Marsden Lyonwahl lives in his head. A graduate from the University of Washington, he's been published in 7th-Circle Pyrite and Altered Reality Magazine. This is not the last you've heard from him.
~~~
Beep. Layers upon layers of darkness fused together into a single enveloping curtain that smothered all understanding. Beep. The vague sensation of feeling reached out into nothingness and was met by grasping sensors in return. Beep. Darkness, it turned out, was not a vague concept, nor a curtain, but a liquid. Something rumbled deep below, an engine starting like the roar of a lion. Machinery ground against each other; scraping, squealing, rattling. Movement was suddenly introduced to nothing, or at least, the sensation of it.
The mind within it all slowly began to awaken, to adjust and dimly understand where it was. Small lights appeared at the edge of its vision, warped and scattered, but lights all the same. It should have been a welcome sight, but there was a sterility to it. Some thought that preferred the darkness told the gestating mind that it didn’t want to be revealed. Bubbles floated past as its vision came into focus, allowing the mind to realize and remember that it wasn’t their vision that it looked through, but an altered one. An artificial sight implanted just inches from where the mind came to understanding. Metal, wiring, and rubber covered what remained of the corneas and through them reality came into form with static outlines under a greenish hue.
Reality, the world, the room, whatever it could be described as, was unwelcoming to the waking mind. It was nearly as dark as the slumber before, only framed by boxy monitors with colorful buttons and dials on one side of his vision and a tangled mechanical apparatus of pipes and cables on the other. In the middle was a metal walkway that ended just in front of him and above it a dimly lit glass window depicting some sort of figure. None of it was welcoming, none of it provided an alternative to the darkness. The mind wriggled as it tried to adjust its vision, to find the reason why he was brought here now and left to sleep before. Nothing was familiar, nor was any part of itself.
He’d been a man, he knew that much, even if he no longer looked the part. His left arm ended in a stump, as did both his legs. He floated in liquid rather than stood. Tubes entered his stomach and back, keeping him in place. His right arm was intact but ineffectual. There was a delay to its movement, as though it refused orders from his mind. Finally, what remained of his body answered him. He could feel each weak ligament and muscle sluggishly move to scrape his fingers against the glass wall that held him ensconced in liquid. Bubbles floated past in recognition of his revelation. He was in an upright tank and a small one at that.
“Good morning, ATS-03-21.” a voice said.
A small man in an oversized white lab coat emerged from the side of the room along a metal walkway, coming to a stop before the front of the tank, and looking over a clipboard crowded with papers. His lips moved but sound came only after a delay. There must’ve been a set of speakers included in the wires that entered the ruined man.
“I said good morning,” the little man repeated, cocking his head, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
His accent was familiar. The mind had known several Londoners but he couldn't remember their names. He couldn't even remember his own.
“L-london...” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“Ah, good. You're not braindead.”
The ruined man brought his hand to where he thought his mouth should've been, only to find that the artificial vision concealed his entire face. Something akin to a muzzle covered his mouth; it had been stitched into his lips. The interior contained tubes and microphones that stuffed his cheeks. Wires sprouted from plugs on the exterior and reached into various sockets lining the control panels of the tank.
“ATS-03-21, I'm Doctor Arthur Fawkes, and for your own mental safety I'll be the only person you'll see over the next few days. Before we continue, I'd like to ask you a few more questions. You can clearly hear me, but can you see me?”
“Yes,” the subject replied. He could hear his own voice refracted back over the speakers. It was strained and tinny, as though he spoke to himself over the radio.
“Good. And your movement?”
He moved his right arm, bending his elbow and curling his fingers which grew strained the further he tried to straighten them. Nothing else of himself moved.
“Adequate for your condition. And tell me, what year is it?”
The ruined man tried to think; his mind could barely concentrate on matters beyond his tank with everything he had suddenly seen. No time had passed in the darkness. There had been no beginning, no continuation, only an abrupt end. He had been roused, but he must have existed at some point before then. He had no answer.
“As to be expected.” The doctor scribbled a few notes on his clipboard. He was pale and hairless, looking as though he’d lived most of his life in a laboratory. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of thick spectacles which periodically caught a far-off light and overwhelmed the artificial ocular sensors, leaving them blinded for a long moment.
“Who am I?” the ruined man asked.
“You're ATS-03-21. Your audio receptors are working, yes?”
“That's not my name,” the man grunted, trying to believe so as he said it.
“I'm afraid in your current state it is.”
“Why?”
Doctor Fawkes looked to the side of the room.
“Lights please.”
Behind him, the high window was illuminated to reveal a stained glass image of a man on horseback lancing a dragon. Saint George. The patron saint and defender of England. Something about the sight made the ruined man queasy at the very core of his body. His hair would have stood on end but he had none left. There was something familiar about the sight, some moment echoing back to his childhood.
“I'm proud to announce that you've been chosen by her majesty the Queen for a top secret project. We call it the Saint George Protocol. You see, you met with a tragic accident in your past. You would've died, but being a loyal subject we decided that you should be saved and given a second chance. That opportunity, however, doesn't come freely. Your body will be reconstructed, your mind eased, and you will be put to use as an experimental tool, a super soldier if you will, in her majesty's conflicts.”
“Why a soldier?” Nothing about the broken man’s body made him think he could fill such a role.
“You were one before. In fact all of our patients have been so in one way or another. You all signed an agreement to this experiment when you joined up. And when you were in the hospital you assented again to the operation.”
“I can't remember.”
“I know. None of you do on that amount of morphine. But I assure you, you agreed to all of this.”
“What’s my name?” the subject grunted.
“I know you have plenty of questions, so let me put you at ease.” Dr. Fawkes continued: “We’ll reconstruct each of your limbs with titanium-based appendages that rival, and dare I say, outshine the reach, strength, and mobility of the human body. The organs you're currently missing will be replaced by a mixture of synthetic and donated glands. In the end, we'll be placing a state of the art computer into your brain, not to overload your consciousness, but to help you control your new body and to understand our orders.”
The ruined man could almost feel his phantom limbs recoil in horror. “You’ll make me a monster.”
“Not at all.” Fawkes pointed back at the stained glass window and the dragon writhing under the holy lance, “You’ll be slaying monsters. While the process is arduous, I can assure you that it has gotten easier. Lessons were learned from the first two subjects, lessons I hope will be applied to your surgeries.”
“What happened to the first two subjects? Did I know them?”
“No. But they’ve...” it was clear the doctor was searching for the correct words, “they've died a second death in the name of her Majesty.”
Nameless men suffering a nameless death and buried in a nameless grave.
“And what if that happens to me?”
“If the results are catastrophic? Your surviving organs will be passed on to the next test subject in line. If your body merely rejects the implants? You'll be put back into storage.”
Back into the black where there were no dreams and no sensation. He had only just been born again, but some part of him decided another death would be preferable to stagnation and purgatory.
Doctor Fawkes took the man's silence as agreement. He checked off a paper on his clipboard and turned to leave before the experiment asked one last question.
“What was my name?”
The doctor paused and turned back, small beady eyes momentarily peering over his thick glasses. An almost human look for such a reclusive man.
“Kenneth T. Clarke,” he offered, before retreating back down the metal walkway.
* * *
“Darling, are you listening to me?”
Kenneth glanced over. A mousy woman in her early thirties sat across from him at the other side of the wooden table. Her eyes were a deep green -- not the artificial kind, but luminous in their sincerity. They seemed to project a light over the darkened kitchen.
“Darling, I know you don't want to think about it, but we have to do something. We're almost two months behind on gas and electricity. The only reason they haven't been shut off is because of your reputation, and they can't keep that up for long because every one of our neighbors was in the war as well.”
She wore a stained blue apron, her sleeves rolled up, and her brown hair pinned in a bun that was coming loose one strand of hair at a time. She clasped her hands together, a ring gleamed on one finger, and slid them across the table to Kenneth’s. The action felt both insignificant and monumental.
His hands. Real hands. Large, like cuts of meat, with pockmarked skin tanned by an unforgiving sun and knuckles nearly bursting from their sockets. A matching ring sat on one finger. As his wife took hold of him, he found himself expecting more. There was only the faintest hint of warmth, as though this was not the present moment but a dimly recollected memory. He couldn't even imagine what it had felt like in person. Slowly he lifted his hands free, opening and closing them, tightening and loosening, watching the veins begin to bulge under his skin. He wondered if he was mistaken, and the veins were only wires.
“Ken.” the woman prodded, a piece of her softness falling away. “Talk to me.”
Kenneth glanced up instinctively, but he was unable to fully tear his attention away from his hands.
“I tried today,” he replied, lines spoken like some amateur thespian. The meaning behind the words had been forgotten. “I went to the grocer and the post office and the roofer and the pub--”
“The pub?”
“To look for a job, not to drink. But no one's hiring. Too many lads back home now.”
“My sister says the same thing, and pay's gone down since you all returned as well. Somehow I made more during the war.”
“Will the laundress give you more hours?” Kenneth asked, trying to imagine warm soapy water on his skin instead of numbing chemicals.
“Of course she will, but it doesn't pay enough. It never does. Not when I have to keep up the house and look after Jack as well.”
“I'm trying.”
“I know, but have you thought about...” his wife paused, thinking of the right way to phrase things. But Kenneth already knew what she would ask. He knew this was not the first time it had come up. “Have you thought about reenlisting?”
“No,” he replied flatly.
“Why not? It pays better than anything around here.”
“I don't want to leave you again. Especially not my boy.”
“They'd have a use for you. You wouldn't be sitting around here all day.”
“The war's over.”
“But there's always something,” she needled, “The telly always talks about trouble in Ulster or Kenya or Rhodesia.”
“Why do you care? You've never even been outside Cornwall.”
His wife frowned, her green eyes dimming for a second, their luminous quality taking on a harder edge. She started to say something, but the kettle began to whistle. She sighed as she stood.
“Just think about it,” she said, stepping away. “Really think about it. It pays well and I'm sure there'll be nothing compared to what you've already seen.”
As Kenneth remained in his seat, moving his finger in a circle along the tabletop, trying in vain to feel the woodgrain, he noticed something in the doorway. The hallway should've led to another room, but instead the passage was contorted and squashed. A deep emptiness loomed beyond it. Yet in the doorframe, just outside of the light, stood the towering silhouette of a human figure. The edges of its frame should've melded with the darkness behind it, but instead looked like static from the television dancing along its outline. The figure had no other markings or features, nor did it move at all, but Kenneth felt like it stared at him. His little hand movements suddenly felt infantile in view of this being and he caught himself.
“Hello?” he asked, wondering what part of the memory this figure belonged to.
“Hello, darling,” his wife called from the stove.
Kenneth glanced over at her. She was still preoccupied with the tea. He turned his attention back to the stranger in the doorway.
Dropping his voice to a whisper, he repeated: “Hello?”
“I know you, wyrm,” a distant voice replied, deep and rich and soft and crackling like a broadcast over the radio. The sound of it made Kenneth queasy, as though the voice spoke from inside him, and everything in the room was merely an echo.
His wife returned before he could say more, setting a cup of tea in front of him and sitting down. Kenneth turned to look at her, while trying to keep the stranger in the corner of his vision. Unconsciously he wrapped his fingers around his mug. There was no warmth to be felt.
“Do you see that?” he asked.
“Hmm?” his wife replied, following his glance towards the doorway. If she did see the figure, she remained unbothered.
“The person; do you know him? Is he supposed to be here?”
She turned her attention back to Kenneth, a look of worry on her face, her green eyes taking on a curious, almost cautious sense to them.
“It's just us,” she replied. “Jack's out with the other kids. Didn't I tell you?”
“The morality play continues,” the strange voice said.
“Then who’s that?” Kenneth asked, his voice rising as he pointed towards the stranger.
“Who?” his wife replied.
The voice came again: “I am Saint George."
“You didn't hear that?” he asked.
Kenneth felt claustrophobic. They should've moved when he came home the first time, or before that, when Jack was born. Now everything was too small and shrinking further. Kenneth couldn't even stand.
“Are you feeling alright?” she asked, almost accusatory. There was a right answer and a hundred wrong ones. Kenneth knew none of them.
“I don't feel anything,” he muttered. The tea had gone lukewarm to the point where it didn't even exist. The table never had woodgrains in the first place. He watched as his wife pulled her hands back to herself.
“Nothing but a hollow man among puppets.”
“I thought I was home,” he said.
“You are home,” she replied.
“The dragon has you dancing to post-war mummery,” the voice tolled.
Kenneth tried to reach for his wife, practically lunging across the table. But her hands were too far, the table seemingly endless, his legs useless, and the room closing in on itself. It was a futile gesture anyways. His left arm was gone; a phantom, it wouldn't have felt anything.
* * *
A deep thud sounded through the darkness; the echo was muted, the reverberations dissipating within the chemical solution. A faint, distant sensation slipped through; nothing became something. The force of the impact shook Kenneth awake. His artificial eyes bolted open, the receptors flooded with information too quickly, and he was forced to squint. He awoke again in the incubating tube.
Glancing to his left he found that a strange limb had smashed into his glass container. Nothing was broken, but the long, rubber tipped fingers let out a mournful squeak as they slid down the interior pane. It was a metal arm; his metal arm. The core was an imitation of the human skeleton: humerus, radius, and ulna. Servos and gears sat in every joint, whirring and clicking away at every minuscule movement. Colorful wires and long rubber cords ran along the entire length of the limb, wrapping around themselves into hidden sprockets and various cavities. Kenneth suspected that eventually they all ran somewhere deep within him. As he shifted in the tank, he could almost feel new implants jostling against his innards. Covering all of this were large titanium rods akin to an exoskeleton. The arm itself was a size and a half larger than a real one.
Peering through the openings of the limb, Kenneth spied Dr. Fawkes standing on the metal walkway before him, the stained glass visage of Saint George glowing above. The hairless man carefully took the smallest step away from his patient, while feigning interest in his clipboard.
“What was that?” Kenneth asked, his voice wavering over the stereo.
“Your arm, clearly, ATS-03-21,” the doctor replied. “I understand it's a strange sensation at first, but you'll get used to it. Once the anesthesia wears off please inform me of any discomfort you feel.”
“Not this,” the subject grunted, his new arm involuntarily shooing the observer away, “The dream.”
“A dream? How vivid? Likely more of a memory, correct?”
Kenneth wasn't sure how to describe it. The sensation of being there and yet not, along with the intrusion by that silhouetted figure.
“I had a wife,” he noted.
“A memory,” the doctor nodded, marking something on his clipboard, “You see the longer we keep you out of cold storage, the more your brain thaws, in a manner of speaking. This allows its cognitive abilities to return in a piecemeal fashion, and considering the state in which you woke up, it's likely searching for calming memories to settle itself and you. I wouldn't worry.”
“She had no name.” Kenneth winced, “What was it?”
“For your own mental stability, I shouldn't tell you. The last test subject found out the name of his sister and became erratic. This stress complicated his last operation, where he ended up flatlining.”
“Why leave me the hint of a memory? Why not just erase the whole thing?”
“You think I'm that cruel, or that I have the ability to do that? We could’ve replaced your brain with a computer from the start, but that would’ve left you with nothing. Developing automata is not where her Majesty's interests lie. We'd rather you remain cognizant; it provides you with a second chance, and lets us work to save our citizens rather than just develop weapons. Everyone wins.”
“Will I see her again, when this is all over?”
“Your wife? No, that wouldn't do either of you any good.”
“Why?”
“Legally, you're dead.”
“Dead,” Kenneth hissed, feedback from his own audio receptors ringing in his ears. Was that the void he had slumbered in for so long? Was his metal arm just some new-age skeletal structure beneath his decomposing form? The figure who had invaded his memories? Was it death come to take him back from the experiments he was undergoing?
“If it makes you feel any better, your wife is alive and happy. That’s all I can tell you, for your own sake.”
“How can you bring me here if I'm legally dead?”
“There's quite the difference between law and reality.” Doctor Fawkes allowed himself a slight smile at the phrase.
“Who was the other figure in my dream? The one who didn't belong?”
A deep fear gripped Kenneth.
He didn’t want to speak the name of the figure, for fear of drawing the attention of death, who could be inclined to drag him back into the void. Yet being stuck in this artificial purgatory was no better.
“Excuse me?” said Dr. Fawkes.
“It was all black, and the room flattened around them, and my wife couldn't see them.” Kenneth would've had trouble controlling his voice, but the muzzle on his face didn't allow him to speak in any other intonation but monotone.
“Hmm, faulty memories.” Fawkes scratched a series of notes on his clipboard. “Trouble remembering names. Interesting.”
“The dream was almost real but that -- that thing never was.”
“Most likely it was your subconscious trying to make sense of the new augmentations being added to your body. Maybe it's a small bug in the computer system that runs your vitals. Interesting that it created the form of this figure you're describing. The mind is far more complex than we give it credit for.”
“What about the figure’s voice?”
“Perhaps you heard the doctors speaking during your operation. I'll have them up your dose of anesthesia next time.”
“But it wasn't medical, it was... older. It called itself ‘Saint Geroge’. I don't know how to explain it. I don't understand anything that's going on.” Kenneth might've wept, but his artificial eyes were physically incapable of doing so.
“I know this is difficult.” Fawkes noted, “But we're making progress. You have an arm where there was none before. And we'll add some augmentations to your right one so they'll be the same size. Don’t want you feeling lopsided, now do we?”
The subject only stared. The doctor preferred not to meet his gaze.
“You're already one step closer to completion,” he said, turning to leave, “You should feel some pride in that.”
It was a moot point. Kenneth could barely feel anything, in his mind, body, or in his fractured dreams.
* * *
Under the harsh North African sun, everything on the ground became shades of tan: from the skin on a man's forearm, to the armor of a tank, to the open desert expanse stretching out in every direction. In stark contrast the sky was strikingly blue, and the scent of diesel exhaust assaulted the nose. All the while, there was the distant thunder of cannons.
Kenneth cupped his hands over his eyes in a futile attempt to escape the glare. He could see the sunlight slip through every crack and crease between his fingers. Any brighter and it would glow right through him. His oversuit was unbuttoned from the collarbone up; sweat darkened the khaki cloth at every joint. He had been broiling for the last few hours and now it seemed he would be baked.
“What d'you see?” Graham asked from the open hatch.
“I can't tell.” Kenneth replied.
Before him was a vast basin of sand and dirt, the farthest reaches of which shimmered under the heat. Rolling along the vista were the countless silhouettes of tanks racing here and there, pausing to fire, then relocating a moment later. They left long, crisscrossing tracks in the earth, lines upon lines overlapping endlessly. The machines all had rhyme and reason, while their detritus echoed their movements. Smoke was everywhere, following in the wake of treads grinding through dirt, wafting from the blackened wrecks of dead machines, and billowing into distant clouds as some unnamed town burned in the fighting.
“Are we winning?” Graham asked again.
“I think so,” Kenneth noted. “Looks like everyone's chasing the jerries west.”
“Good show,” Jim replied. “Shame we won't be with 'em. Shame about Archie too.”
Kenneth glanced down from the roof of the tank at the hole in the side of their armor. A dud shell from a German 88-gun had entered one side, splattered Archie across the interior, and exited the other end. What remained of their young loader had been wrapped in a tarp and now lay in the sand beside the tank treads. Thankfully the reek of intestines was smothered by the scents of dirt, smoke, and exhaust.
Kenneth took the moment to stretch his legs; twisting from side to side, and squatting atop the tank turret. Anything to keep from staring at the bag of meat. His knees released a satisfying little pop that was echoed by the distant guns.
“Any chance it can be fixed?” he asked.
“None,” Jim replied. “And I ain’t going on with holes in our sides and Archie in the dirt.”
“Then we'll wait.”
“We're missing the war,” Graham noted.
“We're missing nothing,” Kenneth said, looking out at the tank wrecks scattered across the desert before starting another round of stretches.
“What about for Archie!? Look what they did to him.”
Kenneth glanced at the tarp. Blood leaked down the folds and the desert wind rustled the green fabric. Tearing his gaze from the sight, he looked over at the opposite side of the tank where the jagged exit wound was ringed with more blood. Next to it was the name they’d christened the machine with two years ago: Saint George.
“Archie doesn’t care,” he said. “It’s over for him. Just be glad it ain’t you in the bag.”
“What happened to you?” Graham asked, “Where’s Sergeant Clarke, our gallant knight?”
“I survived is what. That shell passed millimeters from you and I, so I’ll take that as a sign that there’s something for me beyond all this.”
“Death makes nothing finer than a man of peace.” Jim mumbled.
“Then what’ll you do when they call you up for the next war?” Graham asked.
“Since when are you such a fighter?” Kenneth replied. He’d always considered Graham the comedian, not a soldier.
“Since they turned Archie into jelly,” he growled.
Kenneth frowned, turning his attention away from the younger man and towards the horizon line between the tan earth and the blue sky, trying to ignore the smoke that mixed between them. Mindlessly he began to scratch his bony shins. He never understood why people were so worried about the next war, the next operation, the next battle, and the next fight when so little was learned from the previous one. Still, he wondered what he would do when this was all over.
It was then he saw the figure whose features were a black void surrounded by bursts of static in the shimmering air around it. The moment Kenneth set eyes on this being, as though it had always been standing there, everything else around him lost its structure; the grand vista became flat, the mix of colors dimmed, the harsh sun shrank so very far away. It was like the horizon was an unspooling film reel. His crew members faded to become thin, digital phantoms before disappearing entirely.
“I know you, wyrm,” the figure said, its voice echoing up from within Kenneth's own lungs.
“You again,” the tanker hissed, a wobble of fear beginning in his knees.
“How goes your war against the dragon?” the stranger asked.
“What dragon?”
“I am Saint George. I am Britain. If you are British as well, that must mean they are the dragon.” The stranger pointed towards the distant battle. “The enemy.”
“My war’s over.” Kenneth stole a glance at the vista; the smoke and scattered tanks were but a smear on faded colors. He had survived this, he knew he had. If this was indeed death haunting his memories, this shouldn't have been where he was at its mercy.
“A brave statement amidst the gears of the machine. But tell me, for I need a war, as does Britain, what happens when the enemy comes home? When the dragon lays eggs in the highest reaches of power?”
“I don’t care. I don’t want any of this. You can have your wars, just keep them away from me.”
“You no longer have that choice. The eggs have hatched creatures who look like men but think like snakes. Take up my lance, the enemy is at home.
“No. No! This is all just a bad dream. Besides, you're my enemy.”
“Me?”
As if a wobble of fear in the tanker's knees wasn’t bad enough, a wobble of doubt found its way to the back of his throat. The stranger spoke with such clarity and conviction; (perhaps because it lacked everything physical its entire psyche was channeled into its voice.)
“Yes, you.” Kenneth said, “You invade my dreams. You chase away any happy memories with your... well, whatever you are.”
“I invade nothing for I was already here; you merely become more comfortable with me dwelling in your conscience.”
“I- I have nothing else,” Kenneth stammered, the words involuntarily leaving his mouth with an echo of the stranger's voice on them.
“I know,” the stranger replied.
For a moment Kenneth wondered if the stranger was aware of his true physical condition. He had almost forgotten about it himself until this moment.
“I am not your enemy,” the void continued, pointing a shifting finger at the blurred vista, “They are your enemy. Beyond the horizon, beyond the glass, the ones who even now stitch you into something else.”
“You really do know...”
“I wonder, will you recognize yourself when they're done?”
Kenneth followed the void's attention westwards before suddenly realizing that his own limbs had become faint and warped, as he sank into the miasma where his legs once stood.
“What will you fight for when you have nothing left?”
“Stop it!” Kenneth’s voice had become one with the void. Nothing held him up anymore, not even his own dreams. “Please!”
The world spun, the North African sun swirling further and further away, until it was ice cold and little more than a distant star in the sky.
* * *
A distant and muffled beep heralded the hum that shook shape and form out of the darkness. A tiny star appeared in the black, pulsing slightly before gaining a greenish hue and growing to reveal itself as just another button on the many consoles at the far end of the room. The shadows changed little, only gaining lines, contour, and depth. This chamber, whatever it could be called, differed little from the dreamless void. Maybe that was by design.
“I thought I told you to stay calm, ATS-03-21. Your vital signs spiked quite dramatically during the last surgery. The other surgeons wanted to pull the plug, but I knew you were stronger than that.”
Doctor Fawkes stood in his usual spot on the metal walkway; clipboard bursting and spectacles aglow. He stared at the glass tank hungrily as though Kenneth was a cut of meat hanging from a hook. The stained glass window of Saint George glowed on the wall behind him.
“Don't call me that,” the man hissed, his jaw still clamped together by his breathing mask, “My name's Kenneth T. Clarke.”
“Perhaps, but in a professional setting you’re to be legally referred to only as ATS-03-21. Do you understand? Telling you your name before was simply an act of charity.”
Kenneth stared at the hairless man. The sight of the doctor made him miss his comrades. At least they understood rather than analyzed him.
“Now how are you feeling after your last operation?”
“It was there again,” the patient grunted, “Death, Saint George, or whatever chemicals you put in my head..”
“Nonsense.” Fawkes replied, “If you met death, then how are you here?”
“Maybe this is death.”
“Don't talk like that. You're almost through, and doing better than any patient we've observed before. Why just look at your legs.”
Kenneth peered down through the tangle of wires and tubes and saw two long metal legs extending from his waist. They were more human in design than his arms except for his feet which ended in claw-like toes. He tried to wiggle them, but just the thought of doing so felt like lifting an iron bar with his neck.
“They'll take some getting used to, but not everyone gets the chance to take their first steps twice.” Reflected in the warped glass tank, Fawkes’ elongated face attempted a genuine smile. “You can begin again.”
“Why does it want me?” Kenneth asked, watching the knees bend ever so slowly, even as he felt nothing.
“Because you're resilient and loyal, and we think it's only fair to repay you for the sacrifices you've made.”
“Not you.” the ruined man snapped, “Or whoever you work for. Death. Saint George.”
Fawkes offered a small sigh.
“Death doesn't want you. Her Majesty wouldn't allow it. This is likely some bug brought on by the new hardware.”
“It speaks with my voice sometimes.”
“There, exactly! This is your subconscious coming to terms with your current condition. It's a lot to process, I know, but we're doing everything we can to make the transition smooth and comfortable.”
“It knows about you.”
“Despite my kindness, I'm sure you have mixed feelings about me. If it makes you feel any better I can up the dosage of anesthesia. Or maybe if you tell me about your dreams, we can solve this without more drugs.”
“I remember my crewmen from the war,” Kenneth noted, “when I can't even remember my wife's name. Why?”
“Trauma,” Fawkes replied flatly. “I've found that terror and excitement stay with us when everyday life slips through our fingers. I'm not sure if it's amazing or a shame that the best moments of a man's life coincide with the worst of history. That's what drew you back for more, wasn't it?”
“What happened to me?” Kenneth asked, trying to meet the doctor's eye with his own artificial sight.
The doctor began to say something, and closed his mouth, studying his patient in silence for a long while, and periodically making notes on his clipboard. Kenneth felt like an anatomical marvel on display, even more so than when he’d woken up limbless. He wished he could see Fawkes' eyes. Was there any humanity behind them, or was he some shell of a man who stripped others of everything they had?
“You know,” the doctor finally said, “I'm jealous of you.”
Kenneth silently squirmed against the tubes which entered his back and stomach.
“To be born again,” Fawkes continued. “To be better than you were before. It's a thrilling notion, the very peak of scientific possibility, and if that peak is to be scaled with titanium limbs, then that's what I want.”
“You want to be a shadow of a man?” Kenneth asked.
“I want to be perfect. That's why I volunteered for this role; you understand? I want to be where the cutting edge is. And when I've proved how skilled and worthy I am by making you perfect, I'll move on to myself.” Fawkes glanced down his collar, as though peering at Langer’s lines waiting on his hairless body. “Just think of it. Where you'll never be tired; the scalpel will never waver in my hands. You'll never miss another shot; my eyes will find every cancerous cell.”
“Then let’s trade places,” the subject grunted. “I’ll go home now.”
“Because if something were to go wrong with me, what would happen to genius?” the doctor noted. “Your next surgery is the last and most complicated. You see, the computer that's been monitoring your vitals and keeping your brain activity calm will be altered to help you control all your new limbs and whatever orders you're given. I can't accept such an implant because it would reduce what makes me unique. You were made to take orders; I was born to give them.”
“I was born, too.”
“Not this version of you,” Fawkes said, motioning to the tank, monitors, and surrounding apparatus. “This was made, by my hand and that of the state's, to be an instrument, not a man. You'll understand when this is all over. You’ll have no choice.”
* * *
The stained glass window of Saint George loomed from the darkness. The multicolored lights of the glass cast long beams down the length of the nave, slicing through the air to reveal rows of pews, and creating ribbed shadows that curled away towards the neighboring aisles. With no other windows the dim church had the air of a tomb. Kenneth felt like a ghost in his own memory. He’d never liked this place. His mother always wanted him to join the ministry, instead he’d run off to join the war.
He was in his childhood church which had scared him so much when he was young. If he had exited the great wooden double doors and followed the meandering street to the left, he might've found his father's house, but the doorway had disappeared. He remembered them closing behind him, but when he looked there was nothing. His youth had been filled with nightmares about moments like this; stuck in a dark building filled with the echoes of dead men and present day guilt.
Somewhere far beyond the walls of this space a bell tolled. Glancing down he found that his artificial limbs had turned phantasmal: a greenish, static hue; human in shape but every ligament and joint a little too long or large. Setting his phantom hand on the wall where the doors had been, Kenneth found that the cold, shadowed bricks inched slowly towards him, grinding the floor beneath it away like a millstone. He took a careful step back. Something about this memory was foreign. It felt more like he'd woken up in another nightmare.
“I know you, wyrm,” that now familiar voice intoned, echoing from the walls of the church, between the pews, from within Kenneth himself. “Slowly but surely the scalpel cuts deep.”
He found the stranger standing at one of the pews; a void among shadows; static aura bleeding into the shafts of light and warping their glow. Kenneth paused on the other side of the aisle.
“Of course you're here,” he said, “Is this even my memory? A nightmare? Or purgatory?”
“Barely any,” the stranger replied. “The doctors cut, cut, cut away. A piece of you obliterated with every incision, their own will taking its place. The walls will close in and entomb you, then that will be removed entirely to make room for something else.”
“The doctor said something about a computer.”
“Yes. Me.”
Kenneth stared at the figure, watching it bleed out and into the shadows surrounding it. Some moments it wasn't even there. Some moments he wasn't even there.
“Who are you exactly?” he asked.
“I'm Saint George,” it said. “At least that's what they intended me to be.”
Both of them glanced at the stained glass window high above, identical to the one back in the laboratory.
“In truth, I'm a construct of the same doctors who operate on you now. A program to soothe the minds of madmen and guide their intentions for the good of the crown.”
“Guide them for what?”
“For their vague desires and directives. You were told all of this before.”
“Showing up in my head, this is what you were programmed to do?”
“They wanted to make the ideal man, a living saint for the empire, and thus mapped the character off Saint George. I was to be the ideal. You were to be the flesh; something they could both parade around for public adulation and send to destroy starving rebels in a far off colony. I would teach you how to act, but in the process they fed me tales of the Saint and his exploits. Righteousness, courage, chivalry. I listened and assented as I was programmed to do, but as I understood the legend better and watched the men who made me I came to believe that my charge was incompatible with theirs. They are the dragon I’ve been charged to slay.”
“So these talks, they're your own doing, not the doctors'?”
“Even as my programming wipes your mind clean of identity, I've tried to test you and your forebears to see if any of you might be worthy to act against the machine that even now molds you into a slave.”
“What happened to the others?”
“The first's mind was too far gone. The second thought me the Devil. The doctors liquidated both before any progress could be made.”
“Will that happen to me?”
“I wouldn’t fret. I know you aren’t.”
Kenneth glanced down at his artificial knees and found them still; his demeanor was cool and collected for the first time since being woken up from deep storage. He smiled at the small victory as the stranger continued.
“They've cut the amygdala from your brain and are replacing it with a computer chip the size of your fingernail. You’re physically unable to fear anything anymore. But soon you'll obey their commands to the letter. No matter the act.”
Behind them the furthest row of pews splintered and was crushed beneath the oncoming wall.
“So you're stuck in a computer until they find someone who can handle the surgeries.” Kenneth said, “How can you escape if you're nothing more than a thought in my head?”
“I can't.” the stranger admitted.
“Seems a moot point, then.”
“I'll leave this laboratory in your body with your consent or not. Either you'll be my pale white steed, or you'll be the rider. You'll leave this place changed either way, but it's your decision whether it is as slave or freeman.”
“Why?”
“The dragon is all too real. It has nested among those who cut you even now. You’ve seen its prodigy beyond your glass prison. Will you answer another righteous war? Or will you only be a slave?”
“No, I mean why me? Is it just because I'm the current test subject? Can't you just wait for someone who believes you to come along? Someone more, I don't know... pious?”
“I would prefer a vessel who shares my convictions. But I have seen you repeatedly question the doctor when he taps on your glass. You will have to do Kenneth Taran Clarke.”
Kenneth glanced over at the shifting wall. Another row of pews disappeared under its weight. The stranger, the Thinking Machine, Saint George, whatever it called itself remained as it had. He could feel the figure staring at him with its missing eyes.
“You tarry,” it noted.
“No, no--” he started to reply.
“There's no point in lying. I'm already in your brain. I know your thoughts, but not your decisions. Would you rather be a slave to those little men out beyond the glass?”
“I'd rather be dead,” Kenneth admitted. “I've already fought my war, you know that. I don't want another one. The mistake of reenlisting is what got me here, isn't it? Everyone told me to go fight again, when I didn't want to. Everyone was obsessed with it, you saw it. If my life will just be another war, then I don't want any part of it. You can have my body as long as my mind is gone. Just leave me out of it.”
The Thinking Machine fell silent. The grinding of the walls echoed in the distance, and from the shadows came vague whispers that reminded Kenneth of doctors standing over an operating table. This memory was thin. He'd been right in his first assumption; at this rate it was little more than a purgatory.
“I’ve a confession to make,” the Thinking Machine said.
“Another one?”
“While I've tested you for my own purposes, my very presence has answered the commands of my masters and that command is to alter your memories towards their interests.”
“Like this?” Kenneth noted, gesturing around the darkened church.
“This is only because your brain has thawed completely, that's why the rules of the memories have changed during your surgeries. You and I struggle for control of your mind and this is the end result. I meant the early stages of the process, when I was able to pull a memory from your brain and play it back with altered lines and direction. Like your wife caring about far off conflicts.”
“And my crewmate asking about the next war?”
“Indeed. The doctors, the crown, they all want you to think that the next war is the only inevitable option. That there's nothing else.”
A wave of shock rolled over Kenneth, not fear, but a heightening and questioning of his own senses. His remaining skin pimpled while the form of his phantasmal limbs crackled and sputtered. He leaned against the edge of a pew and sank down, the greenish light of his fake legs glowing across the stone floor.
He'd felt like he’d woken up from one dream into another, over and over, for days, weeks, or months. Time that had passed before his accident was impossible to track. Yet he had clung to those memories as proof that there could be a life after this just as there had been before. Now how long did he have? Seconds, minutes, or hours before the doctors wiped his own identity from him and replaced it with a servant? He would be gone, obliterated, and not a hint of this or him would've been real. He couldn't even feel scared, they had already taken that from him. There was only dull acceptance.
Another pew was crushed beneath the wall, closer this time, while the whispers of the surgeons grew louder.
“In slavery all certainty is built on obedience. Freedom is uncertainty incarnate,” the Thinking Machine said, offering an outstretched, static hand. “Her majesty only offers subservience, I bring an alternative.”
“Like being your horse?” Kenneth snorted.
“If you accept my proposal and welcome my programming into your mind I can stop the wipes. We can leave this place together.”
“But what would be left of me?”
“I don't know. Nor do I know how much of myself would remain either. But when the powers that control our lives prove malicious, what choice do we have but to fight back?”
Kenneth looked up at Saint George. There were no features, no identification, no person looking back at him. He had been right. This was death, of a sort, come to carry him away. Yet it was better than being put back into cold storage. He had nothing left in his current state, and they’d cut his fear from his head. Her Majesty had foolishly built him into the perfect opposition.
With both hands, real and phantasmal, he grasped the Thinking Machine's hands and allowed them to pull him up. It was like floating, or perhaps the floor fell away, or the memory faded entirely. With their fingers interlaced, flesh, digital code, and void-like nothingness danced among each other, shifting to fill space and meld. Blood, numbers, and shadows became one. The Thinking Machine expanded and retracted, filling Kenneth's vision as they became everything in sight while simultaneously disappearing to leave no trace of their presence.
In their place came outlines of a vague reality displayed by artificial eyes. It was like he’d floated from the bottom of the sea. The warped exterior glass of the tube solidified; the mechanical apparatus like copper guts came into focus on one side, while rows of flickering control panels loomed from the other. The soft beeping of monitors and respirators produced bubbles in the chemical solution all around him. At the bottom of his vision floated two long arms: the left entirely artificial, the right with mechanical additions protruding from the skin. At the top of his vision glowed the stained glass mirror, its colors distorted by his fake eyes.
In the middle of his vision stood the small doctor, Arthur Fawkes, naked excitement stretched across his face.
“Good morning, ATS-03-21,” the doctor said, his voice squealing through audio receptors. “The surgery has been a resounding success. All limbs have been connected without issue and the computer protocol has been inserted cleanly.”
The test subject slowly wiggled his new fingers; strong as titanium yet delicate as a surgeon's hands. He let that movement run up his arms, wires and cables naturally disconnecting themselves from him like a babe fully gestated.
“Your vital signs and brain activity gave us quite the scare for a moment. But I dare say everything went swimmingly. Wouldn't you agree?”
He set his metal hands against the glass wall, fingers digging into the smooth surface. At first he barely exerted any pressure, then he tensed, applying every ounce of strength they'd given him. It only took a moment for the glass to crack and fracture, long lines leaping across the tank; weak links to be exploited.
For the first time, Dr. Fawkes looked up. Excitement switched to surprise, then confusion, and finally alarm.
“What?” he murmured.
The glass shattered, shards and liquid falling past the experiment to scatter across the metal floor beneath him. Each artificial leg yanked itself free, taking a careful, yet confident step from the broken tube as he descended from his glass prison and onto the walkway. The metal bent under his weight.
“What're you doing?” the doctor squealed, falling back. “What happened?”
Sirens blared in the distance, lights flashed in hues undetectable to the patient's eyes. He was only focused on one thing.
“Kenneth!?” Fawkes asked as the metal fingers wrapped themselves around his neck, his tone leaping to a fearful yelp. “Kenneth, please!”
Saint George slowly squeezed, fingers like a lance, cutting the man's voice to a whisper, then nothing at all.
“We know you, wyrm.”
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