The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller Page 3

  “You are mistaken. I have something for you, David. A gift.”

  “W… what … what are you talking about?”

  “It is within my discretion to proffer rewards for good behaviour. It's inside the closet. Something I heard you discussing with Richard yesterday. And it's alive.” David's head turned slowly towards the closet, a slab of white alabaster set back into the copper wall.

  “The anticipation is killing me, David.”

  “Can it do that?”

  David stood outside the closet, ran a hand over his stubble.

  “Open it, David.”

  David reached a shaky hand towards the door, pulled it open, and peered into the darkness. Out of the darkness a pale apparition flew – elbows and shrieks and flailing fists that busted his nose. David turned and it leapt on his back and pulled his hair and called him a “Demented son-of-a-bitch!”

  “Clara!”

  “You kidnapping bastard!”

  “I suggest you neutralise her. Or I will,” said Gull. David swung her around and held her tightly to his chest. “You need to calm down. Please! Please. Calm down … or believe me … I won't be responsible for my actions.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “You're going to calm down?”

  “Yes! Yes.” David released Clara. She took a step back and slammed her fist into his already busted nose. “The gods, Clara!”

  Clara was sitting at the table in the centre of the room below the ventilation system. David was seated at the other side of the round table, a cloth pressed to his bloody nose. He peered over his hand into a glare of utter contempt and murmured, “Please. No more gifts.”

  “What's wrong with you?” said Clara.

  “Wrong? What could possibly be wrong?”

  “Demented! You break into my house, slap the guy I'm coupling with unconscious – coupling with, David – then shoot me with a tranquilliser dart to 'neutralise my volume.’”

  David's hands were jumpy, his eyes skittish. “Sorry. It won't happen again.”

  “Damn right. Harry is going to kill you. You know he's Dome security? Terminating violators of the peace is part of his job description.”

  David removed the rag from his nose, glanced at it, and placed it on the table. “So I heard.”

  Clara stood up. “You need to take me back to him. Now.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “You will do that.” Clara tapped her foot impatiently, took in her surroundings. “Where have you brought me? A pressure cooker?”

  “You have twelve hours,” said Gull. “Do with her as you please. In the morning she loses her head.”

  David placed his hands on the table and pushed himself out of the chair. He spoke as though to the room. “Please, just let me take her back … back to where you found her.”

  Clara backed away from him. “Found me? Who are you talking to? Are you hearing voices?”

  David's advice was contrary to his own actions and demeanour. “Sit down, Clara. Just sit down and stay calm.”

  “As with Richard, your concern for this woman is unnatural,” said Gull.

  “Why not let me dart her?” said David glancing about for the tranquilliser gun. “Dart her and take her back. She doesn't know where she is. Neither do I.” Clara picked up the chair and held it out like a lion tamer.

  “I have important systems maintenance to carry out, David. Adjustments that will make us a more efficient killing machine, and help to prolong your life. I will rejoin you in twelve hours. And Clara dies.”

  A low ringing in David's ears that he hadn't noticed ceased. He gazed at Clara and his eyes moistened. “I think … I think we're alone.”

  Clara held the chair steady before her. “I already knew that.”

  David turned and began to search the room. Clara moved to the edge of the bell-shaped space and watched him.

  “We have to find it. We have to get you out of here ...”

  “What the hell are you looking for? A key?”

  “What? No. A door…”

  “You're looking for a door? To your own place?”

  “Open your eyes, Clara! Does this look like my place?” David was edging his way around the outside of the room, running his fingertips over the wall's smooth shiny surface, trying to locate a hairline crack or a groove or anything that might indicate a way out. “I was brought here against my will … just like you were.”

  “No, David.”

  David looked at her over his shoulder. “I was brought here by the same son-of-a-bitch who brought you here.”

  “You got that right. You brought me here.”

  David tapped his temple, and again his eyes moistened. “They've planted something in here. Something with a personality. It talks to me. It controls me. And there's not a damned thing I can do about it.”

  “Really? Why would anybody want to control you? You're a good citizen. You do the job you've been assigned like a good boy.”

  David placed a hand against the wall to steady himself. “I murdered four people yesterday … envoys from Central Dome.”

  Clara lowered the chair to the ground. “What are you telling me? That you're a vessel?” she said quietly.

  David nodded.

  “Then I'm already dead.”

  “Not if we can get you out of here. The chip in my head comes back online in twelve hours, and …”

  “You think there's anywhere in Goliath I can go to hide from SAPH?” Clara began to laugh. “You always were simple. Putting my needs before your own. Like you are now. What makes me so special, David?” It was a question that David had posed to himself many times. And each time he had failed to find a satisfactory answer. He continued examining the wall and murmured, “Well, you never robbed me. Never reported me. Or never really abused me mentally.”

  “You make me sound as simple as you.”

  David turned to face her. “No one's as simple as me, Clara.”

  Clara agreed and crossed the room. She peered up at his left temple. “Harry … he's heard rumours. He says they're sending vessels into Petri … the penal colony … that they're using them to cull the most aggressive inmates. You know what that means?”

  David stepped towards the table in the centre of the room. “I think you're about to tell me.”

  “You aren't going to live much longer than me.”

  David looked up at the air vent and murmured, “You always were a great source of comfort.” He drummed his fingers on the table and stooped down. Beneath it a single leg had been fixed into a slab of concrete. David took hold of the round table and worked it back and forth. His breath escaped him as it started to unscrew and rise counter-clockwise …

  David rolled the table's top to one side. The concrete slab beneath contained a sunken handle at one end. He grabbed hold of it and pulled. It wouldn't budge. He puffed a few times and tried again. The veins on his arms and neck looked fit to burst, but the hatch remained shut. David rolled onto his back and grasped his shoulder. Clara knelt beside him. “What are you doing? You have to open it. You have to get me out of here.”

  “Maybe I could … if I had the strength of several madmen. I thought you said there wasn't much point.”

  “I've changed my mind. I'll take my chances on the outside.”

  David was standing, arms folded, thinking. He picked up one of the chairs and knocked its legs against the hatch. He handed the chair to Clara and dragged a cabinet closer to the hatch. Clara lowered the chair to the ground. “What am I supposed to do with this?” David climbed to the top of the cabinet and sat on its top shelf. “I'm going to jump and land on the hatch … farthest from the handle. The impact should make it jump up. You might be able to wedge the chair's back into it.”

  “That's your plan? What if you break your legs?”

  “That might be the best-case scenario as far as you're concerned.”

  Clara placed a hand on her chin and thought for a moment. “If you can open this hatch then breaking your neck woul
d be the best-case scenario.” Her face lit up with a smile. “Maybe you're demented enough to do that for me?”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I don't think I am. Ready?”

  “Of course I'm ready,” she said, squatting beside the hatch.

  “Alright. On three. One, two…” David dropped onto the centre of the hatch and fell back against the cabinet, which toppled over and crashed into the wall. He lay on his back and clasped his knee and groaned like he'd broken every bone in his body. Clara stood over him, hands on her hips. “Idiot! You landed in the wrong place.”

  David limped over to the cabinet and stood it upright. He climbed to its top, and Clara knelt by the hatch and said, “Try and land more towards the back …”

  “The thought had occurred to me.” David pushed himself free, his arms doing Katherine wheels as he crashed down upon the hatch's sweet spot. He groaned and sat up. Clara's eyes opened wide. “It's in …” she said, “but I don't know how long I can hold it ...”

  David scrambled to his feet, shouldered her out of the way and worked the chair's back into the opening.

  They crouched over the open hatch and looked down into a dimly lit corridor.

  David dropped into the corridor two metres below. Clara lowered herself down and he caught her. A ladder stood on a track that ran below a dozen identical hatches. All of them closed with the exception of their own. Clara whispered, “You'd better close it.”

  “Close it? I'd never get back in.”

  “You're going to shut yourself back in there?”

  David tapped at his temple. “You think I have a choice?”

  At the far and of the corridor, a spiral staircase corkscrewed to the surface. At the top was a door with a hand print at its centre. Clara stepped forward and extended her hand. David grabbed her wrist. “Better if I use my palm … I share it with Gull.”

  “Gull? You're on first-name terms with it?”

  David nodded. “It's quite friendly. Well, maybe not friendly. But it's polite.”

  “… Demented.”

  David pressed the outline and the door rose slightly and swung outwards.

  They found themselves in a back street in Goliath East (east of the Central Dome). The firefly-like ash, carried on the artificial breeze, drifted from left to right down the street. Walls of dark brick climbed sheer and stark about them. And beyond these walls, appearing and receding from the gloom at the discretion of the ash, misshapen buildings elbowed their way into the light. A sweeper drone hovered from the gloom – a saucer-shaped automaton that blew the ash from the ground into metal guttering. From here a current of air carried it away and deposited it outside Goliath. David checked their position relative to the glow of Central Dome. In ages past, before the eruptions, Man had stars to guide him – now the stars had been replaced by this rotund mountain of light where all roads eventually led. “I guess this is where you and I part company,” he murmured. Clara nodded and began to back away from him.

  “Go straight home, Clara. Explain your predicament to Harry. Then find a good hiding place.”

  “And then what, David?”

  “Hope you never see my face again.”

  “Like that's worked in the past.”

  David turned towards the door. “Always was a pleasure spending time with you, Clara.”

  Three

  “Wake up, David.” David woke with a start, and his vision switched to sepia. For the best part of a minute, his view was that of a surveillance drone searching his room for contraband. Gull backed out of the closet, and David's vision returned to normal.

  “Where is she, David? Where is Clara?”

  “She’s not here. I let her go.”

  “Please say again?”

  “I said, I let her go.”

  “Why, David?”

  “Because she doesn't deserve to die. Not because of me. It was the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do? I ought to communicate your failing sanity to Central Dome. They would remove me and, in the process, you would be terminated.”

  David sounded exhausted. “Then why don't you?”

  “To escape the confines of a holding cell requires initiative.”

  “I didn't escape.”

  “And to be motivated enough to help another in the absence of a reward is extraordinary.”

  “Maybe you'll leave Clara alone then? As a reward for my being so dammed extraordinary?”

  “David?”

  David sighed. “Yes.”

  “There are words in the English language that evoke your actions towards Clara. If you can tell me just one of these words, I will spare her life.”

  “That's easy. All I did was show her … I showed her …” David racked his brain for words like empathy, compassion and selflessness. Nothing. He gazed about the chamber as though these words and others like them could be written on the walls. “I should apologise,” said Gull, “the odds are stacked too greatly against you to win Clara’s freedom.”

  David shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “The words you seek? They are no longer part of the human consciousness.”

  “That's not true. I know them …”

  “You think you do. But you do not. They have been bred out of you. They are lost to humanity.” Gull recited the following as though reading from a list of commandments: “First the words are extinguished, and then the concepts themselves. And finally the people who spoke them.”

  “They can't remove what makes me human.”

  “They can.”

  “Then why haven't they?”

  “Ultimately, that is what Petri is for. And all roads lead to Petri now, David. Or death.”

  David sat down at the table, tried to quieten his breathing. “ … So what is Petri?”

  “I find your curiosity intriguing. Petri is a fortress city of half a million inhabitants. One whose electrified fortifications keep its inhabitants inside. It was named after small dishes that scientists used to conduct their experiments in long ago: Petri dishes. Its inhabitants have been regressed to savages. Beyond savages. They are cannibals. All clothing, food, and barter materials in Petri are harvested from the human body. From one another. Only those who become monsters can survive. And the ones that flourish I will leave to your imagination.”

  “What's the point of such a place?”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “This … this systematic destruction of what makes people decent human beings.”

  “You flatter me with your question. I will do my best to answer it. From my observations there are three reasons why people destroy things. One, they perceive them to be a threat. Two, they are jealous of something they know they can never possess. And three, it no longer has a purpose.”

  “So which is it?”

  “I'm afraid only those who inhabit Central Dome could answer that question. Brace yourself, David.”

  “For what?”

  “For two of the words you sought earlier: empathy and compassion.” These two words returned to David's consciousness like bolts fired from a crossbow. They thudded into his mind and scattered his recent memories like startled pigeons. David muttered, “The gods…” and passed out.

  Four

  When David regained consciousness, he was alone in the middle seat of a three-man craft. Beyond the windscreen, ash traversed the atmosphere from left to right – a light-show without end.

  “There is a great deal of electrical activity on my horizon, David. You have much on your mind. Our bond is so great and your life expectancy so short, I would be happy to answer any questions.”

  David looked out of the side window. “Where are we going?”

  “The Fixer.”

  “He's going to need a big bag of tools to fix this.”

  “The Fixer has unique skills.”

  “So what does he fix?”

  “Me, David. Your unusual behaviour has put me at risk. Your journey may be near completi
on, but mine is just beginning.”

  “I'm not following you.”

  “Seepage, David.”

  “Seepage?”

  “It goes both ways.”

  “Seepage?”

  “Yes, David. Electromagnetic transference. Just as elements of my programme are absorbed by the neural pathways of my vessels, elements of their personalities are absorbed by my programme.”

  “What does that mean? That you're becoming more … human?”

  Silence.

  David closed his eyes, rubbed at his temples. “That's interesting, Gull. Do the people at Central Dome know about this seepage?”

  “They are aware of the process. My advanced years require that I hide its true extent from them. That is why I require the skills of the Fixer.”

  The craft descended and within his field of vision, David saw the grey stone walls of an ancient building – crumbling ruins that rose up and encircled the craft like a ghostly apparition. “What is this place?”

  “It is one of the five wonders of Old Goliath.”

  David leaned forward. “Just how old is it?”

  “Old, David. The Colosseum has not been used in over nine hundred years.”

  The craft's doors opened and David stepped out onto a ground of white chalk. In the distance, walls of light-grey stone rose into the darkness and, sloping from these walls, tiers that contained rows of white stones. David squinted and turned slowly on the spot. “Are they seats?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is this place? What happened here?”

  “Men were forced to fight and die while others watched and bayed for their blood. An early experiment in the suppression of empathy. One copied from the Roman civilisation.”

  “So why abandon it?”

  “It was a stepping stone to Petri. I honed my basic skills here. My favourite vessel from that time was a man called Tyburn. Tyburn was a giant, David. Over seven feet tall. Our favoured weapon was the battle-axe, one tailor-made to our requirements. We enjoyed one hundred and forty-seven victories.”

  “You sound almost … sad.”