David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

Sanha remained on his knees, his head bowed toward the rough concrete, sweat and blood dripping from his face, and forming an expressionist masterpiece in his field of vision. He kept his eyes fixed on the ever-changing picture as, one by one, the post-human captives were executed. Point-blank shots to the temple felled them as the Purist super soldier paced up and down the rows of hapless victims.

This is how my life ends? Sanha thought to himself as he watched the Jackson Pollock continue to change, the blood and sweat mixing into yins and yangs, little pieces of dark concrete dust getting picked up and shifted in the mess. I had immortality in my grasp, and now…I just die? I just die?

He flinched as another shot ended the life of yet another one of his compatriots. He could feel the thud of the body as it collapsed somewhere behind him. In his mind, he was sure there had been children in the group—or had the little ones all escaped? Dear God, I hope they all escaped .

Aye, there is the rub, he thought. God. Here I am, talking to God as I wait to die, yet I don’t believe in God. How ironic is it, that even as the men who claim God as their motivation for keeping the species pure are executing me, I still speak to a figment of my imagination? Even now, I can’t let superstition go.

“Sanha! Can you hear me?”

For a moment, Sanha thought his heart might stop.

“Sanha, if you can’t reply but you can hear me, move your head and let me see what’s going on.”

Sanha recognized the voice: Aldous! He turned his head slightly and craned his neck so he could catch a glimpse over his shoulder at the slaughter taking place behind him. He only dared a momentary look. He snapped a picture with his mind’s eye and placed it in his field of vision so Aldous could see it too. Half the people behind him had been executed, and the other half were huddled over on their knees, waiting for death.

“Oh no,” Aldous whispered as he froze in his tracks, hot breath jetting out of his mouth as he panted. He finally dared to turn and looked back. The faint glow of the spotlights from the harrier transports that remained around the entrance to the facility in Mount Andromeda remained visible over the tree line. He wanted to ignite his cocoon and speed back, blasting as many super soldiers as he could on his way in, hopeful that he could at least save one of the remaining post-humans—but he also knew he couldn’t. He had to survive—he had to be ready for the return of the A.I.

“Sanha, I’m so sorry, my dear friend. I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault you’re in that position. It should be me there instead of you.”

Sanha listened but dared not reply. Every few seconds, the super soldier’s rifle thundered to life, and a post-human subsequently lost theirs. His eyes were now focused on the Pollock that continued to form on the concrete underneath him—but it seemed to be shifting away from the randomness and fracture ubiquitous in a Pollock and transforming into a Monet, the blobs of blood beginning to form patterns that seemed like something recognizable. Sanha was sure he could see what looked like a hand forming out of the dirty sweat, little drops of blood tricking from it—the blood looked like bright red coins.

Finally, the super soldier made it to Sanha, his boot stepping into Sanha’s field of vision, wiping away the painting like a sandcastle in the waves. Sanha gulped hard before lifting his head up, squinting as the overhead lights hurt his eyes.

Aldous watched through Sanha’s eyes as the super soldier looked down at his next victim. He looked like the worst perversion of the man-machine civilization. Straight out of Milton, stood a real life Beelzebub, complete with wings that spread out into a six-foot span. He wore a helmet that covered most of the top part of his face, and he flexed skeletal-looking prosthetic fingers on the trigger of his extraordinarily heavy and powerful rifle, carried by his carbon fiber cybernetic arm.

Worst of all were the eyes—or lack there of. The super soldiers all had their biological eyes scooped out in favor of mechanical ones that were jammed unnaturally into their eye cavities, causing bluish stretch marks to snake outward into ugly, web-like patterns in every direction. The mechanical orbs were too large to simply replace the biological eyes, so the entire extent of skin surrounding the eyes, including their eyelids and the muscles around them, had to be removed. This gave the super soldiers an uncanny lack of facial expression, their eyes appearing almost as black voids. At their center, however, were golden irises that swiveled to and fro.

The irises rotated perceptibly as Sanha looked into them, apparently facilitating some sort of visual process. The super soldier’s eyes remained locked on Sanha for an unusually long period of time, the rifle not firing as expected.

Aldous felt as though he were in a Planck ripple—the time seemingly drawn out inexplicably as he waited for his friend’s life to end. The other executions had, at the very least, been quick. This time, it appeared the super soldier was savoring this one for some reason. Does he know Sanha has a rider? Aldous’s connection was aural only, so the white glow that crossed over the eyes of post-humans while their minds’ eyes were flashing images shouldn’t have been present. Could the super soldier possibly detect Aldous’s presence anyway?

Then, suddenly, the rifle barrel was lifted. “Professor Sanha Cho,” the super soldier announced, almost cheerfully, “today’s your lucky day. You’ve been classified as a VIP.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God,” Sanha whispered to himself.

“Excuse me for a moment, will you?” the super soldier said as he turned to the post-human kneeling to Sanha’s right and unceremoniously shot him in the temple. Blood sprayed hot on Sanha’s right cheek, before quickly cooling and becoming a cold shock, running down his neck as the super soldier’s execution spree continued.

Suddenly, a harrier transport emerged from above the tree line, headed in Aldous’s direction. It yanked him out of his stunned immobilization and sent his legs springing into action. He turned and ran for the nearest tree, reaching down with his hand to grab a few branches as he thrust himself down into the snow, pulling the branches up over himself like a blanket of camouflage as he did so.

He knew the transport would certainly be equipped with sensors that could detect and recognize a human pattern amongst the trees, but Aldous hoped the snow and branches would be enough to keep the intelligent algorithms from recognizing his pattern.

The transport whizzed overhead, its red laser sensors visible underneath its belly as it passed by, but it didn’t stop.

When a minute had passed, Aldous got up, brushing the snow off of his clothes and exposed skin, and tuned back into Sanha’s mind’s eye.

The last post-human had been executed, and the super soldier was now standing in front of Sanha once again, gazing down at his prey. “Those implants of yours are mighty powerful,” he began as he returned his rifle to his backpack and retrieved the smaller, sleeker disruptor device. “We can’t just keep shooting the damned thing over and over,” he said as he shot Sanha in the lower abdomen, the energy dissipating in his body.

Sanha grunted slightly, but the disruptor wasn’t painful as much as it was uncomfortable, causing the MTF implant to shimmer slightly, resulting in a numbing of the legs, not unlike the experience of people with sciatica. “I mean, I could just assign a guy to follow you around and shoot you every two minutes, but that hardly seems practical. Lucky for you,” he said, grinning as he replaced his disruptor, “there’s an alternative.”