Empty

[kitkat9]

Re: Empty

Hopefully.

[mead1]

Re: Empty

PART DEUX: PESTILENCE

coming later today probably, I had a burst of inspiration

[mead1]

Re: Empty

Pestilence

After escaping the town, we abandoned it entirely. If we stayed in one place, we would be able to be wiped out. We were certainly hard to kill, but after their quarantine had been destroyed, the prelifes were more likely to aim for eradication instead of containment, and nobody wanted to try their chances against the bomb. I had seen many of my children writhe in pain, bodies covered in flames, being eaten away by the one weapon that seemed to effectively destroy us. We left our homes and went on the road. There was a whole world to enlighten. These were the happiest days of our society.

The military had left behind plenty of vehicles suited for carrying many of us at once, but moving an entire population is still no small feat. We had to spread out in different directions. Leaders had to be appointed, plans had to be made. We would fly, and we would fight.

Virgil and Seth were the obvious choices for leaders of the other two factions. The separation would be hard on them, but ultimately necessary. We were powerful, but we were still a tiny minority, and this division would make us even smaller. When attacking the big cities of this world, we would have to infiltrate quietly. An all-out war would certainly lead in our demise. We would have to do this like a virus.

In the front of each convoy, we would have those left less scathed by the mutations, that could pass for healthy prelifes. They would need to begin converting until we had numbers inside the city that were large enough to assault it from the inside along with our assault from the outside. Those not on the inside would wait, preying on travelers, and assisting in the development of our evolution. The lifted lab vehicles from the military would serve as linked headquarters, and so our growth would continue.

The growth that I had observed in the vent seemed to be continuing on it's own. More and more bulbous masses of discolored skin were appearing all over the surface of my body. My arms looked like I had biceps, but there was no additional muscle, just solid mass of hardened skin. My head, which had stayed mostly prelife-looking was beginning to widen, with extra lumps of flesh growing from either side. None of my research could account for this sudden increase in growths. It wasn't a problem yet, not like it is now, so I decided it was not a priority. What the next generation needed was to become stronger, faster, more deadly. We needed warriors.

This new evolution was a bit of a learning process. My original formula had worked well enough, but it was hardly the fulfillment of our full potential. I worked long hours in the lab, watching cells replicate and destroy one another, seeing how I could change our forms without the system of our bodies collapsing. There had been slight modifications to our body chemistry since I had began, but this was going to be much more expansive. I was going to create a whole other race of post-lives to serve this purpose of assault.

This idea actually caused many of the problems in society today. All of the civil unrest is an almost direct result of the biological differences between generations. Can you really call it racism when one group is actually biologically superior to the other? Now I've gone off on a tangent, but the point was the need for warriors. Simply enough I figured out how to increase the strength and growth rate of fingernails. They would have claws. Muscle mass was my next target, but that wasn't so easily done. Ultimately, I decided that for our current purposes, it would be best to increase production of epinephrine so it could be constantly dumped into their systems. There were probably a dozen other small modifications I made, but the one I was most proud of was the teeth. I knew as I was doing it that this was what would win the war. This is what would terrify the prelifes' to the point of panic.

I modified the mouth structure so that the next generation's teeth would be longer and sharper. They would be gleaming triangles right out of a childhood nightmare. They would rip, tear, and shred. All these changes together formed the generation we call “Harpies”. I distributed the serum to Virgil and Seth, and instructed they be used to convert the first travelers unfortunate enough to be caught. I knew Virgil wouldn't do it personally, even if I told him to. He just didn't have it in him.

--

Virgil's son, Seth, didn't have long to live at all when I first met him. It was for him that Virgil made a hole in the prison I was held in. The doctors had done all that they could to make him comfortable, but the feeling was that he wouldn't outlive the month. Due to his father's immense wealth and many connections, he was hooked up to all the most advanced equipment in a sophisticated lab in a bunker I later learned was deep beneath the Ohio dirt.

Seth had more equipment attached to him then I had had in the entirety of my state of the art medical research facility. I had to learn how to operate several things. Virgil spent most of his time sitting by the side of Seth's bed, hoping he would wake up and be able to speak again. The man cared more for his son than any person I had ever seen care about anything. He had everything in the world, and he sat in this bunker wasting away over this small boy.

Virgil himself came from old money, but was far from an aristocrat. The man looked like an albino neanderthal. He had lived his life in almost a state of pure hedonism, taking what he wanted until Seth came along. Virgil never really explained what happened to Seth's mother, but I suspect that he did something awful to her. Perhaps it was because of his care-free lifestyle that he threw so much of his effort into keeping Seth alive. I always wondered if he was searching for redemption by helping me, or if he simply liked hearing the screams.

That's what was so interesting to me about him, more than anything else. The man was cruel. Heartless to any living thing other than his son, Lynette, and possibly myself. He killed for fun and never faltered in his ability to lead and do the intelligent thing, but he didn't seem to be sure that what we were doing was right. When I offered him the vial to keep Seth alive, he told me he couldn't do it.

I told Virgil that I would do it myself if he needed me to. Secretly, I had been hoping that I would be the one to do it. While I was free of many of the petty emotions I had been saddled with during my prelife, I was both proud and elated, holding the serum over the sleeping boy. If this conversion was a success, this was to be the first of many. I was fairly confident, but not quite as much so as I had appeared in the speech I had given. Hopefully he would experience less of the horrible side effects that I had had to endure, and enjoy more of the benefits. If this was a success, it would mean that I could dedicate the rest of my life to perfecting this serum, to perfecting existence. I was terrified, but more excited than I had been even before my own injection. Slowly, carefully, I filled a syringe with the serum. I sterilized the end, then injected the boy's arm.

The effect began to take shape only a few minutes later. Seth's eyes opened, and Virgil jumped to his feet in joy. The joy was destroyed as Seth started screaming a moment later. Horrible, painful howlings, like a creature dying issued forth from his mouth. Virgil slammed me against the wall, demanding explanations I couldn't offer. I told him to wait. I told him that the change was painful when it happened to me too, and that it would pass. In a moment, it did pass. The screams subsided.

Seth stopped screaming and started talking. He rambled about nonsensical things, about the moon and the wood grain of the walls, and the color blue. He was having the hallucinations for the first time. I couldn't explain this to Virgil either, but again I begged him to be patient. It too passed after a few moments. Then Seth slept, his vitals stabilizing. I told Virgil that the transition had been a success, but he refused to leave Seth's side until he knew for sure that his child would live. I asked to be directed to my sleeping quarters. I didn't really need to sleep anymore, but I wanted to give the man some privacy for the tearful reunion that would follow in a few hours time.

In the days that followed, I could tell that Virgil still loved his son, but something was different. Something was off. He just never seemed as ceaselessly devoted to his son as he had sitting by that bed, waiting for some sign of life. Virgil never converted a single prisoner, or assisted in any of my researches into perfecting our forms, though he showed considerable insight and understanding when I told him what the serum would do to his son. I think that behind all his zeal, Virgil believed in the prelifes a lot more than he let on.

--

After I finished the serum for the Harpies, I found myself bored and listless. While I knew there was waiting to do, I just wanted to be out in the field, keeping the advance of my ambitions within my own control. I decided to do something horribly irresponsible and enter the city and establish my own cell. Virgil was totally against this. He said flattering things about how I was the head of the movement, and how it couldn't continue if something was to happen to me. It was his way of expressing concern, I guess, but I was insatiable in my need for action. I gave instructions for my leadership to be deferred to the other two, and readied myself for the journey into the city.

Preparation was complicated, but I knew it was an important step. The first problem to contend with was that I had one of the most recognizable faces in the world. This wouldn't be hard to fix, I just had to drastically modify my face. The easiest way would be to burn it, I decided. There are many chemicals that cause a horrendous scarring of the skin. I strapped goggles tightly around my eyes and prepared myself mentally. I walked into the bathroom and shed my clothes. Prepared, I walked into the shower. Slowly, I poured the liquid down my face.

Pain is just a stimulus. There's no reason to avoid it outside of instinct. We fear pain because our bodies tell us that we are doing something that could result in our deaths. Just like any other urge, the urge to cease painful activities can be controlled. Once you realize that you understand the base instincts of your body, you can overcome them. The burning was intense. My nerves screamed for me to join them in screaming, to flush my face with water, to do something, but I did not. Standing still, I felt the solution begin to drip down to my neck. It was about time for this to stop.

I turned on the shower and let the water wash over my burns, diluting the acid so it scorched my lower body only mildly. The burns were deep, and even the lukewarm water made my senses scream in protest, but the mind rules the body, and the mind understood what it had done. I stood in the shower for a while after the acid had gone, relishing the feeling of total control over my own instincts. Ironically, it was then that the hallucinations returned.

I saw myself this time, but with legs, but slowly growing. The growths on my skin grew rapidly. They expanded. They multiplied. They divided and stacked on one another, slowly swallowing small features like my fingers and toes. As I expanded and became less defined, I saw my mouth open in terror, hoping to issue forth some sort of scream, but to no avail. I saw inside my mouth there was nothing but more flesh, slowly filling up my mouth cavity, then covering my eyes. Eventually I was nothing more than a large bulb of flesh, wriggling slightly, like it was trying to communicate with the world.

This was frightening. It was the first time in a long, long time that I had truly been frightened. It would be a fate worse than death to be trapped within my own body, unable to communicate, but able to think, alone, forever. As the illusion disappeared and was washed away, I looked at the small growths all over my body and shivered. I would kill myself before I let myself become unable to die. Exiting the shower, I looked in the mirror. The acid had done its job. My face was burned and scarred beyond recognition. The first step was done.

Next I needed a new identity. This step would be far easier. All those converted who had joined my cause had identities they weren't using anymore, content to follow my lead to genetic perfection. I couldn't use someone who was from Parasol. Word had gotten out about the quarantine failing. The government was trying to cover up the whole thing, and the rumor was that they were going to bomb the whole thing. Those who hadn't come with me would meet a fiery end, it seemed. I found someone who had been in Parasol on a business trip. A doctor, like myself. In the files I found his social security card and ID. That would be enough to confirm who I was.

Not having legs makes vehicular transportation very difficult. Fortunately, with a steady hand on the wheel and some slight gerry-rigging of a lever to the gas, I could operate a jeep well enough. I would have to think of a story about who I was, and why I was traveling, but I had a good three hours to think about that until I reached civilization. I drove across the open areas until I came to the road and began driving towards the city. Most of my problems solved, I let my mind wander as I sped off.

--

Seth was able to walk and talk only days after his treatment. He went through the several days of hypersensitivity that I had experienced, and complained of near constant hallucinations. I could do nothing but assure him that they would eventually decrease, and that he would acclimate to the sensitivity. I was the only person in the world who could help him with the changes he would experience in the near future. I had never had a child, but I assume it was something like what I went through over those next few months.

He was nothing like Virgil. Where Virgil was a drifter in all things other than his son, Seth had a personality that consisted almost entirely of small intense bursts of passion. He was one of my own mind, throwing himself into what interested him with a cold calculating logic. He was only seventeen, but as I explained the science behind my serum, he understood. What he didn't understand immediately, he read until he could grasp. Before his disease had left him weak, he had been studying high-level genetics. He was far more advanced then I had been at that age, certainly, and I was impressed.

I could have left at any time, but I chose not to. Virgil invited me to stay as a mentor to Seth in exchange for a place where I could lie low and continue my work. Seth seemed eager to learn, so I agreed. I took him as something of an apprentice, teaching him everything I knew about the human genome and it's inner workings. I watched as he made simple mutations, and as he slowly gained the knowledge to assist me on my work with the serum.
Looking back, Seth was the closest thing I had to a son, myself, even though I worked very closely with his father. At the same time, Seth was also the only person who ever manipulated me. He used me to further his own ends, and he did so without remorse, pausing only to plan his next move. Really, I can't fault him for it. He didn't put the real task in jeopardy, and I can see how what he did was rational from his perspective, but it was a hurtful betrayal I'll never forget.

--

I have characterized Virgil to you as a hedonist and a drifter, but at the point where I ran off to live in the city, he was making a decent attempt at settling down. There was another geneticist, a colleague of mine, actually, with whom he had fallen into something vaguely resembling but slightly different from love. Lynette was everything he had been searching for. She laughed at his jokes, she shared all the same habits, and she accepted him for everything he was and was not. The problem that incited the need for all those words before “love” two sentences ago is that she was one of our people.

She had been converted in the final push for Parasol, and had been working for the government on a way to reverse the effects of the “plague” as they were calling it. When Virgil entered the wall several hours after my children had stormed it, he found her, hiding in an air locked freezer to hide her scent amongst the frozen meats. It had been clever, and nobody else was hiding there with her.

Virgil's role in this story is interesting, looking back on it. He knew from the beginning that his efforts to help me would lead only to him becoming the last of his kind, and yet he did it anyway. Through all these years, the one thing that I've never really understood was his motivation. I understood my own break with humanity, but what could motivate him to work towards it's destruction, while holding valiantly on to his own biological inferiority?

It's hard to say how he knew from that moment that he wanted to be with her. I guess it makes a sad sort of sense, in a way. He was to be the last human survivor, and he had just discovered someone who had also found a way to survive, who had not only the will, but the cunning to escape the culling. For whatever reason, I believe that he was smitten before he knew all those things that made her perfect. When he found her, curled in the fetal position amongst hocks of dead pork, he already loved her. When he helped her up, and told her everything would be fine, he loved her then. As he escorted her out into the corridor and learned her name, the love was still there.

It is equally hard to say what Seth thought, as he saw the two exit the freezer. She exited behind him for some reason, so perhaps he thought his father was in danger. Maybe he thought that she was holding some weapon to his back, holding him hostage. This is what he told me that day, and that's what I believed until much later. Now, I think it was something else. I think that it was the hope he saw in his father's eyes. I think that Seth saw, between the two of them, hope for the race that he was so heart-set on exterminating with me. I think, even more than that, it was jealousy. Jealousy because, as someone who was still a pre-life, she was someone her father could truly love. That's what I think was running through his mind as he jumped.

I was moving from the other end of the corridor at that moment, so I got to see the whole thing. I don't even know what I was thinking at that moment. Maybe I was happy for Virgil, maybe I, like Seth, wanted to exterminate her, maybe I hadn't even made the connection that she was clearly not yet one of us. Either way, I pulled myself slowly, stuck in general inaction, as I watched Seth jump.


His leap landed his left hand on the side of her face. In a moment, she screamed, and the rest of him was there. Virgil was yelling something and was moving to pull out his sidearm as Seth's arm ripped Lynette's jaw off to the side. The pistol was swinging up from Virgil's waist, and he was still yelling. Lynette was screaming. Seth was exclaiming “Wait!” as he saw his father draw. Had Virgil even consciously realized who he was about to shoot at this moment? This is another thing I've never known. He pulled the trigger, and suddenly you couldn't hear any of them. For a moment, the flash of powder and resounding bang paved over the sights and sounds that had been flooding my consciousness.

After this moment, Seth fell to the floor, Lynette fell to the floor, and Virgil stared at the gun in his hand. Seth had been shot at point-blank range directly in the forehead, blowing off the top portion of his skull. He would survive this shot, but this thought probably didn't help Virgil come to terms with his actions. He had to choose who to care about at that moment, and he dove to the side of the woman he'd barely known, but had loved. She was human, and she was his hope. Her jaw hanging off to the side, she was still screaming. Her contorted face would be the subject of many of my hallucinations.

As he turned to me, there were obvious tears in his eyes, but I still am not sure who they were for. He yelled at me; “Come here, doc. Do that thing you people do so that she'll live!” As I pulled myself over to him, I knew he had just condemned himself to being alone again. He really did value humanity, and even if this woman was all he thought he saw, he would never get past the fact that she lacked that basic biological distinction. It was his call to make, though, so I pulled my arm to my face, and bit off a small piece, just enough to make it bleed. Touching my wound to hers, I felt her begin to twitch.

I looked up at Virgil, who was still staring at her, as her eyes reopened and she began to scream. He looked back at me for just a moment, and I mouthed “I'm sorry.” I don't know if he understood what I was trying to say, because he just looked back and shook his head as she screamed. Seth was sitting up again, watching the whole affair, though the top of his head was split open. He would be off of top form for a few days, but the cellular regeneration had proved particularly potent in the vital organ area, and whatever brain damage had resulted from the shot wasn't permanent.

I was in the middle of a triangle of heated emotions at that moment. Seth, embroiled in his own hate, Virgil, filled with disgust and sorrow, and Lynette, with intense and mind-altering pain. I sat calmly, waiting for everyone to simmer down. Virgil, if I ever tell this story to you, I want you to know that I truly am sorry.

--

I approached the city now. How things had changed since Parasol. There was a wall around the city, this time to keep us out. The word on the radio was that the walls that had now popped up around many major cities were actually erected by the citizenry who didn't believe the government's explanations and wanted to take protection into their own hands. Good, I would already be dealing with the paranoid and unstable elements of society. I went over my new persona in my head, willing myself to become him, but also someone that a vigilante sentry would let in.

When I approached the door, four men with guns emerged and pointed them at my vehicle. The door was open, but I really doubted I could take on this entire city with the little existing support inside. I would have to enter peacefully. One of them approached my window, and made a motion for me to lower it and have a chat with him. I was happy to oblige.

“You, what business do you have here?”

“I'm a doctor from a Sosa, you know, the little town about fourty miles west?”

“Yeah, why are you here?”

I lowered my eyes and voice, begging the man to empathize with this poor survivor.

“It's gone sir. The whole place.”

“What happened to it?”

“The same thing that happened to Parasol. These things came out, started eating people. It was... the most horrible thing I'd ever seen.”

“How'd you get away from them, eh?”

“There was a fire, they must have thought everyone was dead, or that I wasn't worth their time, since I don't have legs. I got to a vehicle and just drove.”

“Are there no other survivors?”

“I don't know, sir. I just drove. I was too ****ing scared to think.”

“Damnit. I haven't heard anything about Sosa yet. The ****ing feds. All the same, I'm going to need to see some ID so I know you're who you say you are.”

“Yes sir, let me find it.”

It had worked. I handed him my identification, which I knew would check out, and he let me through shortly after. He gave me some literature that his group was distributing on how the government was lying to everyone, and told me that if I ever wanted to help defend the city, my handicap wouldn't be an issue. What a devoted, silly, stupid man.

I drove into the city. It was time to begin the spread. I had studied maps and websites before I came in, and I had a method of attack ready. I drove into the wrong side of town, and watched as the houses fell further and further into disrepair. Finally, I saw a the sign I had been looking for.

The lettering said “The Home of Vice” and beneath it was a caricature of a horse. While it stood erect, it had a beer belly, and a face as green as the top bulb on a stop-light. It was bent over, as though it was about to throw up. This ad campaign had gained this bar a reputation. It was said that you could find any drug or pleasure, but no good would come of it. That's what their forums said, anyway. In addition to the bar's mythology, it also detailed the cheap rooms and food, which I figured probably attracted exactly the element I was looking for. This would be where I would start from.

Before I had set off, I had made a few final modifications to the drug. I had realized that simply converting those that wouldn't be missed would take far too long to gather the numbers we needed. If we were to take this city, we needed another strategy. It was at this moment I recalled the human lust over the quick fix. The vacation brought from a syringe. I could get people to convert themselves if I could make this seem like something they would want.

Methamphetamines are a drug that people care about, that they will pay ridiculous sums to obtain, that they will get hooked on, and that, most importantly, can be synthesized in most basic chemistry labs given proper materials. Once it has been synthesized, prior to it's sale, it can be cut and laced with pretty much anything the dealer wishes. After about four hours work, I had two pounds of relatively pure meth laced with my final version of the formula, which was the same, but reacted with the person's body at a much slower rate, converting them after days rather than moments.

There was a time where the government sought to control such substances, and fortunately, this time had passed. Not that they truly could have stopped the delivery of freedom to the masses, but it would have made me need to be much more cautious. I got myself a room, and walked into the basement lounge. People lay on couches all over the room, and a smoky haze lay over everything. Nobody really noticed my entry, all of them waiting around in their own worlds, staring at undefined points of sky. So these would be the first to live. I left my two pounds in a chair, knowing some enterprising young lad would pick it up. Let him do my job for me.

As I walked back up the steps, I considered my own problems. The growth was continuing at a startling rate. Already my face was forming back into it's old scowl, and the parts of me that had not been burned had become more bulbous. I didn't look fat, I simply looked large. My fingers were pudgy, and seemed to have less of a range of motion with each passing day. None of my experiments had revealed what was causing this growth. The simplest explanation would be that my cells simply couldn't eat each other fast enough, but what reason did they have to slow down?

My hallucinations had simply become a recurring nightmare. I saw myself more and more often becoming that blob of flesh and hair, unable to move or even communicate. This still frightened me. It frightened me more than death, and it frightened me more than failure, that I might simply become a conscious mind unable to affect the world around it. As I sat in my room contemplating this, my cell phone rang. It was Seth.

He had some news for me. He told me the first conversions were going well, but something was going on that was going to be a growing problem for us. I could hear the pain in his voice as he said that Virgil and Lynette were working on what they called a “cure”. I should have seen this coming. I should have known that he couldn't leave well enough alone. This “disease” as they thought it, could actually be brought easily to its knees. If the cell cannibalism was to stop, so would all the affects of the disease. Given the complex genetic gerry-rigging required to make one cell eat another, it would be a relatively simple matter to make them stop doing so. My mind was reeling, and Seth was calling my name, asking if I was still there. I hung up. I had more important business to attend to.

They were both smart. They could do it. If they both really tried, and I hadn't underestimated either of them, it would be within their grasps within days. I should have known. I should have expected. I should have foreseen. Cursing my own lack of prescience, I stormed from the Home of Vice, moving slowly on my arms, but with no lack of fury. I drove quickly back to the wall, where the same man greeted me again.

“Didn't I just let you in?”

“They're already here you moron. In days they'll flood your streets and kill your women. Get out while you still can.”

“Suit yourself.”

He signaled to have me let through, and I saw him mouth the word “paranoid.” If I hadn't been so angry, I might have laughed at that. I sped off on the road, towards the outpost where I knew Virgil was working at this very moment on a cure with his temptress.

They really had almost been happy together. I remember that Virgil came to me once, a few days before everyone left Parasol, and asked me if it was possible for him and Lynette to have a child. I told him I didn't know. I honestly didn't know what would happen if they tried. I knew that the serum rendered men sterile, but left the womb more or less intact. It was certainly an interesting idea, to think that a baby could be born, with a fully functioning ecosystem of cells competing and eating one another already present in his genetics.

He never brought it up again, so I put it out of my mind. Clearly his desire for a child had superseded his drive to assist in human evolution. I pulled up to the outpost, and leapt out of the car, moving quickly, pulling myself hand over hand to the main door. Someone opened it and looked at me.

“Take me to them.”

Clearly I had been expected, because he knew exactly what I meant. The door slid open, and the man motioned for me to follow him. This ex-military compound was full of anonymous corridors, all looking the same as the other. After making several turns, he stopped at a door, swiped his card, and allowed me in. Inside I saw a twist on a sight I had seen before. There was Virgil, kneeling sorrowfully by a hospital bed, with the body on it hooked up to a million machines. Unlike Seth, however, Lynette was conscious. She saw me and motioned for Virgil to look. I pointed at her.

“You. Don't speak. Virgil, come here.”

He did as I asked, unafraid, walking over to me.

“Seth told me everything. He told me you're working on a cure.”

“Doc, the fetus is eating itself. It can't grow. I'm not trying to undermine you, I'm just trying to save my child.”

“You already have a child.”

“One that you've already seen is a violent and deceptive being. I bet he didn't even tell you what our work was for?”

“He told me enough, Virgil. This cure, if it fell into the wrong hands, it would destroy us all. It's a delicate balance that holds us together, and you're going to wreck it.”

“So I'll only make one dose, and destroy my work after it's done.”

“No. I've given you too much freedom. I've given you the option to live. I've given you the power you always wanted. I've let you do more or less as you liked until this moment. This thing that you want? You cannot have it. You cannot be allowed to play God on the other side of the chess board from me. We are allies. We have come so far. We are so close. But this, this is not something you can have.”

“I have to do this. I need to believe that there's some reason I'm still alive.”

“The reason you are, as you say, “alive” is that you requested it of me, and I honored it, because you helped me. Out of respect for what you've done for this cause, I'm going to let you leave this compound unharmed, and none shall come after you. Stay away from cities and you might hold on to your precious humanity for the rest of your life.”

“Doctor, if that's truly the way it has to be, let me take her with me.”

“She's one of us. Now leave us.”

“But-”

“LEAVE!”

And so he left. He didn't say another word. This was going to be so much work to smooth over. I would need to redivide the troops between myself and Seth, I would need to figure out what to do with Lynette, there was so much micromanagement involved. As my mind was beginning to wrap around these new variables, I felt a syringe in my neck, and blacked out.

[mead1]

Re: Empty

****ing read this you lazy sons of bitches

[DrugstoreCowboy]

Re: Empty

bumping this because I actually really liked the second read.

[mead1]

Re: Empty

Famine

This is where things get a little complicated, I fear. For those of you expecting me to arise as the valiant hero of this story, and to triumph over all obstacles that might slow me, I warn that the rest of this tale will be sadly disappointing. I allowed myself to be taken by surprise, although in hindsight, the ambush and subsequent imprisonment shouldn't have been at all surprising. I'm getting ahead of myself.

After I felt the sting on my neck, I lost the ability to crawl forward. My arms could no longer pull me ahead. I felt my head get heavier and heavier, almost like it was constantly increasing in size. I needed to lay it down, just for a moment, just for a quick rest, just before I found out who did this to me. My head brushed the floor, then I dropped.

When I awoke, I was in a bed attached to a mess of medical equipment, just as I had seen Seth and Lynette. The difference between their situations and my own is that I was tied down. I must have been sizably easier to secure than most prisoners, seeing as there were no restraints other than the massive clamps on my arms.

There were machines all around me, and finally I realized how terrifying it truly was to be in a bed such as this, surrounded by constant reminders of your own mortality. I knew what each number meant, what each blip signified, and each one reminded me that life is fragile. It wouldn't take much to disrupt all of them. A can of gasoline and a match, and all those numbers, all those readouts, all of those indications that I was still alive would zero out, and I would be gone.

The room was familiar, and I quickly came to realize it was actually the same room I had come to in after I had been broken from the prison. This was my old haunt beneath Virgil's home. The realization was frightening. Virgil had not taken kindly to my recent actions towards him. Now that he had me here, there was nothing to stop him from turning the whole thing around, from destroying what I had done here. He had to be stopped, but how?

I surveyed my surroundings once more, and saw nothing new. I was very firmly attached to this bed. Thrashing my torso about, I moved the bed about an inch to the right, but this didn't continue after the first inch. The bed itself was also be attached to the floor somehow. My plans for escape were disrupted by the sound of footsteps. It was then that I saw Seth.

At first I was confused, but honestly, I should have seen it coming. He was too much like myself. He was to brilliant, to ambitious, to bitter towards the world. In seeing the faint look of surprise in my eyes, he smirked a little bit. Far from the weak boy I had first encountered, he now wore the face of a man, one whose plan had worked exactly as he had planned.

It made sense. Chances are, Virgil and Lynette weren't actually plotting against me, and honestly would have just saved their baby, but by sending me over to stop them, he had gotten rid of Virgil, and now I was trapped. There was only one question left:

“Why?”

“Hah. I'll tell you why. You're imperfect, still human in all the wrong ways. The fact that you let my father and his consort live is the best proof of that. I've brought you here so you'll not be able to interfere, but don't worry, I'm going to complete your vision.”

“So what's going to happen to me, then?”

“You'll stay right where you are. I'll even keep you updated with how things are going. Hell, as long as your arms still work you can continue to perfect the serum.”

“Couldn't you just have told me you wanted to command?”

“It's not that simple, and you know it. Our kind needs to learn to move on without you. I'm sure you've noticed the growths. You're the only one it's happening to. It must have been some sort of mistake in your first version of the serum. Just looking at you, I can see it's speeding up. Within a year, you'll be unable to move, much less lead.”

“I can fix that. I've been working on a solution that-”

“No, no you can't. If you could have, you would have already done it.”

He was right. Despite all of my best efforts, the growth continued all over my body. My nightmares were slowly coming true.

“But you've done well, doctor. The idea you had back in the city of spreading the cure through drugs was quite ingenious. That city is eating itself from the inside. There's only one problem, these new forms, these harpies, they won't listen to us. They travel in packs, and fight amongst even each other. It was a good idea, but ultimately that model was a failure. The good news is that people are frightened. Much more than they were before. These harpies have given a whole new face to the revolution, and now those of us that are capable of speech and thought can sit back and watch as they do the work for us.”

“You realize they'll kill us too, right? If they fight each other and continue to convert the humans, we can't stop them either.”

“That's where you come in. I need you to design the next generation. Something that can fight the last one effectively, but isn't as thoroughly stupid. Unless you want all of your work to be for naught, this has to happen.”

“I guess I have no choice but to accept my new role behind the scenes then.”

“That's the attitude I was hoping you would take. All of your equipment is still in this lab, the only difference is that after I let you off that table, I'm going to lock the door behind me when I leave.”

And so began the next phase of my involvement in the revolution. True to his word, Seth did allow me to resume my work with access to everything I needed, except food. Technically, I did not need to eat, but the lack began to take it's toll quickly. With each passing day, I felt weaker, while the uncontrolled growths on my body continued to multiply.

The rest of the story, you probably already know. The fall of Pittsburg, Washington, New York, all the big cities. It's ironic that most of the human population died not in the war for their own evolution but in the fight between the separate paths of their evolution. I stayed here, continuing to perfect and recreate our abilities, and Seth went on to unite those who would be united.
The story you've just heard isn't technically a secret. He's let me stay here, and made it possible for me to communicate, though my physical form resembles nothing that should be capable of such a feat. This said, it's unlikely that many know it, as our civilization seems to be one fixated only on moving forward, without surveying how they got where they are. Every time I see pictures of the world outside this room, I muse on how tragic it is that nobody recalls what the burned out buildings once stood for.

As sad of a state as this world is in, we're still moving towards the perfection of our own existence. My own knowledge is out of date now, but I still try to contribute by giving those who seek a brief window into our past.

--

That's the story he told me. I guess it's probably relevant to his story to spell out something he alluded to. The old man wasn't even a man anymore. At least, he was no longer man-shaped. His body continued to grow outward wildly. I assume at the point where he could no longer move, someone moved his monitors and keyboards closer to him. His form eventually encased all of his tools, and the vast majority of his laboratory. I don't know how Seth allowed that mass to speak, but somehow, through some terrifying combination of medicine and machines, it did.

The laboratory itself stands as a sort of grim museum now. As he said, the past isn't terribly important to this culture now, but I guess it was Seth's way of making amends for trapping the old man in that room for so long. The outside of what used to be a fortress is now just a solitary building, about a mile outside of Charynth. Enough people live there that I guess some must occasionally venture out there. There's a plaque on the wall outside explaining that the doctor will tell his story to anyone who will listen, and detailing what cannot be brought inside. The door still creaks just as much as it did when this place was first built.

Once inside, I had to repress my need to vomit. The whole room was covered at least somewhat in his flesh. He had grown to be one with his own laboratory. I guess it's fitting, since he viewed himself as merely a tool of evolution, a part of something much bigger. All the same, it was a revolting state to see someone I once viewed as a friend in.

I approached the center of the room, walking over the flesh coated floor. Layers of skin and hair covering the tile I remembered from long ago. They shifted slightly, making a squelching noise as I placed one foot slightly in front of the other. Finally, the monstrosity could detect my presence, and it started speaking. I fought back my nausea and sat down, listening to the entire tale.

Once he was done speaking, I did what I had come here to do. I coated the whole room in gasoline, and threw a match in behind me. I never thought it would work that easily, that it was just a movie trick, but damn. If you've never watched a building burn, it's quite a site. The smell it gave off was too much. I did vomit this time. But the sight was awe-inspiring. The flames started at the door, since the building was mostly made of metal, and the door was some sort of wood. After they had engulfed the door, the flames from the doorway began to reach up towards the sky, and the entire building began to change color and bow slightly.

I bet, if he could have, that the doctor would have been screaming. If his mouth still functioned, and if the speakers which allowed him to communicate long past his time hadn't been burning, he would have been screaming like a mother****er. He would have been screaming because he had more to do, because he was so far from achieving perfection, because he thought this world still benefited from what he was doing. The pitiful thing is that he shouldn't have been screaming, because nobody had cared about what he had been doing for years. All the same, I hope that old bastard screamed.

I'm not particularly proud of the person I was before all of this started. I'm not particularly proud of the person I am now, but I like to think that I've improved. I was born into an awful lot of money. I come from a family of bankers who, through various less than savvy tactics, owned 70% of the nation's assets at one point. I wasn't interested in accruing more wealth, so I decided to enjoy what I had.

I tried on lots of different hats by the time I was twenty-five. I had attempted to make myself into a psychiatrist, a teacher, a lawyer, a hundred things, and none of them really took. At some point, I realized I didn't really have to be anything at all. I had enough money to do whatever I wanted for my entire life, and the pursuit of something that would make me truly happy could be it's own profession.

For the next three years, I lived as the good doctor characterized me: “a hedonist and a drifter”. I indulged myself in as many new experiences as I could find, often mixing and matching old ones that I had found particularly pleasurable. With enough care and intelligence, an excess of drugs and sex will have no detrimental effect on your well being, and for a while, everything was fine. Then, too stoned out of my mind to be cautious, I became a father.

For the first few years of fatherhood, all that was required was a check in the mail. The mother had agreed to stay out of my life for a rather large sum, and that seemed perfectly acceptable to me. Of course, the mother was of a similar mindset to me, and used this money seeking drugs and sex, and eventually ended up dead.

So then I truly did become a father, and it changed my way of thinking entirely. I guess most people feel it when their child is first born, but I guess my lateness can be forgiven, since I hadn't seen him until this moment. I understood then, at least slightly, why people bothered living horribly boring lives. Having a child is the ultimate act of hedonism, really. It's your attempt at clawing out a legacy, at still existing long into the future. This was only my rational thinking about the subject, which made up about thirty percent or less of how I really felt. The rest of my mind was filled with that heart-warming fondness that every parent feels for their children.

From that point forward, being a father became my profession. I did everything I could to make sure my son would have the best of everything. I read books, I bought toys, I pioneered a great number of teaching techniques when I found the ones the books offered to be less than adequate. Surely enough, Seth was an incredibly intelligent child. I could not have been more pleased with how my life was going.

I guess that when things are going well, they can never stay that way. The doctors told me the cancer would certainly kill him, although it would do it slowly and painfully. Despite my money and coaxing, there was no treatment that seemed to do anything but slow down my son's inevitable plunge towards death. That is, until that day when I happened to be watching the news, and some nut-job killer got to speak on live television.

That was the first time I saw the doctor. They had let him change out of prison garb for the press conference, and he was truly an intimidating figure. He looked like a man who was truly sure of every word he spoke. That's what made his message so powerful. When he said that there was truly a way to defeat death, I had to believe every word. At the same time, there was something horribly inhuman about him. It was like he was God, almost. He talked as though we were all ants, and he alone could see the patterns in which all of us were moving. When he issued a challenge, rewarding those who would free him, I knew it had come time to use my wealth and connections to ensure my son would outlive me.

Really, the organization of an attack on a federal prison was a lot easier than it really should be. If you can get a large enough group of people to work towards a single task, anything becomes a lot easier than it should be. With a small donation to the warden, I had the doctor transferred to a ground level cell. Figuring out how to rig a charge to blow only his wall was a little more difficult, but not much more. The real challenge was figuring out how to get away clean.

The police force was one of the few things that couldn't be bought. The force attracts a certain sort of people who believe themselves to be above bribery. The ones that can be bought tend to be at the top, but that doesn't assist in getting the foot soldiers to overlook something massive, like a jailbreak. I couldn't just shoot them all, there was too much a chance that the doctor would get caught in the crossfire. I had to somehow ensure that they would be unable to respond.

This is where the large number of people came in. I put out an ad on the internet, and on every local job listing, offering a large sum of money for an hour of work, the only requirement being that they own a car. And so, in this way, I enlisted several hundred citizens as accomplices to my crime. I sent half the money out, and promised the other half upon successful completion of their task. I instructed them to be out at the time I was going to break the doctor out, and to be driving very slowly on a specific road.

In this way, I made it physically impossible for the police to respond to the call. I paid the higher ups enough to have them delay calling in a helicopter until the last possible moment, and by this time, my own helicopter had already taken the doctor outside of city limits. They brought him back here in rough shape. His legs were beyond repair. The one thing I had overlooked was figuring out how to make sure he wasn't leaning on the wall we blew up.

The first time I talked to him, I maintained my cool. In person, he was much more frightening. I could tell he was trying to seem as vulnerable as possible, to try to get me to reveal more than he should know. The man never seemed to stop calculating. I think that was so monstrous about him. I've seen monsters who look like monsters. Hell, I helped create monsters that looked like monsters. None of those scared me to interact with as much as the doctor did.

This fright really started to bother me, because I realized that I had asked him to turn my son into whatever it was that he had become. After I had sent someone to retrieve the materials for the doctor, I had to sit down for a while to consider if this was truly the best course of action. I sat by the Seth's bed. Without the treatment, he probably wouldn't wake up again. I knew then that whatever else it would do would have to be secondary to the fact that this treatment would give my son a life.

All that ****ing explaining he did, about me, and about how I didn't really love my son after the injection. That's bull****. When Seth started screaming, and babbling, and doing things that I still don't like to think about even after everything that's happened, I never stopped loving him. Even now, in this wrecked, ****ed up world. If he were still here, I would still love him.


That's what's the most ****ed up thing about this whole situation. Humanity had two saviors, if this whole evolution thing really was salvation, but now they're both dead, and everyone is still out there killing each other. Without one of them to lead this, they ended the world in trying to save it.

[-paexaea-]

Re: Empty

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