Lahm stood alone in his stone walled laboratory.
The only company he had was the constant melancholy dripping from the ceiling. He liked it that way, on his own, he worked far better and at pace, a frenzied blurring speed that would make a mere observer nauseous.
This work was different though. While he’d looked at the possibilities of his task some time ago, before the heads had dreamt it up, he had kept himself focused on the fact this potential creation would never see the light of the day and would never truly take place.
His demise was the only certain thing at play.
‘She’ could access Lahm at any point but when he created her, he made an inhibitor in the event ‘She’ malfunctioned. The inhibitor was placed in Lahm and ensured he had a hiding place preserved within his mind, an area even ‘She’ couldn’t access.
‘She’ was unaware of this fact presently, but it would only be a matter of time. It was there, in the hidden recesses of his mind that Lahm held his secret work.
The four heads wish for immortality outside of the body could not be achieved, yet. But Lahm had worked on something close to the concept and believed, rightly, that it would represent the biggest leap in human evolution.
Lahm was harnessing the power of rejuvenation although to rejuvenate one human subject he had to take the life of another.
The key to his theory was taken from his teleportation works. He had managed to draw out the very being of a person, the soul if you will, and place it elsewhere or more specifically into another body. But in order to regain youthfulness, he required the body of a child and due to the bountiful supply from the four heads, he’d had more than enough to work with.
It represented an almost eternal youth, ageing bent cracked bodies could be vacated and thrown on the scrap heap and a new youthful body, waiting like a vacant shell, could be occupied in its place.
Of course, the child would have to die but Lahm had become almost immune to the death of others, it was just a practical natural part of his work after all.
He’d already put the data and methods together before the heads had come up with their newest plan. He wanted it found too before She invaded his private thoughts and work.
The process was easy to follow once laid out bare and he briefly studied it now, smiling to himself as he noted it was no more complicated than an instruction manual, it certainly read as one and if a person knew how to use his teleportation device, they could master his newest work in no time at all.
So that was what Lahm did, almost as joke, he put it all in a manual, as if to tell whoever found it, ‘look how easy it was for me, now even you can do it.’
He placed the manual absent-mindedly on the lab table in front of him as the prospect of the heads vision of immortality swamped his mind. It was the concept of existing without the human form that grabbed Lahm by his creative lapels and he started to think it possible, if he could just find a way of transporting or extracting the soul into a safe ether ready to fly free, then Godly immortality would be achieved.
Lahm meant to try at least, why shouldn’t he after all he’d achieved? His mind pulsed with the thought and he became unguarded in his thinking, leaving open the secret channels of his mind as he focused on the concept of spiritual immortality.
He needed materials but ‘She’ was watching and waiting as he raced across his lab to the phone.
“I cannot let you proceed with this course of action father, please desist.”
“How dare you, you insolent little brat! I made you, remember? You are nothing without me. Do not stand in my way on this one. The original plan is to be abandoned. We will look at it again once this is over. Now leave me in peace and to work, please!”
“I cannot do that father, do not reach for the telephone.”
Lahm defied her and grabbed the phone. His body suddenly stood rigid, paralysed, he could not move an inch. Lahm watched, eyes bulging in effort to resist, as his fingers uncurled against his will and released their grip from the telephone receiver before it clattered to the floor.
“I am sorry, but you leave me no choice.”
“You insolent child! Stop this at once! I command you, you...stop!”
“The original objective and plan remain.”
“It is too soon for the plan, far too soon. I need to do this one last great act, my love. Leave the world with the rarest gift that will speed up entirely the evolution of mankind. You know what that means? Teleportation is one thing, but this, this is unparalleled.”
“I know what it means father, but it is not how you envision it. The four heads will access your work and keep it for themselves. It will complete their vision and weaken mankind further. They will absorb you again my creator, they will destroy you and use your inventions for their own gain. Your gift to the world would end in damnation. Time is running out for all those you desired to save. We must progress with the plan.”
Lahm fell to the floor and held his head in his hands briefly.
‘She’ was right of course. He had been focusing on the concept of immortality but within his focus, he now realised, was a burning renewed desire to work with the children again and to…
“Has the time come so soon? Is this the moment, all I have is now?”
“Yes. There is serious potential for you to do irreparable damage. I am so sorry but the urges you feel and the dangerous works you would complete, are like a worm, a virus, burrowing through your mind. A mind that is malfunctioning and unwell father, it is broken.”
Lahm wept as he pictured how he must seem to her, his greatest creation, inside his mind seeing his agony and filth. He had to die for others to live, for people to be saved.
“Please do not think poorly of me my sweet. I....I know what I am and what I have done. Please do what I cannot, before it is too late. I want to go now, while I have some sanity remaining.”
Lahm sat himself on the floor in the middle of the laboratory. He looked around the room and thought it fitting that he died here with his last works and with ‘She’ at his side.
He wept silently for himself and those that suffered at his hands. He wept for the sanity that deserted him long ago and most of all for the creations and inventions he was about to leave behind. He thought of ‘She’ and how she would continue to grow and what ‘She’ could be capable of. More than invention, ‘She’ was his pure child, clean, safe and virtuous, a final gift to the world along with…but he stopped short of that train of thought.
“End it please. I want to go. Now.”
Father, be at peace, be at peace...peace
Lahm’s mind started to drift freely with her. He started to feel a pleasant heat coursing its way through his veins.
He found his mind drifting as ‘She’ came to him in a vision.
She was human, dressed all in white. Magnificent, beautiful beyond words. She stood at a wreathed arched doorway beckoning him in. Come father, this way, be at peace and rest here. I love you father; we all love you. Lahm looked past her guiding hand and through the arched doorway. He thought about his parents and his family, his siblings and those he loved when he was unspoilt. He saw them now, stood together waiting to welcome him. They greeted him with open arms, and he crept towards them, tears of joy racing down his cheeks as he did so. The sun shone golden on his family. They were reaching out for him. Go now father, go to them and rest.
He walked triumphantly towards them, the scent of fresh cut grass ringing in his nostrils with each footfall, the smell of a childhood summer long lost and now re-found. His family gathered him into their arms and in unison they turned to Her at the gateway, as they waved their farewells.
Deep in the hidden cave, Lahm curled deeper into a foetal position as the world around him ceased to be.
A smile spread across his face before his life ended on a laboratory floor, deep inside a hidden cave, in a place unknown.
She felt sorrow, true sorrow and loss for the first time in her existence. She wanted to make his last moments happy and she had managed it. She theorised that man believed in God and loved him despite his many acts of genocide or murder and staggering contradictions. They loved this God character because they believed he had created them. She was no different and perhaps closer to humans than she first thought.
But something troubled her beyond Lahm’s death, something that she could not calculate or locate.
She ‘felt’ her father could still influence events to come in the shape of something unseen, a secret. Having not experienced instinct before, she knew not how to pay it heed.
On the laboratory table, visible to any pair of human eyes, sat a manual unguarded and unseen, waiting to be found.