The Many Deaths of Deacon

Pain, so much pain! My bones are on fire, I can’t think… Feels like a damned elephant is sitting on my chest! where’s that bloody nurse? What kind of circus are they running here, anyway? I need my pain meds, this doesn’t feel right, not right, no… oh no, oh no! I’m not ready to die!

Where am I? Is this heaven? No, it smells like death and decay… what’s in my hand? Oh!

With a snap Deacon awoke, called back to reality by the small heart locket that he kept with him at all times. It contained his mother’s ashes – all that was left of his family now. He held up his fingers, wriggling all twelve of them in front of his face, relieved to find the contact fading fast. The pain and stiffness of crippling arthritis had been almost as bad as the cold, heavy hand that seemed to twist his gut. Cancer and old age – that poor man. No wonder he seemed so bitter.

“Well? Is this one any good?” The Commander asked, gesturing at the skeleton on the ground beside him.

Deacon shook his head. “It’s older than the others, we’re getting closer. But he had an eye augmentation. We’re about fifty years off the mark.”

“Damn it to hell!” The Commander kicked the skull back into the open grave in disgust, making Deacon wince. “We’ve been at this for weeks. How damn hard is it to find just one harvestable corpse?” His eye patch slipped down and he shoved it back in place with his misshapen fingers. “Well? What are you all stood around gawping for? Back to work! I want this whole place dug up by nightfall, understood?”

The soldiers shuffled back to work, some limping, others hunched and contorted in a crude parody of humanity. Deacon was left alone by the grave, and he took a moment to recover before spraying a red ‘X’ on the pile of dirt beside the grave. Not this one.

Not any of them, it seemed like. He’d been working in Columbia, a fascinating dig that helped clarify so many missing pieces in the history books. Aurology had opened up a whole new avenue of archaeological research – instead of relying on pottery shards and outlines of ancient walls, now they could learn from the ancestors directly! The psychic link didn’t always work, and when it did it usually only lasted about twenty minutes, but you could learn a lot from the last twenty minutes someone lived. Of course, those were generally not the most pleasant parts of a life, but out in the field he was only doing one a week, with plenty of down-time in between to write up his discoveries. Then the Commander had arrived in his ornithopter, and everything changed.

Important government business, he’d been told. Top-level clearance, need to know basis. They called it an invitation, but he wasn’t dumb enough to believe he could decline. Within hours he found himself in a green military tent in a muddy field, staring at rows and rows of crumbling skeletons. It was surreal.

Of course, he wasn’t the only aurologist. It was far too much for one person to handle, they even had emotional support dogs on hand for comfort after a particularly bad contact. Deacon’s biggest fear was that one day he would forget himself inside the swirling pain and confusion of those final moments, and be trapped in the link forever, doomed to relive someone else’s death over and over for eternity.

Some of them went crazy. If you contacted a disturbed mind, or if the connection was unusually powerful and all-consuming, there was always a chance you’d break. His friend Anita had been carried off on a stretcher just a week ago, laughing hysterically. She had grabbed for an officer’s gun and attempted to shoot herself, but it needed a fingerprint to fire. Deacon didn’t think he’d see her again, unless perhaps he ended up wherever she was taken.

Ten a day. That was the limit set by the Commander, even he realized more than one death an hour was unreasonable. Like a woman tensing for the next contraction, Deacon counted the minutes in his head. 55 more before the next contact. He took deep breaths, held his locket tightly, trying to hear his mother’s voice in his head.

‘You can do it, Deacon. You’re stronger than you know, and I’m right beside you.’

He wandered towards the refreshment tent. His bow-legged gait might once have seemed comical; not anymore. Now he was one of the lucky ones, relatively free of mutations and disease. His eyes were almost level, he could wear off the rack clothes without alteration. Anita had even told him he was cute, once. He opened his hip flask, taking a swig. In his line of business, alcohol was a must.

Sitting on a bale of hay alone in the tent, Deacon poured the cheap bourbon into his coffee. He missed Anita. She had always been quick with a dark joke to help him when he was struggling. ‘Cheer up,’ she would say, ‘It’s not your funeral.’ Or maybe that old chestnut – ‘you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

The children were the worst, but also somehow the easiest. While the elderly went clawing for every last breath and fighting till the bitter end, the young had a sweet acceptance of death. Some even went willingly, hoping for an afterlife free from the troubles of their short lives.

Hope. Hadn’t been much of that for people in a long time. Genetic modification had seemed great in the early days, but when it went wrong it did so spectacularly. Then the solar flares came and destroyed all electronics, wiping clean every microchip and data set worldwide. All the collected knowledge of the last few hundred years wiped out, all gone. Amidst all the chaos and death, nobody thought about the original cell lines, stored safely in freezers all around the world. By the time they did, it was too late. There was no salvaging the healthy DNA to put humanity back on course.

So now here was Deacon, drafted unwillingly into the armed forces, dragged from burial plot to burial plot in the precious few places not yet repurposed and built over. They only needed one body – just one – with usable DNA. How hard could it be?

“Hey, Necromancer! Get your ass over here!”

Deacon sighed, taking a few swigs from the flask before staggering to his feet. Time for another contact. Please let it be a peaceful one.

Anita would have understood. She’d have placed her warm hand over his, told him he was doing great, reminded him that between the two of them they had the perfect number of fingers. Only she was gone. She’d been so strong, always able to shake it off faster than him. What had she seen that broke her in the end? Was she suffering still?

He didn’t think he could do it again without losing himself in the pain and grief. Then it dawned on him – if he gave in to the insanity, he would be of no more use to the Commander. He would be free of all the death. He drained the last of the bourbon, dizzy now as he headed to the far corner of the field.

There was an air of excitement among the soldiers. There were whispers – this could finally be the one. The coffin was old, older than anything they had come across before. It seemed to be made of some sort of metal - dark, with a dirty glass window in the front. It was small – Deacon could see that from a distance, and he tried to steel himself for what was to come.

They unscrewed the last of the bolts and lifted off the heavy lid. Everyone gasped. The child inside – she looked like she was sleeping! Buried for centuries, yet the roses in her folded hands were still whole, though dried and crumbling. Her brown curls rested on a cream silk pillow, and her pale blue dress matched the ribbons in her hair. She was a little sleeping beauty.

Deacon knelt beside her, almost afraid to touch her. He held tight to his locket, gently placing his other hand on her forehead. For a moment nothing seemed to happen – he’d never worked with such an intact body before. Maybe the embalming fluid was blocking contact…

Hot. So hot. I’m tired, I think I can sleep now. When I wake up I hope I can see Mammy and the baby. It doesn’t hurt now. Not really. I feel better, if it wasn’t so hot in here! The doctor said it’s ‘amonia’, or something like that. It sounds pretty, like a princess name, but it’s not, it’s a mean old troll name and it wants to drag me under its bridge. There’s a bridge at the park, but there isn’t a troll. I wish I was in the park, yes, down by the river feeding the ducks! There’s a breeze there, and the ice cream cart on the corner. If I had an ice cream I’d cool down. Sleepy, so sleepy. I should stay awake so Daddy knows I’m okay. He looks so sad. I don’t want them to be sad. I really do feel better. The park looks beautiful today…

The connection ended gently, the child slipping into a dream in her final moments. Deacon opened his eyes, blinking at the bright sunlight, thinking for just a moment that he could smell strawberry ice cream.

Nobody spoke, not even the Commander. There was an air of respect this time that had not been present with the other contacts… almost a reverence for the innocent child that might be their salvation. He turned to them, nodding.

“This is her – she’s the one for sure. Ellen De Marco, aged five. She loved feeding the ducks in the park, and her new baby brother. The way her Mammy’s hair smelled of apple blossoms, and strawberry ice cream…” he felt tears slipping down his cheek, but he didn’t wipe them away. “She was so sweet, I wish you could see – really see her like I do. If we can capture even a part of the DNA that made her who she was, then humanity will truly be saved.”

The Commander nodded. “You did well, nice work today. We’ll need you to stick around for a few more days while we run some tests, but I think by the end of the week we can take you back to Columbia, if you want.” He turned towards the operations tent, barking orders at the soldiers as he walked.

What do I want?

Deacon knelt beside the coffin while trying to gather his thoughts. The soldiers were dispersing, they’d be back soon enough to take Ellen away. He thought about the last few months, all the deaths he had experienced. So many people died alone. Old women on Dementia wards, unable to recall their children’s names. Teenagers murdering other teenagers over a pair of kicks or a favorite rapper. Kids with leukemia, fighting so bravely for years in a battle they could never win. Or little Ellen, with her pneumonia - would she have lived a long life if she was born just 50 years later? It was all too much. Was mankind really worth saving? What had they learned from all their mistakes in the past? Wars were still happening, every day people killed each other over petty materialism or misguided beliefs.

Suddenly he knew what he had to do. He kissed the locket, before placing it gently beneath Ellen’s hands. “There you go, little one. My Mom will be with you now. It’s time to let the past go.”

He stood up, feeling somehow lighter. He knew with complete certainty that he would never make another contact. It was time to leave death behind him and embrace life instead.