It’s still research.
Some man’s yelling, but the woman on the show yells right back. It takes a moment, but I start to make sense of what they’re saying. They bring another person onto the screen to talk as an expert.
“We’re in the midst of a pandemic that’s different than COVID or the Spanish flu,” the tall woman says. “It’s far worse, and far more damaging.”
I like the idea of a pandemic. That sounds promising.
“Mental illness has been on the rise for a decade, but the further we get from the recent COVID pandemic, the worse things become. More than one in every five adults in the United States is battling a mental illness right now, and more than one in eight adults worldwide is struggling, living with a mental health disorder.”
I blink. A mental. . .what?
After listening for a while, I realize that things for humans in this time are far worse than I thought. These poor humans have no perspective anymore. Their mortality doesn’t feel fleeting, so they don’t value it.
Time is too easy to find.
They have far too much of it.
This unnaturally happy, safe world has denied them what they need to thrive. They’re suffering in their brains now precisely because there’s no actual physical suffering for any of them. Pain medication when they are injured or ill. Brain medication to keep them from feeling things. Kind and caring people to talk to them when they’ve dealt with a loss.
It’s all a disease.
Someone who’s been stabbed in the foot isn’t going to suffer from metaphysical pain. They’ll be working to avoid bleeding out. The more I watch, the more certain I become that I’ll be able to convince Whitney to help me in my purpose. Their need for me is clear—there’s no balance in this world she lives in.
I can restore the health of the humans who are left, and Whitney should want to help me do exactly that.
But how do I start to train her? I may need to know more about her than I do in order to understand how to motivate her, and thereby avoid eliminating her and going back to sleep. Thankfully, without the television to distract me, I manage to catch snatches of what she’s dreaming. She dreams of riding a horse, a small brown horse I dislike immensely, around little barrels of something. I can’t decipher the purpose behind her ride, though it’s done at great speed, but a lot of people are screaming.
Then she’s doing the same thing, but on me.
I quite like that. She and I move fast, the wind whipping through her hair and mine. She’s wearing a bright red shirt, and she’s shouting. When we finish running around the barrels, she throws her arms around my neck and hugs me.
I shouldn’t like that nearly as much as I do.
Then I’m gone again, and she’s arguing with someone, someone she clearly cares a great deal about. I think it’s her mother—the woman’s older and looks quite a lot like Whitney, anyway. They appear to be arguing about her future plans to make money. Or, perhaps it’s that Whitney has no good plans for that, according to the older woman. Humans and their obsession with money.
But then the dream changes again, and now she’s shooting things. Lots of things, mostly little signs with circles on them. But sometimes, she’s shooting bad people, and often, she’s shooting the man who cut up her purse. The dreams are disjointed then, flashing from one thing to the next, and her eyes start moving faster underneath her lids.
I worry that she can sense that I’m watching her, so I decide to focus on something else. There’s not a lot I can do without shifting my sleeping champion, but I can make her a few more colors of clothing. She didn’t love the black dress, though that’s what women usually wear in my experience, but she mentioned objecting to the color. I make her a bright red dress instead, as well as a blue pair of men’s garments—trousers and a shirt—and then I make her a set of coveralls, which I saw one of the humans wearing at the gas station where we bandaged her feet. She’ll have choices. I fold them nicely and toss them over Whitney’s sleeping body and onto the flimsy table near her side of the bed.
Perhaps all of this trouble’s my fault for choosing a woman.
I’ve never chosen one before, because women can create life, and I only take it away. They always seem to misunderstand my purpose and oppose me. What they were created with the ability to do diametrically opposes my purpose, theoretically, which is why the horsemen are all male and the cultivators are all female. But right after waking, Whitney seemed like such a vicious little thing, and I was clearly still groggy from my long slumber.
I should call my brothers to wake me and just kill her, but the thought makes me uneasy, probably because I really hate the idea of asking my younger brothers to help me.
A presence outside, drawing closer to the outer side of our borrowed door, draws my attention. Whitney and I may have a tentative deal, and I’ve left the humans around us alive, but that’s hard enough. If one arrives that poses a threat to my champion, I won’t hesitate to do what I do best. When the human knocks, Whitney shifts, and I’m filled with a senseless rage. The stupid human’s going to wake her, and that might break her. She needs to rest.
I carefully slide myself out from under her, and she shifts, reaching for me. I barely evade her outstretched hand. I dislike the feeling of walking away, probably because she’s my champion, and a weak one at that. I don’t recall disliking separation between me and any other generals I chose, but it’s been a long time. I’ve probably forgotten. When I open the door, there’s another man wearing strange clothing like the threatening one from before.
“I’m Officer—” He stops making noises, his mouth moving silently because I cut off his air.
I toss my head, and then I start walking, closing the door behind me. “Come.”
He flails around, lurching along after me. Once we’re far enough away, I release my control of his windpipe and allow him to breathe.
“My cham—my Whitney’s sleeping.” I scowl. “You could have woken her.”
“Sir, there’s been a crime close. Everyone’s sleeping at this hour, but a man was killed down the road, and we’ve located that man’s car in the parking lot outside. The hotel attendant told us you might know something about it.”
