Full Vessels (9 page)

She paused, then placed her fingers alongside
his neck to search for a heartbeat that was no longer there. Elza
bent over to kiss his forehead. “You don't have to worry about me.
I serve the Creator of the world and nothing can harm me. I promise
to remember you. Goodbye, papa.”

Elza arranged her father's body for the next
person to find it, picked up the pack she kept prepared for this
moment, and abandoned the tribe of her youth. There was an entire
world for her to study.

During the recess someone had found and
convinced Drake to return to the meeting. He sat away from the
table, arms folded and a dour expression on his face. Like everyone
else, he looked to the man sitting tall at the table.

Erik wore a smile that threatened to curl
into a snarl as he made eye contact with each of them in turn.
“None of y'all got a clue what I'm about. You have notions that I'm
nutty in the noggin. That I struggle with anger issues and shit
like that.

“
Wrong.
I got mountains of
self-control. I'm cool as snow, yo. My actions are a hundred and
eleven percent justified, and I'll prove it. Look around. Boring
ass conference room, right? What's beyond that? Old-timey hotel
still bragging about running water. An island sitting around an
angry fucking volcano. A sea. A whole world. A whole fucking
universe.

“You see, dumb asses, the Creator don't do
half measures. This place exists a single week. There's hardly any
reason to try. Yet we find ourselves in a complex, self-consistent
universe. That's beauty. Every moment is a miracle. A real deal
miracle.

“The pathetic creatures don't get that.
Suicides were the thing that opened my eyes. I couldn't fathom why
anything would want to punch the clock. I mean, I used to feel
sorry for the bastards' short lives and I didn't even like 'em. So
anyways, people were looking at their options and voting no on
proposition existence.

“I'll admit, I went a teensy bit extreme at
first. Then I got the idea of a lifetime. Started on a methodology
I kept up until last Iteration. I abduct someone and do the torture
bit until they ask me, without prompting, to kill them. Badabing,
badaboom, I'm done. Just gotta ask one question and I'm dumping a
body somewhere.

“The things I learned were grade A
observation. Pampered people put up less of a fight than the
downtrodden. What the fuck, right? I mean, you'd expect them to
have more to live for and all that. Nope. And age does weird shit.
If you graph out quickness to embrace oblivion, with age as the
independent variable, it looks like a sine wave. Kids are fighters.
Teenagers got a death wish. Adults wanna live. Old fucks are ready
to go.

“Course, that's averaging out a lot of
distinct individuals. I seen some interesting shit.
Caused
a
lot of interesting shit, to tell it straight. That graph, though,
really got me thinking. It's not a straight line up or down. So the
big factor's gotta be life stage. Here's how I reckon the
facts.

“Children are going off of what the Creator
programmed into their biology. Body says live, so they live.
Teenagers got more brains, so they can override the program when
their shorts give them a wedgie. But then adults get a jolt of
self-preservation hormones when they have cum-stains running
around. Then the inconvenience of getting all decrepit makes them
ready to give up. Deep shit, right?”

Ingrid slapped the table. “Do we really have
to listen to this? Your insights aren't deep Erik. They're sick.
They're twisted. They're
simple-minded
.”

“Aw, honey, are you ragging it? Cause if you
are,
I still do not give a shit
. I will start doing things
if anyone interrupts me again. Try to get some objectivity! You're
Observers, not people.

“Anyway, here's some fascinating factoids.
Men last longer than women. Soldiers do fantastic as a segment.
Malnourished or diseased people got no will to live, but that's
mostly biology, I think. Hoodlums probably win. They're survivors.
Mostly, that is. They never survive some quality time with
moi
.

“So the moral of the story is that creation
despises existence. Which, I suppose, the lot of you suiciding
turd-suckers already knew. But wait, there's more!

“See, before I killed anyone, I asked a
question.
Why do you hate Creation?
They told me some
bullshit, I gave em a quick finish. Then, last Iteration, I made a
friend while the Church of the Demiurge kept me in their lovely
torture hotel. Made lots of friends, actually, but this one was a
friend friend. Not a real friend – I'm still being ironic. But not
like a gonna-hurt-you-so-bad friend. More like a
wanna-see-how-you-react friend.

“Anyway, bitch was quite the
conversationalist. I told her all about my routine. Then my main
man Hess broke me out of the slammer. So I reconnected with my
friend friend from the inside. And before I even got started with
my thing, she blows my fucking mind.

“Said some stuff about fear taking over
people. Then the big reveal.
The people don't have a
purpose.
” Erik brandished his hands as if he had performed a
magic trick. His eyes darted from face to face. “Did you fucking
hear me? The people don't have a purpose.”

Hess put a hand to his forehead. “Erik, I'm
certain none of us are following your line of reasoning. Unless
you're telling us that you have yet another excuse to hurt the
people.”

“Not at all.” Erik slumped in his seat.
“You're all fucking morons. Let me lay it out for you. The Creator
made animals as creatures of instinct. Made us with the mental
power to ignore instinct but gave us the divine command. What about
the people? Too much brains to go along with the instinct
programming. No divine command to guide them.

“They are the closest thing to a blank slate
you can get with a conscious creature. People have no purpose.
That's why they're always suiciding. No purpose means no reason to
live. But no purpose isn't the end, cause they can adopt a
purpose.

“
That's
what we need to be studying.
Much as I enjoyed my old job, a new way has presented itself. I
need to study the people who make a new purpose for their lives.
Like dictators or innovators or gladiators. Only problem is I can't
use my usual methods if I want to get a good understanding of their
raison d'être
.

“But that's cool, cause I realized that since
I'm part of the Creator, I deserve a hobby. And my new hobby is –
you guessed it – torturing! Even though it was my job all those
years, I never lost the passion for it, which I think is the true
sign of a good torturer.

“That's my spiel, y'all. Bring on the
debate.”

Hess sighed. “I know I'm probably going to
regret this, but why do you like torture?”

Erik pointed a finger at Hess. “Good
question, you brown noser. I like torture for many reasons. First,
it's hard not to enjoy something you're good at. And I am like the
gold fucking medalist of torturing. Second, it brings out all the
legit emotions, cuts through all the fakey shit. Another reason is
that people deserve it. Choosing not to embrace life is insulting
to the Creator.” Erik turned to Elza. “Come on, lazy-eye, hit me up
with a question.”

“I have no questions for you,” she said.

“Then maybe you have a comment? Criticism?
Sick burn? Don't hold back,
Fraulein
, the two of us are
tight as protons and neutrons.”

Elza pursed her lips in thought. “You never
made anything close to a logical argument, so there isn't anything
concrete to attack. But I can criticize your experimental design.
More accurately, your lack of one. I have observed in your
recitations that your chosen methods are commensurate with your
estimation of your victim. You put in extra effort to break
challenging subjects and move slowly to stretch out your time with
those you consider more delicate. There is no objectivity – not
even the illusion of it. All your data is useless.”

Erik shrugged. “We'll agree to disagree. We
done, shitheads?”

Before anything else, there was knowledge. A
collection of simple, profound facts. The first formed the absolute
bedrock of an identity:
I am an Observer.
The second
provided context:
It is my duty to observe this world on behalf
of the Creator who made it.
The third gave a sense of the
future:
Before the world is destroyed, the sky will open so I
can give my report.
And the final fact promised more:
There
will be other worlds.
Those four facts and the minimal context
necessary to understand them were everything.

Then came sensation. Sight, scent, and touch
erupted into existence. Smell of salty sea air and smoke. Feel of
coarse clothing and smothering heat and sandy soil. Sight of a
breathtaking expanse of sky meeting glimmering green-blue water at
the horizon. The world. Nothing moved, and there was an intuitive
understanding that this moment existed outside of time in the realm
of creation.

And the moment was glorious. The Creator's
Observer studied the scene, content to exist and marvel at the
display. How far did the world extend into the distance? Did it
even have an end? What would change when things began to move?

Memories poured forth, dim in comparison to
the brilliant experience of the present, detailing a life lived in
this world. A complete history arrived within the mind of the
Creator's Observer, providing a meticulously prepared identity.

The name of the identity was Ressi. She had
lived among a tribe of fishermen for all sixteen years of her life,
playing on the beach with the other children, cooking fish over
smoldering flames with the grown women, stitching together the
skins of animals with sinew to make clothing, swimming in the warm
waters at every free moment.

Ressi's prize possession was a crude doll
fashioned by her deceased mother. Her favorite food was soup made
from squid and seaweed. Her best friend was a girl named Annit. The
men of the tribe often watched Ressi with desire, appreciating the
grace of her body and the beauty of her face. So far, her father
Kenja had refused to allow any man to take her, but the day would
come soon when a man would do more than ask.

The Creator's Observer devoured the memories.
So many experiences awaited her in this world. She would collect
every observation possible for the Creator. Learn everything about
the people and their world.

“Ressi, get over here,” Kenja barked. Her
father projected a presence far grander than his slight frame. As
the best spear fisher of the tribe, he commanded much respect.
Though, given that the world had begun so recently, Kenja had never
actually spear fished – a fact only she knew.

Ressi slipped into her clothes as she
approached their hut, noting the way her father's eyes chastely
avoided the contours of her body. She recalled that he had never
taken a woman since her mother died. Yet it was known in the tribe
that men's passions were as wild and uncontrollable as the flames
of a fire. Had grief truly quenched the heat of his loins?

She noticed a tension in Kenja's jaw as she
approached. Quick as the leap of a fish, his palm struck Ressi on
the side of the head, sending her tumbling to the ground. She
blinked away her startlement. “Get in the hut,” Kenja said.

She moved to obey, then stopped. “Why did you
hit me?”

Kenja scowled. “You like running around bare
for all the men of the tribe? Do you not see the desire of their
eyes? You are too young, Ressi.”

The Creator's Observer remembered this man as
a doting father still grieving for a woman he had lost more than
five years past. He rarely struck her, but then again, swimming
unclothed in the waters was something she had not done in years.
She had swum nude today because in the thrill of her first day of
existence, she had yearned to feel everything.

Kenja pointed at the hut. “Get in.”

She ducked inside their home, glanced from
the roof of layered broad-leaf above to the dirt floor below.
Between the two surfaces was an empty room holding two sleeping
mats. Along walls of loosely bound bamboo rested personal items. So
strange, to see a place she remembered falsely. She wondered if all
the experiences of the people were as dim as her memories from
before the world began. If so, that would make them rather dull of
mind.

“Go to sleep,” Kenja said.

On her sleeping mat, Ressi listed to her
father toss and turn. In the twilight of evening, she desired
nothing less than sleep. The world called to her, promising to
reveal wonders untold. She sat up, eliciting an angry grunt from
Kenja. He would not allow his daughter, the remnant of a woman he
loved in spite of death and time, roam the night.

She glanced at the door, then at her father.
The man was not yet gray, so surely he still felt passion. Ressi
slipped free of her clothing. The resemblance between her and her
dead mother was said to be strong. Surely Kenja would appreciate
the similarity. Incest was common enough despite the stigma.

Ressi rolled closer to her father, sliding a
hand along his silhouette in the dark, touching knee, hip, side,
belly, and chest. He lay silent. Ressi pressed herself against him,
trying to piece together what she knew of sex. It was not much
beyond the basic mechanics. Insert that into this. The women were
divided over whether or not the act brought pleasure.

Lacking any practical knowledge, Ressi
decided to simply touch his manhood. Her fingers discovered him
already hard. As she traced his anatomy, Kenja moaned softly. She
wrapped her hand around him and stroked with silky slow
deliberateness. Her father's hips moved counter to her own
motion.