Inform. Addicts Read online

  “It is good to have such a hobby in an increasingly cyberized age.” Pahaliah smiled. “I think people get trapped in their own heads too often these days.”

  He thought of his son, a boy in high school who preferred going by his Fabric name Neoteny815 rather than his birth name, Barachiel. Pahaliah could picture his son’s smug expression after he recently died most of his hair ocean blue with neon green bangs. Barachiel had said he did so as a way to stand up for Mother Nature. The priest had asked his son how many toxic chemicals were released into the environment to make that hair dye, but Barachiel did not seem interested in carrying on the conversation after that. These days when he wasn’t sleeping, Barachiel was following the threads of the Fabric wherever they took him. Pahaliah felt they would lead to oblivion.

  “Good Lord what is that!” Pahaliah took a step back as he saw the movements of a very alien creature in the aquarium. It was the first sign of life in its depths that he had noticed.

  “Jaekelopterus rhenaniae,” Warden Puce said proudly, as if talking about a prize pony. “Wardens have quite nifty paychecks in this day and age, being asked to guard hyper-criminals and all. I have this scientist buddy in Madagascar who specializes in cloning ancient species. Jaekelopterus is still often referred to as a ‘sea scorpion’ in the textbooks, but it really is a freshwater dweller. It is a remarkable predator, but a pain in the as…a pain in the butt to feed.”

  “A very nice pet.” Pahaliah laughed nervously and tugged at his collar.

  The clergyperson noticed for the first time that a Tsuchigumo 2002 sentry automaton was curled up near the doorway to the office. No one made robots like Japan. He had been shocked at how deadly the Tsuchigumo, a smaller unit than most of the NAR’s weapon systems, could be in combat.

  “Please, have a seat.” Warden Puce gestured at the empty leather chair before his desk.

  “You certainly have a secure office.” Pahaliah motioned at the resting sentry automaton.

  “You may leave us Jago,” Puce said with a smile.

  After the assistant had left the office, Puce turned his full attention to the priest, studying his face as if to memorize his physiognomy for ages to come. Pahaliah felt his palms sweat. He was even more nervous around the warden than he had been in the presence of a psychopath, perhaps because he knew this official did not have the highest opinion of people who grew up Unitarian.

  “So what do you think of our local traitor?” the warden asked.

  “As Shakespeare once said, ‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman,’ or at least I think it was Shakespeare.”

  “Yes, he is refreshingly benign. Working with hyper-criminals is a pain in the ass. Oh, pardon my language.”

  “Please tell me, what exactly is the prerequisite for being a hyper-criminal?” Pahaliah asked.

  “Hyper-criminals do not handle a nanome quite as well as the rest of us. As a matter of fact, they do not react to a nanomachine saturated atmosphere very well at all. Emotional and logical areas in their minds are affected, leading to violent behavior never before seen amongst the human species. They live for absolutely nothing but violence, and they will inflict injuries on themselves if another victim cannot be found. It’s as if hyper-criminals cannot spend a second of their day without drawing blood. Heck, we’ve seen that they are even dangerous while sleeping.”

  Pahaliah straightened his posture, hoping to appear more professional while making a sensitive request.

  “I would like the opportunity to use a Rodzanice device on Mr. Abaddon,” the clergyman said.

  “Jesster, would you mind listening to some music? Daddy has to discuss something very important with Father Pahaliah.” The warden smiled at his daughter.

  While the girl did not have external listening buds, Pahaliah could slightly hear the music bouncing from her head. She must have had microliners already in her ears. The clergyperson could not make out what she listened to, but it sounded like C-Pop. Another aspect he envied in children was their ability to quickly accept old enemies as friends. If only more members of his flock desired to make amends with the foreign powers they fought against during the war. What were they so sore about anyway? The NAR and its allies had contributed far too much violence towards their opponents, a sad reminder that no conflict was one sided.

  Besides, any fool could see that the Western powers had established a network of control over the Earth that made the empires of the past look like a high school’s student council…a very small school to be sure. The NAR had the military power, Britain the economic sponsorship and the Vatican, much to the chagrin of the NAR’s priest class, the religious authority over the globe. Pahaliah had not chosen the world he lived in, but he did not regret that he had come out on top of the social ladder. Some of his more liberal opinions, rights to gay marriage for example, had been conceded by the Singular Church to keep all the parties invested in it happy. So what if the government did not permit quite the same liberties as in the old United States of America. It could be worse, right?

  “Ah, the Rodzanice, an old Polish technology originally intended for guessing the future intentions of person based on past memories. Who would have guessed that it would be used to eventually peer into the mind and see the sins a criminal tried to forget.” Warden Puce cracked his knuckles.

  “We have a new program to run through a Rodzanice device called Xiphos,” Pahaliah said with his eyes fixated on the movements of Jaekelopterus behind its shatterproof glass. “It will allow the user not only to see the memories associated with a criminal’s past, but also to physically experience the emotions attached to those recollections.”

  “I thought Xiphos was just vaporware?” The warden seemed very displeased to have not been told otherwise.

  “The S.C. had it brought back as a possibility for leading sinners from the paths of destruction. I mean what better way to understand a mislead man or woman than to put oneself in their shoes?”

  Warden Puce tapped his fingers on his desk, considering the matter during the following awkward silence. After what seemed like a hellish eternity for Pahaliah, a threatening smile crept onto the warden’s face.

  “The S.C. has a particularly large treasury.” Puce pursed his lips. “To disobey a direct order from the high ups entails some danger to my person, if you are found out. Unfortunately, a religious rank would not even protect you in such a situation. This century must be a pain for guys like you, right?”

  “You don’t really expect me to…pay you to allow this experiment to take place?” Pahaliah felt a chill run up his spine at a sprinter’s pace.

  “Oh, of course you feel above a bribe, but I’m sure that God will forgive you for breaking the rules in this case.”

  Pahaliah stood up from his seat, surprisingly exercising enough strength to knock it to the floor. Sadness had entered his eyes like a recent oil spill near Neo Orleans’s coast. He clutched his fingers tightly into balled fists.

  “The S.C.’s money is used solely for covering our costs and for charity, not for satisfying the wallets of men who already make more than enough from their jobs. Perhaps you should pay a visit to a confessional.” Pahaliah felt badly about adding that last statement.

  Warden Puce did not appear offended in the least. As a matter of fact, he let a slight snicker escape his sturdy frame.

  “Money is the only religion that speaks to me anymore,” Puce said.

  “But…I had heard,”

  “I am not the only one who lost faith in the higher powers after witnessing the horrors of the war. The longer you live, the more you start to realize that your existence only has meaning when it is of a finite duration. I mean, what would be the point of life on this rock if you had an eternity to follow? Our actions here seem very trivial and temporary from such a mindset. As for me, I want to give my children wonderful lives, better lives than you or I had thanks to the economy and the war.”

  “Of course this is a nation where you cannot legally be persecuted for your religious
beliefs, but I have to admit, I’m surprised you rose to such a position of power without putting stock in the Christian religion.” Pahaliah scratched his blond beard.

  “You would be surprised how easy it is to fake belief in a being that’s not there,” Puce said. “Ever had to dress up as Santa Claus for the kids?”

  Pahaliah tightened his grip on the suitcase in his left hand, praying for forgiveness and hoping that he was making the right decision.

  “If we can lead more men, women and children to Christ, I am willing to make a sacrifice. How much money do you want?”

  “I knew you would see things my way. For such a provocative request, oh, 30,000 sounds about right.” Puce cracked his knuckles in pleasure.

  Pahaliah mentally connected to the Fabric and moved the funds from his own private banking account to Puce’s. Though he would not be able to eat out with the family at the nicer establishments for some time, Pahaliah would not dare to take money from the Singular Church and use it as a bribe, not when he had his own money to provide.

  “I just sent a mental message to Jago. He’ll take you to see Abaddon, but you’ll have to make it quick. He’s due for an execution you know.”

  Warden Puce opened a drawer and retrieved a tray full of pinkish treats, two of which Jess eagerly took and placed in her mouth.

  “Care for some divinity?” Puce smirked.

  “I’m on a diet.” Pahaliah patted his abdomen which was not especially thick.

  ***

  “Well it didn’t take you long to get back here,” Abaddon said with an unreadable expression, as Pahaliah took a seat across from him.

  “I would like to hook you up to a Rodzanice system, but I must warn you that it has a special program…”

  “The Xiphos right?” Abaddon put his unrestrained hands behind his head.

  Jago and Pahaliah exchanged looks. Puce’s assistant had grown tired of putting on airs for the clergyman, and he seemed far more interested in escorting his guest off the premises than letting him probe a prisoner’s mind.

  “You forget that I outranked you before being placed in here. It seems the powers that be value a maker of assassins over a guide of sheep.” Abaddon rubbed one of his reddened eyes and yawned.

  “I won’t take invasive actions without your clear permission,” Pahaliah asserted.

  “Sure hook me up.” Abaddon waved his hand dismissively.

  Pahaliah opened his metallic briefcase and pulled out two headbands connected by a cinereal cable. To the contemporary eye, it would look like an archaic contraption. Wireless devices were the spirit of the age, and the necessity of connecting to another person through a wire seemed ridiculous. However, the Rodzanice system was not designed to exchange mental mail or hold telepathic conversations. It would allow one mind to probe another’s memories, and for such a task the information had to be kept in a closed channel, where no hacker could access it without first getting his or her hands on the Rodzanice itself.

  The conductive gel Pahaliah rubbed on his temples felt breathtakingly cool, despite being stored at room temperature. He looked like a dolt strapping on the headband, positioning the electrodes over the gel. At least Abaddon also had to wear the unfashionable headgear.

  “You’ll only be asleep for a few minutes, and you won’t feel a thing,” said the autonomous Escort who had run the secondary headset through a compartment in the divider glass and handed it to Abaddon.

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, silicon brain.” Abaddon laughed more to himself than aloud.

  Once the criminal had his device in place, the Escort gave him a shot of Substance Z to put him under. This concoction worked unnervingly quickly, though Father Pahaliah had seen it used enough times to feel no shock witnessing the rapidity of the sedative. Pahaliah did not wish to acknowledge this emotion welling up inside him, but he had to admit, he enjoyed being in a position of power over Garth Abaddon. Before he achieved criminal status, the man behind the glass had outranked the clergyman considerably. Pahaliah recalled that Augustine had once said in The Confessions–“As in the hierarchy of human society a more powerful official is placed above one of lesser rank and is to be obeyed, so God stands above all.” It certainly paid off having a personal relationship with the figure at the top.

  Flipping through the settings of his artificial mental wiring, Pahaliah activated the app that would allow him to use the Rodzanice system. The room about him began to quiver like a heat induced mirage, and the clergyman remembered his college days and the elation he had then felt when using psychedelics. Ah, to be young and heathenish again!

  Soon reality itself was torn apart, and Pahaliah found his mind’s eye staring into a blank void. When first training to use a Rodzanice system, people found this the most challenging stage, but Pahaliah had enough practice to feel no fear staring into this abyss. It was nothing more than a natural reflex on the part of the mind of the affected individual – a defense against a psychic attack that indicated the human mind had been created or evolved (the debate still had not been decided) with the capacity to anticipate psychic warfare. Once he had broken through this barrier, Pahaliah descended into an area of the mind too deep for Abaddon to even access on his own.

  The Xiphos program certainly was a remarkable feat, giving the memory world a texture that Pahaliah had never experienced before. He could see through the eyes of an Abaddon long gone. The subject was lying in a cradle, staring at a bleak ceiling above him. It was the kind of ceiling one would expect to see in a dentist’s office.

  “Look, you’re going to be expected to do far worse things in the Tokoloshe Program than this,” a nightmarishly harsh voice said.

  “But Doctor Rite,” a young assistant replied, a needle trembling in his hands, “you cannot give such large doses of ORN 251960 to infants. It will have irreversibly damaging effects on their minds.”

  “That is what we are counting on,” the doctor replied. “If you will not administer the injections, I am sure the extra workload will not be too much for Nurses Morell and Cumming to handle.”

  A deafening scream ran out through the room, as a pistol was fired and a life left the world. Doctor Rite personally leaned over Abaddon’s little bed, a syringe full of sickeningly green fluid rested in his hands.

  “Your sacrifice will make a better world,” he said as he injected the needle, which Pahaliah could feel pricking his own mind.

  The clergyman didn’t feel like lingering on this memory much longer, so he skipped ahead five years, wondering where on earth Abaddon found himself at this point. He was a bit taken aback to see the young man being trained in weapons usage and martial arts at such a young age. This was territory Abaddon would be able to catch glances of in reminiscence, yet there were no parents to comfort him, only pain and a desire to inflict this same suffering on others. His empathy and sense of self-identity were being stripped away and replaced with a clear mission – the destruction of monstrous demons from across the seas, Eldritch Abominations he had never seen with his own eyes but that had terrible descriptors attached to them.

  Father Pahaliah skipped ahead a dozen years, though he had a strong feeling the memories would not improve. He found Abaddon tied to a chair in a small shack amidst the sweaty canopy of a Colombian jungle. Surprisingly, the remote building had electricity, and Pahaliah could feel the emotions of the prisoner stampeding through his mind like a swarm of oversized ants. The young man stared at a light socket in the wall, thinking how sad the anthropomorphic faces within it appeared to him, as several men beat him for information. Apparently one of the United States’, for the New American Republic did not yet exist, secret organizations had grown weary of cocaine traffickers demanding higher wages for smuggling their drugs into the mainland. They had sent Abaddon to assassinate several leaders in this foreign organization, and the callow youth had only managed to kill two before being caught.

  Tired of seeing whips and belts approaching his eyes, Pahaliah skipped ahead slightly, which was far
enough to see Abaddon kill his captors in indescribably horrific ways before returning to Washington. Apparently the neophyte had realized that he would receive no aid from his superiors in this business. Pahaliah had a strong feeling that this criminal had developed a sense of self-independence because of his life circumstances more than by conscious choice.

  By the time Abaddon was in his mid-twenties, he became the head of a new program that would brainwash youngsters into killing machines. It was the very same program that carried over into the age of the NAR. Pahaliah increasingly felt for the man with whom he temporarily shared memories. Who better to lead a brainwashing program than a person who had been through it before? Abaddon inherited his position violently too, as his predecessor failed one too many cases and “committed suicide with a shotgun to the back of the head.”

  Pahaliah considered the possibility that he may have seen enough of the war criminal’s mind to understand this man. He felt a heavy burden on his heart, considering the memories he had witnessed. Of course when he had heard about Abaddon’s job in the NAR he hated that children should be subjected to such a, dare he say it, satanic responsibility. Rather than sacrificing children to pagan gods, his government had done so for the sake of spreading democracy to every part of the globe. Who was he to suggest these actions were or were not justified? If God worked in mysterious ways, it would be no wonder that the devil would chose underhanded methods.

  Some instinct, though Pahaliah hated applying that word to himself, as it seemed better suited to lower animals, tugged at the heart of the clergyman and urged him to continue following Abaddon’s behavior. He realized that if Abaddon really had been set up, uncovering this truth could put himself, and his family, at risk. Perhaps the dark alcoves of this inmate’s mind were better left alone anyway. Who knew what kind of scaly monster might lurk amongst the sticky neurons of this brain. There was blood dripping from Abaddon’s very cells.