"Are you there?"
...What?
Where is he.
Who is-
My head.
"Gerald? Are you alright?"
The corridor comes back all at once, like a light being switched on in a room he didn't know he was standing in. Grey walls. Grey floor. A woman with white hair looking at him with her eyebrows drawn together, close enough that he can see the pen ink on her thumb.
He straightens up. It takes an embarrassing amount of effort.
"Oh- yeah, of course I am. Just spaced out a bit is all."
She lets out a breath. "Haah. You worried me there for a moment." The concern folds away into something brisker. "Anyway. Are you going to work on O-03-03 or not? The manager assigned it to you ten minutes ago."
O-03-03.
Sure. Yes. Obviously.
Gerald runs a hand through his hair, which buys him roughly one second, and rummages through what he's got for a name to put on her. There's something there. It's like reaching into a coat pocket and finding the shape of a key without the key.
"Yeah, I'll get on it. Uh... Lisa? You should probably get to work as well."
Lisa flicks him in the forehead.
"I was checking on you." She's already turning away, already writing something in the little notebook she carries. "Maybe next time I'll let you get scolded by the manager instead."
She walks off down the corridor. Gerald watches her go and does not move.
Then he looks down at himself.
Black suit, well-fitted, clean. A baton hanging off his hip in a moulded holster he definitely did not put it in. A device on his wrist with a screen on it. His hands are steady. His hands are steady and he has no idea whose they are.
Okay.
Okay, let's sort this out.
I know my name is Gerald.
I apparently work at a place called Lobotomy Corporation.
And...
He stops. Waits. Tilts his head as though the rest of it might come loose if he shakes it.
Nothing comes loose.
...and that's it. That's all he's got.
When did I sign up for this? How did I get here? Do I have family? Did I have a-
Beep. Beep.
The thing on his wrist lights up.
[GERALD — COMMENCE WORK: O-03-03]
...Great.
I'll collect my thoughts later, then.
— — —
The corridor is long and very clean and almost completely empty.
That last part sits wrong with him, though he couldn't say why. There are doors along the left wall with viewport slits and small brass placards, and doors along the right with nothing on them at all. At the far end, an elevator hub with two elevators. One has a lit call panel. The other has a strip of black-and-yellow tape across the doors and a frost line creeping out from the seam along the floor, like the air behind it is being kept somewhere much colder than here.
He looks at it for a while.
Nobody's going to explain that, are they.
No. No, they are not.
His wrist pings again as he reaches the right door. A single word this time.
[ATTACHMENT]
Attachment.
Alright, I was briefed on this. I think.
Attachment is the act of socializing with an Abnormality.
Which raises a question.
What the fuck is an Abnormality.
The answer surfaces the way the last one did, from nowhere, whole.
The inner thoughts of the human mind, brought into physical form.
Cool. Great. Love that.
Should be easy enough.
He opens the door.
A human skull hangs in the middle of the room at chest height, fused into an iron cross that's been snapped off below the crossbeam. A crown of thorny branches is wound tight around the temples, the ends of the cross pushed through the wood to hold it. It gives off a faint yellow light, and it is not touching anything.
Gerald stands in the doorway for a moment.
I had to raise a flag, didn't I.
What demented fucker sat down one day and thought of this thing.
He approaches the way you approach a dog you've been assured is friendly.
"Uh. Hey. Skull... dude. How are you feeling?"
Nothing.
Fantastic. I'm making small talk with a light fixture. I've really lost it.
And then, without any warning at all, Gerald begins wanting to confess.
It isn't a thought. It's a suggestion directed to him with an entirely undesirable expectation, an enormous need to say something out loud, right now, to the thing in front of him. His mouth is open before he decides anything.
"You... you want me to repent?"
The skull's jaw clicks shut. Once. The sound goes around the concrete room and comes back wrong, too long, like the reverb belongs to a much larger building.
Okay. Okay, we're doing this.
He scratches the back of his head. "Well. I, uh. I can't remember anything about my past. So I'm not sure I've got anything to confess that you'd find acceptable." A dry laugh that dies about a foot from his mouth. "Sorry."
The chanting starts.
It comes from inside the skull, or from underneath it, or from underneath the floor, plainchant. In a language he doesn't understand, and he knows without being told that it isn't for him. It's older than him. It was already going.
That's not intimidating at all.
Then the voice arrives in his head, abruptly.
To be willing to bear pain is half the atonement.
Only those who deceive themselves can live truly happy lives. Ignorance is bliss.
Is it not possible to just once forgive an act of evil, as long as the intentions behind it were pure?
"What does that me-"
The pain takes him off his feet.
It goes through the crown of his skull and down into his jaw and behind both eyes at once, a pressure with intent behind it, and he is on his knees on the concrete with both hands clamped to his head and something is growing there, he can feel it, thorns pushing out through his scalp and knitting around and tightening, and there is a point maybe four seconds in where the pain stops being a sensation and becomes the only fact in the world, and he screams, and the chanting does not change tempo at all.
IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS—
And then it stops.
Gerald stays where he is, on all fours, breathing. Sweat runs off his chin and lands on the floor between his hands. His ears are ringing. And underneath the ringing there is a strange, unwelcome clarity. Like a window that had been fogged for so long he'd stopped noticing the fog until somebody wiped it.
He looks up. The skull is looking back.
"...What did you do?"
The light in the empty sockets flickers. The jaw shifts open a fraction, and there's something behind the teeth, something bright, and Gerald's whole body decides at once that he does not want to see it.
The jaw closes. Click.
That's all he gets.
He gets his feet under him and puts his fingers up to the thing on his head. The thorns are real. They're warm. They're wound through his hair and into the skin and they do not move when he pulls, and pulling makes his eyes water.
Not that I'd take it off anyway.
My head's been full of wet sand since I woke up and now it isn't.
I'd be an idiot to complain.
"I'm... not sure what you did," he says. "But it seemed to help. With my head." He shifts his weight. "...Thank you."
Click.
The chanting resumes, low and steady and entirely uninterested in him.
Beep. Beep.
[WORK COMPLETE]
Gerald glances back at the skull one more time and exits the room.
— — —
Ding.
Lisa is halfway across the corridor toward him with a hand raised in greeting when she stops walking, and her eyes go to the performance readout on the wall panel.
"Wow. Perfect score, huh? Didn't think you had it in you."
Gerald shrugs and steps aside to let two people through, different suits, maroon with yellow ties, one carrying a bucket and the other a folded stack of what looks like absorbent matting. They go into the room he just came out of without looking at either of them.
"What's their deal?"
"Those are the clerks." Lisa puts a hand on her hip. "Paperwork, janitorial, logistics. They keep the place running." A pause. "That's the second time today you've needed re-briefing on something."
She leans in slightly, her tone shifting a bit.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Sharper than I thought.
Gerald whips up a smile. Based on her reaction, it is not a good one.
"Never been better."
Lisa scoffs, and then her gaze goes up about six inches and stops.
"Wait. You got an E.G.O gift too?"
So that's what this thing is called.
"Yeah, I guess. Seems like it's stuck to my skull."
She recoils, and then her face does something rather complicated before landing on pity. "D-does it hurt?"
It's the face that gets him. It's such an absurd face, and she's making it so sincerely, Gerald can't help a few chuckles from leaking through.
"The hell's so funny?"
"Nothing." He wipes his eyes. "It was just a bit out of character for you is all."
...Was that insensitive? That might have been insensitive.
Beep.
[BREAK IN EFFECT — RETURN TO WORK IN XX:15]
"What were you working on?" he asks.
Lisa's mouth twists, obviously bothered by what she encountered earlier. "Some disgusting bug abomination. Before I could get three feet into the room, the damn thing screamed at me." She looks away. "I couldn't take it. So I hit it to make it shut up."
"And then it kept going. So I hit it again. And again."
Gerald blinks.
Holy shit.
"...You beat up an Abnormality. Is that allowed?"
"I'm not- look." She gets defensive fast, which tells him she's already had this argument with herself. "Repression work is supposed to be suppressing the Abnormality's desires. For the sake of my job, what I did could technically count as that."
"I don't think that's how that works, Lisa."
"Oh, whatever. I got a good score. I have to be doing something right."
She glances down the corridor toward the break room, and jerks her chin at it.
"Come on. Sit with me for a bit."
The vending machine takes her card twice and gives up two coffees. She drops onto the sofa and pats the cushion beside her.
"Aren't you going to sit?"
"Haha. Right." Gerald sits down like a man being lowered by a crane.
"So." Lisa blows across the top of her cup. "What was your life like before working at L Corp?"
Excellent question. Genuinely. Please write it down, I'll get back to you.
He considers lying. He gets as far as deciding what the lie would be, and then doesn't want to be a person who tells it.
"Honestly? I don't really remember." He turns the cup in his hands. "Is that weird?"
"You don't remember anything?"
"Not really."
Lisa takes a sip and holds it a moment before swallowing.
"That's a bit strange," she says. "But nothing out of the ordinary."
Those two things aren't the same, Lisa.
"Don't be ashamed of it, though. There's probably a reason you can't remember." She nudges him with an elbow. "Maybe you got experimented on by some Wing, huh?"
She laughs. Gerald doesn't. She notices, and stops.
"...Maybe so."
He drinks his coffee. It's bad in a specific institutional way that feels like it's been bad for a long time.
"What about you?"
Something goes out of her eyes for about half a second, and then a smile comes down over it like a shutter.
"Nothing important. Just a bum trying to make ends meet."
A pause. She's deciding.
"Then I got an invitation. From one of the Wings of the world." Her thumb moves along the seam of the cup. "You know what the odds of that are? Someone like me? I finally got a chance to do something more with my life, and I'd be damned if I passed it up."
She sinks lower into the sofa and looks sideways at him.
"Anyone ever tell you you're awfully plain?"
Gerald deadpans at her. "Thanks."
Before she can enjoy it further, both their devices chime, different tones, different orders. Lisa is up and stretching immediately.
"I'll go first, then."
"Sure. See you later."
He watches her leave, and then looks at his own screen.
[GERALD — REPORT TO MAIN CONTROL ROOM]
There's a small M beside the message.
— — —
The main control room is enormous and about a fifth occupied. Rows of desks, most of them dark. Clerks at maybe six of them. A wall of screens above, half of which show nothing at all, not static, just flat blank panels with a small padlock icon in the corner.
Something walks over to him.
It is roughly three and a half feet tall, brown, boxy, with a single large yellow eye set in the middle of what is generously a face, and it is holding a notepad.
"Gerald! Over here!"
"Greetings, Control Team Sephirah Malkuth."
The box puts its hands on its... hips? Corners? and makes a noise of profound dissatisfaction.
"Gerald! Just call me Malkuth!"
"Sorry. Uh. Malkuth."
She crosses her arms, apparently mollified. "Whatever! I'll excuse it this time!" And then, brightening so fast it's almost audible: "Anyway! I wanted to congratulate you on your first work!"
She gives him a thumbs up. The thumb is not really a thumb. Gerald decides not to examine it.
"Be sure to tell me about any complaints you have with my department!"
"Yes. I'll be sure to."
He's already turning to go when the question arrives, and he asks it before he's really examined why he wants to know.
"Hey, Malkuth. Do the Abnormalities have names?"
The eye rotates fractionally. "Well, the agents give them nicknames. For convenience. Traditionally they go by serial number, it's much easier for listing them in the system."
"The names the agents use. Are those official, or is it just something people say?"
There's a pause. The eye holds on his face a beat longer than it has all conversation.
"...If naming an Abnormality increases work efficiency," Malkuth says slowly, "then I suppose you could submit a suggestion. And it would be added to the database."
"Great." Gerald nods. "Then I'll submit a few. For the sake of efficiency."
Malkuth's posture sags with the weight of a workload that has just silently doubled.
"Well... alright! Just send me whatever names you come up with! It is my job, as the CONTROL Team Sephirah! HA HA HA!"
Was it just me, or did that last part get a little unhinged.
"I've already got the first one," Gerald says.
— — —
He wanders after that, because nobody tells him not to.
The Control Team floor is a long spine with containment units hanging off it like ribs, and he walks the length of it twice. The first thing he notices is how many of the placards are blank. The second thing he notices is that at the end of the western corridor there's a bulkhead, a real one, thick, seamed, with a small window in it. Through the window is a hallway exactly like the one he's standing in, except that the light in it is the wrong color and there is a woman standing in the middle of it.
She isn't moving.
Gerald puts his hand near the glass and takes it away again. Cold. Not cold like metal. Cold like the inside of something.
There's a printed label under the window. He reads it twice.
INFORMATION TEAM — SUSPENDED. AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED. DO NOT ATTEMPT.
Suspended.
Suspended is not the same word as closed.
He stands there a moment longer than is comfortable, and then he goes back the way he came.
— — —
The next door has O-02-56 stenciled above it. His wrist buzzes as he reaches it.
[INSIGHT]
Insight. Adjusting the environment to suit the Abnormality's needs.
He opens the door and finds a very small white bird sitting on the floor.
Oh thank God.
It's not an unfathomable horror beyond my comprehension. That's a lovely change of pace.
There's a utility rack outside the room. Gerald leans back out, takes a broom off it, and starts sweeping up the loose feathers scattered across the concrete.
"Don't mind me, little guy. Just cleaning your room a bit."
The bird takes off, lands on his head, and begins arranging his hair into a nest.
"What the hell. That's... unexpected."
It tugs.
"Ow. Goddammit, stop, that hurts."
The bird does not stop. The bird settles its very small body into the arrangement it has made, adjusts twice, and continues editing his hair with its beak while he sweeps.
This goes on for fifteen minutes.
The moment he stops sweeping and allows himself one private instant of relief, the bird hops down off his head and starts pecking his face.
"...You are a sick little bastard."
He gets his hands up. "That hurts! Are you hungry or something?"
The pecking stops. The bird's head tilts.
Gerald digs a granola bar out of his pocket. He has no memory of buying it. He files that away with everything else, and holds it out flat.
"This is a peace offering. Alright?"
The bird hops onto his forearm and eats the entire bar in about four seconds, which should not be geometrically possible, and then hops in place, pleased.
"Are you bipolar or something?"
He rubs the top of its head with one finger. It doesn't attack him. It goes very still instead, and looks at him, and Gerald has the distinct and unwelcome sense of being assessed.
Then the bird nods.
It flies to the corner of the room, comes back with a small chain in its beak, and drops it over his head.
"...Thanks, little bird."
— — —
He checks the panel on his way out. A bright green face. 23 beside it.
The chain sits against his collarbone. He hooks a finger under it. Whatever it is, it makes him feel lighter, not physically, exactly. Like something that had been sitting on his chest has been asked politely to get off.
His wrist doesn't chime this time. It vibrates, deep and slow, in a rhythm he can feel in the bones of his forearm. There's a single letter on the screen.
X
[AGENT — ENTER MY OFFICE IMMEDIATELY]
That's the manager.
He stops walking. Then he starts again, slower.
— — —
He gets as far as raising his hand to knock.
"Please come in."
I didn't knock.
The office is dark. Monitor light on the walls, a desk, a chair, a small cactus in a clay pot that is somehow the strangest object in the room. The chair swivels.
The man in it has black hair and yellow eyes and a suit that costs more than the corridor outside it. Everything about him is arranged.
"Hello, Agent."
Gerald raises a hand. "Hey, Manager."
"Please, take a seat. I need to talk with you for a bit."
Gerald walks deeper into the tiger's den, pulls out the chair, and sits.
The manager folds his hands and leans forward onto the desk.
"Agent... Gerald, was it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you know why I called you into my office?"
Before Gerald can answer, a slender white hand comes past his shoulder from behind him and lays a sheet of paper on the desk.
"What the fuck-"
The silence afterwards is exquisite.
"...Sorry. Your assistant startled me."
The assistant regards him with an expression of such refined contempt that Gerald reconsiders every decision that has led him to this room.
"It's fine," the manager says. "Back to what I was saying." He turns the sheet around with two fingers. "I called you in because your work results are abnormally high."
So my suspicions were correct. Wonderful. Love being correct.
"How would you consider my performance abnormal?"
"You're aware that every Abnormality has a PE-box counter that determines your score."
"Correct, sir."
"And you're aware that this counter has an upper limit. Per Abnormality."
I am aware of that now.
"...No?"
The manager sighs and taps the sheet.
"O-03-03's result was overwhelmingly positive, and the enkephalin produced exceeded its ceiling of ten."
"Oh - you mean One Sin."
The manager stops.
"...One Sin."
"Yeah. That's the name in the database."
There is a small pause during which Gerald can hear the monitors.
"Ah. Right. You agents did request the naming of Abnormalities." The manager's jaw works once. "That's beside the point. While working with O-02-56-"
"Punishing Bird."
The manager looks at him flatly.
"Can you stop interrupting me with these silly names."
"Sorry."
"While working with O-02-56," the manager resumes, "you produced twenty-three boxes. Against a ceiling of twelve." He lets that sit. "Do you see how unusual this is?"
Yes. You've made it painfully obvious.
"So what do you want me to do about it?"
And the manager smiles.
"Nothing at all. In fact, I'd encourage you to continue. It's a substantial increase in our enkephalin production." He makes a small gesture toward the assistant, who has not moved. "Starting tomorrow, you'll be handling E.G.O equipment."
"Don't I already have E.G.O?" Gerald touches the crown, then the chain.
"Those are gifts. Abnormalities give them to employees they take a liking to. They can't be manufactured, and they can't be assigned." He turns back to his desk and picks up a glass of wine that has been sitting there the whole time. "E.G.O equipment is extracted, refined and issued. It's fundamentally different, and it is considerably more dangerous."
He drinks.
"I think we've talked long enough. Keep up the good work, Agent."
"R-right."
Gerald is at the door when he remembers.
"By the way. Punishing Bird looked bored when I came in. Could you maybe consider getting him a perch? Something to rest on."
The manager's finger stops tapping.
"...I'll think about it."
— — —
The corridor outside is a considerable improvement on the inside.
Gerald lets out a breath and finds he has been holding his shoulders somewhere around his ears.
The atmosphere in there was suffocating.
Also: I have gathered some genuinely invaluable information.
Namely, nobody in this building is going to tell me anything I don't ask for.
Beep.
[WORK COMPLETE FOR THE DAY — REPORT TO LIVING QUARTERS BEFORE XX:30]
This quick?
He goes looking for the dormitories, on the reasonable assumption that somebody will have signposted them, and finds instead a clerk on her knees in the corridor with a floor scrubber, working at a stain that isn't coming up.
Gerald slows down. He isn't sure why he stops. He stops.
"Hey. You doing alright there?"
She looks up. Small, maroon suit, yellow tie, hair pinned back badly on one side.
"A-are you asking me?"
"Yeah. Who else would I be talking to?"
She goes quiet for long enough that he starts to worry.
"I'm alright."
"Well. That's... good."
This is getting awkward. Salvage it.
"Anyway... I wanted to ask. Where are the dormitories?"
She points, without quite looking at him. "First floor. Left, then down the hallway."
"Thanks." He crouches slightly, to be less of a tower. "What's your name, by the way?"
"O-oh. It's Beta7."
Gerald stops.
"Excuse me?"
Her whole body flinches, and the words come out in a rush, on the edge of tears -
"D-did I do something wrong? I didn't mean to offend you, I swear, I-"
"Whoa. Hey." He puts his hands up. "No. I'm just asking for your name. Y'know. The one your parents gave you."
She stares at him.
For a second it looks like she might cry anyway. Then she goes scarlet all the way to her ears and laughs, one small mortified laugh, and puts a hand over her face.
"Haha. Sorry. I misunderstood what you were asking."
She clears her throat. Sits up a little straighter. Pushes the badly-pinned hair back behind her ear.
"My name is Vera. I'm a clerk for the Control Team."
"My name is Gerald. Agent of the Control Team." He straightens up. "We're in the same department. So I guess we'll be seeing each other."
A smile creeps onto her face like it's checking whether it's allowed.
"Yeah. Maybe."
He gets four steps down the corridor before he takes out the device on his wrist and, under a heading that already reads One Sin and Punishing Bird, adds a third line.
Vera.
Beta7 — Vera.
— — —
He gets lost twice and enters two rooms he is fairly sure he was not cleared for before he finds the living quarters.
"Hey, pal. Ya lost or somethin'?"
A middle-aged man is leaning against the wall with a cigarette, mean-looking in a way that Gerald suspects is mostly architectural.
"Isn't this the living quarters?"
"Ain't just the living quarters." He jabs a thumb into his own chest. "My living quarters."
"Oh. Sorry. Must've got the wrong end."
The man snorts smoke. "Whatever. Doesn't matter to me." He digs a pack out of his pocket and holds it out. "Ya smoke?"
Do I?
I have no idea. And this thing on my head is no help whatsoever.
"Uh. Sure."
He takes one. The man lights it for him, and Gerald draws on it, and something in his shoulders lets go all at once.
Haah. That... that really does soothe the nerves.
The man smirks at his face. "So. What's the name?"
"Gerald." He exhales. "Third day here."
"Mao. Nice to meet ya, Gerald." Mao grinds his cigarette into the tin ashtray balanced on the rail beside him and yawns hugely. "Third day, huh. You were pushin' a mop day before last."
"...I was?"
"Sure. Clerk's tie an' everything." Mao squints at him. "Quiet type. Didn't talk to nobody."
"Right." Gerald looks at the burning end of his cigarette. "Right, yeah."
"Anyway. Get some sleep. Don't wanna be tired for tomorrow, do ya."
"You're right."
Mao points out the door with Gerald's nameplate on it, which does more damage to Gerald's dignity than anything else that has happened today, and Gerald goes inside.
— — —
It's small. A bed, a wooden dresser with one drawer that doesn't shut, a desk and chair. On the desk, a Lobotomy Corporation manual, training procedures, protocols, safety, with a spine that has never been cracked.
Gerald throws himself onto the bed and lies there.
So this is my life.
Fucking sucks, man.
The ceiling fan turns at its monotonous pace. Somewhere down the corridor a door closes. Somewhere much further away, something that is not machinery makes a sound and stops.
[ATTENTION — QLIPHOTH DETERRENCE ACTIVATING. REMAIN IN YOUR QUARTERS FOR THE DURATION OF THE NIGHT CYCLE.]
The lights in the corridor outside his door drop by half.
Who am I, really?
He doesn't know. He knows the name of a skull, the name of a bird and the name of a girl who scrubs floors, and he knows that he came into this building as somebody quiet who didn't talk to anybody, and that he cannot remember being him.
The crown of thorns throbs once against his scalp.
Gerald reaches up and puts his hand around it, and frowns at the ceiling.
Now you react.
Stupid thing.
.
.
.
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