Absence
My fiction effort - An app-only look at a story's beginning.
This likely has all kinds of errors.
Feedback is welcome, but know that I’m not a writer.
He was there when the Kings were made. Both times.
Not unusual for his station. Thirty years ago as a young Council Associate, he saw them grown on a nutridisc until they were placed inside the female to gestate and be born. All went well. Two boys - bloody, delicate, helpless - were brought into the world by the best doctors money could keep secret. Placed into the mother’s arms, eyes swollen shut, her voice soft and sweet, spoke plainly:
You will stand over our enemies. You will rule this country. Try to rule the world.
He shivered with anticipation and hoped in the future. The twins leapt in her arms.
The second time was six years ago, miles above the surface of Earth in an independent upgrading facility like mankind had never known, where again, if the money was right, they could and would do whatever was asked, regardless of government opinion. Here, the now grown men - clones, his bosses who were also oligarchs - were clamped and connected to surgical tables ready for upgrading. From the window of this deck, Attix saw the wide, blue world, splotched green and brown and its glowing border curve gently, perfectly. As his eyes fell onto the part of the continent that was his home, he remembered: dust from the field on his shoes, lightning bugs, heavy dew in the mornings, and how the warm, pink-orange sunlight changed so quickly pushing the long, purple shadows to the ground as the day came on birdsong. The moon was cold grey. The rest was black. Crushing, soundless, nothingness. Absence. Though in command while the clones were incapacitated, Attix felt small. Powerless. Insignificant. He wasn’t sure if it was the loss of home, the scale of space, or the two individuals being upgraded behind him.
Turning away from the window, he walked over to the beds where surgeons and techs were attending their duties. He thought the clones, his bosses, looked like they lived underground. This is…hideous. He watched their fingers move as if they played an invisible instrument and eyes rapidly move beneath their eyelids. Heads twitch. His own face unconsciously fell as he watched the two oligarchs’ bodies, pale and heavy, processing the new tech, held in place by white sheets pulled snug and tucked. He thought about the last time he saw a caterpillar and how he’d loved finding cocoons - that silky changing room promising a new life. Butterflies. Dragons. Gods. He hoped he was wrong about them and imagined this working out for the best, but that hope was too much for his level mind, and his countenance fell into a stare.
Clones. Oligarchs. Power. Reach.
His gut clenched as he envisioned a precipice that was opening the smooth white tiles at his feet between the two surgical beds. For a moment it seemed he saw the ground split open, spilling the soft woosh of a breeze that too fast became a layered, deafening scream. The sound he also felt as black heat rushed up and stole his breath, shaking him back to the present. Each of his hands grabbing a bedrail, chin down, he looked up to see faces with a few wide eyes looking at him over their masks. Releasing his grip on the rails, Attix inhaled through his nose while giving a nod to all present. Exhale, trying to look normal. Another nod. A surgeon asked, “Everything okay?” Attix let his eyes fall between the two beds. What new thing is being born in the Earth? The bodies fought against an invisible cocoon woven from every human urge. If the new world had a womb, it was this operating room. Inhaling as he raised his eyes, he nodded and stepped back to the windows to catch his breath hoping no one noticed.
His home, his new home, one so large it was visible from space, was just then being overtaken by the global shadow of night. The unending city lights were now on and connecting like nerve cells to one another. More and more artificial lights came on as the Earth turned. So many lights. So many lights. Maybe this isn’t that bad. People are still people. Nothing much will change. There is life. There is reason. There is purpose. Too quickly following that thought, his heart double-beat when he finally allowed in what he had kept at bay for so long.
We are lost. There is no end. There is no bottom.
It started before the surgery was complete. He heard soft alarms and noticed the questions from the eyes of the doctors as they glanced at each other then dispersed to the various monitors and stations.
Hot voices ended his thought abruptly and he spun from the windows. He watched the lead surgeon, arms tight against his sides, walk over to an assistant and commence clinched-jaw shouting at close range. As if in slow motion, some of the techs were looking for an exit, which a few promptly found. Through the door they opened, he shifted to see the hallway traffic slowly thicken all the while hearing the lead surgeon, now grabbing the scrubs of the other doctor, blame his coworker for something. Confusion came early, indecision followed, but a dawning reality began to spread from the room - the clones, the rising powers of the nation - were slipping away. Alarms. Faster. Still by the window, Attix gaged the room: no one was screaming - it was pure focus, so he remained silent but his mind was crouched to act. The lead surgeon and his remaining team returned to finish the job. They had no choice. These two could not die here or so would this facility and everyone in it. That was part of the deal: the oligarchs come away healthy with superior upgrades or everyone with the facility loses everything. Alarms. People were torn, pacing from one office to another. He could pick up bits and pieces of the murmurs, but those glaring at him made no secret of their feelings.
A few eternal moments later, Attix noticed the oligarchs’ shaking lessened and their hands were mostly still. Alarms began to stop. He knew what was going on inside of them. Amorphous blooms of colored clouds of paragraphs and passages, numbers and formulas, and tactics. Not just information. Anyone could get that. Not just data, but insights, greater awareness, unforeseeable abilities. The highest quality, most advanced upgrades known to man coupled with AI, quantum computing, spliced DNA, and even more that Attix couldn’t understand meant that - in these two humans was the most potent pathway to power that had ever been known. The facility knew that was the case when they took the deal. They knew who they were dealing with, but this was more than they bargained for, because, now, spreading like a stain even under anesthesia, the will of the oligarchs began to take shape. Everyone present could see the writing on the wall. Focus began to melt to self-preservation. Attix knew the dilemma: if these two were allowed to live, there would be no end to their reach. If the surgeons allowed them to die here, it would be the end of this facility and everyone in it. All the money and tech in the world could not prevent it.
Suddenly his heart rate leapt with a thought. A furious rush came over him at the thought of more green fields more dirt roads, more woods and marshes covered by the spiteful tech net covering much of the nation and all of the people. Lightning bugs. Crickets. Deer. Foxes. Hay. Wildflowers. Farms. No. He could stop it. Stop them.
He pushed away from the windows and rushed to their sides swinging for everyone to get away. The technological landscape that they had rapidly cultivated so many miles beneath them, the one he hated, had swallowed his old home and the world with it, and with these upgrades the clones would be united with it and unstoppable.
You will stand over our enemies.
You will rule this country.
Try to rule the world.
The new world was being born and he wanted to kill it.
Now between the brothers again and on the edge of decision, he allowed his mind to slowly open a door. What would it matter? What is the point of it all? From his position at their waists, he steps nearer to their heads. His hands find one sync each at the base of one oligarch’s neck. Fingers find a grip. What does it matter? They die, I die, my family dies. Life goes on. Like it or not. Through the windows the blue Earth now sat wholly in shadow, and the void of space filled his vision. Absence. Nothing. Nothing.
Fingers tighten around the syncs, but before twisting them off, Attix speaks. “I release you all and everyone associated with this facility from all consequences of my actions. Now and forever.” The syncs begin to turn.
Alarms stop. Soft sounds regulate. The clones stop trembling. All eyes are on him standing with his hands still on the syncs. Sensors signal regulation. Heavy, heavy stares. The bodies stabilize. His hand slides away defeated. Attix’s heart slides down his spine, into his stomach, then further down to an unknown space outside of himself where feelings don’t seem to matter anymore. In that brief bubble of time it felt like one thing had left the room, but another, larger thing had come. Four identical eyes open.
Within 20 minutes and still on their backs and tucked, the pair had taken control of the hospital. 5 hours after that, the whole facility. Six days later, they descended to the city and had all local authorities under their command. Four weeks after that they controlled all media. By the end of the second month after their descent, the pair had forced diplomatic immunity based on their new importance to humanity, and with the remaining 24 days of the year they subjugated every state government to their de facto rule. It would take a year to smother pockets of resistance and six more to rule the world. After this, the old title of King was heard again in the Earth.
Hope is a stone. We encounter it as children, small and light, like a creekside fossil that we place in our pocket then by our bed. In the prismatic beauty of a rainbow, it grows larger and heavier, and the sweet and lingering hum of a lullaby is yet larger and bears the weight of the world. As children we need it not, for we are innocent, and the distance between our inner man and outer man is not so far. But there will come a time when you need to believe that the odds will be defied, that, no matter what, you will overcome - a time when all you have is Hope. In that day you will plant your legs into the earth, roll the once-small stone from between your shoulders, and then press the world’s weight away from your body, every muscle tight, straining, lifting, praying - hoping.
