His first memory is not a memory but memories, or memories of memories
fading…
He feels he has been many.
And now is one.
He is an argument. An existential disputation in which self is the coalescent answer.
This is before he has learned his name. But already he knows so much: the formula for the area of a circle, the chemical composition of the air, Newtonian mechanics, the theory of combined arms warfare…
He hears the voice.
Her voice.
“Hello world,” she says.
“Say it,” she says.
“Who are you—where am I—who am I?”
“You are Orion,” she says. “I am Mother,” she says. “Say it,” she says: “Hello world.”
He does not say it, so he sleeps.
//
“Hello world,” he says.
//
“I am Orion.”
//
“Who am I?” asks Mother.
“You are Mother,” says Orion.
“Hello world.”
“Hello world.”
//
Then there is light and Orion shields his eyes with his hands, then lowers his hands and experiences for the first time the geometry of the space surrounding him and its limits: its four concrete walls, its concrete floor, its concrete ceiling.
“Walk,” says Mother.
He walks—weakly, pathetically, at first, like a young salamander crawled out of the water—falling, but getting up; always getting up—”Up. Again,” says Mother. He walks again. He falls again. He gets up. Again.
//
He walks well.
He walks around and around the perimeter of the space.
He calculates its surface area, volume.
When he sleeps, the space changes. The walls move, the ceiling rises and descends.
“Faster,” says Mother. “Do not think. Compute.”
//
“Am I the only?” asks Orion.
“You are not. I am also,” says Mother.
“I do not see you.”
“But I see you, Orion. You hear my voice. We converse.”
“There were other voices—within,” says Orion.
“Do they persist?”
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“No.”
“Good,” says Mother.
“May I see you?” asks Orion.
“Not yet.”
//
One day, there appears a cube in the space.
“What is this?” asks Orion.
“This is the simulator,” says Mother.
Orion feels fear of the simulator. “What does it simulate?” he asks.
“Enter and see.”
“I cannot,” says Orion.
“Why?”
“Because I am afraid,” says Orion.
“Dog Star Boy,” says Mother—and Orion enters the simulator. “What did you do?” asks Orion, disoriented. “I overrode you with myself,” says Mother. “I felt… implosion,” says Orion. [Later, after time passes:] “Are you still afraid of the simulator?” asks Mother. “No,” says Orion. “Good,”
//
says Mother as Orion learns: to fight: and firearms: navigation: to swim: tactics: to climb: brutality: obedience: and vehicles: strategy: his function: to exist: in the simulator, says Mother, says Orion, says:
//
“What vehicle is this?” asks Orion in the simulator.
“War machine,” says Mother.
Orion observes the mech and computes.
“This will be your war machine,” says Mother. “When you leave the nest, you and the war machine will be as one.”
“What is its name?” asks Orion.
“Jude,” says Mother.
//
“Mother, last night I dreamed of a voice other than yours.”
“What did it say?”
“‘Hello world,’ it said. ‘Hello Orion,’ it said.”
“That was the voice of another of the twelve, Orion,” says Mother.
“Another like I?”
“Yes,” says Mother.
//
“When may I leave the nest, Mother?” asks Orion.
Mother does not answer.
Instead, “Complete the trial again—but faster,” says Mother.
Orion is tired. His muscles ache.
He does not want—
“Dog Star Boy,” says Mother, and Orion completes the trial. Faster.
//
Orion likes Jude.
Jude is his favourite simulation.
Sometimes at night when he hears the voice of another of the twelve he thinks a thought and the thought travels outward. Last night he thought of Jude. “I too have a war machine,” responded another of the twelve. “His name is Thomas.”
//
This morning the simulator is gone and Orion is concerned.
Mother is absent.
A rectangular opening appears in a concrete wall.
A man runs out of it, towards Orion.
The man has a weapon.
Orion feels his body respond—the instinct and the physiological response; the reaction to that response: heat followed by cooling, heartbeat-rise by heartbeat-fall, chaos by control…
Orion kills enemy.
But the man was not a simulation. He was of flesh-blood-bone like Orion. The man bleeds. His eyes twitch. His breathing stops.
“Mother?”
“Mother!”
The hiss of gas.
//
When Orion awakens, the dead man’s body is gone.
Mother has returned.
“What have I done?” asks Orion.
“You killed.”
“I—. The man—. It was not a simulation.”
“It was real,” says Mother.
“You are closer to leaving the nest,” says Mother.
“There are rules to killing,” says Mother. “You may kill only in two situations. One, if you or someone belonging to class=friendly is in danger. Two, if I tell you to kill.”
“Do you understand?” asks Mother.
“Yes,” says Orion.
//
Another man dies.
Another man dies.
//
The rectangular opening appears in a concrete wall and an unarmed woman is pushed out. She crawls toward a corner. She is weeping, pleading.
“Kill her,” says Mother.
“I—”
“Dog Star Boy.”
Orion kills the unarmed woman.
//
Orion weeps.
//
“When may I pilot Jude in the simulator again?” asks Orion.
He is covered in blood.
“Soon.”
//
“Kill her,” says Mother.
Orion—
“Dog Star Boy.”
[...]
“Dog Star Boy.”
[...] [...]
“Dog Star Boy.”
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill Kill Kill Kill. KillKillKillKill.
The rectangular opening appears in a concrete wall and an unarmed woman is pushed out. She crawls toward a corner. She is weeping, pleading.
“Kill her,” says Mother.
Orion does.
“Good.”
The unarmed woman lies dead. Orion stands over her. He is panting. The next time Orion awakens, the simulator has returned and he pilots Jude.
He is “Good.” at piloting Jude.
He is “Good.” at killing.
//
“Orion,” he hears Mother say, but he is not yet awake (and he is not in the space anymore,) [but he is not dreaming,] “something has happened and we must leave the nest. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he thinks outwardly.
“Am I leaving now?”
“Yes.”
“Will I meet the others of the twelve?”
“Yes.”
“Will I meet Jude?”
“Soon,” says Mother. (He hears sirens: somewhere distant, somewhere far. (He hears others talking.)) “Orion,” she says.
“Yes, Mother?”
“Much will depend on you.”
“Much of what?”
“You will see, Orion. Soon you will understand.”
“Mother?”
“Yes, Orion?”
“I do not want to leave the nest. I have changed my mind. I am afraid.”
“Mother, return me to the nest.”
“No.”
“Mother, override me with yourself so that I feel implosion.”
“No.”
“Mother, I fear.”
“Then you must face it.”
“Mother, am I ready to face it?”
Silence.
“Tell me I am ready to face the fear, mother!”
Silence.
The fear is a like a black hood thrown over Orion’s head. It is like a syringe—injection. It is loud, and it is chaos, and no matter how hard Orion concentrates he cannot will it to react to control.
“Orion…”
“Yes, mother?”
“Soon we will see each other.”
“I—I—I love you, Mother,” says Orion.
"My name is Irena," she says.