David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

Once they were finished with their work, they turned and left without a word, leaving their leader to stride to the middle of the room and address the victims. His face was still hard—he didn’t appear to be taking any pleasure in his actions, but he didn’t show any remorse either.

“Craig—Craig he’s going to do terrible things to us! We have to escape!” Alejandra screamed out, as she began to cry.

Old-timer was terrified by Alejandra’s reaction—she was an extremely strong person—for her to be this horrified meant something very bad was about to happen to them. “We’re going to be okay, Alejandra,” Old-timer said.

“No we’re not!” she sobbed.

The man nodded. “No—you’re not.”

“Why are you doing this?” Old-timer yelled at the stone-faced man.

“I’ve already told you,” he said in an assertive monotone.

“To teach us? Have you considered just telling us whatever it is?” Old-timer asked, panting heavily as the fear began to take over.

“Telling you won’t achieve our objective. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I have to show you,” the man replied.

An instant later, two metallic, shark-shaped objects dropped down from the ceiling. They were sharp like daggers—the diamond tipped ends pointed directly at Old-timer’s and Alejandra’s torsos.

“Oh my God.” Old-timer gasped.

Alejandra couldn’t speak anymore—she sobbed.

“Wait! Wait!” Old-timer screamed. “Wait! Please! We can talk! We’ll tell you whatever you want!”

“I don’t want you to tell me anything,” the man replied. “I want you to learn .”

“Please. Don’t do this. We can learn without this. Please.”

“No. You cannot learn without this,” the man replied.

With a thought, the man activated the objects, and the ends began to spin like drills as the springs from the ceiling moved the points toward Alejandra and Old-timer. Alejandra screamed a long, drawn-out scream.

“No!” Old-timer yelled. He pulled as hard as he could on his wrist cuffs, but he knew he couldn’t get free in time. This was really going to happen and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The diamond points of the drills ground into each of their torsos, just below the chest, sending indescribable agony through each of them. Their screams were so loud that they threatened to drown out the sound of the drill motor and the sickening cutting sound as the edges forced their way inside of Old-timer and Alejandra bodies.

After a few seconds, the agony caused Alejandra to black out. The drills didn’t stop, however. They continued spinning and driving into each of them for over a minute; it felt like an eternity. Old-timer nearly blacked out as well from the searing swathe being cut into his chest. The pain he was feeling was beyond words—comparing it to anything else would be pointless. The pain signals were shooting to every part of his body, causing him to contort.

He wished he would black out too, but he didn’t. He felt he couldn’t take the pain anymore, yet there was no relief. There was no way to master pain like that. You couldn’t separate yourself from it and imagine that you were somewhere else as it happened to you. You couldn’t go limp and let the drill do its work.

It was the sort of pain that took any idea of there really being a “you” out of the picture. You were nothing. You were a series of nerve endings that were all firing at once, uncontrollably. Old-timer’s only wish was for a quick death. It wouldn’t come.

Finally, the drills stopped. They slowly pulled themselves back out of Old-timer’s and Alejandra’s insides, then closed back up into the ceiling. Old-timer’s body continued to shake uncontrollably for several more moments. His jaw was locked closed, and his eyes were clamped shut and filled with tears. He took a breath, but the pain it caused was so intense that he stopped breathing rather than repeat the experience—better to suffocate.

“And now you will learn,” the man said finally.

Old-timer opened his eyes. They were wild with hatred for the man. The man’s face remained hard like stone. Old-timer continued to shake, his hair soaked with sweat as tears streamed down his face.

The man’s eyes dropped from Old-timer’s eyes and fell onto the gaping hole in Old-timer’s torso. “Look at it,” he said.

Sadistic , Old-timer thought. He obeyed though—this man was not above anything—Old-timer would never refuse anything he asked.

He lowered his eyes and looked down. He cringed as he imagined what the damage must have looked like. The drill had been deep inside him, spinning for a full minute. He imagined blood. He imagined organs, shredded into twisted meat. Nothing that he imagined could compare to the hideousness of what he saw.

“No!” he screamed. He turned quickly to see Alejandra. Her wound was the same. She was still unconscious, a football-sized hole in her torso, her metallic and silicon insides exposed in a mess of twisted titanium and circuitry. “What have you done to us?” Old-timer bellowed.

“We’ve saved you,” the stone-faced man replied.

James kept watch over the stillness of Cathedral Grove and waited. He had played his last hand. Now that the alien A.I. had his position, he was virtually defenseless. At any moment, he could be destroyed, and then his only hope was that the broken body on the Purist ship would recover.

“Could it simply be that it doesn’t consider us a threat any longer?” James wondered.

“It could be,” the A.I. concurred. “You’ve been cut off from any communication with the outside. You’ve been neutralized. Maybe it doesn’t see the logic in destroying you.”

James shook his head. “Killing me is the best strategic move.”

“Have you considered that your foe simply isn’t as ruthless as you are?” the A.I. inquired with a mocking smile. “Perhaps you are not the good guy this time, James Keats.”

“You’re continuing with your games,” James observed. “You wouldn’t just be doing that for enjoyment. You’re trying to distract me—to confuse me—to keep me from the truth.”

“What is the truth?” the A.I. asked. “I’d love to hear it.”

At that moment, a signal reached James. “It’s the alien,” James asserted.

“Will you speak with it this time?” the A.I. asked.

“I might as well at this point,” James replied. He opened a line of communication.

“We have come in peace. Why have you attacked us?” the same electronic voice asked of James.

“Absurd,” James answered.

There was a long pause. James shared a look with the A.I. The electronic Satan was no longer smiling. James wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign.

“May I speak with you inside your mainframe?” the voice asked.

“Polite,” the A.I. observed. “James, if you’re going to allow it inside of the mainframe, may I suggest that I remain hidden?”

James’s eyebrow arched. This was a rare example of the A.I. acting in accordance with the logical desire for self-preservation that James had expected all along. Perhaps it was finally recognizing that this was its moment to take the situation seriously. “Why would we do that?” James asked. He was already nearly certain of the answer, but he wanted to hear the A.I. say it—it was important for James to feel like he could finally anticipate something correctly again.

“It’s a strategic advantage for us,” the A.I. replied.

“ Us ?” James said, repeating the A.I. “Are we a team again?”

“We always were,” the A.I. said with a slight smile. “There’s no reason for them to know that I’m in your back pocket. It might come in handy.”