Our bodies spaghettify around another wormhole bend in the corridor. Corners here are literally impossible. Another slip stream pulls us upwards along the edgeless hallway where element coils loop along the floors and walls in a harsh, red blistering light. The coils unravel and rewind continuously forming vectors that trip the eyes and confuse the mind. Hot webs of molten red festoon a large opening giving the darkness beyond a surreal rosé glow. We duck under the wire valances entering into new space.
"This place looks like an operating room and an assembly line got married." I say more to myself than anyone else, hoping I don't have to listen to anymore lectures from Af. This is definitely where those screams were coming from. All around me are the strangest shaped stainless steel chairs, tables, and gurneys. Tapered narrow at the tops and bottoms but bulbous in the middle. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum would fit in perfectly here. The place is over flowing with what must have been human souls and agents. Both are strapped in to the equipment - 'what the hell?' - the agents and souls share a forked tube that is intravenously connected to both their molten light, and translucent grey skin. It conjoins between their respective beds and leads up to a large, undulating, veiny amniotic sack hanging from an IV stand. The sack squeezing and bulging thirstily, as if what is filling it, is filling it ferociously fast. 'Wait, that isn't how those usually work, it's the opposite of an IV drip.' And, it is taking a lot of poor souls to fill it. Every chair, bed, and gurney is full, there are souls on the floor, hanging from the ceiling. Those strapped into the chairs, gurneys, and beds quickly change complexion as they are drained through the tubes feeding the strange sacks. A conveyor carries clear skinned corpses out of the room to some other location for disposal - probably to get tossed into those laundry bins we saw earlier.
Agents mill about going from one prisoner to the next. They look like they took fashion tips from a frantic schizophrenic doctor, Conan, and the Geek Squad. Surgical cap and latex - that looks more like vellum - gloves. They pull large crescent blades from their belts tightly cinched over greenish robes that cover doctor's scrubs. Their fractal frowns twist, glowering at their prospective patients. "Why are agents strapped in?" Af ignores the question forcing me to keep watching. The doctor agents begin to put pick lines in to the soul's wrists. They are so smooth and translucent even I can see they have no veins. I get flustered trying to figure out what the point of the pick lines are. Different types and sizes of needles are used to probe the dermis while other tools are used for...? Torture. I can only imagine what is actually happening here is simple torture. Pap clamps and large t shaped items, a drawing compass looking thing with sharp points on the edges, and many scalpels, saws, and drills litter the tables next to the beds. Fresh wounds are opened everywhere, on every part of the body. Clean incisions and rough tears spit viscous clear liquid all over the place darkening the agent's scrubs. Purple splotches immediately bloom like red wine on white table clothes and dark navy lines race through the souls arms and legs. That is when the screaming starts again. Have you ever heard a soul scream? It's enough to make your ears bleed.
I am witnessing torture. Unbridled torture and killing. I'm not in just any horror film, this is a snuff film and I need to get out. The screams turn guttural, then build into ear piercing caterwauls that are so loud and reach frequencies that nearly buckle my knees. It doesn't even seem like they doing it for science, or to learn anything. Pure enjoyment, that is all.
Suddenly on a pair lying near me the tubes go rigid and taught. Moony glow grows slightly darker, and more phosphorescent than the sack as it begins its jig of gluttony. Agents begin to grab sacks that are already full and had been set aside in a corner of the room, carrying them to special hooks mounted on the wall. Four on a hook, they hang next to an old cathode-ray tube monitor and a machine that looks a lot like an ECG machine had sex with a CT scanner. The tubes hanging from the sacks are then plugged into the machine next to a huge O and everything powers up. Sigils on the front light up LED blue as something inside begins to spin faster and faster, blurring speeds creating whirring that vibrates in your bones. An aqua blue screen projecting its aura around the room begins to whirr along with it and issues a ping at regular intervals. An agent with a stylus pokes and slides the stylus across the monitor screen. Another agent pushes buttons and turns dials. A small square door with a darkened glass window like an oven door opens at the centre of the vortex, O, to a conveyor belt gliding through with rectangular plates on it. The sacks are drained through the tubes into the vortex machine until they are empty crumpled up raisins. Finger-like nozzles lower over the plates on the conveyor belt and begin injecting a dirty ash-white crystalline fluid onto the rectangles. To the right of the conveyor another small, square door opens and the conveyor drops these rectangles out onto a painter's pallet shaped stainless steel table. Af pushes past one of the other agents who's collecting the rectangular plates from the table and picks one up. He brings it over to me. It looks like an iPad screen. His facial flaps twitch and strange gargles and clicking sounds leak out. An agent with an eyeglass screwdriver, a glowing circuit board, and a white rectangular plate comes through an opening I hadn't noticed. They layer the pieces together, the white plate flat, lip up, the circuit board and then the newly stamped screen. The agent uses the tiny screw driver to secure it all together. Af picks it up and flips it over in his hands and breathes on it like someone fogging up glass in order to better wipe it down. He presses the circular button at the bottom of the casing and it all lights up blindingly white. There are no apps on the thing yet, but I know exactly what this is,
"The new iPad Air. Or, at least will be," boasts Af with affection and admiration for the object in its hands. He pokes a molten finger at the safari symbol, the only symbol on the screen and Yahoo springs open instantly. I'm in shock - there's a surprise - the screaming hasn't stopped.
"So, that's what it takes to make these things huh? And here I thought sweat shops were bad," I cajole and provoke Af. He doesn't seem to notice. Agents shuffle out with the exsanguinate, emaciated, double dead. Soul and agent deaths seem like it should be something discussed a little more. How painful is it for a soul to die? It is dead already after all, or well I guess its tether to the world is. What about agents? They are ethereal, part of sphere above the earth. What is it like for them to die? Can they truly die? Other doctors shuffle in with a new batch of souls and agents to cut and drain.
"Tireless work I'm afraid," says Af condescendingly.
"But these are people. What you're doing is immoral."
"Not are, were. They are no longer bodied and no longer rank. You still don't understand the gravity of the situation - "
"Okay, but the agents. They are your own kind. How can you callously do this to them?"
"They turned against the light. Their sympathies are misplaced and in that way they subvert the chain. They are blasphemers and their end is justified. Anything that happens to them is justified."
"Sympathy and blasphemy don't go together. What you are saying makes no sense. In fact it's a blatant contradiction."
"Sense is all you know. You lack purpose. Humans are nothing more than lucky cattle. Lucky in that you've developed tiny faculties that allow you to believe you can reason. Rationalize. Your tiny concepts mean nothing. Theol came along and attempted to give you purpose. Gave meaning to your insignificant lives; to connect, and play with these tiny meaningless concepts that you've been struggling for centuries to understand and still do not. We are not immoral or moral. Morality plays no part; we are so far beyond it."
"Yeah, so far beyond it you haven't even been able to convince all of us dumb humans that what you say is true, never mind right."
"That is what you think, but religion is no longer relevant. These," it says holding up the tablet, "these are what is relevant. Who doesn't have one?"