Born Innocent

ellium missed Alloria. Closing his tired eyes, he tried to imagine her face. He saw her pale, white skin shining in the moonlight like milk that had drizzled over her bones to create the beauty smiling down at him. Her soft, ruby lips moved gently as she spoke, words that he could no longer hear or remember. Where was she now, his raven-haired goddess? Where was Alloria?

The sound of an opening door startled him suddenly and he looked up to see another dark-clothed agent coming in, a woman this time. The heavy metal door clicked and locked behind her as she entered, pushing her collection of manila folders and a large, black leather briefcase up onto the edge of the table that sat in the center of the narrow interrogation room.

The woman stood across from Dellium, her arms crossed, staring at him in fascination. As always, there was a touch of fear too but this was slowing dissolving. Dellium had been awake for 36 hours and no obscene gesture or threat had occurred. He was not a violent person. Violence was an unknown concept to him but how could they have known that? Where were they keeping his Alloria?

The woman straightened her navy blue suit and sat down opposite him, crossing her thin arms once again and resting them on the edge of the smooth, metal tabletop. There was a loud squeak as she slid her chair forward, leaning over so that she could capture the young man’s attention.

She was old, this one. Dellium studied her face, his eyes moving over the cracked lines around her puckered mouth. Her nose was thin and narrow, giving her a bird-like appearance, and her short, curly hair was a dull silver. He didn’t like her eyes, human eyes. They were too small and ridiculously close together. They were an awful shade of boring brown, nothing like the glistening blue of Alloria’s eyes, their eyes. Theirs were large and curious, the shade of a noon-day sky. They were beautiful, like pale blue liquid pools.

Dellium turned his head, looking sadly into the mirror that adorned the west wall. His reflection cried back at him. It mourned for the old Dellium, the young man that had once been handsome and complete. He cringed as his fingers moved up to run along his temple, the skin feeling brittle there. He swung his head from side to side, shaking his long, black hair free so that it swished over his shoulders. That too was ruined. Surely it had been the freezing. You can’t simply freeze something and expect that it will thaw out the same way. Not for one hundred years, in any case. He frowned at the picture of himself, this wavering reflection on two-way glass where other men were surely watching him in the room next door.

He sighed and turned back towards the woman that sat across from him, who was now pulling a pen and small CD recorder from her leather briefcase. Dellium looked behind her, eyeing the lock on the massive metal door that stood between him and Alloria. Perhaps, if he were given the chance, he might figure out how to unlock it.

"Dellium?"

The harsh voice tore him away from his plotting, searing through the tiny room and echoing off the walls. The woman was staring at him intently. He considered the option of not answering. He could easily sit there and say nothing. He could put himself into a state of self-induced comatose. The last time he had talked, they had shoved him into a freezer. Those men, who had supposedly wanted to help him so much, had betrayed him. They had betrayed Alloria. Why did they think he would play the fool again?

Still, Dellium knew that if he would not talk, they would send him back. They would freeze him perhaps for another hundred years. He felt the tears welling up in his eyes when he thought of this. No, he could not allow that to happen. He would never submit to that icy grip again, that cruel cryogenic prison where all thoughts and feelings were washed away to a frigid wasteland. Dellium had been to hell and contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t hot. It was cold!

Better to talk, he thought. Perhaps that would give him some time. Some time to think of a way out of this. Maybe he could find out where they were keeping Alloria. Maybe he could still save them both.

"Dellium," she said again, softer this time. She squirmed in her chair anxiously, tilting her head and trying to catch his gaze. The woman had a bald spot, tucked within the mass of her silver hair and the light had shimmered off her shiny head, making him want to laugh.

"I’m here," he said, crossing his arms and leaning forward on the table to mock the agent. Dellium couldn’t help but smile as she sat back, obviously uncomfortable by his gesture. Clearing her throat, she smiled back at him softly, though it was not a true smile. She wanted something.

"My name is Mrs. Walker. I’ve been asked to come and talk with you, Dellium. I’d like very much for you to tell me what you remember. Can you do that?" Dellium knew enough to understand that this was not a question. This was a demand. They were asking for his story. If he refused, they would surely lock him back up. It would be an unwise thing not to answer. He looked towards the door again. He tried to see through the crack to that tiny, silver mechanism that would latch and unlatch, operating the lock. If only he knew how it worked.

"What should I tell you?" His voice was calm and monotone as it had always been. Still, there was a roughness to it that appealed to him. Maybe the frosty temperature had not been altogether terrible.

Walker reached out with her recorder, her long, wrinkled arm stretching painfully across the table to deposit the tiny machine in front of him. With her thumb, she pressed the button that would start the recording, then she sat back in her chair, giving him her fake smile again.

"What is the very last thing you remember?"

Dellium clenched his eyes shut. He didn’t want to think about that. Why couldn’t she ask another question?

"The truth is hard to swallow, Dellium. In most cases, people would rather cover their ears and avert their eyes from it. Truth can be a frightening thing.. I would agree to all of this. However, the truth must be told. It must be heard. There are secrets that lie within the truth that must be known for the existence of mankind to go on, as it does today. Do you understand?"

He understood. They had not set him free so that he could live again. There were no plans to set Alloria free. He had been brought back so that he could tell his story. Something must have happened to all of the original records. They didn’t know what he was.

"All right," he whispered, nodding gently. He looked over at the mirror again, struggling against the tears as they swelled in his crystal blue eyes, threatening to spill over and splash his sorrow into reality. He was no more than a shadow of the old Dellium. Fine, he thought. These people had ruined him. They had probably ruined his Alloria. They should at least know what a precious thing they had destroyed.

"My name is Dellium and this is my story. This is my truth."

"The night was painted gray. It embraced us with its warmth and it seemed for a moment as if we were all lost in a realm that hung, suspended somewhere between black and white. The colors of the trees and flowers had faded to nothing.. The rich, glossy greens of the forest and the pale yellow of the lilies had been squeezed out forever."

"You were colorblind?" Walker sat forward, obviously enthralled by his poetic way of speaking.

Dellium shook his head, trying desperately to make her understand.

"No. We knew the colors. We knew their names. We could see them, perhaps more vividly than anyone else, if we chose to, but what did that mean to us, the children of steel skyscrapers and cold city streets?" Walker nodded softly, frowning as if she knew what he meant, as if she had touched the same type of apathy in her own life.

"Go on," she whispered, pointing towards the recorder to remind him.

"We were the offspring of a new millennium and we didn’t even know what that meant. Space and time were nothing to us. We ceased our craving for love and instead, sought redemption in the arms of technology. We failed to hear the human voices that cried out to us above the roar of life but we knew the call of binary data as it screeched its path down the tangled mesh of silver wires to flicker and waver in the blue light of our computer screens."

"Hackers?"

Again, he shook his head, leaning forward and looking Walker in the eye.

"It wasn’t like that. Sure, there were some of us that hacked. There were those who were bitter at being treated so shamefully. It was nothing for one of us to figure out a bank code or government password but for the most part, we were more interested in creating, rather than destroying. Those that did participate in such foolishness would rarely do very much damage, only leaving strange notes in the system so that the owner would know that the security had been compromised. It was so easy for us, it was almost laughable."

He stopped here, looking over at the mirror and grinning wickedly.

"Dellium?"

"What? Oh, yes. Let me go on."

Walker smiled warily, throwing a nervous glance at the mirror before focusing on Dellium again.

"As all children did, we went to school, though we were far better at it than the others. We memorized their songs. We pledged our allegiance to their flag of red, white and blue. We learned to pray their prayers with chubby fingers, twined together at Sunday morning Mass but that didn’t make us Americans, did it? That didn’t make us moral beings.

"There were those who wept for us but we felt no pity for ourselves. We were fearless. Intrepid. There was nothing left that could bind us to the old religions. In an age of science, there was no more need for the explanations offered by religious ideals. We did not need faith. We did not need God to answer our questions because we had science. We could find truth in a lab, in a test tube. Through science, all was revealed and faith in fairy tales about Angels and Heaven were stripped away. Those that did believe, held on only because they feared death. We feared nothing. We were not bound by God’s laws. That laid open amazing possibilities for us and superstitions were for the ancient ones, the wrinkled fools who called us cold-blooded beasts while feeding stray cats from tin cans in the alleyways below.

"That’s all we were to them at first, pale-faced creatures with raven hair and crimson shaded lips. We were the blue-eyed miracles of a so-called civilized society. We were misunderstood but even that, meant nothing to us. They said that our behavior was merely a trend, a result of the gothic sub-culture. They didn’t know what we knew. Even if we did not have proof yet, we were aware that something was not right about ourselves. We knew that we were not like them."

"And your parents?"

Dellium laughed.

"We were the throw-away babies, abandoned in garbage pails on cracked sidewalks and shopping mall bathrooms where uptown girls bought expensive perfume and real leather sandals. Perhaps our mothers knew by instinct that we were obscenely different from the rest of mankind. Maybe they were disgusted by our pallid complexions and hair, as dark as a moonless midnight. We were never to know but as I said earlier, these things did not matter to us.

"We spoke in riddles."

"What do you mean?" Walker was totally lost in Dellium’s story now. Her eyes seemed dreamy as if she were swaddled in dark memories of a time, long ago. It was as if he were telling her things that she knew, but did not know.

"As I have mentioned before, we were precocious children, a new era of prodigious talent. Artists, musicians, mathematicians. We learned eminently faster than others and we had a thirst for knowledge that was incomparable. We knew words and facts that even our teachers did not. Our thoughts and ideas were unlike those of most people. This caused our way of speaking to deviate from the norm. It was rare that someone could understand what we were trying to express. We had to teach ourselves to use simple words and even then, our ideas were sometimes puzzling. There were those of us, of course that had talent with words. They would speak and it seemed pure poetry. People were left dizzy by their conversations. Still, for the most part, we choose to stay quiet.

"We were the keepers of dark realities. For reasons that were never made known to us, we knew things that others did not. All of this knowledge was veiled, of course. It was as if we were staring at truths, hidden behind a gossamer cloud of smoke. You could call it intuition or instinct, if you’d like. For example, we knew that the sun was a dangerous thing. Not like humans knew it. It wasn’t about sun burns or skin cancer. It was about the potential for a much greater disaster that loomed in the near future. Sunlight was like poison on our skin. We were engineered for the night. We knew this. We could see better at night. This is why we were called the children of the moon. It wasn’t necessarily because we loved the night more, it was simply because we could function better in the moonlight hours.

"We drove too fast, drank too much, said too little, too softly. We worked with nimble fingers to recreate what those before us had destroyed. We knew each other instantly, set off by clues such as those I have already mentioned. Still, there was something else too. Something that we could never quite put our finger on. Perhaps it was the sadness that lingered within us, a loneliness that echoed inside."

Dellium lowered his head, gazing down at his large hands, the same hands that had held Alloria’s on a night long ago, torn free by a loathing that he might never comprehend. The tears slid down his cheeks freely, dripping from his chin and Walker sat back in her chair, sighing softly in the stillness, looking over at the mirror with tears in her own eyes. Dellium’s voice trembled as he continued.

"We were the broken sons and daughters of a bleak future. A future that had been given to us by a God we did not believe in. We walked in the gentle sigh of Winter as if to wait for something, anything to be proved. We were without tears.. We were without hope. We were without souls."

"Her wail was like a knife. It seared through the commotion, slicing through the confusion and piercing me with its pain. I’ve never known such separation as when they tore her from my arms. I felt utterly helpless as they dragged her away from me, the tears streaming down her pale cheeks, her soft, pink lips, trembling as she cried out for me. Can you imagine that? No, I doubt that you can. It is not the same as loosing a child or a wife. She was the very last of my species!"

"But what WERE you?" Walker bit her lower lip, realizing her mistake too late. She had been caught up in Dellium’s sudden outrage. She tried to imagine them, two lovers, ripped apart and smothered from existence forever. She tried to understand his fury. She wanted to cross the space between them and hold him, caress his hair and tell him that everything was going to be okay. She wanted to...but she couldn’t. The question stood as it was.

"In 2008, the World Coalition passed the Human Licensing Law. I’m going to assume that you know what the World Coalition is?"

Walker nodded impatiently. "In 2005, after the third world war, the nations of the earth joined to become one union, governed by a committee of world leaders. I know it well. It breathes on today. I also know of the Human Licensing Law. In order to control and evaluate criminal behavior, a mandatory license was put on every human being. DNA tests were ordered and a microscopic licensing chip was placed beneath the skin."

Walker thrust her arm forward, turning it over slowly so that Dellium could see the slight lump that adorned her wrist, a throbbing mass that pulsed beneath the skin, evidence of her license.

"Later, they were found to also prove helpful in finding lost children and fathers that had abandoned their families. Your individual DNA structure made up the code for your license and with it, the government could track you anywhere, anytime, night or day. I know these things, Dellium but I do not see their significance."

Dellium sighed, raising his hand and pressing it forward so that Walker could see his unblemished wrist. No license. Walker had never known anyone without one. Babies were taken fresh from the womb and licensed immediately. It seemed totally wrong suddenly. Why didn’t he have a license? Glancing awkwardly at the mirror again, Walker reached out and ran her thumb over Dellium’s wrist.

"You were never licensed?"

Dellium shook his head, pulling his hand back and laying it in his lap..

"Developed in 1985, DNA fingerprinting for identification was not a new concept. It had been used for decades to implicate or exonerate criminals and absolve paternity suits. Still, there was no reason for normal people to have them done. The tests began in 2008, as I have said before. Within a month, I was called to the World Coalition Station in Houston, Texas for an interview. Common procedure, they said, for children with my IQ. I was not afraid, though I knew somehow that my tests had come back abnormal.

"After arriving, I was placed in an office where the door locked behind me. I was 17 years old and perhaps a little naive. I thought nothing of it. The night wore on, hour after hour and no one came to get me. The clock on the wall ticked out the time and around 6 a.m., I fell asleep, snuggling beneath the large mahogany desk along the west wall. When I awoke the next night, groggy and sore from sleeping on the floor all day, I thought I heard her voice. It was faint, the shadow of a whisper, softly singing down the hallway. It was definitely her.

"I crawled across the crimson carpet, pressing my ear against the heavy, metal door. I strained to hear, listening for the distinguishable lilt of her voice. I knew it by heart. The words dripped from her lips like syrup, rich and sweet. Her song drifted, thick and wet on the wind. I could hear it, caressing the cold steel, just inches from my cheek as if it knew my scent and was trying to get in. They had Alloria."

Walker paced the floor, her finger tugging at her bottom lip. She was lost in thought. Dellium didn’t pay very much attention. His eyes were focused on the crack between the door again. Beneath the table, he moved his index finger from side to side slowly, watching the lever in the lock flip from side to side in time with his movements. The sound of it wasn’t enough to startle her and his hand was hidden between his knees so that the mirror-men couldn’t see. His telekinetic powers, among other things, was not something that he wished to discuss with her. He pushed his finger forward and sent the latch backwards, clicking and unlocking quietly. He had it!

"I’m going to be honest with you, Dellium," Walker said, moving towards him suddenly and resting her palms down on the table. "It’s apparent that our men, members of the WCS, called you here and hid the two of you away in some sort of government cover-up. What’s not apparent is why. The records were burned, shredded, lost forever. We contemplated this for years, letting you out to tell us your story. We didn’t know, Dellium. We didn’t know."

"You still don’t know," Dellium smirked, shaking his head and grinning over at the mirror again.

Walker stepped forward, kneeling down beside him. She swallowed softly, reaching up to take his hands into hers. Her eyes were imploring and Dellium couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She wanted to know. She needed to understand.. He didn’t know why, but this woman thought that maybe she could help. She wanted to..

"A fool...never again."

"Like human. Our DNA was similar in structure but altogether different.. That’s what we were. Single-celled prokaryotes to belly-slithering land dwellers. Worm-like land dwellers to Australopithecus. Australopithecus to Homo ergaster. Homo ergaster to Homo sapien, humans, standing tall and proud and perfect.. Perfect. It was bound to happen, you know? Evolution has a way of poking its head up where you least expect it. In our case, it was fast and furious, not long and drawn out for millions of years as it had been before. The next step on the evolutionary ladder. That’s what we were. Like human....but not human."

Walker gasped gently, understand as only a human could, the fear and loathing that this realization could create. Humans, in general, hate change. Vain creatures, they believe that they are perfect, better than other animals, complete with emotions and intelligence. Ruling the world was their God-given right by proof of their own perfection. Something like Dellium could not be allowed. Human evolution had to be stopped so that the existence of mankind could go on, as it does today. Her own words echoed back to her, leaving her breathless and nauseated. What had they done?

"If we were to test you, what would we find?"

"In the 19th century, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck argued that changes in environment evoked adaptive responses. Charles Darwin expanded on this idea in 1859 with his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. We were the result of human evolution at an accelerated rate. We were born, complete with an entirely new set of genes that did not match that of the Homo sapien species. When tested, it was found that we had decreased amounts of fat and muscle mass.. In an age of technology, brute strength was no longer needed. We were not violent creatures. Survival of the fittest no longer applied in the physical sense. Instead, we used our minds as our might. Knowledge was the power that we longed for. It was the way of the future. It was estimated that humans used only 10 percent of their capable mental abilities. We used three times that amount. We were more resistant to disease. Our eyes worked better in the night. In general, we were night creatures. The sun would soon destroy human life with its dangerous rays. One might think that evolution would have made us more resistant to the sun but it did not."

Dellium shrugged.

"We did not know all the answers. The questions were forced upon us."

"You mentioned others. What happened to the others??" Walker's limbs were trembling, her eyes darting, throwing hateful glances at the mirror behind him.

Dellium stared blankly at her face, watching the tissue between her eyes crinkle slightly as she looked up at him, begging silently. Her fingertips dug into his palms painfully but he didn’t try to pull away. He brought her hands up to his face and inhaled her scent. Old skin. Slowly rotting skin. Closing his eyes, he smiled softly.

"Do you know the history of the Jews during the second world war? Do you remember what happened to them and to the mental patients before them? The witch hunts in Salem? You know these stories, don’t you?"

Walker looked confused for a moment, turning her head to the side, her wrinkled hands still clutched close to Dellium’s lips. She held her breath for a moment and then looked back up at him, the tears spilling generously from her small, brown, boring eyes. Her lip trembled. Dellium nodded back to her.

"Genocide," she whispered beneath her breath, shaking her head and pulling her hands away so that she could weep into her palms.

Dellium knew grief but this woman cried out of shame and terror that such a thing could happen in a modern age. She had come to the realization that Dellium and Alloria were the only ones left, kept only for the use of later inspection. Perhaps they were frozen so that they could be compared to any other mutations that might pop up later on. Maybe they were kept because someone thought that future civilization would be able to handle such a thing, even want it. As far as Dellium was concerned, that time would never come and he could see his confirmation in Walker’s face, torn with guilt and fear. The fear had returned. He had to make his move.

Lost in her confusion, Walker's mind opened up to Dellium like the petals of a flower, unfurling gently to reveal her thoughts. He closed his eyes again and picked through them quickly, plucking the ones he needed. Alloria was in a room on the west wing. The vision undulated before him. The hallway, right turn, straight back, left door at the end of the hall. Just before he broke away, he caught a muted memory of Alloria's face. This wasn't his memory, the painted picture of a beautiful girl with long, black hair, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that shined like beacons in the moonlight. No, this was Walker's memory of Alloria, her gorgeous face twisted with horror, set forever in ice. Her lips were pale and lifeless. Completely naked, she laid, stripped of dignity and honor on a metal bed. Dellium trembled with rage.

Without thinking, he stood up and slammed his palms against Walker's shoulders, sending her sprawling across the tile floor. Stunned for a moment, he froze, looking down at her with his mouth gaping.

"Out of here," he thought. "I have to get out of here."

The unlocked door beckoned him, calling his name softly. Dellium turned, shooting one last glance at the mirror before thrusting the door open and running down the hallway. He could hear doors opening behind him and men screaming in a fury but he didn't stop. Their confusion about the lock would give him some time and he knew exactly where he was going.

Right turn, straight back, left door at the end of the hall. Dellium knelt down beside the door, panting heavily and eyeing the lock. The men were coming up the hallway now, yelling words that he didn't hear. His heart was pounding above their screams but he could see out of the corner of his eye that they had their weapons drawn. Walker was yelling behind them, her delicate arms raised in the air, telling them to stop. Dellium tried to focus. He’d failed Alloria once before. He wasn’t going to do it again. He tossed his finger from side to side in front of the lock. Backwards. Click. He was in. The door slammed shut behind him and using every last ounce of concentration, he manipulated the lock, twisting the metal within it and securing it so that no one else could enter.

Silence.

"I love you," he whispered against her frozen lips, his salty tears kissing her cheeks as he held her close.

The room was sealed, sound proof. Still, he was sure that the men outside were plotting their entrance. He didn't have much time. Sitting in a corner on the floor, her lithe body flowed over his lap like a limp blanket. Her lips were parted slightly and her eyes were drained of color, staring blindly at the ceiling. She appeared so fragile in his arms that Dellium feared the lightest touch could make her crumble. Still beautiful, she made his heart quiver.

The room had been a virtual hospital, filled with scalpels, gauze, and antiseptics. Twenty or so bottles of rubbing alcohol littered the wet, tile floor. The small space reeked of the chemical, making Dellium dizzy. He had thought about the scalpel but figured that it was better to not leave their remains behind. Surely, they would cut them both up on some sterile autopsy table. Dellium shuddered at the thought. He wasn't going to leave them a damn thing.

"Save us both."

The gold lighter felt cold in his hand, colder even than Alloria's marbled form. He laughed through his aching sobs. Had he ever cried this much in his life? He didn't think so. It seemed justified somehow, though. It seemed natural. It's funny how things work, he thought. All he had ever wanted was to live, to breathe, to create, and in the end, all he wanted was to destroy, to die. He wanted it to be over.. Perhaps the world was, in fact, better off without them. Maybe not but it didn't really matter. When you're told something long enough, you start to believe it.

The top of the lighter flipped back with a snap. The alcohol spread out beneath them, soaking his pants and dousing Alloria's raven hair. Fire didn’t frighten him. It could never burn as brightly as their hate. Even as it consumed, it wasn’t nearly as violent. It was pure.

Dellium pulled Alloria up to him, kissing her lips gently, tasting her one last time.

"Born innocent," he whispered against her pale cheek.

The lighter sparked, glowing as he threw it to the floor beside them and the shivering flames licked the walls.