The End Has Come

Once I’m out, I’m met by the team of Class As that run the Above Survival Apparatus division. They ask for my latest prototype and I point at my own body. I explain: It’s better than the previous, because it allows for more sensation of physical touch. For instance, I can feel Rex’s warmth, and that signal carries through my nervous system. I can also feel cold, though I find that less pleasant.

They nod with excitement.

In addition, I’m looking into gonadal sensitivity. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

The head A smiles, to be polite. Plastic stretches across his metal teeth in a phony way. I’m reminded why I hate it here: They think I’m crazy.

You’ll make the appropriate modifications for mass production?

I always do, don’t I?

* * *

I spend a week in the city. It’s a terrible, loveless place. The houses are sleep chambers. No one touches. The only people who feel this lack are the As, and none of them will admit it. Instead they conduct more experiments. They keep trying to find the right combination — the thing that sparks our evolution. But it never happens. We don’t change. We can’t. It’s our nature. We are always the same.

The revolt in the Atlantic Colony is quelled. I find myself sorry to hear it. In what dreams I still have, I imagine them rising up. I’ll find them when that happens. I’ll help them.

* * *

On the last day, I collect Rex from the medical center. One look and I know it’s not my dog. You cloned him,

I say. He won’t know me. Now he’s just a sick, old dog.

The C walks away.

Show me his body.

Incinerated,

Linus tells me. He’s wearing a shining new suit. It’s agile. Slightly more human in appearance. In a way, I envy Cs, and even Bs. They never kill themselves. They’re not smart enough to juggle oppositional perspectives.

My last stop is the survival tunnel over which the city stands. We spray it at night so they don’t wake up when we experiment. It would be kinder to clone them from parts, but we want the variety that environmental stress provides.

I was one of the first to discover this particular tunnel a thousand years ago. I came down with another A class, and there they were. These blinking, beautiful creatures who’d turned pale and waiflike in the dark. They hadn’t interbred or poisoned their cells with prions like so many others. They’d stayed strong.

As I’d looked at them, I’d thought that we could live together. Or maybe we ought to act as the cyborgs they’d created us to be, and serve them.

They fired the first shot. In return, we slaughtered all who resisted, and took the best brains for our pool. A thousand years later, they’re sickly things who’ve lost the use of language. Their mutations, which we’ve stimulated, are at turns sublime and grotesque.

I go down to the lowest part of the tunnel. I pick a C class human. She’s pulled from the stocks for above ground respiratory tract insertion as my new dog. I always pick children, so they grow to love me.

I head out the next day. The forecast is clear. I’ve got a Class D driver this time. It speaks in binary code. The dog whimpers at my side. I pat its head. “’S okay, Rex. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll tell you so many stories,” I say. “Did you know? I had a house, once. I had a family. I had a dog I trained to fetch. This was before the asteroid. This was when the world was wonderful . . . I used to be human once, too.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Langan

is the author of the novels The Keeper, This Missing, and Audrey’s Door. Her work has garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, a New York Times Editor’s Pick, an ALA selection, and a Publishers Weekly favorite Book of the Year selection. Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Brave New Worlds, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and elsewhere. She’s at work on her fourth novel, The Clinic, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

ACTS OF CREATION

Chris Avellone