The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller Read online

  David's quarters were a box room that contained a bunk bed and a sink.

  “Nutritional supplements will be brought to you every eight hours. You are free to wander and take exercise in the ship's corridors.” Carradine clicked his fingers at the darkness further along the corridor, and a white-eyed vessel stepped from the shadows and made his way to Carridine's side. “Whenever you leave your quarters you will be accompanied by this vessel.” David limped into his room. “We begin our experiments in twelve hours. I suggest you rest. You'll need it.”

  David closed the door, and leaned heavily on the cane as he crossed the room. He lay face up on the bed, and mulled over his options, each one bleaker than the last – a dark truth that summoned a smile from somewhere. The smile receded like sand through a strainer. Intuition told him what he'd experienced inside the Shadow Strand. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was the torment that has resulted from man's inhumanity to man. A single drop in that particular ocean … but enough to put me in a coma for two weeks.” The experiments Carradine has in mind will make me insane. Or, if I'm lucky, they’ll kill me.

  David fell asleep. When he woke, the lighting in the room had faded to a luminous red sheen. He reached for his cane, got out of bed and hobbled to the sink. He filled a cup with tepid water and drank. David made his way to the door and pressed his forehead against it. “You're standing on the other side, aren't you?” He turned, placed his back against the door and knocked his head against it as if trying to undo the tiredness. He closed his eyes tight and when he opened them a ghost-like figure had appeared at the end of his bed: a soldier dressed in green army fatigues who clutched a rifle and wore a tin helmet. David murmured, “Alright.” He closed his eyes with the intention of counting to ten. He made it as far as three before he opened them again. The soldier dropped to one knee and clutched at his helmet as mud and limbs rained down about him. He shouldered and fired his weapon and David stumbled to his left and collapsed to his knees. “He's not real, you idiot!”

  An explosion blew the man off his feet and he disappeared through the roof of the room … and then fell back to the floor. David moved with a dexterity he imagined beyond him to the man's side. The man lay on his back as he gathered up his entrails and held them in place. He stared straight up and breathed in hurried, staccato gasps. David knelt beside him and reached for his remaining arm – it felt like a magnetic field that tingled his fingers. The soldier's eyes focused on David.

  A witness from some terrible event in history. The man tried to speak but produced only blood which peppered David's cheeks.

  “You can see me?” said David.

  The soldier’s eyes opened wide, and he observed David as though he'd once doubted Him but was now relieved to be proved wrong. He coughed up more blood and said, “…You've … you've come for my soul, Jesus?” David had never heard of Jesus, and didn't know how to respond to this question. He smiled reassuringly and asked the man his name.

  “Don. Don Breeze. I have not been a good … a good Christian. 'Aven't prayed much … nor attended church. Am I … 'ave you forgiven me, Lord?”

  “Of course.” At this, Don breathed his last and vanished. David lay on the floor and thought about something he'd seen in Don's eyes. It was something he'd never seen in the eyes of another person: a need to do what he perceives as right… regardless of personal sacrifice.

  He stood before the mirror and turned his blood-splattered face left and right, searching for that same something in his own eyes…

  Twelve

  The following day, David was taken to a lab at the front of the ship. It was a long room that jutted out into space like something designed to push debris from the ship's path. David was seated in the type of medical chair that people seemed to provide for him these days. Carradine was hunched over a workstation with his back to him. The vessel that shadowed David everywhere was standing behind him. In the furthest reaches of the room, some forty metres from David, stood a cage large enough to house a troop of gorillas. What had captured David's attention lay midway to this cage: the ghostly apparition of a small girl dressed in striped pyjamas. She was kneeling in soil and digging with slow, weak hands. David twisted in his seat and observed the vessel for signs that he could see her.

  “Are you feeling all right?” asked Carradine.

  David turned his attention back to the girl. Carradine followed his gaze but appeared not to see her. The girl dug something from the soil and looked in a fearful way to her right. She raised her hands, which did little to prevent a rifle butt striking her forehead. She tumbled away and vanished from sight. Black boots stepped onto the spot where the girl had been. The boots stepped in her direction and David pushed himself into an upright position. The apparition vanished and David sat back in his seat. With his back to him, Carradine said, “There must be a reason for it.” David placed his head against the head rest and closed his eyes.

  Carradine turned to face him. “Am I boring you?”

  David sighed. “What's on your mind?”

  “It occurs to me that you have much in common with pygmies. It might be said you stand alone on their shoulders.”

  David opened his eyes. “Pygmies?”

  “I refer, of course, to all those individuals who in past times were attuned to the suffering of others. As you are. Individuals burdened with notions of compassion and self-sacrifice. It appears that you are the end result of their collective efforts. If they had known, would they have bothered?”

  “I doubt they would have been too impressed, but they would still have fought.”

  “And what makes you say that?”

  “People like you can be highly motivating.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Not from my perspective.”

  “The losing perspective.”

  “I'm not dead yet.” From behind him, David heard something being dragged into the room. Something heavy. Two vessels manoeuvred a copper trough in front of him. Carradine cast his gaze over it and nodded his approval. He went back to his notes and said, “You find it gets dizzy up there?”

  “Up here on the shoulders of pygmies, you mean?”

  “That's right.”

  “I'm not as significant as you imagine.”

  “You are demonstrating something typical of their kind: modesty.” David heard something else being dragged into the room behind him, and the look of satisfaction on Carradine's face increased his heart rate. A section of wall was manoeuvred above the trough. Gagged and strapped to the wall was a man that David recognised. “Richard.”

  Carradine looked pleased with David's recognition and became suddenly animated. “That's right, he's your work colleague, the one you spent most of your time with.”

  “Why is he strapped up there?”

  “He's part of our experiment. An important part.” From behind David's chair, the vessel pulled a strap across David's throat and held him. Carradine put on a white plastic coat and gloves. He crouched and withdrew a meat cleaver from inside a workstation. He held it up and said, “A crude device, but one ideally suited to our purposes.” Carradine stood beside Richard and checked his position over the trough.

  “Whatever it is you're thinking of doing, you don't need to,” said David. “I'll tell you whatever I know.”

  “I do need information from you, but this information can only be found in your blood.” Carradine drew back the meat clever and hacked through Richard's right leg below the knee. Richard threw back his head and bellowed though his gag. His leg dropped into the trough and blood dribbled over it like relish.

  “My blood is over here! In my veins!” cried David, as Carradine moved around to the other side of Richard and hacked off the other leg in the same place. Richard's head swung from side to side, and his white gag flashed in a copy of his first reaction. He looked like some grisly exhibit at a funfair whose motors produced this response when you fed a quarter into a slot. Carradine dropped the cleaver into the tr
ough. He removed his blood-splattered coat and gloves and dropped them in also. He looked at David and said, “You feel empathy for this man?” David looked at Richard. His eyes were crazed like those of a panicked horse, and he fought for air through his gag.

  “Yes, I believe you do …” observed Carradine. He picked up a syringe, stuck it in David's arm and drew blood. He held the syringe to his face and observed its contents. “This blood contains the hormones necessary for you to feel an empathic response. They must be isolated.”

  “You think empathy is a chemical reaction?” said David.

  “No, but it triggers a release of specific chemicals into your blood stream. And that is how you feel it.”

  “Are you going to help him? Or let him bleed to death?”

  “Would you like to help him?”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  Carradine instructed the vessel to release his grip on David. “Over there is a red canister. It contains a substance that will cauterise his wounds and provide pain relief.”

  David climbed out of the chair and walked as though drunk to the canister, which had a silver nozzle at one end. He sprayed the substance into his palm. It was a black foam, cool and soothing. He cupped his foam-filled hands over the first of Richard's bloody stumps, smothering the wound. Richard gasped and indicated his other leg with grunts and nods. David covered the other stump in foam, and Richard lay his chin on his collarbone.

  Back in his room, David sat on his bed with his head in his hands. Richard was in a wheelchair beside the bed, unconscious. Sometime later, Richard came round and watched David in silence. When he spoke, his voice cut through the silence of the room like a trowel. “What is it that makes you so important, Dave?”

  David looked up from his hands, wide-eyed and startled, and stated the following as though it ought to be obvious, “I stand on the shoulders of pygmies.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Are you thirsty?” David reached for his cane, got up and hobbled to the sink.

  “No. I'm not thirsty. Just tell me what it means.”

  “It means that when Carradine hacked off your legs, I didn't like it. It didn't seem right that you should suffer because of me.”

  Richard sounded astonished. “Why?” David drank the contents of a cup of water. He wiped his mouth and said, “There was a time when giving a damn about others was commonplace. They called it empathy.”

  “Is that what makes you so important? Your empathy?”

  “It enables me to sense things inside the Shadow Strands.”

  “What things?”

  “The suffering of others … a great many others.”

  “Then you can sense mine.” Richard raised his chin and exposed his neck. “Maybe you have enough strength in those hands to terminate me?”

  David shook his head.

  “I'm asking you to show me some empathy.”

  “I don't think you've fully grasped the meaning of the word.”

  “You're wrong, Dave. Do you want them to keep chopping me up? To see how you feel about it? Tell me that preventing that wouldn't be empathy?”

  David lay down, and grimaced as he opened and closed his hands. “Like I said, I don't have the strength in these hands.”

  Thirteen

  The next morning, David was taken back to the lab beneath the ship. Straps had been attached to his chair, and these were secured about his chest and arms. The wall and trough had been removed, and in their place four hollow projectors pointed to a space in the centre of the room. Carradine entered the lab in a hurry and announced, “Richard is to be the test subject again today. He's to be injected with variants of the hormones your body created during yesterday's empathic episode.” He went to a work bench, opened a drawer and removed a phial. “The hormones have been modified … to allow Richard to experience an empathic response.”

  David glanced at the bindings that secured his wrists to the chair. “If today is all about making Richard a nicer person … then why the restraints?”

  “Your sarcasm is more accurate than you imagine. Once infused with the appropriate chemicals, he will be brought into contact with a hollow representation of a Shadow Strand. What do you think about that?”

  “I think he might enjoy the experience about as much as having his legs hacked off.”

  “Let's hope you're right.”

  “What is the point of all this?”

  “The point is we are seeking ways to allow others to interact with the Shadow Strands. Not just you.”

  “You're playing with fire.”

  “Yes. And Richard and others like him are going to get burnt.”

  Richard was wheeled in and placed beside David. He had a glazed expression, as though he'd retreated far inside himself. Carradine injected his left arm with the empathic hormone and observed him for a reaction. David watched too. When Richard showed no immediate signs of a sweeter disposition, Carradine glanced at David who shrugged apologetically and then wondered why he'd done so.

  Without taking his eyes from David, Carradine said, “Bring in the girl.” A vessel escorted a young woman into the room. She had cropped red hair and big blue eyes and looked about as vulnerable as a person can look. At least to those attuned to such things. David was a case in point, and he pulled at the straps. “Who is she? She looks too young to even exist.”

  Carradine beckoned the girl over. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face Richard and David. “She is a part of my own experimental breeding programme.” He took a blade from his pocket and held it to her throat. She closed her eyes and began to tremble. Carradine looked at Richard and said, “She's delicate and innocent. Would my killing her bother you?” A semblance of personality returned to Richard's eyes. “I intend to slit her throat wide open … how does that make you feel, Richard?”

  Richard looked up at the girl for the first time, and then looked away. “I don't know.”

  “You must do better. Otherwise I will slit her throat slowly.”

  Richard's breathing grew laboured as he searched for the words to express himself. “I don’t know.”

  David struggled against his restraints. “Sick! … sick to your damn stomach.”

  Richard nodded. “Yes. Sick to my stomach.”

  “Don't look at me. Look at her … look into her eyes,” instructed Carradine.

  “Her eyes are closed,” breathed Richard.

  Carradine gripped the girl's throat and whispered, “Open your eyes.” She opened her eyes and looked at Richard. Carradine whispered in her ear, “Ask Richard for help.”

  Her cupid bow lips parted. “Help me, Richard.”

  Carradine whispered to her again. “Speak up.”

  “Help me, Richard.”

  “Louder.”

  “Help me, Richard!”

  Richard clutched the sides of his wheelchair and looked away from the girl. “Let her go.”

  “Why?”

  “It sounds foolish …”

  “What is it?”

  Richard sounded like a man resigned to losing his grip on his sanity. “Like, like David said … watching you slit her throat? It would sicken me.”

  “Let's put that theory to the test …” Carradine drew the blade across the girl's throat. She slumped to her knees and toppled onto her side, dead. Richard closed his eyes and tried to quieten his breathing while David yelled so loudly and so persistently that Carradine instructed the vessel to gag him. “Your reaction was very encouraging, Richard. Now let's see if synthesised empathy can deceive a Shadow Strand.”

  The hollow projectors purred into life, and a chunk of Shadow Strand the size of a man appeared and began to rotate slowly on the spot. Carradine ran his fingers along the structure that against all known laws of physics should not be solid. He tapped on it three times, as though knocking to gain entry, then turned to Richard. Richard grabbed the wheels of his chair and attempted to back away, slamming into the vessel behind him. Carradine sm
iled and said, “Is something troubling you?”

  “I can't go near that thing … something inside it wants to … ”

  “Yes?”

  “Crush me! Crush me with sorrow! You can't take me near it.”

  “It did not have this effect on David. In fact, it had no effect … not until he came into direct contact with it. Carradine instructed the vessel to wheel Richard toward the Shadow Strand. As the wheelchair moved forwards, Richard jumped out of it, took two zigzagging steps on his stumps and fell on his side. The vessel grabbed his stumps and dragged him screaming towards the Shadow Strand …

  Fourteen

  David sat on the end of his bed with his head in his palms. Richard was in his wheelchair, watching him. When he'd been pulled from the Shadow Strand, Richard had had the mother of all fits and bit the tip of his tongue off. For the last hour he'd been lisping in languages that David didn't understand. Now that changed: “He should have let me fuck that whore in the ass before he slit her throat.”

  David groaned into his hands. Richard threw his head from side to side as though someone were striking his cheeks… “Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Napalm those motherfuckers!”

  “Motherfuckers?” muttered David. It was not a word he'd heard before.

  Richard clawed at his own face and laughed. He glanced sideways and listened … “She's a heretic, you say? If she will not convert to the one true faith she must be burnt. Burn her in the name of the Almighty!” Richard huffed up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it out. “Goddamn Indians. They fought back pretty good, I'll give 'em that. Now let's get to scalpin' every last one of these here niggers. You reckon they'll pay the same for the scalps of these babes?” Richard looked at David slyly, and lowered his voice. “Juden? Come here, Juden … I have something for you … here in my pocket. Some bread.”