His first hour was spent ingesting the nutrients they provided him, the next eight spent learning all the things a child of ten should know while his body grew accordingly. They didn't speak to him, not even when he questioned them. They merely watched.
"Who is my mother?"
"Where is my father?"
"Hello?"
His questions were noted as was his rapid maturation and by the end of day one, when they manipulated his body into sleep, he was well on his way to manhood.
"He's asking just like the others." commented one without ever looking away from the view screen. They never made eye contact because that would connect them and they must remain distant, clinical. That is the way it must be.
DAY TWO:
"Hello?" He was pressing of the walls of his cube, searching for some flaw in the matte black walls.
This time they answered. "There is no way out."
A voice! He stumbled back over his platform bed in surprise. "Are you my father?" His face was turned upward, focused on the ceiling. "Are you God?"
"I am not your father." The monotone shifted until it came from all directions.
He didn't react to the stereo effect. "Are you God?"
There was no answer to that.
"If you don't answer I'll rip out my neural tubes and kill myself!" His screams reverberated back, causing him to clamp his hands to his ears until the echoes stopped.
"Then you will die." Was the reply after a moment's silence.
"Why am I here?"
"To help us learn."
He fingered the feeds tapping his brain. "This is how I learn. Do you not learn the same way?"
More silence.
"Answer me!"
"We learn through observation."
"We? There is more than one? You touch? See each other? Tell me what it is like." He was standing on the bed now, turning about as he tried to isolate the sound's origin. The surface below him didn't give as he moved about. There was to be no softness in his world. "Please, answer me. Please!"
There was a long, enduring silence before the voice returned. "Yes, we are God to you." And so ended his second day of life and formative teen existence.
One watcher complained that things were becoming too sterile, too clean. She was promptly removed from the project and made to forget its existence.
DAY THREE:
"Hey! Wake up!" Her nudge woke him from his induced sleep.
"Who? What? Oh, God, help me!" And he fled to a corner. His back was to her. "Don't look at me!"
"Why?" There was genuine curiosity behind her blue eyes. "I have never seen another. I was curious."
"Because I wouldn't be here if there wasn't something wrong with me!" His hands covered his face. "I'm hideous."
"Are you?" She didn't venture from where she was but sat down on the edge of his sleep platform. "Then I must be hideous too because I am here too." She ran a slim hand over her face and neck only stopping when she came across the relays embedded in her skull. "Am I?"
"Are you what?" He was peeping through his fingers at her. She was thin and curved and lumpy in a nice way and for some reason he couldn't look away.
"Am I hideous?" Her bottom lip trembled when she realized he was staring.
"No." He said after a while, stepping from the corner to gain a closer look. "Do you talk to them?"
"Them?" She never looked from him as she pointed to the ceiling. He liked the way her hair shifted when she moved. He wanted to touch it.
"Yes, them. Do you ever talk to God?" The distance between them began to close.
"There is a God?" Her face swept into confusion. She could smell him and that smell kept her from finding her own corner "Them is God?"
"That's what they say." He was beside her now, on the bed, and he touched her hair, brushing his hand carefully over it. She did not stop him, not even when he fingered the relays. His fingers said they were the same as his but for some reason they seemed different in the way they protruded from her skull. She looked different, not hideous at all. He touched her bare chest then his own, preferring the feel of hers. "Can I taste you?" He asked when his fingers had learned all they could. "I've tasted the walls, my blankets, the floor and learned a lot from it. Can I learn from you the same way?"
She peered at him for a moment then presented him her outstretched palm. He tasted the ivory flesh then glanced at her face and tasted again, this time learning the flavor of her wrist.
"God is watching." She said somewhere in the midst of their mutual tasting.
"They are always watching." he mumbled into her hair. "But they've had nothing to watch until now."
DAY FOUR:
He woke up alone.
"Where is she?"
"Gone." The monotone never changed.
He ran his fingers through his graying hair and stared at the ceiling. She had done the same thing the night before but it had somehow felt better and his hair had not been graying then. " Where is she now?"
"Elsewhere."
"I want her back." He looked at his hands. They hurt, ached, as did many other joints in his body. 'Bring her back."
"She is gone." They made no sound when he screamed. He threw his blanket, his pillows, his very self against the walls as he bellowed for her return. When his anger reduced to pleas the voice returned. "There are strawberries on the table. Eat."
"Eat?" He wiped his eyes and peered at the ceiling. "Strawberries?"
"Eat."
He crawled to the table and pulled himself into the seat. This too hurt but he had no idea why. "They're red."
"Strawberries are supposed to be red."
"But red is the color I see when I am angry." He stared at the bowl. "Strawberries are red so they must be angry too. I won't eat them."
God did not argue with that bit of logic.
DAY FIVE:
"Why do I ache so?" God talked to him frequently that morning. He was told about sunlight and flowers and children, where children came from. The explanation bored him and it made him think of her.
"Those are very nice stories." He said in a weary voice. "But it still doesn't tell me why I hurt so. I ache. I hear my bones crack when I move. Why do I ache so?"
'Pain comes with age." was the only explanation he was given.
He lay on the bed most of the day. Silent. Thinking. They read his thoughts and he liked that. He shared his thoughts with God.
DAY SIX:
Moving from the bed was very hard for him. He managed though, and sat for a while, staring at the strawberries. They looked like he did, wrinkly, dry. He rubbed his hands together and his bones moaned with the effort.
God didn't speak to him that day and that was all right. He didn't want to hear stories. He didn't want to think. He only wanted her and that want hurt worse than any ache he'd ever known. He wanted to rip the relays from his head. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to simply stop being.
DAY SEVEN:
His head wouldn't leave the pillow so he stared at the ceiling. "Why am I here?" He whispered to no one in particular and to his surprise there was an answer not of the monotone sort.
"You are here so we can learn." The voice was high and pleasant like hers had been.
"Have you learned?" His chest was tight and his throat dry.
"We have." There was the slightest empathy in that womanly voice.
"I did good then?" Tears flowed from his eyes and down his face, following the crags and wrinkles until they landed on his pillow.
"Yes, son, you did well." And the compliment filled him with such joy he did not feel the pain that slowed his heart.
"Tell me about children again." he whispered.
The voice began the exact same explanation as before but this time he listened, reveling at every word that God provided him until his love-filled heart ceased to beat. He had been a good son. God loved him. That was enough.
MONDAY, 1200AM EARTH STANDARD TIME:
He was born with the genes to possess his father's strong hands and his mother's blue eyes. All else remained unchanged.
Jeanne G'Fellers-Walker wears many responsibility hats at one time, including the motherhood tri-corner hat for her three children, a student's mortarboard, and a SF writer's backwards turned baseball cap. Her first novel is currently under publisher's consideration and this is the second of many short stories she hopes to send Aphelion's way.
E-mail: slverjlw@mounet.com
URL:
http://home.talkcity.com/BookmarkBlvd/silverjlw/
URL:
http://communities.msn.com/BlackHoleSurfers
Visit Aphelion's Lettercolumn and voice your opinion of this story.
Return to the Aphelion main page.