Who-Man Prologue

Hello all,

This last year has found me working on several projects and finishing none of them. I've run from story to story, from character to character, taking time to check in with them, to see what they're up to. Long enough to say hello, but not long enough to really get anything accomplished. I have two novels that are racing to the finish line and a short story that just recently beat them both to that mark. Speaking of that short story, titled 'Where Are Your Keys?', is now included in my short story collection for sale on Amazon.

But the reason I'm here is that I wanted to share something with you. One of those novels, the one that has my attention at the moment, is tentatively titled "Who-Man". I am at the point with this project that it is really exciting to me. I love the characters, I love how it's shaping itself, and I love the story. Considering that I know this cycle, and I know that in a few weeks I will be aggravated, tired, and discouraged with this same project, I wanted to capitalize on this moment and share the prologue of this book with you. The book is still nebulous and forming, but I feel pretty confident that this prologue, the one you're about to read, is nearly finished. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it appears in the final form of the novel just as your read it today, word for word. 

So take a look, and feel free to share thoughts and feelings. I hope you like it. 

--

Most of you are afraid of death.

I am not.

I die everyday.

It is not scary.

Waking up, being alive.

That is terrifying.

In every moment of living, from the first gasp of existence to that last gasp that drifts into death, there is nothing but fearful chaos. So many variables, so many choices, so many faces of possibilities, it is all full of terror. 

Especially when it will not end.

Death is quiet, death is calm, there are no variables, no choices, it just is. 

It is everything. 

Death is our natural state. 

It is what we were for the millennia before our birth, it is what we will be for the millennia that follow our death. It is the natural order. 

Life is the anomaly. Life is what is to feared. 

I have woken from death thirty-eight times now, each time hoping I would not.

They don’t think I know, they think I don’t remember. 

I do. 

I think that, at some point, I did not remember. I woke up as a grown man, a grown man who knew things and had skills he had no real right to know or have. I was less human and more biological tool. I was manufactured. I have no memories before this.

I do have knowledge. I know I shouldn’t have woken up a grown man. I know that I should have been a zygote that became a fetus that became a baby that became a child that became an adolescent, and so on. 

I did not. 

I know the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Eden. I know that Adam was also formed into a grown man. Maybe I, too, am made of dust. 

I am not sure if I was once a human that is now a reanimated, meaty facsimile; or if I am the conglomeration of cellular data that was accumulated and programmed to be what I am. I guess it doesn’t matter. 

I am this, regardless of origin.

I do know that I’m not supposed to remember. I know this because of what they say. I am a tool, a programmable object designed to do very specific work. I am not programmed to remember.

They joke about me, they talk about me as people talk about the dog on the couch, the simple creature who cannot process information into memory. 

They give me a nickname. 

I am “Who-Man”. When spoken, it sounds like a toddler pronouncing “human”.

I am a pun.

They call me this because I look like a human, but I have no identity. It started with a new tech asking, “Who?”, when someone referenced me. The name stuck.

“Prep Who-Man for deployment. Check vitals on Who-Man.” And so on.

I always wake up in a grey cylinder of hazy liquid. This is my home.

The first person I see is a bored looking technician, always wearing a size-too-large lab-coat. 

He looks like a child playing scientist. 

He is usually sipping a coffee out of a styrofoam cup that looks overused. Saggy, stained, and wilted, it is the emblem of this place. Pushing buttons out of habit, he barely looks to anything but the book he’s reading. The book looks trashy. From the title, to the worn paperback cover, it looks like he picked it up from a dime-store. 

Why do I know what a dime-store is? Why do I know that dime-stores appeared in the early twentieth century when Frank Winfield Woolworth popularized the market model of buying and selling huge amounts of goods at heavily discounted prices, providing a small profit margin that was multiplied by the volume of total sales?

The hazy liquid eventually drains from the cylinder until my feet hit the cold, wet floor. It’s slippery, so I always have to put my hands out to hold myself up. How do my hands know to hold me up? How do I know how to stand?

“Initiate Kill Sparrow.”

Today it is Kill Sparrow.

Last time it was Rogue Minnow.

Before that, Crimson Underground. 

And on and on.

There have been six distinct code phrases so far. This is the third time for Kill Sparrow. It is my least favorite, it is the one I hate the most. It is the one with the most casualties. 

It is the one with her.

A jolt shivers through me and I feel the programming course through my synapses. I learn so many terrible and lethal things in an instant. I learn so many acts of cruelty, I learn to forget my compassion, my humanity. Soon, I am a killing machine.

Women, men, children, they are specks of biology. Conglomerates of meat and tissue, nothing more. No associated lives or emotions. Meat bags of meaningless chemical reactions. 

Then it all goes black.

Like it always does.

This is not death. This is sleep. Sleep induced by the exhaustion of your brain being stimulated to the point of overload.  

This is a hard reset. This is how I travel.

When I wake up, sand is racing over my arms, my hands digging in, grasping fists of sandy earth. I’ve never been conscious for my arrival, but I always find myself on all fours, my hands in fists. The pain radiates from my gut and shoots out in each direction, reaching my extremities and rushing outwards. Something escaping the body I find myself trapped in.

I slowly stand, dusting the sand off of my clothes. I am dressed in tattered pants, a large tunic, and no shoes.

No tools, no weapons. I am a homeless man from centuries ago. 

This is Kill Sparrow. 

I hate it. 

This is where she is. The woman I love. And she always dies.

And I always kill her.

I stand up. There are no landmarks, just sand. Mounds of sand dancing amongst itself. I don’t need landmarks though, I know the way. I remember. 

I’m not supposed to remember, but I do.

I am supposed to be here until the men on horses stumble upon me, I’m supposed to be confused, harmless, a time bomb who has no concept of time.

I am walking away from the mission, I am walking to her. This time will be different. 

I’m not sure if they can see me, if they are following my movement, but I don’t care. They have no threat over me. Death isn’t scary.

Losing her, that is terrifying.

So I walk, the tiny specks of rocky sand burning my skin as it squishes through my raw toes. I walk until the sun becomes my antagonist, beating down on me with glee.

If I had waited, I’d have been to the village by now. I would be near her. But the events that lead to her death would also be in motion.  

There it is, the village, the clay-stone buildings defying the landscape. Fighting against the sand so desperately trying to overtake the landscape. 

A battle of elements. 

The buildings surround a small well, a well with a hole so deep it finally found water. Water lives under the dryness, heat lives below that, then more water, then more sand. The earth is a conglomeration of matter and energy waiting to become different phases of matter and energy. Gas to water, water to gas, and on and on. Always in flux, always in conflict, always fighting to be.

Her hut is nestled behind the largest structure in the village, a church.

I’m not sure when I am, but it has to be after the advent of Christianity. The cross looms above them all, the shadow reminding everyone that death even awaits gods. 

But gods, like me, wake up from death.

I need to wait until nightfall. Strangers are not welcome in this village, they are the other, they are the threat of something else, something unknown, something outside. That is why the men on horses usually capture me, why they throw my in a cell, why they interrogate me until they initiate the killing switch programmed within me. Once that switch is flipped it is all over, for everyone. For her. 

They, the they that work in the lab that houses my tube, try different iterations every time, switching each tiny variable to hopefully change the conclusion. I can only deduce these variables have not changed the conclusion yet. What is the conclusion they want? I cannot know.

I lay down, the sand moving under me, allowing me to inhabit the space that belonged to it only moments ago. Sand knows that it will inhabit the space again soon enough. They know they will have their turn.

I watch the clouds float by, the Sun watching down as the Earth floats by, the hemisphere slowing turning away from the light. Finally the Sun disappears behind the horizon and night has fallen. The darkness of the Universe reveals itself. 

It’s time to save her. 

I make my way down the hill, past the well, and to the candlelit house in which she lives. Reaching down to the latch on the door I discover it isn’t closed. The door is cracked open. Am I too late? No, I am the one who kills her. I am the threat.

The door swings open silently in response to my touch. She sits next to the fireplace. She doesn’t turn to me, but she speaks.

“Poor boy, they did it to you again didn’t they? Here, sit next to the fire.”

Who is she expecting? Am I that person, does she remember me? Is she like me?

“I am not like you if that’s what you're thinking.”

I move to sit next to her, my legs leading my tingling body. My body trying to cope with the unexpected in a world that has led me to believe that it only dabbled in the expected.

“No, not like you. I made you.”

I suddenly can’t bring myself to look at her. I can only stare at the flame. The oxygen burns, escaping as weightless embers of light, moving on to their next purpose. 

“How many times have you been here now? I assume you’ve become conscious of the whole process by now.”

This is not right. She is a peasant, she is a woman from centuries ago, she is the woman I fell in love with the moment I saw her. She is a remnant of time. The first time I saw her she was running from me, eyes wide, the hazel specks dancing away from me in desperation. And I brought a sword down on her. Her auburn hair splitting, revealing the layer below.

My body was doing what it was programmed to do but my mind, that intangible bit of consciousness that demands it is separate from the rest of your humanity, was revolting. It felt love, sadness, grief as her insides spilt through her outside, her auburn hair turning dark red.

This is why I am here to save her.

“I’m also assuming you don’t know what the hell is going on? Why they’re doing this? Why you're doing this?”

I finally manage to glance at her, to glance at the calm hazel specks floating in her eyes, the auburn hair floating over her forehead stretching towards her ear. 

I am in love with her. Who is she?

“Well, in short, it’s because we fucked it all up.”