THE PROMISE OF IMMORTALITY

By WC QUICK

The job was simple enough, tack the pipes together, angle to angle and seam to seam. Anybody could get it right. But if she screwed up one more time the BOSS was going to swallow her whole and shit her out in little pieces.

Eve carefully matched the electron beam welded seams of the thin titanium, cryogenic system cones, to the variable length, constant section tubing. She sighted in the laser and hit the program button for, TACK. The fixture compressed on the assembly, spun and flashed. She hit the RELEASE button. The fixture returned to the neutral position and relaxed the compression rings on the assembly. 

ERROR, ERROR, ERROR glowed in red on her optical implant control screen. Section 8, Operator 2247, the assembly is out of alignment.

She glowed with personal satisfaction. Confusing the quality assurance programs gave her such a deliciously wicked feeling. Her body shuddered with anticipation. It would be great if she could smile. The error message had been relayed to the Basic Operations Security System. She figured she had maybe 10 seconds before a sentinel was on her.

Eve grabbed the rejected pipe assembly as a sentinel slithered and clanked up the stairway to her station. Stretching to the end of her tethers, near the top of the stairway, she swung the pipe assembly, landing a series of blows on the approaching sentinel as it clamored onto the landing.

VIOLATION, TAMPERING WITH PROTOCOL, blared through the circuits implanted in her head. Her hands stung as a plasma pulse disintegrated the pipe. Vaporized titanium burned her face, blurring her vision.

The sentinel wrapped around her body, ripping the tethers from her thermal suit. The shards on the metal coils tore through the plas-steel fabric of the suit, mauling her skin and bone.

Her lungs and bowels emptied. The feeding tube shot out as her swollen tongue burst the watertight seal of her sutured lips. She felt her eyes bulging from their sockets.

Steam from pressure release jets squirting out of the head of the sentinel, rippled the skin of her bloated face. The lens of its single glowing eye quivered. Its clamshell jaws opened.

***

The warm air trapped inside the moist, folding tissue expanded. And the tiny slices of her body, floated in giant clusters of bubbles in the cold air of the station. The ululation of the workers resonated throughout the sphere. Then the sentinels chased everyone back to their cells.

Eve had seen it all, floating above it all. She could remember everything. She had seen the Promise Keepers and their machines. She saw the soup and the vat of the Genetic Optimization Device. She had felt the pain of rebirth.

All suited up, plumbed and sewn up, she sat on the edge of the shiny metal crèche in her cell.

She was surprised when her mind wandered to a vision of Adam, hovering in the storm.

Adam had sent a scrambled and somewhat cryptic account of the event from his station above Section 8.  “I am sure it was a glorious sight to see. I commend your effort and better luck next time. I would love to hear from you."

Adam was blind. A punishment, he received for having too many deaths. The Promise Keepers removed his eyes after his last resurrection. They installed him as a fusible link in the high voltage conduit. His body floated in plasma above the manufacturing center of Section 8. He was subjected to molar cracking seizures as electrical surges swelled in the turbulence of the plasma.

The last words she spoke to him were, “Die Asshole.” And that had been decades ago..