Excerpt: No Vacancy for a Sentience

The world returned in degrees. First came sound – a melodic mix of low, whirring buzz noises like the sound of fluorescent lights, the soft tapping of a foot on linoleum, the muted hush of human breath. Then feeling – the feeling of hard, cold metal beneath his back, of stinging cold air burning his nostrils, of a thousand pin-thin needles pricking his skin like the work of an unskilled acupuncturist. The smell of a hospital’s burning cleanliness filled his nose like the stench of death. And finally, sight.
He had been undeniably patient in waiting for his sight to return. Not a word had escaped his lips, not a movement had his body made before he was absolutely certain of his whereabouts. But the minute he became aware of where he was, he almost wished he hadn’t.
The hall was enormous and stark. The walls were a gleaming white, as was the sparkling tiled floor. Buzzing red lamps hung from the ceiling like enormous leggy spiders huddling over their prey, and a lustrous silver door stood the height of two men against the farthest wall. None of this was the least bit comparable, however, to what ran the length of the other walls. All down the sides of the room hung giant sheets of metal to which were pinned what, for lack of a better word, at least appeared to have once been human in nature, spread-eagle and slumped upon their aluminum beds. The optimal words in the previous sentence being, of course, “once been.” The human essence of these poor, vagabond spirits was almost lost in the extreme distortion of their figures – some whose hands had turned into hooves, some with antlers splitting like tree branches from their skulls and some with actual tree branches sprouting from their heads, some whose bodies ended in flippers rather than feet, others with enormous black spots peppering their bare white bodies, and still more with goosy white feathers covering their naked forms. The deformities that rendered these humans almost indistinguishable came in an almost infinite number of varieties, crammed together in a spectrum of bodies that stretched for miles and miles down the length of the mammoth room. It took an almost insurmountable amount of effort for Hunter to repress the urge to vomit.
Thankfully, his sight was almost immediately filled with that of several pure human beings, seemingly awoken and attracted by the blinking of his eyes. Directly in his line of sight stood a man with a head of shocking red hair, pulled back into a shoulder-length ponytail behind his head. A stereotypical ankle-length lab coat cloaked the rest of his body, which strangely resembled the structure of a grasshopper. Horn-rimmed black glasses perched precariously on the tip of his bony nose like a bat, shading eyes that were a piercing green.
To the man’s left stood a stunningly beautiful woman with wheat-gold hair falling wavily to her waist. Glossy pink lips stood out on a lightly browned face, and wonderfully auburn eyes glowed like embers above her long, thin nose. A clipboard hung snugly in the crook of one arm. Beside her stood an equally beautiful woman, whose cropped hair was a wild mix of violet and green upon her pale, thin face. She was a good head shorter than the rest of her comrades, but she made up for this fact with an enormously tall pair of spiky green heels that were the only clothing visible besides her matching white lab coat.
Most shocking of all, however, was not this eclectic group of people, but the other two who stood beside them. When Hunter laid his eyes on them, he was almost ready to faint again.
Hanging almost directly on the elbow of the tall, red-headed man was the old, smelly man who had apparently found it necessary to feel Hunter up on the subway. The only difference between the man’s appearance then and now was his choice of clothing, which now unsurprisingly matched that of his peers. Standing almost directly behind the old man was Skylar Marks, the convenience store clerk who seemed to find immasculation a funny joke. Her face wore the same infuriating cocked smile and raised eyebrows that insinuated a hidden knowledge that only she would know, and it was this more than anything that caused the questions that had been swirling subliminally in his brain to rise up like a frothing wave once again.
Before Hunter had the time to question what was going on, however, the red-haired man stepped forward and spoke.
“Hmm, finally you woke up. We actually weren’t expecting you to pass out on the way down. But you did, and so here we are. Your name is Hunter James McCarthy, is it not?”
That caught him off-guard. “How do you know?” The reply was a stammer.
“One of the best lessons this world has to teach us is to never ask questions,” the grasshopper man replied, stepping lithely over to Hunter’s side as he snapped on a pair of Latex gloves. “But I take it by your answer that my guess was correct. Before we can move on to the more important matters, though, I guess it’s only common courtesy for me to introduce the rest of us – as you were kind enough to give that of yourself. This,” he said, gesturing to the sunshine-blond woman to his left, “is Autumn McCray. This –“ he continued, waving a hand towards the violet-green haired woman to Autumn’s left – “is Reese Winters. To her left is Judas Landry, whom is the right of Skylar Savage. And I,” he finished, gesturing augustly to his chest, “am Doctor Nathaniel Bruce Pennington the Third, eminent leader of this bright little pack. Pleasure to meet you.” He outstretched one Latexed hand towards Hunter, who tentatively shook it.
“Now, I have a feeling that you just might be wondering why we brought you down here. Is my assumption correct?” Hunter nodded hesitantly. “Well, it just so happens, my young, healthy friend, that you are the exact perfect specimen for our latest project. What would you say if you were to one day wake up and find that anything you want would be in your reach the moment you thought of it. Why get out of bed and make a cup of coffee when you could just wish for it –“ Nathaniel snapped his fingers, as if for emphasis – “and it would be there? Why get off the couch to let the dog out when you could let your mind do the work for you? But why stop there, my friend? What if all the riches of the world, all the power and might and glory that there is would be yours for the taking? Everything would be within your grasp, no questions asked. What would you say to that?”
Hunter could not find the words to reply, so he resorted to nodding instead. This seemed to satisfy Nathaniel enough for him to continue.
“Well, it is possible, my friend. For you see, there is such a thing as magic. The most revered ability and the ability most feared by commoner and king alike. But why have I not seen such magic in action if it really does exist?, you might ask. Well, I’ll tell you why. Because magic is that which is most feared by every government across the planet. They fear it so much, in fact, that they have hunted every single magician across the planet to extinction. This is a secret genocide, though. Nobody knows about it, except those with enough power to fear it. Have you ever wondered just who you are searching for in your government-paid job for example? Have you ever wondered why the Stalkers are appointed to do what they do? They are using you to hunt out the magicians. They just don’t tell you – instead, they disguise them with pretty code-words like ‘enemies of the state.’ Whenever somebody is detected that seems to have the qualities of a magician, they send you to hunt after them. And if the data you give them confirms their hunches, they’re gone. But this cleansing has been so thorough, that the magic that these magicians once possessed has been diluted so that it is nothing more than common party tricks anymore. The magicians you are finding now are nothing more than your every-day fool ‘mind-readers’ and ‘fortune tellers,’ with barely a drop of magic to call their own.
This is where we come in. We have been working underground for a very long time to perfect the art that we will soon be performing on you. You can see by our work –“ at this, he gestured towards the distorted specimens hung crucifix-like upon the walls – “that we have been working in the art of genetic recombination. For years and years, generation upon generation, we have been working on perfecting the art of combining the genes of two different specimens to create one grand unified whole. For example, you see that man over there?” Nathaniel pointed towards a single slumped figure with a long, furry tail hanging down his back. “For him, we combined the genes of a monkey with his own in order to create the human specimen you see before you. Beautiful, no? But up until now, we have only been able to reach the level of animal-human combination. You, my friend, are about to change all this. Our entire generations’ worth of work has been leading up to this point. You will be our first attempt at human-human recombination. In essence, we will be taking the part of DNA that has given our ancestors their magical prowess and combine it with your own. In other words, we will be giving you magic.”
“Wait…you stalked me secretly to see if you could perform some crazy surgery on my DNA? What are you, some kind of madmen?”
“No, no, no, Hunter…not madmen,” Nathaniel laughed, waving his hands as if wafting away all of Hunter’s doubts. “You just…caught our eye. We’ll explain this all later, but don’t worry, don’t worry for now, there is too little time to waste!”
Silence hung pregnant in the air before Hunter could find the words to respond. “And…what if I don’t want it?” he asked slowly, raising himself up on his palms to look Nathaniel squarely in the face.
The doctor smiled wryly. “You really don’t have much of a choice, Hunter. We have been searching for a long time to find a specimen whose body would have the strength to survive the recombination process and which would be compatible with our dead little friend’s DNA specimen…and you, as we have discovered, work sublimely for both aspects. You may deny our wishes if you truly insist, but I urge you…for the betterment of everything that is good and right…to please help us in our quest.”
Hunter paused in thought for a moment. “How likely is it that I will survive this operation?” he queried hesitantly.
This was the first time that Doctor Pennington had appeared uncomfortable in the entire twenty minutes that Hunter had known him. “We can’t be so sure of that, Hunter,” he said, leaning down to look Hunter in the face and laying his palm on Hunter’s arm. “This has never before been attempted in the history of mankind. The only thing that we can tell you is that you are the one who has the best chance of surviving this…and for that, we plead you to help us.”
Skylar’s eyes burned like fiery stone in the sea of pale faces before him. Hunter gulped heavily, glancing down at his upturned palms. He looked up and closed his eyes tightly. “Fine,” he breathed. “I’ll do it. For the betterment…of all that is good.”
A deep sigh of relief passed through the entire crowd, and smiles were plastered on every face at his response.
“Thank you, Hunter, thank you!” Nathaniel laughed, clapping Hunter on the shoulder. Crow’s feet etched the sides of his eyes. “You don’t know how much this means to me…to me and my father, and my father’s father, and his father…and all the fathers in the history of the world. You can’t even begin to understand the importance of this. But come,” he added, clapping his hands sharply as he faced his assistants. “There is much to be done. Prepare the young man for the biggest operation of his life.” At his words, Summer, Skylar, and Judas scurried off like worker ants, leaving Nathaniel and Hunter to themselves.
“I do warn you,” Nathaniel whispered softly, once more leaning in to Hunter. “This procedure will be extremely painful. We will have to strap you down in order to keep you from damaging the procedure and keep you from harming yourself any more.”
Hunter gulped. “Just how painful are you talking about here?”
“If the prior surgeries were any indication…very. More than all the pain you’ve ever felt in your life combined. And there will be no way to keep you from feeling it.”
At this, Hunter very nearly said a flat-out “no” to the entire procedure. He was fully ready to walk away from the entire project and never turn back again. But for some unknown reason, some reason that rose above any fear of death or pain or deformity, a blazing fire bursting brightly in his mind prevented him from going back on his word, and he gulped once more and nodded. “I’ll be ready,” he said hoarsely.
Nathaniel nodded gravely and pushed a red button on the side of Hunter’s aluminum bed. Metal clamps rose up from the side and strapped his entire length, encasing him in a great aluminum body bag. Panicked instinct attempted to get him to fight it, only to find that he was much too tightly enclosed. Breath coming quick as a rabbit’s, he forced himself to lie still, trying to ignore the almost sobbing gasps wracking his body.
“And this,” Nathaniel added, reaching into his pocket to pull out a long satin handkerchief and wrapping it snugly around Hunter’s eyes. “For protection.” For what, he didn’t say.
The rhythmic stomp of footprints filled Hunter’s ears, and somewhere in the far reaches of his mind, he heard Nathaniel’s voice echo. “It is time. Let us begin.”
The footsteps surrounded him in an impenetrable circle, and the sound of purring machines and metal instruments were the only sounds to be heard in his stark, black universe. Nathaniel braced himself futilely, like a tiny child huddling from the approaching smack of his father’s hand. And then the sharpest pain imaginably struck him like an axe to the face, and his bloodcurdling screams filled his ears so that there was no more thought.