The Human Experience

Three-Quarter P, Day 4, 3412

I am not afraid of death. Once, I thought this made me brave. But after turns of careful consideration, I no longer think bravery means not being afraid. I think it means exactly the opposite. Being afraid, but risking everything to do what you believe in anyways.

So when I killed my cell-mate knowing what the consequences would be, was I being brave? What did I risk? My own life? Some would argue that I was never truly alive in the first place.

Del quickly gathered Helms and soldiers to help her pull the pod from the hangars to the royal dining hall. The soldiers had found a few axles with wheels at their ends; they’d built them in the explosion’s aftermath to help clear hallways of the largest rubble chunks. It took a dozen people to lift the little craft onto the axles. The Helms strapped it on as best they could.

Now the strongest men – Helms, mostly – lugged the craft down the hall, ropes attached to the ship’s harnesses slung over their shoulders. Del led the procession, keeping her eyes on the axles to make sure they didn’t slip out from beneath the ship’s belly.

Something gnawed at her mind. Even as she yelled at her team to hurry, she kept seeing the open door to Orcadis’s chamber and the vacant space inside.

She’d thought to appeal to him first. The man was practically an ox, mentally and physically. Even in his weakened state, he’d have had them going twice this speed.

But for the first time in days his door had been open. And he hadn’t been there.

There was no time to find him. Del jogged ahead to open the dining hall’s doors when the crew drew near.

Sweet mother of suns!

The royal brothers were straddling Hatred, who thrashed on the floor with a hurricane of chair pieces and rubble whirling about him. And Lykus was locked in a hushed conference with Distrust, as if they were working out the stipulations of some business contract.

Damned man. Probably betraying us right now.

Soldiers dropped ropes and scattered when they caught sight of the silver-wreathed shadows. The Helms stayed at their posts, but hesitated. Only stumpy little Belred kept the craft crawling past the threshold, his determined face red from the effort and his cheeks puffed.

“Keep it moving!” Del called. She took up one of the discarded ropes and threw it over her shoulder, straining with everything she had.

The others recovered and resumed pulling the pod over the threshold. Once the back wheels had squeaked past the doorway, they let the ropes slap to the floor and hurried back out so Del could shut the double doors from the inside. She yanked the pod’s door open. “Now!”

Enver hoisted Hatred up by the legs, Serasta lifted him under the arms, and they staggered toward the pod’s mouth. Distrust was diverting the flying objects away from the kings with casual flicks of her wrist, though she maintained a cautious distance from them.

Del moved out of the doorway as the brothers tossed Hatred into the pod, Empathy and Loyalty simultaneously ripping free of them like silvery phantoms. The force of the separation blew Enver back onto the black marble. Del stopped midway through closing the door on Hatred, looking for Serasta. She caught a multicoloured glint from the back of the pod. There was Hatred, one shadowy arm locked around Serasta’s neck, a shard of stained glass hovering beneath the Star-King’s chin.

Martyrs. Lykus had never understood them. Perhaps that was why they were so fascinating. Indeed, the Star-King had never been more interesting than he was now. Too bad there wasn’t time to interrogate him about his motives.

“Close the door,” Serasta said through gritted teeth, his eyes steely. “Do it.”

Del didn’t. A sign of human weakness. Lykus sauntered over to the pod, thinking to help her overcome it.

She rammed her foot into the threshold when he tried to slide the door closed.

“It’s simple statistics, Delia,” Lykus sighed. “One man versus everybody on this ship. How bad at math are you?”

“People are not statistics,” she whispered.

Looking into her dark blue eyes, so certain, firm like Serasta’s, he grew frustrated. After all this time he still didn’t understand. He’d accepted that love made regular people irrational just as he’d accepted that one plus one equals two. But Del didn’t love Serasta. So why protect him at the expense of everyone else?

Lunacy. Madness. A violation of the strongest human instinct: survival. He just didn’t understand!

And if there was one thing that drove Lykus crazy, it was lack of understanding.

It suddenly became obvious why he’d gotten along well with Orcadis in his youth. The man knew his statistics. He’d sent Lykus to wipe out those individuals he thought threatened society as a whole. The outliers he could use, he’d recruit to the Iron Helms. But even Orcadis had gone mad as of late, working himself to death to resuscitate every catatonic soul on the ship.

Making Lykus the only sane person left.

“You created me,” Hatred said in a mangled growl. “You poured your hate into me, trapped me, starved me. And now you want to kill me. Because you’re afraid! I am your mirror: I show you the dark parts of yourselves, and you don’t want to see.”

They don’t hate us because they see us as animals. They hate us because we make them animals. We bring out their fear, and we make them use it against us. We owe them their humanity back, Lykus. And we can only give it to them by being human ourselves.

That ignited a spark. Why was Hatred’s life less valuable than Serasta’s, in these people’s opinion? Because Hatred wasn’t human. He was composed of thoughts.

He couldn’t feel.

Lykus thought of something. Something mad. Something human.

He slipped the remote for H.E.C.T.O.R. out of his pocket, fingering it absently. Considering...considering just how badly he wanted to be human.

“Just put down the weapon and we’ll talk,” Del said in her even mentalist’s voice. She stepped slowly into the pod with her hands raised, inching toward the hovering glass shard.

“Don’t touch it!” Hatred bellowed. The glass jerked and Serasta grunted, a trickle of blood zigzagging down his neck.

Lykus caught Del’s wrist, drawing her back. “I...have a proposal,” he decided, not knowing why he was doing it, if he’d even do it, what he was trying to prove. He held the remote aloft. “Amaris isn’t the only producer of radiation. There is another: me. Well...Hector.” He turned to the hall at large so Empathy, Loyalty, and Distrust could hear him too. “The chip in my brain produces radiation. If I turn this on, crank it up to full power, it may sustain all of you.”

“What the fuck are you doing, Lykus?” Del breathed.

“I don’t know. Being a martyr, I think.”

She gripped his forearms, searching his eyes wildly as if for signs of insanity. A thrill passed through Lykus. He simply loved surprising people.

Distrust hunched in on herself. “You’d knowingly let us invade your mind? All of us?”

He shrugged. “I won’t go catatonic, right? I mean, I can’t run out of radiation. When I was Infected, I never grew absent-minded. My Voice started becoming...human.”

“We will completely overpower your identity,” Empathy warned. It was the first time Lykus had heard him speak, and he had a surprisingly low voice. “You can’t know what – if any – part of you will remain.”

“I already took that chance once, when I became Hector. I believe I’m ready to take it again.”

“No...” Del whispered, turning his face back toward her. “This is different. This won’t be you, Lykus. It won’t be you or Hector.”

Well, he wouldn’t miss Lykus Savage and frankly, neither would anybody else. Had he had that thought before? As for Hector...he was being Hector right now. Hector would do this. “We are defined by our choices, Delia,” he said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “If I make this sacrifice as Lykus, I will still be Hector. Don’t you see? This is the only way to be truly human. You’re the one who said it. Freaks like us give others their humanity by being human themselves.”

She shook her head, lower lip quivering defiantly. “This has to be a trick. What are you really planning, Lykus? Tell me! You cruel bastard, you just like playing with people! Now is not the time!”

Lykus chuckled. Curiosity burned bright in him – the one human trait he’d always clung to. What would he be, with billions of foreign thoughts from a thousand people engulfing his mind? Would he be a good man? An evil one?

A little bit of both, he thought. A normal man.

He almost pressed the button that would turn on his brain implant and convert him to Hector. But he still felt a resistance holding him back. Why be a martyr to understand martyrs? Why even try to understand those fools and their backward biological programming? Why not live for himself, as he’d always done?

Static crackled over the intercom. He looked to the speakers in the room’s corners. Orcadis’s resonant timbre washed through the hall. “My Helms, my friends, my children. Kaed. I love you.”

The hollow, echoing sigh of a panflute rolled through the cavernous hall. A hymn, graceful and mournful, seeming to enter Lykus’s very bones and infuse them with its rhythm.

And he felt nothing.

That was it – Lykus’s final reason for truly and permanently becoming Hector. Humanity made music beautiful.

His thumb came down on the remote. Tingles coursed through his brain, the icy walls of apathy crumbling to release an ocean of sentiment within. He turned up the dial on the remote. The tingles became pounding currents, the emotions threatening to unhinge him. But even as blackness invaded his vision, as he felt spikes of pain drive through his knees when his sank to the floor, he kept cranking up the radiation. He cranked it higher and higher, gritting his teeth, until the roiling and crashing feelings made him scream.

Four silver beings flew at him, crashed within him, and as Hector faded away he could almost imagine Varali greeting him on the other side.

Del could only look in horror as a man she loved convulsed in her arms, four foreign entities ripping him apart. Hector’s jaw was locked, eyes rolled to the back of his head, body so strained Del saw blue veins climbing his neck. She clutched him tighter to stop his shaking, and finally his body relaxed, head flopping against her shoulder.

She laid him down on the black marble, gulping deep breaths as she brushed his hair to the side and cupped his pallid face in her hands. “Hector?” She patted his cheeks. “L-Lykus?”

No answer. She shook him, too hard. In her madness she barely felt Serasta take her shoulders and draw her away. “There now,” he said. “He’ll come to.”

Del quivered, her lips tingling from hyperventilation. “What if it wasn’t enough?” she whimpered. Serasta looked confused and Del grabbed him by the front. “The radiation! He cranked it to full power, but there are millions of Voices inside him! What if he’s catatonic?”

“He can’t be, Del. Voices vacate bodies once they go catatonic. You don’t see the four of them shooting back out of him, do you?”

She released the Star-King and slumped back, her thoughts an indistinct buzz rioting in her skull. What if his brain implant produced enough radiation to provide the Voices with a steady stream of food, but not enough to give him self-consciousness? Stupid man! He’d done this to be human? What the hell had he been rambling about at the end?

Hector stirred. Del jumped, taking him into her arms again. His eyes flickered open and landed on her.

Holding her breath, she waited, not sure what she expected him to say. “H-Hector?” she finally tried.

The man in her arms shook his head, solemn, and she realized she was holding a stranger.

“I’m both Hector and Lykus, and I’m neither. I am every Iron Helm.” He looked at her with foreign eyes. “I am you, too.”

Chills of horror shooting down her spine, Delia pushed the thing in Hector’s body out of her arms. She pounced to her feet before he even sat up. The brothers watched her nervously, Serasta’s arms outstretched like he was preparing to catch her.

Catch her? Why the hell would she fall? Everything was fine! She staggered, dizzy, and realized she was hyperventilating. But there wasn’t enough damned air in this room, and she needed to keep breathing or she’d scream her throat raw.

The panflute solo stopped, its echo fading away like the echoes of Hector’s identity lost in this new amalgamation. A tribute to Hector. Yes, that was it. A musical eulogy.

The thing climbed to its feet and reached for her. “Delia – ”

“No!” she screamed, the pending anger and denial making their debut like clashing cymbals. “Get away from me!”

She burst down the hall at a run, throwing the double doors open and winding through the metal corridors of the ship’s entrails. She ran so fast she almost tripped over her own feet. Frigid air bit at her lungs, pricked her eyes so traitorous tears couldn’t form.

It was her fault. She’d killed him. Her damned ‘fixing’ and tampering! Damn her! She’d ‘fixed’ him, all right – right to his grave.

And she was fourteen again, on her knees in the rain, beating the drenched earth with her palms because everything she’d planted had died.

Things should be left the way they are, in their natural environments. No uprooting and re-planting and overwatering. Why couldn’t she have just left Lykus alone in the first place? No, she had to mess with nature.

She’d gotten burned. Like Orcadis had when he’d messed with her nature.

Del skidded around a corner, her speed so great she barely stopped herself from crashing into the adjoining wall. Orcadis would know what to do. He’d guide her hand as he once had, helping her prop up her wilted stalks.

She knew where he was now: the public address room. Del barely threw a glance into his chamber as she passed it, but it was enough to bring her to a brusque halt. Nudging the door open wider, she saw it.

His thought-energy detector disemboweled, multicoloured wires spilling from its open belly, frayed and spitting sparks. Its metal hull was twisted in on itself like someone of supernatural strength had smashed it with a mallet.

There was a mallet on the empty gurney beside it.

A stone dropped into her stomach. Someone of supernatural strength had smashed it with a mallet. If Hector went catatonic...

She took off again toward the public address room. No, Orcadis couldn’t lose it now. Not now, not with Hector like this. He’d doomed himself! Without the detector, Orcadis couldn’t get himself Infected because he couldn’t be revived from the catatonia. He’d have to be a Helm forever.

Or...was that what it was about? Orcadis being unable to give up the ultimate control?

Del flung open the doors to the public address room. “You damned selfish piece of–!”

She blinked in darkness. The lights were off, and he wasn’t there. Breathing shallowly, she stumbled farther into the room, feeling the wall for the light switch. Maybe she’d make an announcement for both Jesreal and Orcadis to meet her immediately...

She flicked the lights on and something deep inside her cracked. Like a splint snapping in two, one she hadn’t known until now had been holding up her broken frame. Del grabbed the wall for support, a sound between a sob and a gasp wrenching from her lips.

Orcadis lay motionless on his back, one hand stretched toward his fallen panflute, fingertips grazing the curved bamboo pipes.

Del staggered forward, sinking to her knees beside him. She took his face in her hands as she’d taken Hector’s, half expecting him to turn alien eyes to her, too. His skin no longer burned with the fever that had plagued him for days; it was clammy and waxen against her palms.

But his eyes were open. They stared, haunted, at the ceiling. “Orcadis, w-what happened?” she half-sobbed. He didn’t look at her. She turned his face, bending directly into his line of sight, but still those chocolate eyes were glossed mirrors, showing her only her own face twisted with pain.

It was the look of living death. She’d seen it so often – on the faces of catatonics.

“N-No,” she choked, pushing back the rising panic. “It c-can’t...you’re not even Infected! It’s not possible!”

He’s been so absent lately...we thought it was lack of sleep, even too much radiation. He locked himself in his room for days, hardly saying a word...

“No!” she screamed again. “Don’t you do this, Orcadis! Not you, too! Look at me, p-please. Look at me!”

Her eyes burned into his empty pair until tears blurred her vision. Del lowered her head onto his chest, gathered him into her arms, and let the grief wash over her.

He smashed the detector. He didn’t tell anyone he was Infected. Why? Why?

There hadn’t been loose Voices roaming the ship in days. They’d all joined in with one of the four Voice-people. When could he possibly have gotten Infected?

The answer came naturally. In the hangars, the day he’d lunged into the thick of the Voices to find a moonstone to power his detector. A normal man would have gone catatonic long ago. Not Orcadis. Not with his willpower, and not with his close proximity to the detector. That radiation must have kept him going all this time. The moment he’d left the moonstone in the detector to come here...he must have known he’d have only minutes to live.

She crushed her tongue between her teeth to give herself another pain to focus on. Tears squeezed from the corners of her closed eyes.

“You asked me to give you a second chance, r-remember, Orcadis?” she sniffed, her face buried in his front. “How can I, if you didn’t give yourself one? How?”

His chest rose and fell evenly beneath her cheek, a mocking comfort, his heartbeat a deep and powerful rhythm. Dead, but alive. Like Hector.

The tears flowed faster now, hot streams dribbling down her lips. “Damn you!” Del screamed suddenly, lifting her head. “You were supposed to be strong! You were supposed t-to...to be unbreakable.” She brushed the side of his face with a shaking hand. Her fingertips came away wet, and for the first time Del noticed the tears trickling down the sides of his face into his hair. They coursed on, seeming not to know his mind had gone.

His left fist was clenched on his chest, crumpled paper sticking out between his fingers. Del pried the frozen fingers open and smoothed the note. Her heart broke all over again. It was the letter Kaed had left after bombing the engines. Not a goodbye. Not a justification.

And the rain beat down on her. Her hands were unwieldy instruments of destruction, small but clumsy as they moved in the mulled earth, fumbling, always fumbling...

Then, she’d asked Orcadis why everything she touched was destined to die. Now she wanted to ask him why everyone she loved met the same fate, too.

Nobody put a warm cloak around her shoulders this time.

Shivers wracked her body. Del huddled against Orcadis, hugging herself against the cold, and cried until her cheeks were tight from salt.

Spent, she propped herself up on one elbow. Goodbye, Orcadis. For what it’s worth, I forgive you.

Del tipped his face toward her and leaned down, her lips brushing his. They felt cold like marble, but it was a new memory to replace the one he’d stolen from her. One remembered kiss for each of them, one forgotten one.

And she stood. Despite the insurmountable pressure crushing her to the ground and the pain kicking her like a helpless animal, she stood. Del would always stand. She knew that now. Her mind would always be master.

She wouldn’t go back to the beginning, to being Neria. But what had changed in her life? She’d been alone, then. She was alone now. She’d felt powerless then. She felt powerless now. All the factors were the same.

Except one. She wasn’t afraid of those things anymore.

You think of death and death follows you, child.

Leaving the chamber, she told herself she wouldn’t let death follow her. Not this time.

A room dawned before his bleary eyes. Turning his head on his pillow, he realized he was lying in a cot, his skin slick with cold sweat despite the blankets he’d been swathed in. Wool, judging by the abrasive fibres scratching his chin.

Delia watched him, her eyelids puffy. He sensed a reservation in her, even as she reached to caress the side of his face with cold fingers. Her eyes were the midnight sky with no stars, deep and inky and void.

He caught her hand as she drew it back. “Please,” he whispered, “don’t be sad.”

The stars glimmered to life in her eyes. Del smiled, leaning forward to wrap him tightly in her arms. “Hector.” She breathed out the name like a sigh of relief.

Hector. The name stirred something in him. He blinked again, trying to push the rusted gears of his mind into motion, arms trapped by the coverings so he couldn’t return her embrace.

She released him, smiling. “I blinked a lot when I surfaced from my catatonia, too. Feels surreal, doesn’t it? And I only had a handful of Voices in my head. It’ll take a while for your store of radiation to get back to normal. Those Voices put quite a strain on your brain implant.”

Hector scooted into a sitting position. He had to concentrate to remember what had happened, and even then remembered it as if from someone else’s point of view.

Had all that really happened? “The engines,” he sputtered, “Did Jesreal actually...?”

“Fixed,” Del confirmed. “The team Jesreal sent to Amaris for more moonstones finally arrived.” She brushed the stone clumps he hadn’t realized dangled from a chain around his neck. “We kept them by you to help your brain implant. Jesreal said it was never designed to produce as much radiation as you’d forced it to. It couldn’t sustain both you and the Voices for long.”

“Oh.” Hector strained to recall what had transpired in the time he’d shared his mind with as many Voices as to completely overpower his identity. The memories were still there – he could feel them just out of arm’s reach – but he had trouble accessing them. You didn’t store them as yourself, so you can’t expect to recall them as yourself.

He closed his eyes and let himself slip back into the viewpoint of the being that had shared his body. Information came in flashes: Jesreal announced the engines had been restored and the Voices contained; a celebration erupted on the ship; Helms and soldiers and aristocracy alike set aside their animosity to break quarantine, starting revelries in the halls.

And Del, alone in her room, closing her ears to the party outside. Jesreal didn’t partake in the festivities, either. He asked her why.

She said Orcadis was catatonic. He’d pulverized the machine that could save him. In those ensuing days Jesreal slaved over it, trying to reassemble it.

It was too late.

Orcadis died of dehydration. He died faster than normal for any catatonic, way faster than his resilient body should have allowed. As if...as if he’d willed himself to go, even then, with his mind having long abandoned him. As if even in death he’d still been in control.

When Jesreal announced his passing over the intercom, the parties stopped for the Helms.

The Hector/Lykus/Voice-amalgamation cried for him. That, he remembered. He’d cried with his own pain and the Helms’, with the love of Empathy and Loyalty, the regret of Distrust and Hatred.

Hector’s eyes snapped open. Every part of him resonated with shock. The question lingered on his lips. Is Orcadis dead? But Del’s swollen eyelids said it all. She was still smiling for him, but a hidden part of her had wilted. Hector could understand those nuanced things now.

A lump grew in his throat. “H-How come I’m back?”

She produced the remote to H.E.C.T.O.R. from her trouser pocket and flipped it between agile fingers, braving one of her cynical smiles. “You always thought sacrifice was humanity’s defining attribute. As sweet as that is, I disagree. I think it’s intelligence. That’s exactly what I used to undo your little martyr show. I asked Jesreal’s crew to make a pit-stop at Amaris before taking us back to earth. When we got close enough to the moon I turned off your implant, you became Lykus again, and the Voices were thrown out of your brain. Being so close to the moon – and therefore food – the things became civil. We can’t land or we’ll stop spinning and lose gravity, but we’re hovering above Amaris right now, waiting for the technicians to eject the ship with the Voices.” She paused, frowned, then lightly punched his shoulder. “That’s for throwing your life away, dumbass.” Still frowning, she punched his shoulder again, this time harder.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“That’s because I missed you. Even though you’re a dumbass.”

Rubbing his arm, he cracked a grin. “Dear, sentimental Del. Thanks for not giving up on me.”

He watched her cheeks brighten for a few moments, and then a chime came over the intercom.

“Attention passengers and crew: departure scheduled in five minutes. The threat has been neutralized. The pestilence has been ejected from the ship! Those who wish to witness may proceed to the observation chambers.”

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand and leading him out of bed. “Let’s go watch.”

He let himself be pulled after her, the icy metal floor biting into his bare soles and revitalizing him. The corridors were now packed with chattering nobility and soldiers out of uniform. His mind was still muddled, but even so he noticed virtually no Helms joining the rush to watch the Voices descend to Amaris.

The observation chambers were giant galleries extending from each wing, their steel floors encased in domes of reinforced glass. Hector and Del shouldered their way into the southern gallery. They left the blunt artificial glare of neon light strips, emerging into the blaze of a silvery-white surface dotted with craters. Amaris.

Hector grabbed the railing that ran around the dome’s perimeter to keep the crowd from shoving him against the glass. Del cursed as the spectators jostled her, elbowing them to keep her spot by the railing.

“Look!” someone cried, stabbing a finger toward the moon.

“There it is!”

“The Voices are really leaving!”

Hector nearly jumped back when a small spacecraft zipped past the window – the same craft Del and Jesreal had arrived in. It did a zigzagging nosedive toward Amaris’s cratered surface, clearly unpiloted, the flaming tail from its rear sputtering.

People cheered. Del remained static, gripping the rail with both hands, eyes intent on the ship about to crash.

When Hector opened his mouth to ask if she was alright, the craft discharged what looked like a rectangular box. It bobbed into space away from the diving ship, floating as if on peaceful waves.

The cheering stopped. Hushed murmurs began.

“What is it?” Hector wondered aloud.

“A coffin,” Del whispered. He looked sideways to find her with her eyes closed, forehead and one palm resting against the glass. “The Star-King wanted to take his body back down to the earth for burial. The Helms and I, we knew he wouldn’t find any peace there. He couldn’t get a proper service because of his treason. Even if Serasta ordered a nice headstone and the works, the people would never let him rest. Bel and Solmay and a few others helped me build the coffin. The Voices agreed to have it smuggled on board with them.”

Hector felt a cold fist enclose his heart. “You did this against the Star-King’s orders?”

She lifted her head, turning heavy eyes to him. “Orcadis was never meant for our world. Do you think I was wrong?”

We never belonged, Hector. Not in this world. Delmira is...quiet. I think I’d like a quiet life.

The first teary pinpricks forming behind his eyes, he placed an arm around Del’s shoulders. “No. You’re right. You and I, we fought to fit in. Orcadis fought to set himself apart. He did bad things, but I don’t think he was a bad man. He deserves peace.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, burrowing her head beneath his chin as they watched the explosion mushrooming up from the ship’s impact.

The crowd was awed into silence. Soon the fires dispersed around four dark specks profiled in such dazzling light they were impossible to miss.

We gave your father a proper funeral service, Kaed, he thought, just as you asked.

They watched the four products of themselves, feeling the floor begin to vibrate beneath their feet as the hum of the starting engines filled the air. Hector’s thoughts were down there, on Amaris. So were Del’s, Kaed’s, and Orcadis’s. Amaris was now a part of them all. An immortal extension of themselves, and yet, something entirely different. Entirely its own.

Just as Hector could be both an extension of Lykus and his own being.

He smiled, tears rolling freely down his face, holding Del to him, and finally felt he understood himself. He still didn’t know if he was entirely human, per say, but that didn’t matter anymore. He was himself.

That was enough.

FIN