Magenta Monster

The dead were not supposed to dream, though in truth they were not dead but held indefinitely at the defining line between the here and the gone. The bodies were stacked in pods or glass coffins with knobs and dials and the controls of all sorts. They fitted into little nested holes in the walls that had been made especially for them in a room of deep space cold. If the pods failed the bodies would be preserved by the room, if the room failed the pods would maintain.

The system was perfect Matic had even improved this with the new room design so that in event of earthquake or tsunami or both the dead would be preserved until rescue could occur. But sometimes as he watched their frozen forms he began to feel a disquiet. for a start some of their eyes were open, big dark orbs in the angled slits of eyes just before the face narrowed. It did that a lot more on the older bodies. They had very wide foreheads and small narrow chins, on the younger bodies it was less pronounced.

He had pointed this out to his superior and had been told that thinking could be harmful to the too inquisitive here.

But the change was disturbing, Matic couldn’t help but wonder if the Hevian’s had anything to do with it all. He wasn’t stupid he could see hostilities were brewing again. They were polluted scum!

He was constantly amazed that the sea had not swarmed up and punished them all for the vileness that that city empire had inflicted on the beautiful bodies the gods had given them. What was wrong with using placenta trees to grow children? He was born that way, women died in labour so why corrupt the the genome just to put them through such a painful ordeal?

Sometimes late at night he would stare at the bodies trying to make the older ones more perfect and beautiful than the younger ones and worrying that his own genome had been sullied with that of the Land Apes. Some people actually thought they were related! Those big barrely bodies and all that hair! No webbing either and some of them he heard couldn’t even swim.

He shuddered, no he was far too refined to have such DNA.

If he was truthful he hated working with the bodies, if he was tired sometimes he was sure he saw someone down there, moving about within the capsules and once he thought a body had sat up, he was so freaked he had run away screaming, when his boss had come back with him everything seemed fine and he’d felt a complete fool.

But then yesterday he had been moving the print out files and that was when he saw it, the brain activity read outs, some of the brains were active. Or at least that was what he thought the graphs meant, he was no biologist he was here as an equipment engineer but you couldn’t work on cryo units without having a basic understanding, and those wiggly lines looked like the REM sleep pattern to him.

It made him feel ill, were they stuck in a dream? He had had many dreams he really would not want to be caught in and certainly not for years. The oldest body was 150 years old and dream time always seemed longer, sometimes alot longer. His name was down for the cryo list, he wasn’t that sure he wanted to be preserved anymore. He would take his name off, the sea gods messengers would carry him out to sea in the age old tradition, not that he’d seen any dolphins for a while now, probably because he was always stuck inside and didn’t get a chance to swim.

He would go for one during his lunch break he decided, he even told his boss but then he realised that he needed to check the calibrations to make sure that the coffins would be cushioned in the event of the whole structure being shaken loose in earthquakes. It was a relatively simple job and could be done in half an hour so he’d still get to eat.

He popped his whale song head phones on to help him concentrate, he was so intent on his work that he did not see the shadows creeping in nor how the coffins opened one by one.

Whipping his hands he yawned and stretched and stood up removing his head phones looking forward to stuffed jellyfish and seaweed fritters for lunch. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Startled heart pounding he turned, instead of the horrible vision he was expecting there was his boss and another man, with a very broad forehead and the smallest chin he had seen outside of the cold catacombs.

‘Boss you scared me!’ he cried.

‘Matic! I thought you were going for a long lunch swim?’ he sounded angry, had Matic upset him?

‘I remembered I needed to do the buffer calibration just incase you know, who’s your friend?’ he knew he’d made some sort of error in asking but the strange man stepped forward with his webbed hand raised in greeting.

‘I am Aten, and I study the patients from time to time.’

Matic felt a relief, ‘oh so it’s you who I’ve seen wondering around? Is that why the bodies have been sitting up and stuff?’

‘Yes it is,’ the man said.

‘Why didn’t you just come and say hello?’ he asked feeling a sudden rush of angry resentment, he’d been really scared!

‘Ah well my work is a secret people are not supposed to know.’

The echo of the statement seemed to wrap itself around Matic, who as bright as he was, could be incredibly dim and was always eger to do the right thing and more importantly did what he was told.

‘Are you a spy or something?’ he asked.

Aten smiled, it was full of a great sadness but it was still a small and pointy sharp smile. ‘Something like that yes, I will tell you what we are up to if you like?’

Matic looked at his boss, ‘shouldn’t we set an alarm off or something?’ he asked, his boss turned away from him, his narrow shoulders seemed to be going up and down rather fast, if Matic didn’t know better he would think the man was crying.

‘There would be no point in doing that Matic, now come and see the master piece would you please?’ curiousity got him and he did go over to look at what the man was doing to the body.

‘Have you noticed anything about the sleepers?’ Aten asked gently.

‘I… I think some of them dream,’ Matic said feeling a little worried and sick, was he fraternizing with the enemy?

‘Yes, that is right they do! How did you spot it?’ the man sounded excited.

‘From the brain wave read outs, but it’s wrong!’ he cried suddenly, now was his chance to help these people and who in his own head appeared to be trapped in never ending nightmares.

‘How so?’ the man asked calmly, so Maltic explained.

‘Ah I see but what if I told you that they are not dreaming all the time and that the dreams are more a remembering of their life?’

Maltic thought about it, his eyes wide with worry, then he said, ‘that would depend on what their life had been like.’ Aten nodded and smiled a nice smile this time.

‘They are dreaming their memories into this,’ he said show a box of lights that blicked and twinkled reflecting off of each other in a nebulae of colours.

‘An optronics core?’ Maltic breathed, he’d wanted to work on such things but optronics and computing were not valued as fields of study in their own right, he’d heard things were different in the other City Empires.

‘There are discs in their heads that recorded their lives, I am extracting a copy of the data, that is all.’

It all sounded reasonable until Maltic thought about what uses such information could be put too, narrowing his eyes he demanded, ‘which of the three are you!’

Aten sighed and took a slight step back, ‘none,’ he said quietly.

‘Don’t be stupid which is it? I don’t think your an Alantian or you wouldn’t have been skulking about, so that leaves Heva or Pacifica – which is it?’ It was possible the man was Pacifician in which case it might all be ok but he was readying himself to fight.

‘I am from Babel, I doubt you will have heard of it, it is not a city empire, it is… the back up, for the cores, I know here you no longer maintian your core but once you did and Babel is the back up for all three empires, no one has dared attack us because of this. We are neutral, all we want is the survival of our race.’

‘Which race?’ he asked confused, he had heard of Babel but thought it was a myth like the sisters being bought to Eden by the first dolphins – to found the City Empire, of course Atlantis was the oldest Empire even if Pacifica and Heva both claimed the same.

‘All of us Maltic, do you think you are that different from those living in the other city states?’

The question stung, ‘of course I am, I am PURE! Not like them, well Pacifica have only internally altered their genome so I think that’s sort of ok but Heva? They’ve bred with the land apes! With the slaves, filth!’

‘Ah but I know you’ve noticed something else Matic, about the bodies here? About the way they look?’ it was a slow gentle voice the man used and MAtic raised his eyes even wider trying to work it all out.

A sick realisation hit him, his fears were very real, ‘no… no no no,’ he whispered, an idea occurred to him, it was predictable but he did not know that, and grabbed a spanner out of his tool belt and hurtled towards the man known as Aten. He didn’t get a chance to utter a war cry however as a pulse hit him, locking his muscles down tight in a painfully exhilarating way.

‘I so sorry Matic,’ his boss said gently lowering the gun.

‘Their vile indoctrination has worked on this new generation I see?’ the Aten said grimly, ‘remove his ear and put it in the carry vat over there, I will grow more of him on my flight ship and then we can create a disaster for his tragic death.’

‘What… what are we going to do with him architect?’

‘Put him on ice, a mind like that is beautiful though nieve, we can not loose him but I would save everyone if I could. In future times perhaps we can undo the damage, he has no significant other or dependants?’

‘No just him, his mother died from plague, I believe it would have wiped this entire inbred city out if you had not been shifting the genes but he is the third one to notice the generational changes, I can’t keep getting through assistants like this they will start to ask awkward questions, possibly with hot bits of glass rod.’

‘I know, I hope peace will come soon.’

Matic could hear them but no longer speak, he wanted to plead with them to just kill him, he didn’t believe that he wouldn’t be trapped in a forever dream and he no longer cared how pure his genes were, the cold hurt at first.

Posted: Monday, November 3rd, 2014 @ 12:33 am
Categories: Story, The Punks World.
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