The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller Read online

  David's throat was bone dry, and when he swallowed the window registered the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple. A message scrolled within the glass in red neon: 'Embrace the cold you feel today … for it provides the water you will drink tomorrow.' David turned and under his breath he murmured, “I disconnected that damn message chip.” A voice answered David from inside his head. A male voice, educated and supremely relaxed, that spoke above a faint crackle: “I reconnected the message chip, David. As I’ve no doubt you are aware, the disruption of message relays is not permitted in Goliath.” David spun about and struck his left temple with a flat palm. The voice inside it said, “I apologise for the sound. Teething troubles … teething troubles that will soon be rectified.” David lurched to his right and stumbled through a partition of hanging plastic strips. He came to rest with his hands on his basin and stared at his reflection. “I'm losing my mind.”

  “To the contrary, you have lost nothing. You have gained a companion.” The crackle was gone, the voice now clear and distinct. David backed into his room and stood with hands raised like a man caught in headlights. “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Guillotine.”

  “A guillotine?” murmured David, aghast.

  “No. Just Guillotine. A guillotine was an instrument of execution used by the people of France to aid their revolution.”

  “I know what a guillotine is!”

  “For efficiency's sake, you may call me Gull.” David's legs buckled and he reached for his bed and sat down. He remembered his dream and raised a hand to the side of his head. Nothing. He went back into his wash room and studied his left temple, his eyes wide and searching. “I expect you're wondering why I'm called Guillotine, David?”

  “Stop saying my name!”

  “But David is your name. David?”

  “What!”

  “What are you going to do with that knife?”

  “Maybe … maybe I can cut you out of my head.”

  “Quite impossible. You will only injure yourself. And we have important work to do. I'll take the very best care of you. Your life expectancy may be better than you think. My last vessel survived for fifty-seven days, four hours and twenty-seven seconds. I won't bore you with the details, but believe me when I say I took all the required precautions.” The knife pierced the skin above his left temple. David's vision switched to black and white – and in the mirror he saw a sepia image of himself, eyes rolled up to their whites. Radar? David dropped the knife into the sink, turned, and walked calmly into his room.

  When the intercom beside his door beeped, David was sitting on his bed, palms upturned like an ape's, the whites of his eyes showing. “That is Richard, your work colleague,” said Gull. “You are going to travel to work together as is your custom.” David's lips moved, almost imperceptibly, and spittle bubbled on his bottom lip. Gull continued, “Speech is quite impossible while I have control of your primary functions. I will return their control to you in a few moments. I trust you, David. I trust you to travel in to work with your colleague and say nothing of your morning. If you betray this trust, I will be forced to terminate him. And punish you for the red tape this would entail. I can boost your adrenal and testosterone levels many times over. Provide you with the strength of several madmen. I say madmen, David, because only madmen would do what we shall do together. And I have full authority to direct your vessel to terminate any of Goliath's inhabitants. I hope you're paying close attention to what I'm telling you. You will find our time together more agreeable if you do precisely as you're told.” David's blue eyes rolled down and he drew a deep breath. “Nod if you understand and intend to cooperate. Thank you, David.” The intercom by the door beeped again. David got up slowly and approached it. He placed a hand on the wall and considered his options. I have none. “I'll be right down, Richard.”

  David's apartment building was called Needle 261.One thousand identical Needles ran around Goliath's southern perimeter, each three hundred stories high. Their primary function was to support Goliath's outer protective webbing. The Needles comprised two small apartments on each floor. The apartments faced away from each other at right angles, giving the appearance of a sharp nose that ran down the centre of each.

  David stepped into the lift, and its female voice greeted him. “Good morning.” David gripped the hand rail as if the lift were about to blast him into space. “Please state your floor.”

  “Ground.”

  “Please state your floor.”

  “Ground. Ground!” The lift hummed and descended through one hundred and seventy-three floors in five seconds. The doors opened onto a spacious lobby containing a black couch that looked adrift on an expanse of cracked green tile. Ash floated past the front door; migrating wisps of light headed for extinction at ground zero. A craft hovered half a metre from the ground outside. Richard sat in the furthermost of the craft's three central seats, his silver-grey hair and ageing profile framed in the craft's oblong window. David placed his right hand on a reader to the right of the door and it swung outwards. The cold swept in and David lowered his chin and walked out. The door of the craft opened. David put a foot up upon a small ledge and grasped a vertical rail and heaved himself into the cockpit. The door closed behind him. David stared straight ahead, unable to look at Richard. “You okay, Dave? You sick or something? You know you can't come in if you're sick.” David nodded and lifted a hand towards the door. Gull said, “Where do you imagine you are going, David?” David swung his head to his right and looked at Richard. “I'm fine. We'd better get going.”

  “Okay. Continue journey,” he instructed the craft. It continued its journey around Goliath's outer ring. To their right lay abandoned facilities where items were once manufactured for the populace of Central Dome: clothing, plastic, rubber, silicon, computer chips and furniture. Things necessary for a life of comfort. Amid the debris, three men stood huddled about a bonfire. Richard sounded irritated. “Twenty minutes at best until a drone spots them. Puts out that fire and them with it.”

  “Maybe it's what they want.”

  “What's that got to do with anything? I'll have to go over there and tell them to put it out. My craft's signature will be all over this quadrant.”

  As David moved his hand to the door, Gull said, “Remain in the craft while Richard performs his civic duty.”

  “… I'll wait here,” David told the closing door. Richard navigated a path through discarded debris towards the flames. Goliath's drinking water was provided by condensation that seeped down the vast walls of Central Dome – water created by the close proximity of tropical conditions inside the dome and freezing conditions without. Any flame capable of raising Goliath's temperature above that necessary for the creation of water was punishable by death.

  Three men huddled about the flaming drum, their heads bent towards the haze as though searching for meaning in it. Richard stopped short of the men. He called out, tapped his wristwatch, and pointed overhead. One of the men left the drum and navigated the debris to speak to him. In that landscape and within those floating lights they looked to David like refugees from a festive apocalypse. Richard turned and made his way back to the craft. He climbed inside and closed the door. “Continue journey. They wanted to get close to the outer webbing. Never seen the moon. What a surprise. Got it into their heads they might catch a glimpse of it out here on the southern-most edge. I told them we were headed outside of Goliath's outer defences right now. That I've been going outside for almost forty years. And I've seen nothing but ash, smoke and hell out there. That's what I told them.”

  “I guess it's up there somewhere,” said David.”

  “What is?”

  “The moon.”

  “You heard from Clara lately?”

  “No. No, I haven't. Last I heard she'd taken up with a security worker. Works the Dome's southern perimeter.”

  “They get lodgings in Sector A, close to the Dome … close to the light.”

  “That's what I heard.”

&
nbsp; “That's tough. I know she made you happy.”

  “Only when she wasn't making me miserable.”

  “Isn't it always the way?” The craft halted at an intersection. To their left was Turbine Exit 12. The craft swivelled to the left and moved towards the opening doors, coming to a halt in an air lock. They sat in silence as the doors behind them closed and the ones in front opened. Darkness beyond and howling winds. The craft moved out and the ash assaulted it like a swarm of locusts. Overhead, Wind Turbine 617 towered up into the shifting gloom. Doors loomed in the craft's high beams.

  Inside a parking bay a dozen identical craft hung in a line. The whole area was awash with neon that forced both men to squint. They exited the craft and walked up a ramp towards an elevator. There was a dull hum behind as their craft raised up and joined the others. They stepped into the elevator. Richard gave a verbal command, “Observation deck,” then added, “I'll let you out and continue on up. A meeting's been called. Inspectors sent by Central Dome. They only informed me about it this morning. I have no idea what it's about. But I have a bad feeling about it.”

  Gull said, “Richard is correct about his bad feeling. Ask him in which room the meeting is to take place.”

  “I won't do it.”

  Richard rubbed a cold sore on his lip. “Won't do what?”

  Gull said, “If I wasn't aware that such sentiments were no longer possible, I might suspect you of placing the well-being of another above your own. An indication that you're mentally unstable, perhaps. Ask him the number of the room, David. Otherwise he will lose his head with the others, and your smiling face will be the last thing he sees.”

  “Which meeting room you headed to?”

  “Thirteen. Why?”

  “No reason.” The doors opened onto the observation deck and David walked out.

  The observation deck snaked around all four thousand wind turbines. The turbines spanned the southern hemisphere of Goliath's outer ring of defences. To David's left and right, as far as the eye could see, technicians worked at maintaining Central Dome's electricity supply. David's shoes clipped the stone floor as he moved towards his work station: a semi-circular desk below a single holographic display. A bald man leaned back from his workstation and raised a hand. “Morning, Dave.”

  “Ed.” A woman in a white coat crossed his path and blew on a steaming cup. “You look ill,” she said.

  “I feel ill.”

  There was a long package wrapped in brown paper on David's desk. He slumped down in his seat, stared at it. And it's not even my birthday. Three red dots pulsed at various depths on a holo screen above it. Problems that needed addressing. Gull said, “Open the second drawer down.”

  “Why? I don't need a rubber band.”

  “Open the drawer, David.” Atop a circular nest of rubber bands lay a pair of wrap-around shades. To hide the whites of my eyes. “I sense your reticence, David. It is wrong for me to tease you in this way.” David's eyes rolled up to their whites. Gull slid on the shades and reached for the package.

  Gull walked towards the lift, the observation room reflecting in his shades. The lift's doors opened. A man raised an eyebrow and walked out, leaving it empty. Gull entered the lift and turned to face the closing doors. Within this human shell, the man known as David was held in a vice from which he could not break free. His vision replaced by radar that forced him to view his surroundings in sepia.

  Gull stepped out of the lift and entered the room directly opposite. It was a small meeting room with a single table and three chairs. Gull placed the package on the table and opened it. Inside was a black case, and inside that a samurai sword. David considered the name of the thing controlling him – Guillotine – and what the sword meant for the men inside room 13. He swallowed hard, and although he felt his Adam's apple move, it had not. The sword lay beside a scabbard. Gull dropped it over his shoulder and secured it there, then he picked up the sword and slid it inside. He spoke using a version of David's voice without emotion or inflection. “I sense your anxiety, David. It is unfounded. I have taken the name of a guillotine for good reason. It was a most efficient way of bringing life to an abrupt conclusion. It delivered a blow of eight hundred and eight pounds per square inch. Decapitation was instantaneous. As it will be for the targets inside room 13. I detect a sharp rise in your anxiety levels. I hope you don't imagine I will ask you to carry out these executions. Rest assured you are merely the vessel. A spectator. I cannot hear your thoughts. So, when in control of your primary functions, I have only your vital signs to indicate how your day is going.”

  The door to meeting room 13 appeared black. The doors up here are red. David's hand grasped the handle, but this sensation was not conveyed to his conscious brain. He felt only his heart, thumping and jerking in his chest like a boiler being stoked to its limits. The strength of several madmen. David wanted to close his eyes, but they were not his to close. Gull removed the shades and slipped them into his pocket. “Men should see the face of their executioner, David. Your face.” Don't hurt Richard.

  The door swung open. Inside, five men sat in armchairs about a semi-circular space. The slowly rotating hologram of a valve mechanism filled it. Four of the men were stocky envoys sent by Central Dome. The fifth was Richard who said, “David? What are you doing up here? What's wrong with your eyes?” Gull drew the sword from the scabbard on his back. The man in the chair on the right (as David looked) jumped up and moved behind his chair, away from the others. He ran a hand through his dark hair and regarded his companions accusingly. “It's a vessel. One of you has broken with protocol.” The other three got up and stepped away from each other. Gull addressed the room in a monotone version of David's voice: “In a moment the lights will go out. In the event that any of you make it to the door with your heads attached … well, let's just say, I will be flabbergasted.” The room plunged into darkness, but David's view remained the same. He jerked forwards like a passenger on board a murderous funfair ride. Wide-eyed faces flashed up, and each in turn was launched on a spray of dark liquid – the first shot away to the left, the second to the right, while the third went straight up and clipped the ceiling before landing with a thud and rolling towards a neck that was not its own. Gull turned his head slowly and looked over his shoulder towards a bright rectangle of light. The fourth man had made it to the door. The funfair ride started again, with a speed that left David's stomach in the room behind him. The man was running down a narrow corridor towards the lift. He looked back over his shoulder, clipped the wall, and stumbled on as fast as his gelatine legs would carry him. He reached for the lift's call button but the tip of the blade sliced through his midsection, striking the button first. The last thing David heard before his world faded to black was his own voice saying, “Allow me to summon the elevator for you, Mr Hopkins.”

  Two

  David woke up and clasped a hand over his mouth. His eyes moved skittishly from left to right as though reading emergency information …

  “Welcome back, David.”

  David swallowed some bile and winced. “You enjoyed it … you enjoyed murdering those people.”

  “Enjoyment is a biological construct. It requires specific chemicals and a trigger to ignite them. I simply take pride in my work. You might say I have been programmed with job satisfaction.”

  David lifted his head and gazed wide-eyed about the room: a bell-shaped space with shiny, copper-coloured walls that tapered to a circular air vent. There's no door. David lay his head back on the pillow. “How did I get here?”

  “I navigated you here. After yesterday's terminations, your vital signs suggested mild trauma. I deemed it necessary to place you in a state of shallow hibernation. Your mental well-being is high on my list of priorities.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn't be inside my head.”

  “My location is beyond my control. Something you and I have in common, David. In many respects we are both victims.”

  David closed his eyes and drew a deep b
reath. “Richard’s alive?”

  “Your interest in Richard's well-being is something I'm looking forward to discussing with you.”

  David squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I'm told I'm demented that way.”

  “That possibility had occurred to me. Something they overlooked during your assessment perhaps.”

  “Is Richard still alive?”

  “Yes. I'm an implant of my word. I hope you'll appreciate that during our time together.”

  David sat up and lowered his feet to the ground. You mean until you get me killed, he thought.

  Various items of exercise equipment peppered the room: punch bags, a horizontal pole for doing chin-ups, push-up bars, a set of ankle bracelets that hung from the ceiling. “We will start each new day with a strict exercise regime,” said Gull. “You are already in good physical condition. You would not have been chosen otherwise. But to realise our potential we must take your body to its optimum.”

  David lay back down, placed a hand over his eyes, and tried not to think. “The last thing I feel like doing is exercising, Gull.”

  “And we have an abundance of grade A protein packs. The correct nutrition is vital.”

  “Murder hasn't done much for my appetite either.”

  “You are going to exercise and then you are going to eat, David.”

  “I don't think so.” David's vision returned to colour, he doubled over, coughing and panting, his clothing soaked through with sweat.

  “You will learn that you must do what is required of you, David.” David's legs gave way, he stumbled backwards and fell on his ass. “I … I can't breathe … I'm having … a heart attack!”