Replacements (a fanfic)

[Nerdanel]

This is a Chronicles of Thomas Covenant fanfic centered around what is essentially an original character in the "real world". I hope the deeper levels of this are comprehensible despite the short length of this story.

---------

Replacements
by Nerdanel

The right hand of Dr. Victor Bliss still ached with ghost pain even though the fingers were no longer there. All but the thumb had been lost after the night in the woods ten years ago when he had touched the bonfire and watched his vulnerable flesh blacken and pop open. He had not truly understood what he had done until later.

Unreasoning religious hysteria: that was no answer to anything. The Community of Retribution had been the low point of his life; the cult had only added to his problems. He still had nightmares full the smell of cooking meat and malignant, impossible eyes that stared at him from the fire of the hopefully-singular psychotic episode of which he would never talk to a living soul.

Bliss poured himself another cup. An observer would have noted the disconcerting way his fingers moved as they grabbed the coffee pot handle. The prosthetic fingers were things of plastic and metal; the motors in them did not obey the patterns of life.

Two children came in. The other had hair of pale gold, and the locks of the other were black. The children looked at him with identical expressions of love and trust and talked of the little happenings they had had during the day. The artificial hand was a crude thing compared to his current work. His children were miracles of biotechnology, vat-grown angels alive with nerves and microchips.

The names of these first ones were Aleph and Bet. Bliss smiled and made the appropriate, encouraging sounds as he sipped his coffee.

The Department of Defense thought the children of Bliss would one day grow to be the invincible American supersoldiers. Bliss would not allow that to happen. He had used his authority and his guile to subvert the program and cloud its true direction. His children would be their own persons instead of brainwashed slaves. It was a goal worthy of committing treason and murder for.

If there were a Heaven, little Cathy and William along with their mother would be there. Bliss hoped they looked at him with pride.

What terrible might would his new children one day wield! Pure and sexless, enhanced beyond human flesh, seeing the world in a wide electromagnetic spectrum. So unlike the corrupt and depraved race from which they sprang. They would be the new humans, powerful and austere. They would sweep the filth away.