For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The Speaker stopped abruptly on the second floor landing. "Ready?" he said, then waved a hand casually toward the door that separated the second floor from the stairwell. For my entire life, the second floor of Miss Becky's building had been the home and workshop of the Boyens family, who specialized in jury-rigged generator maintenance. However, the Boyens' shop did not appear beyond the door. Instead, the doorway led to a dining hall more gilded than Miss Kathryn's but somehow less garish, more ornamented but somehow less ostentatious.
The Speaker extended a thick arm toward the door, and Dr. Farrah entered, followed by Kayle, Billy, and, finally, myself. As the Speaker stepped in behind me, the door snapped shut and I wondered if Miss Becky's building still sat beyond.
"Safe," the Speaker said, clapping his huge palms together with a hollow thump. "Let's talk. And eat!" He gestured at a beautifully carved cherry wood table in the center of the room, which was suddenly laden with all sorts of food, exotic fruits and salads interspersed with comforting bowls of potatoes and corn and chicken and plates piled high with slices of warm bread, with scrambled eggs. "There's your nachos and steak, Billy," he gestured at the table. "The cake will have to wait. Dessert last, once business is done. Strong food for this conversation." He waved his hand again, this time with purpose. The table shuddered. Four silver pots popped up between the piles of food, each surrounded by several china mugs. "And strong coffee."
We stared, dumbfounded, as we took our seats around the table and dug into the food, trying not to think too much about how it had been magicked into being, and focusing instead on how delicious it was. As we dug in, the Speaker reclined in his own chair and watched, not bothering to make a plate for himself. "I may not be able to unmake who I am, what I am. But I can use it to a greater purpose, or, at least, I can try," he said.
"You're a Master," I said, somehow plainly stating the fact, though I still could not reconcile the reality in my own mind.
"A Regressive," the Speaker said, leaning forward slightly, "but, yes. I am."
"And you want to help us," Dr. Farrah said.
"We do. We resist the Masters as vehemently as you, even though, technically, we are them."
"We?" Billy asked through a mouthful of potatoes.
The Speaker closed his eyes, then opened them, smiling somewhat ruefully. "It is about time I told you the whole story. It began four hundred years ago. We left the planet when the cities first began to overflow into the forests and beyond, when the last grassfed animals were finally corralled into metal boxes. We did not expect to survive, but like many before and after us, we hoped that our efforts would allow future generations to thrive in open air.
"So, though we were nowhere near ready to actually found a colony, we launched ourselves into space with that goal in mind. Surely we would die before we reached our destination, but perhaps luck would see us there. Even if we died on the surface, the symbol of the colony's founding--even if that founding is merely our landing--would be enough for some. Some who needed it. And then, we hoped, they would save the rest. Or inspire the rest enough to save themselves. We knew it might be hopeless, but we had to try.
"We never made it, though. The company went bankrupt in the middle of our flight, and our pilot had a breakdown when he heard the news. Apparently he'd only come on the mission to see that his family got paid and, well, they obviously did not. So, he quietly altered course and flew us off into the middle of nothing, then killed himself. It didn't take long to find him, but we were too far off our original course, too low on resources. We had no options left. We were adrift.
"The other researchers and I gathered for an emergency meeting, each putting forth our best suggestions for survival. Cryogenic stasis--written off long before launching and originally presented as a joke--ended up being our choice. And so, we did our absolute best to create some semblance of a stasis chamber, then put it to the test. Once we had killed our handful of lab animals in failed attempts, our youngest researcher, name of Lee, volunteered for the test. Of course we warned him off it, but his argument was sound: he'd die either way, and he preferred this to starvation or suffocation.
"Lee was the first Greyman. Bonded to me. He just, sort of, popped out of existence in front of us and showed up inside my mind. All of his memories, thoughts, feelings--I had it all inside of me. And, when I went to sleep that night, he stood before me in my dreams.
"But he did not know who Lee was; he did not have his memories any longer. I did.
"Ashamed of what I had taken from him, I tried to give it back, but I only managed to smush his face into a pile of mush. When I tried to fix it, I made it worse. His skin fell from him in hunks and folds, cascading over his limbs until they became indistinct. He was a blob, the color slowly draining from him. I stopped touching him, and he stopped falling apart, but he never went back together again. Never remembered himself.
"I told the others, explained that the stasis was a total failure. They thought I had gone crazy, like the pilot. Thought I was dangerous. They locked me up and continued their experiments. Each day, another person's self invaded my mind. Each night, they joined my horde.
"Soon, they had all died in the failed experiment, all joined me. Riddled with guilt, I could not stand to see their faces in my mind, so I smooshed them each as I had Lee.And, as the life support systems failed, I found that they lended me strength and kept me alive. I stepped out through the airlock and navigated the empty space, this way and that with my horde to guide me.
"I found my way home, got a new identity, married a woman, and had children. No one knew what I was or what I'd been through. My horde was my secret, my powers went unused.
"But my children inherited... something. When they got angry or sad or scared, things did not happen as they should. I tried to hide their problems from their mother, but she discovered them, of course, and denounced me as a monster for what I'd hidden. Scared she would take them from me, I stole my children and took them to back to space, to the place the colony would have been.
"We lived there for a time, until my oldest began to ask questions about the home she remembered. Finally, I agreed to take them to Earth and they agreed to behave. So, we came back. And the children went wild, taking and taking. They had fifty Greymen each by the time they were done.
"We couldn't stay, obviously. So, back to our colony. But it wasn't far enough. My children returned to Earth again and again, and took more power, even having children of their own. I rounded up the Masters, my family, such as we were, and took us far, far away.
"But the others never forgot their home. They sent Dawn. I had to follow. I had to stop them. I had to try."
"And you failed," Dr. Farrah said, not cruelly. "The First Big Sleep came, your children expanded their ranks and their own families, eradicating our way of life, our population. The Second followed. You could never have known what your actions would cause, neither could you stop it."
The Speaker splayed his hands before himself. "I'm sorry. It was out of my control."
"Exactly," Dr. Farrah said. "Why should we believe that now, when your family has gained the power of the billions of Greymen that they have taken, you'll suddenly be able to stop them? Why should we believe anything you say after you've lied to us all for so long?"
The Speaker frowned, but the rest of us leaned forward, waiting for his answer. "On my own, I have kept your city safe from the dangers that roam the Wilds for thirty years. And now, I am no longer alone."
Kayle laughed sarcastically. "Oh, please. There are," she glanced around the table, "five of us. We're human. Or were you planning on making us part of your horde, too?"
"Of course not," the Speaker said. "But I have found members of my family who, like me, reject the idea that more power justifies the enslavement of our own people. We are the Regressives and we are going to save you."
If you enjoyed this chapter, let me know by clicking the vote button, leaving a comment, or reviewing "The Big Sleep (The Masters)" on Goodreads! Thanks for reading.
