6So I fixed up my 'tense' mistake from Chapter 1, and am sticking to present tense for the near future.
Also, thank you guys for your reviews, follows, and contributions. Reader feedback is always appreciated.
The chapter below is told in vignettes, since it takes place over a period of many months and would be too long and tedious to capture I written in the style of the first part.
Chapter 2
The doctor, after leaving to rest on a nearby workbench for two hours, finally mends the wound of my gouged eye-socket, and what is left after his 'corrective' surgery is an almond-shaped black hole surrounded by exposed artificial muscle and tendon after he removes the eviscerated metallic flesh around it.
He cradles me in his limp arms for an hour after he finishes and whispers uncomfortably close in my ear that at least I still have one beautiful mauve eye he can still marvel at.
With his philosophy, having one is better than nothing.
I want to say that having everything whole rather than an incomplete portion is better.
…
A week passes after the horrendous event, and here I sit in the laboratory, watching the small hand of a nearby grandfather clock painfully make its way to the number 3. I remain quiet, while the Doctor proceeds to bang away on a computer nearby. He hasn't been drinking today, I could sense it right away, when he removed me from my incubator and beckoned me to sit near him.
He tells me that I need to be ready by 3 o'clock, but he won't elaborate on what for, so I merely sit there and feel an hour, close to two, tick by with little excitement.
My eye turns to look over the lab tables nearby. They've been cleaned and sterilized into immaculate condition, yet the area around the perimeter is filthy and smells of bodily secretions.
What has happened here?
There is nothing on the tables except a jar. In the jar I can see a shallow pool of white plasma, that when I stare at carefully appears to be making the faintest of movements.
I do not realize how long I've been scrutinizing the specimen, until I suddenly hear the lab doors open and slow footsteps come walking forth. I quickly turn my attention forward, and see the CEO standing just mere front from me. He regards me for a moment, until the erratic typing of a keyboard behind me falls silent.
"Excellent timing, Caleb," the Doctor states from behind me, suddenly putting a hand of his on my shoulder. "I've got the data from Zero's cortex uploaded, so that we will be able to contain his memory from the cerebral hemisphere."
"That is excellent news," Goldman agrees.
"Have you brought everything?" There is still a tenseness in the Doctor's tone that will not leave, and it has been coming on stronger ever since he took out my right eye.
"Everything is downstairs," the CEO confirms, "and I'll have the men bring it up after I ask you a few questions first.
I hear the Doctor sigh, but it doesn't seem Goldman quite caught it.
"If you're going to ask about his eye—"
"Nothing about it. I've already been aware of it."
I feel the Doctor's hand on me tighten up, and even I wonder how in the world the CEO has the information in the first place, and how little he seems to care regarding it.
"I wanted to ask about how the other specimen is developing."
The grip slackens.
"Let's just hope you haven't done any mutilating on it either."
"I haven't. Its still in its embryonic stage, but its certainly the cream of its crop—"
Goldman follows to where Curien's finger is pointing and picks up the jar containing the translucent white jelly.
He looks at it silently for a minute, and during this I can hear the Doctor breath quietly yet erratically, as if he just finished running a mile.
"I think," the CEO suddenly proclaims, holding up the jar with the moving fluid, "that we'll find the potential in this one."
"It is still weak," Curien interrupts his ogling. "One of the disadvantages of working with pure stem cells is the direct possibility of instability."
Goldman eyes the trembling gel. "It certainly seems like it's already begun to start a life of its own," he inspects it all over. "The injection of the mutagen before the cells could begin to differentiate themselves should produce a fascinating result." He holds it close to him. "I will be taking this one with me, for further research inquiries."
The Doctor then looks surprised. "Wait, what? That's my specimen!"
The CEO shook his head. "Technically you are the one to begin the foundations, but as you are my subordinate, I will see fit as to what should continue under different circumstances."
"What do you plan to do to it?"
The Doctor's voice suddenly becomes shaky, as if he is losing something he has become attached to.
"It's a prototype, Goldman! It's not fit at this time for further testing. You must not tinker with it. Please!"
He no longer hides his desperation, which only seems to be convincing Goldman of the opposite.
"There is a lot of potential in this, Roy," he says with languid calmness. "You treat it like it's a mere fragile toy."
Curien says nothing, but instead stares at him like a wounded bird.
"I am not disposing any of your strenuous research, Roy. I am doing what is for the best. If I didn't care, you bet this whole operation of yours fall right into the hands of the AMS."
"The AMS!?"
That certainly stirs a reaction.
"Yes, the AMS," Goldman reiterates. "They'll come in here, question everything you've done. They won't listen to a word you say about assisting with your son, how you're trying to synthesize a pure blood to save him because no other Tom, Dick, or Harry could cure his terminal ailment, they told you he'd most likely die before the start of the next century. The AMS will discard everything you have, all the money, labor, sweat you have poured into this process. And truth be told, your partaking in the influence will send their squads after you faster than the rejuvenation your son will feel when you've completely reached your end goal."
"My son…"
"Oh, you know how the AMS plays their game. They'll let your boy die a slow, painful death because they'll occupy themselves with a useless mission. They'll associate him with you, and in your eyes you're a hopeless, deranged crook, so they'll let him fade away into the void."
The Doctor suddenly puts his face in his hands, and I can hear weak, stifling noises emitting in soft muffles. Goldman then kneels down right in front of me.
"And they hate beings like you, Zero," he murmurs. "You are vastly more superior in physical strength and intelligence than most living creature on this planet. Do you know what you are? You are the pinnacle of the highest achievements human beings could ever create: a superior intellect that could lead us to the dawn of a new era. You are the forefront of a modern genetic line that could birth the most impeccable beings that have ever graced Earth. Do you know want that means? You are a threat. You are a hindrance. They know that an individual like you could tear their deeply integrated, antiquated, social constructs apart before their very eyes. Thousands of years of foolish, petty systems that have been incorporated to keep us subservient, to be good little animals that can be constantly distracted with material, banal things…things that would not even serve a purpose if we weren't living in such disgusting, wasteful, slovenly, ignorant societies. We're indoctrinated from the start to live these lifestyles of greed, dog-eating-dog, and then masquerade it as 'freedom'."
He leans in close to me. "They would see you as a rebel. Your acumen would highlight how stupid and backwards they are. Your strength would reveal their weaknesses. You, as he individual, are more of a threat than a thousand sheep. Attempts to enlighten them with fire will only result in you being thrown in the dark pecked at by vultures."
I don't even realize it, but he is making me quiver, and I can see in his eyes that he realizes the affect this is having on me. I don't even completely understand the language he uses or how he uses it, but the sadism and darkness in his voice that highlights each grotesque sentence disturbs something very fundamental within me.
"You have what none of them possess or could even dream of possessing: a mind of your own. You haven't been born to automatically accept their pathetic norms. You are already your own individual, developing into your own being. That is a threat to their foundations. Don't comply? You're out of the game."
Why do I feel he knows more about me than I or anyone else?
The Doctor has stopped his weeping while Goldman talks, and wiping his hands puts them back on my shoulder.
"They'd kill you Zero!" he chimes in, his voice cracked with his pent-up emotion.
"Or they'd use you for their own experiments and mutilate and torture you until you're nothing but writhing nerves on a pile corporeal fragments."
I shudder. Just like the remnants the Doctor had on his lab tables.
"Oh please stop talking like this!" the doctor insisted. "It's absolutely sickening! I just can't lose him!" He wraps his arms completely around me. "I can't lose either of them!" I feel his wet check rest against my right breast, and with the trembling of his form I can tell he had fallen into another lachrymose state.
Goldman clasps my face with his large, encapsulating hand.
"You won't let them take ahold of you, will you?"
His eyes, their pupils are dim as coffee, I can see their piercing blackness beneath his dark shades. His stoicism is replaced with something fiercer, stronger than his grip upon me. I had never heard anybody talk in such a manner other than the Doctor, and yet, I feel that his words have taken quite the stronghold.
I am still terrified of losing my other eye. Or something else on me. I do not want to feel such a horrible, penetrating pain ever again.
I needed to indicate to him in a different manner. The way he was looking at me was expecting it.
I can feel the muscles in my throat contracting, soar, almost scratchy when I feel myself struggling to emit a sound from their burning constraints. My tongue lines with the roof of my mouth, which I emulate off watching others speak, how their mouths form when forming the phoneme to meet with the conjunction of the vowel. It's a word I've become quite familiar lip-reading.
"No."
A voice.
Both men are staring at me.
Goldman's grip has gone limp.
"What did you say?" Curien questions, his head completely lifted from my breast, his mouth open into a perfectly round 'o' of great astonishment.
I attempt to repeat myself this time, and while hoarse, I now say it with clearer authority.
"No!"
It is a deep voice, gravelly and carrying a mechanical echo.
The Doctor gawks, then before I know it he is embracing me tight.
"He can talk!" he exclaims, enthusiastic over my utterance. "Oh, my other son can finally speak!" He begins to laugh. "And I was afraid he would be mute, oh the wonders never cease!"
His laughter eventually dies down into whispered words of hopes that have been fulfilled.
Goldman and I merely look at each other.
…
I cannot begin to discern or describe the process that is currently happening to me and this whole cloning method, so I simply stand upright like a mannequin as Goldman and Curien stick spine-like apertures on the outside and inside of my body, and with each insertion comes toggling, fidgeting, and frantic checking on a monitor that is turned away from my view.
If only I had two eyes in this situation.
Still, I can sense everything, as if I possess optics everywhere else.
"Hold still!" Goldman commands, "I'm trying to poke one in here."
"No."
"Please stop saying that," he sighs. "You've been repeating after each statement I make for an hour."
"No."
"Just leave him alone, Caleb," the Doctor says, moving to my front and sticking me where it hurts. "Be thankful that we're both complying with this."
Goldman looks at the Doctor. "It's not like there was much choice in the matter to begin with."
Curien says nothing about it. "Will this accurately gather all his physical and mental data?"
"Oh the nanochips within these should read him just fine. He's missing so much of him anyways what harm will missing a little more do to him?"
The Doctor pauses. "You know, I swear he was developing alright…I'm not sure why he's be missing flesh over these specific areas."
"It's too late to ponder over your mistakes, let's hurry and get this over with."
"But I feel like…" Curien stares distantly into my eye, "I cannot see what I did wrong."
…
"My luscious bellflower, how in spirits name did you barge your way in here!?"
If there is anyone who can master the art of conveying both unadulterated affection and livid ire into a single compressed voice, it is Doctor Curien, himself. It is fascinating to listen to, if you're not the one who's the center of his focus.
His victim? A young woman. Blonde, somewhat slender, clad entirely in red uniform. A specialized researcher then. I don't need to lean forward in my incubator to pick up the booming speech of the Doctor, but for the timid female bowed before him.
"Please…" she is practically on her knees, her hands clasped feverishly together, like a saint attempting to spare themselves from martyrdom. "I didn't mean—"
"What your intentions were are not what I'm questioning you for at this moment." He interrupts. "I'm asking how you got in here."
"I—" she pauses. "I was let into this wing by your gardener, I was looking for—"
"Cyril?" He sounds both disbelieved and bewildered.
"Yes, I believe it was him." The woman then suddenly covers her mouth, realizing her mistake.
Curien's body suddenly becomes very still.
"Why did Cyril let you in here?"
The woman's eyes look up at him. "There was this proper nucleic synthesis I wasn't sure how to conduct, and none of the other researchers were sure where I could get such information from, so I asked the gardener if there was a possible book on such an esoteric subject. He told me to come here."
"Why him of all people?"
"Because he knows the ins and outs of this mansion, and I thought that you would be with your son."
Every word that leaves her mouth is pure torture for her to speak. With a glare as cold as Curien's, I almost feel her pain. For about a second.
"I didn't know, Doctor. You know I'm new here!"
"When I walked in I caught you starting at him," he points his finger at me, "as if he was a tiger waiting to pounce."
She stood up, silent for a moment, completely off guard by what to say.
"That's merely because I wasn't expecting…I didn't know you were conducting research here. I was caught quite by surprise by his…presence."
It's a nice way of saying that you're taken by surprise to come across a scaled-bodied, goat horned, long-shanked creature such as I. I can sense that she was taught well by well-mannered people, but those kinds of manners in this situation are not of much worth.
"Well, of course that would be your reaction!" he retorts. "It would not be your reaction if you knew what he was for, or what his true purpose was. I do like privacy, and some sections of my mansion are strictly of limits for certain reasons. Fools like you just do not understand. There is no worth in explaining something to somebody who lacks the aptitude to comprehend it."
She is nodding her head as he speaks, thoughtlessly agreeing with him.
She is desperate to get out.
"Where is that gardener, by the way?"
The woman's eyes suddenly widen.
She asks a short question, her voice is too low for me to catch it, but based on the reading of her lips, it is "Why?"
Curien shakes his head.
"First you probe into my personal affairs, and you have the audacity to question me? I am ashamed of you, Sophie."
Sophie. That is a name I have heard before.
She tries to walk back towards the door, but he suddenly lunges forward and grabs a hold of her shoulder. She cries out in surprise at his reaction.
"Do not think you're getting out of this on a whim, my dear."
He then opens the door, his grip steady on her.
"And when I am done with you, I can guarantee you'll never make the same mistake again."
His response sets off a catalyst of commotion. Sophie begins to scream outright, attempting to pull herself away and fight back with feeble kicks and jostles from her arms. He merely hugs her to him and keeps him tight against his own body.
"Trying to fight back are we? I can tell you your efforts are feeble. Nobody has ever done it against me successfully."
She continues to scream and curse, and with a snide shake of his head, he carries the struggling woman outside the door, and slams it behind him with a shake.
Quiet. Pure, blissful quiet, for the first in a long time. I know that the Doctor is better to women than he is to men, but not by much. At least I know she will not be a heap of flesh and matter on one of his lab tables, though maybe by the time he gets done with her, she'll have others she's known who will be.
That is the terrible thing about attachment. It's a human weakness that I will never understand.
Well, honestly, I understand it quite well, and I do not have positive conclusions of it based on my own observations and analyses.
I am just thankful that they are gone, and I am no longer the center of attention.
…
The Doctor does not often leave me alone. He is smart in the regard that he seldomly keeps me out of his sight, where he can watch and monitor me under his scrutinizing eye. I have come quickly to realize that one of the sundry reasons he takes me out of my incubator is due to his starvation for company.
Now that I have a primitive comprehension of basic speech, he seizes each free moment he has with great relish. "I now feel that I can talk to you like a real father to his son," he says quite often, or "Now I feel that we can understand each other better."
Understanding, by his definition, is him rambling away while I throw in an occasional agreement (or disagreement if need be), and only question when it is appropriate. I actually find this arrangement perfectly suitable for the time being.
It's almost fascinating how my mind works, but I don't necessarily owe that to my creator. A brain needs to be stimulated for it to thrive and continue to be curious. If not given an opportunity to ever do so, chances are that mind they have will shrivel and cripple when the realities of the world falls upon them if they are not able to give themselves the intellectual improvement they need. The Doctor is lucky that I am perceptive. Or, maybe not so lucky.
I know this info because I secretly read parts of a book on Pediatric Health published by an institution called the Mayo Clinic. I know what an institution is because the Doctor hates them. When left alone for brief synapses of time outside my ossuary while he is away, I pick up a book off his nearby collection of assorted medicinal books and scan through. The words soak into my brain and remain, and instantly I feel a connection between what is conveyed and what can be connected to form a logical whole. I am only able to read bits and pieces of the publications before my sensitive ears pick up his footsteps nearby and I hurriedly put the book back right where it belongs. My photographic memory serves me perfectly well here: I always remember that Pediatric Health rests alongside Cambridge's Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
He still knows not a thing about these activities, thinking I am an infant who will listen to him with blind obedience. Suffice to say, I am sufficient in the art of masquerading. I know that was not passed down from him.
I still do not know what I am going to do yet or what the outcome will be, but I do know that the Doctor probably will not live long enough to see.
"What do you think?"
He catches my full-on attention with a photograph. It's grainy and not of the best quality, but at first it looks a younger, somehow paler version of Curien, himself, standing forlorn in debonair attire outside of a tall structure of glass and steel, imposing and most likely causing the shadow of darkness that fades the picture. Behind him stands Caleb Goldman, looking his usual stoic self, his hand resting on the shoulder of a small, slender girl with equally dark hair but pink complexion, her hazel eyes and features bringing the only source of color in the print.
I quickly realize that with the adult Goldman in the picture, it would not make any sense for the young boy to be the Doctor.
"It's a photograph of my son, Daniel, just before he was diagnosed."
The features are uncannily similar.
I nod.
"My wife would have been so happy to see how intelligent he is and how handsome he has become." His false smile suddenly turns into his signature grimace. "But she has been spared from seeing what he has also turned into."
I nod.
"Death is the only equal thing in this world, and while I miss her and pine for her presence, I'm comforted by the fact that she is no longer suffering. Also, I cannot absolutely think of how my life would have turned out without knowing you could exist."
"You're to kind," I respond. My deep voice is the only thing that prevents it from sounding purely convincing.
"I try," he says, ", and even if not everything is always perfect, you'll know that I always love you, right?"
"Yes."
"That's good." He pauses to look at me in a minute of silent admiration.
"I sometimes wish I could be in your spot. Just a listless being swathed by the inert warmth of an incubator, dreaming away, completely ignorant of the world and reveling when your taken care of, knowing that there is somebody out there who gives a damn about you, not having to do anything to receive that adoration other than being in that person's presence."
I smile softly.
He smiles back, tilting his head.
"So child-like. It's astonishing."
He looks down at the photograph for a moment, and, biting his bottom lip, quickly dispenses it onto the table behind him.
"Enough with being mushy, I have work to do."
He leads me back to my incubator. I feign my weakness of walking, even though I've begun to feel more stable, stronger.
"Does your mind ever wander, Zero," he asks as he leads me up the stairs, "when I talk to you?"
"No."
"Ah," I hear relief, "I didn't think so."
He "helps" stabilize me when we reach my incubator before stepping away.
"It's better to know a little rather than to know everything."
I let my body convey that I agree with him. My words would have been too slanderous, and I must fight the urge to bite my bottom lip, out of both exasperation and wry amusement.
He watches me as the incubator surrounds me, and I am delicately lifted up, soon floating in the warm center of my glassy womb. It is now difficult to sleep, being fully aware of my situation. What was once my safe haven now feels like a tomb, suffocating and all in the name of developing me to maturity, is ironically preventing me from really living.
Is this what living between the veil of life and death feels like?
