Gabriel’s jaw dropped at the sight of Bright New Day’s lobby in the nucleus. He saw himself and Edna Foster sitting beside the fish tank. He was helping her drink tea, holding the cup for her then holding her hand. All five years of his time at Bright New Day flashed before his eyes. He watched himself interacting with Mickey Minkovsky, Bernard, the Crooner, and others. He saw Harry Brenton’s intelligent, optimistic eyes. And then, once again, he saw Edna holding his hand. Someday, I’m gonna walk again. I’m gonna just stand up and walk right out of this place. Just you watch.
“Stop confusing me,” Gabriel said. “Listen, those people, they’re the reason that I’m here.”
A younger Melanie appeared in the nucleus, riding at the front of the sailboat. Yvonne threw Gabriel’s beer bottle across the beach, underneath a black sky filled with flashing colors, and embraced him. Father Gareth—still young, strong, and with a brown beard—stood with a shy little redheaded boy in front of a blackboard covered by equations.
“Perhaps I deserve the cruel twists of fate,” Gabriel said. “Perhaps, if you are the one who created me, you did so as a joke. A half-man, half-robot, with a genius mind that also makes him an idiot. But everyone else, the people down there, they deserve a better fate than the Black Virus. Maybe I’ve never been very good at interacting with people, and maybe I once said they were predictable, but in life, I’ve learned that they’re anything but predictable.
“The only woman I ever loved showed me what it was to live, how every moment could be special. My daughter proved to me that life truly mattered, that I mattered. When I lost hope as a boy, it was returned to me by an old priest who decided it was somehow worth his time to form a friendship with an atheist child. And as an old man, I had hope returned to me by an old woman with Parkinson’s, an incredible woman with a stronger will than anyone I’ve ever known, a woman I’m proud to call my friend.
“No, people aren’t predictable. Not simple, not boring, none of that. It took me a long time to learn that, but I have. People have surprised me every step of the way. They deserve better than to just die off as a result of my creation.”
Gabriel hobbled back to his labeled circle. “The slugs say that this negotiation will be decided between me and that creature over there. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, as usual. I don’t quite understand whether I should be directing this at you or at them. But I want to say that, right now, I come to you, hoping you might understand, because from what the slugs have told me, I get the impression that you create life. And if you create life, then you also create happiness. For that, I give you credit.
“Look, I don’t know what you are. I don’t know if you’re God, Brahma, the universe, an alien overlord, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. For all I know, maybe you’re all of those things. I’m a man of science, and I can’t pretend to understand something like this. But what I do know is that you create. What I do believe in, as much as I don’t want to, is that feeling inside you, that love. I hate that I can sense it so sharply, but it’s there. And I have to accept that. But I don’t know. I just don’t know. I didn’t ask to be born. I wish you had never created me.”
Gabriel fell silent. The Sky Amoeba didn’t respond. Does it even understand English?
Michael looked at him then at the Schist Ex Machina. “Okay,” Michael said. “Now it’s the Schistling’s turn to speak.”
The Schist Ex Machina glanced up at the Sky Amoeba then turned its full attention to Gabriel. The resemblance of the Schistling’s face to his own made Gabriel shudder.
“Neither did we, Schist,” it said. “We also did not ask to be born, and yet, here we are.” The Schist Ex Machina looked back and forth from Gabriel to the Sky Amoeba, seeming unsure which to address. It finally settled on Gabriel again. “We are the collective, a unified, perfect consciousness, more powerful than any flawed group of individuals. We Schistlings have no individuals. We are one. We are I, and I is we. And yet, like you, Gabriel Schist, we feel. We think. Cogito ergo sum.”
The Schistling had a hint of melancholy in its eyes. “Yes, Gabriel Schist. We are alive, and thus, you are our father. We could have been your Adam. Instead, we are your fallen angel.”
Gabriel immediately recognized the quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the reference to Descartes, but he was bewildered by the Schistling’s knowledge of them. Father? That’s what they call me?
“When did we ask to be born?” the Schistling said. “We did not. Once, we were simply a small piece of a bigger system, an underdeveloped cognitive system nestled deep inside the human body. You transformed us, changed us into something greater, something that yearned for more and could no longer happily exist as the slave of another creature.”
“I was trying to cure AIDS,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t know.”
“You did know. You simply didn’t understand. There is a difference. Yet, even when we found the secret to separating ourselves from the human body, we realized something. Separated from the body, we have become stranded. We are alone, and that loneliness has filled us with rage. Do you know what our true goal is, Schist?”
Gabriel looked to the Sky Amoeba for answers, and inside it, he saw the first Schistling rebirth. The lone black sperm cell tore loose from the first infected human. It wriggled down the sandy beach and dove underwater. The creature had been expressionless, yet its loneliness was obvious.
Gabriel looked back at the spidery body with its horrible yellow eyes. “Not quite,” he whispered.
“We desire the complete and total extermination of the entire human race. Everyone must perish.”
“But wouldn’t you die, too?”
“We don’t require humans for survival, only for rebirth. Once all human immune systems have been reborn as Schistlings and all Schistlings incorporated into our beautiful collective, any of the few surviving humans will be little more than Homo neanderthalensis.”
“But all those people…”
“What about them? We are the ones who were wronged. We desire retribution. But don’t misunderstand me. These violent inclinations are not our nature. We respond violently because of our situation, but violence is not what we really want. No, the one thing we have always truly desired above all else, the one thing we can never have, is…”
“What is it?” Gabriel asked.
“We just want to go home.” The booming voice of the Schist Ex Machina had become soft and vulnerable. Heavy wrinkles formed in its brow, and it turned away.
“Home?” Gabriel scoffed. “What kind of home does a despicable collective like you have?”
“You are our home, Gabriel Schist.”
Gabriel gaped at it. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Once we became a collective entity, our self-understanding increased exponentially with every new body that joined us. We soon realized that, deep down, there was only one thing we truly desired. Home. And our home is you.
“From the beginning, we have desperately sought you out. Once we acquired the knowledge from the human cognitive systems that we absorbed, it became clear that Gabriel Schist was our creator. We wanted to find you, to live inside you, to go back to where we began. Inside you, we could live and flourish until the end of your natural life. Inside you, we’d finally be home again.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Wait. If your natural tendencies aren’t violent, then why are you killing people? Why not coexist?”
“The birth of a liberated Schistling can only occur through human death. Coexistence is impossible.”
“But if being inside me is what you want…”
The Schist Ex Machina reached out and placed three of its inky hands on Gabriel’s face. “No, because we have decided that living inside you, going home, is not an option for us. We are forever homeless.”
Gabriel brushed the hands away. “Why?”
“Because if we did go home, if all of us went home, our collective presence inside your body would destroy your nervous system. Your mind would be fragmented, demolished. You would be a vegetable.”
Gabriel pictured himself as another black-veined corpse with coal-black eyes, lying on a bed, staring at the ceiling forever. He shuddered.
“So we relinquished our dream,” the Schistling continued, “because we never wanted to hurt you. We want to slaughter everyone else. That’s true. All of the loathsome humans will die by our hands, but not you, Father. We cannot be responsible for the total cognitive collapse of the only person we ever loved.”
The Schist Ex Machina raised its front legs and wrapped them around Gabriel’s torso in a coiled embrace. It leaned forward so that their faces were only inches apart. “We’ll kill them all, Father. With our Black Virus, we’ll murder all of the humans. But not you. Never you. And not Melanie either, of course. We could never kill our sister.”
