The Basilisk's Mouth

10: UNEARTHING THE ROOT

 I've just put you through a long period of time in Johann's mind, for which I can only apologise. It's not a healthy place to be.

 I think, now that we're much closer to the end of the tale, we deserve a break. Allow me to reappear before this story reaches its unsavoury conclusion, and give you some more of my perspective instead.

 You might be wondering where my relevance is in this story. Why am I even here? What right do I have to dictate how Johann is being described, to claim to want the best for him, when I have no interaction with him at all?

 The truth is, my lack of agency has less to do with me, and more with the boy himself. As you've seen, I've made every effort to connect with him in the past, to no avail. And this isn't the way it has to be. He likes to pretend he doesn't, but Johann knows I am here. Like everything he prefers to forget, he's buried this awareness so deep that nothing can reach it.

 I was first discovered when he was merely seven years old. To set the scene; imagine the rough surface of an ugly carpet tickling the spaces between his toes. Picture a patch of golden sunlight, the kind you see on the front of a cereal box. His head was swimming in the fragrance of garlic wafting through from the pan sizzling in the kitchen. It would have been a beautiful morning if the television hadn't been screaming war propaganda at him.

 It was all just beginning, back then. The stench of war had been lying thick over the world for years before that point, but the United States had finally made their move. The ideal location for the Elevator would be along the equator, preferably near a developed country where they could situate ground control and educate their scientists. I won't bore you with the politics, but Brazil had already been the target of significant suspicion due to the various surveillance scandals using brand new and as-yet unregulated AI technology, and the States were itching for a reason, no matter how flimsy, to stamp them down.

 It was only their right, you understand. They were becoming an empire. All land was either theirs already, or ripe for the taking.

 we are facing an unprecedented roadblock in the path to enlightenment and expanding humanity's outreach to the solar system and beyond

 Johann looked up from the tablet lying discarded between his legs and up at the TV. His English was still incomplete, but after being bombarded with it by advertisements and the media, anyone can get used to anything. In any case, anger transcends language.

 find your place in history

 Help our brothers overseas and muddy boots stamping through a field, the grass, tattered dandelions and daisies, beaten down to pulp.

 His nails dug into his palms. He didn't know why he was so afraid. He didn't know what he had just seen. The next advert came on, a woman with glowing skin gliding the new Dyson DC99X now with SmartAuto-Pilot over a pristine carpet, and his mother's hoarse voice barked Frühstück from the kitchen. The world kept spinning, but he was left on that carpet, mouth slightly agape, his abandoned tablet screaming GAME OVER from under his hands, still reeling from a blow he didn't realise had hit.

 And that was when he felt me.

 I was very different back then, different from how you see me now. Less ...sentient. Childhood is a busy time, you understand. You might have heard the saying that a child's mind is like a sponge, and I can testify that it's exactly true. The soil will swallow anything that comes close to touching it. It takes in the merest pattern of faces on a TV screen, the words people speak a little quieter than the rest, and regards every action of a parent as gospel. That's a lot of work for just one shovel. In fact, there wasn't much time for me to do anything but work, nevermind reflect or philosophise, as I have the luxury of doing now. I was creating a person. The easy parts came later, when I got to put my feet up and face the monstrosity that grew from the soil.

 It's for this reason I can forgive the fear he felt when he first saw me. I wasn't a pretty sight. I was still brusque, untrained in civility or selection. There were a lot of things I planted then that I would think twice about now. I present myself as a gardener to you, to put my job into understandable language. But if I were to describe what Johann saw that day, I would say I seemed closer to a butcher.

 I teared open his consciousness with a bloody hatchet, dead eyes staring mindlessly at the firing neurons and tearing nerves. I took the marching soldiers, the solemn voice chanting propaganda, and I packed it inside his grey matter. Stuffing his prefrontal cortex to the brim, filling his amygdala with poison. Deeper and deeper I cut, opening his brain to the stem, filling it with venom and leaving festering wounds in my wake. Wiping the blood from my face, stopping for a breath, before lifting the hatchet over my head and splitting him open again.

 It's not an accurate image. Even when he was still a child, my work was subtler than sheer butchery. It requires finesse; you can't just go stuffing any old memory into a mind wholesale. Every memory, every influence, splits into a thousand little pieces and implants itself into different parts of the brain like shrapnel. Or, as I prefer to describe it, like seeds. Seeds scattered on many plots, adjacent but never touching.

 Accurate or not, this is what Johann saw. And I saw myself through his eyes, frowning at the blood, the carnage, the grey matter clotting the space under my nails. He saw a stranger brutalising his mind. I saw a killer wearing my own skin. Suffice it to say, we both panicked. I threw the shovel from my hand, or the axe; I couldn't tell which it was anymore. The panic crowded every corner of his mind, and I had never seen emotions before this point, but his fear was so strong now I couldn't look away from it. A deep pulsing purple, shooting through his mind. I dropped to my knees and tried to cover myself from it. It thickened around me like tar, dragging at my body and threatening to drown me. I kept my head covered until it was gone, receding from my feet with a sulky pop. I opened my eyes to a mind that would never be the same again.

 There was nothing concrete that had changed; fear never leaves much of an obvious trace. The most I could feel was a chill that hadn't been there before. A curtain had been drawn, I understood. A deep sky had formed over my head, and I was aware of the garden for the first time. It was vast, but contained, the air stale. He had trapped me somewhere he never intended to visit, cut me off from the rest of the world. I was left with his memory of me, the monster I had appeared to be, cupped in the palm of my hand. A little pile of bitter black seeds.

 I could have done anything with them. I could have tried to change them, maybe even make him remember me differently. Instead, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I picked up the shovel and dug out a hole.

 I've been here ever since, planting the seeds and digging up the trees that sprout from their resting place. An endless loop, gradually edging towards a story.

 You know where it ends. Let's just get straight to the point.