Mask of Humanity

Nicolai found himself a pitiful mass of quivering, cramping, burned, dehydrated flesh. Pitiful, yes, but as he woke from his fugue he was grinning hugely and the reason why lay in the stone beneath him.

He was on the far side of the monkeybars, and for a moment victorious joy and exhilaration roared through him. Then his mind finished waking up and the joy vanished as though sucked away by a tube because he knew what he’d see when he looked up. The course, continuing before him, and as the exhaustion pressed upon him like a heavy weight he knew that he couldn’t make it.

Regardless of willpower and determination and pure rage, there was only so far that a body could be pushed, and he was at that limit. He felt a vast desire to simply lay there and go to sleep.

But I will not stop until my heart stops beating and I fall dead. He would rather fall from the next obstacle into the lava and burn, than lie here. He checked on the Seed with his tongue then he got one shaking arm underneath him, and the next, and he forced his body halfway up, tilting his head to look forwards.

He stared down the stone walkway before him, frowning in confusion, shaking his head and blinking his eyes because what he saw didn’t make any sense.

The stone walkway was twisting in front of him like a great snake slowly waving its head around, the air shivering like a heat-mirage, all of it tinted by throbbing panes of red light. Oh, I’m losing my mind, he realised irritably but then it all stopped moving and coalesced into something different.

Nicolai frowned as his eyes traced the stone walkway which continued a short distance and then ended where it ran onto open, grassy ground. A big open pool or pond of water, clouds of mist. There were people in the water, swimming, bathing.

It looked like the promised land. He was possessed by a hope that infused him with energy, forced his creaking body straight and stood him there for a moment, swaying. His vision grew dark and full of spots before he blinked them away and stumbled forwards.

The world blurred around him and then Nicolai collapsed into the pool of water, joining dozens of others who were floating within it. It was wonderfully cool and soothing, draining the heat from his body.

Nicolai closed his eyes and sighed, a smile on his face, then he felt his endless thirst and started slurping greedily at the water, keeping his Seed trapped beneath his tongue. He choked reflexively, his burned mouth and throat overwhelmed, and slowed his drinking. He forced himself to stop before he wanted to, aware that drinking too much after such dehydration would do more harm than good.

After a few minutes or maybe hours he was floating, feeling calm and empty for the first time since his rebirth, arms and legs spread, staring at nothing as he drifted.

His eyes caught the gaze of another, a beautiful girl who was staring right at him and smiling. His calm was shattered as the lust buried within him reared its head, hopeful, though this time it was mingled with a vague and unusual desire to connect.

He was disgusted as always by the base urge but he was so drained, so tired that he was unable to stop himself as he smiled back and after a moment began paddling casually towards her, or at least trying to paddle. It was hard to move, the cool water seeming to have infected him with its placidity, and he realised all of a sudden how sleepy he felt. Nicolai shook his head like a dog and flailed his limbs in the water, finding it thick and hard to move in.

Then he was fully awake and staring around and his eyes found the girls again and she was still smiling at him and his desires were still going strong even through the sudden unease and panic, keeping him moving towards her, half of his mind trying to think up a good icebreaker, his stupid urges doing their best to maintain his hopeful grin.

There was something odd about her face and her smile and at last he stopped, staring at her, seeing her clearly. She was utterly still, bobbing gently up and down, her face frozen in its unshifting smile.

Nicolai had seen a lot of corpses in his life and he was surprised he hadn’t recognised this one sooner. He twisted his head to look at the other shapes in the pool, the other people, and they all stared back at him with the same frozen grin and fish-like eyes.

The stillness and silence was broken as Nicolai thrashed through the water, struggling as it clung to him, straining to reach the edge of the pool and finding he was quite some distance. Spitting and snorting water that kept finding its way into his mouth and nose, he kept going, finding it increasingly hard to keep his head above the water. Time stretched out and he was pulled under by something but he kicked and jerked his head back out and gasped in a breath and worked himself into a solid breaststroke and then he was there, dragging himself out from the water and crawling, hauling himself away from it, kicking strands of it from his legs.

He remembered how he’d been drinking it and panicked disgust bent him over as his stomach spasmed, his throat working as he vomited a geyser of water which was tinted red, his stomach full of needles. He sucked in a gasp of air and vomited again.

Something silver shimmered in the water and he grabbed it, finding it to be his Seed. Lifting it in trembling hands to hold it before him he saw it was… fine. Still wriggling. Unaffected by the water and forgiving of him for forgetting about it again. He was surprised that it was still with him, after all the times it had slipped his mind. But as he held it he felt almost as though he could feel its own thoughts and drives, that it was able to look after itself, to a degree, that it found his mouth a safe place.

He placed it back into its home and closed his mouth, feeling it shift into the place it had chosen for itself, nestled around and below his tongue.

A shadow darkened the grass before him and Nicolai looked up to meet the gaze of another statue, another of the three-eyed tentacle-bearded things. Not the same one as before. Much shorter, no bigger than he was. It was smiling at him.

It spread its arms wide. ‘Congratulations, and welcome to the Trial of Resistance.’ It had a deep, smooth voice, one that made him think of polished wood and cigars.

Nicolai eyed it. ‘Thanks,’ he grunted with reflexive politeness, pushing himself to his feet. He found his body moved more easily, now, and the cuts and scrapes looked days old, the ache of his burned flesh significantly reduced. The water truly had healed him, to a degree, and it had marginally slaked his thirst, even as it did whatever else it had been doing.

‘Complimentary bottle of water?’ said the statue, proffering a plastic water bottle just like those one might purchase from vending machines on Earth. Nicolai had no idea where the bottle had come from—the statue hadn’t held it a moment ago—but the thirst was still there and he seized the bottle, automatically unscrewing the cap. The seal broke with a crisp plastic snap.

He was raising it and tilting his head to drink when he stopped, his paranoia gripping his hand and holding it still.

No, said Threat Analysis, then he remembered Threat Analysis was gone and decided it was his own voice.

Nicolai stared at the bottle and the glistening, clear, pure water within it, licking at dry and cracked lips, tongue playing over the ragged, half-healed tear in them.

‘What does resistance mean, in terms of this trial?’ he asked the statue, his voice dull.

It grinned horribly at him, tentacles squirming. ‘Resistance to temptation.’

Nicolai grimaced equally horribly back at it then with a sigh of utter misery he hurled the bottle away, him and the statue both watching as it arced through the air to land in the corpse-filled pond.

The statue nodded to him, alien features vaguely disappointed, then it said: ‘Go that way.’ It pointed to the side where Nicolai saw a dirt path extending away through the grass.

He debated whether the dirt path was tempting or not, decided it was not, and then stomped away from the statue along the path.

‘Don’t stop,’ the statues voice whispered behind him.

Nicolai flapped a dismissive hand over his shoulder and kept walking.

The clouds of mist grew as he moved, becoming an omnipresent fog that made it hard to see anything but the path before him. He stumbled over a dark form splayed out on the ground, pausing and looking down, recognising it as another dead human.

There was an opened bottle of complimentary water beside them. Nicolai gave the bottle a savage kick that sent it sailing through the mist and kept moving. He found more dead, littering the path, and was forced to pick his way over them.

After a time there were no more corpses and he realised he now walked through a forest, dark trunks and bright green leaves appearing out of the fog.

The mist cleared a little, and he heard sounds and saw firelight through the forest to his side. He resolutely told himself to keep moving but his feet disagreed, and they slowed as he smelt cooking food, heard laughter, then he’d stopped and he was peering through the foliage.

A group of happy-looking people who were actually wearing clothes sat around wooden tables in a clearing, bonfires spread around. They were drinking, beer and wine and water and eating food that, and Nicolai wasn’t much of a judge of such things but to him and in this moment at least, that looked delicious. One of them saw him and they waved. ‘Come, join us!’ they yelled, taking a sip from a beer mug.

Nicolai sneered back, and found he wasn’t tempted at all. Sit down, talk to people, interact? He found himself laughing. This trial didn’t know him at all. Then one of them tapped out a line of white powder and leant down and snorted it and Nicolai’s eyes dilated with urgent need.

Of course his recreated body was addicted to... to whatever it was, why wouldn’t it be? He’d been obsessed with all kinds of substances in his youth. The anger rose again as he realised then and there part of the reason why he’d felt so on edge, so off. Withdrawal?

‘Gurrhhh,’ he snarled and pressed his hands to his eyes, experiencing an urge to pluck them out, and when he lowered them the scene had morphed into an orgy, sweaty bodies sliding around.

‘Fuck off!’ he screamed. ‘That’s not who I am!’ He turned and stumbled into a run as he felt his endless foul urges begging him to go back.

He slowed his pace when he realised he was about to charge right over the path and into the forest on the far side which had also lit up with sound and light and obscenity, and forcing himself back to the path he continued walking, taking deep breaths, trying to calm down.

If only he could have a moment away from all this madness, he felt sure he would be able to take control and master himself. But it was one thing after another, the worst possible introduction of the present him to his old body in a new world, and he wished he could just do something simple, something he was good at, like fight someone.

The mists parted to reveal a shape before him. It was a big naked man holding a club. The man grinned at him and there was a fleshy thwack as he slapped the club into his open palm, an invitation.

‘Look at you. Pathetic. A miserable wretch.’ The man laughed in a big booming voice, pointing the club at him. ‘I could kill a hundred of you.’

‘No, you couldn’t,’ Nicolai snarled back, his whole body tensing up as he analysed how the man stood and saw that it was all wrong, this guy was clueless, which normally wouldn’t hold much appeal but right now, a fight was a fight. He envisioned how he would get close and wait for the swing then take that club and smash that oversized skull open with blow after savage, beautiful blow.

The big man shifted stance and raised the club, eyes narrowing as Nicolai moved towards him, beginning to circle slightly so Nicolai did the same.

He raised his arms, feeling for the first time in full control of his body. The need to begin roared through him, no rage this time, just a primal joy that made him grin so tight he heard his teeth grinding.

But all the time an unease had been rising through him because he knew, he just knew that this was the test, the real trial, and now as the moment drew closer it turned into an utter certainty, one that made him furious because how dare they dangle exactly what he wanted before him.

Nicolai placed trembling hands over his eyes again and kept walking, blowing spittle through his gritted teeth, wrestling with his rising fury, imagining the blow falling upon his unprotected form which was just, so wrong, what was he doing? This guy was going to kill him. He tore his hands away and spun and ducked, ready, but there was no one there, just cruel laughter spinning away through the mist.

He kept going, drained and empty. All kinds of things presented themselves but he ignored it all because the only thing he really wanted now was for this to be over. To have some time and some quiet, to sort himself out, to reassert control over the urges and emotions.