Tabula Rasa [preview]

Tabula Rasa

We are all born equal in our insignificance. It is death that grants us meaning.

By J. Ishiro Finney

ta·bu·la ra·sa
An absence of preconceived ideas, ideals,
or predetermined goals; a clean slate.

I was torn from the loins of a Singapore whore.

To the World of Man she was a woman of loose virtue. A harlot. A prostitute. A human fuck toy. Like most women, she’d been conditioned to be sick, her mind cancerous with self-loathing and a need to be desired.

Five months she carried me in her poisoned womb.

She toiled. She sweat. She sacrificed her very life—all for a chance of forgiveness. Tabula Rasa. The one true absolution. Any woman who submits to the Seed of Purity is worthy of a second chance, if not in this life, then in the next.

My beginning was her end.

In her dying moments I’m certain she came to know the true meaning of The Second Absolute: All pain is temporary.

That was ten years ago.

Now it is my turn. Today I will embrace my fate.

From my very first meditation in the Teaching Circle, to my last round of daily growth hormone injections, my entire life has been preparing me for this moment. I’ve learned to speak as my enemy does, learned to mimic his intricate dance of privilege, race, and class. I’ve walked this city a thousand times. And rehearsed my mission in every simulated permutation. Every waking moment, every sync-induced dream, every surgery, every lecture, every ritualistic semen harvesting was impelling me to right here, right now, to this trash-strewn alley where I crouch like a hungry junkie, staring at a loaded syringe. The needle I hold is a cheap, plastic 1 ML tuberculin spike. I’ve held hundreds just like this one. Felt the sting of hundreds more. But this needle is unique. Its venom is a catalyzing agent, an amber fluid that shines like liquid moonlight.

This is it. The final injection.

Today, I will become the revolution made flesh.

I steady myself and close my eyes. Pinheads of sweat roll down my brow. I breathe deep. Slowly exhale. Then recite the Fifth Absolute: We are all born equal in our insignificance. It is death that grants us meaning. The words are meant to cleanse me, to purge all trace of individual weakness. Yet for all my genetic purity apprehension still slows my hand. My body quivers, my nerves become ice. Stabs of fear twist in my gut.

“Don’t think,” I tell myself, “Don’t think. Act.” I say it again. I say it loud. I say it until my voice can be heard over the hot August rain that batters the pavement.
I tilt my head back. Allow piss-warm rain to wash over my face. Focus on the constant thrum of engines overhead. Drone aircraft. The ever-present eyes of the State. Through the rain and clouds and ash-colored twilight their dragonfly forms trace slow orbits above the jagged skyline. I have no doubt I’m being watched. Here in the alley, down in the mud, huddled between the skeletal husks of dead cars, I’m afforded only minimal privacy.

It’s enough.

After two years of living homeless the Grid has lost all interest in me. To them, I’m just another castoff. A blank. Human waste. Another unwanted byproduct of this modern, civilized world. This city is famous for its population of forgotten and unwanted. These rags I wear, this filth on my skin, the cruel hunger that’s so evident in my sunken, boney face—these things grant me untold freedom to walk among the enemy. Poverty has made me a ghost. Invisible. Never once has National Surveillance Grid suspected that I am the culmination of more than half a century of black budget projects and forbidden research. Born of two mothers and twenty-seven fathers, my family tree is a string of recombinant DNA where the chromosomes of soldiers and saints share nucleotides with the genes of criminals and politicians. I am a Brother. A ten-year-old man who was perfected in a lab, born from a whore, and raised to be mankind’s redeemer.

And today I will die.

I will die and will burn like the phoenix. I will blaze across a billion screens and be reborn immortal as my finest moment is captured, broadcast, and streamed globally. The eyes of the world will be on me, my proud face emblazoned upon every feed. Footage will be uploaded. Every second analyzed and scrutinized. Every aspect of my sacrifice will be reconstructed, deconstructed, and re-lived in simulation. Experts will talk. Pundits will argue. And those on the wrong side of history will recoil in horror. I will be hated. Condemned. They will call me terrorist and fanatic. Even suicide bomber.

And they will be wrong. I am none of these.

I am the future.

I am their end.

I am… Don’t think. Act.

The bite of the needle is a familiar sting. The same steely kiss that I’ve known since birth. I hit the mainline. Thumb the plunger. Liquid moonlight disappears beneath my skin. And it is done. The catalyzing agent is coiling up my arm like an icy snake, working its way towards my heart. A second later I feel its fangs. My arm goes heavy. Limp. Waves of pain swell within from my core. Legs go weak. Body shudders. I slump into the soot and grime. Wet filth clings to me like angry ticks. And somewhere very dark and very far away…

I hear myself scream.

In the Teaching Circle we were told many times about the catalyzing agent and its gifts, “…an endocrine trigger that pushes the metabolism into overdrive and turns the circulatory system into what is, quite literally, a slow-burning chemical fire.” I was warned of the pain. Told of the billions of tiny teeth that would chew me from the inside out. That is why we Brothers must first endure the Lessons of Agony before we’re sent into the world. It’s when the bamboo rods and surgical hooks lose their sting that a Brother knows he is ready.

Vision blurs.

Tears form.

The world flares into a sucking, hissing, shrieking void; an ever-expanding black that throbs in time with my pounding heart, stripping away pieces of my consciousness until all that I am is the raw anguish that’s pumping through my veins. And suddenly I’m on the pavement, face grinding into wet asphalt, splinters of blunt pain shooting through my skull.

And then I realize something…

I’m smiling.

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Tabula Rasa
by J. Ishiro Finney
Published by 01Publishing
www.01Publishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic form mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events portrayed are fictional or are used in an imaginary manner to entertain. Any resemblance to any real persons or dead is purely coincidental.

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