Science and the Greater Good
“By Satan’s flaming prick this is not the end of it,” growled Ralf. “Let the dark angels reserve your place in Chaos!” He coughed a spray of blood and phlegm, and straining against the shackles he turned a loathsome glare on the malefactor his own equal. “I’ll be back for you; a demon of your own making. Hear my words, false oracle—I’ll lead the Black Lord himself to your Prophesy!!!”
Enraged with the hollow rattle of his threats Ralf again lunged against the straps, his grunting efforts strangled by the manacle clamped tight around his throat, but soon he was spent, wheezing for breath and wielding nothing but empty words.
How quickly his circumstances had changed…
“You take your righteous gods,” he said softly, “your soulless saints and your buggerin’ clergy, and go stuff ‘em where no sun casts a shadow.” Twisting against the strand of electrodes that pierced his scalp like a halo of barbed wire, Ralf felt the prongs tear through flesh and catch on bone, and he hawked and spat toward the curate who had officiously declared himself as Primacy Deland Gaunt.
But a mouth parched dry with desperation made little of his effort.
The orator paused, feigning a charitable smile as he dabbed at imagined flecks of spittle on his robes, and Ralf sank back against the hard metal surface. The self-proclaimed Prophet lifted his Sceptre and resumed the tracing of intricate aerial patterns while chanting sonorous platitudes of pietistic drivel, and Ralf’s eyes nearly bulged from their sockets as he again lunged to rage against the leather and steel than bound him fast to the gurney.
The vicar put much drama into raising a finger before a flashing red button on the panel of dials and gauges, and he began building his cadenced preachment to a climax. Though Ralf paid no attention to any sect other than the very select Cult of Ralf, he could not help but marvel at the inane drivel—the melding of righteous urgency and moral rectitude and all based in the inevitability of The Prophecy. The priest held his finger poised dramatically before the button, where it bobbed like a serpent setting itself to strike, until with a final incantation and theatrical flourish he leaned in to press it.
The throbbing light abruptly ceased its urgent flashing and stayed lit with all the silent certainty of an EKG gone flat-line. The scene abruptly began to dissolve, swirling and breaking apart in Ralf’s vision like a pointillist canvas coming undone, and Ralf cried out as his wits began to spin away, swirling faster and faster like water down a drain. Ralf became less, and still less yet, until he felt like a mere slip of the sheerest gauze.
And then there was nothing.
***
He had not died, he didn’t think.
If that were the case, then there would be nothing. Or there’d be demons prodding at him through the flames, or angels flying around sprinkling fairy dust. Whatever.
This was, well… OK, so it was nothing—but still, he was thinking about it. Though there was little enough to assess. No sight, no sound, no sensations of any nature. It felt to Ralf as though he had somehow been ‘absent’ for an indeterminate period, and then the process of thinking had begun to grow on him. Scattered fragments at first, like static-ridden signals on an ancient analog tuner, and then patterns filtering together. Gradually his thoughts connected with one another, and he pieced together the events preceding this… well, whatever this was.
The Prophesy. They'd caught up with him, finally. He'd made a mistake and they had linked him to a multitude of… well, incidents, as he preferred to call them. Once they’d known who to look for they had tracked him easily enough, as pervasive and unbounded as is the Prophesy.
And that had been that. The show was over, the curtain lowered. The players gone from the stage and the theatre pad-locked forevermore, so it would seem. The Prophesy’s Enforcers had processed him in short order, paying minimal lip service and skating through the legalities with all the delicacy of a blow torch on an ice cube.
Let the bastards stew in their own hell! fumed Ralf, from his little stub-track off the vastness of nowhere. The Prophesy’s self-actualized ‘True Judgment’ councils proclaim their actions as being just and righteous, but they’re no more ‘moral’ than am I.
Ralf pondered that notion at length, turning it one way and another and considering it from various angles, because, quite frankly, he had no other pressing engagements in the foreseeable future. Finally he resolved that, on the whole, he did not view his mores as evil-incarnate—but then neither could he justify them.
Good or bad, right or wrong; it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Having exhausted that philosophical consideration, Ralf commenced to revel in all that was left him now; the reconstructing of memories of his past, all those carefully plotted and exceptionally guileful artifices. There was the beginning of each entrapment—an oft-time whimsical selection of his prey, and then a crafty pursuit, artfully twisted and turned upon itself, and eventually the culmination, which was, sadly enough, always much the same. Once he had extracted the final penance there was nothing more for him there, and he would feel empty and purposeless until he could recharge himself with a new and perhaps even more deviant pursuit.
Oh yes, how he would satiate in the brutal cycling of emotions that he labored to induce; surprise and confusion; anger; fear; hope crushed to despair; agony—he was able to identify each by its unique and desperate smell in the sweat and the breath of his victims. And if that felt so exquisite to him, so sublime—how then could it be inherently wicked? Of course that question was raised by the perpetrator, not by the perpatratee…
Amusement!
Look there—an emotion reconstructed from nothing! If Ralf could have shaken his head, he would have.
What the hell is going on here? Where…what am I?
Ralf’s meandering train of thought was suddenly set off-track as he became aware of a murmuring on the fringe of his mentality.
Sound? Could that be sound?
And of a sudden he caught the faintest scent, a musky aroma that he could almost taste.
Jeezus B Christ! Am I being born again? Out of the womb and all that gooey crap?
“He’s… to…..…..ound…...utting….t..ether.”
Bits of words! And those were not my thoughts, I heard them! Sort of.
“You ..ink so? ..at woul…uite a rapid t…..”
A second voice?
“Yes, it.....ppening....sually quick, but can’t you feel it? He is coalescing.”
Ralf concentrated on the words, struggling to assemble them into a coherent whole, and he abruptly came to realize that it was no longer pitch black. An interior space, a room, was coming into focus, bit by bit, like pixels gathering on a monitor.
“Hello? You can hear us now?” The voice redirected itself. “You see there, Dedra, where his substance comes together?”
Substance!?? Coming together?
Ralf tried to look down at himself, at his so-called ‘substance’, and his senses dropped into a spin, careening like an over-clocked motherboard, tumbling end over end through open space and solid matter. He clenched his vision shut to halt the madness, and when he calmed and reopened his mind he found himself in another room, looking down from the ceiling. He lowered his perspective to the floor and he jumped—figuratively speaking—as the same voice spoke again.
“Well then, this is truly remarkable! It would appear that you’ve careened headfirst into your new existence, eh? But you needn’t be overly concerned with what happened just now, as your bearings should settle down once you’ve gained self-control.”
Ralf rotated a full circle, deciding that he was not really ‘hearing’ the voice. Nor did he physically squint his eyes. At first he perceived nothing but an empty room, but he then became aware of an indistinct blur—like a smudge on a camera lens. The chimera spoke to him.
“You can see us now, is that correct?”
Us?
He tried to focus on the formless presence that spoke to his mind, and he became aware that, indeed, it was not a single entity, but rather a pair. But how could he speak to it, to them? He had no mouth, no lips—he was nothing.
“What are you?”
Shocked, Ralf realized that question had come from him.
“You see, Dedra?” The voice again redirected its focus. “This is superb! I have never seen an extraction come together so quickly. We have long hoped for one such as this. Perhaps he may prove a true savant—more adept than even you or I!”
The voice turned back to Ralf. “You are new to this plane of existence, and so you have much to learn. To begin, I will introduce myself. I am Doctor Albert Forquessas, and this is Dedra Handerstorn, my circumstantial compatriot.”
Ralf thought he could discern which bit of shimmer was the speaker, but as he pondered how he might respond, a vague memory tugged at him. Forquessas?
***
Laura stepped out the doorway, throwing the deadbolt and warily scanning both directions down the brightly-lit hallway. She frowned—the excitement of her new apartment had quickly cooled to a sense of unease, though she could point to no reason for it. But, admittedly, the low rent had seemed too good to be true. The complex was as secure as she could hope for, located in a fairly upscale neighborhood. And, unlike her previous apartment, seemingly not prowled by the darker denizens of the metropolis.
Nonetheless—the place really creeped her out. She never felt truly alone here, it was as though someone always watched, some presence always lingering just beyond view. The second week she’d gone so far as to conduct a reconnaissance—electrical outlets, phone jacks, light fixtures—any place some twisted freak might have planted the intrusive miniature surveillance camera or microphone. But she’d found nothing to justify her discomfort. Now she shook her head—why on earth had she become so skittish? There was no dark history evident here, no skeletons rattling about in closets.
Even so, she’d learned from guarded conversations with other tenants that she was not alone with her vague sense of threat. The young guy across the hall was moving out as soon as he could find anyplace halfway decent. He would forfeit his entire security deposit—and he’d just cycled out of a tour of combat duty, for God’s sake—not someone you’d expect to see jumping from his shadow.
Laura had taken to watching her neighbors, and after a short time she found herself paying closer attention to those who stayed on long-term. There was old Mrs. McClarity at the end of the hall, young Dylan Brown on the first floor, and ditzy blonde Melissa, to name a few. Dylan was perpetually happy, a ‘special’ bagger at the local grocery. Melissa was always bombed on whatever ‘script she could wrangle from one day-clinic or another, and Mrs. McClarity, well… there was no denying that the old woman was feeble.
The thing of it was; all of those who showed no sign of discomfort here—they were kinda slow in one way or another. None too perceptive, not running on all cylinders. Could that be why they sensed nothing askew?
Whatever the case, Laura found herself spending more and more time at her boyfriend’s ramshackle studio apartment these days.
***
“I would say that you were totally whacked out, if not for the fact that here I am, less than a shadow on the wall, talking to a couple of spooks.” Ralf wished he could pinch himself awake.
“Oh no, that is not at all true,” insisted the bit of nothing who called himself Dr. Forquessas. “A shadow is something of a void, an absence of energy. You, to the contrary, are a coalescence of energy.”
“Say what?”
“You said that you recognized my name. Then surely you understand what I suggest?”
“Uh, listen up, Doc. I was never much for psychics or scientology or whatever the hell it was you did. I had my own, ah… interests.” Ralf harbored his secret smile.
“Oh?” Dr. Forquessas sounded newly wary. “Tell me then, what action of yours merited an extraction? For most of us it was a minor infraction.” Forquessas sighed, Ralf somehow sensed. “So many people on the planet, all following the Genesis Codex—our sheer volume necessitated some means of forced attrition after the Twenty Wars ended and could no longer provide that function. Unfortunately for us all, the Prophesy assumed that role. But back to my question; your transgressions were slight, were they not?”
Ralf shrugged. “Yeah, sure. They got me for jaywalking. And once I bumped my scatcraft into the Chancellor’s luxo-rig. They get all pissy over stuff like that.”
“Hmmmm, I suppose. Well, in any case, you could hardly cause any trouble here. Not yet, anyway.”
Ralf’s ears perked up, metaphorically speaking. “Whaddaya mean, not yet?”
“We will discuss that later. For now, I want to make sure that you understand what you are; what we all are.”
“Doc, you keep saying stuff like ‘all of us’. I don’t see no big crowd. You, me, and Dedra there.”
“Oh no, there are many, many more. Here and at other dumping zones across the planet. You don’t yet perceive the weaker signatures, but in time you will. This zone is long overcrowded, as I’m certain the others are.”
Ralf scowled, and then carefully widened his vision.
There’s nothing else here, I… no, wait! I see something, very faint, like the last trace of a cloud blown apart in the wind.
“You see them?” asked Dr. Forquessas encouragingly.
Ralf nodded dubiously. “Maybe. So what’s your point, Doc?”
Forquessas sighed. “My point is that we do indeed exist, but not as solid matter. To summarize a lengthy discourse, my premise is that life is energy.”
“You're saying I’m a peppy guy?”
“What remains of you is pure, formless, energy. My work has shown that streams of energy comprise what we think of as life. All else, such as your body or the physical form of a tree, are just containers—vessels meant to hold specific signatures of energy for a period of time.”
“So Doc, if I’m so energetic like you say, why don’t I just whip out my cape and fly off, like Super-Dude?”
Forquessas chuckled. “If only it were so simple, Ralf. To put it as simply as I am able, what you enjoyed previously was a unique concentration of energy that defined your thoughts, your memories, your emotions; all contained within a vessel synchronized to the complex pattern of energy that was, and is, Ralf. As it were, we have all been deprived of those uniquely tuned coffers that we once thought of as bodies.”
“Yeah? So what happened to our bods, Doc? Couldn’t we just track 'em down and climb back on board?”
Forquessas shook his head, or so Ralf imagined. “We are separated by time and by space, and the bodies are stacked in cryogenic storage—like so many John Doe’s in a morgue—awaiting incineration after a period of time beyond what any human could hope to survive in normal life. We are, in effect, stranded here.”
***
Laura doubled-checked the locks and safety chains on the front door and switched on all the lights in the apartment before ducking into the bathroom. She locked that door also, and, feeling rather silly about it but doing so anyway, she wedged a chair under the doorknob. Taking a deep breath, she turned on the shower and slipped off her robe.
***
“They turned my work against me, Ralf. Claiming that I’d broken a sacred covenant, they usurped the very effort they’d condemned and then turned it to their own purpose.”
“How can they do that, Doc? Wasn’t Capital P outlawed after the last Annihilation?”
“Ah, and there’s the rub. Per the Prophesy’s abstruse logic, the extraction is not capital punishment. And in a way that’s true. We are not dead, after all; we are simply disembodied.”
“So I’m iced-out somewhere, huh? I sure hope they stacked me business-end-down on some stonkin’ babe.”
Forquessas sighed. “You may as well abandon your baser desires, Ralf, as you’ll find no outlet for them here.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that. But in the meantime, Doc, the big mamba-lickin’ question is—how did we end up here? In a different place; an earlier time?”
“Ah... For that the Prophesy turned to the efforts of one Doctor Antoine Devilier, who demonstrated the ability to transport inanimate matter through space and time. On pattern, the Prophesy accroached Devilier’s work even while they decried it, and by so doing they assembled the pieces necessary to build their new social order—all while purportedly retaining moral purity.” Forquessas huffed. “The Prophesy could then extract the energy that defined a living being and isolate it as a non-biological entity, transport that energy-stream through space and time, and thus be rid of any who displeased them. They wasted little time eliminating any who might threaten their blossoming theocracy.”
Ralf nodded dubiously. “If you say so, Doc… But even if that’s true—why do we stay here? When I first showed up I blasted through walls and ceilings and whatever else. It's not like we’re locked in. Why not get out, go wander around—stir things up?”
“It is true that both time and space are now immaterial to us—to an extent. When we were robbed of our physical vessels we were granted free rein in dimensions that were previously off limits. But the Prophesy understood that would be the case, and so they implemented safeguards.” Forquessas drifted closer. “So that I might show you, Ralf, rather than just tell you, why don’t you and I step back to yesterday?”
“Huh?”
“Yes, go back to yesterday. There are no words to express what we could never before comprehend, and so I employ the catchword streaming. Watch closely, and follow.”
Forquessas seemed to shimmer and fade away, and Ralf emulated what he’d sensed. “Well, that was a lot of nothing,” he said. “Here we freakin’ are, just like we were.”
“Yes, except that in human time it is yesterday. Do you see Dedra? No, she is where we left her, in this room, but tomorrow. Now let me show you something else. It is the first step in our return to normalcy.”
Ralf licked his ephemeral chops and drifted in close. Now we’re gettin’ down t’ the meat and potatos…
***
Laura stepped from the shower, darting her eyes around the steamy room. The mirrors were fogged over unseeing, and she was grateful for that. The pulsing hot water had been wonderful, but she had felt so very exposed and vulnerable that she’d lathered up and rinsed off and gotten out fast.
Shivering chilled in the hot lavatory, she reached out for a towel.
***
“You understand that without a physical presence, there is very little we can do?”
“That’s no great revelation, Doc.”
“You have a very strong aura in this form, Ralf, and I need that. And so I am going to confide in you; I will be your mentor.”
Ralf nodded to himself. No big deal, it’s not like I might get killed or something…
“We are restricted to this general location by the minimal cohesion of our energy fields. The Prophesy tuned our signatures to require some level of magnetic energy to hold together, and they then dumped us atop one or another region known for substantial deep deposits of iron ore. If we were to wander away an appreciable distance—as have done those who wished to end themselves—then we would dissipate to nothing.” He chuckled. “Like your wisp of cloud torn apart in the wind.”
Ralf carefully catalogued that statement. If Forquessas could so readily see his mind, he would need to more tightly shelter his thoughts.
“That explains our limitation in the dimension of space, Ralf. As for the dimension of time—there we are less restricted. We can regress as far as we like, but upon advancing we encounter a barrier, undoubtedly somehow erected by the Prophesy to block us from their timeline. I do not know the details, but they undoubtedly have stolen someone else’s work for that.”
“So you’re tellin’ me we’re basically stuck in the past.”
“That is the intent of the Prophesy. But I have worked out a plan, and I believe that with the addition of your strength it might be achievable.”
Ralf suddenly felt Forquessas delve into his mind, no doubt hoping to not find the unrestrained sociopath that he feared might dwell there. Ralf blanked his thoughts, a technique he’d always found very useful when misdirection was his goal, and after some moments Forquessas nodded and continued.
“As I said, we have no hope, should we remain unable to regain physical form. Forever phantoms; sensed by few and known by none, wandering the ether until it becomes too much to bear, and then capitulating to seek out true and final oblivion. I have also described to you how our bodies were vessels, each tuned to match a unique energy signature. But if we had access to those bodies—undamaged—I believe that the stronger among us could, given the proper technique, ‘reoccupy’ them.”
“Yeah, so what? You just told me we can’t get to those bods, iced or not.”
“By passing through time and space as we exist now, that is correct, we cannot.” Forquessas moved across the room and beckoned Ralf to follow. “Look here, Ralf. This is a wooden chair. It is an inanimate object, though once alive, and its remnant energy signature is relatively simple. Yes?”
“OK. So what?”
“So, Ralf. Why don’t you ‘occupy’ this chair?”
Ralf chuffed. “You mean sit on it, Doc? Isn’t that kinda dumb? I’m just a spook, I don’t need no freakin’chair.”
“No, Ralf. I mean ‘become’ the chair. Match yourself to its signature and use it as your physical vessel. I have learned to do it, and I think you can also. To put it in basic terms, simply make yourself one with it.”
Ralf barked out a laugh. “Doc, why in hell would I want to be a chair?”
“Because if you show me you can do that, Ralf, I will guide you further; help you extend your range. This chair is simple; living beings are infinitely complex. But within reach of the strongest among us, I believe.”
***
Laura’s fingers closed on the comforting weave of the towel, and as she lifted it from its peg she gasped at the onset of a sensation more vile and intrusive than any she could have imagined. She shrieked and flung the towel to the floor, stamping her feet and slapping her skin as the presence enfolded her, violating her singularity. She gagged as she felt it course roughly over her breasts, down her belly and up her thighs. She fell to the floor and dry-wretched; great, heaving convulsions, and gasping for air she wrenched herself upright. She fumbled the door open and yanked a cloak from the rack by the front door, toppling the stand and overturning a cabinet. Her personal treasures broke across the tiled entryway as her bare feet scattered them before her sobbing careen from the apartment.
***
“I felt her!” Ralf hooted. “I rubbed her little boobies, and I smelled the fear in her!”
It had felt so good—to do whatever he wanted, unhindered and beyond any possibility of penance. He laughed coarsely.
“So what’s the next plan, Doc? Panty raids? Do I get to stir my whizzle stick?”
Forquessas’ brume darkened. “No, Ralf, that is most certainly not my intent. Your efforts have been improving, and I simply meant for you to observe that you could approach synchronicity with a living being, to understand that you might adjust your energy signature to match that of another vessel. You see how close we are? Dedra lags behind a little, but even so quickly you have matched my best efforts. Contain whatever deviant desires you harbor, Ralf, and soon enough we might resume our true place—outside this realm between worlds.”
***
It was an entirely unremarkable setting, the dregs of a party winding down. Ralf looked away from the scene, forcing himself calm.
“We’ve practiced forever, Doc—finally it’s time?” He studied the floor, cataloging every imperfection there, intent upon holding his bright excitement below the doctor’s radar. He dare not look directly upon the two couples that laughed and flirted drunkenly, lest he lose control and spill all his cards face up.
Forquessas spoke softly. “Yes, Ralf. I believe that we are ready, and that our friend’s liberal consumption of liquor has lowered most of the mental barriers we might otherwise encounter.” Forquessas focused on Dedra. “You are ready? We understand that this crosses a moral threshold, but must also remind ourselves that in this case the end truly justifies the means.” Dedra nodded solemnly, and Forquessas turned to Ralf.
“Ralf, you accept the restrictions that we impose upon ourselves? It is a selfish, damnable act that we undertake, but it is the only means I know to thwart the Prophesy before their malefic influence is forever impressed upon future history.”
Ralf nodded, struggling to present a somber posture. They had pushed forward in time as far as they could; hard up against the Prophesy’s bulwark. It had felt strangely empowering; so many generations had come and gone in what seemed little more than the passage through a doorway. Nonetheless, they were still far from their native timespace.
Forquessas looked back to the whooping partygoers. “We will combine our strength and make the transfers one at a time. Given their excessive consumption of alcohol there should be little to no resistance, and it will be, ah… painless… for them.”
As they began to move forward, the younger male seemed to suddenly sense something awry. His eyes widened in alarm and he lurched to his feet, overturning the end table and crashing the lamp to the floor.
“Jeeezhusssh, Billl,” slurred the older man. “Take it eazhy, will ya?”
Ralf’s excitement spiked and he abandoned control, sweeping forward like a squad of BlackHeart mercenaries from the last Annihilation, slamming the younger man unconscious and stunning the other three senseless. They sagged limp into the cushions and Ralf gathered himself up, and—
“Ralf!”
Arrested by a surprisingly powerful tug at his being, Ralf immediately backed off. He must not allow himself to forget that the doctor had nearly his strength, and greater experience and technique.
“Uh… gee, I'm sorry, Doc. The guy panicked and jumped up, like he was gonna run off or somethin’…” Ralf felt an intense scrutiny bear down, and he prayed that he hadn’t just blown this once-only opportunity. Forquessas spoke gravely.
“Ralf. When… if we consummate this occupation, we will then be free to leave this space in physical form. After we pass the Prophesy’s time barrier in human form, we will abandon these bodies to make a second time-leap forward, which will put us in place to each find our biological selves and combine therewith—so resuming our rightful lives. Young Doctor Forquessas will have the insight to not publish his works, so denying that empowerment to the Prophesy, and Ralf will grow up knowing to not stray beyond the bounds of common decency.” The doctor studied him, peering into his darkest corners, and Ralf examined the plaid pattern of the armchair.
“You fully agree to this, then?” asked Forquessas.
Ralf nodded docilely. “A’ course I do, Doc. It’s what we’ve said all along.”
***
“Jeezhus on a broomschtick!” exclaimed Ralf/Bill as he staggered to his feet and stood wobbily, feeling real