Tantalus of Eden
Vincent Santino Smarra
The first time I died was probably because of old age. At least, I think it was. Long time ago. Doesn’t matter now. It’s unrelated. Irrelevant.
I was sent up to space to figure out the best way for a human to be brought back to life. I spend my time plugged into the ship’s computer, some A.I., which, as it drives on the loop to distant star and back, also records my brain activity so that a copy of me can be recreated when body inevitably fails me. I’ve been reborn more times than years I was initially alive. And thanks to the digital memory banks, I haven’t forgotten a thing. I know now, just as I did then, how important my mission is, that the data gathered here is imperative to humanity’s continued existence. Getting to another planet and surviving the trip is the species’ only real chance, given the state of everything from the environment to worldwide politics, at anything resembling a livable future.
The utilitarian side of me is happy about that. That’s it. I’m no masochist. It’s no fun being tortured. Back home I’d crafted a luxurious life, not to anyone else’s standards, but always my own, and the sharp contrast of that comfort, still so close and vivid in pixel-perfect memory, is difficult to reconcile with my current, prisoner-like situation. Temporal distance, the passage of time, that which we take for granted simply by living, the natural separation of things no longer exists for me.
Sure, there is a countdown, artificial numbers in my mind, that, to watch, would suggest
I’ve never been distanced from what I miss, especially as they’re encroaching zeros, but I remember, see now, the clock starting there, how it ticked up to that number I wouldn’t even try to pronounce, it’s all muddled so to say it means anything is—
- total loss of distinction. I feel like a ripple in still water where a stone might’ve been thrown. Inside of liquid. Sinking through timelessness, a picture, added to, expanding while remaining the same; any change is no change at all—
—darkness. My eyes are shut. There’s no need to open them, it’s enough to know I have them again. The feeling of being shut off, perception, even in the negative, is verification of my somatic reincarnation.
Starting life with a brain is a mistake.
Yes, I’m fine. Now. Before I got used to it, though, thoughts like I’d just had, where definition unravels and its strings tangle each other and me into a Gordian knot, only mortality’s blade could separate. It took a few lifetimes paralyzed in that nether-realm of the subconscious confusion that permeates my pseudo-immortality like primordial ooze. Escape was only possible through evolution. I had to die die die and die again, waiting, each time, for my body to atrophy out as feeding breathing and bathroom tubes took care of physical function. The solution seems to be a matter of eventuality more than an intelligent design.
My body has been made heavy. Wired in as I am there’s no moving to see it but I feel it, an uneven dispersal mainly concentrated in my lungs. Every breath is a painful shift in my chest. Illusion, delusion, it’s all glass, shattered by the hammer of pain. In the suffocating hot of the cockpit from which I never remember moving (disposal of flesh happening outside of my consciousness has turned the space into an eternal hell, red lighting and all) the sweat that catches in the folds of flesh, once taut, before steaming and the smell of my slightly cooked self combined with the not-quite-bloodlike but still metallic tang of my own juice; all my senses register disgust past a point that’d be possible to ignore. And that might not even be so bad if I wasn’t restrained, but I am, with less allowance to move than some idiot dog on a chain that’s wrapped around the only tree in the yard.
I have a million fixes in mind. From the moment I left I recorded every suggestion onto a list. It’s a habit born of righteousness. As the first human being revived by A.I., my feedback is set to determine the experience of an effectively infinite amount of others. It’s almost unthinkable, the amount of influence afforded to someone like me because who am I, really?
Once, I felt the center of a personal universe. Now I am the center of an algorithm. Still, I am human, still, for as long as the list exists, I can help fix this.
The numbers hit zero. It’s no dream as the normally nightmarish environment I’ve existed in turns serene, red lights to green, hellish heat intensifying for a second only to recede and I can breathe easy, for once, as the screen on the computer reads ‘successful atmospheric entry’. Restrains finally do me a favor, fight gravity on the ship’s shift to a vertical orientation, cut into my flesh but keep me from falling.
Still hooked to the ship’s interface, I mentally dismiss the ‘welcome home’ message to
send my list but am met with the message ‘no Internet access’. No matter. I make it print.
Paper slides out from machinery, accordion-folding onto itself; I know it won’t stop soon. All that’s left for me to do is detach, but despite my perfect memory and all the prep, there’s nothing, not even a hint of anyone going over it with me. The best way to squirm out of the restraints would be—the thought is interrupted by the bindings withdrawal, sudden tape-measure snap into depths of seat. I smell smoke, probably from where they’d dug into my shoulders then dragged, like a match, across my skin, but nothing hurts.
Or if it does I’m not thinking about it—not as my throat is pulled out from inside of my mouth. Still, I breathe. The tube that’d done that for me, now hanging like a limp, timid test noodle, perfectly pulled from pot, still dripping, is followed by a thinner colleague, paste on the inside color of uncooked spaghetti. My mouth, having hung open for multiple lifetimes, won’t shut at a simple command. I have to focus to get it closed, and to keep it there requires maintaining an uncomfortable tension—
FLP—Another tube, caked with waste, hangs in front of me, I smell shit but ignore it; the printer flicked out the final sheet of paper, my list is only a reach away—‘SYSTEM DISENGAGED’—the bottom drops out of the ship, the metal plate hits a hill that I, along with everything else that isn’t bolted down, roll down, and I’m struck by a memory of doing this for fun as a child, keeping my eyes open during the rotation, drinking in every second of the shifting worldview and then hopping up, practically drunk, definitely happy, still spinning - now is different though, my body moves faster, no bounce or control just more speed and the rotation, increased as well - sickening. I shut my eyes, let momentum carry me until—
I awake, and having crashed into the tree at that velocity, am surprised I haven’t died. Pain, as I’ve been trained, usually means things are over for me and everything hurts. But I’m alive. Open my eyes and see, for what feels like the first time, a sky above me. Space is infinite. Directionless. Timeless. Here, orientation makes sense; I can trust what my senses tell me.
Like that I’m hungry. And that wherever I rolled, I’d smacked into an apple tree because conveniently, a clearly fresh from branch red delicious sits in front of me. There’s even a nearby pond to wash down the sweetness. Beneath the shadow of trees, with food and drink in front of me, for a moment it’s pure. Peace.
I reach for the fruit but it’s too far? I can’t even believe what I see to be part of me—skeletal appendage, more like an efficient part of an ivory-laden machine than any flesh of mine. Sure, I was skinny and white but what I’m looking at is translucent and infinitesimal, impossible for a human but it’s mine, responding as a hand should, albeit weakly.
Worming towards the food (my legs aren’t working either and I’m not looking back to figure out why) with whole body folds, I arrive after enough time for the sun to have shifted the shadow coverage into a porous pattern. I lower my head to take a bite but can’t do that—not without teeth. I prod around my mouth with tongue. It’s nothing but gums, soft little recesses that greedily accept the attention and, once it’s stopped, scream with sensitive pain that they were touched then left alone.
Now I do look back at my legs. Except I only have one, and it’s not really a leg so much as it is a fin, and it’s not really a fin so much as it is a chair-shaped sack of flesh, a perfect fit for when I’d been sitting in the ship. The biggest bend I can manage in my knees does nothing but lightly crease the surrounding fleshbag. My toes, arranged opposite each other, means my legs are permanently stuck, splayed, but understanding that, I’m at least able to rock onto my side and use the bend to push forward more effectively.
At the pond. My reflection is a mockery of humanity. Some type of cruel joke. My hair is gone. Face rounded out like definition is a sin. And instead of a chin—sphincter with black bits—the explanation for the so very persistent smell of shit. The A.I. was too efficient. I’ve been brought back perfect—perfect for the ship, not this.
The apple is still next to me. Using my everything I hold it in place and nub free a chunk of its flesh, and the taste, while nostalgic, immediately makes me sick. I swallow it anyways and I spasm, the movement vitriolic as I feel, my body mutinies against the substance, forcing an expulsing from my mouth and chincter, a continuous projectile spray, light, bile greenish yellow, that sits on the grass it hits thickly, without dripping down. The slime also catches the light of the setting sun, shining it directly onto me, and like I’m back on the ship I smell burning except I see my flesh curling and feel the pain.
Writhing, still clutching the apple, my spastic movements slide me on the slime that stretches toward trees from me and I end up beneath them, delivered, like sediment from tributary into a lake of puke yet despite the disgusting odor and nonsensically chunky smooth consistency it is also safety, in the shadows created by the still rising but momentarily paused sun, the burning stops.
I’ve been made allergic to light. Why not, right? Not like there was any reason for protective pigmentation on the ship. It’d been taken away, same as my legs and face. All that’s left of me is efficiency for a situation that no longer exists. No one is anywhere to be found and my body, mutated uselessly, is an anachronism from a futuristic past. I no longer belong on this planet. Everything that maintains life harms me.
Then, what to do? Suicide, after living so many lives, seems too mythologized a fate for someone—a monster like me. Too poetic. Too eternal, like I’m trying to preserve a legacy with some single, momentous act. It’s too human.
Whatever I am now wants to flee.
My mouth is around the apple, sickly sweet juice from the already exposed bit mixing with spit that keeps coming. I chew. Taste blood, too, and it makes keeping down the violence in my stomach way harder but still I chew, eat, gag, continue until I’ve reached the apple’s core and I can’t take anymore so I spew, more goo comes out but instead of suffering through it I move, it’s a path I’m forming for myself, to the hill which I’d fallen down, I continuously throw-up and inch forward, both hands clawing uncovered grass between moves so I don’t slide but it’s hard and the uncovered sun, burning my back, has made it through me to spine, I see the ship, feel the sear, hear a FLOOMPH of sudden flame and I’m engulfed—my scream, so close to the ship, activates an emergency entry ladder that extends from the ship with my list (must’ve been printed onto there), right to me and a final fold dumps the papers onto the fire, everything burns voraciously—
Wild dogs, not quite wolves but on their way back, approach a pile of cooked meat. Tails wagging, they feast.
Vincent Santino Smarra
wishes he didn't have to explain who he was, but the man has bad luck with lamps. No genies, just light for his pen and paper. This story is from his latest book, General Eyes and the Miseducated Militia. He also has illuminated nonsense published by Edge of Humanity, Neologism Poetry, and more upcoming with Clockwise Cat. Find more of his writing at VincentSantino.Com.