THE NECRONAUT

Going into Deadworld is falling through a table.

I don't mean “like” falling through a table, I don't mean it “feels” like falling through a table, I don't mean it metaphorically resembles falling through a table on some freudian or platonic level.

Going into Deadworld is falling through a table.

Specifically, the table I have set up in my office with a small atom-smasher on it, reinforced to hold both its weight and that of a man wearing what amounts to a polyester-and-ceramic diving suit while waiting for the entheogen to take hold. You have to time it just right, so that when the walls start to look like they're melting you get hit with a burst of synchrotron radiation.

Then you fall through the table.

It's expensive as all hell. I'm not some medium who mimics the sound of a dead-person's voice and tells them “not to worry about the money” or “move on with your life.”

The last time I went in was a month ago.

Was sitting on the balcony of my office, smoking a cigar, when I saw this woman go through the ground-level entrance of the dilapidated storefront where I keep my office and start climbing the stairs. Good looking girl, if not for the bleach-blond hair. Long legs. Probably early thirties.

She entered through the door, causing it to “ding” and looked around. I rapped on the window calling her attention to me.

At the time, I was sitting on a wicker chair that had broken legs, which sort of defeated the purpose. Thankfully, it was the back legs that had broken, letting me lean back.

She stepped outside and looked at me, weathered, horse-like face, paunch, stubby limbs and all.

“Are you John Pinder?” she asked.

“Yeah?” I responded.

“My name's Anna Weber, I'm with a...particular media conglomerate. I was hoping to borrow some of your time?”

I stood up and gently put out the cigar.

“My fee's five-thousand dollars an hour. I do not back down from that, I offer no discounts. If you are unable to pay that, then you may not borrow any of my time.”

She nodded.

“I can.”

“Good, then we can step inside.”

My office is the second floor of a storefront. The bottom is abandoned, which is just as well. My work can raise an awful racket.

We moved into the sitting room, where I meet my customers, and attempt to dissuade those who come in for personal business. I sat in an armchair that had seen better days, and she sat on a couch that had once been white, but was now an odd paisley color.

“I was advised by a consultant, Dr. Humbert, to speak to you,” she said.

“I should be. He's a repeat customer. On his dollar, I've gone under four times.”

“Gone under?” she asked.

I turned and looked at her.

“The doctor didn't explain how I work, did he?”

She shook her head. I headed over and sat

“Ms. Weber, I am a Necronaut, don't take this to mean that I'm some sort of spiritualist or houngan--I've met both types, and they were generally nice, but only the houngan had anything to his method--I'm a scientific practitioner.

“The first Necronaut was Karl Blake, in the employ of Queen Victoria, after his death in 1881, it wasn't until 1949 when the practice was revived by the U.S. Airforce. Since then, most of the members of my profession have been in the employ of Uncle Sam.”

Ms. Weber nodded, smiling.

“But what do you do?” she asked.

“Well, it's somewhat complex. Essentially, it is necessary to understand our world as one side of a coin. The 'live' side of the coin, where the second law of thermodynamics is fairly even and gradual, and aborted children don't try to eat you.

“My job is to take a drill and poke through into the 'dead' side of the coin--Deadworld--and go and find things that have passed over. In the case of your professor, I carried a cellular phone with me, and he was able to interview, on three separate occasions, John Locke, Theodore Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, jr.”

She cocked her head to the side, furrowing her brow.

“But you've gone under four times.”

“Sometimes, people are very, very hard to find. On such expeditions, I refund everything but the cost of materials.”

“How much is that?” she asked.

“Three thousand.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Who am I looking for?” I asked.

“Hold a second, you said something about...aborted children?”

I smiled without humor.

“Everyone ends up in Deadworld. It's unavoidable. Those who've lived on our side of the coin get affixed to the form of the body they had in life. Those who don't...well, they never went through the Lacanian trauma of understanding that there are things separate from the self. They don't even have a self-image. As such, they're monsters of appetite.”

She looked at me with a horrified expression.

“So, you're pro-life?” she asked.

“No. Masturbation can produce it, too. If it were up to me, all teenage boys would be castrated to save the souls of humanity.”

I said this with a straight face, but it was a bit of a joke. Most customers don't get it, but I never get tired of telling it.

“So who am I looking for?” I repeated.

“Thomas Jefferson.”

I nodded.

“Alright. I think I can do that. How much money do you have?”

“I've got a research budget of twenty-thousand, I'm willing to spend up to seven thousand.”

I nodded.

“Then I can get you a bit over an hour. I've got some paperwork for you to sign before I suit up and bore through.”

She signed the release forms, papers that said that I could not be held responsible if the information she was looking for wasn't available. Legalese for “eaten by monsters.”

I injected myself with the entheogen that would put me in the proper state of mind for the journey, and waited for my heart to calm down. I always get the shakes before crossing over.

After that, I went in the back room and put on the under-suit; basically a wet-suit with thick insulation and a bulletproof glass helmet. The whole apparatus was equipped with a navy-grade rebreather, which could let me stay over on the other side for up to six hours. I think; it works just fine for one or two-hour excursions, but I never tested it further.

After that came the over-suit; a big clunky diving suit that weighed at least forty pounds, but had a pneumatic system to assist, bought surplus from a government agency. It was made of corrosion-resistant materials that supposedly wouldn't decay for fifty thousand years. Had to replace it every five trips.

Finally, between the two was the water. A good three centimeters separated the outer- from the under-suit, everywhere but the fingers. That was filled up with a boiling-hot saline solution. It was uncomfortable to begin with, but I wouldn't want to go over without it.

I remembered the story of Karl Blake. He tried going over with no protection at all. His apprentice recovered the body: his flesh had rotted to the consistency of pudding, and the only thing keeping it on his yellow bones was the fact that the outer-most layer had frozen into an envelope.

His eyes had been plucked out beforehand.

It had only taken five minutes.

So, I wasn't about to risk anything. Strapped to my thigh was my protection: a foot-long blade made from material I'd brought back from the other side. Called it 'stygian glass.'

I nicked a mugger with it, once. Found him in a hospital three days later. Doctors said it was an advanced case of leprosy. Or maybe syphilis. Perhaps both. Didn't really care. Good for a laugh, though.

I pointed out the television monitors which would show her what I saw, tested the radio and zipped the cellular phone into the pouch on my stomach. Then, I attached my tether--the lifeline that would pull me back into the world of the living after I'd made my delivery.

Climbing up onto the table, I flipped on the synchrotron and waited.

The walls began to melt, and I was irradiated.

There's always a sense of falling, I braced myself, and landed in Deadworld.

Obviously, things are not the same, there. It doesn't look anything like the real world, and I took a moment to adjust.

Phenomenological Shock, they called it in the air force.

The light there is dusty and gray (which loaned Blake his term for it: “The Gloom.”)

The ground is swampy, but not with water. When you stand in Deadworld, you're standing knee deep in filth and dust. Spars of stygian glass poke up out of the ground, looking like nothing quite so much as obsidian trees.

I know what it smells like, from when I climb out. Burning metal and human filth.

Every time you enter, there's a new geography to learn. Deadworld shifts based on who you're looking for. I knew Thomas Jefferson would be somewhere nearby. The target always is, for some reason. But where?

I pulled out my knife and a flashlight. Flipping it on, I scanned the terrain around me.

A rise appeared nearby, not twenty meters away. I made my way for it.

The filth had fossilized into something like stone, mingled with the stygian glass of the trees. Carefully, I ascended, making sure that I didn't cut open my suit.

They can smell you in Deadworld.

I could see things moving around in the forest of glass trees. Things that had either forgotten or never knew in the first place what it meant to be human.

My light shone in blind eyes, and they shrank back, hissing.

Normal shades look much like people do in life, but with the same general appearance of a meth-addicted concentration camp survivor: skeletal. Thin. Sunken-eyed. Broken teeth. They're translucent, but other than that, don't look all that much different from a normal person.

One of the Neverborn slithered toward me. An adventurous creature, which meant it was either very young or very old.

It reared up, a serpentine thing with a body made of segments that reminded me of rib cages. Each segment had what looked like four baby's arms coming out of it. Its head was a mass of these arranged around a toothy hole.

It hissed at me, waving tiny, skinless hands.

I shone my light at it, and shouted into the microphone in my helmet.

“Back off!”

Unused to the sound of a human voice, it reared up, awkwardly balanced on its bottom third.

Something tugged at my back and I turned, seeing another one, a little ugly bastard. It must've been far along when it was destroyed, because it almost knew what it was supposed to be.

Its top half looked like an infant, but all bleached out and dry. Its lower half was insectile, though, and it fluttered through the air on dragonfly wings.

Needle-like teeth occupied its mouth, and identical claws came from each finger at the first knuckle.

It was tugging at my tether, trying to take me back into the filth.

I turned, and stabbed at it; the little bastard popped like a balloon, providing no resistance, but I'd nicked the tether. It was on its last mission, the decay of Deadworld gradually turning it from an artificial spider-silk into a cobweb.

I had no time to think about it, though. The other one, the sinuous, baby-armed thing had crawled closer, sniffing at me through its tooth-hole.

Turning, I began to beat it with my flashlight. Each hit a wet “squish.”

I didn't stop until it lay broken and bleeding at my feet.

Neverborn are sort-of material in Deadworld. You can break them, but it's not always easy. I saw one, once, that was a sphere of black metal, jetting out hot steam through screaming little cherub-faces. Damn thing moved like a bullet, broke two of my ribs; only died when I pushed it down into the filth and clogged all its holes, drowning the bastard.

“What are those things?” Ms. Weber asked.

“Neverborn. I told you about them.”

“Aborted children?” she asked.

“Yeah. Look at this.”

I went down to the edge of the hill, and crouched by the filth, shining my light on it.

Little things crawled and hopped through it. Most of them looked like water-bears.

“Those can strip the flesh from your bones. I brought a hamburger in with me, once, to see what would happen. It began to decay and they gobbled it all up.”

“What are they?”

“Shades produced from masturbation. A lot of them, aren't there?”

I could hear her retching.

“I'm serious about the teenage boys. Going to write my congressman, someday.”

She remained silent. Suppose she didn't get the joke. I didn't really care. So long as the check cleared, I didn't care about anything, when it came to clients.

I resumed my search.

There was another mound rising out of the marsh a ways away. On top of it were the pale lights of fires, and small, tired figures gathered around it. I began sloughing toward it, knee deep in dust and filth, my flashlight lighting the way, keeping an eye out for sinkholes.

Getting sucked down into a shit-mire would be a great way to snap my tether and get my suit eaten out by those little piranha-like Neverborn. I'd be willing to bet that there were things that dug through the mire, down there. Things that might have never been human in the first place.

Shivering, I wove through the trees, doing my best not to cut my tether on the glass trees.

Something brushed past my leg, and I lashed out with my knife. There was a sound, like a scream coming from behind a waterfall, as the Neverborn I had cut rose up.

It was the size of a full-grown man, but its head lacked eyes: it had a slight depression on either side of its pug-like nose, but the skin was unbroken. It had three jaws: a normal mouth, but the lower mandible split apart into two flexible, toothy limbs.

Its arms and legs were so malformed as to be boneless and tentacle-like. Each split into five tendrils at the end, and I could see that all of these five had perfectly formed fingernails at the end.

As it reared up, spreading its arms and jaws wide, I lunged forward with my knife, taking it in the throat. It gurgled, and sank back into the mire.

“Is it always this bad?” Ms. Weber asked.

“Sometimes it's worse. Sometimes I don't see one at all.”

I continued on, heading towards what could only be a camp of shades.

The figures were small and shivering, gathered around a fire that no doubt stank of burning excrement.

It was more instinct than anything, that lead them to light fires. In Deadworld, fire is only a danger, never an asset; it can burn your flesh just fine, but it provides no warmth. You could stand in the middle of a raging conflagration, and as your flesh wilts away and chars, you'd be as cold as ever.

“Thomas Jefferson?” I asked, approaching the camp.

A hunched, white-haired turned to look at me, and I unzipped the pocket on my belly, and pulled out the cellphone, hitting the green button.

“Someone has some questions for you. Hold this device like so--” I held it to my ear, outside the bubble-helmet of my suit “--and you'll be able to hear her. Please answer her questions.”

I handed the phone to him, and he inexpertly held it to his head.

“Other way. Flip it over,” I informed her.

The people were dressed in scraps, and some held pieces of obsidian as weapons--that was new. I don't think I'd ever seen the shades arm themselves to fight off the Neverborn. Perhaps that's what had them so agitated?

I saw one man off to the side, at his own fire. Thick, greasy smoke belched upward from it, and he looked hungrily into the pale fire. He crouched by the fire with slouched shoulders, his hands resting on the ground.

He pulled a chunk of meat out, poking at it with a long, thin obsidian needle.

I watched in horror, as he raised it up, and I ran toward him.

“Don't eat that!” I shouted.

“What?” he asked, looking at me. His eyes weren't the same as the others. They seemed to smolder with indignation, as if being here, in this place was some sort of offense.

“Are you sure it's safe to eat that?” I asked him.

“I've been eating it for a while,” he said, furrowing his brow. He stood, and I could immediately see that this man was not the emaciated wreck of the others, but a tall, broad-shouldered individual.

“Who are you?” he asked, “where did you come from?”

This, too, was abnormal. The dead tended not to be adaptive, but apathetic and disinterested in the world around them. This man, however, seemed vital, and curious.

I shone my light in his face and shrank back.

“I'm an explorer from the land of the living, bub.”

“So there's a way here and back?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “but it doesn't work for the dead. The USAF tried that; a shade brought through the portal explodes like a hand-grenade. There's no vessel for the mind to inhabit.”

He raised the chunk of meat to his mouth, and bit into it, tugging a bit off.

“So...there's no escape?” he asked.

“No. I'm sorry,” I said, though my voice didn't really display any sorrow, “Not a permanent one. Houngans can bring you back for a while, but you'll just end up here, again.”

The man slumped, and shoved the rest of the pale, greasy meat into his mouth.

“Why are you eating that?” I asked him.

“I'm hungry, and they're made of meat,” he said. Then he looked at me, his eyes full of comprehension, “you...you're made of meat...I could crack you open like a lobster...”

He began to laugh, and raised his long needle.

Hit him in the face with my flashlight, and he reeled back. Then, I hit him again for good measure, taking care to smash him on the temple as hard as I could.

A third time, I decided, would have been overkill.

A finger tapped my shoulder and I spun around.

“It's gone quiet,” the shade of Thomas Jefferson told me, holding out the cellphone.

I took it from him, dropped it on the ground and stomped on it. They only last one trip.

I shifted my shoulders, and the once-boiling water sloshed, now barely lukewarm.

There was a “pop!” and the suit began to deflate.

Turning, I saw that the man had gotten up; he twitched so fast that he blurred before my eyes.

When he stopped, I could see that something was moving around under his skin. Rope-like tendrils writhed, and one penetrated the shade-flesh of his stomach, extruding a long, thin pseudopod tipped with a wickedly curved blade.

It lunged toward me, and I moved to the side.

The blade caught on my tether, and I felt it go slack. It zipped away into the darkness, leaving a wake in the muck and I ran after it.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the man begin twitching again, more tendrils emerging from his body and latching onto the shades around him, cutting their flesh, and pulling them towards him.

I didn't stop to watch. They were dead, anyway.

Saline leaked from my suit, and I could feel the cold piercing my flesh.

“There's a rope ladder by the table,” I said into my microphone, “I need you to drop it through the hole.

“What's wrong?” Ms. Weber asked, sensing panic in my voice.

“Just do it!” I growled.

She didn't respond. Either my radio was dead, or she had followed my instructions.

The swamps were alive with Neverborn. They loomed in the shadows, and swung from trees, chittering at me, growling, shrieking, laughing.

I didn't stop to fight them, only lashing out with my knife and flashlight when they got close enough to grab me.

I reached the first hillock, and turned in the direction I hoped the portal was; there was a faint glimmer of light in that direction. It could've been my portal, or it could have been more shade-fires.

I hoped it was the former. I didn't want to know what would happen to me if I died here.

I breathed hard as I neared the light. The air in my suit was growing stale, and my vision was dimming.

There was a cold unlike any I'd ever felt.

There it was, the portal. Around it were the Neverborn, looking at the hole in the sky from which a rope ladder dangled.

They couldn't make it through, and they knew.

Turning toward me, they glared at me with hatred in their blind eyes.

From behind me came a half-human shriek, and I turned.

The man stood there, his skin hanging off of his necrotized flesh. From his stomach emerged five hook-tipped tentacles, surrounding a wickedly-curved beak.

“.i can seE .you don't know how long it's beeN”

The voice was strange, like a semi-intelligible back-masking on a record.

He laughed, from his human mouth, as the beak opened and the voice issued forth from it.

“.i'll let you livE .you can survivE .just let me through the dooR .let me eat the people on the other side, and you can livE.”

There were times I wished that there was a way to make a gun work in Deadworld, but the chemical reactions never functioned properly. This was one of those times.

I ran toward the light, and the shade-thing lashed out at the Neverborn closing in on me. Pulling himself after me, faster and faster.

Never trust something that tells you it will let you live. That seems like a solid rule. I had to get through before it did. My stuff was junk, but I wasn't having it blow up my shop.

I began climbing the rope, toward the world of light and life. But curiosity got the better of me, and I looked down.

My pursuer had paused to feast on the Neverborn it had killed, shoveling the meat into its beak.

The human head looked up at me, and I saw something emerge from his lips, like his gums and esophagus had detached and were being extended outward on a stalk.

He began to move toward the ladder again.

Steeling myself, I climbed higher and higher.

I flung myself out with a burst of Deadworld's toxic air.

Rolling across the floor, I ran for the switch that would shut off the synchrotron, closing the gate. The ladder was cut when the portal closed, sitting, useless, on the table.

Something reached up out of the portal, a ropy tentacle with a hook at the end. Ms. Weber shrieked and shrank back from it.

I flipped the switch, and the gate closed, slicing through the extended hook. It fell to the table, and began to twitch. Soon, it had burned up like flash paper.

I stood, and headed into the back room, climbing into the chemical shower. And rinsing off the filth and blood that I had brought back with me.

I climbed out of the suit, and showered again, before dressing in the t-shirt and sweatpants that I wore to warm up in.

Ms. Weber followed me through my office, as I moved back to the balcony to sit in the late-summer sun to warm my bones.

“What was that thing?” she asked.

I breathed deeply, wishing that I still possessed my sense of smell. I lit a cigar and drew on it before answering.

“Things over there don't die, not like they do over there. They just change form. One of the shades was eating Neverborn meat, and, in turn, was eaten from the inside out. He became something else.”

She shivered, and leaned against the railing, crossing her arms.

“How did you ever get into this line of work? It can't be the pay.”

I laughed humorlessly, and took another long drag on the cigar.

“I used to be in the USAF, and I was selected to be in the Necronaut Program. The 'ORPHEUS Project' as it was called.

“I was a fresh-faced kid of twenty-one. Never went to college. They trained me, and after six months, they sent me in for the operation.”

I looked down at the people below who never had to deal with this sort of thing. Who had children and homes with dogs in the yards.

“The Operation was the procedure that makes you into a Necronaut. They brought back something from Deadworld, somehow, a creature they call 'the Surgeon.' Because that's what it looks like. It's not a Neverborn, and it isn't a shade. It's something else.”

I closed my eyes and turned my mind's eye to the experience.

“I was put on life support, because it took out my psyche. I was a vegetable for a week, but I was conscious. It dug into me, pulling out the bits that were dead-weight on the soul. Cut out my mortality, and put in something else. Then, it set about flensing my spirit, gently ripping at the meat of it so that it would scar over.”

I leaned my head back, and took another drag off the cigar.

“In the end, the spirit didn't exactly fit the body, and I began to age faster and faster. Going into Deadworld didn't help. I was twenty-two when I went in the program, and they threw me out six months later, all used up.”

I opened my eyes, and looked her in the face.

“That was six years ago,” I said.

“But you look like you're fifty!” she protested.

“Thanks, I try to stay in shape,” I said, and puffed on the cigar again, “I'm not going to live to see my thirty-fifth birthday, lady. And even if I did, it wouldn't matter. I have no friends. I have no family. The surgeon cut that all out. I'm only half-living.”

I stood, faltering, and looked her in the face. Gave her a lazy salute, and grinned a yellow, broken grin.

“So...how about that check?”

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