23. The Magus

Chapter 23

When Eva managed to stop crying, it was as if she had never cried at all. It seemed like my actions hadn't affected her. But I knew they had. I had broken her wrist. She was in pain.

She stood up on top of the grave, leaving an indent of bent blue flowers beneath her. Gingerly, she moved her wrist to her side. One-handedly, she rummaged through her purse until she found her cell. One-handedly, she dialed. A woman answered after one ring, "Hello."

"Yes, this is Eva, hello," she said.

I wondered if she was going to report me, if she was going to have me destroyed before I even completed my mission. That would be an apt punishment. An existence devoid of meaning. Never achieving what I was made to achieve.

"Yes," said Eva, "Order Destruction Number 11 to not speak to Destruction Number 7 again."

The voice on the other end, "Yes ma'am."

"Good. Thank you. Goodbye." Eva bit off each word as if she were biting glass. She put her cell back in her purse. She looked at me. Then she told me things. She issued commands that went against my purpose. Orders that made me realize I had never begun to understand her. She didn't care for her family. She didn't care for me. She didn't even care about the Earth. She only cared for revenge. Her orders were ironclad and accounted for every possible circumstance. She was brilliant. She was destructive. She was beautiful.

When she was done speaking, she looked away from me. "Destruction Number 7, follow me," she ordered.

I followed her. She did not say a word to me as I followed her back to the bunker. She did not say a word to me as she shut the door. That was the last time I saw her.

Over and over, that moment, the last inch, centimeter, millimeter, I saw of her through the door has played in my mind. The door was open, and then it was shut.

I was a computer gutted of wires, of electricity.

When Schrodinger returned to the bunker, he didn't go straight to his cot; he came to mine, where I sat bolt upright. I couldn't lie flat; it was as if I were being pulled up by a string. He kneeled beside me. He touched my face. I felt a fleeting coolness against my hot skin, and I saw his fingers glistening with moisture. I was crying, I realized. The tears streamed, making the front of my shirt wet.

Schrodinger looked at me with green eyes like shattered light bulbs. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, "I'm so sorry my brother."

When he put his arms around me, encircling my shoulders as no one, not even Eva, had done before, when he patted and rubbed my back, I did not pull away. I let my head drop to his shoulder. My tears did not stop streaming for what seemed a long time.

"I know," he murmured again and again.

Destruction Number 6 was taken away and hadn't come back, and I knew I was next. The fact I hurt Eva, and there was nothing I could do about it—I wanted to escape into nonexistence. But at the same time, there was ecstasy in existing simply while knowing that Eva also existed. The impulses to exist and not exist canceled each other out. I sat cross-legged on the cot, neither happy nor unhappy about my impending end. Soon, would be the end to all my suffering and all my ecstasy. Soon I would no longer long for Eva because I wouldn't exist. My existence was just like that of any other man-made object, like a paper plate. I was created, I would serve my purpose, and I would be trashed—incinerated—destroyed.

At least Eva was the one destroying me.

Schrodinger sat in his own cot, across from me, and he cried. He did not make noise and he did not wipe away his tears. He sat perfectly still. He was like a man-made fountain or a mannikin with his blond hair and youthful face.

I got up, I went to him, I put my hand on his shoulder, and still, he did not move. "Do not be sad, my brother," I said, not recognizing my own voice. "This is how it needs to be for the rest of us. But you, if you need to escape, you can escape. No one would stop you."

He shrugged off my hand. He pulled his knees up against his chest. He hit himself, hard, on the side of the head with a closed fist. I went back to my own cot to continue awaiting my fate.

The door opened and the tall man in the suit, who had taken away both Destruction Number 6 and Destruction Number 3, said, "Destruction Number 7, follow me." Because he used my true name, I had no choice but to do as he ordered, but I would have obeyed him even if I had had a choice because it was all a part of Eva's plan.

We walked briskly down the hall to the elevator, and rode it to the second floor, a floor I had never been in before, though I had seen glimpses of it on other elevator rides. The doors we walked past in the hallway were shut with room numbers, names and titles, managers and the like.

We came to an open door leading to a conference room and entered. Six pairs of human eyes turned to look at me. I recognized Jenice, the blonde woman whose arm Schr?dinger had broken. Apparently, her arm had healed. Eva was not in the room. I had hoped to see Eva one last time, but I was not surprised by her absence. I regretted that I had broken her bones—I wished I had hurt her on the outside, where she would have a visible scar to remember me by. When I realized I had that thought, I understood I was as monstrous as she believed.

"Take a seat, Destruction Number 7," Jenice ordered. I took the last open seat, at the head of the table, directly facing her.

"As you may have realized, there has been a change in plans in the sense we're speeding things along," she said. "There are riots in the street. Protests. Things are getting ugly. We need to destroy their infrastructure. Without infrastructure, the underclasses will be too busy trying to survive to protest." She went on speaking, ordering me very precisely about what I was going to do and what I was going to say. She told me what I was to do if A happened, or B happened, or C happened. She tried to cage me in with her orders, but Eva was smarter. Eva's orders were more complete than Janice's and took precedence—and that made me glad—because I did not have a choice.

The pod journey to the launch was my first time in public without Eva's supervision. I was prepared for it. It was easy. I smiled at humans, as Eva instructed, and they smiled back. The bus to the launch was crammed with people. They all smelled happy, but I also detected the scent of disease among them. The man who sat next to me on the bus talked about how much he'd always wanted to see a rocket launch and how he hoped to one day emigrate to Mars too, that those darn protests should stop protesting and start saving up for their own ticket to Mars, which he figured would be a lot cheaper in a few years. Then he went off track, speaking about his daughters and his wife. His wife was apparently annoyed at him for wanting to see the launch because it meant leaving her alone with the kids. He hardly ever did anything for himself, so he insisted on going, even though he knew she would refuse to have sex with him for a week. His name was Peter, and his breath smelled like corn and pesticides.

The crowds of people at the launch all pressed against the chain-link fence that separated the wealthy passengers of the Müsk rocket from those who were just there to watch a giant oblong object, which sat like a stone a mile away, blast into space. Some of the young observers held signs of protest with slogans like "Stop Stealing Our Resources" and "Make Earth Great Again!" But for the most part, the humans seemed more interested in watching the world burn than in putting out the fire. I watched as one young man wiped his nosebleed with his sleeve. Eva was right about humans, I thought. She was right. I wished I could tell her I finally understood. These humans were disgusting. They would watch the world be destroyed while chewing popcorn.

The news crews were on the far side of the chain-link fence, interviewing the wealthy and the minds that had helped plan the massive orange rocket. They called it one of the greatest achievements of human civilization, even though identical rockets, differing only in color, had been launched in different cities worldwide.

I didn't pause to watch. I said goodbye to Peter, then I sliced through the hot, stinking, pulsating crowd, smiling at people as I shoved by them. Taller than most, it was easy to see my goal: the goal that Eva gave me. The chain link was all cool dirty metal and holes in my grip. I could rip it apart, but that was not what I was instructed to do. I climbed, I leaped. Hand-over hand, I moved quickly, powerfully, relishing in the movement of my body that was as complex as any rocket, as much of a marvel of science as any rocket. I registered the gasps and the shouts of the humans telling me to stop, to get down, telling me I wasn't meant to do that, and the shouts of encouragement from the humans who held the signs of protest. I grinned through it all as I leaped off the top of the fence, fell through thirty feet of air, and felt my feet hit the gravel on the other side, out of the crowd, amongst the news crews and the expensively dressed humans who intended to live on Mars.

I beelined for the first news reporter I saw holding a microphone. I pushed him down with one hand and grabbed his microphone with the other. He fell with an oomph, and remained sitting there, staring up at me, dazed. I turned away from him to the cameras. The news crews, men and women, all turned towards me as well, with racing hearts. The smell of adrenaline fogged the air. They were not frightened, they were delighted.

Looking at the nearest camera pointed at me I continued, just as I was instructed, I spoke, "The powerful created the economy. They hoarded resources, they set prices in the days of cavemen, arbitrarily thinking they were worth more than other people because they owned more than other people. The wealthy have always felt entitled to things that should be shared equally amongst all men and women, all of whom are equally entitled to this Earth. A horse does not tell another horse to leave its field. It congregates with that horse for safety and shares all the grass. It has no conception of personal property and neither—" I paused as a couple of large security men tried to tackle me. I sent them each flying with my free hand. It was more of an effort to stop myself from crushing the microphone than it was to send them crashing away. "Should humans. There is no inherent reason we should abide by the standard of personal property that has been used to oppress for centuries. There is no reason we should let the so-called haves destroy our planet, steal the resources from the have-nots, and escape to Mars. Our environment is dying. They lit this fire, and they expect us to burn, while they warm themselves on our hot carcasses. But if we burn, we will make sure they burn with us. We have operatives all over the world amongst you." Bullets stung my chest, causing me to take a slight step back to steady myself, "I may look like a regular human, but I am not." I released the armory from my arms. Ignoring screams I said, "And if you are a wealthy viewer watching this, hopeful about escaping to Mars, know that a fate like this awaits you."

I shot an expensively dressed man staring at me in the forehead. Like a tree, hesitant to topple, he fell. Then people were running away from me, trampling each other in their haste to get away. And I was shooting the wealthy, getting sprayed and splattered with blood, making the ground slippery with it. I was slaughtering them, and I thought this was right. This is what Eva had wanted for me, this is my niche. I killed them, men and women, just as Eva ordered me to. None of the passengers were spared. Fear was a drug in the air, and it made my smile and my laughter as real as they ever could be, even though I had no choice—I had been ordered to laugh happily. I had been told that laughter would instill greater fear than anger ever could and would make viewers even more reluctant to get on other rockets for fear of facing a monster like me.

I sprayed bullets at the people around me as quickly as I was sprayed with bullets; it would have been a sort of equilibrium, but I did not die, and the humans around me were as easily crushed as overripe tomatoes. I kept shooting until there was no breathing being left to shoot. Crows cawed and circled overhead, black figures in the gray sky.

I turned back towards the camera I had been speaking to; the cameraman was either dead or had run away.

"Anyone who wants to escape to Mars will face this same fate," I said. Then I was sprinting towards the massive rocket itself, which even at its base was bigger than a city block and stretched farther into the sky than any skyscraper I had seen. It was a mountain of metals and synthetic material, filling my vision. It was my aim, my doom. It was beautiful, almost as beautiful as Eva.

I moved faster than any human, faster than any animal. The only thing that I could hear was the air whistling past my ears and my hard footfalls upon the gravel. My nose was still clogged with the metallic scent of blood. It was a vibrant smell, as vibrant as the orange rocket.

I barreled straight towards the rocket, and I leaped on it when I was close enough, landing as high as I could. I pierced its metal carapace with my fingers as a human might stick its fingers into clay. For a moment, I hung there, a speck against a mountain, a speck against the universe, absurdly hugging a rocket with my arms that were both massive and tiny. Eva, I thought, Eva.

And then, for the first time, and for what I thought would be the last time, I self-destructed, as I had always known how to do, and the world exploded around me.

There was nothing.

And then there was pain.

The agony. I discovered I had been too well constructed. I healed too well. I was a sun that had exploded into a red giant and was now shrinking back into a red dwarf. A black hole. My atoms sought each other as if they were magnets. Each electric nerve ending fired with pain as it grew back atom by atom. Quickly I returned to myself, but eternally. The pain, slow at first and accelerating as my healing accelerated.

There was the taste of rocket fuel and metal and acidic dust in my mouth. In the middle of a crater of dirt and rock I lay. The sky was the same color as the crater: brown and gray. Gray and brown. Everything was hot and hard and ugly. I wanted that moment of nonexistence back. I felt cheated out of my peace. I wanted to kill something, and I knew I would be jealous of the death of anything or anyone I managed to kill.

Eva, I remembered. Eva was alive, I was exhilarated. I had done my duty, just as I was expected to, aside from dying, and now maybe she would forgive me. Or maybe she would hate me all the same, or maybe she would fear me all the more. But I was free. I would return to her, and now that I was free from any other purpose, I would make her my purpose. I would be with her. I wouldn't let anyone stop me, not even Eva, not even if I had to rip out her tongue. I would make her forgive me. I would make her want me more than she had ever wanted Caesar. I would make her forget him. Nothing could stop me, I learned. Nothing could destroy me, not even me.

I climbed to my feet. The ground was soft dust and hard pebbles under my naked soles. It was a long walk to the edge of the crater and a long climb up its side. Orange chunks of metal and other debris with sharp, jagged edges were scattered here and there, the only colors other than gray and brown and my own pale skin. It was like how I imagined most of Mars outside the terraformed bubbles would be. The air was unbreathable. Nothing could survive where I walked, not even an insect.

The world outside the crater was not much more alive. There were plants, dead and dying, stripped of leaves. There were crushed buildings, shreds of metal, melted plastic, charred bones. But I hardly noticed. Eva was all I thought about. What I would say to her. What she would say to me. What I would do to her. What she would do to me. What she looked like, what she spoke like, what she smelled like and tasted like…

I walked a long way. The soles of my feet tore apart and healed, burned off and regrew. My destruction was not the only destruction wrought on the world that I saw–far from it. There was fog choking my vision, but the fog was made of smoke and dust. There were alarms ringing and muffled in the distance. There were screams. I got lost and then I found my way again. I reached the city and there were fires burning and coldness and the smell of fear and death. The glass windows of storefronts had been broken, and people ran away when they saw me. I wondered if this was what Eva had wanted, had expected. She had wanted to scare people, and now every human I passed was drenched in terror. It was a wonderful smell. It made me feel alive. I was happy. I was going to see Eva, and I felt alive.

I bellowed, an animal, taut with pain when I saw the building—what had been the building. It had been gutted thoroughly. The acidic smell of metal and plastic and smoke and death was the smell of a nuclear explosion. Much smaller than the one I had perpetrated with no rocket fuel to help it along—but a nuclear explosion all the same.

I ran—why had I been walking? Why had I been taking my time as if I had all the time in the world? I knew it was too late, but only when it was already too late did I run.

I smelled her, only it was not her, the smell of burned orange, overly sweet, charred, the smell of cooked meat—my Eva. Under a slab of cement that I tossed aside, I found a slab of half-melted, half-burned flesh. I couldn't call it Eva, but that is what it was.

I couldn't control it; I self-destructed again.

When I came to, Schrodinger was crouched naked in front of me. He was crying. Again. He said nothing as I ripped my own throat out, in another desperate attempt to die. And I said nothing to him even when my larynx grew back. I walked away. I would walk to the ends of the Earth. There was nothing else to do.

I had Zoochosis, and the whole world was my cage.

Soon after Iago told me that Martians were coming, he left. We had always thought that they might come back. Iago had set up a telescope to watch Mars, just in case. But short of watching, we had not agreed upon a plan.

I was all for killing any Martians who stepped foot on Earth—and I suspect Eva would have supported such a plan. But Iago insisted that we wait and see. He is as sadistic as I am, it is ingrained in us, but he is more restrained in his violence. He also prefers to take a minimalistic approach to our interactions with humans, which I agree with. We cannot change human nature. Ultimately, Iago understands humans more than I do, so I trust his judgment in this. And Martians are not on the forefront of my mind. Eva is.

I spend every waking moment thinking of her—and because I cannot sleep, that is every moment. What is she doing right now? Is she healthy? Is she safe? Is that boy protecting her? Is he touching her? I'm malfunctioning. The fact that between my bouts of destruction, I've been acting like a human, drinking at the town pub, proves it. I've gone from being the terror of the town to the buffoon. The drunk.

I make small talk with everyone, just as the first Eva taught me. I've been using long unused lessons in acting human, just as Eva taught me. I laugh at all the jokes. I smile. I slur my words—I was surprised to learn I can indeed get drunk, though it takes much more for me than it does for a regular human, and I metabolize into sobriety much quicker.

The other patrons and the servers at first smelled deliciously like fear when I came in, but after weeks, of my presence, the scent dwindled. Then Tom spoke to me, and when I didn't kill him when he called me a "scary bastard," the rest of the men sidled up to me. At first, it seemed to be a contest amongst them, a badge of bravery to speak to me. The fact that I paid for everyone's beer every night may have been a contributing factor to my newfound popularity.

I learn of their insignificant daily troubles, and I tell them truths about the world Iago and I had molded around us, and they all think the truth is just drunken lies. They knew I was not human, yet it seemed they started to feel that the only thing I could be was human.

I have stepped outside the pub to remind myself what the sun looks like, when my transmitter buzzes. I know it is Iago.

I answer it. "Eva?" I say.

There is a pause at the other end, and then, "Are you drunk? Again?"

"Nooo…" I grin. Iago knows me so well. It is good to be known by someone. "Are you? You're the one who suggested I try some human coping mechanisms anyway."

"I hate this. I hate this. Why can't you just get over her?" he says.

"Because she's Eva," I say.

"You aren't making any sense."

"Eva. Do you know where she has gone? I need to find her. I need her. I'll die without her. I'm dead."

"You aren't dead. You can't die."

"I know that. What are you calling me about anyway?"

I wave at a barmaid entering the pub, showing her smiling teeth and winking. Immediately, she smells aroused. I'm the town drunk and I am seen talking to myself almost every day when Iago calls me, but still the humans delight in me. Iago says it is because we were made to be attractive. Flowers to honeybees or honey to flies or something along those lines.

"Eva."

I snap back to attention, "Eva?"

Iago sighs, "Yes. Eva is leaving Esseff. She found out I'm in charge of Esseff, and now she is going to leave Esseff."

I try to follow, "What—she found out you're in charge?"

"Yes. I honestly am shocked it took her this long to find out. I certainly didn't think she'd leave because of it, though..."

"I see." I've stopped breathing. I've stopped smiling. I've stopped making eye-contact with the humans entering and leaving the pub.

"Anyway, she wants to run away from her past entirely, so she and the boy are leaving. I thought I should tell you."

I'm walking away from the pub now, taking long strides over the cobbled ground. "Release me from your order not to chase her."

"But—"

"Listen Iago," I say. "I realize I am not being fair to you. Using you like this."

"I—"

"Don't make me beg, Iago. I will beg. I will grovel. I have no dignity. I need her. And she needs me now."

"She doesn't need you just because she is leaving Esseff. You're fooling yourself. She is a strong woman," Iago is angry, I can tell.

"Please," I drop to my knees in the middle of the walkway even though Iago can't see me. "Please."

"Destruction Number 7, I release you from my command not to follow Eva or the boy."