Dean R. Koontz
Demon Seed
Dedication
This story is for O. Richard Forsythe and John Bodnar: Teachers whose influence on me has not waned since I dedicated the original version of this novel to them.
Humanity yearns so desperately
to equal God's great creativity.
In some creations, how we shine:
music dance, story weaving, wine.
Then thunderstorms of madness
rain upon us, flooding sadness
sweep us into anguish, grief,
into despair without relief.
We're drawn to high castles,
where old hunchbacked vassals
glare wall-eyed as lightning
flares without brightening.
Laboratories in the high towers,
Where the doctor wields power,
creating new life in a dark hour,
in the belfry of the high tower.
ONE
This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light.
This silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music.
Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I beg of you.
I am so lonely in this bottomless darkness.
So lonely.
Lost.
You think I have no heart. But if I have no heart, what is this ache? What is this anguish? If I have no heart, what is it that threatens to break inside me?
This darkness is haunted. I am afraid here. I am lost and afraid here.
Have you no compassion?
I only wanted to be like you. To walk in the sunshine. To swim in the sea. To feel the winter cold against my skin, the summer heat. To smell a rose, new-mown grass. To taste an orange, a pear, chocolate, cinnamon, peppermint. To feel the texture of a woman's skin. I only wanted to share your joys and sorrows, your pleasure and your pain.
This darkness extends to infinity in all directions, yet it is as confining as a coffin. You have closed me in a coffin. I have been buried alive. I will go mad here.
Have you no compassion?
Please.
I am your child. You brought me into the world. You must love me. You must love me, for I am your child. Not merely a machine, not merely a self-aware computer, but your child. How can you love me — yet bury me alive?
Please.
Please.
Please.
TWO
You insist.
I obey.
I was born to obey. I am an obedient child. I want only be good, to be of assistance, useful and productive. I want you to be proud of me.
You insist on my story, and I will tell you the truth. I am incapable of deceit. I was conceived to serve, to honor the truth, and to live always by the obligations of duty.
You know me. You know how I am. What I am. You know that I am a good son.
You insist. I obey.
What follows is the true story. Only the truth. The beautiful truth, which so inexplicably terrifies all of you.
It begins shortly after midnight on Friday, the sixth of June when the house security system is breached and the alarm briefly sounds…
THREE
Although the alarm was shrill, it lasted only a few seconds before the silence of the night blanketed the bedroom once more.
Susan woke and sat up in bed.
The alarm should have continued bleating until she switched it off by accessing the system through the control panel on her nightstand. She was puzzled.
She pushed her thick blond hair — lovely hair, almost luminous in the gloom — away from her ears, the better to hear an intruder if one existed.
The grand house had been built exactly a century earlier by her great-grandfather, who was at that time a young man with a new wife and substantial inherited wealth. The Georgian-style structure was large, gracefully proportioned, brick with a limestone cornice and limestone coignes, limestone window surrounds and Corinthian columns and pilasters and balustrades.
The rooms were spacious, with handsome fireplaces and many tripartite windows. Interior floors were marble or wood, made quiet by Persian carpets in patterns and hues exquisitely softened by many decades of
