Back | Next
Contents

TWILIGHT OF THE GOD MAKERS


star


Erica L. Satifka



Geeta flips through the documents on her tablet anxiously, unable to look the doomed mother-to-be in the eye. “We can get you prepped for the embryo transfer right now, if you like. You’ve passed the physical.”

“I’m ready to serve my country, Dr. Kapoor,” Marilyn says in a confident, dutiful tone.

“Sign here,” Geeta says, handing over the tablet. As the woman scribbles out her name, Geeta tries not to think about the overman birth she’d seen in her orientation video: how the fetus had shredded its way out of its mother’s womb like a piranha, pushing out ropes of intestines and slapping them against the birthing room’s tile walls, throwing off the husk of its mother like a too-small suit.

That will be her six months from now, Geeta thinks, reminding herself not to get too close to the subject.

Geeta takes the tablet back from the young woman. “We’ll tour the facility, and if you’re ready they’ll transfer the embryo this afternoon.”

A slight smile, a minute hair bob. Geeta forces herself to concentrate on the recruitment poster on the wall. A diverse crowd of women dressed all in white poses on the steps of a classical building. They all look far too healthy and well nourished to be volunteers for Project Deus. Most of the women who’d enlisted twenty years ago had been poor.

Marilyn isn’t one of them. She hadn’t even accepted the posthumous stipend. Her motivation is ideological; according to her file, she’d lost her father in the Conflict. Geeta locks her tablet in her desk and stands up.

“Let’s get started.”


A few weeks later, Geeta goes to the enclosure to feed the overmen. It’s her day to do it. She loads the slabs of low-grade beef onto a waiting dolly and wheels it out to the multiply-reinforced titanium geodesic dome. She’s surprised to find her project lead already there, his hands clasped behind his back, watching the overmen’s activity on monitors welded to the enclosure’s opaque surface.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” he says.

Geeta presses the remote control that opens a space near the top of the enclosure. Even though the hatch is only open for a minute at a time, it’s a weak spot in base security, and it’s not impossible that one of them will find the exit. “I think they do, Dr. Sullivan.”

Kyle Sullivan, head biologist of Project Deus 2.0, shakes his head sadly. “We made ourselves a pantheon. But these gods are dead. Worse than dead.”

They both watch the monitors in silence. One of the creatures looms over a ground-level camera and releases a series of barks. She watches in horror as it scratches at the lens with its overgrown fingernails, which now resemble claws. Behind him, an identical overman with a rip in one of his wings picks up a rock and sticks it in his mouth.

“It’s coming, you morons,” mutters Geeta under her breath as the dolly continues to climb.

The original Project Deus started near the end of the Sino-Luso-American Conflict. When American terrorists detonated a nuclear device in Brasilia in retaliation for a slight nobody remembers, mutual destruction was assured. Back then a team of Mexican scientists at the University of Calgary had discovered the key to building the overmen—the continent’s greatest protectors.

The dolly reaches the feeding hatch, and two hundred pounds of meat rain down, landing with a wet glop. The overman who’d just scratched at the camera rushes to defend a pile of raw beef, but a slightly less addled one steps in his path. The two creatures limply fight, as others crawl toward the meat the combatants had suddenly abandoned.

“Poor bastards,” Sullivan says.

The overmen are cloned superhumans, the result of a gene-splicing process that both allows them to grow to their full size by the age of two years and grants them powers far beyond normal human capabilities. They’d been dispatched to all three countries as peacekeepers, and it was under their watchful gaze that the Treaty of Reconciliation had been signed. Upon the overmen’s return to the North American continent, the United States, Canada, and Mexico had joined together as one nation, the only one that holds the key to overman genetics.

“We worked out the kinks,” Geeta says to Sullivan, trying to inject a bit of optimism into her voice. “The new generation won’t be anything like these . . . people.”

Sullivan gives Geeta a brief glance and turns back to the monitors. “Probably.”

After the Conflict ended, the overmen had continued to patrol the skies over the North American Union. Geeta even saw one once as a girl from her parents’ home in Halifax. They’d been tasked not only with defusing the many separatist movements brewing in each of the constituent countries, but were also present at major diplomatic functions. They were celebrities of sorts, a symbol of peace through strength.

Tragically, their accelerated growth patterns caught up with them. All three hundred or so clones developed intractable dementia, and began to attack the cities they’d once so bravely defended. After several high-profile mass killings, the overmen had been caught and corralled.

They hadn’t been killed, however, except accidentally in the course of being captured. Overmen are too valuable a resource to simply throw away. And besides, overmen are veterans.

Now we’re making more of them, Geeta thinks, just in case they’re needed. And we won’t know if we’ve fixed the problem for a decade, at least. She watches the barking overman hover a few meters above his treasure of meat. He chokes it down so fast, he coughs, which appears to scare him.

“Dr. Kapoor, do you know why we made overmen? We have drones, after all.”

She’s surprised at the question. “I . . . I don’t know?”

“Because drones don’t have faces,” Sullivan snaps. He turns away from the enclosure, and after sealing the hatch with her remote control, so does Geeta. “People were getting less interested in war because of how technical it all was. So we built new drones out of flesh, and gave them human faces.”

Geeta doesn’t know what to say. “I’m not sure that’s true, Dr. Sullivan,” she says as gently as she can.

Dr. Sullivan gives Geeta a hard look. “You’d better get to sleep, Doctor, and so should I. The general wants to see everyone in the morning.”


Geeta struggles to keep her eyes open at General Rivera’s briefing. She takes a deep swig of coffee from her thermos and scans through patient reports on her tablet.

General Rivera strides into the room, sensible heels click-clacking on the tile floor. Her iron-gray bun stretches back the skin of her face, but the natural facelift can’t hide her age. She was well into her middle years when the Treaty of Reconciliation was signed, a fact she never let the much younger members of the science team forget.

“Sullivan, SITREP.”

He clears his throat. “As of yesterday evening, embryonic transfers have been conducted in thirty-seven women. All of the patients are doing well.”

The general grunts in approval. “What about the rehabilitation arm?”

Geeta almost groans aloud. The armed forces of the NAU had originally tasked the scientists here with fixing the existing overmen. The NAU wants their super soldiers, and they want them now.

“General, we’ve been over this. Overman rehabilitation is a pipe dream.” Sullivan takes a deep breath before his next sentence. “It’s not like we’re in the middle of a war. We have time.”

“We do not have time!” General Rivera yells. She slams her fist on the table, making several of the scientists jump. “Haven’t any of you seen the riots in Indianapolis?”

Geeta’s tracked a bit of it on her feed. A group of United States separatists, flanked by their allies in the parallel Canadian and Mexican movements, had torched a federal courthouse and set up an autonomous zone encompassing several square blocks of the city’s downtown. This area includes a convention center currently hosting the governor and this year’s Colts roster, making them all hostages.

“I defer to your experience in interpreting civil disturbances, ma’am. But our needs don’t change science. You’ll just have to use drones.”

The general snorts; Geeta imagines twin steam puffs coming out of her nostrils. “Drones kill civilians. Overmen—good overmen, not those wrecks out back—don’t. I’m not going before a court-martial.”

Geeta’s grown used to the general’s behavior. Everyone who had actually lived through the Conflict acted like General Rivera to an extent. The war had hardened them and loosened their tongues. Most people of that generation also had a dedication to the continuation of the NAU that bordered on the fanatical. Geeta guessed it was similar to the patriotic fervor that had once seized the constituent countries when they’d been founded so many centuries ago.

“I want full effort put back into rehabilitation,” General Rivera says. “I want all eyes on our veterans.”

This time, Geeta can’t stop herself from speaking up. “But what’s going to happen to the women?”

“The women will be fine,” the general says without a hint of empathy in her voice. “They’re not going anywhere, believe me.”

Geeta supposes “fine” isn’t the right term to use to describe what’s going to happen to the pregnant women in six months, but this time she keeps her mouth shut.

After the meeting, Geeta makes her way to the maternity ward. She’s been directed to move all her personal effects from this part of the base to the neuroplasticity wing, where the overman rehabilitation project is already ramping up.

“Dr. Kapoor!” yells a familiar voice.

Geeta turns to face Marilyn, the woman she’d sentenced to death. “I don’t think you should be out of bed, Miss Brown.”

“I just wanted to take a walk,” Marilyn says, “while I still can.”

It’s only been a couple of weeks, but Marilyn is already showing a bowling-ball-sized lump under her dress, the fetal overman within her turning her bowlegged and awkward. She’ll be immobile within a week, and on life support within a month. This probably is her last walk, Geeta thinks.

She takes Marilyn by the elbow and steers her back to her room. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“You have no idea how excited I am,” Marilyn says dreamily, as Geeta leads her along.

She’s a patriot, Geeta thinks, and this is what she thinks her duty is.

Once she’s settled Marilyn into bed, Geeta picks up the young woman’s water glass, walks over to the sink to refill it, and puts it on the table beside her. Then she takes Marilyn’s hand. “It’s okay to be scared, too. Even heroes get scared.”

The young woman beams. “But I’m not, Dr. Kapoor.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Geeta says, knowing that she won’t. She and the rest of the scientists are heading into a very different kind of work tomorrow.


The crack of a broken stylus rouses Geeta from the diagrams on her tablet. She looks over at Dr. Sullivan, arches an eyebrow.

“This is pointless,” he says, his usual daily greeting.

They’ve been stationed in the neuroplasticity wing for over a month. The two overmen judged most likely to be rehabilitated had been moved from their domed enclosure to this building, where they’d been strapped to their beds with ultrastrong tethers and experimented on like rats. Very expensive rats.

Last week, the team had injected a neural growth stimulating agent into the brains of both overmen, to zero effect. The week before that, they’d attached a microchip made out of synthetic bone to the insides of their skulls, a cutting-edge treatment that had breathed life into many human beings by ricocheting electric pulses throughout their cerebrums. But overman skull composition is just a little too far from human standard.

For the current go-around, they’d suspended a powerful nootropic mostly used by college students into a time-released fat globule and implanted the whole mess subdermally. Sullivan doesn’t have high hopes for this one either, to put it mildly.

“Maybe there was something in the Amazon that could have saved them,” Sullivan says bitterly, and not for the first time. “Too bad our dear general and her friends had to go torch it all up in the Conflict.”

Geeta knows to change the subject. She directs all her attention on the overman in front of them. “Tell me your name,” she says in a slow, deliberate voice.

The overmen, as pseudogods, had been given the code names of existing deities from various religions to humanize them. This one, a lantern-jawed pile of twitching muscle, is called Tlaloc, after the Aztec god of rain. Its counterpart in the next room was named Jophiel, after the Biblical archangel of wisdom and judgment.

“You’re wasting your time,” Sullivan says.

Geeta tries again. “Your name. Name.

Tlaloc’s lips peel back. He makes one of those awful barking sounds and strains at his tethers. “Ta . . . ta . . .”

At that, both scientists turn their heads and stare at the overman. He seems to be concentrating on a distant point of light. “Tlaloc.”

Geeta gasps, and Dr. Sullivan drops the pieces of his stylus. She speaks to the creature again in a slow, clear voice. “That—that was very good, Tlaloc.”

“Fly . . .” Tlaloc coughs a few times in rapid succession, and Geeta hurriedly squirts some water into his dry mouth. “Want to fly. Need to fly . . . protect.”

Sullivan holds up his camera. “Keep talking to him, Dr. Kapoor. The general needs to see this.”

Geeta doesn’t know what to say to the overman. She hadn’t even expected him to say his name let alone form most of a complete sentence. “Uh, how are you feeling?” she asks lamely.

“To fly, to protect,” Tlaloc says. Then, without warning, he belts out the NAU national anthem, a retelling of the signing of the Treaty of Reconciliation that uses musical cues from all three constituent countries’ anthems.

“Holy shit,” whispers Dr. Sullivan under his breath. He lowers his phone and turns off the video. “Do you know what this means? We can rehabilitate them. The general was right.”

“Maybe,” Geeta says. Just being able to remember the words of the national anthem isn’t proof positive there’s been a genuine improvement. The overmen had been trained to periodically break into song whenever they descended from the skies, so it was locked in the deepest recesses of their memories.

But then, it doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a real change, either.

Tlaloc has finished singing, and is joyfully straining at his ultrastrong bonds. “Fly! Fly! Fly!”

“You can’t fly today, Tlaloc,” Geeta says. “But soon. Very soon.”


Over the next month, Tlaloc’s condition improves dramatically. By week three, the overman is able to speak in complex sentences, and a few days after that, Tlaloc starts making supervised tether-free flights.

The same therapies that have worked so well for Tlaloc are given to Jophiel, though his progress has been less straightforward than his semibrother’s. While Jophiel’s voice remains silent except for the terrible barks, and he attempts to scratch out the eyes of any researcher who comes near, there’s something awakening in him. Geeta can see it, and so can Dr. Sullivan.

“I’m worried about that one,” he’d said at their last meeting.

Now, as they sit across from one another in the conference room, Geeta has a strong sense of foreboding. When she enters, General Rivera is grinning, which freaks Geeta out even more.

“We’re getting a visitor,” the general says. “We’ve shown the President some videos of Tlaloc and . . . what’s the other one?”

“Jophiel,” a junior scientist says.

She nods. “Well, the President’s seen them, and she really wants to meet our two good-as-new overmen. She’s scheduled to arrive in a week. Please have both soldiers ready for exhibition.”

All the scientists look around at one another, gaping. “That isn’t possible, ma’am,” Sullivan says. “Jophiel is nowhere near ready, and Tlaloc—”

“Dammit, they look ready in those videos!” She glares at Geeta. “What do you think? You’ve been working with them too.”

Geeta has to avert her gaze from the lead scientist before she speaks. “I disagree with Dr. Sullivan. I think Tlaloc is ready, for a short flight at least.”

General Rivera smiles. “And Jophiel?”

Sullivan steps in to field that question. “Absolutely not.” Geeta nods furiously at this point.

General Rivera frowns, her lips contracting like she’s sucked a lemon. Finally, her stance shifts, and she gives all the scientists a stern nod. “That will be acceptable. You will deliver the operational overman at oh eight hundred hours one week from now.”

The general leaves, and a furious spate of expressions and muffled complaints breaks out. Sullivan, however, remains stone silent.

You can be mad all you want, she thinks. Tlaloc is tame enough, and he’s just one overman. If I hadn’t said anything, she would have tried to exhibit both of them. I just saved this project.

The scientists file out of the conference room sullenly. Geeta follows them for a bit, then turns and walks in the other direction.

“Hey!” Sullivan yells. “Don’t you walk away from us after what you did.”

“I have to check on something first,” she says, before quickening her pace. He shouts at her once more, but she pretends to be too far away to hear it.


The maternity ward has deteriorated since the bulk of the staff abandoned it. A handful of nurses walk the halls, and the stench of iodine and sweat permeates every surface. Geeta pinches her nose closed as she heads for Marilyn’s room.

It’s been less than two months since she’s last seen Marilyn, but in that short time the young woman has been completely transformed. The overman within her is almost visible, its sculpted musculature protruding through the thin layer of skin on her abdomen.

Geeta approaches her bedside, fearing the worst. But Marilyn’s blue eyes are still bright and joyful. “Hi, Dr. Kapoor!”

“I can’t stay long, but I wanted to check in on you.” Geeta forces herself to smile at the ill-fated woman.

“I’m okay. Maybe a little bored.” Suddenly, Marilyn’s body begins to shake. It only lasts for ten seconds at most, not long enough to even call in one of the roaming nurses, but Geeta is terrified all the same.

She’s lying, Geeta thinks, to make this easier for me. Maybe for herself too. Just like she was lying about not being afraid. She jerks her gaze away from Marilyn and talks to the dirty mirror on the wall.

“There’s going to be a demonstration next week,” Geeta says. “One of the overman veterans has shown great improvement. I can ask if you can come out and watch; I know how much you want to see an overman in action.”

There’s a silence as Marilyn pants out a few halting breaths. “Oh, Dr. Kapoor, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. The nurses said I shouldn’t leave this room until . . . well, you know.”

“Think it over, please. I outrank the nurses.” Geeta’s not sure if that’s true or not, but she says it anyway.

“I see them in my dreams,” Marilyn says. “That’s enough for me.”


“Flying today?” Tlaloc flexes his wings as far as he can from his position on the bed. He’s only bound to it by one thick rope, but his actions don’t show the slightest hint of malice.

“Yes, you will be flying today,” Geeta says. “You’re very good at flying, Tlaloc.”

While Tlaloc’s voice is still off, his movements are impeccable. The team had sourced myriad old videos of the overmen in action, stamping out crime in their aerodynamic uniforms emblazoned with the colors of the NAU flag. The trainers run Tlaloc through a similar dance three times a week, and though Geeta’s only watched a few of these practice sessions, she believes he’s got it.

Or at least he won’t destroy the whole base, Geeta thinks. Tlaloc is peaceful, with no hints of violence even in his addled state.

But his counterpart is an entirely different matter. Dr. Sullivan spends most of his time in Jophiel’s room these days, probably more to get away from Geeta than anything else, and the reports he’s given at their daily stand-up meetings haven’t been promising.

“He’s mad,” Sullivan had said. “Angry mad.”

One of the junior scientists brings in a bowl of high-caloric mush for the overman. Geeta watches him feed himself with his hands like a toddler. She hopes he doesn’t have to eat in front of the President.

After Tlaloc’s messy lunch, Geeta helps the technicians take the overman to the yard and sits through another one of his routines. On one slightly mistimed dive, he veers dangerously close to the feeding hatch, and Geeta finds herself holding her breath. The enclosure is opaque, but Geeta feels like somehow the wild pseudogods can sense him there anyway, enjoying a freedom they currently lack.

“NAU! NAU!” Tlaloc shouts with joy, as he swoops around in the prototype uniform a Project Deus 2.0 sub-team had designed for him. “Flying, Doctor!”


The night before the President’s visit, Geeta can’t sleep. She considers checking on Tlaloc, but she knows the night crew is there, and the last thing she wants to do is alter his schedule.

Geeta checks her phone; it’s nearly three hours until she’s needed in the lab. Almost on impulse, she heads across base and enters the maternity ward.

I wonder what I should say if someone asks me why I’m here, she thinks, before remembering she isn’t barred from the ward in any way. She still attempts to skirt the night nurses, though.

She pushes open the door to Marilyn’s room as softly as she can. Even though Geeta saw her only a week ago, the mother-to-be had changed even more. The fine details of the nearly full-grown overman’s body are clearly visible underneath Marilyn’s skin, which is so thin it’s almost transparent. The machines gathered around the young woman have almost doubled, and the collection of tubes and wires reminds Geeta of an ancient mainframe computer.

Marilyn is sleeping. She looks like she’s been out for some time, and Geeta isn’t planning to disturb her. She was right when she said she wouldn’t be able to watch Tlaloc’s flight, Geeta thinks. There’s no way to get all those machines up the ward stairs.

Just then, Geeta’s phone chirps. She takes it out into the hall to answer it. A nurse frowns at her. “Dr. Sullivan?”

“Jophiel’s missing.”

What?” There’s a shush from the nurse, and Geeta drops her voice. “How could he be missing? He’s eight feet tall.”

“He’s not in the building. The cameras aren’t picking him up. We need you here.”

Geeta speed-walks out of the maternity ward, and heads to the rehabilitation lab, still talking to Dr. Sullivan. “I’m on my way.” If she hurries, she can get there in less than fifteen minutes.

As she emerges from the building, she sees Jophiel circling above, flapping his membranous wings. The sweat covering his naked body makes it appear as if he’s been clothed in a milky sheen. She knows from his vengeful expression that Jophiel has spotted her.

Sullivan was right, Geeta thinks. You’re mad, angry mad. And your anger has made you smart again.

Jophiel dive-bombs her, and Geeta knows she can’t outrun the creature. Instead, she drops to the dirt, ready to be torn apart from the outside like so many women had been torn apart by overmen from the inside.

Then there’s a blur from the edge of her vision. Before she can work out what she’s seeing, Tlaloc appears in front of her. He drops onto Jophiel, making the angry overman shriek.

We didn’t tie them down hard enough, Geeta thinks, or maybe their restored intelligence helped them free themselves. But they’re free now and rolling toward her.

As clones, they’re evenly matched. Jophiel alights on the ground and roars; Geeta’s only heard an overman’s roar in archival footage, but in real life it brings tears to her eyes. A moment later, an answering roar emanates from the titanium enclosure. No soundproofing in the world can dampen that mighty rumble.

Tlaloc, unfazed by his counterpart’s thunderous bellow, uproots a light pole and swings it at Jophiel, nearly catching the other creature in his chest. Jophiel flies wide and comes up behind Tlaloc, shoving the domesticated overman.

A shove into the enclosure. A shove at full velocity. Geeta hears the sickening sound of bending metal from the side of the dome nearest the feeding hatch. The two superhumans hammer away, each dodged blow leading to further deformations in the enclosure. Dust from both the damaged enclosure and the dirt around them blur her vision. Through it, she makes out Tlaloc’s final hell-bent charge at Jophiel, launching the angry overman straight into the hatch. There’s an audible grind as the two tumbling bodies puncture it.

By now, the alarms have sounded. Geeta pulls up the feed from the inside of the enclosure on her phone, but it’s impossibly chaotic. Geeta looks for both Tlaloc and Jophiel in the mess—they should be easy to spot, she thinks, they’re huge—but the two fighters are nowhere to be found. Maybe the impact killed them.

Suddenly, with a rustle of wings, the rest of the overmen begin to rocket out of the open feeding hatch at one hundred kilometers an hour.

Above her head, the overmen scatter like a disorganized flock of birds. Shots fire from the guard towers ringing the base’s perimeter, but they’re more ceremonial than functional. The overmen are completely dispersed, and far from the reach of any missile powerful enough to kill them.

Geeta stands, brushes herself off. She lurches toward the research buildings. Sullivan intercepts her.

“They’re gone,” Geeta says, dazed.

The other scientist doesn’t say a thing, just guides her back to the lab.


Over the next few weeks, some of the runaway overmen are caught and mercifully euthanized, but most are still at large.

A small group of them, operating from procedural memory, dealt with the situation in Indianapolis, dismantling the autonomous zone and shredding the bodies of a few hundred dissidents. The bulk had taken up their previous patrols, meting out their brand of superpowered justice more or less arbitrarily, screeching and barking all the while. Occasionally, one overman manages to kill another, but their main targets are the citizens of the NAU, who are now all terrorists in the overmen’s eyes.

Geeta watches Marilyn’s gurney slide past her on its way to the birthing room. She doesn’t have to be here, technically, but she feels like she owes it to a woman who in another life she would have called a friend.

Marilyn’s face is distorted beyond recognition, her entire upper half merely some sort of shrunken dimple. The overman inside her is fully active, and she thinks she can already see a few lines appearing on the surface of Marilyn’s stretched skin, like the cracks on an egg about to hatch.

It’s ready to be born, Geeta thinks. Ready to kill.

Geeta enters the birthing room and immediately starts to gag. The overman’s arm protrudes from Marilyn’s ruined body, and blood bubbles up from the flesh like strawberry jam. Even Dr. Sullivan, who’s directing the birth, is a little green.

After the rehabilitation arm of the overman project was permanently shuttered, the volunteering women and their offspring once again became the main event. Except this time, the overmen will be trained not just to quell uprisings and defuse potential terrorist attacks, but also to hunt down and neutralize others of their own kind. Their intensive training over the next two years—and Sullivan had told General Rivera in no uncertain terms that they needed that amount of time and none shorter—would be centered on that.

The overman stands up on its legs, knee-deep in his mother’s tissue and organs. He stares with new eyes at the scientists who’d brought him to life, and flaps his leathery wings.

There’s nothing of Marilyn in the overman, nothing genetic anyway. But somehow, his meaty face holds the same nurturing expression his surrogate had worn. He had killed her, and he will kill for her, and for everyone here as well.

More than likely, he too will meet the demented overmen’s fate. Geeta cringes, thinking of the hundreds of young women she’ll process in the next few months as Project Deus 2.0 explodes. They’ll need far more than thirty-seven overmen.

It’s a vicious cycle, she thinks. But what else can we do?

The newborn beats his wings a few more times and smiles toothlessly, looking for all the world as if he’s pleased with his work. Then he roars.

At once, all the room’s windows shatter.


Back | Next
Framed