The cold steel walls ascended into blackness. Father Clement sat in the center of the room, his every movement encumbered by the heavy chains that held him. He was cold and tired but he was no longer hungry. His want for food had left him days ago, a blessing from the Lord to be sure. He wished to be unburdened from the pain that remained, he was ready to die, not like this.
He had carried a blade beneath his habit for years. When the guards came to take him, he drew it and called on Saint Michael for strength. He did not die as he had imagined—in a hail of gunfire, with heroic resolve. The flash of their weapons stole his martyrdom, leaving him lying in a puddle of urine, his face pressed into the packed dirt floor of the chapel, his mouth foaming like a rabid dog as they dragged him away.
Since that day he had sat in the empty room chained to the floor. He was defrocked and dressed in rags, but they had not beaten him and for this he was thankful. He had heard stories of torture, and from time to time, he could hear cries of pain—from whom or what, he did not know. On occasion the guards would open the door and call to him, “Hey Priest,” their faces and figures hidden behind the light flooding into the room. They would douse him in water, until their buckets ran dry or they were satisfied with his humiliation. His soaked garments would grow heavier, the air colder and they would leave him chained in the darkness.
Father Clement believed the dousing ritual occurred once a day and thanked God for otherwise he would have no way of tracking the passing of time. Twelve times the door had opened and twelve times he had drenched, twelve apostles. Father Clement found God's work in all things, and he believed it was in suffering that God’s fingerprints were the deepest.
A flood of blinding light and the crash of metal reverberated through the steel walls—the door had opened. Father Clement lowered his head, muscles tensing as he braced for the icy water to steal his breath. The room fell silent. The rhythmic tap of a heel grew closer. He lifted his head but the light left only the silhouette. Whispers. Father Clement tried to make out the words but failed. Heels tapping, growing softer, gone.
The guards entered the room, unlocking the chains from Father Clement’s wrists and hauling him to his feet. “Up. On your feet.”
He stood. His knees were weak, shaking, he struggled to steady himself. He felt as though he had aged beyond his years. His muscles, his mind, body, closer to death but still fully alive.
“Hurry up. We don’t got all day.” The guard said, jabbing him, urging him to move faster.
He was led through down winding corridors, unidentifiable, white on white, bright lights buzzing overhead. He was taken to the showers, stripped naked. They gave him soap and told him to wash. He did. When he was done they sat him in a chair and cut his hair and shaved his face. He was handed a bag, inside his clothes, his shoes, his Roman collar. He dressed. When he was done the guards told him not to speak and they placed a bag over his head, cuffed his hands and instructed him to walk. A long walk, stairs, an elevator. Birds chirping, heat, outside, stairs, sitting down.
His eyes slowly adjusted as the bag was torn from his head. The guards who had overseen his captivity were gone, their black-on-black uniforms and masked faces hidden from all but God. In their place guards of the Perfecta Forma now stood. Like statues flanking the doorway, their eyes straight ahead. They wore dress uniforms, navy blue jackets trimmed in white, ribbons pinned to their chest, their black boots rising to their knees, polished and shining against white trousers.
He was no longer in prison. He rubbed his wrist, they hurt, why must they always tighten the cuffs? The room was grand, laid in a crescent, pillars rising in slate gray, the floor onyx on ivory interlocking patterns of marble polished to a near mirror shine. Horseshoe arched windows ran across the back of the room from floor to ceiling. The focal point of it all, a desk carved from wood, a color Father Clement could not name.
A woman entered the room holding a tray. She sat it before him. Eggs steaming, the color of daisies, bacon crisp and fragile, toast, milk.
“Is it morning?” Father Clement asked.
“Eat.”
He began to ask again but stopped. Something in her response told him the only words he might hear she had already spoken. He rushed, he had forgotten what hunger was until the food was laid before him. Discipline evaporated, he shuffled eggs into his mouth, he could hear himself, masticating, animal like, primal. The woman's eyes fell on him and Father Clement stopped. How quick we turn to beats he thought. He sat up and wiped his mouth. “Forgive me, I have not eaten in some time.” She does not respond. Father Clement took a deep breath, crossed himself and thanked the Lord for his meal. He ate slowly, each bite a prayer unto itself. Salty, sweet, rich. He savored each bite, when he would eat again he did not know.
When he was done, he wiped his mouth and laid his napkin on the table.
“Done?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
The woman took the tray, gave a deep bow, and hurried out of the room.
Father Clement sat in silence, his breath barely audible in the grand chamber. He didn’t know what to expect, but he understood why they had come for him. The mockery of the sacrament had been deliberate, the dousing a twisted imitation of baptism. For all his trials, he knew their goal—to strip him of dignity, to rob him of faith.
They were known to drown priests and parishioners while reading the baptismal rites. They offered mercy in exchange for apostasy and to his shame many did. They were spared for their betrayal but before they were freed they were castrated so that the Perfecta Forma was cleansed. “I will not betray the Lord, I will not betray the Lord.” He repeated the words, believing their repetition would make it so. That if he banished the thought of dishonor, if he conditioned himself to accept that he was already dead that he would die a martyr, but doubt filled his spirit, “I will not betray the Lord.”
The guards snapped to attention. A man clothed in robes of white and rose, and wearing a birretta entered the room. He carried the golden staff, its head the double helix of the Perfecta Forma.
“Rise.”
Father Clement struggled to his feet.
“What is your name?”
“William Clement, sir.”
“Are you not a priest?”
“I am, sir.”
“Then what is your name?”
“Father William Clement.”
“I am Victor Moreau, Grand Curator of the Corpus. Please have a seat.”
Moreau dismissed the guards and placed his staff and robes in a closet on the far side of the room and took a seat across from Father Clement. “Titles are important, they speak to who we are and tell others what to expect of us. What does my title tell you?”
Father Clement hesitated, “That you are a man of great learning, and honor and…”
“No, no,” Moreau said, shaking his head. “Do not flatter me. I am not interested in lies. Speak free, nothing you say here will change your fate.”
Clement hesitates again, rubbing his hands nervously. “You are dangerous, a man who’s conscience only knows ambition.”
Moreau leaned back, a thin smile stretching from ear to ear, his skin a ghostly pale, pulled tight so that the skull appeared to haunt his every expression. His eyes empty and black, plucked from a child's toy, his thin silver hair pressed to his head. He had the appearance of a man on the verge of death, but his movements were quick and his wit sharp.
“You are more correct than you know, Father Clement. A man does not rise to the title of Grand Curator by concerning himself with archaic conceptions of morality. It is a position seized, not given.” Moreau tapped his fingers on the desk slowly rhythmically, glaring curiously at Father Clement. “How old are you?”
Clement adjusted his collar, “42.”
“And how long have you been a priest?”
“12 years.”
“And in that time how many of your peers have risen to bishops, cardinals?”
“I don’t know.”
Moreau hit the desk with a closed fist. “Do not lie. We are well aware that the hierarchy of the Church remains.”
Father Clement shook his head. “I am not entirely sure.
“Yet you know some have risen to positions of power. Do you not wish to join them?”
“If the Lord sees fit to elevate my position He will.”
“You priests are all the same, passive actors in a world of action. Has God not given you the tools to take what is yours? Many of your peers have done so. The bishops and cardinals that have set before me understand this, they understand that power is born from their bones, it is in the smallest molecules of the human body. It is the potential of the Perfect Forma to become gods. Does your book not say that all men are created in the image of God?”
“Did you bring me here to discuss theology?”
“Humor me.”
“It is not the physical form that we are modeled after. It is our consciousness, our soul, we have been given freedom to choose.”
“Why must you hold to such primitive beliefs? Time has passed you buy. Man has progressed in so many ways, we command the skies, the seas, the farthest reaches of our solar system, yet you hold to archaic conceptions that hold man back from what he is destined to be.”
Father Clement laughed, “You raise the creature above the creator.”
“The creature is the creator.” Moreau lowered his voice, “I am sorry, I am a man of passion, it is not often I get to engage in such discussions.”
“Because you have killed nearly every potential intercalator.” The words slipped from his mouth, without thought. He watched the Grand Curator closely, worried he had overstepped. He was relieved as Moreau flashed a crooked smile, he might still have a chance to leave here alive.
“It is an unfortunate effect of my effectiveness,” Moreau said, pouring a glass of wine. “Would you like some?” he held the bottle like a newborn. “It’s pre war, from the last of the outdoor vineyards in France.”
“Yes, please.” Father Clement took a drink, it was earthy, beautiful, he could taste sunlight. He had not had white wine since the war. They had taken an estate in northern Argentina. The basement housed a small wine cellar and they drank it dry. Green soldiers, young and arrogant, defiling masterpieces, like children left to finger paint over Rembrandt.
Moreau took a long drink and sat down. “My predecessors failed to execute the inquisition effectively. I rose to Grand Curator because I did not share their faults. The downside is that you are one of the few men of the old religion that remains. To be an adequate hunter is a good thing, but to be a great hunter is to be the instrument of your own obsolescence.
“Do you regret your persecution?” Father Clement asked.
“Yes, but I know it is for the greater good. The Perfecta Forma is within reach, and it is necessary to eliminate any corruption in the body.
“Isn’t that the curse of a man's ambition? To reach for things he should not, and in its attainment, sow the seeds, his own death
“You are quite clever, father but the Perfecta Forma is not the same. You see men have tried so many times to reach the heavens and failed, but they failed because of their own flaws, their own in ability. The Church of the Perfecta Forma will give man everything he needs to achieve that which was once out reach.”
“Perfection is not ours to optain, Grand Curator. Man’s greatest weakness is in his hubris, his belief that he is greater than the creator.”
“I told you before,” Moreau said through his teeth, “The creature and the creator are one in the same, your book says we are created in the image of God, what you fail to understand is that the image of the creator lives within us and it is our duty to give it life.”
“We are fallen, The history of mankind proves this.”
Moreau rose to his feet waving his hands before him.“Yes, exactly. It is true. We are fallen, we have lost our way, but not because we are fallen but becuse we have become corrupted. Because perversion has been given life in the very code which is written within us. It’s in our genes. We must only trim the weakness within the code, the bugs must be erased. Have you not learned from our great achievements that we can reach perfection? You hold us back with your old ways, your distorted ways, your inability to see what is and what will be.” Moreau stopped and refilled his glass. “It is the weakness inherent in your belief that led you here, and it is that weakness that has destroyed who we are. It has allowed for the proliferation of vermin, the lowest forms, the genetic abnormalities that should never have been. In your charity they have been allowed to drag us down. Can you not see that with our technology, with our advancement we gave men room to grow and that your charity and kindness gave birth to the lowest forms of humanity, allowing them to multiply, to grow into a mass feeding on the best of us?”
Father Clement gritted his teeth, and began to pace. “No, it was a failure on our part, we did not understand the true meaning of charity. We sought to give men fish instead of teaching them to feed themselves, and that fault burden is ours to bare. Again it is man thinking that he could create the perfect world and we fell into the same trap that now draws you in.”
“You are a smart man, father Clement, a very smart man and that is why I brought you here. That is why I have spared you thus far, to give you an opportunity to be something great. I know of your time in the war of the metals you keep hidden away from your flock. You were a great leader of men and a great commander of armies. We could use someone like you. You could help rid humanity of the last of this plague, this religion that you cling to. You could one day sit on the throne of the Architectus.”
Father Clement could feel a creeping ambition, a desire to be something. He could feel the weight of silver birds, the ensignias that once set on his collar, heavy and calling. The men standing in formation ready and willing to live and die on his very word, their faces a glow with admiration. He had not thought of it in years, and now a few well-placed words had given birth to a desire he thought long dead. He banished the thought as fast as it rose, “I can’t do it.”
“Do not let pride get in your way,” Moreau said, his tone lowered and fatherly.
“It is not pride.”
“Do not fool yourself into thinking that you do this for God. It is your own pride, your own desire to hold to a belief system. It gives you importance. I offer you greater significance than all the fairytales and myths that you pander to your flock.”
Father Clement walked across the room and looked out the window on to the green expanse of forest extending into darkness under the shadow of distant mountains. “I have watched the Church of the Perfect Forma rise. The worship of the perfect man. You believe that we have been given tools to write wrongs. To read is not to understand. A child cannot appreciate the great works, he cannot perfect them. Only a fool would think he could correct Shakespeare. God is the author of man, we cannot improve that which is beyond our understanding. I will not lend my talents to hubris, I will not place my faith in the ego of science.”
Moreau clenched his fist, “Blind loyalty to ancient books! Slaves! That is what you are and that is what you shall be!”
Father Clement turned slowly, his eyes lowered to the floor, “No man is his own master.”
Moreau’s face turned red, his eyes dilating into empty black pools. “You want to die for your God?”
Father Clement said nothing. He felt his insides turn, his breath stolen as the guard drove the butt of his rifle into his stomach. He doubled over, hands clasped around his waist. Moreau stood over him, watching carefully, his face glowing, a mix of pride and anger. He drew a blade from his waist and held it to Clement's ear. The pain overwhelmed him, acute and scorching. He bit his lip and fought back tears, the blade was sharp and the cut clean. Moreau cupped Clement's detached ear in his hand and spoke into it. “He who has ears let him hear.” He wiped the blade clean and whispered where the ear once was, “Those with eyes will see you die.”
The guards lifted Clement to his feet. Blood radiating violent and red against his pale face. “Since you want to be a slave, a slave you shall be. You will be castrated and you will work the lithium mines until your savior comes. If you will not work, then I will have you quartered.”
Father Clement spoke softly, his words dissipating under his breath. Moreau drew closer, “What was that. A prayer? You ask God to deliver you?”
Father Clement shook his head, “No. Just for strength.”
Moreau took a step back, “The greatest enemy of strength is doubt. Your God won’t deliver you, but I can. Renounce your God now, and you can go free.
Father Clement, heard the words from deep inside of him. The bitter clinging to life. The cornered animal willing to gnaw through bone to free itself. “Just say the words and you're free,” he heard the voice deep in his soul. “You have been forsaken.” His eyes grew heavy, his head falling slowly, blood pouring from the open wound.
“Well?” Moreau asked, with a smile.
Father Clement slowly raised his head, “I will not betray the Lord.”
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