The End Has Come

ACTS OF CREATION Chris Avellone

Agnes waited as the ID number above the cell changed to green, and the steel wall dissolved into a transparent gel. Taking a breath, she stepped through the viscous barrier, suppressing a shudder as the gel clung to her body. Agnes had never become accustomed to the feel against her skin. Once she cleared it, she relaxed as the wall hardened behind her.

The cell was empty.

Agnes reassured herself Reeves was still corporeal; the cell’s air filters were Sensitive to changes in the oxygen count that would indicate transformation. Usually, the signs were evident hours or even days prior to the change — the subject could then be terminated before it occurred. Usually.

“Hell(----)o, Doc(--)tor.”

Agnes looked up and saw the spindly, naked prisoner crawling on the ceiling, smiling toothlessly at her.

“Come down,” Agnes said sharply.

Reeves’ smile widened, displaying blackened gums. The staff had been forced to remove his teeth soon after his imprisonment; in a moment of desperation, he had started biting himself to draw blood to paint with. Since that time, teeth, hair, fingernails — anything that could be used to render an artistic form — had been surgically removed from Reeves and all other Sensitive inmates; blood clots and contraceptive blocks had been formed in their bladders and genitals, preventing excrement or semen from being used as a medium for their creative talents. In questionable compensation, intestinal and gland implants recycled their waste and saliva with 70% efficiency. The Sensitives needed only a few grams of protein every month to sustain themselves.

“The(----)se wall[-]s are wonderful!” Reeves’ forearms and legs bulged with the effort of holding himself suspended from the softcell ceiling. “l can put [---] my hands in [--] it, but I [---] can’t make them s(-)tick [---]. And [---] when I release my [--] hands, it goes right [--] back to its origin(--)al shape [-] as if I had never [---] touch(---)ed it at all.” His smile widened, the skin on his neck stretching, outlining his throat.

She ran a safety diagnostic. The ECCO box stuttered Reeves’ speech, turning his syllables arrhythmic. It was regulation for all Sensitive patients after the MONO tone implants had proven ineffective — two months ago, 84J had recited a poorly-structured haiku and vaporized the Central Corridor, killing himself, the interviewer, and several other Sensitives. After this incident, many of the frontline neurotechs had suggested removing the vocal cords of the inmates entirely, but this motion had been struck down by Agnes and others in Executive Main: research clearly showed that voiceless Sensitives gained telepathy faster than those who could still speak. Telepathy, in turn, accelerated the transformation and worse, allowed them to transmit destructive thoughts without a vocal medium.

“Get down, Reeves.” His name felt dirty on her lips. Agnes would have preferred his numerical designation, but Sensitives were psychologically incapable of comprehending their designations — they had to be referred to by the names they had possessed before creation. “This is your last warning.”

Reeves detached his legs from the ceiling and swung back and forth, ignoring her.

“Reeves, the walls of this cell are alive and hungry. Release them or they will devour you.”

Reeves gave a startled yelp and dropped, his naked body tumbling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Whimpering, he scrambled to his feet, hopping on one leg, then another, trying to keep as much of his flesh away from the floor as possible.

“S-s-so(--)rry. I jus(----)t want(--)ed to b(--)rachiate.” His voice was apologetic and frightened.

“The floor will not eat you if you sit over there,” Agnes said firmly, pointing to a corner of the cell. Reeves, desperate for safety, leapt over and squatted down, drawing his knees up to his chest. As he crouched, Agnes scanned him for any external damage or open wounds.

He was thin, even by Sensitive standards. Ribs protruded from his sunken chest. His hairlessness and his dead-white skin marked him for what he was — the former by institute regulation, the latter by quarantine. Agnes frowned. Reeves had been losing weight steadily. She logged a mental note to have the engineers check the status of his implants and linked the note to a visual of Reeves with a few blinks.

“Chair,” she said crisply.

The floor near Agnes liquefied and a softcell platform slowly ascended to knee-height. In moments, it had solidified into a foamy chair, and Agnes sat down on it, holding in a sigh of relief. She had been making rounds all day, and despite frequent shots, she found herself growing more tired by the end of each shift.

Reeves’ eyes were fixed on the chair, his fear of the floor forgotten. “Can [---] you [--] make [-----] any(--)thing else?” Entranced, he crawled over to the seat and tentatively prodded its surface with his finger. He yanked his finger back as the foam indented at his touch, then, wide-eyed, watched the imprint he had made fill itself in.

Agnes accessed her auditory system and edited the ECCO scrambler from his speech — it enabled her to decipher his words without turning off the ECCO box. “Reeves, say something.”

“Did you bring a pen?” he asked immediately. He had lost all interest in the chair and was looking at her hopefully.

Agnes shook her head, faintly irritated. “All information, case history, record sessions, and commentary —” Agnes called up Procedures onto her eyelids, and her voice became a monotone as words were fed into her mouth, “ — is imprinted in tailored neurons within the brain of the interviewer. At no time is an interviewer to use or permit subjects access to instruments of creation —” She stopped as Reeves crawled back to his corner and curled up into a ball, burying his face in his arms.

“ — no writing instruments are required.” Agnes lowered her voice. “You knew that, yet you continue to ask me. You know all our procedures here. Recovery would be much easier if you would simply absorb what I tell you. Our tests show you’re capable of it —”

Reeves raised his head; folding his arms and mimicking Agnes’ stern expression, he stuck out his tongue. Agnes restrained herself from making a comment. It would just encourage him.

She tried a different track. “Reeves, I came to ask you about the transformation.”

Reeves shrugged. “I know.” He turned away from Agnes and started to press his palms into the softcell floor.

Agnes frowned. “Oh?”

Reeves lifted his palms and watched the floor flow back to its original shape. “It’s what you always come to ask me about.” He rubbed his nose with his finger and glared sullenly at the floor. “You don’t care about me at all.”

Agnes bristled. “That’s not true, Reeves. I care about you and the rest of the Sensitives here at the station. That’s why I need you to tell me about the transformation. Can you do that for me?”

“It’s against the rules.” His eyes darted worriedly at the ceiling. “They kill tattlers here.”

“Reeves, there is no social interaction among the inmates. Your life is governed only by the rules we administer. Now tell me about the transformation and how to stop it.”

Reeves shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said flatly, “you’re mean to me.”

“How am I mean to you?”

Reeves shrugged. “You don’t love me. You won’t let me call you anything but 'Doctor’ and that’s not a name at all and you call me by my name all the time. You don’t give me any clothes, you won’t let me leave, and you won’t let me touch you.” Reeves raised his voice. “You’re just using me. You don’t care about me at all.” He tucked his head into the shelter of his arms. “I can see it when I look at you.”

Agnes froze. “What do you mean by that?” She felt her heart race as she called up the cell’s oxygen count. It had decreased twenty parts per million. “What do you mean, ‘when you look at me’?” Reeves continued to sulk, and Agnes braced herself. “Reeves, look at me.”

He peeked out from behind his arms.

“What do you see now?”

Reeves slowly uncurled himself and crawled over to her, stopping in front of her chair. Raising himself to his knees, their eyes met —

an old woman radiant silver gray hair spilling around a face despondency worn with age tracery of lines and wrinkles gathering at the corner of her mouth voice a forgotten song buried

— and Agnes tore herself away, severing the connection. “Oh, no.” Her mind began to race, slipping from her, falling away to fear. “Oh, Reeves.”

Reeves’ mouth was open slightly, showing scarred gums.

“Oh, Reeves. It’s started.”

Frustration tore at Agnes as she ran projections on Reeves’ deterioration. It wouldn’t be long — only a few hours, a day at most. There was no way to stop it, not now. Reeves would make the 35^th patient this month, an escalation of —

From the corner of her eye she saw him reach out to touch her. With a swift burst of anger, she slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed. “Don’t you ever touch me.”

Reeves’ eyes widened. “Your face fell apart,” he whispered, as if in wonder. Without another word, he crawled back to his corner, staring at her.

The mechanism of the transformation had long eluded the staff. Hundreds of theories had been proposed: neurological decay, suspension of disbelief in the Sensitives themselves, an undiagnosed virus . . . The only thing the theories had in common was a lack of supporting evidence. Agnes felt that the transformation was somehow activated by the Sensitives themselves, perhaps through the sharing of a thought, a memory, a rhythm . . .

But she had no basis for her theory, only intuition. And intuition was not enough to stop it. Thirty-four Sensitives had perished in the last month, manifesting bursts of telepathic communication before they disintegrated. Not a single treatment had proven effective, it was as if without any other means to communicate, their thoughts strengthened, their minds adapted to their new cells to allow . . . expression.

“It’s not your fault,” Reeves said quietly.

Agnes glanced at him.

“I want to go. It’s time, anyway. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.” He paused. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Reeves, don’t you know what this means? You won’t exist —”

Reeves fingers twitched nervously. “I d-d-don’t want to exist. I h-h-hurt, Doctor.” Reeves struggled for words. “I h-h-hurt all the time. I can’t understand what you w-want from me. I don’t like being here . . . y-you don’t like being here with me —”

“I am here for your benefit,” Agnes interrupted. “What I want is irrelevant. The danger you, all of you, represent to yourselves and to the societal construct is . . . incalculable.” Her voice gave over to the words, sterile, familiar, even though she had written them long ago. “It is our responsibility to disarm you and allow you to rejoin society. If you are not cured, the loss of life you inflicted during the war could happen again . . .”

Reeves was staring at her.

“Are you listening to m —”

Without meaning to, she met his eyes and —

a symphony joined planet laid waste surface mosaic swirling ash, compressed sculpture bodies, drifting shades of incandescent flame, wreckage of fleets drifting alone in dead cold of space, ruptured husks, metal beasts burning in blackness herds of flickering afterimages static thoughts incomprehensible silhouette skeletons scattered across the barren planet surface in the wake of creation

— and Agnes shut her eyes and severed the connection. Her mind burned, a film of sweat forming on her brow and running into her eyes. Reeves’ thoughts had been more structured, more dangerous this time. She took a deep breath, checked her neural paths and winced at how raw they had become from recording Reeves’ telepathic transmission. If he had infected her, if he . . .

The burning sensation rose in her mind, and she acted quickly.

“Reeves, your eyelids are heavy,” she gasped as a new wave of pain hit her. “ . . .too heavy for you to open them.” Working carefully, quickly, she isolated the sections of Reeves’ memories she had absorbed, and severed them from the rest of her mind, stemming further neural path spread. Her thoughts were tinged with adrenaline, and behind it, she could hear her own voice, cold, calm, dictating treatments: cauterize the thoughts, inject a mental block, sensory deprivation . . . a hundred other useless options that had never worked with any patient . . . she steadied herself. Took a breath.

Reeves was floundering helplessly on the floor, his eyes shut tight.

“Reeves.” She kept her voice level. “You are not to make eye contact with me or any other interviewer from now on.” Reeves stopped flailing as she spoke, and his head turned as he sought the direction of her voice. Agnes doubted the command would last, but she couldn’t allow him to transmit any more thoughts — if he had been able to vocalize the images they both would have died. Only the immaturity of his telepathy had saved her.

“D-D-Doctor, I can’t open my eyes.” His voice trembled, and she swept away a spike of pity. His face was contorted, and his hands slowly moved around him, shaking fingers grasping the floor of the cell.

“Reeves, you can open your eyes now. Do not look at me.”

Reeves blinked. He huddled against the floor, facing away from her. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly. “It’s just l can’t talk to you because my words come out funny —” his hands clawed at his throat “ — and I want to tell you because I don’t think you understand.” Reeves paused. “I don’t want to be here anymore. You don’t want me to be here. You’re sorry you ever made us —” Reeves’ hands began to twitch again. He was either nervous or angry.

“Reeves, that’s not tr —”

“YES, IT IS!” Reeves screamed, and his fists thrashed against the floor. “YOU WISH I HAD NEVER BEEN MADE AND YOU HAD FOUND SOME OTHER WAY TO KILL PEOPLE AND YOU TELL ME THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE TO HURT ME AND I HATE YOU!” Reeves pummeled the foamy floor uselessly with his fists, his screams the only sound in the small confines of the cell. “I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!”

He began to sob, and his fists unclenched. “W-w-why did you make us if you didn’t want us? W-w-why did you make me?”

Agnes paused, structuring her response.

“You were . . . required, Reeves. Because of you, we won the war. We made a mistake. I made a mistake. Now, we are trying to cure you.”

“I don’t want to come back. I can’t live here.”

“Why not?”

“Everything’s . . . wrong.” Reeves’ mouth opened and closed in confusion as he searched for words. After a moment, he gave up. “It hurts. Your voice hurts when you ask me questions or tell me things. You use words in place of what you see in your head . . .” His voice became ragged, as if forcing an idea out through his lips. “Cure, when you mean a shadow . . . d-d-disarm . . .” The word was like the yowling of a cat, and Agnes felt a spike of fear. “You say m-m-mistake, I see a c-c-cloak over geometries of planets, c-c-covered with husks and molds that once held people . . .” Reeves paused. “Your thoughts hurt, locked inside words your lips spill, wanting to get out . . . l don’t like it here. None of us do —” Reeves stopped in mid-sentence and looked uncomfortable.

“Who’s us, Reeves?”

Reeves fidgeted and Agnes pressed the initiative.

“You are isolated in this cell. You are permitted to speak to no one else but me. “ She leaned forward. “Who is us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know.”

She tightened her fists.

“Reeves, there is an itch in the middle of your back. It is just out of reach and growing more unbearable by the second. If you answer my questions, the itch will fade.” Agnes leaned back in the chair. “Who do you communicate with?”

Reeves strained and groped at his back, fingers without nails pulling at the skin uselessly, trying to scratch but unable to. Agnes was impressed: Reeves writhed on the floor in discomfort for almost a minute before he answered.

“Th-th-them. The others here.” Reeves still looked uncomfortable. After a few seconds, he rolled over and began to rub his back against the floor. “Make it stop.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Reeves’ expression became pained. “It’s t-t-true.”

Agnes frowned. “How, then? How do you communicate?”

If his tear ducts had not been removed, Agnes was certain Reeves would have been crying. “L-l-like we were just now. No words. They say I don’t need words anymore.” His eyelids began to flicker. “Please stop it.”

Agnes did not hear him.

The patients had been communicating telepathically.

“How long?” Agnes asked frantically. “How long, Reeves?”

“N-n-not long . . . short time only,” Reeves started rubbing his back again, but the softcell floor provided no friction. He whimpered. “Th-th-they talk to everyone now. They say we should leave. We don’t belong here.”

“How did you plan to leave, Reeves?”

“Please make it stop.”

“How did you plan to leave?”

Reeves thrashed on the floor, his whimpering changing to moans as he bent his arms behind him, trying to reach the illusory itchy spot.

“I am not going to ask you again.”

Agnes waited — Reeves continued to struggle on the floor, until he suddenly stopped, exhausted. Sighing faintly, he closed his eyes.

And his body flickered.

Rising to her feet, she plugged into the security net: As she made contact, her mind was filled with a low buzz, the sound of hundreds of transmissions — the entire facility was alive and broadcasting signals. Her eyes were filled with the static of warnings and flashes streaming past. All the same message as the one she had prepared to send. The facility was losing its patients. All of them.

Reeves lay on the floor, his stark face turned toward her. As she watched, his outline flickered again and the skin blurred. She blinked several times but could not focus on him.

“H-h-had to try.” His voice was a whisper. “Had to try and make you see, make you come with me. I’m sorry . . .”

Reeves’ words died as his body became a silhouette and faded from view.

The indentation where he had lain on the floor slowly flowed back to its normal shape.

The cell around her felt suddenly, impossibly small. The thought was not hers.

In her mind, Reeves’ memories burned, calling to her to follow.