The Book of All Flesh by James Lowder

Author:James Lowder [Lowder, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-09T01:40:56+00:00

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dimensional space, existing outside the entropic forces of the observable universe from which the perception of linear time is derived.

“Sure,” he said, “but theology has never been my strong point.”

It is this statement that Kedea is remembering as the door to the chamber slides shut behind her and Parsons turns to face her.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about his appearance.

He is the same man she selected six months ago, the same man she has launched out of this world into another and called back again five times now. His eyes are the same calm, friendly eyes that looked out at her from the tank just over twenty-eight hours ago. Except, she notes, he isn’t breathing.

The room is quiet. The hum of the technology that habituation makes silent, ever-present in the corridors and labs of the complex, is absent here. So it is a loud quiet.

Parsons is looking at her. She notes the recognition in his eyes, perhaps a hint of welcome in his smile. Outside the complex, the corridors and labs and tests, outside the science of it all, she has felt happy for Albert Parsons. She likes him and feels proud of him and for him. She has felt pleased that he has gotten to do this amazing thing. Her assigned observer in Psych cautioned her against projecting her own feelings of accomplishment onto her subject, a warning to remain sensitive to his own experience. Parsons, possessing his own crude but effective sensitivity, once made a point of thanking her for this opportunity. Always quick to put others at ease.

His manner hasn’t changed. She still feels comfortable with him, standing a few paces away from him in the chamber.

Except for the hard and uncompromising fact, stated clearly and definitively by the monitoring sensors imbedded in the walls of the room, that he is dead.

Parsons gestures to the cot, offering her a seat. She shakes her head, begins to smile instinctively but can’t make it happen against the weight of the fact. He notices and his eyes soften in sympathy.

“Albert,” she says, inviting him to talk.

He shakes his head, but it doesn’t seem to be a refusal.

“You can’t?” she asks.

A single nod.

Feelings well up inside her. This never happens here, in the complex. Everything here is codified and delineated. The only unknowns are those that are predicted and designated.

Late at night she has woken up alone in bed, feeling. It is an 170

DANIEL KSENYCH

overwhelming thing for her and she always answers it by driving out to the complex and running simulations or study-ing results.

She is feeling now, a deep sadness, some fear. A lack of something. The absence of something inside her that will be able to help this man she has made. That she doesn’t understand where the feelings are coming from is as much the problem as the feelings themselves.

“Albert. Help me understand.”

He begins to walk toward her.

✢ ✢ ✢

The alarm sounds at 3:11 P.M. Internal Security arrives at 3:12 P.M. They wear white, chunky plyalloy body armor laced with MEM bioresponse fibers.

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