Chapter 5

Two Amours of Information

A jolting vibratory thrust snapped my consciousness back, through a shockwave of pain, to the high-rise office building, a blaring siren preventing any sense of clarity to my shattered mind. The white room was now bathed in an ocean of crimson lights as if internal to a sadistic glowing organ. Flashing images and echoes were slow to shake, like a debilitating drunkenness. Slapping my face in fear, I tried to erase the sensory specters that still inhabited my waking body.

As if possessed, I still felt smooth skin and blond hair in my face. Was I still girlishly prancing? Motion? I saw my sister’s devious smiles. The smell of bubblegum lips was still with me and the sensation of having a slight and energetic juvenile body caused me to fall repeatedly in my bulky, clumsy, and tingling new body, as if gravity was increased.

But, with the finality of a slamming door or blown fuse, the sensations vanished. Looking around, I could see that the huge window near me was seriously cracked, like a fragile veined cataract that stared and threatened to disintegrate. My nondescript face and chest were soaked with fluid, which I immediately assumed was blood because of the pain, but with the lights it seemed that the whole room was hemorrhaging along with me. I must have slammed into the window with force during my latest delusional onslaught.

Looking up and around, I noticed a deep purplish glow emanating from the two children encased in their clear cybernetic globes; bubbles were forming and I detected strengthening jerking movements. Were these children causing these hallucinations somehow? No, I thought, they were more than mere fleeting feelings, they were a new kind of lucid reality. I was (am?) a horrid little girl? What about Jon Coyote? The virtual machinery of my brain seemed cobbled together for a demolition derby.

Wandering over to the dead child I had held, now thrown down near the cracked window, I lifted his head up to look at his face. It was the face of Aurora, or certainly very near to it, even though it was distinctly male.

I should be angered by this face, I thought. Why anger? Only the vaguest wisp of Aurora still remained and I struggled to recall what it had felt like to be her. Fading already?

Was she my own internal creation, a fractured or submerged aspect of my own personality? Looking at the familiar lines of the boy’s face, the sense of looking into a mirror remained. I thought then that I must force myself to assume a rational and logical frame of mind or I would never explain these events and eventually die as a result of another psychotic episode. However, as soon as my mind played with these thoughts, I started to loose control again.

A tingling sensation started in my mouth and fingers. My grip tightened around the boy’s limbs reflexively and the beginning of an unfamiliar, though pleasant, feeling began to travel up my arms. The sensitivity increased quickly like an intense sexual arousal or a syringe injection of pure narcotic. The mere movement of my mouth or hands sent a rush of pleasure to my brain. With sensation likened only to the furious rubbing of an enflamed and engorged penis or an over-stimulated clitoris, my now vibrating arms and drooling mouth seemed to have will of their own.

Like some perverse chemical addiction, my whole being seemed to be primed for the loss of my own identity and freewill. The beginning of an instinctual fury was upon me, and in that moment, I felt I would do anything to further these feelings, just like an addict in the beginning of withdrawal. The orgasm in my mouth intensified the closer my head was to the dead boy’s and I quickly found myself rubbing my mouth over the boy’s face and scull, to my own abject horror.

My finger’s were just penetrating his skin when a metal cuff painfully latched onto my arm. With a single, swift, motion I was thrown across the room. My leg brace clanged as it struck a pole that supported a computer panel, as I landed on my shoulder in a heap nearby. An immature, synthetic blend of male and female voices reverberated above the still active siren, “You will not kill us, monster…”

Released from the strange and violent erotic spell, I looked up to see machine arms attempt to pick up the dead boy. They were connected to a central cylindrical unit, like an umbrella with the cloth removed, that rose from a large dark opening in the floor. Several arms held the boy while others injected him with an array of substances. I watched as the machine relentlessly and hopelessly stuck the dead boy again and again until he looked swollen with fluids.

I must make contact with these children, I thought. It was obvious that they could communicate and control their environment through the machinery of the building. I just hoped I could keep myself from drifting away long enough to make some progress.

Avoiding the possible reach of the arms of that robotic apparatus, I rose and walked over to a nearby computer panel. The words ‘alert’ were blinking in various parts of the display and I made an attempt, through a touch screen, to stop the sirens. One screen led to another and another like a confused set of rooms and corridors, however I was able to cancel the alert. The red lights switched to white, the stains of blood and fluids upon the pristine white a shocking contrast.

Just as the siren stopped, the voices returned, “Stop it! We will kill you…” The robotic arms made an attempt to grab me, but I was out of their range.

Unsteadily I walked beneath the globes, my body a pitiful array of injuries, and spoke to the children. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sick. We have to help each other. I don’t want to hurt you, I promise. I want to help. ”

The synthetic voice was distinctly female, “We must kill anyone who comes…we were told by the others…the father tried to…he tried to hurt us…”

I pointed to the man slumped in the corner, “Is he the father?”

The voices answered in unison as if repeating a phrase committed to memory, “You are Vitellius, the father. You love us and we love you. We must listen to the father. The father knows best…”

The man had a badge that said ‘Langley’.

A boyish child voice then said, “ The father lied, lied, lied! The father killed AV3! We stop the father, they said so!”

Pointing to the dead boy I asked, “Is that - AV3?”

The voices screamed, “Don’t hurt him!”

“I don’t want to hurt him! I’m … sick. I didn’t mean what I did. ”

“We must help… help him alive…can you help him…help him alive?”

Looking around to locate the hole in the clear polymer wall in which I entered, in case I needed to flee, I cautiously said, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help him to be alive again. I am really sorry. I wish I could, I really do. ” Without waiting for a response, I tried to redirect them and gain some information. “What happened to all the people? The people in the building and outside, why are they all dead? Do you know?”

The young female answered in a warbling tone, “People will come … we must stop them … they are crazy … they said so …”

“Crazy? Why are they crazy?”

“They are crazy…they said so…they will try to hurt us…crazy from the plague … . ”

Plague! Now I am getting somewhere, I thought. Could I be infected with this plague? Was I insane? Why was I not dead like everyone else? Why were these children alive like this? Alright, slow down.

“Maybe … I can help. Do you know more? Tell me more about the plague. ”

“We … must stay alive. The building will help us. The few company men. Stuart. Malik. Briant. They are good, keep them good with drugs. They told us … don’t trust anyone… kill all who come…you…wait… wait… you are the one. We know you. He-he, we did it! We did it! They told us. Ha-Ha. They will be so happy! Happy!”

I started to back away as I detected a sinister change in their tone, despite their childish enthusiasm.

“What do you mean? Why am I the one? Who told you?”

“They said … they said … hold you … kill you … hold you? Use … use … find it AV2! File … found … AV1 … it’s a try … tri … tridiporozioxilide … slow you … confusion, its mental! Mental like crazy! He-he!”

“What? Oh no. ”

The umbrella-like machine extended itself, twirled, and then retracted into the floor as a panel closed the gap. There was a vibration from beneath and a space opened in the floor right beside me. I staggered back, yelled “No! Wait! Stop!”, and a similar strings of pleas, turned to make a run for the opening in the clear barrier, the way that I had entered. A space in the floor opened close to me again and a machine arm seized my leg instantly, before I could make a counter move.

The machine had fortuitously clasped my leg brace and I wriggled out of it in a panic, ignoring the pain. Limping and stumbling my way across the floor toward the hole, I nearly made it close to the atmosphere machines near the aperture, when another space opened in the floor in front of me. I turned slightly as a syringe attached to a manipulation arm plunged into my side. Jumping back from it, I fell to the floor and crawled again around the arm toward my only hope of escape.

As I neared the hole I inexplicably stopped. I put my arm out to steady myself on the clear barrier. A throbbing emanated from various points in my body. I could now see them. My shoulder, chest, left arm, inner thigh – dotted with grotesque metallic-looking tumors. Voices filled my mind. Whispering to me all their secrets and imploring…compelling me to listen. I sat on the floor, my back against the clear wall. My body flushed with an instant fever and my heart detonated with a volley of furious palpitations.

Sensations caused me to convulse as I was bombarded yet again with a series of lucid visions. I was in a drunken fight near neon signs, a crowd cheering. I was trying on a leotard, tight on my naked juvenile form. My husband was yelling as I packed my bags, I was leaving again. The tracks I was following through the brush, disappeared into the terawatt moon.

My face is dark. My skin is dark. My life is dark.

There I am, adjusting my breasts in the dressing room mirror, wondering if I should buy this lingerie for him.