Project Aspire

Chapter 39 - Amanda (Written by Taran Matharu)

I looked upon the face of creation and saw humanity reflected. Tiamat stood as tall as a giant, a herculean figure of perfect musculature and symmetry, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man incarnate. His face was extraordinarily perfect, a divine countenance that would put Helen of Troy to shame. Strangely, it was a sexless face, androgynous to the point of confusion, yet strangely beautiful. Only his skin marked him as alien, as pale and smooth as marble.

Tiamat was a living statue, complete with the sexless groin of an action figurine. It reminded me of Pope Innocent X, chiseling the phalluses from the statues of the Vatican to protect his clergy’s eyes from sinful temptation.

 His eyes were insipid blue, watery and pale like arctic ice. They bore into my very soul, and I felt naked under his gaze. In one, quick motion, he took Cole’s neck in a perfectly formed hand, gripping it as delicately as a wine flute. He tilted Cole’s head this way and that, examining him closely.

“Marduk chose his messengers poorly,” he sang, releasing Cole. For it was singing, there could be no other word for it.

The voice was lilting and smooth, moving with melodically timbre from one perfectly intone word to the next. It was strangely mechanical, like a computerized voice, yet pure and pleasant to the ear.

“I am no messenger. Marduk is dead. I speak for humanity,” I replied, struggling to keep eye contact as he turned his gaze onto me once again.

He was silent. For a moment, I saw his face flicker. An image of my mother. Dr Sneed. Ray.

“Get out of my head,” I snarled, shaking my skull as if I could dislodge his mental hooks. He smiled in a rictus and I felt him withdraw. He was playing with me.

 “Marduk is alive,” he uttered, pointing a long finger at the ceiling above. “We are immortals, he and I. He walks among you, guiding, protecting. He has lived a million lives, changing his face when it suits him. Lurking in the shadows. Plotting against me.”

“And you do the same!” I accused, motioning behind me. “Gathering your army to slaughter my people.” 

“His people,” Tiamat replied. He turned and walked away from us. Only then did I take in the room. It was a cockpit, not dissimilar from the one on the Aspire. In fact, it seemed altogether more primitive, no touch screens or displays, only switches and dials. Tiamat sat in the chair, looking out into the sea of green forest below him.

 “I’ll distract him, see if you can get behind,” Eric whispered out of the corner of his mouth. It was barely audible, in fact I would never had heard it if I hadn’t been standing directly in front of him.

“I would not do that, Eric.” Tiamat said, swiveling in his chair and steepling his fingers. “It did not work for your father and it will not work for you.”

“You…you knew my father?” Eric asked. I could see his fists clenching.

 “I killed your father.” Tiamat replied matter-of-factly.  “Of course, he knew of the bad blood between my brother and I. But he never understood why Marduk sent him. I can see in your minds that you do not either. 

My heart fell. Of course he could read our minds. He would never have been able to control the hordes of mindless creatures without some form of it. I had thought it was a combination of pheromones and religious zealotry. 

“Not all biological phenomena exist on Earth,” Tiamat said. I could feel him, rummaging through my mind, plucking memories out like a child through a toy box. How could I convince him of anything, if he already knew all that I did? Even as the thought crossed my mind, he grinned like a shark, and I knew he had heard it.