Chapter Fifteen: Vague Misperception — Part 4

Transitive Memory: Part 2

“I’m so hungry I’m hearing voices in my head.” Jonathan said, certain he was going insane.

Do they sound like this? Susan asked, not even bothering to focus.

“Yes…” Jonathan almost hissed, awestruck. “I must be particularly sensitive.”

“Particularly arrogant, perhaps. Older children can block out the rattling thoughts of others around them, even if they can sometimes be unintentionally noisy in a room, and all adults can telelpath to an individual with enough focus so as not to be heard by everybody. Unless they try real hard to focus on one person, everybody within their family can hear the leaders of both the Antansi and Human family units. And if I focus with even a little of my mind, I can reach every human being on the planet. Only the general populace has privacy of telepathic thought, after all.”

“This voice keeps saying, ‘You are part of me, and I of you, we are one.’ Without emotion it expresses a greater love than I have ever felt before.” Jonathan said. “It is because of this that I don’t trust it.”

“Antans, the land we stand on, is awake. The voice you hear is the voice resultant of trillions upon trillions of symbiotic cells working within a species-induced biometric field, much like telepathy.”

“It told me that I was its servant, and because of the crimes I have committed in the past, I will be its servant until I am no longer what the other tried to make of me.” Jonathan paused. “I remember no crimes.”

“You were a killer. The absence of memory cannot disqualify the horrors of your past.” Susan said, her tone turning momentarily dark.

Another drone landed near Jonathan, carrying food. “What are these?” He asked.

“Appetizers.” Susan said. “How are you dealing with this contract of servitude?”

“I choose to resistance it, I choose to fight it with everything I am, and die rather than become a servant.” Jonathan said, making no attempt to conceal his anger.

“You could only survive the transition by making the very choice you claim to resist. Why do you fight it now?”

“Because I can.” Jonathan said. “Nothing should control me, I’ve even gained immunity against your lasers. I could leave now, if I wanted to.”

“Why don’t you?” Susan toyed with him.

“It won’t let me.” Jonathan admitted.

“I give you permission to leave the lab and go out into the world.” Susan said. “But I warn you, if you try to hurt one of our tribe, or one of the natives, they may find it necessary to kill you. It would not be construed as murder, to end such a pathetic life as yours.”

Jonathan rose slowly, stepping through the lasers. They burned momentarily, just as they would for anybody, but he healed quickly. “How can you control me like that?”

“Because it is my duty to protect you, and in exchange for that protection comes fealty, willing or otherwise. Until you learn some self-control, you’re in danger of hurting yourself, far more so than you are of hurting others. It is you that the symbiont is trying to protect, after all.”

“I wouldn’t care about anybody but myself if I had as much power as you do.” Jonathan said

“And that is why you aren’t a candidate for Leadership of my people.” Susan dismissed him casually. “Go make some friends. Find a mate, start a life.”

“No . . .” He began. “I don’t deserve anybody.”

“So you do know your value. Go increase it.” Susan turned away, heading through door, disappearing into the mist.

Once free of the clean room, Jonathan decided to put his new body to the test. He darted through the treetops with grace far exceeding any person or animal he had ever known. As he jumped from branch to branch, others flew by him, looking like characters out of some ancient fairy tale. In his mind he thought of flying, and his body lifted off the ground, leaving the world behind him. As Jonathan rose higher into the atmosphere, the air thinned significantly, and yet he didn’t feel lightheaded. Rather, his metabolism slowed to compensate for the lack of oxygen.

Reveling in his newfound freedom, he broke two more layers of clouds, hovering at the edge of Antans’s breathable atmosphere, and saw for the first time, Antans’s pale, unusually small sun. He knew instinctively that Antans had no moon, had nothing orbiting near enough to encourage cycles of season or of tides. He was certain that he would have sensed its gravitational influence, however minute it might have been. As he stared into the layers of cloud beneath him, he realized that there were others below him, but that few, if any, had flown as high as he had. Of course, none had been denied the sunrise as long as himself. Many creatures flew through the clouds, some of them human, some of them frightening. Some of the scary things, he could sense, were growing curious about him specifically. They circled below him, unable, most probably, to come into the light of the sun. Cautiously, Jonathan let himself slowly drop back down into the questionable safety of the mist. He had such plans, and so many new powers to test. For the time being, Jonathan let his curious, scientific mind take over, and began to document and experiment with his abilities.

After so many centuries in darkness, Jonathan preferred the night. Sounds seemed louder at night, thoughts more crisp, and all odors and smell somehow more intense. He even preferred the dull red outline of a world with no true light to the twilit purples and reds of the Antansi day. And at night, the miasma of smells, good and bad, seemed to flood his body even more so in the cool, still air, than during the day. The gentle scent of a human female lingered in the air. She was putting considerable effort into clearing as great a distance as quickly as possible, though he could not fathom why.

He could smell her fear and her femininity as two distinct flavors of the same person, and that brought to him a yearning he had not felt in over two hundred years. After a short trek, he saw her, caught up with her, passed her by. She continued to run, oblivious to anything but her own trajectory. She had a slender body, firm breasts, and blue hair. Her eyes, he saw them flash back at him for a moment, were ashen gray and angry, despite her fear. He dropped out of the tree in front of her, and she started. He had never seen a woman more beautiful. Her scent left him longing, craving sex in a way he had not craved since his youth, several hundred years before.

“Hello.” He had said, dodging a quick jab that might have killed him if she hadn’t pulled the punch.

“Don’t surprise me like that.”

He touched her to make sure she was real, and she pushed him so hard he fell off balance, landing in a puddle of sludge. Angered, he jumped up and shoved her back.

“What was that for?” She asked, curious.

“I don’t know. Why did you push me into the mud?” Jonathan countered.

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What’s your name?” Jonathan asked curiously.

“Vertigo.”

“Vertigo?” Jonathan looked at her sideways. “What a peculiar name.”

“This coming from a man who calls himself Jonathan, instead of Jonathan.” Her words were cutting, but there was a kind of cold humor in them.

Jonathan laughed coldly, wondering how such a young woman could be so intimate with the details of his recovery. “Almost everybody else is asleep, or at least in their homes.” Jonathan sniffed the air. “At least one couple nearby is engaged in sex, from what I can tell.” Vertigo did nothing to hide her annoyance at this comment, so Jonathan concluded his thoughts. “Why are you out this late at night?”

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