Deus Ex Machina

DISCLAIMER: CONTAINS GORE AND MILD LANGUAGE

This is a first. I usually know which terminal to head to, especially at the Philadelphia International Airport. This time however, I’m supposed to sit on the third bench from the left, between Concourse B and Concourse C, until ‘prompted’. Not ambiguous at all.

I sit on the bench and crossed my legs. As soon as I do, the same question that’s been haunting me for two weeks resurfaced. What am I supposed to write?

As always, I don’t have an answer.

I wait silently, for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. Now what?

As if someone heard me, an airport buggy stopped in front of my bench. The attendant greeted me with a nod, so I nodded back. He didn’t leave, and seems to be waiting for me. Is this the prompt? I got on the back, and almost immediately, he handed me a pair of sunglasses.

“Put them on,” he said, without looking back. Judging from the frame, he has on the same pair. A golden elephant is etched on each side. I do as I’m told.

“I can’t see.”

“Good,” he replied, curtly.

*****

“Don’t,” a deep voice suddenly warned. I had my hand on the sunglasses. It’s instinctive, upon seeing pitch black even after opening your eyes.

“I’m in a truck?” I asked. My hands moved around my body, feeling the bulges that should have been my phone, wallet and other things you keep in your pockets. The truck shook. Hey, I answered my question. It’s obvious I’m sitting sideways, judging from the way our bodies waved with the motion.

“That’s right, sunshine,” another voice answered.

“What about the flight?”

“What flight?” A third voice responded, before laughter boomed.

When we arrived, at least two hours must have passed. A different trooper approached me. He sounded gentle, as he helped me off the vehicle.

We walked a little, before getting on another buggy. I dreaded a little, fearing that I’d be drugged again. Yes, I remember now. There’s no way I would pass out that easily. I mean, I beat Derek at any drinking game, and Derek went to hospital once for alcohol poisoning.

Thankfully, it was a short drive. I stepped forward after getting off, when a pair of hands stopped me.

“Mr. Bilal!” An amicable voice said. He took my sunglasses off. It was bright, almost disorienting, but his particular face pulled my focus from the light. “I’m so sorry for this uh, formality. I’m afraid it’s simply non-negotiable, considering the nature of our work.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. I took out my phone, and saw that it’s been 10 hours since I got to the airport, yesterday.

“Well, if you would step this way,” he ushered me. “I’m Dr. Steiner, by the way. Hugo Steiner. We spoke on the phone?”

“Yes, of course, Dr. Steiner.” I shook his hand. I try to remember the things we talked about, but the scene is too distracting.

How anticlimactic. This is an office. There’s a reception, a copier machine, a water cooler by the elevator, and a vending machine!

The biggest question I have however, is why there is a man in a gorilla suit making waffles in the corner!?

Dr. Steiner chuckled. “That’s just something we learned from a popular TV show. You can tell anyone you want, they’d never believe you,” he said with a grin.

Why did you have to drug me then?

He walked ahead, leaving that question in my head. I started walking too, escorted by a couple of soldiers.

 “Can I ask something? Why me? You could have better writers. Why did you ask for me?”

I didn’t see his face, but from his gait, I imagined he was smiling.

“Because of your article, all those years ago. About the afterlife. Remember?”

How could I not? It was one of the first few articles I wrote after being fired as a customer service agent. I had told a customer to fornicate with themselves, which, in hindsight, was probably unacceptable. But hey, he called my mom a whore.

That article, was for a small magazine that targets an even smaller Muslim community in the UK back in the 2010s. ‘The Afterlife: What to Pack for the Ultimate Journey?’ They loved it. It pretty much established my writing career, and later journalism.

 “I was especially captivated by the line, ‘our vessels may perish, but our souls persevere.’ Remember?”

I remember feeling ominous, but brushed it off.

Before I could answer, I was greeted by the sight of a humongous machine that takes up nearly, if not all, of the big, circular room. The first thing one would see is the engine-like structure that’s connected to a plethora of wires and cables. The structure reaches all the way to the ceiling. There are scientists working on consoles on its sides, on the second floor. They seem to be calibrating, as their gaze switches from the console to the laptops in their hands, alternatively.

“Behold, the soul machine!” Dr. Steiner announced, as if presenting fire to man.

I lifted my camera to my eye level unenthusiastically, and Dr. Steiner must have noticed, judging by his look.

“You fool! Explain properly!” A voice boomed.

The owner of the voice descends the stairs, dramatically. He approaches us, slowly.

“This machine analyzes the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation that the human souls emit, and captures it!” a tall, cold looking man in thick, round glasses said. He looks a lot younger than Dr. Steiner. “Step on the plate.”

I do as I’m told. The machine beeped.

“See?” He said, as if proving something.

I smiled, politely. It may have seemed fake, evident by the way Dr. Steiner hurriedly stepped in. “Maybe it’s better if we just show him?” His remark was met with a knuckle to his bald head, by none other than his colleague.

“I was going to!” The tall scientist exclaimed, exasperatedly.

“Dr. Adler!” A female voice yelled.

A woman in a lab coat rushed to check on Dr. Steiner, who kept muttering “It’s fine” with a smile.

“He’s fine! Go show him the test subjects, Steiner!” Adler ordered.

“Dr. Adler!” The female staff barked. “You’re the assistant!”

It was quiet for a few seconds. It’s awkward. I wanted to leave.

He finally relented, and scampered. I follow. We all do.

Here, there are paths that lead to different parts of the laboratory. We took the second path from the left of the machine. At the end is a smaller room lined on each side with MRI machines. There are people in them, hooked to a second machine that I don’t recognize. More staff in lab coats monitor them and the machines.

“They’re experiencing the souls we’ve recorded,” the female staff suddenly said from behind me. I turned to her. “I’m Dr. Farrah, by the way,” she added, extending her hand.

I shook it.

I took my phone out, and got my stylus ready. “How does the machine differentiate a soul’s wavelength from other wavelengths?” I asked.

“There is a scripture…” Dr. Steiner was about to say.

“A lore!” Dr. Adler interjected, his voice raised.

“Dr. Saul Adler! Please behave, or I will take away your UV light machine for your light interference experiment!” Dr. Farrah scowled, and it worked, as he’s left stunned.

Dr. Farrah started explaining with a sigh. “We found a scripture about a god who is said to ‘blow’ souls into humans, giving them life. That gave us a hint that the soul’s wavelength can only be detected at a certain temperature.”

“Thermal radiation,” Dr. Adler added.

Dr. Farrah smiled, genuinely at him. “Yes, thank you, Saul. We need a machine that can detect objects at extremely cold temperatures. Do you know what the lowest temperature on earth is?”

I shook my head.

“-89.2°C, or -128.6°F for you Americans. We need to achieve a temperature nearly ten times colder,” Dr. Farrah answered.

I finish writing that piece of information down. “And can you explain how your machine achieves that?”

“Sure,” Dr. Farrah said. “You got two days?” she said, followed by laughter from her colleagues. The staff in the distance snickered, too.

“I’m kidding. It’ll take too much time, and it isn’t what’s important now.”

We approached the MRI machines, and gazed on the nearest test subject. She seems unconscious, though from the machines she’s connected to, we can see her pulse and heart rates. The scientists focus on the screen above the machine.

“This shows us their brain activity. They’re feeling what the recorded soul is experiencing.”

“Okay, it’s one thing to be able to detect souls, but to actually experience what they’re feeling? That’s…”

“That’s the beauty of it!” Dr. Farrah continued. “All we needed to do was find the wavelength that souls emit! Once we do that, it’s like we’re touching the souls! Our machine is able to calculate the speed and the frequency of the wave, which can be translated roughly, mind you, into a sort of experience.”

I try to jot down as much as I can, but all this sounds a bit too ‘Inception’ to me.

I stared at the screen, but can’t make heads or tails of it.

Dr. Farrah pulled up a different interface on the screen, showing a scan of the subject’s brain, from bird’s eye view. “See these highlighted parts? They’re the parts of the brain that’re stimulated, when a person is experiencing pain.”

That stopped the stroke of my stylus. “She’s in pain?”

“Tiny bit. This machine allows us to limit the experience, so the test subject won’t be harmed. You know, too much,” Steiner said, trailing off at the end.

“Our subjects are mostly convicts, and lifers who volunteered. Mostly,” Farrah murmured.

I gave them a surprised look, without saying anything.

 “This is much milder than what our first subjects experienced,” Adler added.

The other two scientists looked grim.

“Come with me,” Dr. Adler instructed, and began heading further in.

I didn’t see it before, but there’s another path at the end of the room which leads to a much smaller room. Other than some seats, the rest of the room is covered with consoles. Dr. Adler begins fiddling with them, which lit up the glass screen in front of us.

“We didn’t know what to expect, so when we obtained the data, we foolishly processed it, raw, on a live subject. This subject experienced the soul of a dead atheist, and this is his reaction,” Adler elaborated, before pressing a button.

What followed may be the most gruesome scene ever etched to my mind, despite being censored. I could tell. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, even before the recording played.

A man screams at the top of his lungs, to make it stop, claiming his skin is being pulled apart by hooks. It's not, of course. He collides his head against the walls, running first to ensure critical hits. When they didn’t stop, or stop quickly enough, since the recording’s duration is only 38 seconds, the subject began smashing his ears into any pointy objects he could find. There were few, and since that didn’t work, the subject started clawing at his eyes. Staff poured into the room when I looked away, but from what I saw, they were too late.

“The subject survived,” Steiner added, with a smile. “There has been no casualties.”

“What the hell is this!?” I questioned as soon as my stomach stopped churning.

“The subject experienced a tortured soul,” Adler stated, cold. "Now watch this." Adler pressed another button. “This subject experienced the soul of a child who died at 2 years old.”

I instinctively looked away, but still saw some.

If the first video was a complete portrayal of agony, the second one is of complete bliss. In a way that cannot be put into words, the subject is extremely happy.

I finally lay my eyes on the screen. The adult male subject is clearly in a heaven of his own. Which is simply mind-blowing, as he has also clearly lost his sanity; he’s soiling his clothes, in more ways than one, and he keeps licking the floor, claiming it’s a river of honey.

 “An untainted soul… Children go straight to…” I muttered, unexpectedly.

“Precisely!” Dr. Steiner exclaimed.

I took a deep breath, to regain, or retain any composure. “These souls you recorded, how many do you have?”

“We have… enough,” Farrah said.

“And how did you…?”

Farrah looked away.

“We defile graves,” Steiner said with a voice so stern, I never knew he had it in him. “No two ways about it.”

“It’s not exactly defiling!” Farrah said, pushing Steiner aside. “We inject a thick rod into the soil, deep enough so we can deliver our remote-controlled drone close to the corpse. Once there, it’ll detect the wavelengths, and it just needs to stay long enough for a discernable pattern to be recorded before we retrieve it. No one was defiled!”

I sense that Adler has been staring at me. “You’re sharp, aren’t you Bilal? You understand.”

I looked away.

“99% of the human body is made of known atoms, but the remaining 1% cannot be attributed to any known compounds. That’s the soul, Bilal! And the soul is an intangible force that differentiates each person, as well as their experiences in the afterlife,” Adler stated, confident.

I recognized the scenes. The torture, and the rewards; they’re unique to “Faith,” I replied, meekly. My faith, which I haven’t been practicing.

Adler looked satisfied.

“And now, it’s time,” Adler faced the screen. He pressed another button, revealing that it’s not just a glass screen. It’s a glass wall separating this control room with a test subject. Another live one.

Farrah locked the door behind us, as Steiner held me.

 “Today, we will achieve the highest reward of faith!” Steiner declared, a crazy look gleaming in his eyes. His colleagues did not object.

They hold my head, and force my gaze on the subject. The screen displays the data of the soul that the subject is about to experience.

“We were hoping to get ‘his’ soul, but security was too tight. His companion’s will do,” Adler explained.

My god. This is blasphemy. This is the soul of a ‘sahabah’, or companion of the messenger, who lived more than 1500 years ago. The owner of this soul shares my name; the man who was once a slave, known for his strong yet gentle voice that called people to worship.

The button is clicked, and the subject experiences it right away. I thought I imagined hearing a loud yet inspiring call to prayer reverberating, but it soon became obvious that they hear it too. Farrah searched frantically for the source of the voice.

The screen displays the subject’s brain activity. Despite his fearful look, the numbers state that the subject is happy. Parts of the brain are highlighted on the screen. In joy, the frontal cortex and the back of the brain, near the cerebellum display the most activities.

The subject screamed, holding his head with his hands, as if it’s the only thing preventing his head from splitting. It’s bizarre, to see data indicating extreme happiness, yet the subject’s behavior suggests the exact opposite.

Then it happened; the subject looked away, readying his arms to embrace, welcoming something, or someone. His face that portrayed fear, now contorted painfully into a smile; stained with tears, snot and drool. His lips never healed from the smile they cracked as it crescendos towards a climax. “Oh, apostle, how I’ve missed you…!”

“Apostle? I think he means proph…”

Farrah was interrupted as the call to prayer peaks. The subject yelled out the Arabic word for ‘god’ before a loud and wet, squelching sound echoes. It is followed by the subject’s head exploding, splattering its viscera and brain matter in all direction, including the glass wall.

“We were so close…! That was…!” Distracted, Adler shifted his gaze to the same spot the subject looked at before his demise.

Steiner focused his senses, to try and see it too. “What?”

That was Steiner’s last word. The laboratory ceiling crumbled down in a rain of fire, caused by falling, blazing boulders from the sky. They were small, but many. The impact shot the floor panels towards the glass, breaking it, but what killed Steiner was the heat.

“Of course,” Farrah uttered, weakly. “Divine retribution…What better proof is there that we have transcended humanity’s…” She turned to me, revealing that half her face has disappeared; her skin, skull and flesh having melted. She succumbed soon after.

The impact shook the ground, and threw the chair, along with me to the floor.

“My love, oh the sacrifices made…” Adler spoke, holding Farrah’s lifeless body. He kissed her lips, before laying her to rest.

“This is what it means to defy Him, Bilal! Is this fair? To be tortured, to be cast aside, simply because we weren’t born in His grace!? And you knew all this, yet, have you thought to share?”

I don’t know what he wants me to say. “Why do you care? Aren’t you Jewish!?”

He brushed that comment aside. “We will reveal this hypocrisy to the world. They’ll see your faith for what it truly is!”

Behind this madman, I could see the sky. The outside. So close. That ray of hope was darkened, quite literally, as something big suddenly blocks the sun.

Adler noticed this, despite having his back turned. He looked behind him, to the now dim room.

We never saw them, but there must have been thousands of birds flapping their wings just outside the building.

“My god…” were Adler’s last words. A new batch of blazing boulders were dropped. None of the boulders actually hit us, but the spark from the fall created tiny embers that traveled across the room.

Like leaves eaten by insects, the embers left holes in his body, wherever they land. They burn him from the inside as his fingers fall off from his palms one by one, as life slowly leaves his body.

I prepare for my fate. I knew the truth, but chose to look away.

I remember what my father told me. No matter what sin you commit, you must ensure that at the end of the day, you are still His servant.

I do as I’m told, and recited the attahiyat.

I waited for the end, but it never came. The shadows of the birds left the sky, leaving it bright again.

In the silence, in the wake of corpses and destruction, the same question popped in my head. What am I supposed to write?