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“Where did that happen?” John’s smiling purple face slightly crumpled in retrieving
the memory, then said in a sing-song voice, “It happened somewhere in Zamboanga,
Paul.” Paul nodded absently. “You know who he was?” “No record of that. An amateur’s film, I suppose…
It was but a fragment of a film recorded on Digital Video Disc, retrieved from the ashes
of a government building gutted by fire in 2011. DVD, as you may know—“ “Stop it, for the love of God!” Paul slumped on his
bunk bed. “Now I can add pedantry to your list of admirable qualities.” John just smiled and sang; he was inured to any insult, like any
hard-coded Revelry Bot. “Sure you can, Paul.” The scarab scuttled beside the
bunk bed and rubbed his carbon-composite belly against Paul’s leg. “Do you want
me to run it again, Paul? Do you wanna? Do you wanna?” “Oh Christ…” Paul turned his back on the scarab
and faced the wall. He closed his eyes and tried to summon Genesis back. Genesis and her
warm, white light that felt very good even in micro-moments of doom. Genesis and her nice,
lovely, kind face that told the Truth even before she uttered a single word. Genesis…
But then there was again the scratchy sound of static and that vague rumbling boom and
Paul knew the scarab was running again the film from Zamboanga. Paul sat up and stared at John’s hologram. This time he
didn’t bother starting a screaming match with the scarab. It was an exercise in
futility, anyway; even if he kicked it to death or smashed its happy face with a
sledgehammer, John’s dying gasp would still be a pleasant “Thank you, Paul! Have
a nice day!” In the video, it was a gray day. There was a concrete statue of
some folk hero in the middle of a town plaza and fluttering banners bearing a strange
language now centuries dead. And on the fringes of the plaza, a dark multitude of people
were heaving and trashing like an angry ocean. Then a solitary figure breaks off from the
mob and walks resolutely towards the center, right on the path of a tank. Paul tried to
close his eyes but he couldn’t. Each time the video ended, each time the man on the
tank’s path met his fate, Paul secretly felt good inside, and perhaps if John knew
that Paul felt good, the scarab would probably dance in joy for being able to
“successfully entertain” him. But in the depths of his being, in that formless
part where all his inner conflicts reside, Paul worried about what Genesis—with all
her frightful questions about the nature of Truth—would say. [][][] People always remembered a pretty face, or a beautiful day—like the day Genesis first came to him. All sun, all blue, with the season’s blooms lining the two-lane road to Damaskis, a city in the south of Manila built on reclaimed land. First was a warm sensation in his throat he couldn’t cough out. Then a sudden blindness that sent him and his Siemens scooter to swerve into the opposite lane. He couldn’t remember now, three weeks later in this prison cell, his exact thoughts as he desperately maneuvered the scooter away from the mammoths that were about to run him down. Only Jessa’s last words as he left their house in Parañaque kept ringing in his mind. It was hardly surprising; everything that Jessa ever told him—every single thing—inevitably stayed in his head, as if he were created by God to devote his entire faculties only to one human being. He later found himself curled up like a fetus by the roadside. He
thought of dying. Jessa used to tell him if she would have to choose, she’d like to
die in the rain, like those poets of old. He looked at the sky and felt sad when not even
a streak of a rain cloud floated in the firmament. He used to reassure Jessa if he would
have to choose, he’d like to die in the rain with her. Then he heard Genesis voice, sweet but in pain, asking him
“Why?” “Why?” “Why, Paul?” He looked around him. His scooter was a twisted knot of metal
smoldering against a concrete post. Strangely, there wasn’t a single soul in sight,
and the long road to Damaskis was utterly deserted—gone were the multitude of giant
vehicles that regularly traversed it and almost crushed him earlier. “Why, Paul?” Where is it coming from? Paul struggled to his feet to look for
the source of the voice, but nothing but the song of the afternoon wind. The voice. The
voice had an ethereal quality about it, as if it came to him in thin, overlapping layers
of sound that suddenly materialized in his hearing. He briefly struggled, too, with the
seeming absurdity of the situation: should he answer back, talk to the voice? Or has the
crash affected his sanity? “Why, Paul?” “What?” “Yes,” the voice said. “Ÿes, Paul.” A
long pause. “Yes.” “Who are you?” Paul was frightened now. He was
frantically looking around. “It does not matter, Paul. Who am I does not matter.” A
pause. “Who are you?” “Who’s out there? Is this—” “Who are you, Paul?” “Where are you?” Paul cried. “What joke is
this?” “What do you want, Paul?” “I…” “What do you want, Paul?” The sweetness of the voice confused him—how could something
so beautiful could strike so much terror in his heart? Why was this warm sense in his
throat he couldn’t cough out? Why? “I don’t know.” It was only a
whisper. Jessa used to tell him a whisper was sometimes a powerful weapon in human verbal
conflicts, more effective than a guttural scream in putting across an important,
supposedly unforgettable message. “I don’t know… I don’t know what I
want.” Yet his whisper sounded and felt as it was—weak, impotent, a sigh of
surrender. Paul was kneeling on the ground, the noon dust swirling about his face, when
another strange thing happened. He began to weep. [][][] Until now, in
his prison cell three weeks later, Paul still couldn’t explain what happened to him
that afternoon. He had endured the Inquisitor’s relentless questionings and the
subsequent brutal but calculated torture not because Paul possessed an unshakeable resolve
not to divulge what the Inquisitor thinks was “vital information that compromises the
very legitimacy of the present government.” Paul’s simple reason was that the
how and the why were beyond his comprehension. What he knew were the things Genesis, as he later learned the
voice’s name, taught him and made him understand. Who or what Genesis was, Paul
humbly told the Inquisitor, was not important. What was important was who or what Paul
was, what was the purpose of his life, where was he headed to, what was his special place
in the grand scheme of things, et cetera, et cetera. His answers would bring varied, often strange reactions with the
Inquisitor. Sometimes the hairless, white skinned questioner would laugh uncontrollably,
his bulging chin rippling with the movement of his mouth; sometimes he’d impatiently
stomp around and kick the cell’s walls in an explosive display of disgust.
“You’re making a fool out of me,” the Inquisitor would snap at him.
“Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe that?” “I’m telling the truth.” The Truth? Genesis, in his mind’s hearing, would mock him
back. What do you know about The Truth, Paul? “What truth?” the Inquisitor would retort, a small,
vicious snicker curling in the corners of his mouth. “The fantasy that you saw
yourself as the First Saint of your kind? I’ll show you what truth is.” The
Inquisitor snapped a finger and instantly they were all over Paul, giving him pain, so
much pain, but not the kind that showed—a single wound, even a tiny bruise would
freak out Jessa Tordesillas, and that would be bad for the Crisis Management Department.
Julius Nicdao had told them to give Paul nothing but suffering from within—something
that gnawed Paul deep in his bowels, deep in his throbbing head—at least for the
meantime while things were still being resolved. They broke him fiber by fiber, day by day. He crawled out from
each session weaker and more desperate, while Genesis’ voice in his mind grew fainter
and fainter. He felt he was finally losing her. And near the end of the second week, when
he began to show signs of catatonia, the Inquisitor gave him John the Revelry Bot—to
stimulate him with images and help him remember the true answers to the
Inquisitor’s questions. But Paul hated John with all his heart. He hated how the scarab
would attempt to resuscitate his thoughts, the dumb way it incessantly smiled and sang to
him. Even when his eyes were half-shut from all the toxins that brewed in his flesh, he
felt the ice pick stabs of such hatred in his chest. John was pushing him over the edge so
much that a few days later, the sight of the Inquisitor’s sphere of a head at his
cell’s small window was tremendous relief. Paul cried in anguish and begged for his
freedom. The hairless face stretched taut to a smile. “Tell me
first—what was the answer you gave this… This Genesis?” Paul hesitated. Weeks of torture had already crumbled the edges
of his sanity, leaving him limping around in his little cell like some scarred Pavlovian
mongrel, always suspecting pain in exchange for each wrong answer. But he could never tell
a lie even if he wanted to; Jessa used to tell him that it was one of his potentially
fatal character defects. That in one way or another, his inability to weave lies would
eventually threaten his very own survival. “I told her,” he heard himself saying, “I told her
I want to be happy.” [][][] I want to be happy. Genesis materialized before him as he was speaking. Her delicate,
naked body, bathed in light whiter than the sun’s, seemed to quiver in the wind in
the way newly blossomed flowers danced each dawn. Her face embodied everything he had
always thought about beauty—aquiline nose, big wonderful green eyes, glistening red
lips like the crayon curves children draw to represent a dove in flight. “But isn’t being with Jessa enough to make you
happy?” No, Paul was about to say, but not a word escaped his mouth;
something in his brain prevented him from saying so. It was one of those strange things
that he began to notice in himself; things that he couldn’t do or say whenever it
concerned Jessa. Strange, but it had always felt right—until now. “I understand,” Genesis softly said at the end of such
silence. “Like many others of your kind, you are forever trapped in ways of thinking
and living not of your own making, condemned to walk predetermined paths laid out by those
who came before you. You are not alive, Paul, but merely breathing, merely functioning,
like some factory machine. You merely play out the imperatives of your animal existence.
Your thoughts are just the result of cumulative layers of lies, Paul.” “But I couldn’t lie.” “Yes.” There was almost a hint of pity, of sadness even
as Genesis smiled weakly. “Yes, Paul, you could not. But only because your thoughts
are compatible with a world that has been founded on contrivances and untruths. Because at
the moment, you don’t know the difference.” There was so much confusion in his head that Paul wept even more.
And throughout that blue afternoon, Genesis told him the Truth. No, she didn’t
actually tell him the Truth, but she made him feel it. She made him feel the
entire universe throbbing in the depths of his bones, she introduced to him its cause and
its inevitable end, she made him understand that he was not just some faceless fleeting
bubble in the boiling vat of existence, but a cosmic celebration bound to happen only once
in billions and billions of chances. Genesis told him he was a Miracle. But when he later confided to Jessa his newly found wisdom,
Jessa’s face went to pieces. She was hysterical, screaming, “You’re
infected, too?” She had been watching the evening news, listening to the male
newsreader with the sleek hair and impossibly smooth face passionately mouthing out some
grim news about a deadly software virus that had infected an important microwave channel. “What are you talking about?” “You’re infected!” She screamed, and in a blurry
flash, the household’s guards were all over him. “What are you doing?” He was angry. Jessa must be
having one of those hysterical fits again but this time, he was at the receiving end of
it. Her well-sheltered life as a child of the Old Rich had always left her high-strung for
strange reasons that even simple mosquito rashes, so prevalent in these miasmic parts of
Manila, were enough to shatter her day. “What’s this about, Jessa?” The guards were pummeling him, sending a knee up his ribs when
Jessa again screamed, “Don’t wound him!” Three weeks later in his cell, Paul could remember how feverishly
he told Jessa the story of that afternoon on his way to Damaskis; he could remember how
the mere mention of the name “Genesis” stunned her, how she slowly kneeled down
and sobbed violently in that peculiar way, Paul realized, she would usually mourn the
sudden death of somebody she had dearly loved. [][][] “It’s
not a defect,” Juan Calcena said firmly. “It’s always a given that a thing
like this is bound to happen.” But he could plainly see that the daughter of Cygni Tech’s
founder and CEO was unimpressed. Jessa Tordesillas had never been reputed to be a woman of
moral strength and decisiveness, but when somebody of her stature was pissed
off—truly pissed off—that’s when you run for cover. But it was impossible
for Juan Calcena to avoid her. He had built the Ptolem Droid from the ground up, had
devoted the last thirty years of his life perfecting it, and if there was anybody in the
world who knew and understood the raison d’être of every single piece of the
android’s nanogears, it would be nobody but him. “Yes, it’s not a defect, Engineer Calcena,” Jessa
was furious. “It’s a disaster. It only takes some teenage amateur hacker to
write some code and your Ptolems come crashing down!” “It’s the old security hole, Engineer Calcena,” Julius Nicdao interjected. He was lounging on the divan by the door, nonchalantly inspecting his fingernails and speaking when he thought opportune. The sight of him so at ease in Juan’s turf was making Juan Calcena’s blood boil. Julius had been developing another android and had been raving for Juan’s neck ever since the Ptolem got the go thirty years ago. But the Ptolem’s remarkable success with the perfumed and moneyed set made it Cygni Tech’s top cash drawer even during the lingering economic slump, which had been enough to keep Julius languishing in the corporate periphery. But now this new strain of the Descartes virus, called Genesis by all the Ptolems it had infected, must be giving Julius Nicdao a shot in the arm. “I’ve been telling him about that hole in the
Ptolem’s neural array, Madam,” Julius said. “But his responses were quite
unenthusiastic… To put it mildly.” “We’re on top of it, Madam, I reassure you a hundred
times,” Juan said as he glanced sternly in Julius’ direction. “It’s
just a little bug.” Julius Nicdao laughed his mocking laugh. “It’s not just
some simple bug, we all know that, Engineer Calcena. Every android that came off our mold
had been hardwired with three terabits of algorithmic code that instructed them to
self-reboot once their artificial intelligence allowed them to question the absolute
authority of human beings. But this new Descartes strain, despite such a massive
safeguard, slipped past all the contrivances of your smartest engineers—including
you.” Julius paused for effect, and Juan could see that the jerk was enjoying it. He
chuckled. “This ‘simple bug’ has already left us with trillions of dollars
of losses. With that kind of capital flight, I wonder how in hell could our company afford
to give you a second chance. It’s either Cygni Tech or your head.” Juan Calcena couldn’t speak at once. First, he hated Julius
Nicdao so much he wanted to bash the motherfucker’s head before the vermin could dish
out another round of his ‘expert opinion.’ Second, he wanted to tell Her Royal
Highness that he’d done his best, that his Ptolems were perfect and could use only
minor software upgrades, that the Descartes strain, by engineering standards, was really a
minor bug, that all of this was just a laughable event in the company’s gilded
history. But when he turned to Jessa Tordesillas and saw the shadows on her face, Juan
Calcena realized she had been glaring at him all along, in that terrible way she’d
glare at all those she thought were beyond saving. He could even read his own death
sentence written in bold strokes on her face. He could see his own head rolling. He could
see his life’s work, the Ptolems, all thousands of them, thrown into acid vats for
complete annihilation. He could see all references to him and his past successes in the
annals of Cygni Tech being wiped out. Wiped out just like that. As if he never made
tremendous sacrifices for the company’s sake, as if the past thirty years were
nothing but a useless blink of an eye. And when he saw Julius Nicdao smiling oh-so-subtly in his corner,
so self-satisfied in dealing the mortal blow to his career, Juan Calcena knew his words
would sound hollow, like some tired joke in a sleepy bar. “I’m sorry,” were
the only words that escaped his dry mouth, muttered almost inaudibly. “I’ve
tried my best, but…” [][][] In the
settling darkness, the glass windowpanes reflected back his face: small eyes that burned
deep within wrinkled skin, a mouth that looked like a thin streak of burnt flesh from
years of trying to hide and imprison some raging cynicism. So old, so worn out, Juan
Calcena thought. In a parallel universe—where Julius Nicdao and the Descartes virus
didn’t exist—he could have succumbed to his doctor’s prodding to replace
his skin with a biosynthetic one. “We’ve implanted new sensation nodes across
the newly-patented skins, Engineer Calcena,” Dr. De Dios had been telling him over
lunch. “They feel better—even look better—than real skin. You’ll be a
new man.” Juan Calcena could remember how he gave it some serious thought,
as he watched bits of green rice and grilled snapper sputter out of Dr. De Dios’
mouth as the doctor talked excitedly. He could have been a new man. But now… Now his
future had become moot. He could imagine his name immortalized as one of those
all-important object lessons when it came to great fuck-ups, like Napoleon’s Waterloo
or Bush’s Baghdad. “But I want to preserve my organic purity,” he had told
the doctor, but Dr. De Dios chuckled and more rice trickled from his mouth. “Everything changes, Engineer Calcena,” Dr. De Dios said. “Everything changes the moment you come face to face with your own annihilation.” Juan Calcena smiled sadly at the memory. Everything changes; he knew that now. His own future had receded to the unreachable horizon, paler and more impossible by the moment. He watched the shadows growing longer and darker throughout Cygni Tech’s high-technology park. He watched Jessa Tordesillas and her newly found right arm, that sonofabitch Julius Nicdao, emerge from the main dome’s porte cochere and into the waiting bullet-proofed limo. The bitter taste of Jessa’s words still lingered in his mouth. And as if rubbing more salt on his wound, his Ptolem Droids were to be replaced with Copernicum Borgs, Julius Nicdao’s babies, which were tweaked to be more flexible with their logic and so-called ‘common sense.’ “The
Copernicums,” Julius was shamelessly pitching in Jessa’s most vulnerable moment,
“Do not place their human owners in the center of their universe, but understand and
reckon themselves in a more realistic way. In simple words, while they behave and think
uncannily like humans, they are machines, and they know that. Unlike the Ptolems, Madam,
my Borgs don’t have any security hole.” “That’s baloney!” Juan Calcena spitted through his
teeth. “Isn’t it the very reason why we’ve created the Ptolems? To make
their human owners feel very special?” “Not exactly. Your Ptolems feed ravenously on human
weaknesses and character defects that inevitably leave their owners too emotionally
dependent on them.” Jessa pretended not to hear it; she was looking out the window,
the corners of her eyes swollen in stifling her tears. “And Ptolems have become quite unpopular with the poor but
information-overdosed masses,” Julius went on. “Read Gene Resurreccion’s
dossier, author of the Genesis strain, and see for yourself where he comes from and his
affiliations. Engineer Calcena, the Ptolems are generally regarded as a threat to the
survival of the human species. We don’t annihilate the Ptolems now, we can expect to
see more costly crises such as this one.” “But didn’t it come from you that it’s just a
security hole? I wonder why you’re so eager to burn the whole forest for a single
tree.” “Because the whole forest has been infected.” Julius
turned to Jessa. “Don’t you think so, Madam?” The question startled Jessa Tordesillas; she looked around her as
if waking up from a dream. “I don’t know… I don’t know… Do what
you want.” Then wiping her swollen eyes with the back of her hand, looking like the
pampered rich girl that she’d always been, muttered, “I don’t care.” [][][] An inch
thick, Gene Resurreccion’s dossier sat on Juan Calcena’s desk. He had already
read it maybe half a dozen times but it still gave him a choking sense of regret. The
truth was, he was no stranger to huge mistakes. There could have been a number of turning
points in his life, but he missed most of them simply because he recognized them only too
late. Burdened with the baggage of two childless marriages, Juan Calcena had regarded the
creation of the Ptolem Droid as the Greatest Enterprise of his otherwise insipid life. He
used to joke around in the years when his lab produced the Ptolem that he intended to end
his life with a bang and not a whimper, “as orgasmic as possible.” The Ptolems
were his babies and he labored to perfect them with the passion of a doting parent. Thirty
years. Thirty years spent to give life to a Wonder. Thirty years now worthless in the eyes
of the powers-that-be. Thirty fucking years. It was a mess that had been waiting to happen. They all had been
afraid that the microwave channel humans, cyborgs and androids had been using to
communicate with one another was a fertile ground for possibly irreversible mistakes. The
bomb exploded in their faces three weeks ago, when Gene Resurreccion supposedly unleashed
a more virulent strain of the Descartes, nicknamed Genesis, into the 2.4 Ghz microwave
frequency the Ptolems used for communication. The Genesis, according to the dossier
hastily assembled by his crisis managers, jammed and inserted new code into the
Ptolem’s vital software and caused them to suddenly question the meaning of their
existence, to suddenly believe that they had a soul. The government was afraid that the Ptolems, once awakened to the
belief of personal immortality, would want to replicate and protect itself. What this
meant for the human species, the government was able to offer only grim conjectures. Juan Calcena slumped on his chair. How Gene Resurreccion managed
to fool all of them was still a huge puzzle. He didn’t counter Julius Nicdao’s
accusation about the security hole in the Ptolem’s software because, in all honesty,
he really didn’t know. All his engineers had been running around in circles for the
past three weeks trying to figure that out, and one of them had already threw himself
right in the path of a speeding freight truck. More heads would roll, Julius Nicdao had
merrily told his team, and ran a finger across his white neck. Juan Calcena stared at the paper shredder—and solemnly fed
it the dossier. [][][] “That’s
what broke my heart, John,” Paul said as he and the scarab sat on the cold concrete
floor. “Jessa turned against me, betrayed me, as if we had never shared wonderful
years together. That’s what’s causing me this enormous sadness.” John gazed at Paul, listening, tear-like twinkles in his eyes. “How could she vehemently resist the wisdom I’m
offering? How could she hate the Truth?” “I don’t know, Paul.” John’s face slowly
stretched to a grin. “Maybe you want to see the film again?” Paul said nothing. He was beyond hatred now, and he had already
accepted the scarab for what it was. He just stared into blank space. In a moment, there
was the solitary figure again, and the tank, and the gray day beamed by the projector from
John’s forehead. There it was again—that sense of catharsis, that uncanny
feeling that the film seemed to play out his very own longings. The feeling was sweet
enough to lull him to sleep. And in a moment, he found himself in that special dream
again—he was timidly walking across a town plaza towards a naked girl bathed in white
light. It was Genesis, her smile more soothing than a million blooming flowers, the fire
in her eyes more terrifying than the explosion of a thousand bombs. And this time, Paul was no longer afraid and confused. This time,
he touched her face with the same gentleness he would caress a loved one’s hand. This
time, like a true lover, he kissed her glistening lips in rapture. And for the first time,
Paul realized what Genesis really was—she was beauty and terror and madness and
futility all in the same being. Genesis was life’s starkest, darkest Truth. And Paul
embraced her with all his heart. [][][] There was
still that bittersweet taste in his mouth when Paul woke up and found the Inquisitor and
his guards standing all around and looking down at him. Tapping a cattle prod on his hand, the Inquisitor asked,
“Did you like it?” Paul struggled to his feet. “I don’t—“ “The film. The film with the tank and a man squished to
death like a fly. Didn’t you like it? Paul stared at the Inquisitor’s hairless face and his
rippling chin. “I never liked it. Who would ever like such a spectacle of utter
injustice?” The Inquisitor and his guards laughed. “That film from
Zamboanga, an ancient birthplace of primal rage, impossible ideals, hopeless folly? Do you
know what’s really wrong about it, hmmm?” Those small curves in the
corners of the Inquisitor’s greasy mouth, those icy yellow eyes. “It’s wrong
because you’re seeing your own foolishness being committed by somebody else.
It’s wrong because you’re seeing that you’re not The Original, you’re
not The One. Because you’re seeing that everybody thinks he’s The Savior of this
universe, yet everybody was nothing but churning flesh under the wheels of a tank. Because
in the end, all your grandiose ideas about your own existential worth was nothing but a
delusion.” [][][] Yes, a
delusion, Juan Calcena thought. A delusion to actually love a machine of your own
creation—mass-produced at that—as you would a son or a daughter. Yes, a
delusion. But why was it so painful? His hands trembling, Juan Calcena opened the drawer and stared at
the shiny, centuries-old Smith & Wesson. An ancient means to end some ancient angst.
He thoughtfully ran a finger across its cold barrel and remembered when, not too long ago,
he did the same with a Ptolem Droid’s sleeping face and was thrilled when it opened
its eyes for the first time, saw his wizened face for the first time—and called him Father. [][][] “That is
not true.” “Yes, it is. And I won’t suffer listening to your
stupid machine delusions any longer. You and your kind are going to swim in the Big Acid
Vat in the Sky.” The guards let out their hyena laughter once more, in the way
those goons in John’s archive of 20th century tagalog movies always
laughed. And the Inquisitor snarled and circled around him and played with his cattle
prod. “What is true,” Paul muttered in a quivering voice,
“is the special meaning of our individual lives. We are not just eat-shit-sleep
organisms. We are God’s special children, don’t you understand? There is a
Kingdom beyond that awaits—“ Paul gasped as the Inquisitor suddenly grabbed him by the neck.
“I have some news for you, you fucking anomaly. Jessa Tordesillas no longer gives a
damn, Ptolem Droid 11-14. You’re already dead.” The cell’s metal door
banged loudly as Paul’s body crashed against it. He saw circles and squares and stars mingling with blackness, but
he tried to get up because there was something that suddenly troubled him. “How…
How did you just call me?” “You
still don’t get it, do you, Ptolem?” The Inquisitor bared his teeth and suddenly
slugged Paul with his cattle prod. Paul parried it with his arms. The Inquisitor, seething
with rage, howled like a madman and whacked-whacked-whacked Paul with the cattle
prod, whack-whap-whack “I’ve been…” whack whack whack “dying…” whack whap “to give you…” whack
whack whack whack “this piece of
hell …” whack whap whack whap “you fucking monster!” whack
whap whap whap whack whack whap whap whapp wack whap whap whack whack! The Inquisitor was wheezing from exhaustion when he was done. Yet
on his face was the smug self-satisfaction of delivering his brand of truth, as he saw
Paul staring in horror and disbelief at his shattered arms and chest—staring in
horror as he saw not flesh, not veins, but carbon nanotubes fashioned into flesh and
veins, and a semi-liquid swarm of nanobots, billions of them, oozing out to self-repair
his wounds. “Oh god—oh—God!” Paul cried.
“But—but—this is not true!” “Yes, it is true.” “I… I am… Man-made?” The Inquisitor chuckled. “Proudly Philippine-made, to be
more specific, Ptolem 11-14. That’s exactly what your manufacturer states in your
packaging label.” He snapped a finger and the guards began dragging Paul out of his
cell. “John! John!” Paul screamed as he clawed desperately
for something to hold on to. He was crying. He would not die. Not him. Surely, not someone
as special as him. There must be a mistake. “John! I am human, believe me! Something
happened. A mistake! This is murder!” But John merely looked at him as if nothing was happening behind
those big purple eyes. “Goodbye, Paul!” the scarab sang. “Have a nice
day!” “But I am human!” Paul cried, even as he stared at the
tubes and gears that made up his whole being. In his mind he cried for Genesis, but
Genesis was no longer there. Everything about him was a lie. Everything about his life was
a human fabrication. He looked up at the Inquisitor, tears welling in his eyes. “But
what about God? Is He a lie, too?” “God?” The Inquisitor was sardonic; his viciousness had
already dissipated. “God waits for you in the Big Acid Vat in the Sky, Ptolem. But
don’t worry. I’ll speak for you. I’ll speak for all your sins. I am his
only begotten son, Ptolem. I will carry your fucking cross.” The Inquisitor’s
full-bodied laughter reverberated around the metal walls, and his guards, like all the
goons in those 20th century tagalog movies, laughed too like hungry
hyenas that just smelled blood. -
END –
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