Authors: Paul Hughes
“Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Zero’s eyes rolled back as he fell to the floor of the bowl, overcome with a realization that he was not yet ready to acknowledge. The two men peering down from the circular cut in the chamber began to climb down to pull him out. Zero was lost in dream.
It was like a dream, Fleur decided, as they came to the end of the tunnel to Center Earth. The plush carpeting had begun several hundred feet back, and they now walked on shag the color of neon green. The walls appeared to be covered in wooden paneling instead of the sterile silver expanse of the Vegas pipe.
At the end of the tunnel, there was a simple wooden door with a brass knocker and a peephole in the upper center panel. Fleur took in her surroundings with utter disbelief. It did not look at all like the living quarters of the Divine Merciful and Wise Mother of the Sixth Extinction that she remembered.
Whistler strode confidently up to the door and swung the brass knocker down several times. The tap-tap-tapping was more annoying than effective, and they were met with silence from the other side of the door. Whistler nervously smiled, inhaled, knocked again.
“Mother? We’re home, and we’ve brought your poppet.”
There was a faint sound of tiny footsteps from behind the door, followed by an odd metallic scraping sound that drew closer. The metal plate covering the far side of the peephole swung out of place, allowing a glint of light to show through for a moment, before the plate was dropped back into place. Clicking and ratcheting and twisting sounds of various locks, deadbolts, then the metallic scraping sound again and the door swung lazily inward, revealing nothing but another dark passage, an ancient folding metal step-stool, and a little girl of approximately five years of age.
She smiled and took Whistler’s hand, leading him into the dark hallway beyond the door. He turned and shot Nine a look of silent concern as he walked into the inner sanctum of Center Earth. Hank chuckled a little under his breath, took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a battered red handkerchief before following Whistler in. Nine gently grabbed Fleur’s forearm as she walked by him, and she stopped. Nine leaned in close to the side of her head.
“What it is? What’s wrong?” His whispers were louder than he had anticipated, and Fleur reached up, pressed the tip of her new index finger against his mouth.
“She’s dying.” Fleur withdrew her finger and softly pulled Nine after her as they walked through the doorway into the center of the planet.
It was a feeling of falling, definitely, but Zero knew that his limp body was actually being pulled up the side of the bowl by hands that were human if not actually human. He was powerless to resist, yet could not tell if it was his own body’s defense mechanisms that had paralyzed him, or if an unknown weapon had been used against him by the two miners who had found him. And that’s what they really were, right? Two miners who had found a treasure buried at the center of a biological fluid vessel, like the milk chocolate center of a sugar-coated confection. He was the prize.
Up, up, up and then down, slammed to the floor and dragged up an incline, a smooth circular ramp of melted liquid silver, senses still not responding, but the sensation of warmth underneath his legs and lower back unmistakable as the vestiges of a mortal wound to Machine that had been carved in to the bowl.
An end to the tunnel, and bright lights. A room filled with other men, most holding weapons before them, most standing silently as Zero was lifted on to a hovering stretcher and clamps were secured around his arms and legs. There was a flickering undertone of communication, just fits and snatches of thought, mostly well-masked against Zero’s prying and curious mind.
Zero’s head lolled to one side, still out of his control. A man draped in black material approached, quickly slid a needle-tipped device into Zero’s neck, withdrew it, waited for a reading. The device emitted a shrill beep. Again, the man slid the device under the flesh of Zero’s neck. Again, the beep. The man shook his head, consulted with another person who was draped both in black material and the shadows of the corner of the room. The words were a jumbled mess of guttural exclamations and smooth vocal elisions. Zero knew that it was not a human language.
[no data on file. it has to be—]
[don’t]
The man in shadows stepped forward, gazed down on the disabled Zero with fire and contempt barely held placid under the glare of steely eyes. He reached out and turned Zero’s head toward him, so that their eyes met.
[the sum of our fears. it hasn’t ended yet.]
The words tore into Zero’s mind, a brilliant flash of tugging heated pain nestled directly behind his eyes. For an instant, he caught an image of what appeared to be two planets colliding, an image of a screaming woman trapped underneath the rubble of a shattered building, a hand so close a hand looking at looking out at his own hand wiping blood from a broken nose and feeling tasting bleeding that blood himself. The image retreated an instant after it appeared, and he was left with only those eyes steel gray eyes looking into and through him with a hatred he could not begin to describe with words.
The man turned the aura of communications that emanated from behind his eyes directly at Zero. The experience was intimate, disconcerting, terrifying.
[which colony are you from, son? who sent you?]
Perhaps the most disturbing moment during the whole trip to Center Earth for Nine was the moment when the creature that was Mother looked back mischievously as he held Whistler’s considerably-larger hand and then began to skip down the remainder of the passage. Whistler had no choice but to skip alongside the Divine Merciful and Wise Mother of the Sixth Extinction, even summoning enough acting skill to let out a joyful “Hurrah!” as he skipped with her.
She laughed as only an energetic five-year-old can, be damned the fact that she was little more than a machine-based lifeform from beyond the stars that was solely responsible for the deaths of trillions upon trillions of sentient beings in this backwater of the collapsing universe. She reached up for the doorknob to the inner chamber, but couldn’t seem to grasp it. She looked back down the hallway at her step stool. Whistler realized the dilemma, opened the door for her. She sweetly smiled, and ran into her abode, the curls atop her head bouncing playfully along. She was wearing a delightful pair of magenta corduroy bib overalls and a light pink shirt. Barefoot. She sat down in the center of the room, which had been redecorated in a childhood motif since Whistler had last been there. There were stuffed animals, dolls, a large rocking horse in the corner. Pastels with few primaries. On the floor, she devoted her attention to a stack of coloring books and a large pile of crayons, every color imaginable. She scribbled delightedly for a while, filling in the image of a duck with an umbrella an intriguing aesthetic of raw sienna and silver, ignoring the four people grouped around her, looking down in an uneasy mixture of confusion and horrifying fear. Eventually she was satisfied with the coloring job she did on the duck and his little umbrella, and she looked up, the smile gone from her cherubic face.
[fleur, you betrayed me.]
The words hung languidly in the air for a moment, and Fleur stumbled over her own voice, tried to think of something, anything to say in her own defense. Mother raised one hand, and Fleur fell quiet.
[hush, little one.]
The imperative was made doubly-disconcerting by the fact that it came from a five-year-old with the voice of an ancient, the voice that transcended voice, emanated from the entire expanse of the Vegas tunnel, swept across the surface of the dead planet and reached out to the void through which the Extinction Fleet once sailed on their divine mission of pacification and purification.
[i won’t kill you for betraying me, but you may very well die where i am sending you.]
a haze of pain beyond pain, loss beyond loss...
The scraping had been more of a gouging and dismembering as the inhabitants of the unknown vessel cut into and through Machine to extract its precious cargo of Zero. Machine gasped a breath that was not air and shuddered a shudder of non-shudder. Such pain in this existence. The other senses were lost, but still it felt pain.
Enveloped. Encompassed. The liquid metal of the Machine was quickly destabilizing, becoming something else. Machine sensed that Zero had been taken from his bowl. Without Zero, Machine would quickly dissolve into nothing more than several trillion tons of silver liquid biomass. Machine couldn’t hear Zero’s thoughts anywhere near.
point of origin?
The inquisition shot through him unexpectedly, resonating his entire being. The question echoed back and forth, forth and back in every color of the rainbow, every language every spoken and several never ever spoken. Machine, torn apart and invaded for the Cracker Jack prize of death row inmate and certified troublemaker Zero, felt at once raped and fulfilled by this new voice... It filled in the cracks, smoothed over the incision, patted the scrape and kissed it, making everything better. It was as close a sensation to le petit mort that Machine ever had and ever could experience.
point of origin?
Again, the question. Should Machine answer this stranger who was in his
(head? mind? what are you thinking, machine?)
soul? Would it jeopardize his mission? He decided that the fact that he was incapacitated and bleeding out the precious bioneural gelatin was a pretty good indication of game over, Machine. What could he lose by telling this voice everything that it wanted to hear?
point of origin?
Earth. Planet One of fourteen million surveyed and pacified planets.
rephrase: point of cargo origin?
Machine thought for a moment about that one... Where exactly was Zero from?
Uncertain point of origin. Last planetary contact with Planet One.
redirect: list applicable cargo contaminants.
Again, Machine was confused by the question. He could feel this faceless voice searching though his accumulated knowledge, faint fingertips tickling deep inside of his essense.
rephrase: is cargo contaminated with the genocidal catalyst referred to as “fleur”?
Machine had a moment of realization. Vestigial emotions and visions of a burning city, a screaming woman reaching out, and burning silver falling from the sky. This presence was not from the Extinction Fleet. The vessel that had encompassed them in liquidspace was not from earth or Mother or the any of the Inner. This was something unanticipated, and much, much worse.
Zero has a natural immunity to the Fleur catalyst.
Machine felt it then, the abrupt, stabbing pain of his end, as the liquid metal voice pierced and poured through the final interior battlements he had erected in his mind as a last line of defense. Invaded and suffocated and consumed by that beautiful, lyrical presence. Machine gasped and drowned in his own liquid soul.
[more tea?]
Whistler was still holding the tiny plastic cup to his lips, but he looked up obligingly, smiled his patented killer smile, all sparkly whites to match his shock of curled white hair. “But of course, Mum. It is delicious.”
Mother smiled her angelic child smile and poured more tepid water from her plastic teapot into Whistler’s cup. He nodded his approval and gratitude and took a sip. Fleur watched with mild interest as her mind wandered, rabbit in the headlights of an uncertain end. She thought with mild unease about the intricate process that was taking place instantaneously within Whistler as his projected form catalyzed and converted the liquid water into another part of his illusion. Liquid becomes upload becomes holographically-projected drip of water running down the chin of a man who was no more physically alive than the plastic teacup from which he drank. Whistler laughed, embarrassed at the spillage, daintily wiped the water from the periphery of his goatee. Fleur did not like to think about the technology that allowed him to exist.