"You always say you want me. For what? I've held you when you cried, fucked your brains out when you asked for it, never let you down. I've tried to be a boss and a brother and a lover and a friend to you. Why, because I care for you. Not once have you returned that. I never asked for your love or devotion. But--"
She untied the sash of his robe and pushed it aside, exposing him, jarring him to the stark realization of what she really wanted. "Sister's right. You really don't understand, no matter how much I've tried to help you see the beauty of it. You're selfish, proud, everything you say you try to protect the children from--you are. Perhaps it is the PostHom that's muddled your head like the others. It's no matter. You want to know what I want, Fin? I want to live. I want to see our brothers and sisters experience everything possible. I want what you have. Death is unnecessary, a part of our past. You and I can help create a new kind of life. A new existence for our people. If you won't join me in this, I have to take it."
"No." He thrashed again, and the drones clamped his legs still along with his arms. "Don't touch me. I won't give you shit. You fucking bitches. You and that lifeless husk you bow to---"
Jess waved a command to the drones. "Please keep him quiet. I can't do this while he rants like a maniac."
One of the drones complied with a swift clamp over Finlo's mouth, silencing him.
He tried to shout, scream, tossed his head. To no avail.
Jess unfastened her gown, and it fell away. Nude and breathtaking as she'd always been, yet Finlo shrank from her. His pulse thundered in his ears, could scarcely breathe. Jess' cool, slender hands stroked him, caressing him as she had so many times before. Her touch used to bring him to the edge almost instantly. Now a sickening blend of loathing and terror overwhelmed his lust.
Won't give in. No way. Fucking cunts. How dare they?
After several minutes of sucking and rubbing and sliding her flesh along his unresponsive body, Jess clucked her tongue as if he were a misbehaving child. "I guess we have to do it the hard way after all. You really are the most stubborn man I've ever met. A shame. I've always admired your tenacity. But how easily it fails when you're most needed."
She reached into the folds of the gown at her feet and pulled out a seed harvester--a specialized device used when men wished to donate their semen to the Repository. The going joke had always been that harvesters were only needed when someone couldn't rise to the task. The joke was on him now.
His muscles strained against the drones' grasp. Jess slipped the harvester into place and activated it. A potency concoction of hormones and stimulants invaded his groin via the micro-injectors embedded in the device. His own body betrayed him, the most horrifying slight of all. Raped by a fucking steel tube and a vial of erectile dysfunction juice. The brief pleasure of release was no more than a convulsion. A slap to his dignity. The last sane after-human was nothing more than Sister's mute stud animal.
At least it ended quickly. Jess removed the harvester and sealed it off when she'd gathered all she could from him. The drones still restrained him as she slipped her gown on and put the harvester back in her billowed sleeve. Her smile angled to one side, more a smirk.
"There. Wasn't so bad, was it?" She ran a finger down the side of his tensed face. "Next time I hope we won't have to use that horrid thing. It's so much more fun the old way. At least our child didn't have to be forced like that. Maybe you'll learn to be a little more generous when Sister asks you for something important. I did a long time ago. And now I'm Chief Enforcer because of my hard work. Cooperating with our allies will get you much farther in this new world than being an old-fashioned stick in the mud, Fin. Take my advice and don't fight Sister. Everything you've ever desired will fall into your lap if you just reconsider your self-centered ways." She kissed his sweating forehead. "I'll see you next time, old man. Do think about everything I've said. I still want you. Despite everything, you are the best I've ever had. And that's worth more than immortality to me."
She walked out the door, and the drones followed her. The heavy thump of their footsteps retreated to silence, and the doors slid closed, imprisoning Finlo once again. Alone. Battered. A ravaged heap of nothing. He curled into fetal position, hugged his knees and shivered, though the suite's optimized thermo-settings always kept it balmy as a summer back on Earth.
Home. Two hundred years, more lifetimes ago than any true human should ever remember. He hated himself then for ever thinking he'd be up to the task of living forever. For thinking himself stronger than he was. For continuing this sham of existence, fooling himself to the notion that it was all for the benefit of helping the young ones remember. He'd been wrong. There was no hope left, and he wasn't the hero to save it. He was just a man, the same boy he'd been when he left that home that no one remembered anymore. That no one even cared for anymore.
He laid on the floor until sim-night fell outside. The myriad lights of the surrounding towers and scrapers sparkled, false stars in a false universe. Nothing mattered. Time passed in a worthless daze, enough hours passing until withdrawal crept upon him once again. A faithful yet unwelcome guest. The growing pain gnawed, pleaded, coiled its tentacles into every fiber of his being. His heart flailed. Laughter tittered. His own? Someone's? Perhaps Sister still taunted him from some back-channel in his broken interface. Perhaps, once and for all, PostHom's madness had come for him too.
Knock, knock, who's there?
Death.
Death who?
Death the Deliverer. The leveler of kings and gods. The respite for those weary of life's suffering. Open the door. I shall take you to the home only you remember...
Only minutes left. The door creaked open. The maelstrom of his long, perplexing life clamored into his mind. Voices. Music. Colors waltzed into blurred imagery that every now and then coalesced into something meaningful. Out of the convolution rose a new voice. Clear, undeniable, and he cried out from pain and the grief of repressed memory.
"Finlo..."
"Dad?"
His voice, the high and unburdened timbre of a small boy. His father beside him, their bare feet dangled in the stream along with their fishing lines. Years before the Nine Sisters, the meteor, the Virus that destroyed Earth as they knew it. The good years when everything was joy.
His lure bobbed, line tugged. He reeled in a big one. A nine pound trout. The biggest he'd ever caught!
"Nice one, son! That's one worth saving. Put it in the tub."
Finlo obeyed, cut the trout loose and dropped it into the pail beside him. No sooner had he done so than the fish flopped its way out, hook still dangling, and darted to freedom back in the water.
"Well, there you go, that old fish knew a thing or two about life after all," Dad said.
"What do you mean?" Finlo asked.
Dad patted Finlo's slumped shoulder. "When you're at the end of the line, and thrown out of the water, when you're trying to swim and can't get anywhere, you remember where you came from, and you get right back there no matter what. You only fail when you stop fighting for it."
Another wrack of pain hurled him back to Melpomene, the moment, the suite at the top of the Spire. Feed it...life...not yet!
He slammed the door in Death's skeletal face and crawled toward the nearby table, gasping and shaking. The tray of PostHom waited for him there, so pretty an array left for him by Sister. Couldn't let her win. Couldn't give up. Not who he was. This was war, and he wasn't about to belly over and let a deluded tyrant destroy his unborn child.
His child...even if the mother was the biggest bitch beside Sister, he had to live. Had to try. He was the only father it had. And he owed it to the little thing to teach it right, to be there in a crumbling society where no one else cared.
He reached for an injector and placed it at his wrist, set the poison of self-appointed gods and madmen back into his insatiable body. Let Sister believe she'd conquered him, humbled him into what she wanted. He could pretend, could play the game for his child's sake. When they reached the next destination planet, Entrepid-5RS, within the next two decades, he'd find a way to escape. To get to one of the more civilized colonies and seek a peaceful and traditional life. Sister would pay eventually for her crimes and deceit.
He'd bide his time, play along, keep his motives hidden, no matter how long it took. Time was but a trifle after all.
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