Cullsman #9

March 19, 2009 · Posted in Science Fiction, Stories MJG 

They’re coming.

It’s been 20 years, and now they’re coming.

I knew it, of course. I’ve been preparing. It’s the reason I’m here, after all, the reason we’re all here, the 38 of us that are left. Preparing for the Cull.

This world I’ve known, soon, there’ll be nothing left. Everything I did, thought, every choice I made, none of it will matter. Everything will be wiped clean and forgotten. A world of work, a generation, and nothing to show for it.

I am glad.

I am going home. I will see my wife. My daughters will be 22 and 23 now, surely sick of only knowing their father through old simulations. I will understand. I have watched their images dancing through my rooms every night for the last 15 years. I am ready to meet them now.

I am going home.

08-shoresofheaven

Image from Rassouli.

I’m stirring in bed. There’s a red haze through the filtered glass and blinds, must be dawn already. I don’t sleep much anymore. I lie awake, but still there are the nightmares.

I see the arms of giants tearing apart the world. I see a young girl, pigtails and dungarees, exploding. I see my daughters watching video-grams with my image removed, crackling white static where my figure should be.

I throw the covers from my body and step over to the shower. Hot water helps. My eyes ache. There are so many things still to be done. The lists fill my mind. Coding the bomb. Final testing of the links. Extending of the slack. Judging the spin. Accounting for weather conditions. Grouping the nations. Organizing the evacuation. Saying goodbye to this world.

I have to be ready.

I turn off the water, go to the window, and watch the dawn. Molten fire creeping over the ice. My world. And there, straddling the horizon and the rising sun, huge bulk of twisted metal, the first link in the chain.

*

I told them there was nothing they could do. I brought them all here, to the pole, and I told them. That their world was mine. Ours. That soon we would come for it, and there was nothing they could do.

They laughed, some of them. The new ones. The ones barely important enough to be there. The others, raised in my system, merely nodded their heads.

They left. They told no one. They know there is no other choice.

*

I have no friends. I have no family, at least not here. I haven’t seen one person from my real life for 20 years.

I have no equals here. I have a crew, though many have deserted. Now there are only 38 of us left. Yet they are not my equals. They remain not through duty, but through fear.

But then, is this a lie?

Perhaps there was one, once. I don’t know anymore. Time fades everything.

An old man. I’d been out walking, through the streets of my first town. My eyes were open but I saw nothing. It was days after I’d arrived, England, I’d placed my first 3 patents, and was waiting.

There was a town square, lofty buildings too big for such a small town. I sat down beneath the bronze cast of a lion, and watched the crowds pass me by. Blacks and whites, not so different from me. Biology, culture, language, small differences, but in the end, mostly the same. I couldn’t have felt any more alien than I did right then.

Then he was there, sitting discreetly at the end of the bench. I scarcely noticed him at first, just another one of these people. Grey hair, thinning, too much in his ears, blooming from thick caterpillar eyebrows. Face wrinkled, tanned, unlit pipe jutting proudly from his lips, jowls dangling regally like the folds of a robe. Dressed in tweeds and shirt and tie, polished black lace-up shoes, ebony cane resting at right angles to the concrete tiled ground.

“I know how you feel, sonny,” he said abruptly. I turned, watched him, slight smile curling round the stem of his pipe. I caught a faint wisp of vanilla.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked slowly, the language still new to me, the routes still being drawn through my mind, meshing the word-dump with what I already had. It would be days yet. He smiled, waited politely as I struggled with the sounds.

“How you feel,” he repeated, twisting the haft of his cane. “I’ve been where you are now.”

I said nothing, just listened to the dry rasp of his cane, gold-tipped, grinding against the concrete.

“Could be the loneliest place in the world,” he said.

“This town?” I asked.

He chuckled. “You know what I mean, son. But then, perhaps it is just this town. Bolton. They have the funniest names, don’t you think?”

I’d heard of this. We had it too, once. The brain deteriorates, leads to disconnected thought, random firing patterns. I was surprised at his calm demeanor though, pleasant and controlled appearance, but it was becoming clear.

“What do you mean?”I asked, working for every word.

“Oh, I could mean anything,” said the old man, waving his hand dismissively. “Could be I’m talking nonsense, nothing you need to worry about. Or it could be I’m talking real soft, saying things quietly, ‘cos I’m hoping they’ll creep up on you, sometime, when you’re alone. Maybe it’s all about the secrets, and keeping them to ourselves.”

I nodded, decided. “I have to go,” I said, and stood up.

“Do you?” he asked, as I took my fist steps away. “Are you sure? The patents won’t come through for 2 weeks yet. You can relax.”

I stopped, turned back to look at him. Grinning, leaning back, looking very pleased with himself.

“How do you know about the patents?” I asked, wary. He only grinned wider.

“I saw you leaving the town hall. It says it on your case.” He gestured triumphantly at the clear red folder in my hand. I had forgotten. It says “˜PATENTS PENDING’ on a sheet inside, visible through the plastic.

“Oh,” I said, hesitant.

“I see most things though lad, don’t feel bad. Have done since I retired. Why don’t you take a seat?” He pats the bench, my spot by the lion. “Yes, I watch for things now. People, I suppose. Sometimes you see the craziest things, even in a town like this. You ever feel like that, son?”

I watched him silently, unsure. Could he really see my patents sign from across the square? Was it that obvious? Perhaps I would have to be more careful.

“No, maybe not,” he answers himself. “Young fella like yourself, no room for doubt, is there? See, you gotta know where to look. Now, me, I keep an eye out. Watching the square all day, normally sitting right where you were sitting. Good seat, eh? That’s it, have a seat.”

I was sitting again. I don’t really know why. Maybe I was lonely, like he said, I can’t remember. Me and an old man, sitting on a bench.

“See, you just made yourself a choice there,” he said happily. “I can watch that. I can watch all kinds of folks, making their choices, every day. Been doing it for years. Figured out, if I can see it anywhere, it’s here. Nothing cosmic, mind. “˜Should I buy the pink dress, or the orange one?’, “˜should I wait 10 more minutes for him, or just leave?’, “˜should I help this old lady up the stairs, or walk by and act like I haven’t noticed?’. Stuff like that.”

I fingered the folder in my hands, his words washing over me. The first person I’d really spoken to, listened to, in this place. I said nothing, and he continued.

“I tell you what, lad, I’ll tell you a story. Used to be a real good storyteller. So anyway, this story, it’s about a choice. Not the kind you see every day, mind. A special choice that came to only one man. Maybe you’d understand. Anyhow. It’s about a chap called Prometheus. Now, he works for the big guy, the guy upstairs. He’s a nice fella himself. So, one day he’s taking a walk, maybe through Bolton town square, and he sees all these people labouring and toiling without fire. You know, fire? And he figures, well, that ain’t right. I’d better give them some fire, I got plenty right here, I won’t miss it none. So he walks over and he gives them some fire. Then he keeps walking, taking the air mayhap, and he sees more people working hard without fire, and he figures to himself, well, I reckon it should be no problem to give “˜em fire again, so away he goes. And he keeps doing this, giving out fire, and never sticking around for thanks, “˜cos that ain’t the reason he’s doing it.

“Well, after a few days of this, the boss calls him up, and claps him on the shoulder, and says: “Nice work, Prometheus, you’re promoted. Just look at this. All these lovely little people killing each other with your fire, I can’t believe I never thought of it myself. What a show! Who’d have thought they’d have figured out nuclear missiles so quickly? It’ll be a real massacre, as long as we push the right buttons. Mars’ll be kind of jealous, but he’ll get over it. Nice job!

“So Prometheus, he goes home, and he reckons he doesn’t want to toy with the people he just helped. He”˜d spoken to them, seen their lives, reckoned they had more rights than just being playthings. So what does he do? Comes to his choice, right? Like it does for everyone, some point or other, though most ain’t as cosmic as this. So here he is, but what can he do? What power has he got? Can he take the fire back? Can he tell the boss it wasn’t meant to be like that? Or should he just join in, twist lives left and right like the rest of them?”

I found myself nodding, half-entranced.

“So what do you reckon he did?” asked the old man. “Poor old Prometheus, what kind of a choice is that? What could he do?”

I waited, but he said nothing more. “I don’t know,” I said. “Tell me.”

But the old man shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know either, son. Maybe that part of the story ain’t written yet. Anyhow, figure I best be off, probably bored you half to death by now. Good luck with your patents. Hope it all works out just like you’ve planned.

Then he stood, walked away, cane tapping across the square before him, and I was left alone again, with the blacks and whites passing before me, and the realization that, for a little while at least, I had forgotten just how alone I really was.

*

Putting on my clothes, readying for the day. I will leave this room, and my life, my mind, will not be my own again until I return, 16 hours later. I will try to sleep, but I will only think about the old man, and the story he told, 20 years old in my mind.

*

The story of Prometheus, the ancient Greek myth, is not as he told it. Prometheus was not hailed as a hero by the gods, he was tortured for eternity, strapped to a stone, guts pecked at by birds, for bringing wisdom down to mankind.

I named my first company Prometheus. I don’t know why. My crew questioned the decision, but I doubt they really cared. It was just a name. Since then, the Prometheus division has dealt with all our patents, albeit by proxy in many cases. We hold around 2000, now. This world, this new world, is built upon them.

*

The mission is my life. I live it, and it’s all I have. Here at the Peak, I control everything. My crew is dispersed around the globe, following my orders. I speak to them through our satellite network, we sit around a table together in our Intranet, and we check progress. There are always so many things to be done.

Now, I only give orders. I think, and I give orders. Those beneath me, my crew, whose real faces I haven’t seen for 16 years, since we built the Peak and started construction on the chain, they give orders too. And the men beneath them, they give orders. And the men beneath them, they give orders to governments. They tell prime ministers, presidents, dictators, what to do. The men beneath them give orders to companies, they tell the richest men what to do with their power. The men beneath them, they tell the people what to do. They control the global media, the news, advertisements, television shows, radio shows, products, the way people think, the things they aspire to, the history they learn, the lives they lead. And the men beneath them, and the men beneath them, and all the way down, these are the men that do the work, and make the changes, and shape the world as I see fit.

I say the word, and a million minds leap into action. I say the word, and a new race is born. I say the word, and a whole country dies. I say the word, and a mile wide chain into the heavens is built at the North Pole. I say the word and they do it.

I am a god, here. It’s strange. Back home, on the Host even now speeding towards us, I am just a man with a few gigabytes of data and a language patch in my brain.

That’s all the difference there is.

*

20 years ago, the plan began. 50 of us arrived, then went our separate ways. Lodged our own patents in 50 different countries around the world. Small things, unconnected, nothing to draw too much attention. Fine tuning of existing machinery, programming, engineering. New coolant mixtures for power stations, new braking systems for automobiles, new formulations of plastic, rubber, metal, gas, liquid. New techniques of building, new methods of drilling. New applications for the world’s primitive Internet, new unified communications programs, new bandwidths, new protocols.

3 patents each, 150 in total, each of which became indispensable within years. Of this 3 that we lodged each, we sold one within days of arrival. With the money from that first, we set up businesses producing and selling the second and the third. When these became indispensable, the 50 companies growing in size and profit, we invested in other companies. We bought stocks and shares across the world, and through these other companies, and those of our own, we introduced not just parts, but wholes. Instead of the fuel for a jet engine, or the tread for the wheels, or the configuration of the control deck, we produced the whole plane.

We started to make weapons. We supplied armies and governments. Our goods fought in wars all round the world. We made new communications networks, launched our own satellites, and manipulated the Internet. We destroyed our competitors. We monopolized everything. On 50 different fronts, in 50 different countries, through thousands of companies we now owned, through the swelling ranks of our employees, we developed the world, and we took control of the new infrastructure, as it grew.

There was no way to resist us. There was nothing to resist. We used the laws of the world, the capitalistic culture, the thirst for new technology, for power, to propel us to the top. Within 8 years we had enough pooled resources, assets, and industries, to begin the Peak ourselves. We didn’t need anybody else.

One of the 50 might have specialized his country in nuclear energy. One in drilling for ore. One in computer programming. One in deep-sea mining. One in the processing of raw materials. One in the refining of metal. One in overseas transport, one in land, one in air. One might be specialized in line production, one in food production, one in the media, one in nuclear weapons, one in aerial subterfuge, warfare, communications.

We took everything they already had, and we made it bigger, and better, and we used it for ourselves.

Now the chain is finished. 1 mile in diameter, a solid mass of metal, 10,000,000,000 spun titanium threads, twisted to maximum strength, plunging 10 miles into the Earth’s crust, held fast by a hemi-spheroid of solid concrete some 20 miles wide at the base with a mass of 20 trillion tons, reaching up into the sky and through the ozone layer, escaping gravity, into the black null of space, culminating with the giant hook we had to blow a nuclear device up inside to fuse.

Waiting for them to come.

*

I am tired. It would be nice to forget this loneliness for a time. It would be nice to have back my family. On the Host. But there are always the doubts I cannot kill. Have they waited for me? Have they remained faithful, as I have? Will they be there, when I return?

I look out of this window, across a desk, from the 30th floor of the Peak, a building rooted through the ice of the polar cap to the seabed some 2 miles below us, and I see the chain. Stretching upwards, suspended under its own massive weight, its sheer size, into and through the sky.

I heard the story of Jack and the Beanstalk once. I think of that now, as I look at the rusted exterior of the lower echelons, completed 10 years ago. I think, perhaps it is a story I would have told my children, if I’d been there for them, if they’d been born on this planet.

*

The day I was recruited I was exultant. I hadn’t expected it. I was 23, and applying to everything after graduate school. I had a young wife and 2 daughters. We had fallen in love before University, on a gap year on the then-Second, working resource extraction. We were both scholarship students, learning about the methods of drilling, removal, refining.

We met in a crust bar, 3 stories deep. The place was oxygenated, helmets off, and relaxed. I was playing pool with 2 other guys, and she walked in. I’d seen her in class, suited like the rest of us, and thought her hair looked nice, her eyes maybe, all I could see through the helmet screen. I’d never seen the shape of her. The movement of her. Then, that first time, the boys managed to hide the cue ball on the overhead pool light I was so distracted.

It was love, I was sure. Am still sure. I loved her. From the first words to the last, and I remember them all. Towards the end especially.

One time and crying. Hunched on our bed, babies asleep in the room next to ours. Placement papers crumpled in her hands, sodden. She’d been drinking, vodka. She was still looking for a job. She had been sat in the apartment all day, staring at the papers. Neither of us could believe it, but there the words were, before us.

Cullsman. Not just one of the crew. Not just another one of the 500 sent every year, though that would still be terrifying. One of the 10. One of the 10, that would control a world, that would ensure the survival of the Host, of us all.

I sat beside her. She wasn’t mine to touch anymore, I wasn’t sure. Soft light through the curtains, evening. Green smells on the air, mown grass, leaves. The drunk smell, not of vodka, nor sweat, but a mixture, exuding from her, along with the tears.

Her hands were shaking. The paper whispered against her dry skin.

“I have to go,” I’d said. “Can’t you understand that? I have to go.”

“You don’t have to leave us,” she’d said softly, and it killed me to hear it. Until then, though I’d known, she’d been strong. Supportive. A good wife. But now, and this was it, it was real. In days I’d be leaving for training. It was going to be real. Tears pattered on the paper.

“I’ll come back,” I’d said. “20 years is nothing. I love you. I’ll wait for you. For our daughters. I’m doing this for us.”

She’d looked at me then, smiled a smile I still don’t understand.

“I know,” she’d said. “I know you are.” Then she buried herself in my arms. The shaking didn’t stop “˜til it was dark.

I left for training. Met my 50. Spoke to my wife, burbled at my daughters every night, every hour I had a chance, but they limited us. They wanted us to get used to it. The distances, the spaces between. There would be 20 years of this, they warned, we had to be ready for it.

They blasted us with information. One year, a constant barrage of everything we would need to know. Our worlds, our cultures, our languages. Our plans, our specializations, our chances of being the chosen planet. My mind was raw from it.

She was strong at the end. Some decision reached. She stood by me as I watched my crew board. Men my age, younger, older. She held my hand, and I kissed her face.

“I love you,” I’d said.

“I love you too,” she`d replied.

My parents waved me on board. My wife stood immobile, my babies trussed up like teddy bears in their stroller. I had to turn at some point, away from them, and into the ship. I did. And that was it.

The Host readied us, launched us, slungshot us round it’s orbit, then fired us off at a vector, stealing a little momentum, off to a chosen sector, ready to be picked up when the Host arced back round 2 decades later.

I got videograms for a while. I never stopped sending them. Even now, my image will be ratcheting across space, chasing the Host as it swerves it’s massive curve round the galaxy. Then one day, there was nothing in return. They were too distant, and would be until my mission was completed.

*

The Host trawls through space with the Second trailing behind. I am sure that these planets once had other names, but I do not know them. I am sure that there were other people, cultures, lives, but I don’t know their names either.

The Host is a giant city. An entire planet riddled with life, black with it from the bays around the dried up seas, across the empty airless skies and through the dead and drained core, filling out the space. Billions of people living off the remnants, and the latest Second.

The Second is an empty world. A stolen world wrenched from it’s orbit, now paraded round the universe like some grisly trophy, as the Host picks at its bones, drilling its veins, sucking up its liquids, siphoning the core, chewing down the meat and fat and gristle until there is only a shell remaining.

The Second is food. Chained to the Host, in constant motion as my people prowl the wilderness for the next catch, the next resource laden planet, tugged through the vacuum in the wake of a thousand nuclear ships, towing the Host, towing the Second, linked by great chains shackling them all together.

I have built a chain on this planet, at the point of zero spin, the axis of the world. It will hold, as long as the escape from orbit is gentle. This world will die, but we will evacuate before the sun grows too distant, before the spin slows and the atmosphere fades away.

It will hold, and I will return to my home, to my wife and family, and this world will be food.

*

There’s a communication waiting for me, logged this morning, memo to the 38 and a message for me.

It’s from the Host. We’ve been selected. As I expected. We’re on the route, direct line with the arc. The other 9, it seems, failed, for one reason or another. Deaths, rebellions, desertions. It happens every year, that’s why they send 10.

They’re really coming. 3 months, it says. My tugs are to be ready in space, to help align the hook. The gravometric, orbital, radioactive and magnetic conditions will be at their peak. Just a gentle tugging, and this world will inch free of its track, its orbit lengthening, ellipsing, breaking. Leaving its home forever. Its sun will recede, its people absorbed into the mass of the Host, and in its place, the desiccated wreck of last year’s Second, some other planet from some other galaxy, left behind.

The tugs will accelerate, 1000 nuclear engines heaving, and we will accelerate with them, following the charted courses, bringing us in line with the next target, the next cluster of 10, and the waiting Cullsmen. In 6 months we’ll be fractioning light speed, constant acceleration with nothing to slow us down but the curve of our course.

Another 10 will be sent in our wake. The next planet of the 10 will be selected. Work will begin on the new Second. Billions of people will be re-housed. I will go back to my home, and I will know at last if my wife is still mine.

The cycle repeats itself.

*

The Seconnier, advance scout, will be here soon. To check everything is in order. Check I’m still loyal, that the power hasn’t changed me or my mission. He will ease my return to the Host, all of us, welcome us back into the fold like the old man’s Prometheus. Good job, Fen, he’ll say. You’re a hero. Now get busy re-housing these people.

*

There was a little girl, once. Same town, same square, same black and whites, bronze lion, bench, loneliness. It was the day before I was due to leave for the Peak, commence construction of the chain. I’d been on my feet for 2 days straight, making final adjustments to the plan, things I’d be too busy to oversee myself for the next few months: a war to start in Africa over diamond rights, environmental groups to quash at a protest in the North Sea, the coding and automation of the latest batch of nuclear weapons, a communist regime in Europe to be put down, a capitalist regime to be installed, and 2 more rogue crew members to track down.

I was exhausted. My head felt like a bag of jelly, rolling with the breezes. I was back in that town, Bolton, in the North of England, for the patents. They were to be moved to a vault in Switzerland, registered with the authorities there, because a terrorist bomb was due to go off in the too big town hall in a few days, some smaller island vying for independence.

Anyway.

I was thinking about many things, bubbling up like froth in my head. The mission, and the chain. The old man and his story. The impending bomb and its motivation. The people and their choices, streaming before me.

She was in the midst of them, pigtails, blue dungarees, pink and white striped T-shirt, pale English skin, freckles. Bouncing a big red ball as she walked, intent smile on her face, maybe 7 years old.

I watched her meandering progress across the square, weaving unconsciously through the crowd, ball slapping rubber on the cement tiles. I found myself wondering where her parents were.

She came to sit next to me, setting the ball seriously on the bench beside her.

“It’s my birthday today,” she said abruptly, voice high and happy. “I’m 6 years old.” She held out a hand, fingers splayed. “6!”

I smiled. Looked around. Still no parents.

“Yup, my daddy says I’ll be bigger than him soon!”

I nodded.

“Which means I’ll be bigger than mommy too, and the teachers at school. Except maybe not Mr. Flanchman, because he’s a giant. Maybe Miss Weathers, she’s not so tall, but I don’t know for sure, what do you think?”

I didn’t know what to say. She was looking at me intensely, and I felt like laughing.

“What`s your name?” she said suddenly, extending her little hand, fingernails painted with smudged stars and flowers, and took my own from the bench beside me. “I’m Angelina, but Daddy just calls me “˜little angel’. What’s your name?”

I shook her hand. “Fen,” I said.

“Nice to meet you Fen,” she enthused, setting my hand down. Looked around, as if waiting to circulate, find more people to talk to. Then back to me. “Are you shopping as well?” she asked.

“Sort of,” I said.

“We’re buying a birthday present for me, daddy says he wants to get me a horse, but I don’t think they sell those in town, do they? Mummy wants me to get my own television but I said no, I want a horse, and so does Daddy.” She smiled, gap-toothed, at me. “Mummy laughed and said Daddy was crazy, he’d just fall off and break his back like Superman. I don’t really know what she meant.”

She fell silent, looked around again.

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

She turned back to me, looked at me as if seeing my face for the first time, with great interest. Then she smiled again, looked away as if content with what she’d seen.

“They’ll be along soon,” she said.

I nodded, went back to watching the crowds. The little girl hummed something out of key. Soon, a woman came skittering through the crowds, eyes scanning the length of the square anxiously.

“That’s my Mummy,” said the little girl, pointing. “Over there.”

As if hearing her daughter’s words, the woman turned to us, and I see panic on her face, but it drops away in seconds. She rushed over, hauled up her daughter and drew her into a tight hug. “How many times, Angie, how many times?” she said in a quiet voice.

I watched bemusedly. Smiled at the woman when she looked at me.

“I’m sorry, I’ve told her a thousand times not to bother people like this,” she said. “It’s her birthday though, she’s excited.”

“That’s OK,” I said.

“Are we getting a horsey, mommy?” asked Angelina.

The woman let out a little half-laugh. “Only if you promise to stay with us while we pick it, honey. Your Daddy’s going spare.”

“Spare?”

“Look, terribly sorry and all,” said the mother again to me. “She’s just so excited.

“No problem,” I said.

“Bye bye, Fen,” said Angelina. She picked up her ball from the bench, and was swept back through the crowds, hand tightly held in her mother’s. I could hear fragments of them talking. The mother saying she mustn’t talk to strangers. The daughter saying that I looked so sad. That sort of thing.

I sat there for a long time, perhaps until it got dark, with scant hours until my ride to the Peak was due to leave, thinking. About my daughters, light years away and growing up without a father. I wondered what nicknames would I have had for them, what presents would I have bought them on their birthdays. What I would have done if they had struck up conversations with random strangers because they looked sad, what kind of father would I have been.

Then I had to leave, forget, and work on the chain began.

*

10 stories down and I’m back in my apartment, it’s night, the windows are frosted with ice again, I can barely make out the chain’s black shadow against the stars. Our security lights blur over the ice caps, giving the land a silver glow, cracked through the hoarfrost on my windows.

The room is warm. The Peak is always warm. The pole has enough frozen methane hydrate worked into its crust to keep us lit for a thousand years. Of course, we won’t be here for that long.

I strip off my tie, cuff-links, shirt and shoes. I don’t need to wear these things anymore, I meet with no clients, but I wear them anyway. I sit down on the bed feeling the same thing, loneliness like an insistent old friend, gnawing at my mind.

Switch on the videograms, sit back, watch the images walking round the living room, my daughters learning to talk, walk, sing, play on swings. The latest I received from the Host, sent 15 years ago, received 4 later. There are no images of my wife.

They sing the same songs they’ve sung for 11 years. Moments frozen in time. I’ve watched them like this when the chain was just a stub on the horizon, refracted through their rippling forms. Now, huge black pillar grasping upwards, seems to refract them.

I spend the night like this. At some point, the videograms phase to nightmare, and I see again giant arms ripping at the land, at my body, wrapping me in metal coils, twisting me into a chain made of other struggling men. I see the little girl, smiling, exploding. I see the picture of a family, happy, with the father’s face cut out.

Just like every other night.

*

There’s a man at my side when I wake up. There’s a cold breeze, frost in the air, and my daughters have stopped playing around me. It’s dark, but I know he’s there.

“Sorry about the window,” he says abruptly, “but you’ve got this place wrapped up pretty tight, we didn’t have much choice.”

To my left. Voice feels familiar. Apologetic, young, calm. I consider getting up, going for him, reaching for a weapon, but there seems to be no point.

“Good morning,” I say instead.

“Yes, it is,” he replies conversationally. “Little chilly out, but the hole really isn’t that big, shouldn’t be too difficult to stop up. Seemed to be the only way, though.”

“Only way? Only way to what?”

“To get to you.”

There’s a silence. My guest shifts in his seat.

“So what do you want?” I ask, businesslike tone surprising me.

“Oh, I’d just like to talk. Lots of things for us to discuss, actually. First though I suppose you’re curious as to who I am, why I’m here?”

I shrug, inch up to sit against the headboard. The room is dark but my eyes are adjusting. A slight figure, outlined in the glow from the blinds, perched on the dresser.

“I suppose so,” I acknowledge.

“And no doubt, you’re wondering why I’m sitting here, and your security guards are nowhere to be seen. Why all your alarms are silent?”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”

“Well, we can get into all that soon enough. There isn’t much time, so you need to listen carefully. I’m going to tell you a story. Perhaps it will be familiar to you. Is that alright?”

“I don’t imagine there’s much I can do to stop you.” It strikes me that I should be afraid, but it doesn’t happen. It feels like a dream, though the sharp whip of arctic air tells me otherwise.

“All you have to do is say no,” he says, spreads his thin arms wide, cutting across the dawn glow. I can see his hair now, and the lines of his face. It’s getting brighter.

“Alright,” I say, strange, “go ahead.”

“Thankyou. It’s an old story, and like I said, you might have heard it before. It’s about a man named Prometheus.”

Something shivers inside me. His voice. Something I remember very clearly.

“A man who brought civilization to the savages, who promised glory to a whole world. A man who asked for no thanks, who worked tirelessly and gave everything that he had, because he believed that what he was doing was right. Yet he never questioned it, though he never really understood just who it was he was helping, or what the reward would be. Perhaps he’s beginning to see now, just what kind of harvest he’s going to reap. Perhaps he’s like the farmer in the Bible. You know the Bible. The man who scattered seeds on both the thorns and brambles, and on fertile soil, and now he’s waiting for the crops. Or perhaps he’s the seed himself, scattered like so many others around the universe, and he’s not sure if he’s a thorn or a crop, and he doesn’t know if he wants to grow and find out. He’s waiting.

“Now, this Prometheus, he’s waiting, but perhaps he’ll wait too long. Perhaps he’ll never get to make his choice, he’ll leave it too late and the decision will be made without him. He’ll have no say in the ending, even after all his work, even after becoming a god himself.”

I say nothing, possibilities vying with each other in my mind. A man’s voice, and appearance, and life.

“Do you recognize the story, Fen? Do you know how it ends yet?”

I open my mouth, close it. I don’t know what to say.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s been too long. Maybe another story, then. It’s about another man, a young man, bright and capable, waiting for his role in life. He is married, this young man, and his wife is beautiful. They met in a bar, and he knew from the start. He knew before that, before he’d met her, spoken to her, he knew. And they had children, 2 wonderful baby girls. Is this story more familiar? I hope so. Because this young man made a choice, a choice he hasn’t allowed himself to regret since then, though it was 2 decades ago. He made the choice and he left his life and his babies and his wife behind. He gave up on his family and his love, for a duty he didn’t understand. He gave it all up to become a thief, to steal the most precious thing in the universe.

“Home. The right to exist. The right to belong, the right to determine your own future. He gave up everything that he had so that he could do the same thing to billions of other people.

“Perhaps he didn’t know it then. I hope not. Perhaps he chose not to see it, and I hope so. Any man who knew this, saw it as it is to be seen and yet continues, is no kind of man to be.

“Is it familiar, Fen? Do you know this story?”

I’m feeling I don’t know what. Angry. My throat is dry, and my stomach is a riot, and I don’t really know what to say.

“Maybe one more story? You won’t know it. It’s about a little girl. Pretty little thing, maybe 6 years old. Likes to bounce a red ball, talk to strangers. She’s very friendly. For her 6th birthday she got a rocking horse, which she played on every day. Her parents adored her.

“She was popular at school. One girl bullied her, called her “˜Tourettes’ because she used to speak her mind openly, without thinking. Most people liked her for it though, so the bully never really hurt her.

“She grew up, and she became beautiful. It doesn’t matter to the story that she was beautiful, but she was. She grew her hair long and kept herself intact. She still spoke her mind, and people grew to love her for it. They found relief in her company. They felt at home around her.

“She went to University, studied medicine, and put her natural skill to use as a nurse. She was outstanding. 3 years into an internship in London she met a young doctor, a man with a dark past of gangs and drugs and violence, and she saved him. He loved her, and he became a good man for her. He worked hard for her, and she bore him 3 children, 2 girls and a boy. They grew up and got married, and had children of their own.

“He died at 78, cancer. She lived another 10 years, tending to the other women in the home with her. She never complained. Her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren came to see her often. They brought her flowers and fruit, and they loved her even as her mind slipped away.

“She died happy, thinking of her family and the lives she’d touched, of her husband and all the good things he’d done in his life.”

He falls silent. I can hear the breeze, whistling through the hole in the window, flapping the blinds.

“Did you like that story, Fen? Beautiful, isn’t it? Well, I have a few variations. In one, the young girl dies at 6 years old, 3 days after her birthday, thinking about her new rocking horse at home, in a terrorist attack. She was sitting across the square, talking to a lonely looking stranger, when the bomb went off. She was clear of the blast, but a piece of shrapnel flew straight into her chest and pierced her heart. She died in minutes.

“Sad, isn’t it? You know what it was for? Independence. Beliefs. One group thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted, because they believed. It’s a funny thing.”

He pauses for a moment. Turns something over in his hands.

“Is that the real story?” he continues. “It doesn’t matter. Here’s another variation. The shrapnel misses the little girl. She doesn’t think about it. Goes on to University, becomes a nurse, meets her young doctor, and begins to ease his troubled mind. But then, as they’re falling in love, it says on the news that the Earth, the whole planet, is being evacuated to some colossal galaxy sailing pirate ship. Their world, their home, is to be destroyed, their culture to be assimilated, all within the next 3 months.

“It broke the young doctor. He got drunk, night after night, forgot his job, spent days walking in circles round the town. He wasn’t alone. Many were the same, unable to comprehend the vastness of their fate. Before the evacuation, a lot of them killed themselves. Many in graveyards, next to the stones marking the final resting-places of loved ones, gone forever. He was amongst these people.

“She found his body and buried it herself. There was no-one left to stop her, the evacuation had begun. She wanted to kill herself too, but couldn’t muster the passion for it. Instead she went to the pirate planet, and lived her days broken and beaten down. She grew old and died alone, thinking of the waste of everything, raving about a life she hadn’t led. All for independence. All because one group of people believed blindly, because they chose to ignore the truth.

“People, and it pains me to say it, Fen, as I’ve watched you alone and waiting these past 20 years, but people like you. The exact type they wanted for their Cullsmen. Loving men. Caring men. Men with a rock solid desire to return home.

“I know you’ve thought about it. 20 years is a long time. You think they’ve waited for you? You think it was difficult for you to wait, here in your vacuum? Have you got any right to ask them for anything, when you get back? You already made your choice, Fen. You made it, and it’s changed your life. Now, you have another. You’ve got a choice, just like old Prometheus, that will change the fate of a world, and in the end, it comes down to you.”

I stand up, walk over to the light, switch it on, stare at the man to the left of my bed.

“It’s you,” I say.

“It`s me.”

“But you were old. 60, 70. And now?”

“I’ve been busy too, Fen. You think a stowaway on a Cullsman ship can be just anybody? You think it’s easy? No. I planned too. I brought my own patents, patents from my own world. You won’t know it, the Host consumed it before you were born. Since then I’ve been organizing. Gaining some power, some influence. I drew others to me, rebels, free-thinkers. Men from your ranks, the 12 you lost. People who wouldn’t stand to see the Host destroy more lives.”

“What about the girl? The 6 year old?”

“Died in the terrorist blast. You could have told her, told them all, but you didn’t. You could have warned them, but you didn’t. No. And the other story, the broken woman, the dead and mad spinster, that was me. My wife killed herself on our home planet. She wouldn’t let it take her, though in the end its metal jaws will have scooped up her body anyway, along with everything else. I couldn’t join her, couldn’t do it, so instead I tried to fight. We lobbied governments to use force against the chain. We broke into TV stations and tried to send out the message. At the end, we attempted to take over a military base, find a way to launch missiles ourselves and set us free. But we failed.

“Now it’s different. You hear about this latest 10? 9 failed already. You think that’s chance? You think it’s just bad luck? No. That’s us. My colleagues. Denying the Host it’s nourishment, forcing it to stop, killing it.

“But you? Your men were different. Driven by you. You have been the iron at the core of that chain, Fen. If this planet is Culled, it will be solely because of you. I could take only 12 of your men, currently risking their lives to keep me here undetected, for I don’t know how much longer. I’ve been working against you these 20 years, but I couldn’t stop you. You wanted your life back too much. I knew it when I first met you, and I knew then that I’d have to live to the end. I invested my patents, just like you. I worked in cloning, genetic engineering, and I used my information, the secrets of my dead world, to give me this body that you see before you. I’m 112 years old, Fen, I should be dead but I’m not. I lived so that I could spend every second available to me working against you.

“Now it’s come down to this. Me and you. I wanted to take the choice from you. I thought I could do it myself, up until a few months ago, but I see now that I was wrong. The choice will be yours, and there is nothing I can do.”

“But why?” I ask. “If I’m so important, why not just kill me? What do you want, just to convert me? You could have killed me in my sleep!”

He sighs.

“Even if I could it would make no difference now, your plans are in motion. The Seconnier is coming any day now. No, I couldn’t kill you. Besides, I didn’t want to. The best I can do is throw the choice in your lap. Throw this world in your lap and ask you to understand, understand what it is you’re doing and why.

“Your men will be coming soon. We’ve eluded them for long enough, but they will be here soon and I’ll be shut off. So I’ll leave you with your choices, Fen. Which story do you want to be true?”

He stands, lifts the silver pad in his hand, holds it up, studies it

“I like you Fen. You’ve driven this world to the brink, but you’re a good man. You have to be. You’re only everything they made you to be. Seeds on the thorns, seeds on the grasses. Now, just like Prometheus, it’s time for you to choose. What kind of man do you want to be?”

He smiles, there’s a flash of light, and the silver pad drops to the floor. He is gone. With a crackle, my daughters spring back to life, at play in the dining room.

I walk over to the dresser, next to the bed, see the silver disc, videogram emitter. At the window, a circular hole, just big enough.

The phone on my desk rings. I answer it.

“Sir, is everything alright? We’ve just intercepted a signal coming in through the soft walls, focused on your room. Security will be there in seconds.”

The door flies open. 5 men in full armor burst into the room, rifles leveled.

“Sir, is everything OK?” asks the lead man.

I hold up my hands. “No problem,” I say. “You can leave now.”

The men slowly lower their weapons, salute, then file out of the room.

The phone speaks again, but I hang it up. Walk back to the window, look through the hole at the chain and the snow and the sun, as my daughters dance behind me, ghosts in the daylight, completely unaware and nothing but a memory.

*

He told me that the choice is mine, but I don’t know what it is. Standing next to the chain now, gloved hands resting against its oxidized outer layer, wondering.

Up close, it feels like a wall. A wall that doesn’t end in any direction. Up, left, right, it’s always the same shimmering red metal. I wonder how Jack must have felt, stood so close to the beanstalk that towered above him, that had changed his life so completely, that he had created without every really thinking about.

Where to go from here. The Seconnier will arrive any day. My powers will be curtailed. If there’s a choice, it has to be made now.

*

In my private jet, photo of my family in my hand, heading for England.

*

In the square, the same town, the same seat, but it’s night. A few drunks slur across the star-dappled flagstones. They’ve changed everything. The town hall building, details picked out with up-lights, is clean and new. There’s a glass wing where the bomb must have been, jutting like a splinter of ice from the old masonry. The square has been re-paved. The lions have been burnished, gleaming in the street-light.

There’s a tramp a few benches down, kagooled against the cold, layered with old clothes, dirty plastic bags tied with string at his feet.

It’s my first time down from the Peak in 16 years. I clutch the photograph tightly in my hands, try to hold it back, but the words ring out anyway.

This world is real.

I can’t stop it. I’ve fought them for so long, but I don’t know if I can any longer.

These people are real.

I try, but they come anyway.

Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been, the wars, the businesses, the lives and deaths, the little girl, the old man, they were all real, as real as the people in this photograph. I’ve known it all this time. It’s been true all this time. I just didn’t want to see it.

There are probably tears in my eyes. The world blurs, and the lights trickle into stars, turning the square into my own private universe, with me but one body in the midst.

I’d already made my choice. I hadn’t thought of these people as anything but less. Nothing compared to my wife and children. Nothing compared to the Host, its great history and culture. Nothing compared to me.

I was wrong.

*

It is done in silence. The fate of the world sealed, and not a word is spoken.

Private jet. Intranet. The orders given by a smattering of key strokes. To have forgotten, that this is how close I always was.

In the silence afterwards, in the void, I feel nothing but my loneliness, magnified so many times. All the stars in the night sky, they are nothing compared to the number of stars seen from the Host.

These are my stars now.

*

I live in my private jet. I do not wish to be contacted. I did not do this to make friends. I did not do this to be their hero. I never wanted to be a hero.

I try to remember what my wife looks like, but it’s only the fuzz of a videogram that I see. Even that is gone, now. A life I cannot go back to.

*

The nuclear weapons codes. Written into all our products. I sent 10 to the chain, and now it is gone. There is no umbilicus with which the Host can drag us away. There is no hook anymore, but for an asteroidal chunk of curved metal orbiting the planet. I told them, if they come, I will kill them all.

The news said it was a volcano. Under the ice. Of course, that’s what I told them to say.

The Peak is gone, contaminated and crushed beneath miles of solid metal, but everything else is still in place. I can still be a god, but I don’t know. Prometheus was punished for eternity, by gods. Perhaps they are not the sort of people I want to be.

*

A week after my decision, there are freak tornadoes in Greenland, ice squalls over Northern Europe and fallout on Svalbard, but that’s about it.

I’m going to land this plane. I’m going to find the old man, and the rebels, and I’m going to understand. I’m going to leave this photograph, cracked and torn, behind, and I’m going to finally understand what the last 20 years of my life have been for.

After all, Prometheus gave the world civilization. The greatest gift. He was punished, but he made the world a better place. I’d like to think that I can say the same. That my choices have mattered, that my life has mattered, that my punishment will be worth it.

*

I walk into a bar off Bolton town square. They are all there, the twelve I lost, the old man now young, gathered round the bar, all of them smiling.

“We’ve been following your plane,” says one of them.

“We knew you’d come here eventually,” says another.

They are all smiling.

The old man, young now, steps forward from their midst, puts his hands on my shoulders, looks into my eyes.

“Welcome home, Fen,” he says.

END

DARK FICTION

You can see all MJG’s stories here:

Dark Fiction

Dark Fiction

Madness / Surreal

Madness / Surreal

Fantasy

Fantasy

Science Fiction

Science Fiction

Jabbler's Mons

Jabbler's Mons

 
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Comments

2 Responses to “Cullsman #9”

  1. Can. MikeNo Gravatar on March 20th, 2009 7:12 pm

    Great story Mike,
    Very well thought out and written!

  2. MJGNo Gravatar on March 24th, 2009 2:48 pm

    Mike- Impressed you read the whole thing, and that’s great you liked it- thanks a lot for letting me know :)

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