cicatrize
Hell Yes
Joined: 15 Jun 2003
Posts: 1234
Location: Cambridge, UK
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So here's a short story I wrote a while ago.. don't think I posted it here before.. enjoy
Reborn
It was not the pressures of battle that caused Moquator's skull to feel like it was splitting, nor was it the smoke from the funeral pyres; such things had long since failed to disturb him, even if the same could not quite yet be said for the twisted forms visible within the flickering orange flames. Not quite yet.
The cleansing was necessary, by blade and flame if it came down to it although less personal methods were preferable. Even if the headaches plagued him regardless, the guilt took less time to fade when he was simply operating the machinery. It felt less like genocide that way. Most of the caverns this deep below the city were inaccessible to the great steel behemoths that had been so successful in cleansing the upper levels. Most of them had been left alone for centuries and, Moquator secretly believed, could be safely left alone for centuries to come. But the cleansing was necessary. The Pure must inherit the Earth, reclaim it as a species that could once again rival the great civilizations of the late 23rd century, before the great plagues that ravaged mankind after the third and devestating Cyber-Jihad; designer viruses that had ripped through the nations of Earth, butchering the human genome as their virtual counterparts had worked their way through mans electronic communication systems.
Its veracity - the virus spread like wildfire through entire populations - had lead to its demise. Within a few years the active form had run out of new victims and the virus lived on only in the genome of the afflicted. A fraction of humanity had survived the cancers and other genetic illnesses that the virus caused. A further fraction of these were able still to produce offspring, and what offspring they were. As the virus had inserted itself into the genome of it’s victims, so it started work on the very genetic code itself, mutating, de-activating gene clusters, activating ancestral genes that had lain dormant for millenia so that the first wave of births after the plagues had not been the blessed relief prayed for by a decimated population. Although the children of the plague could hardly be called human, they survived well in the post-apocalyptic climate, a fresh stock for natural selection to work with. Within a few generations a new population was taking over the places where man used to rule supreme.
"Everything OK there, brother?"
Moquator had not realized he was cradling his forehead. Looking up he saw the ever-serious face of his cousin Rahid.
"Yeah I'm fine, just a bit of a headache coming on."
"You been getting a lot of those recently, you should take it easy for a while."
They both knew that was not as simple as it sounded: the Brotherhood may not explicitly demand hard working ethics, but it could not be denied that carrying out ones tasks with a certain fervor made life a little easier.
“Looks like we’re all done for today, you coming back up?”
“You go ahead, I think I’m gonna take a walk now that this sector is clear, maybe It’ll clear my head a little.”
“Suite yourself, you know where I’ll be if you fancy company later.”
With that, Rahid twisted a dial on the wrist of his suit and was gone. The other members of his crew were vanishing one by one, and soon Moquator was alone with the smoldering fires. A clean-up crew would be along in a couple of days to take care of the remains but Moquator could bear them no longer – he turned his back and started to walk.
The children of the plague had not been the only survivors of the plague. Self-contained refuges had existed for those who had the wealth to buy a place in one, and it was from these that the movement commonly known as the Brotherhood of the Pure originated – a loose network of survivors who had avoided any exposure to the virus, who’s mission was to see mankind back to its glory days. At first the Brotherhood’s priority had been simple survival – after a couple of generations, the refuges were no longer able to sustain the growing population, and so the Brotherhood had had to start clearing and repopulating areas of the city, bringing them into direct competition with the twisted, partially human forms that became known to the Brotherhood as plague children.
As he walked, Moquator felt the headache and the stinging, pin-prickly feeling around his eyes abate slightly. It had all started a couple of weeks back; As the leader of his cleansing crew, it was Moquator's duty to ensure that there were no survivors after each sweep - the crew would check as the bodies were piled up to be cremated, but sometimes Moquator would stay behind to double check; some of the forms taken by the plague children were particularly hardy and there had been more than one incident where a clean-up crew had got a nasty surprise…
The sweep had gone routinely, although the children in this cavern seemed to be particularly stubborn, almost as though they had been protecting something. The rest of his crew had already gone up top – it baffled most of them why Moquator should sometimes choose to stay behind when the pires had already been set – when a suggestion of movement had caught his attention. Blinking, he slowly crept towards the cavern wall where it had been, but could see nothing. Again, a flicker of movement, this time right in his line of vision yet nothing seemed to be there. He inched closer, desperately trying to make out what was in the shadows. The smooth, metallic wall of the cavern stretched up to seamlessly meet the high ceiling, a miracle of the times before the plague. Much technology had been rediscovered since the fall but the secret of mithrantium production was not one of them. Still, he could not make out anything that might have caused the movement he was already doubting he had really seen.
Suddenly, and without warning, he found himself paralyzed, held in place by some force unknown as his vision swam, spots of colour and geometric patterns flowing in front of his eyes as the wall, the cavern, even his own body seemed to melt out of material reality, his consciousness seemingly his entire existence, his thoughts becoming flavours and colours as they chased each other around his head. He felt euphoria as he had never known, but at the same time a melancholy so deep he wanted to weep. All this time, he felt aware that he was not alone in himself, but that he was a minuscule drop in an ocean of awareness, ebbing and flowing in and out of what he had previously regarded as his own mind.
As abruptly as it had started, the experience was over. He was himself again, in his own body. Returning to the surface to find that only a short period had passed for what had seemed days to him, he had told no-one of his experience, fearing a trip to the sanitarium – the Brotherhood did not look favourably on what they regarded as mental weakness, and very few who ever entered the sanitarium returned in a better state, if at all.
It was after this incident that the headaches had started, combined with a stinging, prickly feeling around his eyes and forehead. It came and went, being hardly noticeable most of the time. It was worse when he left the surface to work in the caverns below the city, being worst of all when he was physically performing his cleansing duties.
Leaving behind the cavern with it’s still smoldering pyres, Moquator turned down one of the many smaller tunnels that ran between caverns. He was not sure where he was headed or why, but there was something important he had to do. Someone, or something was calling him. Vague images flashed across his mind, of deep dark places and twisted flesh, feelings of something momentous just beyond his comprehension.
Before he knew it he was standing before the sealed entrance to one of the shafts that pierced the uncleansed depths below this level. It took only a few moments to release the seals and the great mithrantium door swung silently open, apparently feather light although he knew it must weigh several tons. He entered the shaft and started to clamber down the ancient rungs that ran down one side, the small amount of light offered by the entrance soon swallowed by the inky darkness. After what seemed an eternity in the blackness, Moquator sensed a light growing faintly below him. Coming to another opening, he peered through into a scene straight out of his nightmares. He looked out into another vast cavern like those above, but there was little similarity. The walls, floor and even the huge span of a ceiling were coated in what appeared to be living tissue, that in places bore a grotesque semblance to human features; limbs, digits, even glittering eyes peered out from half formed faces. There was a superficial resemblance to the Plague Children Moquator had encountered in the higher levels, but the scale was all wrong. They had been less than human, the result of horrific genetic disfigurement leaving its victims more animal than human. But this, this was something big, something greater. Stepping into the cavern, Moquator dropped to his knees as the pain in his head suddenly intensified, spots of colour dancing across his vision. He felt the ground shift beneath him, felt slabs of tissue move to take him in a warm embrace. As his vision failed he felt the most incredible sensation, as though the front of his skull was cracking and warping to better expose what had been growing underneath. Unknown to Moquator, his strange encounter two weeks ago had set off a remarkable chain of events, a manipulation of his very DNA encouraging the growth and post-human development of that most mysterious part of the human anatomy, his Pineal gland.
Rapidly, the pain faded, and although his vision was not yet restored, Moquator could ‘see’ everything that surrounded him, could feel the soft embrace of the collective consciousness he suddenly felt a part of. A feeling of relaxation came over him and he began to understand. He knew now that all of the Brotherhoods efforts had been in vain. Down in these deepest caverns below the city, a new life form had arisen, born of the plague children it had grown and multiplied, beings the size of insects and life-forms taking up acres of space – all were interlinked down here. Stories had been told of Plague Children that seemed to possess some kind of telepathy, but nothing could have prepared humanity for the truth of what was lying deep below their own feet. Whilst the Brotherhood waged the war of cleansing, they had had no cause to think that it was not their own work, that maybe humanity had been deftly manipulated to clear the way for a new kind of being. As he sank further into the comforting wash of the collective psyche, he saw how humanity, in the form represented by the Brotherhood, stood no chance against what lay down here. Here was the future, to deny it would be fallacy. Even as his own role in this new future was revealed to him, he could not help but to shiver with the joy and anticipation that rippled through his newly found kin.
(c) to me
_________________
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.”
--The late, great Bill Hicks |
02/14/10 09:26am |
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si
AN OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED CUNT!
Joined: 11 Mar 2005
Posts: 33501
Age: 15
Location: SUNNY B.A
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Could you summarise it in 4 words please?
_________________
http://www.chimpout.com/ |
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02/14/10 10:01am |
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RavenMadd
Coffee House Tyrant
Joined: 26 Mar 2005
Posts: 10592
Age: 100
Location: Up Your Mother Next Door!
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wowsers
_________________
I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then.......- Lewis Carroll
I fucked up .....there fore I'am |
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02/14/10 11:37am |
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Adolph
Bow to your God
Joined: 30 Mar 2003
Posts: 29324
Age: 43
Location: The Empire State
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quote:
Originally posted by si
Could you summarise it in 4 words please?
You suck big balls. |
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02/14/10 01:07pm |
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cicatrize
Hell Yes
Joined: 15 Jun 2003
Posts: 1234
Location: Cambridge, UK
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quote:
Originally posted by si
Could you summarise it in 4 words please?
Humanity is fucked, mate
_________________
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.”
--The late, great Bill Hicks |
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02/14/10 01:38pm |
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si
AN OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED CUNT!
Joined: 11 Mar 2005
Posts: 33501
Age: 15
Location: SUNNY B.A
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Cool.
_________________
http://www.chimpout.com/ |
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02/14/10 05:36pm |
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