Proximity Muse

He awoke in silence, floating in darkness. No sensation of touch, of heat or cold, just a blank void. He could feel himself breathing, but it made no sound. He shouted into the darkness, but no echoes returned for his desperate ears to perceive. Panic swept over him and was just as quickly replaced with a sleepy lassitude that seemed somehow artificial. His mind refused to register the impossibility of sentience without form and shut down. He slept.

He awoke for the second time to the sensation of cold on his chest. His mind shrieked in exaltation at the feeling, latching onto the chill as proof of existence. A blade sliced into his skin, parting the flesh as easily as he’d once pared streams of data. (What did that mean?) The exaltation in his mind turned to fear, the sensation of pain overcoming its triumph. Adrenaline attempted to flood his system, but was overwhelmed by the same lassitude that kept him from panicking. He tried to thrash away from the pain, but couldn’t move. Forcing himself to concentrate on his right arm, he pulled with all his might and, for the first time, felt the binding touch of restraints surrounding him. A voice, violently loud after the still quiet, pounded into his eardrums like the voice of God.

“Did he just try to move?”

It was a feminine voice. It sounded startled and unsure.

“First off,” said a male voice. “It doesn’t help you to think of them as ‘he’ or ‘she.’ These things have no identity, no gender, and certainly no volition of their own. I like to think of them as a sort of cornucopia. An endless supply of vitality for patients who have lost their own.”

“That’s kind of creepy, Doc.”

The male voice laughed and the blade dug deeper into his flesh.

“It,” the Doctor said, enunciating the word, “didn’t move. Not one inch. It can’t move. It is nothing more than a bag of spare parts kept on life support.”

“If it can’t move,” said the female voice, “then why the restraints?”

“Sometimes they twitch a bit,” said the Doctor. “Purely involuntary muscle reaction to the trauma of harvesting. It’s easier to just keep them restrained.”

A searing tugging sensation increased the pain in his chest to a crescendo. Overwhelmed by too much sensation, his mind shut down again. As the darkness claimed him, he heard one last sentence, as though from far, far away.

“And that is how you harvest a liver.”

He awoke again in the darkness. No pain, no sensation of any kind followed him into consciousness. Tentatively, his mind peered out from its hidey-hole and considered this. His fingers twitched involuntarily with a desire to touch his chest. Desperate to distract itself, his mind produced computations in an arcane gibberish. Code seemed to flash before his eyes in the darkness.

What does that mean?

His mind refused to answer, and, seemingly in sulking response to the question, promptly powered down.

They came again, waking him with cold. The knife cut and pain followed its course. Darkness encompassed him as his liver was ripped from his body.

The next time consciousness returned, he seized it and shut out the frightened bleatings of his mind, giving in, at least partially, to the lassitude that sought to claim him. Slowly, carefully, he moved his right arm, unable to feel the restraints that held him hostage, but knowing they were there. He pulled, he pushed, he lifted, all the while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his actions. After what could have been days, or minutes, or hours, he felt something slip off his wrist, partially freeing his arm. His mind threatened to explode with hope, but he denied it, slipping fully, intentionally, into the darkness.

It was harder, this time, when they came, to remain still and not grasp at the hand that sought to eviscerate him. Instead of concentrating on the pain of his liver being stolen, he concentrated on the code his mind had provided him with before. He massaged it. He parsed it. He interpreted it, and eventually his mind spat out two words in glowing red letters. RESTRICTED ACCESS. He took the words with him into the darkness.

He began to welcome the voices that brought him pain. The tearing of his flesh became a benchmark. A mark of time passing in eternity. Day after day (or night after night) they returned and tore open his body to extract his liver. Day after day (or night after night) he came closer to loosing his bonds completely. In the times in-between, he concentrated on the code, extracting more and more from it. Hacking it, like he’d once hacked information that, like him, wanted to be free. He knew these things, yet had no context for them. He knew them, but didn’t understand what they meant. His mind offered up details stingily and he grasped for the context.

“It’s a blessing not to see their faces,” said the female voice.

“Hmmm?” The Doctor.

“I mean, I’ve gotten pretty well used to them just lying there and all, but I don’t think I’d like it if I could see their faces.”

“The mask isn’t there for your benefit,” said the Doctor. “It’s to ensure a proper flow of the enriched amniotic fluid and filter out impurities.”

“I know why it’s there,” said the female. “I’m just saying I appreciate the mask’s aesthetic value in preserving my peace of mind, is all.”

“Whatever works for you,” said the Doctor.

Silence while the knife did its bloody work. Then the female spoke up again, so quietly that he almost couldn’t hear her.

“Where do they come from anyway?”

“Do you really want to know? That information is restricted for a reason. If you think the mask preserves your peace of mind, let me assure you that knowing the answer to that particular question won’t.”

“I’d always assumed that the original biomass came from a voluntary donor.”

“You just keep on assuming that, then,” said the Doctor. “I won’t tell you you’re wrong, and you’ll sleep better at night.”

A final cut detached his liver from his body. Darkness followed.

That night (day?) he managed to free his right arm completely. Not knowing how long he had before the voices returned, he moved as quickly as his stupor would allow, unbinding his left arm as well. Blindly, he reached out and his hands encountered a hard, smooth surface. Before his mind could counter the idea with visions of horrors, he ripped the mask off his face. The dim glow of machines and after-hours lights shone down on him, indistinct through the fluid surrounding him, seared into his light-starved eyes. Slowly, his vision adjusted and the first thing he registered was that he was encased in a long, glass cylinder, filled with a milky-white fluid. His mind took this opportunity to provide him with images of death by drowning and his breathing became ragged. Eventually it occurred to him that he was, in fact, breathing the fluid as naturally as air and he calmed. He craned his neck to peer at his legs and discovered they were bound in strips of a clear, soft, plastic-looking material. A quick glance to his side confirmed these were the same type of restraints that had held his arms in place. By contorting his body in the tight confines of the cylinder, he was able to grab the strips with his hands and loosen them enough to allow his legs to slip free.

Now able to turn freely in the cylinder, he looked for a seam or gap, or some break in the glass that would allow him egress. At mid-chest level he discovered a panel that looked as though it swung out. It was the panel the voices used to torment him. To cut his skin and steal his flesh. He pushed against it and it slid open. Wriggling, assisted by the fluid surrounding him, he managed to slide out of the opening. With a wet plop he fell naked to the floor. Almost immediately, tremors shot through his body as he sought to breath and vomited up what seemed like gallons of the milky-white fluid. Coughing and spluttering, he retched up the last of the stuff and took a shuddering breath. Clean, cool air rushed down his lungs. Only then did he look up.

A cry escaped his lips. Surrounding him was row after row of identical glass cylinders, a body within each, just visible through milky-white fluid. He remembered. He’d been idly hacking his way through the Biocorp system when he found an encrypted project file. His computer had chewed on the encryption for a week before the first details emerged. Prototype cloning. Organ harvesting. He had to share his knowledge with the world, had to bring the light of truth to the masses. He had just begun to upload the decrypted text when they arrived. He remembered the sound of the front door of his shitty apartment being kicked open and the sound of muffled gunshots. He remembered blood pooling on the industrial grey carpet in his bedroom. He remembered dying. But here he was. Alive. The sound of voices echoed through the room. He started at the sound, fear driving away questions of mortality for the time being. He quietly closed the hatch on the cylinder that had held him.

Taking in his near surroundings, he saw each cylinder was attached to a surgical station. He scanned the rows of gleaming, sterile surgical equipment and a plastic box marked ‘Biohazard’ that was just the right size for a liver. Snatching up a scalpel he scuttled under the rows of cylinders as quickly as he could on shaking limbs. Crawling slowly from one cylinder to the next, he moved toward the murmur of the voices.

“I went out for a beer with some of the guys last night.” It was the female voice. “That letch, Murphy, tried to grab my ass.”

Male laughter followed the statement. The Doctor.

“He hits on anything with a pulse. Bet he’d love to get reassigned to this sector. He wouldn’t care if he could see their faces or not, as long as he could get to the goodies.”

“That’s revolting.”

He slid under another cylinder and found two pairs of medical scrub-clad legs blocking his vision.

“So’s Murphy.”

He angled for the legs that ended in men’s tennis shoes. The scalpel slashed through skin and clothing with equal ease, blood spattering as he sliced through tendons. To his satisfaction, it was a male voice that screamed in pain and a man’s body that collapsed to the floor in front of him. The reality of the man that had tormented him was disappointing. The Doctor was nothing more than a balding, middle-aged man with just a hint of a paunch straining against the fabric of his scrubs. Pale blue, watery eyes stared at him and he could see they were filled with fear and confusion. Those eyes stole any satisfaction hurting the Doctor might have given him. The man was no monster, just another victim. He took no pleasure in opening the Doctor’s throat from ear-to-ear. Blood sprayed out from the cut, misting his face and the female’s scrubs. Not wanting her to get away, he reached out a hand and grabbed her by the ankle, pulling. She slipped in the Doctor’s blood and fell heavily to the floor.

She was younger than he had expected. He doubted if she was more than 25. She screamed when she saw him and tried to scramble away. He yanked her back toward him by her ankle and poked the tip of the scalpel into her belly. A tiny spot of blood welled up through her scrubs. He realized she was saying something, repeating something in-between her screams.

“I didn’t know…I didn’t know…I didn’t know…”

“Shut up,” he said. His voice was hoarse and too quiet for her to hear over the noise she was making. She began to scream again and he slapped her. She stared at him in disbelief.

“Shut up,” he said again, louder this time.

“I didn’t know!” she whined.

“I don’t care,” he said, and punched her in the face. Two more punches and she lost consciousness.

She awoke in silence, floating in darkness. No sensation of touch, of heat or cold, just a blank void. She could feel himself breathing, but it made no sound. She knew immediately where she was and screamed into the darkness, but no echoes returned for her desperate ears to perceive. Without warning she felt the skin on her chest grow cold.

“Nice rack on this one,” she heard Murphy’s voice say. “Wonder what she looks like under the mask? Ah well.”

The blade cut.