Orgonomicon by Boris D. Schleinkofer Read Free Book Online

fewer living beings there were to witness the presence of
the outlanders, the slower would be the spread of the
field-anomaly. The higher the order of intelligence witnessing, the
greater was the degree of magnitude. It was a simple ratio, and yet
it was all the Hive understood, nothing close to true knowledge of
the problem. Protocols had been developed and the situation studied
further, but it was as far as the Hive had gotten.
    Protocols. Protocols demanded the killing of
the strange, beautiful creature with the voice of a distant galaxy
collapsing. Protocols which enabled the drone to carry out its
duties for another one million, five-hundred seventy-seven
thousand, eight-hundred and forty-seven-point-six minutes
Earth-time, before the mobile would become unusable and it would be
recycled. HfX7qe2179A9 held the bird in its three-fingered claw,
held the prismatic rainbow of soft feathers in its cold, grey
claw.
    The boy slept soundly in his bunk.
    The two other children had been harvested
already; HfX7qe2179A9 had not been able to complete the harvesting
of this one. There would need to be another demerit added to the
tally; Hive-records were nothing if not exhaustive.
    But could they ever come to a complete
knowledge of even a single human being? These creatures were
incredibly complex for such a simple-minded species. The chemical
interactions within the boundaries of a single unit were in
constant flux, unpredictable if left alone, and complicated beyond
measure when taken on an interactive basis with others of their
kind. To make a complete map of the subtle networks between even
two humans was still an impossibility; group dynamics of three or
more were manipulable only at the trend-level and were subject to
innumerable permutations.
    Would there be consequences for its sparing
the boy?
    These thoughts expanded one upon the other,
leading HfX7qe2179A9 once again to dangerous thinking.
    The singular unit, however, the lone human—if
not fully understood, these were perfectly controllable, down to
the very last nuance in the wrinkling mouth of a facial tic. The
boy's mind plied open to a stroke of blue light from the wand;
HfX7qe2179A9 read the events of his past activity-cycle.
    In many ways, they were alike: the human's
schedule was rigidly programmed and outside his influence, his
perceptions and opinions carefully managed by meticulous overseers
and their talking-box technologies. The boy's Queen—his
'Mother'—was the absolute power in their hierarchical family
structure.
    The father had been removed some time prior
to the events covered in the scan of the boy's memory, and
HfX7qe2179A9 knew that the human had strong reactions to the
other's absence. There were complexities, and still further
complications when the boy's mother lied to him about the man's
going away—the boy knew she was being untruthful and permitted
himself to withhold the truth from her in return, when she asked
him a simple question: "Do you understand me?"
    The question itself was a double-bind, not
asked to verify the boy's general comprehension but instead meant
as a threat. She'd repeated the question once, with an escalatory
tone and frightening countenance, and the boy had chosen to give
her what she'd wanted without actually giving anything. It had been
the boy's first lie. He'd said, "Yes."
    HfX7qe2179A9 was curious.
    This phenomenon, of the purposeful falsity,
was not in order. There was a rebound, as the boy responded to the
lie with another lie, which was accepted with yet another, an
unbroken chain. The spin-offs were out of control, causality a
tangled unpredictable—
    These thought-processes were not available to
drones. HfX7qe2179A9 was to complete the mission and return.
    It stood at the foot of the child's bed,
watching the human sleep; the boy frowned and then rolled away onto
his side and clutched the blankets up around his neck, and then
went perfectly still. HfX7qe2179A9 lay the wand down at its
leathery side, tilted