The Human Experience

Two P, day 7, 3396.

Master Jerr says maybee if I keep any motion jurnel journal I will get better but I didint know I was sick. Mommy says im kold even tho its hi summer and i feel warm. Righting writing will help me have any motions I still think mooving more will give me better motions tho then writing. love is the motion that mayks makes us not animals so i will trie the love motion but no body can say how im supposed too move in that way.

Half P, day 15, 3401.

Living with Orcadis is fun so far. I like him better than Mommy and Pappy because he doesn’t make me call him Orry or something stupid like that and he never pretends I’m normal. Instead he says it’s good I am different because normal people are foolish since they love.

Orcadis tells me he is stupid too when he loves. He has a baby named Kaed and he loves that thing he says even though it is ugly and drools and sleeps all day. I asked why he loves it since it is good for nothing and probably even stupider than Vara. He said it doesn’t have to do anything he will love it anyway because he is its father and it is part of him. Blood of my blood, he said. I think that’s more like loving yourself but I am probably wrong because I don’t get this stuff.

I asked why he loves Kaed’s mommy if she is not blood of his blood. Orcadis said because I am stupid that’s why, and weak and all those bad things you can never be. Then he said I shouldn’t worry since he is trying hard to forget her now.

Six-Quarter P, day 9, 3411.

Mentalist Alister finally convinced the others to let me have my journal. Vara and I were captured fifteen days ago, while trying to assassinate the tribal leader of Van-Rath. He’s been Infected for a turn and is telling the Rathians the Voices are victims and should have rights or something. Anyways, Varali convinced our captors she was crazy, too. They locked the kid up with me. Just when I thought I could get some peace.

Guess what she said when I asked her why she did it? That it was because she loved me. Go figure. Looking back at that entry I wrote when I was ten – the one about Orcadis loving Kaed for no damned reason – I realized Vara’s the same way. I’m no better than a drooling, shit-faced baby in her eyes! I don’t do anything loveable, say anything loveable, am completely unlovable, from what everyone tells me. I haven’t lifted a finger for the kid since she was born, and even then I’d only lifted it to toss her from a window. So does she really love me only because we’re related? Because she’s a half-wit? Because she’s never known anyone else? Who cares. The bottom line is, Orcadis was right – when people love you they act like fools.

Let’s see if I can use that against Mentalist Alister.

Seven-Quarter P, day 37, 3416.

I don’t know what Star-forsaken madness made me ask Del to marry me. I was desperate, I suppose, terrified of being left alone once Vara went off to the Exodus. Gods, that was selfish. Why do love and selfishness seem to fit so well together? Aren’t they conflicting terms or something? You’d think becoming Hector would’ve answered all my questions about emotions. It only confuses me more.

Do I even love Delia Alister? I’m attracted to her, I know that much. I like being with her. When she forgets to look serious and she smiles, my heart skips a beat and I feel...warm. But then again, going off this whole ‘love-is-selfish’ thing, I probably feel that way because of all the stuff she’s done for me. She saved me and Varali from the asylum, she provides for us a hell of a lot better than my stupid construction job ever could. I got fired last week, but let’s not go into that. Basically, I’m a wreck. She’s an emotionless rock. No wonder she likes Lykus better.

Lykus is so sure Del loves him. The guy doesn’t even know what love is! So how come I can’t figure it out and he can? How come her sneers and snide remarks make me feel insecure while they make Lykus even more confident of her love?

Two P, day 30, 3417

I hate love. I fucking hate it. If I lose the second person I’ve ever loved I swear I’ll tear Orcadis to shreds with my bare hands. It’s his fault this happened. If he hadn’t brought Hector out that day we’d never have been seeking solitude by the island in the first place. Del wouldn’t have had to come back for me if I’d been Lykus. She could’ve made it to the cable car once the alarm started.

But she did come back. She came back, and now she’s in a fucking coma and I...I can’t think. With this anger toward Orcadis and fear for Del, I’m going mad. If my writing is sloppy, it’s because I’ve taken to punching trees and ground my knuckles to the bone.

A group of Infected people came to our aid in the forest. The very ones I’m supposed to follow and destroy, I think. They treated her as best as they could to keep her stable for the journey to the infirmary, and even lent me a horse to ride with her there. They accompanied me all the way to the front gate. When the nurses refused to admit her until the Swarm passed, they persuaded them. They even defended me when I broke down the gate, paying off the damage so the staff wouldn’t press charges.

And that’s how I know I love Delia. I didn’t realize I was Infected until after the nurses told me she was no longer in critical condition. I forgot myself to attend to her. I could have been missing an arm and a leg and I doubt I would’ve noticed.

It’s lonely now. I don’t cry, though. Del wouldn’t like that. I just sit by her bed, holding her hand. Not that she’d like that. Belred, Solmay and Kaed came yesterday. They were worried, bastards, because Orcadis will have a stick up his ass about this delay. Solmay said we should leave Del here and continue our journey. I tried to punch her, though the bitch moved out of my way and Kaed yelled ‘don’t’ all before my fingers even twitched. It doesn’t matter. I made it clear I wasn’t going anywhere without Del.

My Infected friends visit us in the infirmary daily. They have to wait for the rest of their party to reach the rock formations, anyways. I think I like these people. They asked me to ride with them to Akkút. I accepted.

This is highly convenient for Orcadis. That hasn’t slipped my notice. I just ‘happened’ to be Hector when a Swarm ‘happened’ to be passing and the Infected ‘happened’ to arrive early. Bull-fucking-shit. Good planning, Orcadis. You wanted us to meet. You wanted me to be integrated into that group. I was never going to follow them, was I? I was going to become them.

That’s fine. But Orcadis will answer to me for this. For Del.

The knot sat tight in Hector’s throat for five days. There hadn’t been a moment’s relief, as if Orcadis had kept him as Hector throughout Del’s coma just to make him suffer. He wasn’t able to get a morsel of food into his stomach most days, but today Zorion had brought pheasant stew and polenta, and Hector hadn’t been able to refuse the old man who’d helped save Del.

He spooned stew into his mouth under Zorion’s watchful gaze, muttering his thanks even though everything turned to ash on his tongue.

The door clicked open behind them, letting a sliver of light from the corridor stretch into the chamber. Hector and Zorion both looked at their feet as the Inaulti nurse fluffed Del’s pillows, adjusted her breathing tube, and flicked the blanket back to change the bandage around her ankle. Hector stole a sideways glance at the cot and choked on his mouthful.

Her entire left leg, from her toes up to her thigh, burned plum-purple like every blood-vessel had burst. Patches of blue and yellow mottled the once delicate, rosy skin, and the leg was so swollen it had lost its tapered shape.

The nurse swung the blankets back over Del’s legs and left. Hector slid his plate onto the nightstand, stomach churning.

“Honey, by the stars I swear I wasn’t!” Zorion said, his head snapping up once the nurse had gone. “She’s practically a child, you twit!”

Hector’s revulsion mounted. “Mr. Zorion? Are you...?”

“Yes, yes, I’m talking to the missus. Woman thinks I was looking at that girl who came in just now, can you believe it, Hector? I tell her, I says, I’m seventy-one turns old, you old goat! If I was to cheat on you, I’d find myself a real woman, not some – no, honey, I’m not gossiping.”

“It’s not your wife,” Hector growled, unable to help himself. “You shouldn’t treat it like it is.” He barely stopped himself from adding that Zorion’s late wife would probably be revolted to know she’d been replaced by a brain parasite.

Zorion leaned closer, his fingers linked loosely before him. He grinned and his one front tooth stood out like a pearl against his midnight-dark skin. “She doesn’t like you very much.” He laughed his raspy laugh, then grew sombre again. “Can you ever really know someone as they are, Hector? You can only see them through the filter in your head. You may love someone your brother, say, doesn’t think is worth spitting on. So how is that person really?” He brought a wrinkled finger to his forehead. “No, friend, this ain’t my wife. It’s me. Me missing her. Me thinking about her. What’s wrong with that?”

Everything, but he knew he couldn’t say that. Questions that weren’t really questions – just another of the phenomena he’d learned as Hector.

Can I speak now? his Voice piped up.

Hector’s lip curled involuntarily. You can go to hell, that’s what you can do.

It still hurt treating something that sounded and acted like Varali so harshly, but he knew he had to get used to it. The only alternative was tarnishing his sister’s memory by replacing her with a thing, and a thing he hated, at that. Maybe if he refused to love it, battered it with blow after blow of hatred, it would detach. As long as he remembered it wasn’t Varali.

Don’t hate me, please. It’s not my fault I’m like this. I don’t want to be a parasite, but I can’t help how I was born. I can’t change myself like you did.

“I said you can’t talk!” Hector yelled. Zorion jumped, clasped a hand to his chest.

“Stars, boy, why do you have to bark at it like that? You know it doesn’t have ears?”

Hector gnashed his teeth to keep from smashing his already skinned knuckles into another wall. “What if she’s Infected, too?” He turned his attention to Del. She looked like a corpse, her skin grey and her lips pale, sucked of the colour that once blazed in her cheeks when he’d touched her. Now she remained a porcelain doll as he stroked her hair.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Zorion said gently. “Voices can’t grip your mind when you’re unconscious. They need your emotions to play on, your sense of self. It’s like this – you need somebody at home to pick up the phone so you can deliver a message, right? Your lady friend was unconscious or delusional for most of the Swarm’s passing. She never got the message.”

So unconscious people couldn’t get Infected. Interesting. What did that make Lykus, then? Hector pushed the thought away. “I want to go with your group to Akkút, I really do, but...I can’t leave Del like this.”

The old man blew out his cheeks, stood up and paced by the cot. “Look, Hector, I know you’re new at this. The others want me to be more cautious, but I...” He stopped and rubbed the tight grey ringlets atop his scalp. “I get a real good feeling about you. Bottom line, it’s important you come with us. If you’re not at the destination point on the eve of the Alignment, it’ll be too late.”

“Destination point?” Hector tried, struggling not to look too desperate as his eyes flicked from Del to Zorion. If Zorion gave up the location now, this whole quest could be abandoned and he could go back to being Lykus tomorrow.

But the answer dispersed his hopes like tendrils of smoke. “Nobody knows where it is. The Voices don’t tell us. They only tell us where to go mile by mile, when to turn eastward or westward, what streets to follow, and so forth. And there’s no one route, either, only meeting points. Hell, I left the grottos of Van-Doth with my cousin and his wife, was told to part ways with them in Van-Ferrall, met up some days later with three kids when I was sleepin’ under a bridge, and finally found this lot I’m travelling with a day’s hard ride from the rock formations. It’s how the Voices make sure we never draw attention by travelling in the same groups.

“But here’s your problem. You just got Infected, so your Voice won’t mature enough to be able to direct you to the Exodus by the Alignment. Usually takes a T-turn or so before people set off. The Alignment’s just over a P-turn away; you don’t have time.”

“And why exactly do I have to be at this ‘destination point’ by the Alignment?” Hector demanded.

Zorion threw up his hands in defeat, his sole tooth gleaming in the low light. “Beats me! That’s what the Liberator says, and the Voices all seem to listen to him.”

“The Lib–?”

“The leader of the Radiant Thinkers,” he hurried on. “Nobody I know has ever met him – he keeps his identity secret, see – but the Voices all know him. He claims he can give the Voices their freedom without harming the humans they’re attached to. The people that get Infected in the next P-turn won’t make it to the destination on time, though, so that’s a little kink in the plan, huh?” He breathed another raspy laugh. “Truth is, this won’t fix the problem. Voices will still form, people will still get Infected, even if all the current Infected are cured. The Liberator swears he’s working on that, but...we’re losing hope, Hector.”

Hector remained silent. At this point, the world was such a mess it would almost be a relief for Pyrrhus to go supernova and rid everyone of Voices and all. Then King Serasta could take his apocalypse ship and shove it up his ass, for all the good it would do.

The door creaked open again, and again light stretched its pale fingers across the back wall. Zorion and Hector quickly diverted their eyes, but then Kaed’s voice murmured, “It’s just me.” He came in and hovered over Del’s bed, his hands crammed into the pockets of his too-tight jeans. They were green today. “How’s she doing?”

Why, did Orcadis inquire? Hector thought acidly.

“Believe it or not, I am my own person,” Kaed said, so softly Hector barely heard it. The boy watched his booted feet the whole time.

Hector supposed it was time he stopped venting his anger on others. This wasn’t poor Kaed’s fault. He was as much a victim of his father’s ploys as Hector. “Unconscious,” he said. “But she’s stable for now.”

Kaed nodded. His loose waves dangled over his eyes, caramel-brown in the low light.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Zorion breathed. Hector glanced over to see him ogling Kaed. “You, boy, what’s your name?”

The teenager hunched in on himself with discomfort. “Kaed, sir.”

“Well, Kaed, how would you like to join the Exodus?”

Kaed’s lips parted in shock.

Zorion smiled sadly, knowingly. “You’re Infected.”

“I am not!”

“Don’t be afraid, boy, I can help–”

“Stay away from me!” Kaed blurted. He backed toward the door, eyes glinting like a terrified cat’s. “I’m not Infected, I’m not! You’re insane!”

Zorion stepped closer to him, making him grab the doorknob with a defiant look. The old man lifted his hands in appeasement. “Son,” he whispered, “you can’t just ignore it. It will drain your mind if you don’t–”

“Can’t ignore it?” Kaed snarled. “Why not? Everyone ignores me, and I’m a goddamned human being!”

And he swept from the room like an awkward bat.