Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [16]
Tekton watched the model flower into a replica of a section of space. Fiery anti-gravity reactions formed in the shape of a rectangle.
‘A Neo-Brutalist Aedicule.’ Ra smiled with satisfaction.
‘You mean a doorway,’ snorted Tekton.
‘But in space, Tekton. And what is behind a doorway? Have you thought of that?’ For the first time Ra looked at Tekton’s face. His eyes were segmented. The pink had disappeared. ‘No, you wouldn’t have. Fine as your designs are, you have such a grounded imagination,’ he added. ‘Earthly.’ Ra snapped the cube shut and stood, his robe still firmly closed. ‘Goodbye, cousin. I imagine you will be having transformation tomorrow. Perhaps it might affect your imagination for the better.’
A Geneer and a Dieter seated at the bar watched with bright intentness as Ra left. Even the uuli on the hum everted its flange in interest.
Tekton put his robe back on and, without speaking to any of them, returned to his quarters and lay on his bed in a fury. He let rage swamp him, indulging in its comforting aftermath of righteousness. Ra had always been impossible but now his cousin’s competitive instincts bordered on psychopathy. Does Sole Entity monitor such deviations from the psychological norm? he wondered.
With no audience for further discussion other than himself, his anger drained into fatigue.
Tekton sank into a bath of emulsifier, instructing the moud to play the welcome message. The President of OLOSS, dressed in egalitarian fatigues and with an elaborate dress ring threaded through his ear web, appeared in place of the Selenat waterfall.
‘ArchiTect Tekton, please be welcomed to Belle-Monde. You have been selected to trial your suitability to study under the wondrous Entity known to the sentient species as Sole. Should you be successful you will remain under the Entity’s tutelage until either it or you seeks to relinquish your contract. All we ask is that you submit to regular evaluations and monitoring by our trained staff. . .’
Tekton drifted off as the President’s welcome was replaced with a monotonous disclaimer. Eventually he grunted at the moud to silence the film.
His final thought before sleep claimed him concerned the uselessness of a mind that had to shut down regularly to recharge and rearrange. He resolved in his last wakeful seconds that this would be his first request to Sole: sleeplessness.
How else would he stand a chance of inhibiting Ra’s ascendancy?
* * * *
Tekton’s shafting occurred precisely at 0817 hours in a room referred to by the livery as the Arena. The Arena was the only building on the surface of the pseudo-world, aside from the landing dock. The thick, transparent amphitheatre walls gave a clear and altogether uncomfortable view into the dark space where the Entity resided.
The humanesque technician, a Balol matron with thick skin ruffles around her neck and wrists, instructed Tekton to record another disclaimer specifically for the reconfiguration. She then directed him to climb inside a slim, tall container.
Tekton found Balols on the whole irritating and often odorous, but comforting in their attention to detail. This one’s thick ruffles suggested her seniority so he complied with her request.
As she secured the container’s cover, a waft from her inactive skin folds became trapped inside with him. He sat straight-backed and concentrated on controlling his gag reflex. It would never do to regurgitate. Imagine the repercussions.
At first nothing happened. He stared through transparent barriers into space beyond and waited.
Then he lost any semblance of cognition.
Afterwards Tekton likened the physical experience to having his brain violently sucked out through a tiny hole in the top of his skull and syphoned back through a straw.
As the pressure of the reconfiguration process built, the greater became his fear that the arrangement and order of his mind would be irrevocably lost. He experienced long, intense moments of sheer animal panic in which his subconscious survival instincts urged him to flee.
As he regained consciousness