Fiction Vortex - December 2013 Read online

  I had a second trick up my sleeve: the script monitored the system for remote logins and spread the neural networks to those computers too, then from those onto others, and so on.

  ~~~~~

  I was walking back home from the supermarket when a teenager fiddling with his phone slammed into me from behind. The human-shaped silhouette in the left corner of my vision shone bright — the left arm glowing in a paler shade of blue than the right — and almost instinctively I balanced the bags of groceries in my arms based on the force implied by the colors.

  “Sorry.” He pranced away, whistling, leaving a trail of musical notes in his wake. Two or three seconds later, when a sufficient amount of notes were recognized by my device, I saw them transform in the words [BAND X] – [SONG X].

  I whispered, “Download it.”

  Back home [MY WIFE] was waiting in the kitchen, stooped above an overflowing ashtray. The colors in my vision screeched get out, get out. I set the groceries on the counter, started stocking up the fridge.

  “We need to talk.” Her voice was hoarse but unwavering. She must have had a few drinks.

  “About what?”

  She shrugged. “Things.” A cigarette dangled from her lips. “Us.”

  The silhouette in my vision made a sitting gesture so I pulled up a chair and sat down. Her bloodshot eyes peered through me.

  Lighting her cigarette she said, “What’s the matter with you? Huh? S’like you can’t see me no more.”

  Words appeared as if wreathed in smoke. “Nothing,” I read out.

  “Nothing my ass.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “You on the other hand ... you have a problem.”

  An outraged “What?” sent red sparks flying from her.

  “You’re a booze bag.”

  She tried to slap me but the shape’s right arm flashed and I raised mine just in time to stop her. New words appeared. “I’m serious.”

  She sprang up. The device overlaid one last sentence, and the words almost stuck in my throat. As she strode out the kitchen though, I managed to read them out, demanding a divorce.

  ~~~~~

  The myriad shapes and symbols gave out instructions, which I followed. They told me to redistribute the weight of the cardboard box from my left to my right hand, to walk an optimized path from the truck to the house and vice-versa, to avoid looking at her eyes at all cost.

  She sat on the truck’s front seat, smoking.

  When I loaded the last of her boxes she started up the engine and stepped out.

  Her look was one of contempt, disappointment, anger, though mostly it was sadness I saw. When she opened her mouth to speak or cuss or yell, she changed her mind, got back in the truck, and drove away.

  ~~~~~

  I couldn’t tell the day of the week, and even when I could it was useless because an eye blink later it was tomorrow, and the day after, and the one after that.

  My mind took the back seat as my body switched to autopilot. I saw my hands move, do stuff, very efficiently and without any volition on my part, akin to muscle memory but of things I’d never learned or practiced.

  Society never noticed the difference. I took part in my activities and barely changed my habits. Shopping in the corner market, eating in the Thai restaurant, walking in the park. Change was internalized. I had more time to think, to let my mind wander while my body obeyed the optimized rules of movement, conduct, and reaction.

  Someone asked a question and the written answer before me signaled my mouth to move and air to pass through my vocal chords in the shape of those words. Another person smiled or greeted or communicated in body language and my muscles and bones reacted according to the appropriate response calculated by my device.

  I embodied the experiment. A person living a life not his own, speaking without understanding, doing without knowing.

  But this was not the end. Not yet.

  My existence became instinct. My actions became reactions. I was reduced to a pair of eyes shoved to the back of my skull, observing but unable to act.

  ~~~~~

  Movement became differential equations and speech a function of acoustics. I glimpsed only the end product of the ever-calculating neural networks, and my body listened to their reasoning.

  At times I couldn’t understand it, why my legs carried me to that part of town, why my mouth spoke to those people, shook these hands, kissed that girl, signed those contracts...

  There were rare moments when I woke from sleep screaming at the empty house, sensation creeping back in my arms and legs and torso, euphoria spreading through my reclaimed body. I cried out in joy, clasping my arms, pulling the skin on my face.

  But the joy was stillborn. Moments later the sensations slipped away, and my body reverted to its new, rightful owner.

  ~~~~~

  The eyes at the back of my skull soon tired, eyelids drooping. Even my status as observer was no longer certain.

  I sensed my body do things to itself, apply further modifications, pushing the metamorphosis towards completion.

  The experiment’s endpoint, within my grasp.

  But this is where I lose track of [MY STORY]. Here on out all I remember is an engulfing blackness and the implacable, primal fear beneath it all.

  ~~~~~

  Here I am now, awake for the time being. It’s the needles they stick in me, the adrenaline shots that chase away the sleep.

  Atrophied consciousness due to cognitive outsourcing is their diagnosis. Sounds like something made up.

  The doctors say I was so dependent on external decisions the conscious part of my mind became dormant, unused. They mumble a lot of medical jargon as well and even showed me a scan of my rewired nervous system.

  Apparently, my software had spread throughout the world, causing a scare rivaling that of the millennium bug a quarter of a century ago. Tracing that software is precisely how they’d found me.

  I ask about the dark spots, the blemishes littering my memory like cigarette burns. They call my mind stale and mention retrograde amnesia but mostly look at their shoes.

  I see they know as little as me.

  I spend my days strapped to this hospital bed, forcing my mind to stay conscious for more than seconds at a time, recovering my past. Shards are all I remember. Concepts. Relationships between concepts. Who said what and when and why. But not really the people behind the actions. Not the feelings. I remember a woman but not her name or her face or her touch. Just what she said. And who she was.

  [MY WIFE].

  No one comes to visit. They say I was successful and made heaps of money, but no one comes anyhow.

  I glance at the world map on the wall — red circles and lines showing my scattered nervous system prior to the surgeries — and wonder what he would have to say about that.

  The reply comes in the shape of an indecipherable, soothing whisper.

  My eyes close.

  I fall asleep.

  Damien Krsteski is an SF author from Skopje, Macedonia. His work has appeared in places like Liquid Imagination, Fiction365, Way of the Buffalo podcast, 365 Tomorrows and others. More information about his work can be found on his blog: https://monochromewish.blogspot.com

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  The Razorblade Dragon

  by Nathan James; published December 10, 2013

  To Benjamin the world seemed grey and dreary, and yet tinged with a dreamlike brightness that penetrated the dark. The boy would drift in and out of these observations, like a pendulum swinging between love and hate.

  He had no purpose as far as he was concerned. His purposelessness was a blanket to him. He shrouded himself in it. If he didn’t try at anything, nothing mattered. So he slept and dreamed and prayed and sunk and dug and rose, and then slept some more.

  His parents were nebulous shades in his life, and when they pretended to care he laughed, and when they really cared he cried. His mother was a ghostly apparition and his father a negligent drunk, and between them they did
everything they could to make him hate himself.

  One day they took him to a hospital, and he smiled as they gave him his first dose of medication.

  ~~~~~

  Arak was a broad, muscular man, with an expression that was always somewhere between joviality and intoxication. Benjamin felt odd standing before him in his t-shirt and jeans; Arak wore a thick leather jerkin with a battle-axe slung lazily across his back.

  The tavern was full of men and whores and dogs and serving wenches, and their voices combined into an odd yet beautiful melody. Benjamin sipped a tankard of beer, and Arak slugged whisky. The room was vivid and colorful, and yet had a shimmering un-realness about it.

  Arak sipped some more whisky and then said, “The dragon must die.”

  Cries of agreement filled the tavern. Simultaneously blood-red sunlight trickled in through a hole in the roof and blossomed across the ceiling, as if to herald Arak’s wise words. He turned to Benjamin, staring expectantly. At length Benjamin said, “Yes.”

  Arak nodded gruffly and handed him a sheathed sword, showed him how to strap it to his waist, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him from the tavern.

  The sun was rising over the mountains in the east, birds were squawking in the trees, and as Benjamin watched the wind robbed a sunflower of its petals. Arak patted him on the back. “Are you ready lad?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  Arak pointed into the distance. “Over that ridge is the source of your troubles. That dragon plagues men’s dreams, makes them think dark thoughts. When we kill it, you will be free.”

  Benjamin nodded.

  Arak said, “Let us go then.”

  ~~~~~

  Benjamin hovered in a haze of blackness that shimmered and shifted and never stayed still. When he saw light, it was small and evanescent. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t. He tried to walk, but he couldn’t. He tried to breathe, but he couldn’t.

  He was dead yet alive. When he opened his eyes to the blackness it swam into him, spreading throughout his body and engulfing his insides. There was no hurt, but he knew that he would never be the same.

  There was no redemption, and his mind was as turbulent as a volcano. He would think that he had it under control, and would sigh a sigh of relief, but then it would erupt and again he would be plunged into nothingness.

  He was confused, and yet he knew what was happening; he was no-one, a shadow creature bound by a law he didn’t understand to live in two worlds, but belong to neither.

  He yearned for acceptance and reality, but he wasn’t even sure if he knew what reality was. Reality had become an amorphous thing, something that could not be comprehended or discerned.

  He knew that life had picked him up, and he knew that it would drop him somewhere. Where it would drop him, he could not say.

  ~~~~~

  The razorblade glinted in the blackness. As Benjamin watched, the glint seemed to get brighter and brighter, until he was captured by an irresistible urge to stand and walk the length of the room to pick it up.

  In his hand it was cold. It made him feel warm. He caressed it, and when he nicked his finger and the blood flowed, he didn’t feel a thing. The urge grew, and he had to consciously fight it, but he lost. He held it to his wrist.

  He pressed down and more blood flowed. He would only need to press a little harder and the pendulum would stop forever, and he would be free.

  He was about to, but then some other urge took hold of him. He couldn’t say what it was, nor that he had ever felt it before, but he dropped the razorblade to the ground, where it clattered metallically.

  He walked back to his bed. The sheets were cold with sweat.

  ~~~~~

  Arak crested the ridge, and Benjamin jogged along after him. The sun had set and risen innumerable times since the outset of their journey, and Benjamin’s legs were sore with travel. The breeze was gentle and caressed his neck as he stretched out on the earth.

  Arak smiled. “Tired lad?”

  “Yes.”

  Arak slumped down opposite him, dropping his battle-axe and slugging some whisky. He offered the bottle to Benjamin, but he declined. The big man shrugged, took a sip. “Where are you from lad?”

  Benjamin gave the question some serious thought, for he was sure that there were two answers. He gave the one that seemed right in the present circumstances, and pushed the other one deep down where it could lay quietly and harmlessly. “From a small village east of Ad Mandrel. My parents were killed by raiders.”

  “Your attire is awfully strange,” Arak said.

  The words flowed from Benjamin mechanically. Sometimes speech was a conscious construction — now it was a sub-conscious stream. “I travelled with a mummer’s show. They gave me these clothes.”

  Arak was quiet for a time and then said, “I guess sometimes it’s better to be someone else.”

  Benjamin nodded. Arak took another swig of whisky, lay back, and closed his eyes and snored. Benjamin lay on his side and let the wind soothe him to sleep.

  He awoke to Arak’s startled face. “Get up,“ Arak said. “I can hear someone coming.”

  Benjamin jumped up, drawing his sword. Arak hefted his battle-axe and stood square-shouldered facing the noise. It sounded like two men in conversation, one shouting and the other talking calmly.

  Arak slugged some whisky, dropped the bottle, and returned to his fighting stance. Benjamin held his sword up and tried to remember how to fight, although he could not remember fighting before.

  When the men came into sight Benjamin saw that there was only one man, and he was talking to himself. He was tall and topless, and covered in thick black hair. His face was almost invisible under his beard, except for his shiny blue eyes.

  Arak sat down and so did Benjamin. The man came and sat down with them. “You have to be true to yourself,” he said, “but you can’t ignore the voices when they come for you. They say that it is bad, but I love them!” At this exclamation he threw his arms into the air and his face lit up, and his blue eyes shone with glee.

  “Hello,” Arak said. “May we be of service?”

  The man looked at Arak and then blinked as if waking from a dream. “I am happy,” he said, and it was the sincerest thing Benjamin had ever heard. Everything about the man indicated total contentment. The way he absentmindedly tapped his foot, his constant grin, and the way his fingers played about his shirt-neck all implied blissful euphoria.

  “I am glad to hear that,” Arak said. “Would you like some whisky?”

  The man fell into a fit of laughter, from which he did not recover for several minutes. Benjamin and Arak sat patiently waiting, the latter sipping from his bottle, and the former staring on in fascination. The man was happiness personified. There was nothing frightening about his evident madness; he was mad with happiness and contentment.

  When he recovered, he stood and walked away, only stopping to nod at Benjamin and Arak. His voice filled the air as he resumed his quarrel.

  “What a strange man,” Arak said.

  “Yes.”

  “We should get going.”

  “Yes.”

  They walked through open fields of green and yellow, and passed old farmers and young blacksmiths, eager whores and sad-eyed widows. A snow started as they walked, and it didn’t stop for many weeks, falling in an incessant trickle.

  Arak found respite from the cold in his bottle, and Benjamin thought more and more about the dragon. For some reason that he could not discern, the dragon embodied everything that was wrong with him, and when he killed it, Benjamin would be the person he wanted to be; he would belong. He smiled through the sun and the snow and the villages and the towns. Could it really be so simple?

  When the snow left, Benjamin was harder than he had been. Somewhere along the road he had swapped his mummer’s costume for a sturdy suit of leather and studded-steel. Arak smiled at him approvingly during sword practice, and Benjamin felt like he was making progress.

  The journ
ey was nearly at an end, and Benjamin was nearly ready to become someone.

  ~~~~~

  Benjamin sat at his desk and stared at the book: Don Quixote. The words were hazy black lines and his eyes ached. He stopped as the sound of mad cackling and hushed murmuring filtered in through a vent in the wall.

  He swiveled in his chair and studied the vent. It was set high in the wall, and connected to the adjacent room. Benjamin closed his eyes and focused on the voice.

  “I can’t take it anymore...” and then, “You have to.”

  The cackling returned and stayed for several minutes, filling up Benjamin’s room. It was the maddest thing Benjamin had ever heard, and the saddest. It sounded like a forced laugh, like someone was trying to ward off something horrible with contrived happiness. There was no mirth in that laugh.

  Presently the cackling stopped and the voices returned. “You can’t do this. It isn’t fair on me...” There was a gruff laugh and then, “I don’t care if it’s fair on you. I can’t take this anymore. I’m not normal, and I’ll never be normal. Just leave me alone. I just want peace.”

  Benjamin felt shameful listening to the voices and turned back to Don Quixote, but ignoring them was impossible. They got louder until they were shouting. One of them was furious and the other just wanted peace, and the former said that peace didn’t come like this, and the latter said that it was the only way he knew.

  Suddenly a loud crack sounded, and the murmuring and cackling stopped.

  Benjamin dragged his bed to the floor underneath the vent and climbed onto it. He stood on tiptoes and saw through the vent.

  A man swung from a rope. Benjamin watched as the man spun around and his bearded face came into view. He was tall and topless, covered in thick black hair, and his blue eyes were dark and dull.

  Benjamin fell back onto his bed and closed his eyes, and fought the urge to follow the man into oblivion.

  ~~~~~

  The mountain stretched into the sky and disappeared into a sheet of white. The snow had stopped, and every now and then a sliver of sunlight would penetrate the clouds. Deer and bears drank from the stream that ran between Benjamin and Arak and the mountain. An eagle perched on a branch and watched over the scene.

  Arak had been slugging whisky fervently all week, and had worked himself into quite a state. He was currently trying to get his battle-axe strap over his head, but he was having trouble and kept getting it caught. In the end he gave up, drank some more whisky, and sat down, which was awkward because of his battle-axe.