“How…?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” the judge said, his grinning face hovering in the gloom. “You are dead, Mr. Moore. You died centuries ago.”
“No.”
“We levelled you.”
“No!”
“You’ll see. Soon you’ll see everything.”
Four’s expression brightened.
“Now?” she asked.
“We have delayed enough,” he replied. “To the chair.”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Addison screamed.
The drone shot forwards, knocking him down. Doubling over, Addison’s vision swam and in the misty walls he suddenly thought he saw shapes, not-quite human shadows ebbing and receding in the grey. There was a thudding, a distant pounding, and he stretched out a hand, beckoning, pleading. Then Four’s pistol swung out of the darkness, and Addison saw nothing but black.
– Chapter 2 –
In The Blood
First, a thudding: distant and muffled.
“G’way,” Addison mumbled. “Lemme sleep.”
Second, a buzzing: closer, unsettlingly familiar.
“Sleep,” he groaned.
Slowly, much too slowly, the crumbling city blocks of Addison’s brain flickered to life. Sensations clamoured at him, cold, discomfort, the sound of nearby voices. As he swam up towards the spangly brightness of day, one snapped into focus.
“Awake, returnee,” the voice said. “Awake and see.”
Addison’s eyes flew open.
“Oh god, no,” he whispered. “No, no…”
Everything flooded back. Four stood before him, teeth glinting like knives, and he was strapped into a chair, naked save for a thin metal sheet. The same misty grey walls surrounded him, but this was a smaller space: dark, claustrophobic, reeking of sweat. Behind him, something was gurgling unpleasantly.
“Welcome to the vision chair,” Four said.
“This can’t be happening,” Addison said, rocking against his restraints. “This can’t––”
The buzzing leapt in volume and suddenly he was screaming. Blistering, searing pain ripped through his body and he thrashed, muscles spasming. Then, blessedly, it was over and he slumped back.
“Please, interrupt me again,” Four said. “The paladin can maintain this indefinitely.”
“I can’t,” Addison gasped, as the drone buzzed behind him. “I can’t––”
Another crackle.
More pain.
An eternity of it.
Addison wasn’t even screaming any more, just mouthing in silent agony. The pain was total, obliterating: everything else fell away. If he could have talked, he’d have said anything – done anything – to make it stop. It just had to stop. When the drone did finally release him, he felt something close to joy. He sighed, pitched forwards and vomited onto the floor.
“We can continue,” Four said, grimacing and taking a step back. “Or you can comply.”
“Careful,” came another voice. “His was the only compatible sample.”
Five stood a few feet away watching nervously.
“We tried it your way,” Four snapped. “My turn.”
The woman’s eyes were wild and Addison had no doubt she would hurt him again. In fact, he got the distinct impression she was only warming up.
“I’ll comply,” he croaked. “I’ll do anything.”
Four looked almost disappointed.
“Two will tell you the facts,” she replied. “Then the chair will show you the truth. Move, and there will be pain. Resist, and there will be more pain. Understand?”
Addison nodded. The gurgling intensified and Two stepped around into the light.
“Mr. Moore!” he began, his cheery tone suddenly more menacing than Four’s hostility. “You have been levelled. Do you understand?”
Addison looked up helplessly.
“The process has many names,” he sighed. “Geneweaving, psychotransubstantiation, haemosynaptic transfer, but ‘levelling’ is perhaps the most elegant. As you know, there are many levels of information in human DNA. Physical traits, behavioural quirks, the veritable anthology of genetic data that makes you, you, all encoded at a biological level. What you may not know however, is that consciousness is encoded too, in the final and most information-dense of these levels.”
“Consciousness isn’t in your blood,” Addison whispered. “That’s insane.”
“How quaint!” Two beamed. “The scholars of your time thought much the same, that consciousness all happened in the brain. In reality, it was more intertwined with genetics than they ever conceived. Here, we master that intertwining.”
“Here?” Addison managed.
“When the world still turned, this magnificent institute was dedicated to extracting, examining and preserving levelling samples. And deep in an archive, yours was waiting.”
“My sample?”
“Your blood.”
Addison began to shiver.
“What am I?” he breathed.
“The closest analogy from your era is ‘clone,’” Two said, nose wrinkling. “But it is such a crude term. Cloning is for dilettantes, levelling is art. Extracting a person’s consciousness, their very soul from a single sample, it is the pinnacle of human achievement, the closest to godhood our species ever came.”
Addison’s mind was spinning. “But I remember,” he whispered. “The casting call, the bus here...”
“Alas, false memories. Five’s great folly.”
“But why?”
In the gloom, Five smiled sadly. “Because it was humane. I thought I could spare you the horrors of reality whilst also completing our task. I was a fool.”
“But why me? What’s special about me?”
Five glanced at his colleagues. “The levelling archives are... damaged. The world is dying, our technology failing. We have one interpreter and it only works for certain blood groups. Of the samples we could access, you were the only candidate.”
Four leant forwards, teeth shining. “That is why, guilty as you may be, you are not on trial.”
“But I haven’t done anything!”
“Of course you have!” Two smiled. “You just died before you could see the consequences. Now you will be held to account!”
“No!” Addison shouted, shaking the chair. “No!”
“He does not see,” Four said, standing back.
“He will,” Two replied, the genial mask slipping.
The pair moved behind the chair.
“I’m sorry, Addison,” Five said. “I’m so sorry.”
Behind him, the gurgling reached a fever pitch. Hands snaked to the base of Addison’s skull and twisted violently. But this time there was no pain.
This time there was light.
Addison saw.
He saw everything.
Images bloomed in his mind, more real and vivid than anything he’d ever known.
He saw everything that had ever happened, recordings from a thousand artificial eyes – satellites, cameras, phones, screens, media he couldn’t even comprehend – all beamed directly into his brain. Hundreds of years of history unfolded in seconds: megacities swarming the earth, choking, smothering. Green spaces eroded, eaten away, bulldozed entirely. Temperatures rising, creeping at first, then soaring, unstoppable...
Except, also, entirely stoppable.
He saw a scattered few conceive of the calamity, sound the alarm, plead with the world to stop,
