Lam’s Trial

By: Ben Bielert

Lam woke coughing blood.

A thick, frothy pink phlegm that belied the ache he felt in his chest. He spat the emission into the steel basin and watched the clear water swirl it down the drain.

He clung to the sink like a man grasping the armrests of a doomed passenger plane, hoping to survive the crash. The row of tumours on his right thigh had grown large as grapefruits. They were painful as any injury he’d ever felt, throbbing and pulsing, sending shivers of agony running through him.

<Are you okay, Lam?> the voice that was not a voice said.

“Yeah,” he said in a shaky voice, aloud. “Like you care, though; you did this to me.”

<It is an unfortunate necessity, and one I am sorry for. I would have it nearly any other way, but there is no other way. I care about your well-being though, and I swear I will not let you die.>

Lam wasn’t sure he didn’t want to die, some days he thought fleetingly that he welcomed death. But even in the darkest of hours he somehow still yearned for life, even this half-life. He spat once more and swished with the sweet water, water one could not find anywhere outside of places like this, and spit again, turning off the tap.

“That’s kind of you to show concern for the torture you subject me to.”

He knew he didn’t have to speak aloud, the other would hear him even if he only thought the words, but he had never been able to get used to just thinking his replies. Besides, nobody would think it strange to overhear him talking, especially not here. Many people even outside places like this had the voices inside their heads now, voices that belonged to these strange parasitic creatures intertwined with their bodies.

He struggled back to the bed in his spacious and bright apartment unit. It was one of many in the high-rise that he lived in, and this high-rise was one of many on its block. All of them were owned and paid for by the parasites.

“How do you have the money for this?” Lam had asked when he was first infected. The apartment was a luxury especially compared to the streets he had been living on. He had agreed to the contract out of desperation. They called it bonding, but he had always thought of it as an infection, a sickness, a disease.

His disease called itself Horan. <We came here from a distant star.> Horan explained. <Yours is not the first world nor species to host us. But your people are one of the most ideal hosts we have ever found. We have many resources and technology. We help your species fix this ruin of a world you’ve made. In exchange, your governments have supplied us with a good deal of material wealth.>

He had sneered at this, felt the blood rise to his cheeks, but he knew it to be true. Humanity had destroyed the Earth. If they hadn’t shown up, almost everyone agreed that mankind would be wiped out in a generation or so. They had already done as much to over 98% of the other life on their world.

“We call you spaceflukes,” Lam had told it. “After a type of parasite on Earth.”

<I know what a fluke is. Ironic moniker considering how lucky your species is to have us. We call ourselves Atrarians and we are more akin to a virus.> Horan had explained.  <But one on a grand scale and consisting of many individual particles. The particles make a sort of multi-unit entity, only I have no metabolism of my own to speak of. Like a virus, we have to infiltrate another living thing to live, hijack its metabolism and use it as we need it.>

Lam had gotten sick then, but not from the growing tumours throughout his body, simply because the thought had turned his stomach.

That was nearly two months ago now. “I think I want to be done,” Lam whispered.

<You are nearly done,> Horan replied.

He shook his head and grasped his gut. It felt like he had swallowed razor blades, his insides churning and paining him. “No, I need to be done now.”

He leapt from his bed, and even in the agony that rippled through every fibre of his being, he managed to make his way to the window; he began to pry at the lock.

<Lam, heed me. Your body is going through a transformative process and although it hurts, this will pass in time.>

Lam cursed, tears running down his cheeks. “And then what? I host you for the rest of my life?”

<Yes. We are irreversibly bonded.>

The bonding process had seemed so benign, the little orb of protein they’d fed him. It had taken a week until the voice began, it had taken nearly a month before the pain began. Now the Atrarian particles were bonded to nearly every cell in his body.

“And I will just keep helping you to enslave my people?”

<To partner with your people. We do not think of you as our slaves.>

“Whatever you call it, you’ll keep trying to infect us.”

<We will continue to bond with as many of you as we can. To propagate our species, this is the nature of all living things. You are already nearly at the point of our first brood.>

Lam opened the window, but it would not open wide enough for him to fit through. He shouted in frustration and slumped to the ground. “What do you mean, our first brood?”

<Our first offspring are nearly prepared to go and find hosts of their own.>

“I… don’t understand,” Lam said, a fresh wave of pain crashed over him, causing an involuntary whimper to rise from his lips.

<You have grown the cysts that will bear our young to their hosts already. You think of them as tumours, and in a sense they are, but they harbour enough Atrarian particles to begin a new entity.>

In horror, Lam looked at his thigh and the row of fleshy orbs growing there. Orbs that all too closely now resembled the ball of protein he had eaten, once. “You don’t mean…”

<Yes, each of those will fall off you soon, and when they do, each can be consumed by one of your species and will in turn give rise to a symbiote like what we are now.>

Lam howled in fury and disgust. He punched the wall, nearly breaking his fist. He slammed his head against the wall, trying to give himself a concussion.

<Be still,> Horan said.

He was not still. He grabbed a chair and ran at the window, throwing it with all his might. His muscles screamed at the exertion, but the window shattered, and he was left with the cold breeze of the night washing over him and the expanse of the pavement below in front of him.

<Lam, please consider what you are thinking of doing.> Horan said.

“Why should I?” Lam asked. “I’ve become an abomination.”

<You have evolved, as your species had to in order to survive.>

“By becoming servile to yours.”

<By allying with ours.>

He stepped up to the edge, the broken glass cutting his feet and flooding the ledge with crimson. He hardly even felt the fresh sting of pain.

<Please.> Horan said.

The softness and desperation of the please gave him pause, and for a teetering moment, Lam stood at the edge. “What did you say?”

<I said, “please”, please do not do this.>

“Why not? Because you’ll punish me? Because your children are so precious to you?”

<No, because I want you to live. I will purge myself from your cells if it means that you do not jump.>

Lam swayed for a moment, almost fell, but caught himself and realized just how precarious, just how close he sat to death. His head swam as he looked down at the distance and death below.

“But… wouldn’t that kill you?” Lam asked.

<Most certainly, and the process would not be pleasant for you, but I would rather die than let you do this.>

“Why, Horan? Why do you care if I live or die?”

<Because I know you, I know you perhaps like none ever has. I know the pain you feel, the doubt, the shame, I know it all. But I also know your myriad redeeming qualities, Lam. I have seen every act of kindness, every decent thing, every hard choice, and I know that I do not want you to die. I love you.>

He steadied himself by placing his hand on the windowsill. “How can you love me?”

<How could I not? I see you, good and bad, and I fully embrace who you are, and who you can be. It would be a tremendous waste for you to die, Lam. Please, I will go rather than see it.>

The pain had not subsided the whole time, if anything it was worse. His hand throbbed, his head pounded, and his feet stung and bled freely. Slowly, and wincing from the pain as he set his feet back on the ground, Lam got down from the ledge.

“No,” he finally said. His voice was rough but resolute. “You can stay. I don’t want you to die, either.”

<Thank you, Lam.> Horan said. <I promise that the suffering will not last.>

Lam ignored Horan’s promise. “I’m sorry.”

<Don’t be, nearly everyone gets to that point, at nearly this time. Very few make the decision you just did.>

Lam shook his head. “Most kill themselves?”

It was a sort of melancholy that came back, <Far too many, the first brood and the transformation are painful, agonizing even. It pushes most beyond their limits.>

Lam had begun to rinse his feet off in his shower, the blood swirling down the drain, glimmering when the light caught the flecks of glass within it. “What do you mean the transformation?”

<Lam, I have told you. Our bonding will not forever be torture. You are adapting to me, and I to you. It is a painful change, but when it is done, we will be so much more than either of us could be alone.>

Lam stared as the cuts on his feet began to knit themselves closed. “I’m healing.”

<Oh yes, and soon you will have many more gifts. Your trial is nearly at an end, Lam,> Horan said, joy seeping into his words.

“We’ve won.” Lam and Horan said together.