What does a god do? How does he act? Does a god still need nourishment, shelter, sex? Does he need need to excrete waste? Is he immortal?
A hundred questions. Maybe a thousand. Maybe more. I had to find someplace secure. Someplace where I could sit and think.
I left the Punishment Chamber a fiery demon, bursting with power, yet unable to control it. The guard wasn’t supposed to die. I meant to harm no one. He threatened me, and before my eyes he was split in two. I knew I should feel something. Guilt, pleasure, sorrow, rapture. Something. I felt nothing. Just the driving compulsion to flee. To put as much distance between myself and this man, Marquadt, as possible. How I knew his name, his thoughts, I couldn’t guess, but the fact remained that I did. He was an open book to me. I knew at that moment I could take him apart atom by atom if I so desired, but the concept of revenge was suddenly foreign to me. To take revenge on these pathetic creatures would offer me as much satisfaction as I would get seeking vengeance on an ant who walked across my palm as I slept. I realized at that point that the reason I felt nothing in regards to the man’s death was as simple as that. I would mourn their passing much as I would mourn the passing of an insect. They were almost beneath my notice.
Yet they did pose a threat. At least until I knew the extent of my powers. I exited the compound and took in the vista before me. The sun was bright and I was naked, yet it offered me no warmth; nor was I cold. It felt as if my nerves had been severed. A breeze blew, I saw my hair move with it’s caress, but my sense of touch had deserted me.
All around me sounds of chaos echoed. Sirens blared, lasers fired, men screamed orders. I walked calmly through the compound, beams of laser light striking me and dissapating. I strode to the gate, and then through it. Behind me there was a hole in the chain link fence, roughly the shape of my body. I turned and looked at it, facinated. I reached and touched it with my index finger, expecting some sort of feeling. Nothing. I looked at the scene behind me, and then turned and continued walking.
The compound was in the middle of the desert, surrounded my neural mines. I must have detonated a half dozen at least. No effect. I continued walking. The noise from the compound eventually died down. I heard their pursuit in air tanks and sandmarines.
I don’t know what made me stop. This square of sand looked no different from the million other squares surrounding it. I just stopped. It was destined to be that way, and I made it so. With just the slightest deliberate concentration, I felt the sand begin to shift beneath my feet. The horizon began to get higher as I began to get closer and closer to the sand. I looked down to a sight which would have astonished me just days earlier. The sand was leaping from my feet and I was sinking quickly in the dry, sun-baked sand. I was up to my neck, and then the sand covered me. I continued down further and further. Time became meaningless as I continued my downward journey. Hours? Days? I didn’t care.
I eventually emerged very close to the earth’s core. I was knee deep in flowing magma. I raised myself an inch above the hot fluid rock and thought the magma into solidity. I sat crosslegged on my little island and contemplated the former secrets of the universe.
“Keep digging!” Marquadt shouted.
“He’s dead by now, sir. He’s been under for six hours,” Lewis, Marquadt’s assistant, informed him.
“If he’s dead, there will be a body,” Marquadt spat.
Lewis looked at his boss incredulously. “If?” he asked.
Marquadt returned his underling’s gaze. “Did you see what X-57 did to Riley? He tore him in half. Lengthwise. Without laying a hand on him.”
Lewis stared in silence. “But how. . . .”
“Something went wrong back there, Lewis. The Punishment Drugs, the Neurowaves. . .something. Morgan and Steinberg are working on getting us some answers as we speak.” Marquadt turned towards the fifty foot pit his men had dug. “Until we find a body or dig our way through the earth, we keep looking and pray that X-57 is not dead.”
“You want him alive?”
“Do you understand what we have here, Lewis? This man is either the greatest potential weapon we’ve ever created, or the biggest threat. If we can capture him, convince him that the best place for him is on the side of the Black Pope, the subversives will fall, once and for all.”
“And if we can’t? If he is alive and he wants revenge for what we’ve done to him?”
“Then he must die. One way or another we must find some way to destroy him. If he lives and doesn’t work for us, do you realize the threat he poses? The consumers aren’t prepared for this. God knows how they would react. They could take him as the second coming or as God himself. We can not afford to take those kinds of chances.”
Lewis nodded and looked into the pit.
Erin Millar sat on her bed, looking at her feet. She’d always liked her feet. In her mind, they as sexy as feet could possibly be. Bright red polish splashed onto perfectly pedicured nails. It seemed a shame to cover them with shoes. Not that the rest of her was so hard on the eyes. Standing 5 feet ten inches, her lean, athletic body got more than it’s share of attention. Her long, blond hair, tossed just the right way, was a virtual man magnet. In short, she had her choice of just about anyone she wanted, male or female, and she’d sampled her choice of each on many occasions.
She rose from the bed and walked to the sonic shower. She often wondered what it would be like to bathe in water, the way her parents had. It seemed so extravagant. All that water just to wash a little dirt, sweat, and dead skin off. Almost unthinkable. Minutes later, she stepped out of the chamber and walked to her closet. She removed a fresh uniform and donned it, zipping it to her neck. The toenail polish was her only concession to vanity. Hidden beneath her shoes, it didn’t break the uniform code, and it was always an seductive surprise to a new lover.
She stepped onto her balcony and hailed a jetcab. Within minutes she disembarked on the landing pad of Neurowave Industries. The halls were still abuzz with the gossip of the events of the previous Friday. One of the higher ups had been caught selling technology to the subversives and had been carted away by the Psyforce. These instances of techonological espionage were extremely rare, especially among the upper echelon. She’d heard rumors of the Punishment Chamber and shuddered imaging his fate. Especially since she was so close to sharing it.
Erin had been a subversive for some time. Her parents had broken the laws by telling her stories of the days before the Black Pope. Water baths, gasoline powered cars, books, art. The stories had enthralled her as a child, and she’d not been able to shake that sense of wonder, no matter how much programming she went through at the university.
In the beginning it had been difficult. You didn’t just walk into a subversive employment office and request an application. Almost by definition, the subversives were an unorganized lot. To become a subversive, one had to basically make the the rules as one went along. Most subversives lived their lives normally; critical of the Black Pope and his Ministries, but living within its confines. Erin was different, though. She wasn’t content to lead a normal life. She wanted change. She wanted to meet other subversives, join a cell, carry out terrorist activities, perhaps even die for her beliefs. If questioned about this last bit, she would have denied possessing a death wish, but she knew that wasn’t quite true. Her life was miserable. She’d welcome death’s cold black embrace, if only she could leave a lasting impression on her fellow man.
She knew it was all fairy tales and pipe dreams, though. People like her, normal people, just didn’t get involved with subversive cells. She was expected to marry by 25 (only one year to go as of last Wednesday), have one child, preferably male, work, and then quietly die. That was the script handed to her.
But she longed to leave the scripted page. To improvise just once, making up her own dialogue and action; to be the center of her own film instead of a bit player in a cast of millions. To that end, she worked hard at the university, playing the role as best she could, which, it turned out, was quite well indeed. Upon graduation she had her pick of careers. Was it any wonder she joined Neurowave Industries?
She opened the door to the office she shared with two others and took her seat in front of her desk. She put on her Imagespecs and clicked a button on the side. The three dimensional screen appeared before her and she mentally commanded the research file she’d been assigned to open. To think, she mused, that one of her superiors had been a high ranking subversive, perhaps leader of a cell. Was that her one chance, now gone forever? Security, which was tight before, would certainly be tighter now. She’d never stolen any information for the simple fact that she had no idea what to do with it was procured. Still, with the recent arrest, her imagination reeled.
A-3f put down the Securcom, mind spinning in a dozen directions at once. If Lewis was right, the key to everything was buried in the sand, no more that 400 miles from where A-3f stood. The information was invaluable, but worthless if Marquadt and his Braingoons got to X-57 first. They’d probably be designating him X-57f or X-57d before the sun rose again. All the prisoners were numbered. A-3f had no idea what all the numbers meant, but he’d met enough former prisoners and heard enough horror stories to know that the first letter was a version designate. He himself had been a guinea pig, subject to the first version of the punishment software. Apparently there’d been 23 upgrades since his time in the Punishment Chamber 10 years ago. The number after the first letter was his prison order number. He’d been the third prisoner subjected to the first version. His new interest was the 57th prisoner of the 24th version. The letters weren’t attached until after punishment had been meted. F stood for failure. Something had gone wrong with the software. This was rare after version C, but not entirely unheard of. D stood for deceased, meaning that the software had brought about the death of the prisoner. He’d only heard one or two stories of “d” designates, and had never encountered anyone with first hand knowledge of a “d”, let alone any proof. He assumed there were other designates, but he didn’t know what they were or what they could mean.
Yes, the system had branded him a failure, though cured of criminal tendencies. He’d been guilty of murder and rape. Under the old system, he most certainly would have faced death, but under the Punishment Drugs, he was pronounced cured after three weeks of “therapy”. The drugs had taken his will to murder or rape, but they’d taken his sanity too. In the Black Pope’s utopia, he was a pock mark, an ugly reminder of the way things once were.
He feigned stupidity and acted like a lunatic, as was expected of him, but the Punishment Drugs had altered his chemistry as well. Not to the extent of X-57 by any means, but enough to band together his own renegade subversive cell, commit acts of terrorism, and not get caught. His IQ, if taken would have measured upwards of 190. He was insane, but perhaps the smartest man on the planet.
And now his agent, Lewis, had dropped this bombshell in his lap. With his brains and X-57’s power, they’d be unstoppable. He had no doubts that together they could rule the world.
If X-57 survived, he would join A-3f. If he did not, he would die. That was the decision of A-3f.
Near the center of the earth, I weep. The wonders of the universe are open to me. The voices that had been silent to me for so long now sing songs of their wonder. From the smallest atom, to the largest universe, nothing can hide from my all seeing third eye. The result is euphoric, overwhelming, and belief shattering. How wrong they all are. What foolish children.
I look up through the miles of sand. I see the one called Marquadt digging his hole. He is inconsequential. He no longer poses any sort of threat to me. I see him in two years, on a battlefield, leg severed, blood spurting from the artery slowy, painfully dying. I turn my attention to his trusted associate, this Lewis. Ten minutes ago he made a Securcom call to a subversive, I’m sure. I’m curious as to why I can’t identify who this subversive is. The first limitations of my new powers that I’ve encountered. Interesting. I touch a hundred lives, knowing their past, present, and future in an instant. I return my attention to this Marquadt. A strange man. I see him as a child. Abusive father. I see Marquadt awaken in his bed. He is seven years old. He is startled to find the barrel of a laser pistol in his mouth, his father standing over him, shouting. By some miracle (actually a short in the firing circuits) the pistol doesn’t fire and his life is spared. His father is not so lucky. Marquadt reports the crime and his father is executed. Marquadt still carries the guilt of his father’s murder with him. I see him at twenty-one, entering Neurowave Industries. He’s a pioneer in his field. At sixteen, he impregnates a 14 year old girl. I see him using his engineering genius to rig her aircar. She dies in what authorities determine to be an accident. Thirty. He is still a young man, though his crimes have made him look and act older. He supervises the first use of the Punishment Drugs. Horrible failure. The prisoner is beyond insanity. Marquadt administers the plasma shock to the prisoner’s brain himself. His second murder, but in his mind it’s his third. I pull my mind back into my body.
The extent of my powers are still unknown to me. Can I destroy the planet just by thinking the thought? The universe? The superverse? Beyond? No answers. Just questions.
I search for the Black Pope. He too, like this subversive is invisible to me. Puzzling. I remember a girl. From my former life. Pretty blond. She worked two levels below me. I’d been attracted to her. I never knew her name until now. Erin Millar. Sex is meaningless to me, but some primative part of my brain is drawn to her. Without realizing it, I’m suddenly inside her head. To my surprise, she’s thinking of me, though she doesn’t know it. A subversive at heart. I am pleased.
I bring myself back to this present reality. There are answers that I need. Answers that I owe my former life and people like Erin Millar. I need to know who framed me. I need to know what happened to me in the Punishment Chamber and why. I need to know who the Black Pope is and the reason for his existence. I need to know why I can’t reach his mind, or the mind of this mysterious subversive.
I have plenty of time and unlimited resources. I decide arbitrarily that the best place to begin my quest is Neurowave Industries.
What does a god do? That answer is easy.
Whatever he wants.
Posted by BlackJack 
Posted by BlackJack 
Posted by Sparks 
“:)”. There are six different colors and, not surprisingly, six different flavors. 
Finally, we arrive at Wonka’s Sweetarts Hearts. If you’ve ever had a Sweetart in any form (and if you haven’t, you, sir, disgust me), then you know exactly what to expect here. 
Flavorwise these are identical to regular ol’ Sweetarts, only they’re heart-shaped. There are only four different colors, but they somehow managed to pack in four different flavors. 
BlackJack
Sparks
cmsof