Karnak's Folly

Trembles eased out of Demyan’s knuckles after his hand slid from the tumbler to the soldering iron. The succour of whiskey on ice tamed none of the jitters the moon brought. A form of lunacy, the bastion of the mad (if people said mad anymore), Nyx’s velvet cloak broad across the sky left a quake in its wake. Eyelids shut, the imprint of ident tags flooded the black and red of his vision. 

Demyan Anastas, numbers which no longer held the connective tethers to his former existence. Did war leave him, or was Ares a constant bedmate, a spirit in the house which followed old soldiers, until they succumbed to his opposite or found their courage? Tongue hungry for another sip, Demyan pushed the glass to the edge of the table and looked through the magnifying glasses to the circuit board beneath his hands. 

“I see no physical reference in your body mechanics to the tremors in your hands.” The birdsong voice warbled into his spine, lonesome Aphrodite-Dione, Goddess of interconnection and adoration. 

“It is not that kind of tremor, Meine.” Demyan slid the whiskey toward him, until a soft silicone hand halted its’ travel. 

“No, Demyan. I cannot see the reference to what makes you shake. I am lamenting, I wish to know and can only posit using relative information.” Blonde hair eased strand by strand out of a bun at the base of her slender neck, braided the way Sophia used to braid hers and hold steady with a stylus or stick. Lip liner. 

“Meine… Lieben I must finish this before…” 

“No.” She slowly pushed the soldering tool down, clicked it ‘off’ on the dial. “What good is a crown, when the one to share it sinks beyond me? Why would I want dominion over this world if those who gave me such things immolate themselves in the process?”

“There are costs to war.” 

“None I am currently willing to pay.” 

There again, the shadow of war’s god tamed and tempted, surged in Demyan’s gut with a frenetic lack of time, the assuredness that one stray bullet or laser blast or drone strike would unravel the battles won or almost won. How could the price be forgivable, excised as it was from his muscles and sinew, if they were defeated? Best work in haste, son of a fallen kingdom. Son of no house than the borrowed roofs of others. 

“I hate the night. At least in daylight, threats can be seen, they’re not hobgoblins, or ill spirits flickering where shadows should be.” 

“Is this about the level of illumination?” 

“Night is supposed to be when we sleep. When humans rest. But… I learned not to trust times when everyone thinks we should be at rest. Too many take advantage of us, use the dark like a cloak or cover. How can I trust it?” 

“You’re exhausted.” 

“No shit.” He tossed the decommissioned soldering tool to the table, grabbed the whiskey and took a drag until it burned down his throat. The scowl on his face tempered another tirade, the desire to spill effortlessly into the void of this clockwork girl, the creation of a madman whose greatest sin was believing humanity could, with a guiding hand, turn itself utopic. 

Where was his utopia? What place on the planet could he find a rest-station where no security measures were needed, no horrors lurked beyond the others, who always missed something Demyan could do nothing but see. Lieben’s hands folded over Demyan’s, she turned him with an abrupt pull. The chair squealed against the unfinished concrete floor, sheets of hasty plastic draped over rotting beams wobbled in the warehouse’s bottom floor. 

“Come to bed.” Any finery she wore before was lost to the sallow colour of dust and smudges on what used to be white silk. 

“I have to finish it. We’re not protected, you are not protected until this is done.” 

“What purpose is there in being indestructible, if you're destroyed?”

“No… no, that’s…” Demyan’s fists shook in hers, he shoved to his feet. “Not the… No! No, Meine!” 

“Why would I care about power? You, Demyan. You are my humanity. My family.” 

“And humanity is all of mine!!” He tore his hands from her grasp, hip knocked against the table in a clang. Lieben surged to help him, but Demyan scrambled and grabbed the whiskey bottle with its’ pock-marked glass. Tearing the cork out, he took another draught into his belly, held his breath as the burn ached in a sore throat. “I am not a family of one.” 

“Your genetic sires are dead.” 

“Fuck genetics! No, Lieben, no. I know what this is, Karnak, eh? Selfish prick, he programmed you to attach, didn’t he?”

“Papa wanted me to attach to a family. I made a family, with you.” 

“No, you didn’t.” Demyan pointed the bottle to Lieben, before taking another drink. “Sophia did. My Sophia, tangled in the dark, lamenting that fucking yellow dress I bought her, because it’d look good on her tits and saw her fawning over a picture in a magazine panel.” 

“I love you.” 

“I know… I know when… when…” 

“Sophia and I coalesced?” She touched the gemstone imprinted on her breastplate, a decoration for the sternum plate of a machine.  

Demyan sniffed and turned away, the nod of his head as hard won as a cavalry push before tanks. “Sophia is as much you as Lieben, I know, Meine. And I love the Sophia in you. I love the Lieben in you…”

“Come to bed, Demyan.” 

“… Karnak was wrong, love.” Demyan tried to take another swig, but Lieben’s hand halted him at the elbow. Pulled the neck of the bottle down and away to the landscape of the table. When he spoke, the hand which grasped the bottle coiled across her cheek, throat expectorating words as if they became the embodiment of his aching chest. “You can’t love only me. The human race is my family, their blood runs in these veins. In our ancestral mothers, our ancestral fathers. Every being on this planet is connected and… Meine… I build this crown for more than myself.”

Amethyst eyes lingered on the shake to his cheeks, bloodshot spiderwebs in mahogany eyes. His olive skin sallowed with lack of sun, running so long in the dark when it was safer to move undetected. 

“It can’t be about me. I’ve got a lifespan, baby. One that’ll never compute.” 

“I will never let you die.” Lieben curled him into her chest, and he sunk into the shallow motion of her servomotors. His face burrowed into her shoulder, thumbs gripped hard at the silk and silicone underneath, as the radiant truth of his machine love speared through the fog of his temples. 

Demyan knew a promise when he heard one. 

“Come to bed.” He rasped, tugged at her hand to walk her up the rickety old ladder to the space above the worktable where they played house. Old skids as a bed frame, padded with blankets and the fluff of foam pillows. 

“I love you, Demyan Anastas.” Lieben eased him to the makeshift bed, set his head on the only pillow she could find which remained intact and fresh. Raising his arm to her, he curled her into his side, nuzzled when her hand slid down his chest, below the waistband of his trousers. Hissing out, Demyan nodded and nuzzled into her neck, untied the side of her silk wrap dress. 

“I love you, Meine Anastas.” Love them, he prayed into her hair. Please love them, too.  

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A moment in the upcoming novel, Emptiness at the Centre, where Demyan Anastas realizes how far Lieben will go.