32. Capsus

capsus ~ī, m.

1. a pen for animals

in the heart of the world, a man brings an offering.

He wheels a cart forward, his white lab coat swishing with the movement. His eyes scan up at the core, at the many millions of silver fibrils suspended in the pale-periwinkle gel, but most of all at the wispy tendrils of the thing floating around it high above. He knows it’s a warning—an escape attempt. It’s a reversion to the natural order of things; the state of least resistance. He knows: what is made always unmakes itself.

This is a law neither the king nor his rider nor the board advisors and their many threats can change. This is the universe, and just because they have tamed a small portion of it does not mean it will remain dormant forever—reality is older and longer and braver than humanity will ever be.

He knows it is neither fair nor unfair that he is paying for the sins of people long dead. It simply is.

He knows, long ago, old Earth made its first mistake. And its last.

And now he makes his.

One by one, he unloads the offerings of the cart. Each time, a brain—perfectly frozen, perfectly suspended in a hard-light canister of formaldehyde—moves from his gloved hands, pushes past the dense film of the massive core, and sinks into the gel. Each time, the silver fibrils quiver as if sensing it, and then move like lightning as they descend—a flock of ravenous scavengers. He can barely see the tissue, swarming with silver, until it’s almost gone; the brain stem floats thin and used, an apple core gnawed to its finality.

He knows it’s not the fatty calories of the tissue they crave but what lies within and between—the thing that still, despite four hundred years of science, has no real name. He knows they are always hungry for it. He knows they take it and try to regrow themselves with it, but the many human machines hooked up to the core redirect every drop of that regenerative energy to the Station. Or they used to. He knows, like all evolution, that the fibrils have found ways around the machines, a slow, mutinous trickle that’s become a river over the decades now threatening to swallow everything. He knows they are the devil, but he thinks that God perhaps might feed on the same thing they do—the mind, the heart, the soul. He knows the tendriled thing floating listlessly far above his head will fade, and when his cart is empty, it does.

He knows, most of all, it will return.