Fish Swim in the Lake

Part 7.1 | Lighten up my eyes

She heard herself say: we're at war? She felt her face assume the neutral, reassuring mask it used to take when she was a -- before she shot Nemoros. That idiot.

"Yes."

"With a species called the Magaz?" She felt faintly ridiculous.

Even with the drugs, it seemed a struggle for him to talk. He said, "yes."

"An alien species?"

"Yes."

"Silicon based?"

"Yes."

"Sentient?"

"Unquestionably."

"Who become stronger by combining into a single functional unit?" She thought they were little neon blue blocks with spines on them, linking into larger asymmetric blocks, gleaming like old fashioned glass office towers.

"Yes."

"Whose corpses make good components for electronic devices, and implants to human beings?"

"Yes."

alphaDana closed her eyes. It made no difference. The dead thing in her head kept recording. She saw more with them shut than she saw with them open; it allowed her to focus more cleanly on the status reports playing over her eyelids. Some vloggers went around blindfolded. She lifted away on a helium balloon. The thing, the corpse, was here. She was here with it. There was nowhere for her to go.

"Whose corpses are being used by Magaz Corporation?" She thought of little neon blue blocks on articulated conveyer belts being stamped by huge hammers. Of brilliant, radiant alien dust drifting into the nostrils of what few factory overseers were left. Haloing their noses and eyes with blue dust.

"Apparently."

alphaDana squeezed her closed eyes with her right hand. "Corpses supplied, I guess, by you guys Up There, with the idea that we'll -- I mean, on Earth -- find weaknesses and better ways to exterminate them?"

"Probably. I mean yes."

"It's military, so they can rely on you to keep quiet." She was drifting again. The room was too white. Vas's reclining body outlined in white light. "How long?" she said.

"I don't know," Vas said. "About ten years."

"Why didn't you ever say anything about it to me?"

His eyes snapped open. "I thought you knew."

Posted by gtaylor at May 20, 2002 11:02 AM