Mark Doten - The Infernal

[heavy cross out] tell my story!

I think of my friend Lewis.

No, not Lewis. Can’t think, can’t remember.

Commissioners, you must allow me in the Omnosyne.

Give me that, only that, I beg of you.

Get through this, then patch it up, then my turn, so I can remember and understand at last.

Picture the subject in the Omnosyne.

Imagine the whole process, front to back.

Imagine a whole subject, a prone and fully expressive body, not this burnt and ruined thing.

Do you even know what it looks like?

I will tell you what it looks like.

[heavy cross out] tongue swells violently at the introduction of the threads, while the other threads, in their progress down the spine, inflict terrible pain. Each nerve activated and a reaction touched off. It is only pain that is felt — if it turns to pleasure, the threads compensate — they cut of the pleasure so that again it is pain.

The body goes into shock, then, just as quickly, moves back out if it — the body does not know how to respond to the intensity of pain in the neck and head and shoulders, in the arms, the wrists and fingers — perhaps it feels as if the body is being pressed with hot pokers, or flayed, inch by inch, down the trunk and into the abdomen and groin and thighs. I’ve seen pain of such severity that a toenail actually flies off, so tightly is the subject clenching the muscles of his foot.

The whole body jitters, then is still, then [heavy cross out] goes on for some three or four hours, until the spines erupt down the subject’s back.

Spinal fluid has gone into hyperproduction, and now thick, rubbery protuberances erupt alongside the spine on either side, pumped full of spinal fluid, of pus and blood, measure ten to forty-five centimeters in length and two to six centimeters in diameter, swaying gently an hour later when they’re full grown, like the tentacles of a sea anemone.

Through all of this, the eyes flick open and closed — all the way open, darting as far as the muscles of orbit will allow, up, down, perimeter of the socket [heavy cross out] eye flicks and flicks, and somehow stays ahead of the pain, almost — eyes squeezing shut, then flying wide open and darting, then squeezing all the way shut, panicked by the pain chasing through. Something almost comical in the way the eyes squeeze shut. Like a clown or mime might shut his eyes, and place index fingers in his ears, and wait for the bomb to go off. But this impression is complicated by the Jennings medical gag that holds the mouth wide open, and the mass of threads leading from mouth to upper box, and the dipping needle on its long copper arm, positioned between the teeth.

[heavy cross out]

[heavy cross out]

We are now five hours in, six hours, and things are accelerating. The body in full convulsion, and yet the spines sway gently, almost in slow motion, and change color, going from an angry, vulcanized black to aquamarine or royal blue or a pearlescent pink — the eyes on the twisted-back head darting and squeezing shut, the mouth wide, tongue swelling, the body jittering madly as though touched by high-voltage wires, and the spines gently swaying, pink or blue or green.

And then, around the seventh hour, all the terrible pain is over — or it doesn’t matter anymore, somehow.

The machine activates nerves, muscle groups, in ways that they have never before been activated, a whole different set of experiences play across the body than have ever played before — and then a change.

A look comes into the face, of such grace, such light — even with the mouth split open by the Jennings gag. That open mouth is no longer expressive of a demented rictus, but of something else — total understanding.

[heavy cross out] as though the mouth had swung open in that moment of full comprehension and been held like that — as though the subject would now live in that instant of understanding.

The muscles of the face relax, all the lines of care smooth out, and the mouth is open — I have often thought: as in song, as though caught in mid-hymn. And as the subject’s face is transfigured, a marvelous clatter rises in the transcriber, and the confession is typed onto the sheets of paper fed through by hand.

The subject in the apparatus has found it — he is OK with himself at last. The pain no longer matters — what is it compared to the memory of every other pain, every other euphoria, feeling all that and understanding all that all at once?

So at last, you see, he can be OK — he can be OK with everything that ever happened.

And then the deep story is told.

That is the version of Eden that I favor — perfect memory, and perfect understanding. Which we were cut off from when we were expelled.

[heavy cross out]

but the Commission interrupted my work.

It is torture; it is execution; how can we approve a method that doesn’t allow us to ask questions; how can we risk high-value subjects in a machine that will kill them, when we may not have the first understanding of the deep story they tell.

It is true, the deep stories I extracted were quite different from dead lists of facts and dates in the Memex. A sort of poetry, at times gnomic, at others perfectly clear, it was a chance, in that sense, a calculated risk.

These were not the real reasons, though, were they?

The Commission could not accept what the machine offered. They had seen its work with their eyes, and they understood: a return to Eden, everything they had ever lived, their childhood and youth, their family and their choices — they would have it all and understand it all, and would experience a grace such as none before had known.

“If we accept that what you are saying is true, then you are giving to our enemies a gift — a gift we are not ourselves permitted.”

Yes, that is true, that is the paradox.

I said that we could set up such devices, to allow our own people into them, at the hour of their death, so that they too might have this gift.

But they decided, no, we could not use the apparatus on our own countrymen, that was not a possibility — we could not offer such grace to our own countrymen, when it might wipe our country out altogether.

And so the program was shuttered, and I understood that I was no longer of any use to the Commission — so I would use the Omnosyne on myself, porcelain crank turned by a machine I rigged up, pages feeding out to no one, but first I would have to get rid of the minders that swarmed about me; I was the last of the students of the institute, and they had their hopes in me, and knew not to trust …

[heavy cross out]

And so I armed myself with an M1 and a hunting knife, and eliminated the minders and barricaded myself in the room with the Omnosyne — but I failed, I had only just begun to thread myself in before a wave of soldiers arrived, and blew down the door.

I think that is why I have always prized the notion of friendship.

Outside the apparatus, true friendship is the closest we have to the exchange I dream of, the angels of light [heavy cross out]

[heavy cross out]

The apparatus is accelerating!

Clutch levers and pinions and friction plates [heavy cross out]

The apparatus is breaking down!