The End of All Things (6 page)

But who the
actual fuck
can’t taste their own mouth?

So, yeah. This is where my brain well and truly started saying
oh shit oh shit oh shit
on a more or less infinite loop.

Because after that
everything
I wasn’t sensing hit me head on: No feeling in my hands or feet or arms or legs or penis or lips. No smells coming in through my nose. No sensation of air going past my nostrils and into my nose. No sense of balance. No sense of heat or cold.

No nervous swallow. No feeling of fear sweat in my pits and on my brow. No racing heart. No heartbeat.

No anything.

I would have positively shit myself in fear, except I had no sense of losing sphincter control, either.

The only thing I could feel was pain, because my headache decided that this was a fantastic time to get a dozen times worse.

And I focused on that headache like a starving dog focuses on a steak
because it was the only thing in the world I could feel
.

And then I passed out. Because I think my brain decided I was feeling too much about not feeling anything.

I can’t say that I disagreed with it.

*   *   *

When I came to again I did not freak out, and I felt a little bit proud about that. Instead, I tried to calmly and rationally figure out what was going on.

First hypothesis: I was dead.

Discarded because that seemed kind of stupid. If I were dead, then yes, I wouldn’t be feeling anything. But I also probably wouldn’t be aware that I wasn’t feeling anything. I just … wouldn’t
be
.

Unless this was the afterlife. But I doubted it was. I’m not much of a religious person, but most afterlives that I’d heard of were something more than a blank nothingness. If God or gods existed, and this was all they put together for eternal life, I wasn’t very impressed with their user experience.

So: probably alive.

Which was a start!

Second hypothesis: was in some sort of coma.

This seemed more reasonable, although I didn’t really know anything about the medical facts of a coma. I didn’t know if people in comas could actually think about things while they were in them. From the outside they didn’t seem like they were doing much. Tabled this idea for later thought.

Third hypothesis: not in a coma but for some reason trapped in my body without any sensation.

This seemed like the most reasonable explanation on the surface, but two questions arose that I didn’t have answers for. One, how I got into this predicament in the first place. I was conscious and knew who I was, but otherwise my memory of recent events was shaky. I remembered falling out of my bunk and then going to the bridge, but anything after that was a blur.

This suggested to me that I had some sort of event; I knew people’s memories of accidents or injury were sometimes wiped out by the trauma of the event itself. That seemed likely here. Whatever it was, I was in a bad way.

Well, that wasn’t news. I was a consciousness floating around in nothing. I had gotten the “you’re not doing so well” memo.

But that was the second thing: Even if I were in terrible shape, which I assumed I was, I should be able to feel something, or to sense something other than my own thoughts. I couldn’t.

Hell, I didn’t even have a headache anymore.

“You’re awake.”

A voice, perfectly audible, indeterminate in terms of any identifying quality, coming from everywhere. I was shocked into immobility, or would have been, if I had any way to be mobile.

“Hello?” I said, or would have, if I had been able to speak, which I wasn’t, so nothing happened. I started to go into panic mode, because I was reminded so clearly that there was something wrong with me, and because I was desperate that the voice, whoever it was, would not leave me alone again in the nothing.

“You’re trying to talk,” the voice said, again from everywhere. “Your brain is trying to send signals to your mouth and tongue. It’s not going to work. Think the words instead.”

Like this,
I thought.

“Yes,” the voice said, and I would have cried with relief, if I could cry. A jumble of thoughts and emotions rose up in a panicky need to be expressed. I had to take a minute to calm down and focus on a single coherent thought.

What happened to me?
I asked.
Why can’t I speak?

“You can’t speak because you don’t have a mouth or tongue,” the voice said.

Why?

“Because we took them from you.”

I don’t understand,
I thought, after a long minute.

“We took them from you,” the voice repeated.

Did something happen to them? Was I in an accident?

“No, they were perfectly fine, and no, you weren’t.”

I don’t understand,
I thought again.

“We removed your brain from your body.”

It’s hard, looking back, to accurately convey the amount of utter incomprehension I was experiencing at this moment. I tried very hard to express my level of confusion and incredulity at the statement I just heard. What came out was:

What

“We removed your brain from your body,” the voice repeated.

Why would you do that?

“You don’t need them for what we need you to do.”

I was still not comprehending well, and absent anything else was numbly carrying on with the conversation, waiting for the whole thing to make the slightest bit of sense to me.

What do you need me to do?
I thought.

“Pilot your ship.”

I need my mouth for that.

“No you don’t.”

How will I talk to the rest of the crew?

“There is no other crew.”

At this, something surged in my brain—something like a memory, but not an actual memory. A thought that I used to know what had happened to the crew of the
Chandler,
but now I didn’t, and that whatever had happened wasn’t good.

Where is the rest of the crew,
I thought.

“They are dead. All of them.”

How?

“We killed them.”

My sense of panic was back. I knew this was right, that the voice was telling me the truth. But I couldn’t picture how it had happened. I knew I used to know. I desperately
wanted
to know. But there was nothing in my mind that could tell me, nothing but an approaching wall of dread.

Why did you kill them?
I thought.

“Because they weren’t needed.”

You need a crew to run a ship.

“No we don’t.”

Why not?

“Because we have you.”

I can’t operate an entire ship by myself.

“You will or you’ll die.”

I can’t even fucking move,
I thought, exasperated.

“This will not be a problem.”

How do you expect me to pilot and operate an entire ship when I can’t even move?

“You are the ship now.”

And then suddenly the complete incomprehension was back.

Excuse me?
I finally thought.

“You are the ship now,” the voice repeated.

I am the ship.

“Yes.”

I am the
Chandler.

“Yes.”

What the fuck does that even mean?

“We have removed your brain from your body,” the voice said. “We’ve integrated your brain with the
Chandler
. The ship is now your body. You will learn how to control your body.”

I tried to process what I was being told and failed miserably. I could not imagine a single element of what I was being hit with. I could not imagine being a ship. I couldn’t imagine trying to control such a complex machine all on my own.

And if I don’t?
I thought.
What happens if I can’t learn how to control it?

“Then you will die,” the voice said.

I don’t understand,
I thought, again, and I imagined that the complete helplessness I felt was entirely obvious. Maybe that was the point.

“It’s not important for you to understand,” the voice said.

To which some part of my brain immediately said,
Fuck you, asshole
. But it didn’t appear to have been sent—or at least the voice didn’t respond to it. So I said something else to the voice instead.

Why would you do this to me?

“This ship needs a pilot. You are a pilot. You know this ship.”

That doesn’t require taking my brain out of my goddamned skull,
I thought.

“It does.”

Why?

“It’s not important for you to know.”

I disagree!

“It doesn’t matter that you disagree.”

It matters that I won’t pilot the ship. I won’t.

“You will or you will die.”

I’m already a brain in box,
I thought
. I don’t care if I die
.

I thought this was an excellent point, until a spasm of pain started.

Remember that headache? That was a twinge compared to this. It felt like my entire body was turned in a seizing electrical cramp, and not even the wonder of feeling like I had a body again distracted me from just how much I hurt.

Objectively, it can’t have gone on for more than a few seconds. Subjectively I think I aged a year through it.

It stopped.

“You do not have a body, but your brain does not know that,” the voice said. “All the pathways are still there. All the ways that your brain can still make you experience pain are ours to control. It’s very simple to do. All the settings are already programmed. If we were so inclined we could run them on a loop. Or we could simply leave you in the dark, deprived of every possible sensation, forever. So, yes. If you will not pilot and operate this ship, then you will die. But before you die you will learn just how far and how long your death can be delayed, and how much pain you can feel between now and then. And I assure you that you will care.”

Who are you?
I thought.

“We are the only voice you will hear for the rest of your life, unless you do what we tell you.”

Is that the royal we?
I thought, not to the voice but to myself. I don’t know why the hell I thought that. I think being made to feel like I had a power station’s worth of electricity run through my nonexistent body might have made me a little loopy.

The voice didn’t respond.

Which was the second time that happened, when I didn’t think directly to the voice.

Which was interesting.

What happens if I do what you tell me?
I asked, to the voice.

“Then at the end of it you will get your body back. It’s a simple exchange. Do what you’re told, and you will be you again. Refuse and you will die, in pain.”

What is it you want me to do?

“Pilot and operate this ship. We have already told you this.”

Where and for what purpose?

“That comes later,” the voice said.

What do I do now?
I asked.

“Now, you think,” the voice said. “You will think about what your choices are, and what the consequences of those choices will be. I will give you a day to think about it, here in the dark. It will be a long day. Good-bye.”

Wait,
I thought, but the voice was already gone.

*   *   *

So for the next day I thought.

First thought: Definitely not dead. No need for a religious crisis. One small thing off the list of things to worry about. It was the only one, but anything would do at this point.

Second thought: Whoever it was who had me had captured my ship, killed my crew, taken my brain out of my body, and now expected me to run the ship entirely on my own, for their own purposes, and would kill me if I didn’t.

Third thought: To Hell with these people. There was no way I was going to do anything for them.

In which case they would be more than happy to torture me just for the fun of it. As I knew from experience. Which was an actual consideration I had to take into account.

Fourth thought: Why me?

As in, why did they take me and not someone else? I was third pilot of the
Chandler
. I was literally the newest crew member. They could have picked anyone else from that ship and they would have made a better choice, in terms of knowing the ship, how it works, and what its capabilities were. I was not the obvious choice.

Identify your pilots.

The sentence barreled out of my subconscious and stood in front of me, daring me to give it some sort of context. My memory was still spotty; I knew it had been spoken, but not by whom, or when. I would need to rack my brain to figure it out.

The thing was, I had time.

And in time an image popped into my head: a creature dressed in black, knees going the wrong way, giving the order to Captain Thao and shooting Lee Han when she questioned the order.

A Rraey. The Rraey had taken me. That answered the question of who these people were. But it didn’t answer the question of why me. The captain hadn’t identified me as a pilot. She hadn’t identified anyone as anything. Someone else did that.

Secretary Ocampo
.

Suddenly the image of that bastard pointing me out blazed into my consciousness, clear as if I were reliving the moment.

And then all the rest of it came back too—every blank spot in the memory suddenly filled with hard force, almost painfully jammed in.

I had to stop.

I had to stop to grieve for the crew of the
Chandler
. To grieve for the few friends I had made there, and for everyone else who I did not know but who did not deserve to die, just as I did not deserve to live instead of them.

It took some time. But as I said before, I had the time.

I took it.

And then when I was done I started fiddling with the problem again.

Why
was I taken? Because Secretary Ocampo knew me. He’d been introduced to me even before we’d gotten to the
Chandler,
we took the shuttle ride over, and I came to him when I had questions about our change of destination.