The Conformity by John Hornor Jacobs Read Free Book Online

just worship, right,” Jack says, raising his hands, a great mass of fingers. “Worshipping something, praying to something … It’s not actually doing anything. It’s not creating anything.”
    Priest looks at Jack sadly. “Have you been listening, Mr. Graves?” He doesn’t go so far as tsk ing but I get the impression he’s thinking about it. “Everything is connected. We are—all of us—part of a great tissue that expands and contracts and breathes and shivers and thrums. We are a wave front. The human wave front. And what happens to one of us affects us all. Do you not understand this?”
    Jack shakes his head. “It’s bullshit. New-age crap. I do what I decide. I have free will. I’m not just part of the machine. Because if what you’re saying was true—which it isn’t— we’re already part of a conformity.”
    â€œPrecisely. And now that unity is being threatened.”
    Boom . Boom - boom .
    I’m holding a freezing tube full of the essence of one of my friends while a walking tower of flesh is banging at the mountainside, wanting to either squish or subsume us. At a certain point, all the jibber-jabber becomes useless.
    â€œThis is all just dandy. But what’s your plan?”
    Priest limps around the worktable. He withdraws a set of keys, opens a steel storage compartment, and waves us to assist him. “That black box. Please remove it, Mr. Graves.”
    Jack picks it up with a grunt, and I see it’s the same sort of matte-black box that the Orange Team implemented during the ill-fated attack on the Towson Veterans Hospital. Priest presses a button, and a compartment opens on its face. There’s a mechanical interface inside it, including a suspiciously familiar-looking outlet.
    â€œIt is relatively simple. You place the weaponized genome here. It locks in and drains into the device. There’s a synthetic organism in there that will, once you press this button, go into a frighteningly strong paroxysm of psychokinetic energy. It is, in essence, an extranatural bomb. Once triggered it will, in a matter of moments, bond with the weaponized genome and release its energy.”
    â€œSo, this is the stasis bomb we kept hearing about?”
    â€œIt is and it isn’t. It’s whatever genome you place inside it. And it’s good for only one burst.”
    â€œHow many of these things do you have?” Jack asks, awed.
    â€œJust the one.” Priest gives a bitter laugh. “That box costs more money than it cost the United States to set mankind on the moon. Billions upon billions of dollars.”
    â€œOne device? But how many genomes?” I ask.
    â€œMany. Thirty or forty.”
    â€œSo you’re telling me Quincrux took that many kids and … what? Weaponized them? Killed them? Couldn’t he just take their blood?”
    He shakes his head. “Everything is connected. To weaponize an extranatural ability, it must be collected at the moment of genesis within the individual and harvested. The ‘donor’—and I use that term loosely—does not survive.” He waves a hand at the tank full of thin, transparent oil. “It is a frighteningly complicated process that I’m afraid, with my antiquated knowledge of science, I did not fully understand.”
    We’re silent for a while, the only noise our breathing and an intermittent boom sounding in the subterranean laboratory. It’s par for the course, really, that these avaricious men would harvest children for their own ends. What does it say about me that I’m not even surprised?
    â€œSo,” I say, breaking the silence. “The plan.”
    â€œThere are two more exits from this bunker. One on the other side of the mountain. Once again, I must ask you to be bait, Shreve.”
    I laugh. “Again? You didn’t ask the first time.”
    His face colors, and I think for an instant