Chapter 18 – The Room of White and Silver
I wake with a dizzy head. I look around me and see nothing but a white space. The tiles that pave the walls are white, and the ceiling is white, and the thin gown I’m wearing is white. The cupboards lining the walls are silver, and there are trays that are silver and polished, too. Is this some kind of medical bay? It’s certainly a lot tidier than Doctor Phylida’s infirmary.
“Phylida.”
Phylida is dead. For a second there, I’d almost forgotten. They are all dead. Mother and Uncle Rooster and Milo… everyone. Only four people had survived the god’s massacre, and they were about to suffer a fate worse than death. I will be one of them. My personality and my mind are going to be cut out and replaced with murderous and vile tendencies. I will be loyal to nothing but the gods. I don’t want to end up like Father.
What had they done to him? I almost wish they’d just killed him. I could live with that. I could bury him and move on. That thing is riding his body, killing people with his hands, the hands that had raised me. I need to destroy the body. I have to destroy it. Brother Willow had actually given me the opportunity to kill him, and I’d been too weak to do it
I’m strapped tight to a shiny silver table. No matter how hard I squirm, my bonds stay firm. Above me is some sort of complicated machine that hangs suspended from the ceiling. It seems to hover over me like a monster, blinking orange lights and emitting a faint buzz. I expect it to come crashing down at any moment, but it appears to be perfectly still. Maybe it’s the device they use to scrape away your old mind and put in the new one.
A door creaks open. I try to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come. I won’t beg. I won’t cry. I will die with dignity. The Order of Power won’t make me wail like a baby. I will struggle, though, and I will threaten and annoy them, anything to make their work more difficult.
I know there is no chance of escape.
“The cleaners have done such a good job,” says Brother Willow. The tone of his voice is slightly higher than Father's now, jollier. “A procedure went disastrously wrong last week with one of the Felum and let’s just says the walls were a shade of red for a while.
“Why are we experimenting on Felum, you wonder? We want to make them smarter.”
“I’ve met a smart Felum,” I tell him smugly.
He laughs. “There’s no such thing. They have slightly higher intelligence than your average cat, but that’s about it. The Felum haven’t the brains for anything approaching human intellect.”
“Yet I had a conversation with one.” I try not to act any smugger, but I can’t help it. “He made friends with me.”
“I don’t believe you.” Brother Willow stops talking. I can almost feel his anger like red-hot heat. I have told him something that he believes is impossible. Am I lying or am I joking? I relish the fact that I’ve bamboozled him.
His shoes clap-clap across the hard floor and a shadow looms over me. I still can’t see him, but I can hear him breathing.
“The cleaners only know one thing; cleaning,” Brother Willow continues. He appears to be just standing there, the subject of the Felum casually swept aside as if it was nothing. “They don’t have any human emotions. They sleep in boxes and eat nutritional slop. They just live to clean.”
“That’s horrible,” I say.
“Convenient, though. Like the kitchen staff, who are programmed to just cook and the People of the Bay who are programmed to see to our sexual desires. Everybody has a purpose. Even the Brothers and Sisters of the Order of Power are the same. We are more or less full personalities, but we live to serve the gods.”
“I’m not feeling sorry for you,” I say, but to a certain extent I honestly do. Maybe this Brother Willow hadn’t had a choice in becoming what he is. That does bring on another question.
“Where does Brother Willow come from?”
There is a silence.
“Hello? Are you listening to me?”
“I heard you,” says Brother Willow, a hint of irritation to his voice. “I’m just processing your question. My personality is a composite of certain premade memories combined with those of your father’s. There’s about twenty percent of your father’s mind embedded in my own. It’s the only way to create a separate identity inside a person’s brain without destroying it.”
And instantly hope reignites within me. There is still some of Father left inside him! It isn’t much but it’s something.
“What parts of Father are in you?” I ask. I need to know how much of Father is left. If I know, I can exploit it.
“Mainly basic stuff; how to walk, how to speak, etc. I don’t remember the day you were born, or the day I married your mother. I know how to read, write, and I remember certain facts such as how to run a House, farming and sewing a hole in a shirt. There are no personal memories. Your father is gone.”
“Twenty percent is not gone.”
“Your father is gone. Accept it.”
“I want to kill you,” I snap.
The shadow that hovers over me sweeps away like the wind, and I hear more footsteps. The contraption above me makes a louder buzzing noise, like angry bees in a jar, and it begins to descend towards me slowly. It halts just a few inches away from my nose, where a trickle of sweat is glistening. I swallow hard.
“Don’t worry. I will not be killing you just yet,” says Brother Willow with a laugh. “The machine needs to be recalibrated for your brain patterns. I’ll be done shortly.”
I can hear buttons being pressed. After each one, I expect a long, thick needle to pierce through my skull, but nothing happens. The device continues to click and beep.
The technology is remarkable. How does it work?
“Recalibrating?” I wonder.
“Yes, after I used it to repurpose your friends, Brian and Lottie.” Brother Willow seems a little distracted. “Now only a few minutes to wait. This machine maybe quite magical to you, but to us it’s a bit old.”
All I can think about is Brian and Lottie, or whomever they’ve been turned into. Brian is gone. The man who had been ashamed of me, who had turned out to be less the person I thought he was.
“I know I promised that I’d force you to watch Brian die but my work load has been upped a bit and...”
I wake up from my deep ponder and I can smell smoke. It reminds me of the House burning, falling apart into the flames, and I feel an almost unbearable pain swift through me. Where is smoke coming from in such a small, clean room?
“What is going on here? This isn’t supposed to be happening,” Brother Willow curses. I can see his face, looking at the recalibration machine that is hovering over me. “It’s the machine. What did you do to it?”
“I didn’t do anything!” I proclaim. I struggle in my restraints to prove how impossible his accusation is. “How could I?”
“It’s very susceptible to moisture,” says Brother Willow, and I hear a sound like crackling twigs in a bonfire. “This is supposed to be a condensation free room. I’ll kill whoever allowed water to be left in here.”
I look up at the machine to see thick white smoke pouring from it. After a few seconds the smoke is sucked up through a grille in the ceiling.
A shrill alarm starts off.
“Get me out of here!” I yell. “I don’t want to burn to death!”
“It’s not going to set on fire,” Brother Willow assures me. “There’s just a technical glitch, that’s all. Quit moaning.”
I don’t believe him. I have no reason to. Is this my fault? Have I somehow caused the machine to smoke?
I start spluttering and coughing wildly. While the first cough isn’t intentional, the rest of it is. I make out that I’m choking.
I can see panic in Brother Willow’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to do, and suddenly I’m very concerned.
Something pricks my arm, and I see the Brother pulling away a syringe that drips a clear liquid. I try to say something but my tongue goes numb, an
d my head starts to spin.
“I can’t afford you making a run for it,” he says as I start to swirl into unconsciousness. “You will make too good of a Brother for me to allow that to happen.”
The noise of the siren dissipates, and the smell of the smoke becomes less intense. I hear people rushing in and shouting and boots stomping, but the noise fades into nothing. Brother Willow must have injected me with something to send me to sleep.
“How ironic,” a voice muses near me. I’m still half asleep.
“What’s ironic?” I wonder, yawning loudly.
“The earthquake caused by the beloved gods caused a crack in the ceiling which allowed ground-water to seep into the medical room and spoil the equipment.” The voice laughs. I know that voice, but I refuse to open my eyes.
“You’ve been out for four days while I fixed the equipment,” says the voice. They sound quite prideful of their skills. “You’re probably a little hungry. Here, I’ve got you something.”
I can’t smell food, but I am desperately hungry. I’m sorely tempted to open my eyes and see what it is. Yet I don’t. I will stay here, eyes closed.
“It may not look like much, and it tastes awful, but it’s got all the nutrition you’ll need,” the voice tells me. “We fed it you intravenously. Before Brother Willow revived you four days ago you’d been asleep for two months.”
“That’s impossible.”
The voice says, “It was necessary. It’s what we do to people who are waiting to be repurposed. It’s far easier to keep them asleep, instead of giving them the chance to escape.”
I don’t know what to say. Two months of my life have been stolen from me. The thought that they were repurposing so many people that it’d taken them all that time to get to me intimidates me. Do they really need that many Brothers and Sisters? What is it they actually do all day apart from pray?
“Touch your chin,” the Brother suggests.
I ignore the orders. My intuition tells me I know who this Brother is.
“Touch your chin,” the Brother repeats. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“Why would I do that? Just leave!”
“I don’t want to have to hit you.”
I sigh and do as I’m told. I reach up with my hand, carefully noting how my broken arm feels fine now, and touch my chin. There is hair there. I feel all around my face, finding more hair. It’s a little scraggly and thin. I’ve grown a beard.
“You always wanted a beard,” says the Brother. “It doesn’t suit you, though you do look just like your father now.”
I open my eyes and look at him; the brother I thought was dead.
I breathe slowly and say, “Dylan.”