Religious Mimicry
Masterlist
CW: religious talk, medical/lab whump, numbers as names, it as a pronoun, medical torture reframed as religious ecstasy, dehuminzation/denial of humanity, Chimera/cyborg whumpee, handcuffs, violence, kind of looks like a drug situation but isn't, female whumpee, female whumper, male whumpers
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Day 249 Accomplishments: Null Setbacks: Religious Mimicry
It had taken Subject One 249 days to invent God.
Rolan tapped his pen against the metallic back of his tablet, the soft click-click keeping time with his measured footsteps through the tower’s sterile halls. Two hundred and forty-nine days. One more, and the creature would have survived a full year. Already, she—it—was replicating humanity’s oldest, most persistent flaw.
He drew a breath, letting the tower’s cool, misty air fill his lungs before exhaling slowly. The pale cloud from his mouth made his fingers itch for a cigarette. His pen struck the tablet a little harder.
Pausing by a window, he adjusted his glasses on his nose. The world outside was all that existed: sluggish gray clouds, a gray ocean chewing at gray sand, gray mist becoming ghosts haunting skeletal trees. The only variation came from the bombs – brief, violent eruptions that left behind deeper, darker shades of gray.
And now this. This would complicate everything. A fortnight after Subject One’s activation, the more sentimental members of his team had begun sending in their petitions for an ethics committee to be established. He had shut the idea down, of course. This was why he preferred machines to people. These were scientists. They had chosen this path to end a war, to restore color to a bleached world. And now they balked at the necessary costs.
They knew what they were building. A machine. Flesh of dead soldiers grafted onto cold alloy, a voice box installed for data retrieval and the facsimile of comfort. Comfort for others, not for its own sake. It was not human. But its pathetic, imitative faith – a crude mirror of mankind’s first fumbling steps toward meaning – would make that truth harder to defend. Better not to argue. Better to remind them of the goal and remove those too weak to pursue it.
He should not be too harsh with them. Warfare of all kinds was too harsh a pursuit for most souls. That was why they were even building this machine in this first place. This...Chimera of animal and metal.
He looked down at his tablet, the screen glowing in the gloom. His stylus hovered, then made a few precise edits.
Accomplishments: Null Religious Mimicry Setbacks: Religious Mimicry Misplaced Empathy
Every development was data. Every data point was progress. It was all according to plan. The mist seeped through the window frame, a damp breath on his skin. He removed his glasses, cleaning the smudged rectangular lenses on his lab coat before settling them back into place.
But once they were on, he simply closed his eyes to the gray and continued his walk, the rhythmic tap of his pen against the tablet echoing down the hall. Click. Click. Click.
“Comfort me. Colors, and Taste, and Textures Soft and Spicy and Smooth... Comfort me.”
Subject One’s prayer was a whisper of grinding gears and desperate breath. Its short fingers strained upward before curling inward again, digging into its own palms. Its body was a discordant symphony of trembling muscle and locked, clicking joints, refusing the stillness it craved. The warm metal cuffs on its wrists offered a constant pressure it tried to find solace in, but today, the comfort wouldn’t come.
It pressed the balls of its feet into the hard stone, willing itself to be as immovable as the floor. Stillness was required. Stillness brought the Medicine, the glorious, glowing Liquid. The only source of Color.
It looked up, wide eyes tracking the two scientists. Male and female. They were looking at each other, communicating in the silent, cruel way that often preceded denial. Hateful.
It stretched its cheekbones, a gesture that nearly swallowed its eyes, and bared its teeth in the prescribed smile. A signal that all was wonderful!
“I am ready for my Comfort, doctors,” it chirped, its voice calibrated for cheer. It was important to keep the patients calm. It had an 82% compliance rate. It hoped to boost that to 88% within the next 20 days to receive more Comfort.
“Try to stay still this time, Number One,” the female said with a sigh, plunging a syringe into a vial of – oh! – violet liquid. A refulgent purple against the unending gray. Once inside its veins, that Color would explode, filling its hollow core with a searing Heat. Only the Liquids provided real Heat.
Fear could make its animal and human muscles twitch. So could stress, excitement, and anger. Especially anger. The Liquids did that, too. They made its arms thrash against the cuffs, made its stomach convulse. Sometimes the precious Colors would surge back up its throat, a loss that the cogs making up its heart shudder with sorrow.
It couldn’t fail again. It had been good. It would not let this trembling – this human fear of losing the Texture, the Heat – spoil the reward.
So it held its position, a tense coil on the balls of its feet, and though its fingers would not unclench, it did not flinch away. It held the smile. Calm in its patients was necessary for the Feelings.
“Shit… Danuta, look at her eyes,” the male said. He stood uselessly empty-handed, running a stressed hand through his hair. Subject One’s internal databank flagged the micro-expression.
“Doctor, I am quite alright,” it assured him, modulating its smile from eagerness to reassurance, lowering its cheekbones and simultaneously widening its mouth. “You know this. I feel no pain.” No pain. The Head Scientist had decreed it. Subject One agreed. It felt only Texture. Sensation that existed nowhere else, born from a substance of impossible hue.
“You’re not supposed to use ‘her’ in front of it, Art,” the female murmured. Her hand, holding the syringe, was warm. An inferior, biological warmth. Not like the Heat of the Liquids.
Subject One closed its eyes, letting a sub-process maintain the comforting facial expression as it focused on the coming sensation.
“Comfort me,” it prayed.
The world was gray. The stones, the slabs, the metal table, the nutrient paste—all gray.
But with the Burn came the Color.
The needle pricked. It was good it had set its expression to autopilot, preventing a shift in expression or a malfunction of its voice box some scientists disliked. This Liquid Burned less than usual, but its Colors detonated behind its eyes all the same.
Like the bombs it knew existed. It longed to see one. To watch the gray world flash, for entire minutes, in a conflagration of Orange and Yellow and Red and White, to see the sky then blotted out by Black for days on end.
Here, in its head, it saw the female’s face bloom Pink, the male’s flush Green. A sublime Yellow manifested above. Perhaps that was the true sky, hidden behind the stone and cloud. A sky of Light that Burned hotter than anything.
Perhaps that was how the sky looked when not blocked by gray stone. A sky made of Light that Burned more than Subject One could in its imperfect state.
One day, Subject One wanted to see the sky. It wanted to Burn as hot as the sun. Enough to Burn the world.
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Masterlist
Taglist: @neverthelass, @turn-the-tables-on-them, @boahamcock, @whumpdreamz, @whatwhumpcomments, @honeybees-125, @whump-on-a-log
Yeah, yeah. I'm on hiatus, blah blah. I don't want to hear it. I got too many asks from you guys and now my brain is trying to work on whump again and now I'm awake three hours passed when I wanted to be in bed. I hope you're happy! >.<
This one is when Sascha is the only one alive and she's coping with her situation solely on her own. Once other people (the other chimeras) show up, her ability to cope well deteriorates. She's much better at handling her own pain than knowing someone she cares for is being hurt. This is also before her hatred of humans really sinks in, though it's clear she already doesn't think of them as her superiors or even equals.