her grasp. Smiles of ignorance grew on their faces and they set about deciding their new line of research.
Their bodies would then spread the lie to their colleagues and a stable consistent sense of normality would return to this little speck of the world.
I left the building through a previously hidden archway, concealed with a lie. A contagion, the origins of which were lost to time. Then I walked outside, into a city that showed centuries worth of change.
I saw doorways that were hidden. Passages where others see walls. The decay people were made to forget and buildings people learnt to ignore. Grand sights of London seemed small and what was previously ignored stood out like beacons. Secrets built up over time.
It would be easy to attribute intelligence to intestines, as if they were working to a plan, but it was only Bruce that showed intelligence.
The others don't plan or prepare like people do. They live in the here and now. Building up their layers of lies with no memory or understanding of when or why; repeating the same songs without knowing or caring what's true.
Walking down the busy street, with people walking round me, we begin a new song for people to sing.
Bruce sang out a song to make the stars swirl with a new beauty in the sky, and then we decided that today we would have a carnival. It's in honour of me.
Smiles appeared on people faces. Eyes lit up. They'd been planning it for weeks; they’d hoped to surprise me. Everybody dancing and happy as they spread their joy down the street.
There were still negative messages amongst the crowd. One young woman, with a lovely smile, had to listen to her gut calling her fat and ugly. We silenced those lies and watched similar lies, within nearby bodies, softened in response. She began to cry. At first I thought we might have harmed her, but they were tears of joy.
We were like Jesus.
The city still stank after the flooding; I discovered later that all human habitation stank. We built a lie of cleanliness around us, walling ourselves in under a comfortable delusion. The flood wiped away that lie, and I rebuilt it, more beautifully than ever.
We followed the carnival up the road, to the hotel. Fixing people’s stress and pain along t
he way. When we arrived, we released the people back into their lives, and the crowd dispersed.
Entering the hotel, we walked up to the front desk. The hotel receptionist was being force fed self loathing from his gut, and we cured him. Then we checked in, convincing him we'd already booked.
I thought of other experiments to carry out. I wondered how someone would react if I silenced all messages from their intestines. Every whisper.
We went into the hotel cafeteria and ordered a cup of tea. Then we sat at a table in the corner. I selected a waitress and quietly observed her, never glancing for more than a moment.
She was being fed the idea that others were judging her. We wiped those thoughts away. She was told the country should pre-empt a war because war was inevitable. We stopped that.
A tranquil expression grew on her face as, one by one, we silenced the whispers. She could see the world as it was. Like me, she could see the dirt that was hidden, but she wouldn’t mind. Gone was her obsession with the perception of cleanliness.
When it was all complete, I realised what I should have realised from the start. I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. I could hear songs from every being, transmitted through Bruce, but as far as the human mind was concerned I was no telepath.
This would be true of all telepaths. They could only hear the whispers of intestines singing to each other. What a warped and pitiful view of mankind they must have had.
'You drove your mother away.'
How I wish I could have heard, with the same clarity, all the little lies I suffered in my past.
One body, in the cafeteria, broke this newly found balance. It belonged to a miserable looking fellow, sat in a corner. Little fears of cultural invasion was emanating from his belly.
I was quite disappointed to see that, although the subjects never spoke, I could sense the waitress’s beautifully clean and quiet body, start to join in with the song. She was an empty vessel, soaking up all the noise around her.
She made some uncomfortable glances towards him. As if, on some level, she realised he was infecting her, but she kept up her professionalism as a waitress. Could I offer nothing but a temporary fix?
I pondered over this as I silently observed. More and more noise would grumble out of her thin waist. Size was no indication of volume. Her waist growled with ideas and notions, picked up from every passing stranger. If we could only silence everyone - if.
“No,” said Bruce, “New fears and lies would form. It would all just start up again.”
I wondered what form a fresh layer of lies would take. With none of the old lies to base themselves on, would they have grown even stranger?
Over the weeks we adapted to our power. We learned to get whatever we wanted from people with minimal effort. We lived like a king and brought peace and joy to the world - at least temporarily to those around us.
Any home I picked would be our own and the people would think it my castle or flying saucer, as they came to serve.
I decided that we should use our gift to play at politics and I flew around the world encouraging peace and an end to all the tension for war. It was hard work. We did a lot of good, but it wasn’t as easy to effect change as I'd hoped. Bruce and I would retune politicians as we traveled around the world.
It worked to a point, but every time we walked away people’s old doubts and fears would resurface and things would begin to revert back to the old ways.
After giving it some thought we wrote a tune of peace for people’s bodies to sing. This one was designed with all the tricks we learned with the intention of being contagious. It took a number of attempts before we built a song that would take hold. It would spread throughout the world, person to person, promoting peace.
Then we retired and watched the new world unfold. Crime levels reduced and the threat of war subsided. It wasn't a powerful force. It still had to compete with all the existing lies but it helped maintain a more secure balance.
Time went by and we withdrew into a fantasy world of our creation. I kept interference with the outside world to a minimum, for fear I'd start an undesirable contagion.
We understood that we had the power to destroy humanity, if careless. Much better to stay isolated within our own lies.
We arranged for my physical body to be looked after in a mental hospital. I'd no longer had any use for it. I was happy in my own little kingdom, in my time travelling castle on a planet with rainbow coloured dwarfs, stretchy goblins and a city of unicorns. The part of me that knew it was nothing but lies was a relatively minor part of my mind.
I woke to find my father weeping by my bedside. I told him it was all ok and removed his fears. I found him a kind woman from amongst the nursing staff, Olivia Hosley, who would love him and look after him, and I found a job that he’d enjoy. It’s what he really wanted from life.
From that point on, I lost all track of time. Bruce would occasionally tell me how old I was but I didn't care about my biological age. My father would visit but I no longer woke for him.
I remained undisturbed in my world of carefully crafted lies, until one day, whilst riding a pigeon named Bruce over a mountain top, I looked down and saw all the nurses and patients in the hospital below. Bruce chose to show them to me. They were there, with all their angst and troubles. They filled me with such pity.
This pity made me do something I thought I'd never do again. I found myself composing a final song for the outside world. A song to forget all songs. It spread amongst my test subjects like wildfire. A blank slate, wiping away all other messages.
Bruce was wary of us toying with such a contagion, but he always obeyed. The relief spread over the faces of the nurses. The patients would get to their feet and smile with a new hope for the world.
We would always silence it out before it spread too far. We had to. We were in a responsible position. We had to be sure we weren't releasing something dangerous into the world. Anyway, there was no hurry. I liked my life now. It couldn't be better.
We feel safe when the days start and end the same, Snuggled up in bed. At hand: supper and breakfast. It’s like a long running sitcom. The Illusion of safety and certainty, given to us through routine.
Take away that certainty and you become stressed - you can ask any of the nurses about that. We perform better within the comfort of a lie. We build clever time consuming activities and engage in imaginary ladder climbing with our fellow inmates. It all seems good for us. We aren’t going to let things change.
It's a unique position - to walk in both worlds. I have the power to permanently brush away much of the bitterness which encrusts mankind. I could draw back the curtain and let everybody go free. All I need do is will it.
Chapter 19
I did write a short story for the Halloween competition in the company newsletter. I didn’t think it good enough to enter and I felt a little bit intimidated by Tethra Collins, who had really taken this competition to heart. So I filed it away in my clutter box and forgot about it.
It was a story of a boy who felt out of step with the world. He tried to fit in, playing the role of a normal child, clumsily aping the behaviour of normal children.
When he grew up, he attempted surgery on himself in the hope it would make him the right shape to fit in. He tried to get the corners chopped off his square peg of a face, but he still didn’t fit. The harder he tried the more people would stare.
As he got older still, people began backing away from him on sight, and whispering amongst themselves as they stood pointing in fear.
Maybe they could sense it. The could feel this square peg ramming itself against their world, repeatedly. Bashing away in the hope that one day it would break through.
That’s exactly what happened. The square pegged faced man woke one morning, I think it was a Saturday, after an unusually relaxed night’s sleep, and he stepped outside his house, into the street.
*Bang*
The first person who glanced at him, as she walked home from some e
arly morning shoe shopping, found herself knocked back onto the ground.
*Bang*
A car swerved to the side on the road, crumpling its body against a lamppost.
*Bang*
The postman was knocked clean out of his shoes, his red and white striped socks flying through the air, letters scattering down the street.
*Bang*
The twitching curtains, from the nosy neighbors house, flew off their hooks and wrapped themselves around her as she stumbled and fell away from the window.
*Bang*
The world shuddered as a group of girl guides turned the corner and found themselves hurled down the street.
*Bang*
The frosty air around him began to crack. Little specks of reality started to fall away.
*Bang*
The cracks in the air shattered and came tumbling down to earth in a blast of white dust.
That was it, he was through, but what a mess he’d made.
Looking at the people, now, as they walked around, he realised he was no longer the square peg he’d been his whole life, or rather, it was the world that was no longer the circular hole. It was everyone else who had ended up changing to fit him - ended up being cured.
Through a relentless force of will, he’d made the world, and everyone in it, accept each other for the way they were.
Perusing the people, as their eyes flickered about with a new appreciation for each other, he wondered, why now? Why couldn’t things have been this way from the start?
Now I think about it, I wonder if my protagonist was simply mad. Thinking he had the power to change the world; surely that’s a sign of insanity.
The End
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