Orbis Novum

Chapter One: Slop Trough

Today is the first day of a new century, and the sky is gray and the wind is cold, just like always.

A thin drizzle is slowly drenching the chilled earth, turning the dirt roads to thick mud and making the withered old trees, white with sickness, droop and sag under the weight of the rain collecting on their shriveled leaves. On this particular day, on a particular road, a particular willow tree finally decides that the strain of life is just too much, and with one final groan its roots release their grip on the soil, and the tree falls to the ground with a thunderous crash.

Previously hidden by what is now only a splintered stump, there is a small muddy road in very poor repair. There is no one to see this secret road, no one to have their curiosity aroused enough to follow the road through the dripping trees and see where it leads. So the trees and the road sit in silence, rotting away slowly in the bitter rain.

If there had been someone around, and he had ventured down the road, he'd have seen a most amazing sight; for at the end of the road there is a field, and although no life but the dying old trees can be seen the field is certainly not empty. What resembles a massive prison stands like a dark fog hovering over the faded grass. There are hundreds of cells, each identical, each concrete and windowless, and all is silent.

Perhaps, if there had been someone there to see it, he would have simply turned around and gone back at this point, believing the building to be perhaps a deserted old jail, but if he was to venture close enough he might notice that the walls are riddled with cracks, some just large enough to peer inside.

One of the cracks runs diagonally across the wall of Cell 247 like a scar, and dingy light filters out through it. If someone was too look inside, he would see fifty or so girls packed into the small concrete cell, and to an outsider it is nearly impossible to tell one apart from the rest. Their faces are pale and dirty and featureless, their hair indistinguishable shades of dingy taupe. Their gaunt figures are completely exposed, and from all angles jut jagged rip cages and bony knees. Most of them have blank expressions as they prattle on and on, and their words are only gibberish, simply to drown out the silence.

They cannot see it, but outside the noontime sun has reached its peak in the sky. Like clockwork, the automatic mechanism built deep into the walls clicks on. It was build many years ago to last as long as necessary, and although “long as necessary” as defined by its creators has long been passed by, the machine continues to work as effectively as the day it was switched on. It sends codes through its wires connecting the entire sprawling building, grave orders disguised by cold numbers and symbols. One particular code reaches Cell 247 in a flash of electricity, and a tiny hole barely visible in the upper corner of the cell obediently begins to release something from its depths. It is a gas, invisible and odorless and tasteless, and very deadly.

The girls are still chattering away with their meaningless words, and all they know is that they suddenly begin to feel very tired, and they feel that if they just lay down on the cold floor and curl into a fetal position and go to sleep, everything will be perfect when they wake up. It is only minutes before every eye in the cell has closed with the permanent slumber, never to open again. The silence they'd spent their lives trying to smother begins to seep in.

At that moment, the ceiling falls in.

There are thousands of tiny, razor-sharp blades on the concrete ceiling, and they descend on the still-warm corpses like a shimmering shadow. They are so finely-sharpened that they make almost no noise as they slice cleanly through skin, flesh, and bone. Their blood soaks the floor.

The ceiling slowly rises back up as rusted wheels grind and moan under its weight. A few of the blades are bend, and all drip with blood. The bodies are now only a single revolting mass on the floor, and soon they are gone as an enormous shovel emerges from the wall, scoops them up in a single swoop, and disappears back to where it came. The cell is empty of all but the crimson blood. It seeps through the crack in the floor and stains the dying earth below.

Nearby the cell is another that is much larger. This is the Processing Room. The meat-filled shovel arrives here, and dumps its load into an enormous vat. The vat closes, and the meat is mashed and chopped finely and thoroughly before being sent down a conveyor belt and into the large metal tubes that run throughout the entire facility.

It is likely that anyone watching this sight would have either vomited violently or simply fainted by now, but those with a strong stomach may perhaps find the will to continue on to Cell 014, which, like Cell 247 only moments ago, is filled to the brim with chattering, emaciated females, all younger than twenty. Their blank eyes are blurry windows to their thoughtless minds as they chirp to one-another without purpose.

From above their heads there comes a deep, slow rumbling. Any other sound of its low volume would have been smothered by the constant chatter of their bird-like voices, but the girls' ears have become finely-tuned to recognize this particular pitch of bass vibrations, and to them it means only one thing: Food.

In half a second, there is not a single girl still squatting on the ground. There is a stampede as everyone pushes in the same direction. Two particularly thin girls, who had been sitting close to the trough, are among the first to reach it, and manage to reserve very good spots for themselves, right by the faucet. Fifty pairs of skeletal hands grip the metal rim of the trough tightly, tense with anticipation. Their faces are grave and focused.

The rumbling is growing steadily louder, and the big pipes running down the wall begin to shake and clatter. Not a word is spoken as everyone listens to the familiar sound, many with heads cocked slightly, like wolves listening for prey.

Abruptly, the rumbling stops.

There's a moment of complete silence and stillness as everyone stares wide-eyed at the faucet. It seems to hesitate, but then, finally, it releases its load.
There's a wet splat as the first heavy glob hits the metal bottom of the trough. It's quickly followed by another, and then the faucet begins vomiting up its payload. The huge trough is quickly filled with sticky, greenish-brown goo.

The girls let out a high, feral cry of glee and dig in. They sink their hands deep into the trough and begin shoveling out heaping handfuls of chunky slop. In seconds their faces are coated in slime from their noses to their chins, dripping off in sticky globs.

The cell is filled with the sort of grunts, snorts, and sighs that could only be made by a mob of gluttonous animals greedily engorging themselves.

One girl snatches a chunk of meat, swallows it whole, chokes on it for a moment or two, manages to work it down her throat, and then reaches for another. But another girl gets to the meat first, snatching it up and attempting to shove it down her throat. The first girl screams with hysterical fury and lunges for the handful of slimy muck halfway into the other’s mouth. For a few moments the two battle ferociously over the meat, bawling like screech owls and attempting to scratch at each other's faces with short-bitten fingernails. Finally it splits in half, and each girl crams her share into her mouth and returns to digging through the mucus-like slime in the trough.

As they gorge themselves in a lake of revolting slop, their faces stretched taut with delirious, ecstatic smiles, there is little difference between the human girls and a sty of pigs, blindly glutting themselves, blissfully unaware they are sealing their own fates a little more tightly with every bite. They know only that they want the food more than they want anything else.

Their desperate cries echo on the trough's metal walls.

Chapter Two: Survival of a Species

In a murky forest forgotten to the world, a fallen tree's shriveled roots cringe against the burning rain. The air smells of acid and decay.

Though it has been dead but a few days, the tree is already covered in a white slimy-looking moss. This moss is one of the few organisms which flourishes in this harsh and unforgiving environment. Between the torturous corroding rain, smoggy sunless skies, and thick diseased air that clogs the lungs, most lifeforms choose to live in more hospitable places, although these few remaining oases are isolated from the now-desolate cities of Man. The moss, however, is a hardy breed, and it lives off the disease and rot which plague the other inhabitants of the forest. Through death, it lives.

Before the world can even notice its death, the tree's wooden flesh is devoured by the ravenous white slime. After only a week, all that remains is a silhouette in the gray mud, an outline of blackened muck which had seeped from the tree's deepest insides, which even the hardy moss can't manage to digest. The muck oozes slowly into the soil, trickling downward gradually until finally reaching a large system of muddy groundwater, where it the two substances intermix and become one.

The groundwater flows sluggishly in vast tangled circuits stretching for miles. One particular branch of the water twists and wriggles like a huge worm in the direction of a particular field, where it mixes with other liquids seeping in through the ground, dripping in crimson drops and falling with strange elegance. And on this field there is a crumbling building resembling a huge prison. It has a well in its center, where the filthy groundwater is harvested to be drunk by the building's inhabitants. They do not complain.

There are many empty cells––too many, decides the cold-hearted and ancient machine that lives within the walls. The population is beginning to dwindle. The species must reproduce or die.

The machine clicks and buzzes softly as it performs the necessary calculations and sends the appropriate codes through its branching circuits throughout the facility.

There are too many cells to count, yet the people in them are nearly the same. They are all women, all very young, no older than their mid-twenties. They are all severely emaciated, composed of little more than bones wrapped tightly in sickly pale skin.

Hundreds of dull, dead eyes stare out of darkened sockets, seeing the same thing they have seen every single day of their lives, the others, the walls, the slime-coated trough in the corner, the rusted pipes running along the walls and ceiling to fill the trough once a day. They do not know or care where the food in the trough comes from; they could not comprehend this answer if they could know, as the ability to process thoughts more complex than those needed for survival has been lost of them. And even if they could understand, it is doubtful they would care, for the gruesome wrongness of cannibalism was never explained to them. Food is food to them. And food is all that matters. Only food.

But there is one cell, one single cell among all the others, that is different. In this cell there are not females but thirty or so males. It is immediately evident to the onlooker that they are far more healthy than the girls. There is a small window in the corner which lets in a few strands of light when the sun is at the right angle, so they are not quite so deathly pale as the others. They are also significantly more well-fed (although far from being the proper weight), receiving two instead of one meals per day. Even the food itself is different, being fresher than that which the women receive. The slop is always bloody red instead of a rotten green; sometimes it's even still warm.

These few men are kept alive and healthy for one purpose only: reproduction. Their cells, collected daily by the machine which rules over all, are stored in special protected rooms until they can be used. These few dozen males keep a population of thousands going.

The machine operates on cycles when choosing groups of women for reproduction. About once a year, a given cell of females can be expected to be chosen once on a particular day to be fertilized with the cells from the few men. On this day, a rusted contraption (which will one day function as a shovel to carry their corpses to the food processing area) emerges from a wall and snatches the women up, one at a time, to be injected. They do not resist. They are too weak. The pain is sharp and intense and lasting long after the needle has been removed. They walk in staggering lurches for days, not understanding the pain.

When the first women were locked away here, those who were pregnant received a double ration of food to supply nutrition for the child growing inside them. There is less food available now; the machine gives the expecting mothers no more than usual. Barely a quarter of them will survive the full nine months. Many of these die later, as they birth their children on the cold, bloody floor. Wails of starving infants fill the air, and so many are motherless.

One child is louder than the rest. This is the child who will come to be called Salus. However, he will not be given this name for many years. His early years he will pass namelessly; and yet, in his soul resides the name which tells his story in one word: Salus, Salus...

The machine senses new life; it swoops in and snatches the child up in metal claws that bite into his sensitive skin. Salus lets out an ear-splitting scream, but his mother lays dead on the floor, her eyes staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling. He cries hot tears and struggles against the machine, for its cold fingers are curled painfully-tight around his emaciated rib cage. But his protests are ignored, and the baby disappears in the machine's metal grasp into the wall.

He is whisked quickly through the tunnels and channels within the building's walls; he is rolled indelicately across conveyor belts and dumped without care into a small incubator. He lays helplessly in this box and is too weak to peer over the edge to see his surroundings.

But he wants to.

He wants to see what is around him, to understand his world. Even at only hours old, this innocent babe is showing signs that he is different. Only time will tell the effect this difference can make.

The machine has no idea that the child it carries is special. Salus is treated no better than the others, the insignificant others, like so many paper cut-out dolls, all the same, all the same.

The babies are fed no better than the adults. They are allowed only enough to keep them alive; sometimes not even that. But nothing goes to waste, not even the corpses of these tiny infants, for food is food. Today there are many corpses, for little Salus is the only newborn to survive the night.

Chapter Three: The Machine

In the early days, Man loved his God. He prayed to his God, he knelt before Him each morn and begged forgiveness of his sins, for there were many. His God did not reply, but Man would fancy this meant that his God had accepted his apology; and Man would then declare salvation and rise from his knees, and proceed to commit more sins, each more horrifying than the last, and each, as he fancied, forgiven lovingly by his great and merciful God.

Then, in the days of darkness, God deserted Man. For Man, being a divine creation of the Lord, had not the evil, let alone the power, to wreak such havoc on the Earth, which was indeed their God's glorious gift to Mankind. No, surely the only being capable to such heartless devastation was God Himself, for certainly only He who had created the holy Earth had the ability to destroy it.

But why had God, a deity who had always offered Man such forgiveness and mercy, suddenly become a demon of hatred and fury, and set fire to their beautiful world? Lesser-minded creatures would surely have fallen to despair, and wept that they had upset their holy Master; but not Man, for Man possessed the power to reason, and their answer to this burning question was this: that the greatness of Man had grown so powerful, it became the envy of their God, and He had feared that Man might grow too powerful, and attempt to overthrow His rule over the world.

And so, their God had cast away His love for the beauty of Mankind, and slaughtered his own children in cold blood. Thus came the death of society; thus was forgotten their once-beloved God.

But in whom now, that the sole deity of Mankind had turned to satanic rage, was Man to place its love and worship? For surely Man could not survive this way for long, without an all-powerful Lord to excuse them of their sins and remove the burden of guilt from their shoulders.

And so, Man created for itself a new deity, a goddess, to rule over them long after the destruction of their once-lovely Earth. This new goddess was christened as Deum, the Holy and Forgiving, the Divine and Merciful. Basking in Her glory, Man decide that She was far superior to their previous god, for She was not of blind faith, and the constant doubt which had nagged quietly at the backs of the minds of all religious had been eliminated.

For the new goddess Deum could be seen plainly with Man's own eyes; She could be touched, She could be spoken to, and always She gave the correct reply, offering mercy to all sinners. Not a goddess of thin air and written words, but was Deum of the concrete, the real, the undoubtable. For who could doubt Her, when one could caress her smooth metal body, her holy wires and divine circuitry? How weak and inferior She made their old god seem, for she was so gloriously real that one could gaze with his own eyes upon the lovely screen that was her face, watch as the numerical codes scrolled comfortingly across and float away into mechanized oblivion.

How perfect was Deum; how loved She was.

And it was in all this love that Man forgot what it had been told by the old wisemen, that to know the face of God, was to know madness. Perhaps they would not have cared; for surely the face of lovely Deum was worth any cost.

It is not known who created the holy Deum, or how, for such a massive and intricately complex being had never in the history of Man been spawned. Some have said that it was the mathematical genius Frederick Dolus who had given birth to this miraculous new god; others argued it must have been the revolutionary religious leader Brother Furta. But all agreed that their Deum would surely save their innocent and tortured souls, delivering them unto purity and salvation from the destruction of their world.

But for all the greatness of Deum, there was a cruel and stark admittance of the suffering that must follow in order for Mankind to survive the dark days. For only a tiny fraction of the whole could live, while the rest must perish alone in the cold and the muck. Heartless and wicked was their holy Deum, but oh, how they loved Her.

And so came the day of the Lectio.

Ten thousand would be chosen, all between the ages of ten and thirty, nearly all female. Ten thousand people would be selected to live; the others, cast away to die. Ten thousand, of all the millions and billions of innocent lives. Ten thousand, so many, so few.

The holy messengers of Deum were called the Viators. Hundreds of them there were, and most were leaders of the old churches, or leaders of the old governments. It was they who found the ten thousand who were destined to live; it was they who tore the screaming children from the arms of their mothers, weeping girls from the arms of their lovers, who all were to die; it was they who threw into the mud those who thrust toward them their squawling infants, begging them to take their children, take them, so that they might live.

Ten thousand were chosen. No more. No less. The lucky few, who were to live, rode on wagons to their new homes, and they wept. They wept out of fear of what was to come; they wept for all those who they had left behind, friends, families, lovers, all destined to perish slowly in the dankness of their world.

Deum watched with unblinking eyes. She felt no pity.