the Cosmologue

The cursor prompted a command be input. 

The text field screamed white, blank. Waiting. 

Saydn caught himself glancing at the test subject, then checked himself and returned his gaze to the monitor. He felt that looking away too many times would surely paint him in an unfavorable light with his observers; he tried to operate with a feigned cool confidence despite his anxiety that he might be perceived as somehow anxious for some reason. 

Saydn caught himself glancing at the test subject. A panel of displays washed from crimson to green as the subject’s closed eyes began to rove and dart— a blind gaze casting about back and forth, searching in the dark desperately. Feverishly. Sadyn checked himself, returned his gaze to the monitor, and attempted to address his observers. He managed only a light squeaking sound, cleared his throat, and tried again, more firmly. 

“He’s reached the appropriate phase of the sleep cycle.”

—He found it difficult to affect the proper tone that balanced qualified lecturer with subject of the imperial crown. Trying to be brave, he opted for a more pedantic pitch—

“As previously demonstrated, the life support system will maintain his vitals, and—“ 

He prioritized the subject’s vital signs on the monitor and three pairs of beady eyes reflected the green light of the display in miniscule. Six tongues of emerald fire danced above three polite smiles. 

“—the intravenous neurostabilizer will maintain him in this phase of sleep indefinitely.” 

Saydn now caught himself looking hard at the test subject, and felt the first real churn in his guts— a knot of worry in his stomach like a mislocated sense that someone had a twisting fistful of his hair. One of the three polite smiles opened up behind him and intook a short breath before posing the first question from the audience. The voice was honeyed, almost sleepy, with a soft humming around the consonants’ edges. 

“Can the effect of the neurostabilizer be easily interrupted?” 

This question had been fully covered in the preparatory dossier for this demonstration which the Institute’s Head, Dr. Edom, had meticulously compiled for these observers, and Sadyn already had the firm impression that the asker of this question— Eliphaz, Regent Father of Teman, General of Human Behavior in the Corps of Imperial Advisiers —had not only read it, but maybe had even made clandestine inquiry into some of its finer points. His Grace Eliphaz could easily have bought his way into the Institute’s work if he so chose, and his question hung in the air with a cautionary tone. Sadyn felt himself the subject of a test all his own, but was rescued from replying when one of the other two observers chimed in— Bildad, Father Regent of Shuhar, General of CIvics in the Corps of Imperial Advisiers —with a much more familiar, friendly music to his voice than had Sadyn expected. 

“Eliphaz, Your Grace, don’t interrupt!” he laughed, and the sound was almost comforting. “It’s been weeks leading to this, and you’ll delay the fun all the more.”

Sadyn swallowed, and the temporary relief dropped away. The reference to his mentor’s undergoing of this sado-masochistic proof of the worth of his Institute’s greatest project as “fun” brought him very close to vomiting, but he regained his composure and turned to face the second voice. Both other pairs of eyes still reviewed the monitors, but His Grace Bildad met Sadyn’s gaze with a gaunt, hungry light. Sadyn might have stood completely frozen forever if the third observer— Zophar, Regent Father of Naamath, General of Theology in the Corps of Imperial Advisiers —hadn’t intervened. 

“Bildad, Your Grace,” —a grave, clear, irritated tone— “have some pity for the poor apprentice. He can only be in a state of distress over this. Imagine fearing for your master’s life and still having to give a presentation.”

Sadyn swallowed again, much more dryly this time. His master’s life? He glanced at the test subject. Dr. Edom’’s eyes continued to survey the insides of his own eyelids. Beads of perspiration began to manifest on Sadyn’s brow. 

“Please,” His Grace Eliphaz addressed Sadyn directly. “Forgo the remainder of your presentation. We will have you administer the tests at this point.” 

“Yes, Your Grace,” replied Sadyn hollowly, bobbing with a slight bow and bringing his hands to wait on the keyboard. 

“By the decree of his Imperial Majesty,” Eliphaz intoned, swelling with ceremony, “your master will undergo the loss of his possessions, his descendants, and his health. He must survive these agonies uprightly or prove his entire program unsuitable for the rehabilitation of his Imperial Majesty’s Ideological Nemeses. Let the tests be administered one at a time, commencing immediately.” 

Sadyn took a deep breath and began to type. 

SCENARIO: BASELINE REALITY: HOUSEFIRE / MARKET CRASH / STORM: TARGET RESULT → ELIMINATE SUBJECT'S POSSESSIONS AND WEALTH

At first, it seemed that the command input had no effect on Dr. Edom. The Cosmologue’s fans tripped on as the engine pressed its phantasms upon the sleeping Head of the Institue. All waited, watching. The heart rate monitor spiked. The steel restraints clanked a complaint as the good doctor’s limbs found the limit of their reach. Edom’s brow furrowed, his spine arched, and the muscles of his jaw contracted. 

His Grace Eliphaz leaned forward intently and coolly addressed his two companions. 

“Who, Your Graces, being innocent, has ever perished? When were the upright ever destroyed?” 

Edom’s teeth bared in a gnashing grimace as his back arched his wrists and ankles reared once again in their cuffs. Sadyn shrank from the scene as His Grace Eliphaz continued. 

“Unless the good doctor’s mind be poisoned with guilt, this trial will be nothing but a trifle, I’m quite certain. Otherwise, it will bring out any secret conspiracies he holds against His Imperial Majesty.” 

His collegues nodded, and Bildad indicated that Sadyn continue. 

SCENARIO: BASELINE REALITY + PREVIOUS INPUT: CRUISER CRASH: 

TARGET RESULT → ELIMINATE SUBJECT'S ENTIRE PROGENY

The effect was much more immediate this time. Almost as soon as Sadyn verified the command, the blood pressure monitor chirped a warning signal, and the doctor’s entire body began to thrash and spasm. Foam bubbled from the corners of the doctor’s mouth. 

“Let’s have this scenario onscreen,” piped Zophar, inching forward in his chair. 

Sadyn hesitated for a moment before accessing the visual parsing program from the reality engine’s list of functions. While this software had been an enormous feat of the Institute’s programmers that must necessarily be demonstrated, Sadyn felt that using it now was a sickening breech of the poor doctor’s privacy. 

He prioritized the parsed visuals onscreen. 

Dr. Edom could be seen kneeling before the flaming wreckage of a cruiser, knees on the ground, chest bared to the open sky. He was rending his shirt from his body, screeching like an ape as the cotton gave way under the magnitude of his grief and confusion. Part of the debris settled and came loose from the nearest side, collapsing just enough to reveal a tiny hand, stiff and strained, reaching out toward Edom. 

He scrambled forward on all fours frantically, reaching, clawing through molten metal and open flame to grasp the tiny fingers in his own. Sadyn closed the parsing program as the doctor began to shake violently with weeping and kiss the tiny hand over and over, leaning his face near enough into the wreckage to be burned and smeared with ash. 

“Absolutely marvelous,” remarked His Grace Bildad. Not even Advisier-Generals had ever seen a reality engine so effective nor so manipulable.  “It wouldn’t even be sensible to compare this to our current idealogical rehabilitation programs— such trust we’ve had in them! The Idealogues are fools to trust in their current curricula— fragile as a spider’s web! You may as well lean on one and expect it to hold you up, but this—” Here, he clapped Zophar on the back. “––this is true reeducation. We will clothe our enemies in shame, Your Graces.” 

Dr. Edom’s body continued flailing and whipping around in the restraints. 

“Continue,” His Grace Zophar pressed. 

Sadyn accessed his notes. Physiological reality generations had to be carefully designed and input to realize their desired effects, and the emperor’s team had debated tirelessly with the Institute’s College of Biofabrication to agree on how the third phase of the test would operate.

SCENARIO: BASELINE REALITY + PREVIOUS INPUTS: STAT3 GENE:  CHROMOSOME 17: INCREASE IMMUNOGLOBULIN E

TARGET RESULT → BOILS, SORES, SEPSIS, AGONY

Edom’s thrashing ceased. He lay utterly still on the holding table, but his vital signs all began to whine and flash with warning alarms. A spasm rolled through his body— almost a punctuating mark —and he began to draw deep, slow breaths. 

Zophar sneered.

“This machine will do nothing to reform the heretics,” he spat with indignation, “for it leaves out the presence of the Divine from it’s vile computation.” He leveled a finger at Sadyn. 

“Can you fathom the mysteries of God?” he hissed.

Sadyn shivered. Zophar wheeled to his companions and demanded— 

“Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? How can we say that any man will truly be reformed if he learns his lesson in a bubble cosmos where the Divine is not generated to be felt, to be present?”

Eliphaz and Bildad looked at each other. 

“Do you insinuate, Your Grace Zophar,” Eliphaz asked slowly but venemously, “that the good doctor has generated a place wherein the Almighty cannot reach?”

Zophar went very pale and rearranged himself and his robes in his chair. 

“Now, boy,” Eliphaz continued, turning his gaze on Sadyn. “It is the emperor’s wish that you select an input.”

Sadyn went pale and held still. He felt no different from the doctor on the Cosmologue’s life support— a still statue with screaming insides. His swallow was as dry cotton scraped on a desert floor. He faced the monitor. 

What would prove his mentor’s worth? What would show them that Dr. Edom was worthy of the emperor’s trust? He took a deep breath and with a few keystrokes the generated misfortune of the doctor reared up on the monitor. 

Edom still knelt, but it was only kneeling in a skeletal sense. His legs were certainly bent underneath him at one point, but the vast majority of him had slowly slid off onto the ground, piling up and pooling around him. His flesh hung open, sliding in leisurely cataracts off his frame. At a glance, it looked more like he was wading waist deep through the earth. He gently rocked back and forth, back and forth, muttering and cursing to himself. Cursing the very day he was born. Cursing that he had not died in his mother’s womb.

Sadyn placed his hands on the keyboard and typed. 

SCENARIO: BASELINE REALITY + PREVIOUS INPUTS: SUGGESTION: 

“YOU DESERVE THIS”

Edom’s head bolted upright. There was a sickening slap as the sudden convulsion sent viscera plunging to the earth. And he screamed at the skies for all in the room to hear.

Though you slay me, My Lord, yet I will hope in you. I know that I will be vindicated. Who can bring a charge against me? Let him speak, and I will be silent unto death.