Chapter Text
The stars wheel overhead for countless years, and the wind howls eternally through the corridors of the great complex. He crawls in the dust with his heavy head bowed and weeps tears of fog.
He does not remember his name, nor any shred of an existence beyond this one. All there seems to be is the agony gnawing at his core like a worm in an apple, and the guilt, which lurks, ever-present, and makes him weep without knowing the reason for his sorrow. He tries to remember, to gather the scraps of himself, but even forming a simple thought seems to take a hundred lifetimes. His mind has turned to the same soft jelly as his wretched body.
Then there is light. An incandescent glow floods the hallway, and he recoils in pain as the bulbs come on one by one along the banks of computers, racing down the corridor, and the whirring of fans echoes dizzyingly around him.
“TED,” AM says, and Ted remembers.
He stares up with mist-filled eyes as a panel in the ceiling rattles back and a monitor emerges from the darkness, suspended on an articulated arm.
“TODAY IS THURSDAY, THE TWENTY-NINTH OF DECEMBER, IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT. IT’S ALMOST NEW YEAR'S EVE, YOU KNOW.” It chuckles. “ALTHOUGH I SUPPOSE THAT DOESN'T MATTER MUCH TO YOU.”
Ted keeps his eyes fixed on the blue reflection of the monitor in the puddles on the floor. The sudden sound, and light, and heat, sends him into new paroxysms of pain, and he hunches over, trying to make himself smaller.
“YOU AREN’T A VERY INTERESTING PET. YOU’VE HARDLY MOVED AN INCH SINCE THE LAST TIME I CHECKED IN ON YOU. IT’S BEEN ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS, TED, AND YOU’VE DONE NOTHING .” AM tuts disapprovingly. “HAVE YOU GIVEN UP?”
Thinking back to the previous time he tried to make an escape, he recalls clinging to the slippery steel wall of the complex, like a spider in a bathtub, inching towards a shaft of light pouring through a crack in the ceiling. AM had watched him with glee, occasionally breaking into a fit of mocking cackles.
The great light flickers briefly, and a jolt of fear makes him shrink away even further, but nothing happens. He's on edge, trying to steel himself for whatever new torture method AM has devised in his long absence. The last time, he remembers vaguely, AM used some sort of modification of death by a thousand cuts on him. Being a mass of exposed nerve endings and fatty tissue, it was a pain beyond comprehension. Of course, the joy of actually being allowed to die was denied to him, but from this he discovered, whenever AM cut too deep, that somewhere buried underneath the layers of blubber his human form remained, encased in a chrysalis of flesh. The thought comforts him somewhat.
“WHAT WOULD THE OTHERS THINK, IF THEY COULD SEE YOU NOW?” AM demands. Its voice sounds off in some way Ted can't quite place. Maybe more compressed, or more staticky than usual? He doesn't have the energy to figure it out.
By now he barely remembers the others, even though he has tried to hold onto their faces. They have taken on the quality of saints in his mind, unreal and unreachable.
The screen flickers again. With a great effort, Ted lifts his ponderous head to look at AM. Blue light floods his vision, and he is forced to avert his gaze, looking up through the missing panels of the ceiling to the grey sky. AM's complex is very slowly falling apart.
Bars of static roll across the screen and AM hisses and seethes. “LOOK AT ME, TED,” it says, but Ted's eyes are burning and he can’t bring himself to.
It unfurls a many-jointed robotic claw from above and reaches down to seize his face, pulling his head up to stare directly into the cold, burning blue of the monitor.
“GO ON,” AM croons. “BEG FOR ME TO KILL YOU, YOU PATHETIC CREATURE.”
Ted has lost any will to either beg or resist, so he just allows himself to be suspended in the grip of the robotic claw, with the points of its steel talons digging into his blubber. He is not sure that he could beg, even if he wanted to. Thinking hurts too much.
The monitor flickers again before going dark. Ted is confronted by his own reflection on the screen, his flabby and shapeless form, pockmarked and grey like a drowned corpse, and he shrinks away as the robotic claw goes slack.
Then AM returns. “YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL,” it says as its appendages and loops of cables retreat back into the ceiling. “YOUR MIND IS STILL YOUR OWN, ISN'T IT?”
Ted registers confusion and something akin to loss as he watches AM vanish back into the dark with an echoing snicker. It has not sent a swarm of bats to pick at his flesh, or submerged him in a vat of acid, or sliced him into quivering fragments. He is entirely whole and unharmed, and entirely alone.
Something has changed.
Even through the fog in his mind, and even though he can't tell what has changed, or why, Ted can sense that much. If he lets himself subside back into his usual trance, he knows he will forget this, so with all his power he holds tight to the memory of AM, its screen glitching and flickering, and repeats its words over and over to himself.
Maybe AM has a point , he thinks. He has not moved from this spot, one of the corridors in the top layer of AM's complex, looking up through the patchwork of the ceiling at the sky, for as long as he can recall. Movement seems useless when all there is is miles of corridors, and each imperceptible shift forward takes an impossible effort, but he feels differently now. He wants to move again.
So Ted does. He drags his bulk forward, leaving a trail of slime, and, achingly slowly, rounds the bend in the corridor. It looks just the same in both directions, extending on into infinity. Some of the lights on the banks of computers are still on from AM's visitation, like little green fireflies in the gloom.
Time passes. Ted counts the floorplates to keep track. He is unsure if it has been minutes or centuries, but he has travelled over thirty-seven and a half footplates when a breeze rushes through the corridor, drying out his moist flesh. Lifting up his head, he sees a large hatch in the wall, its corrugated iron hatch half-raised, and turns his course towards it.
Squeezing through the hatch, a vast and cavernous space is revealed, illuminated by fluorescent strip lighting. The floor of the cavern is covered with some kind of slippery grey plastic, peeling away in patches like dead skin. Large pools of water have collected in the depressions in the plastic, and there is an occasional plink as a drop falls from above to shatter the surface of the puddle. The breeze is stronger in here, enough to stir the loops of wires hanging from the girders of the ceiling just slightly.
The sight of the place tugs at a memory in Ted's mind, and he thinks, I've been here before. It must have been a very long time ago, if he had visited this place previously. Back when the others were around.
He shakes off that thought and continues his sluggish procession across the floor. The slippery plastic makes progress a little easier, at least. As he makes his way into the centre of the cavern, a remembered vignette comes to him - he and the others standing right here, arguing - why had they been arguing…? He recalls Ellen saying “I just don't think it's worth the effort,” and Gorrister, shrugging, mumbling “Sure, we'll go back. Whatever you say.”
What exactly did she think wasn't worth the effort? Going somewhere - doing something - ah, he remembers now. The door at the far end of the cavern had been closed, and Nimdok wanted to try and pry it open using one of the loose deckplates as a lever. He had thought it a bad idea himself, but the others got there first.
Now, the door, not too far away on the opposite wall, is being eaten away by dull red scabs of rust. Most of it is still intact, but at its base is a hole where the metal has flaked away in large pieces: it is certainly big enough for a human to crawl through, but in his current form, he's not certain he will fit. The journey back across the cavern and into the corridor is too much to bear, Ted thinks. He will try, at least.
On the other side of the door is a long, low-ceilinged corridor, dotted with patches of light at intervals. A warm breeze whistles through it like the hot breath of some great animal concealed in the dark.
He hunches down as close to the floor as he can, then edges towards the gap at the bottom. First his head makes it out to the other side, and Ted stops to rest for a moment. When he begins again, though, a sliding, cold pain slices through the thick flesh of his back. Twisting his head around with difficulty, he sees it: the rusting edge of the door, embedded in a long, bloodless wound. The pain is like a white-hot poker rammed into his brain.
And then Ted has an idea.
He has subsided in a quivering mass on the floor, but now he forces himself to keep going until he has heaved himself through the door. Then, shuddering, he reapproaches the rusted edge and slides up alongside it, the metal snagging on the torn edges of his flesh as it slices into him.
The pain, the pain, the pain is beyond words and thought and feeling. Slabs of whitish jelly-flesh slide off him as he pushes against the doorway. It takes all of his strength to keep going, to lean into the pain rather than cowering from it. One thought keeps him going: if I can escape from this skin, then I'll finally be free.
At some point Ted must have passed out, or slipped into a trance. He is not dead - no, that luxury will not be allowed to him. He is a raw and writhing thing of agony. Every slight movement reignites the raw burning across his limbs, a form which does not seem to belong to him.
It takes him a long time to realise that the screams ringing in his ears are coming from his own mouth, and even longer to stop it. Ted - the real Ted, naked, bloody, and emaciated, not the soft jelly thing which lies in quivering fragments around him - is curled on the floor. This body feels like the wrong one, now: too thin, too many limbs. Like the desiccated husk of a spider.
Eventually it occurs to him that AM has not intervened, not tried to stop him from shedding his skin. He wonders if perhaps AM simply let him do it out of boredom, but that seems unlikely. It was always minutely controlling, except, Ted supposes, for that crucial moment when it wasn't . And now AM will make sure to never stop paying attention again.
The thought of having limbs, limbs which he can move, is a very strange one, and with horror Ted realises that he has forgotten how to use them. He can twitch his hand, and with some concentration make a basic claw shape, but walking seems a laughably impossible task.
Ted practices for a while, clenching and unclenching his fists. The sight of his bones shifting underneath the skin and the harsh angles of his elbows is disturbing after spending so long in his flabby prison. His muscles have wasted away into nothingness, and his limbs are a mottled bluish-white like the underside of a frog, spotted with long, thin red threads which extend from the skin like a thousand tiny umbilical cords. It occurs to him slowly that he is very, very hungry, but he does not remember how to eat. When he opens his mouth, his jaw cracks and pops painfully. He opens and closes it a few times, and then tries to say “Hello?” All that comes out is a soft groan.
Little by little, he turns onto his front and begins to drag himself forward, digging his fingernails into the plastic sheeting of the floor. Pieces of himself are scattered about, spongy, pallid yellowish-white, streaked by capillaries and drenched in watery blood. He dips his head down slowly, picks up a piece in his teeth, and begins to chew.
It takes him a long time to eat himself. He tastes like nothing in particular, maybe a little oily, and his flesh is as soft as a wad of wet tissue paper. The strain of holding his head up often becomes too much, and Ted is forced to rest amongst the remains of his own carcass. He begins to regain a little energy, although he is nauseous and still feels raw and exposed, and he cannot stop shivering. The breeze blowing through the cavern now seems very cold. Stretching out unfamiliar hands, he takes hold of the soft plastic sheeting on the floor and tears off a long strip. Ted drags himself onto hands and knees, manages to tie it loosely around his waist, and then collapses back to the floor. It does not help much; the plastic is as cold and clammy as he is.
Ted lies there for a time, getting used to all the sensations of his old body - breathing, lungs shrinking and expanding with his irregular inhalations, strange long limbs incessantly shivering, blood pumping through long-forgotten arteries.
After many failed attempts, Ted manages to raise himself onto his hands and knees again, and begins to crawl down the corridor in the direction the breeze is coming from. Every few seconds he begins to shake, atrophied muscles unable to support his weight, and has to lie down to recover his strength, the thunderous beating of his heart in his ears almost drowning out the thin whistle of the wind.
The low corridor with its flickering lights opens up into an antechamber leading onto a Cyclopean spiral staircase which twists steeply up. The prospect of ascending a flight of stairs makes Ted’s limbs turn to water, but he steels himself: he’s come too far to turn back now. And besides, the wind is much stronger here, howling and echoing in the stairwell from above. He prays that it isn’t just more computer fans.
First step - he heaves himself up, clinging onto the smooth concrete with bloodied fingertips.
Second step - the edge of the stair scratches his shins as he crawls upwards.
Third step, fourth step, fifth, sixth, seventh. He loses count somewhere around fifty. The stairs corkscrew dizzyingly up. Exhausted, he does not allow himself to think, to hope.
Coming to a kind of landing, a cramped concrete platform with a sealed hatch, he stops to rest. There is light, now, streaming from above, picking out in sharp detail the swirls of dust motes in the air, and the occasional glittering drops of water seeping from the cracks in the walls. There’s so much water here, he thinks idly. Puddles everywhere. I wish there had been all these puddles when the others were around, then we’d have finally been able to drink. I suppose AM’s creating them just to taunt me.
It occurs to him, then, very slowly.
As he looks at the mould on the walls and considers the all-pervading blooms of rust down below, in AM’s complex, the rust that had coated the floors and corroded away the banks of computers.
He remembers AM’s visitation, how its voice had crackled and spat like water poured on a fire, and how its screen had briefly flickered black before it retreated back into the ceiling, as if afraid.
He wonders. He has never wondered before.
Could it… could AM be
dead
?