Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

“There I am, Major.” A drone dropped down in front of him and pointed towards the tank. “Do with me what you will.”

Karnage moved closer, squinting his eyes. The pulsing mass was composed of coils of grey flesh as thick as his forearm, looped endlessly together, packed tightly within the dome. As he drew closer, he saw a small shadow hanging from the base of the dome.

It was a body, curled in on itself, hanging from the dome by its head. A band of gleaming metal attached its head to the base of the dome. Its pale skin was translucent. The limbs were shrivelled, pulled up against the swollen torso. It wore a nothing but a thin sleeveless shroud, lines of purple, blue, and green visible on the skin.

As Karnage drew closer, he saw the band cut across the body’s head just above the eyes. It was missing the top half of its skull. Karnage looked up at the tangles of grey coils that filled the tank. It was as if they had spilled out of the head, and were now pulsing inside the giant tank. That’s his brain.

Its face was drawn and tight, eyes closed, the pale lids tattooed with tiny purple capillaries. The face pinched tighter as the eyes struggled to open. The pink pupils drifted towards Karnage and tried to focus while its tiny lips curled slightly at the corners.

The drone beside Karnage turned to him. “Now do you understand?”

The smile dropped from the lips, replaced by a painful grimace. The eyes unfocused and the eyelids closed.

“No,” Karnage said.

“Of course you don’t,” the drone said. “Nor would anyone else. It is too different. Too… alien. And so I stay hidden. Protected.”

Karnage looked up at the pulsing mass of brain. “How…?”

“Decompressive craniectomy and extensive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Does that help you understand at all?”

“Not really.”

The drone nodded. “It would not. It is too foreign to you. Just as your ways are foreign to many. We are both very much alike. Outcasts. Incomprehensible to the outside world. Damaged in so many ways, and yet so very able in others. You owe your very life to my abilities. My research. My path. Perhaps your path will lead you to return that favour. Except…”

“What?” Karnage said.

“I accept my limitations, Major. And I have chosen to work within them.” The drone poked at Karnage’s bandaged shoulder. Blood was seeping through. “You would be wise to learn to do the same.”

Karnage watched as a drone restitched his shoulder. He was sitting on a stool in the water tower in front of the oval windows. He peered through the grime-covered glass at the broken water park below. Somewhere beyond the sagging roller coasters and broken water slides lay the squidbugs. He turned to Sydney. “I’m a mess.”

“You just tore out a few stitches,” Sydney said. “Uncle will have you stitched up again in no time.”

Karnage shook his head. “It’s more than that. We were there. Right there. Starin’ them squidbugs square in the face. We could have ended it all right there. We could’ve…”

“You don’t know what you could have done,” Sydney said.

“I do,” Karnage said, “and it was nothing. I had my chance, and I blew it. Goddammit, how the fuck am I supposed to fight anything without blowin’ my head off?!”

“What do you mean?” Sydney said.

“He’s referring to the explosive device implanted in the base of his skull,” the drone said.

Sydney did a double take. “What?!”

Karnage looked at the drone. “How did you know about that?”

The drone’s lens looked up at Karnage. “It’s rather hard to miss, isn’t it?” It tapped the LED screen of the patch. “Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t brought it up before.”

“I try not to think about it too much,” Karnage said.

“Yes, and as a result you’ve come precariously close to blowing your head off on a large number of occasions.”

“How do you know that?!”

“It’s all recorded here in the device’s on-board computer. It was automatically scanned and downloaded when Sydney first brought you in. I must say, it is an amazing piece of technology. The gentleman who designed it is either a genius or a complete and utter madman.”

“That sounds like Flaherty.”

“Dr. Paul Flaherty? The neuroscientist?”

“You knew him?”

“I knew of him. He was involved in a number of horrifying scandals which left many of his patients either brain-dead or just plain dead. His theories were occasionally interesting, while his methods were… impractical, let’s say. I’m shocked to see that he finally achieved some measure of success.”

“Depends on your definition of success,” Karnage said.

“The fact you are still alive should be considered success enough.”

“Can you remove it?” Sydney said.

The drone zoomed its lens in on the device. “Any attempt to cut power to the device will cause it to detonate. Any attempt to improperly tamper with the device will also cause it to detonate.”

“Sounds like I’m fucked,” Karnage said.

“Not necessarily,” the drone said. “There are other options available to us outside of the surgical. Alternative therapies. We could take a more holistic approach.”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of tampering with the device,” the drone tapped Karnage’s head, “we tamper with the subject.”

Karnage swatted it away. “What the hell do you mean tamper with the subject?! I’m not gonna let anybody carve up my brain!”

“I assure you no carving would be required. All adjustments would be behavioural in nature, not surgical. The sensors respond to specific signals from the amygdala, hypothalamus, and to a lesser extent, the pituitary gland. It interprets these responses in order to determine the instinctual motivations of the subject. In effect, it is tied directly to your lizard brain. Remove the lizard brain from the equation, and the sensors will have nothing to respond to. No stimulus, no response. No earth-shattering kaboom.”

“So how do I cut out my lizard brain?” Karnage asked.

The drone tapped a tentacle against Karnage’s forehead. “By becoming attuned to your Eleventh Sense.”

“Of course we are all familiar with the five Primary Senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch. But beyond that, there are a further three Secondary Senses from which the body draws from.

“Intuition, the oft-cited and poorly understood Sixth Sense which unthinkingly pulls from the first five senses and manifests as a ‘gut reaction.’ In essence, this is your lizard brain.

“Logic, the Seventh Sense, is an understanding and application of the underlying mathematics and order of the universe as well as our place within it. The Seventh Sense is the level at which we first truly begin to experience consciousness.

“Emotion, the Eight Sense, is an awareness of one’s own emotions and emotional states, as manifested by the five Primary Senses in conjunction with the Sixth and Seventh Senses.

“Above the Secondary Senses, we have the Tertiary Senses. Sensitivity, which relates to an awareness of others’ emotional states and how our own emotions affect them, as well as the creatures around us. Acuity, the Tenth Sense, is the sharpening of the previous nine senses into finely honed points of—”

“This sounds like a lot of bullshit to me,” Karnage said.

“Of course it does,” the drone said. “That is because you haven’t mastered them.”

Karnage threw up his hands. “Okay, now I know you’re full of shit.” He walked towards the door.

“I have the mathematical proofs to support my theories,” the drone called after him. “I can show them to you if you like.”