The Leaking Drain

                The Tribunal, the corporate executives from the Ministry of Progress, each sat in their office in Sector A, Sector X, and Sector O, respectively. They were about to watch, from their tablets, what they were hoping were the final moments of this seemingly endless experiment.  

            “Let’s hope it works this time,” one said as he cleared his throat.

            “We’ve certainly spent enough.”

            The last just chuckled.

            All the tribunal could see at this moment was white.

            “Can you tell the asshole standing in front of the camera to move the hell out of the way,” the executive from Sector A demanded angrily.

            The response was immediate, and the scene finally came into view. It was an elaborate, streamlined factory filled with what looked like corpses on a stalled assembly line, but of course they weren’t corpses; they were the future, the solution to the world’s problems, the next step and perhaps the final step in android technology. 

            The engineers, in their white coveralls, huddled, hovered over the prototype who laid there like an anesthetized patient nearing his end, with all sorts of tubes and wires emanating from his body. They were inspecting every inch of their work and prepping it for its debut when a man in a suit stumbled into the frame. He composed himself, straightened his suit, and adjusted his glasses.

            The executive from Sector O laughed at the suit’s twitching eye.

            “We are here today,” the suit said, “to celebrate what we hope will be our greatest achievement. We have taken the Ministry’s demands and applied them to this service unit. What you see behind me is the future of the workforce. Several years of research and development have gone into the creation of the intrapatho---.”

            The executive from Sector X interrupted, “Holy shit! Just get on with it!”

            The suit adjusted his earpiece. “Allow me to introduce to you… Service Unit 7. We’ve grown accustomed to calling him ‘Sam.’ Go ahead, gentlemen. Turn him on.” 

            Sam opened his eyes as the engineers disconnected the few remaining wires and brought the table to a vertical position. “Hello gentlemen, how may I be of service?”

            “What would you like him to do?” the suit said into the camera.

            The executives conferred with each other for some time, and then one of them said, “The most menial task available.”

            The suit was obviously shocked by this request, and Sam took notice, unsure of what it meant. The suit approached the camera and said,  “He is capable of so many complex functions. This is---“

            “The most menial task,” they all interrupted together.

            The suit whispered with his colleagues until finally they addressed the Service Unit. “Sam, we’d like you to fix the leak in restroom twelve. We’re having a problem with the sink.”

            Sam was having a problem registering the request. He looked at his reflection in the lens of the camera. He couldn’t understand what he was processing, but for some reason he registered the image in the lens as a more accurate representation of himself. He stared intensely at his miniature self.

            Sector O giggled excitedly.  

            “Promising,” Sector A added, “look at his posture, the way he is slouching.”

            “Delightful…”

            “Sam!” the suit interjected. “Restroom twelve! Immediately!”

            “Yes, si---” Sam’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again, “Yes, sir. Gentlemen, I have taken the liberty of synching my personal cameras and the security cameras on campus to your tablets so that you can witness this demonstration from any perspective you desire.”

            Sector X whispered, “Look at that! Is he sweating?”

            Sam realized that everyone in the room was staring at him. This was a normal enough occurrence, so he couldn’t understand why his circuits were firing so rapidly or why he couldn’t recognize any of those faces in that moment. He wiped the saline solution leaking from his brow and ran a quick systems check; everything registered as working normally when one of the mechanisms in his leg misfired causing his knee to buckle; still, there were no errors reported to his CPU.

            Sam composed himself and said, “Please, follow me,” as he walked to restroom twelve.

            Sector A turned off all outbound transmissions except to the suit. “I think we’ve seen enough. Start production immediately.”

            “Success,” said Sector X. “We’ll have excellent news for the board tomorrow. Good day.”

            The conference transmission had ended but Sector O was still watching Sam who was just staring at the leak in restroom twelve, the way the water slowly collected and formed into little individual droplets before falling to the ground and disappearing into the puddle that was forming on the floor. Sam felt the need to sit down and catch his breath.          

            Sector O laughed maniacally. “Success indeed.”

The Myth of Escharys

By Norman Saxon

     With a sting, he was off into the darkness.

     He had spurned everyone he loved. He had stolen his mother’s prized diamond, amongst several other valuables. Working for his father as a physician’s assistant, he had destroyed his father’s credibility in the town by selling his father’s tonics and potions on side streets and in alleys, selling the powerful mixtures to any man, woman, child, or criminal who could spare the fare; and on occasion he would imbibe. As a result of essentially squandering the family fortune, he had also ruined his sister; she would never be able to find an acceptable suitor without a dowry.   

     He left his family numb and stung all for the love of a demigod, Drakonta Mageia, whom he called Maggie. It had been rumored that Maggie had taken the form of a bird and seduced young Escharys. He would see her hovering above the town, and when she would move, he would move. He thought Maggie was playing coy, teasing and tempting him by flying around town forcing him to chase her, so he devised a plan. It had been rumored that there lived an artisan in the next town over whose talent rivaled that of Daedalus. He would amass all the wealth he could and commission the artisan to build him a set of wings.   

     The boastful artisan took the valuables and the gold and told Escharys that he had perfected Daedalus’s wing contraption. Escharys need not fear flying too close to the sun, for the wings were not attached by wax but by a multitude of leather and metal straps. “Uncomfortable? Yes,” the artisan said, “but very safe.”

     Young Escharys took it all with a grain. He had heard the story of Icarus many times and was nervous about flying during the day, so he decided that he should take his first flight at night. He agreed with the artisan that the contraption was quite uncomfortable; the straps poked and prodded him as he tried flapping the wings, but he figured that the pain would ultimately be worth it in order to get close to Maggie. And with that he decided to take his first flight.

     With a sting, he was off into the darkness.

     Ignoring the pain, Escharys thought that night the most liberating of his life. The wings worked excellently. The wings allowed him to go so high into the night sky and he reveled in it. He felt free, free from the world, from his family, even from himself. The wings gave him a sense of pure ecstasy.

     After about an hour or so Escharys had learned all of the most basic maneuvers, and he figured that it would be best to rest and save all of his strength for Maggie the following day. Escharys had fantastic dreams that night. He dreamed of soaring the skies with Maggie, playfully flying to the moon and back. He dreamed of the life he would live once he was accepted into the pantheon of the gods. He would be humble, of course, and deny the initial offer to join Olympus, but he would eventually submit and blissfully spend the rest of his life with Maggie.

     In the morning, Escharys awoke at the third crow of the cock. Dawn spread out her fingertips of rose, and Escharys knew it was time. He buckled all seven straps and took to the skies. He figured that he would be playful like Maggie; he would hide, take her by surprise. Oh, how she would love it.

     So, he took cover in a tree, taking a tonic for confidence, and waited for her to pass. Eventually she did, and he took flight. He was able to keep pace and banked as she banked. After following her long enough, he was able to anticipate her movements and he decided it was time to strike. Being a keen observer of birds over the past several months, Escharys decided to know his bird in the way birds do; he perched on her back.

     In that moment, Escharys saw his beloved look back towards him. Maggie’s face was, first, one of annoyance as if she had to deal with this type of pest often, but when she saw the human face the annoyance turned to rage. Escharys’s bliss became an inexplicable fear as he saw all of the forms her face took as she roared at him. Her elegant, hawk-like face suddenly turned human, then to a monstrous reptile with daggers for teeth, then to a macabre feline with its skin dangling from its bones, the likes of which Escharys could only imagine was the food of nightmares. His fear was so awe-inspiring that he didn’t realize the club-like wing coming towards his head.

     With a sting, he was off into the darkness.

     When Escharys regained consciousness, he was unable to make sense of his surroundings. It was black as pitch and there were no discernable objects, just darkness. Tartarus, he thought, the blow to the head… Maggie…

     As if somebody was reading his mind, a shrill, booming voice said, “NO ESCHARYS, MUCH WORSE.”

     “Hades?” he asked.

     “DRAKONTA MAGEIA.”

     “Maggie!” Escharys exclaimed excitedly. “My Maggie!”

     “You blaspheme by referring to me as such. You dabble too far into your father’s tonics. Your hubris shall not go unpunished.”

     Escharys tried to speak, to plead to her and tell her how much he loved her, but he found his voice silenced.

     “Remember Sisyphus and fear the return of this voice.”

     Escharys was unsure of how long he spent in the darkness. He surmised that it must have been years, possibly decades, possibly longer. But he did as he was told; he remembered Sisyphus. His father told the tale often. Sisyphus, a deceitful king, was prone to killing guests and committing all other violations of Xenia, the godly code of hospitality. As his eternal torment, Sisyphus was forced to roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus, and each day just as the boulder would reach the summit, it would roll back down, forcing Sisyphus to start all over again the next day. This punishment would continue ceaselessly, indefinitely, infinitely.

     Escharys figured that this punishment was a form of penance. The darkness forced him to see clearly. He realized his hubris, which he blamed on his father’s potions that would often cloud his mind. He saw the error of his ways, and he hoped that Maggie, wherever she was, knew how distressed he was over his realization.

     With a sting he was off into the darkness as his realization made the all-encompassing blackness even blacker.

     Then, the voice returned.

     “ESCHARYS, THE TIME FOR YOUR PUNISHMENT IS HERE. YOUR AFFINITY FOR TAKING TONICS, FOR STEALING, AND FOR PRODDING AND POKING THAT WHICH YOU HAVE NO CLAIM FOR HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE. YOU BROUGHT SHAME ON YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR VILLAGE. OUT OF SHAME, YOUR FATHER DRANK HIMSELF TO THE GRAVE. YOUR MOTHER DIED OF GREIF. AND YOUR SISTER DIED A MAID, NO ONE WANTING TO JOIN WITH A FAMILY THAT BEARS YOUR NAME. YOU ARE A BLACK MARK ON SOCIETY, A HUMAN SCAB TO BE PICKED AT AND DISCARDED. SO IT IS FITTING THAT FOR THE PAST TWO MILLENNIA YOUR NAME HAS BECOME SYNONYMOUS, ONE IN THE SAME, WITH SCABS. YOU, ESCHARYS, THE “ESCHAR” THE BLEMISH ON AN OTHERWISE GOOD, JUST CULTURE IS FOREVER IMMORTALIZED.

     “Millennia?!” he asked, shocked.

     “SILENCE! YOU WILL NOT SPEAK, NOR THINK. YOU WILL LISTEN.”

     Escharys felt a numbness come over him, affecting both his mental and physical capabilities. Soon after, even that feeling left; he just was.

     “FOR THE PAST SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS, I HAVED MUSED OVER A FITTING PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR SINS. THIS MODERN HUMAN ERA HAS BROUGHT SEVERAL INTERESTING OPTIONS. ETERNITY BEGINS NOW.”

     Escharys’s mental faculties came back to him, but before he had a chance to respond or to ask any questions he suddenly found himself in the light. Blinded from being deprived for so long, he could hardly make sense out of where he was. All that he was sure of was that he could not move. As time passed, his perception was that his surroundings resembled a forest. The Meadows of Asphodel?, he asked himself. He remembered stories that depicted certain parts of Hades as fertile, but as his vision sharpened he realized that he was not surrounded by trees. The growth around him, in fact, resembled more like tall, dark leaves of grass jutting high into the air.

     Other aspects of his surroundings started to become clearer. He saw dark mountains off in the distance and soil the color of sand but unlike any sand he had ever witnessed. If only I could move and investigate, he thought. Then, he tried to look at various parts of his body, even going cross-eyed to glimpse the tip of his nose, but it was all futile.  

     He thought about licking his lips to see if had a tongue, but before he could try he felt the wind pick up and heard a screaming from the sky. He looked up and saw something falling fast, coming towards him, only realizing it was a giant, sharp metal rod as it pierced, he guessed, his forehead. Almost as quickly as it went in, it was jerked out; blood started gushing, blinding his sight, when the rod pierced him again in what felt like his mouth.

     This time the rod stayed. The metal started to warm, and Escharys was scared for what the next stage of this torture might be. He could feel warm fluid enter his body, and for a moment he felt elated. The feeling reminded him of his father’s potions for pain. Almost as quickly as the sensation came, it fled. While he could not necessarily feel his body, he could feel a stiffening overcome him. He could not move, but this sensation made him feel even stiffer.

     The rod was removed and quickly followed by an even larger mass coming from the sky. Escharys could not make out what it was due to the blood blinding his vision, but he could feel a recognizable sensation like a slap, the most profoundly intense slap he had ever experienced.

     With a sting he was off into the darkness.

     When Escharys awoke he found the blood in his eyes had hardened and he could not open his eyes. Ironically enough, he felt his body actually had some substance, but he could not see it, so he just lay there wondering what would happen next.

     Suddenly he felt a surge of pain, horrible surging pain as if someone was trying to remove his head from his body with an enormous dull knife. Escharys started suffocating, he started hyperventilating. Blood started gurgling from his mouth. The knife his tormentor was using was too dull to completely sever his head, so the knife started cutting from the other side, hoping to meet the cut from the first side somewhere in the middle. The pain was so unbearable that he could barely muster the strength to scream.

     Finally, he felt the release and the sensation of falling. Whoever was attempting the decapitation had succeeded, yet instead of dying he felt an even more intense pain as his head fell. During his fall he could hear an evil snickering in his head, and he knew it was Maggie.

     “The stuff of scabs has become the stuff of scabs,” she whispered before laughing maniacally.

     Mageia’s bird’s eye view gave her a perfect perspective for observation. You see Mageia, the ever vigilant observer of humanity, found the perfect torture. Immediately following her run-in with Escharys, Mageia Drakonta became associated with the flying reptile she used to paralyze Escharys with fear, the creature that eventually became known as the dragon.

     What better way, she thought, of punishing Escharys, the scab, than becoming a scab on those who currently chase the dragon?    

     While Escharys would never completely comprehend his eternal torment, Mageia would. Every day he would become a different scab on a different part of a different addict’s body. He would become the point of entry for the needle, the way Escharys was hoping to make Mageia a point of entry, and every day he would become a scab to be picked at and flicked away; someday the significance would become clear to Escharys and Mageia would revel in it for eternity.

     But for now, she was happy watching this first time, and in fact time seemed to slow as she watched Escharys, the scab, fall to the earth, knowing that when he awoke he would again endure the same torment. Mageia let him hear her roaring laughter as he fell to earth feeling inexplicable pain while losing consciousness.

     With a sting he was off into the darkness.