Fiction~~You Shall Know the Truth~~Ch. 1
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| You Shall
Know the Truth Chapter 1 |
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The first and last thing required
of genius is the love of truth - Goethe
Dr.
Elias Kerr sat on the floor, fixated on a hologram of his latest
project. Blue ink staining his lips from a half chewed pen, he
struggled against the tight feeling in his chest as he stared at the
man who was the love of his life. He corrected himself
automatically. The man who might possibly
be the love of his life, if he put any stock in the genetic inheritance
that was now affecting his life and his work. He wasn’t entirely
certain if he was interpreting the feeling correctly; he’d never felt
‘the gift’ before. Everyone in the family had described it to him, of
course, and they’d all said that when he met the person he was destined
to be with, he would just…know. Like that was a reasonable
explanation to give a scientist! That was his family, all guts
and no logic. It was beyond irritating.
He’d always
thought his family’s claims, that they had the ability to detect their
soul mate, were a bit ridiculous. It was an interesting phenomenon, and
one that every one of his relatives fully believed in, but it was
impossible to prove anything. The ability to detect something as
nebulous as ‘love’ was a cross between supernatural drivel and
pseudo-scientific fluff to begin with. If such a thing existed, he
should have been able to measure it. As every test he’d badgered
his family into letting him perform had shown no difference, he’d
dismissed the concept as a mass delusion, albeit one that had tragic
consequences at times. There was more than one member of the family who
claimed to have met the love of their life only to discover that their
‘destined’ partner was already married to someone else. The unfortunate
person spent the rest of their lives mourning their imagined
loss. It was such a waste.
And yet, after all the years of
mentally shaking his head at his family’s unbalanced, undisciplined,
unexamined approach to life, here he sat. In love. He’d had
no more success measuring the feeling in himself than he’d had with his
sisters or his parents, but now he finally knew what they’d
meant. He ‘just knew’ this was the man for him, which was
aggravating in the extreme. He hated the fact that he could find
no explanation for this feeling, but couldn’t discount its validity;
the sensation was too singularly different from anything he’d felt
before to ignore it.
In all his covert research into the
history of ‘soul mates,’ however, he’d never read about anyone running
into THIS particular problem before. This was so much worse than
a simple love triangle.
Chewing on the pen again, he
looked at his work and ordered himself to stop being such a selfish
idiot. The logical half of his mind reminded him that whatever he was
feeling was irrelevant; it was the project that mattered, and the
project was on schedule. The equipment was perfect; he’d unpacked
it himself just to be sure. He’d personally checked all the
manual calibrations 63 times, confirmed Gabriel’s physical health 81
times, and checked and rechecked the man’s brain activity so often that
he’d actually lost count.
There was nothing wrong.
Gabriel, rather his body, was completely and utterly brain dead.
It
was a good thing, he told himself angrily, ignoring the tear running
down his cheek. He needed to stop this attachment. The
terminally ill volunteer needed someone without a mind for the
transference to occur; it was, literally, a matter of life and
death. So Elias should be ecstatic that everything was going so
well. This was the process that would turn tragedies like
Gabriel’s into hope for the future. Euthanizing empty
shells that no longer had a mind would become a thing of the past if
they could be used to help the terminally ill by offering them new
bodies.
Rubbing the wetness from his face, he still stared
at Gabriel’s image. Maybe he was too close to everything.
Was that why he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something
wrong, in spite of the superb test readings, or was it simply an
inability to let go of a dream? He just couldn’t seem to stop his
constant testing, even though the results always indicated exactly what
he’d expect from Gabriel’s condition. But then again, these were
human beings he was dealing with now, not computer simulations.
He didn’t have room for doubt; he had to figure out what eating at
him. He was the lead scientist on the project, not some teen with
puerile self-interest as his only concern.
Tossing his pen
to the floor and wiping his mouth, he stood abruptly. He’d go
check on Gabriel’s body again. It was late enough that he could
avoid running into the constant barrage of questions from the other
scientists and the techs. Why they couldn’t understand the formulas and
processes he’d come up with, he had no idea; it seemed fairly simple to
him. Still, even his professors had sometimes stared at his work
with a baffled look, so he supposed he should be used to it. It
was one of the reasons he was usually on-site when he started a new
project; people could use what he created in his mind, but it took them
a long time before they figured it out, and they rarely completely
understood it.
This made it a bit difficult to get more
than a few quiet minutes for himself. Maybe being close to
Gabriel, with no one around to interrupt his train of thought, would
give him the enlightenment he needed to solve his obsession with
this. He could give his seal of approval tomorrow with no
reservations, although regret over his own loss might haunt him.
He
should get dressed, he thought absently. Opening his closet, he
automatically chose from a week’s worth of white shirts, each with
different ties already secured around the collar. Seven sets of
black slacks hung next to them, with seven sets of socks and shoes
beneath. He dressed quickly, pausing to wipe away a few more
tears, and grabbed the white lab coat by the door as he slipped out of
the room. He made his way through the darkened, metallic
hallways, his footsteps muffled by drab olive carpeting.
A
small part of his brain mocked him as he walked. He was sure it
was the same part that had laughed at him when he’d dubbed their empty
shell ‘Gabriel’ in the first place. Officially, the body was test
subject T1. Elias had renamed him in his thoughts almost
immediately after seeing him, however. He didn’t think he would
ever forget that particular moment. Excited and giddy at the
underground, off-world lab provided by S.N.S., practically gushing over
the new equipment, Elias had come into the holding room in a euphoric
daze. He’d stopped and stared the moment he saw the mobility
table and the nude man strapped down on it.
It had been
like looking at an angel. That was his first embarrassed
thought. Not one of the pearlescent, languid males who made up
the celestial choir on the temple walls, but an angel from the older
stories. Warriors who fought and bled and died at heaven’s whim,
so beautiful it made you weep just to look at them. Elias almost
had, tears coming to his eyes as he’d seen him and realized that this
was The One. The instant pull in his stomach and the despair in
his mind told him that this was the person he was destined to be with.
Gabriel, it sang out in his
mind. His name is Gabriel.
Golden
blond hair had poured about a cruelly beautiful face and chiseled
frame. The honeyed stuff was so long that it had even trailed
across the large man’s slender hips and pelvis as though in attempted
modesty. He’d swallowed heavily as he’d snuck a furtive look at
Gabriel’s groin. The member all that hair surrounded had been
flaccid and silky, but large enough that he didn’t think there was a
chance in the world of hiding it. His eyes had roamed almost
feverishly over the man’s body, searching for flaws. Gabriel’s
lashes were enviously long; his jaw was smooth and just the smallest
bit stubborn. Every inch of him had been muscled in perfect
proportion for a sword wielding battle-angel, and Elias had given up on
finding any flaws. It was only when temptation almost persuaded
him to call out and wake him up that he’d remembered the reason he was
there.
The body was sound, but the mind was gone.
This was supposed to be the person that someone else’s consciousness
was transferred into.
He’d
wanted to weep all over again. This one was supposed to be his, yet was
already gone from the world by the time Elias met him. Muscles
were kept in shape as the mobility table stimulated them with
electrical impulses and moved the body periodically to keep him
limber. The expressive face; and he ‘just knew’ it must have been
expressive, was bland and unmoving with the cold calm of
nothingness. It was merely a reflection the being who had once
been Gabriel. Only the body was left of what had once been his
man.
Elias would never even find out what the man had been
like before he arrived. By Elias’s own rules, they weren’t
permitted to know anything about the shell. He had thought it
would make the process too difficult if they knew they were watching
the death of someone who had, in reality, died long before, their minds
destroyed by whatever illness or injury had taken them.
However,
even though Gabriel was gone, over the weeks that Elias had worked on
the project he’d dreamt of him. Grew a fantasy of what he had
missed out on. During the hours spent touching his mental lover,
in order to take his measurements and vitals in precise detail, he’d
made up the man’s past in his head. It was ridiculous, and as
juvenile as naming the shell he had been, but Elias couldn’t help
himself.
He’d decided that Gabriel had been a justice
officer. One of the best, in fact, who had received so many
awards that he had to keep them in a trunk stored at his sister’s
house. He had a dark sense of humor, a gentle touch, and a rare
but touching smile.
He loathed peas.
He had a
puppy named Izrak who had mourned itself to death when Gabriel had been
injured. He loved soft music and spicy food. He was bad at
basketball but excelled in art. He was also a fantastic,
demanding lover who kept it a closely guarded secret that he enjoyed
bottoming. And in Elias’s secret heart of hearts, when he’d take
the extra minute to braid Gabriel’s hair himself rather than let one of
the techs perform the task, Elias could imagine how he and Gabriel had
met and shared their lives together.
Over the month of
constant testing, Elias had found more and more excuses to spend time
in the holding room as he wove his fantasies about the two of
them. He would type his notes next to Gabriel so that he could
listen to the man’s breathing. In his head, he could hear the
same sound after they’d made love. He began to eat lunch in the
holding room as well, thinking that the privacy was more conducive to
his digestion, and he’d fantasize about feeding chocolates to Gabriel
as they talked.
The few times during the day that he had
to touch Gabriel, his mind’s eye saw their illusionary sexual exploits
parade by until he was sweating and aroused. He was practically
panting with need by the end of each brief exam and the bathroom across
the hall had seen more of him than ever before as he snuck in to
relieve himself a few times a day. It made him feel like a
pervert, to be lusting after the poor man’s lifeless body, but no
matter how hard he tried he couldn’t keep the images out of his head.
It
surprised him how dominating he’d become in his own head. He
could see Gabriel moaning when he suckled on his nipples. The bigger
man would literally collapse, quivering and helpless as Elias went down
on him. Musky arousal would overwhelm Elias as he dragged his
tongue up and down the shaft of that impressive penis, sucking on it
like a popsicle until Gabriel screamed in release. He’d watch
blonde hair fly as his angel was bent over the kitchen table in the
middle of dinner to be taken quick and hard. He could slip into
the shower behind Gabriel, sliding arms around his waist, pushing so
the man knew exactly where he was meant to be, and then thrust into him
from behind, against the wall. Trying it once face to face, Elias
pushed his lover’s knees up to his chest, but being a bit bigger than
he was, the man had thrashed so strongly with his legs when he’d come
that Elias had been knocked off.
After that, Dream
Gabriel very kindly acquiesced to Elias’s request for positions that
didn’t require brute strength just to stay in place.
Besides, Gabriel’s bottom was as perfect as the rest of him and Elias
had always had a fascination with--
Elias’s flashback
ended abruptly as he smacked into a wall. Bouncing off of it with
his face, his eyes teared. “Ow.” He touched his forehead and
flinched at the throbbing pain. “Ow. Ow! I HATE this!” What a
ridiculous thing to do. Darn it, he’d bruised the same spot
yesterday! It wasn’t too far from the bump he’d received from the
day before that, too, come to think of it.
All this fantasizing was getting hazardous to his health.
Whimpering
just a little as he gave his bruised forehead one last tentative poke,
the genius took a deep breath and continued on his way to the
lab. His palms grew damp the minute the exam room was in
sight. He didn’t want to worry about how much the simple thought
of seeing that beautiful body was affecting him. He never touched
Gabriel inappropriately, after all. He’d actually had people
fired for trying to do so. He didn’t call his body anything but
subject T1 in front of the staff, not by verbal or written word.
Gabriel and their imagined life together were strictly a personal
fantasy. This impending feeling of loss he felt was his own
business, and he would overcome it.
He had to. As
soon as the donor’s mind was implanted, Gabriel would be an entirely
different person. A few weeks of therapy as the mind adjusted to the
new body, and a new Gabriel would walk out of the lab, healthy and
happy. Elias would never see him again.
Closing his
eyes tightly at the thought, his brow furrowed as it finally registered
an odd roaring noise. What in the world could be making that
level of noise at this time of night? Was there a problem
somewhere? He listened intently; walking in what he thought was
the right direction. It almost sounded like singing, if strangled cats
could sing, that is. Turning a corner, he grimaced as he saw a
garish poster covered in aesthetically unappealing pink hearts and
disgusting fat winged babies. That’s right. Today was the
Valentine’s celebration. The ‘morale’ crew had gotten together and
organized some sort of dance thing for the evening. He’d
forgotten all about it.
It wasn’t as though he had anyone
he’d like to be with, after all. The last forced socialization,
his only company had been the few sincere people who had come up to
thank him for his last project, the cure for Jorian’s Plague.
This was outside his norm. He never really associated with anyone
outside of the work place. He liked his solitude.
It
would have been nice to dance with Gabriel, his mind whispered
temptingly, and Elias’s breath hitched. He stared at the poster, eyes
blank as he dissected his fantasy in a moment of brutal honesty.
The unknown man might be taking up most of his waking moments, in some
form or another, but he couldn’t come to the dance, could he? He
was just a construct in Elias’s mind. The part of him that would
have loved was already dead. The body just didn’t know it yet.
“Are you all right, Dr. Kerr?”
Elias jumped at the interruption of his thoughts. He turned to
find a guard from the higher security area staring at him.
“Sorry, Dr. Kerr, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said solemnly.
The
scientist nodded and waved the concern away. He didn’t
think he could bring himself to smile at the man, but he wasn’t going
to be rude. After all, Devlin Grimson was one of the few people
he talked with. When Elias had first arrived, the guard had
sought him out to thank him for his work. Devlin’s sister had
been one of Jorian’s many victims and it seemed that Elias’s cure had
been able to save her.
It made things a little awkward
to have someone constantly looking out for him as Devlin seemed to, but
it was meant with the best intentions. He wasn’t attracted to
him, after all. Elias wasn’t exactly the sort of man people
‘wanted.’ A little short, a little on the thin side, he
might pass as average, but no further. Brown hair and dark eyes
were rather mousy and mundane in his opinion, but the feature that made
things completely unredeemable was his nose. He’d inherited it
from his mother. A little button nose looked cute on a petite
woman. It simply made Elias look like he should still be in
school.
“Are you going to the dance?” Devlin’s green eyes sparkled a bit as he
teased, but Elias merely shook his head again.
“I’m just walking. I needed a few minutes alone, before the
procedure.”
Devlin blinked, looking at him sharply, and Elias hoped all signs of
his tears were gone.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right? It’s pretty late to be wandering
around by yourself.”
Elias tried to smile as he backed up a step. “I’m fine. I’m
just heading to the exam room. I’ll be fine.”
“All
right.” Devlin reached for the door handle behind him as he took the
hint. “If you need anything, though, you know who to come to.”
Elias
nodded again. “I know. I will. Thank you.” Elias
backed up another step, not turning until Devlin was back inside the
dance. It was nice to have someone who knew how to be polite, he
thought to himself, using any excuse he could get to distract his
mind. Too many people simply wanted to talk to the man who
had found the cure for the Plague, or the scientist who had discovered
the causes of the Cristobel Syndrome. Devlin’s devoted gratitude
might be a bit embarrassing, but at least it was sincere. Elias
would take that any day over the glory seekers and groupies.
Besides,
his body only wanted Gabriel. It didn’t care that the mind was
gone; it wanted sex and it insisted on one person and one person
only. Elias quickened his pace away from the dissonant music and
laughter. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was the
reason he was having such a hard time with the procedure and the test
results. With his body’s response, he didn’t feel like he was
going to transfer someone into a blank slate tomorrow. It felt as
though he would be killing his future lover.
“I need to
say goodbye. That will solve this,” he murmured, wiping away
another annoying tear. Walking quickly, he took the tube up to
the exam room where Gabriel was situated for the transfer tomorrow.
Putting
his hand out to open the door to Gabriel’s room, he paused. He
heard laughter from inside. Did he have the wrong room?
Looking at the number on the wall, he was positive that this was the
correct room, but he’d feel terribly stupid if he’d made a mistake and
walked into someone’s intimate moment. He’d been so distracted by
his worries over Gabriel that when the tech had mentioned a room change
he’d barely paid attention. Darn it, was this Gabriel’s room or
not?
More laughter rang out and Elias frowned. It
wasn’t a very pleasant sound. Listening to the harsh, jeering
tones, he began to wonder nervously if someone might actually be in
trouble. He couldn’t ignore it if someone needed help, but he
couldn’t tell from the sound alone what was going on. Chewing his
lips, Elias turned and went around the corner to the control
room. There should be someone inside monitoring the exam
rooms at all hours of the day, but Elias had already discovered that
the night shift was rarely present at their assigned posts. He’d
lodged protest after protest without success. He could use that to his
advantage at the moment if the guards were true to form. Knocking
and receiving no answer, he nodded in satisfaction. He could call
Devlin for help if it was necessary, he thought. His lips
reddened from nervous biting, he opened the door to an empty room
filled with blank video screens and audio monitors. This
wasn’t good. Before, even when the guards had been absent the
monitors had still been on.
Flicking on the screen to the
exam room, Elias froze at the picture that took shape. Five
guards had their stix in hand. They were lashing out at a sixth
man who snarled in rage while he backed against the wall and tried
unsuccessfully to fight back. The victim was large and muscled,
his nude body gleaming with sweat as he dodged the electrified rods,
glaring fiercely as Elias stared at the screen. Dark blond hair
stuck in damp strands to the man’s face and body as fought the men
surrounding him.
Elias stared at the man’s eyes.
Blue, perfectly aware eyes filled the screen. How could these be the
same eyes? Eyes that he’d examined earlier that day on a man that
every reading told him was completely brain dead?
“Gabriel?” His whispered question startled him out of his shock
He
looked at the men, coldly enraged. He knew each of them.
These guards were the ones from the night shift that had always given
him the willies whenever they’d insisted on escorting him back to his
quarters. What did they think they were doing? How dare
they try to hurt his Gabriel!
“Lookin’ forward to bein’
erased, boy?” The tinny speaker-voice of one of the guards taunted as
he lashed out, catching Gabriel on the calf with his stix.
Elias’s nails dug into his palms painfully as he heard the soft grunt
Gabriel gave in response.
“Stop hurting him,” Elias
whispered furiously. He looked for the alarm button to summon
help and had just spotted it when Gabriel spoke.
“Not
erased yet.” The deep voice sent shivers through Elias’s spine, but it
wasn’t the sound itself that stunned him into near immobility. It
was the fact that Gabriel was actually talking. Not just moving,
but talking. The man’s brain was so undamaged that he
comprehended spoken language and responded to it. That shouldn’t
be possible! A mistake of this magnitude? Impossible, even
with major flaws in the machine calibration or his calculations. And
this was a living breathing person, not an experiment; this great an
error was unforgivable.
One man laughed with uneasy
bravado as they all grasped their stix more tightly. “You can’t do jack
shit to us. You won’t even remember us, freak.”
Another
guard taunted. “You’re gonna die tomorrow. Everything’s gone
after they overwrite you. But today’s Valentine’s Day, and we
talked it over.” He waved at the others and leered. “Everyone
here should get a little ass on Valentine’s Day, and we figured we’re
sure as hell going to enjoy yours before we lose the chance. Tight ass
like yours deserves a little playtime. ”
They were going
to rape him?! Elias glared down at the filth masquerading as real
human beings, hand shooting for the alarm again. He wouldn’t let
them do this. His fingers stopped just short of depressing the
button as another man entered the room.
“What do you
cretins think you’re doing?” the well dressed intruder hissed. Elias
smiled in satisfaction. It was Dr. Takahashi. The director of the
center had actually shown up. There, now they’d find out what
happened when you abused…
“D-doctor Takahashi!
Uh…we…AAH!” The guard yelled as Gabriel took advantage of the
unexpected distraction and charged him. Two of the guards grabbed
frantically at their holsters. Gabriel had managed to get a grip
on one of his tormentor’s stix wrenching it hard, but two darts
sprouted from his chest almost immediately. He fell to the floor
with a groan, his eyes closing while his body twitched for a moment,
and then went perfectly still. The guard who’d been attacked
moaned quietly, cradling his arm that looked bent in an unnatural angle.
“Quit
that pathetic moaning,” Takahashi snapped. “It’s less than you
deserve, you imbecile. Waking a man like him without the proper
precautions? You were all nearly dead, and how do you think our
client would feel waking up in a sodomized body? I swear to you,
if anything else happens to him before the transfer happens, I will
kill you myself! I will not lose millions on this simply so you
can add some notch to your grunting, half-brained belts! ”
Elias sat frozen as he watched the guards cringe and move towards
Gabriel.
“Clean
him up. You know that pissant scientist will notice anything
different about him. Little fairy is so anal he’d notice if you
added an extra damn freckle.”
“I’d like to see how anal he
really is,” one guard muttered, ignoring his injured cohort as he
picked up Gabriel’s unconscious legs.
Dr. Takahashi gave
him a cutting glare. “You will leave Dr. Kerr alone until this
project has been successfully completed. After that, Mr. Mureta
has ordered a complete burn of the facility and anyone who might
jeopardize the company’s plans. At that point, I don’t care if
you split Kerr open like a squealing pig, so long as he has finished
the transfer beforehand!”
Elias drew his hand away from
the button and stared in horror. The director…Dr. Takahashi had
been such a pleasant man. Someone to be considered a colleague, a
fellow scientist, and here he was coldly discussing the disposal of not
only Elias’ beloved Gabriel, but himself. Trying to control his
breathing, Elias listened in a daze as men casually discussed the
various sexual horrors they planned to visit on him as soon as they had
what they wanted. They buckled Gabriel’s unconscious body back
down on the table, arranging his limbs exactly as he’d been left.
Trailing in the director’s wake, they laughed in subdued, nervous
bursts as they walked down the hall and past Elias’s hiding
place. One man followed behind slowly, still moaning under his
breath.
Elias huddled in his chair until he couldn’t hear them any longer.
“Crud, crud, crud, crud,” he muttered, clenching his hands into
fists. “This is the Crapinomicron of all crud!”
With
a small shift, he stopped the video feed from the exam room, pried the
button off and shorted a circuit. The lack of power might buy
them some time if a guard actually came to his station and tried to
monitor Gabriel’s room. Elias would scrounge every moment he
could get, right now he was feeling so shaky that he wasn’t sure he
would even be able to do anything with the time he’d bought.
Gabriel
was still alive! Elias hadn’t met him too late…as long as he got
him out of this place. His brain raced with possibilities like a
hyperactive hamster on a wheel. He had to get Gabriel off planet
first, which was going to more than a little difficult considering the
complete lack of ships available. The shuttle, as far as he knew,
was their only way out and it wasn’t due for a week yet. Elias
knew better than to believe it would be unguarded. The communications
relays were constantly monitored as well, so there would be no way to
get a message to the Interplanetary Officers and request help.
The communications room was built like a small fort, actually.
He’d always wondered why, and now he worried that he was finally
finding out.
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