Echopraxia

POSTSCRIPT An End to Loneliness

THERE’S NOT MUCH to work with. Barely a melanoma’s worth. Enough to rewire the circuitry of the midbrain, certainly; but to deal with shattered bones? Enough to keep osteoblasts and striated muscles alive in the face of such massive damage, to keep the metabolic fires flickering? Enough to keep decomposition at bay?

Barely. Perhaps. One piece at a time.

The body shouts, wordless alarm-barks, when the scavengers come calling. Judicious twitches scare away most of the birds. Even so, something pecks out an eye before the body’s whole enough to crawl for shelter; and there will be necrosis at the extremities. The system triages itself, focuses on feet and legs and the architecture of locomotion. Hands can be replaced, if need be. Later.

And something else: a tiny shard of God, reprogrammed and wrapped in a crunchy encephalitis jacket. A patch, targeted to a specific part of the vampire brain: Portia processors, homesick for the pattern-matching wetware of the fusiform gyrus.

There’s no longer any light behind these eyes. The parasitic, self-reflective homunculus has been expunged. The system still has access to stored memories, though, and if there was sufficient cause it could certainly replay the awestruck words of the late Rakshi Sengupta.

Can you imagine what those fuckers could do if they could actually stand to be in the same room together?

An end to loneliness. By now, the system that was Daniel Brüks seethes with it. His is the blood of the covenant; it will be shed for many.

It hauls its broken, stiff-legged chassis to its feet—only an observer for now, but soon, perhaps, an ambassador. The resurrection walks east, toward the new world.

Valerie’s legacy goes along for the ride.