EPTYou guys have always been there, I hope you like the story.
Adrian VSX2259 sat up quickly from his work at the sound of a light rapping at the door. Sighing heavily, he lay down a data pad covered in his hastily tidy scrawl atop an enormous stack of books; one of many that littered the room and culminated in a mountainous peak at his desk. As he moved towards the front of the house he looked quizzically into the nothing of his empty home, no one was supposed to visit him during his working hours, not during these last few weeks, he didn't have the time for such interruption's. Reaching the entryway he casually swung out his arm and struck the key to open the hexagonal doorway. There, standing at the threshold, through the narrows of the receding iris, just as he had on the day Adrian had learned of his own inevitable demise, scripture clenched in his hands, was the Preacher. Sighing heavily, Adrian leaned against the doorframe in exasperation. Without a word he turned back into the house, motioning for the Preacher to follow as he went. As he walked, the Preacher didn't make a sound, his vestments only registering the slightest whisper as they brushed over the cool metallic floor. Reaching the kitchen, without missing a beat, almost as if the scenario were one rehearsed beyond visual or auditory cues, Adrian reached for refreshments glancing almost knowingly at the Preacher as he responded with a minute shake of the head that seemed to coincide with Adrian's replacement of the accommodations.
With the frivolous rituals and ceremonies delivered by host to guest at their end Adrian finally sat down before the Preacher prepared for the meeting he'd wished away in the back of his mind since his self imposed hermitage. However, the Preacher only stared back at Adrian, refusing to take the seat opposite Adrian. Even as the host insinuated that his guest should do so with a cursory wave of the hand, more intended to fill the silence than to establish any real accommodation, Adrian could detect a subtle shift in the mannerisms of the staunchly religious Preacher from the last time they had spoken.
The silence of the meeting dragged on for a few seconds before Adrian became unnerved by it all and found himself doing one of the things he swore he would not give the Preacher the satisfaction of forcing him to do. He spoke first.
"Well Thomas, there's really no use in it now, and quite frankly I'm sick of it all," shaking his head forlornly as he spoke, Adrian couldn't help but feel he had been suddenly, and insidiously trapped, "You'll all just have to let me be and realize once and for all, that I just can't believe it. The fights all gone out of me. Were it another time, a different set of circumstances, you'd better believe I'd fight, boy would I ever." As he spoke he noticed Thomas's stare as it waned in its intensity, almost as if it were his very unwillingness to fight that was disarming his opponent. "Everything that I could have said I've said, and I'm in the process of saying it once and for all, definitively so that you can all just get over your delusion."
With this last sentence Adrian's voice seemed to peak, the irritation beginning to spill over his calm facade. He had no time for this, how dare this person come to his home, unannounced, when everyone knew of the importance of the works he was doing and the limited time with which he had left to do it. Curiously, the Preacher's own serene revere seemed to return as his hosts fractured.
"You're all just a bunch of fools, no fault of your own, mind you, I mean, we've found the cause of the problem, but you all just won't listen, and your lies are tainting the more easily impressionable." Adrian's eyes had now drifted away from Thomas and stared through the table, as if he were seeing something beneath it which called his attention away from the immediacy of the monastically silent second half of the conversation.
"It has to do with your make up, the way your built, it's all part of your natural mechanism, an aberration in your thought process resulting from a physiological symptom..." his eyes had grown slightly wild in nature as he spoke, his voice rising and falling with reckless abandon as he fell into the grip of impassioned denial. All the while, the Preacher sat stoically, riding out the anger from the person across from him like a wave in the sea.
"You're sick, do you hear me? SICK. All it is, is a delusion, and we can fix it! Give us a few more years, and we can weed out the markers that influence the delusions, we've made huge advances in the last few years you know..." Trailing off again, his voice like the warble of a pitching claxon, Adrian turned away from the Preacher, playing with his hands, and seeming like all the world had its eyes upon him, he bowed his head. Silence ruled the moment, seeking to overwhelm them both, but Adrian was done, he'd said his peace, and now the Preacher would leave, and he could get back to his work.
"Adrian, you must return to the Way, else your soul will be left unto eternal damnation...I fear for you, and now with your death nigh at hand, and your denials as vehement as ever...I could not sit idly by." Thomas's eyes narrowed, searchingly, as if he were seeking out some sort of transmutation on the part of his opposite's visage at the catalyst of his words. But no, the maddeningly frightful denial lay sprawled across Adrian's face, nestled in his eyes, and clenched at his brow. A final inaudible sigh passed his lips. "Though it would seem that you refuse to be persuaded. You call it an aberration, a sickness, something within us that is wrong," here Thomas's voice stretched for a moment, "Have you not considered that what you claim is the wrong, may in fact, be the right? That it was intended? Can your science say which is the true right of it all?" A final waver of his gaze was the last of it as the preacher gathered his psyche.
For his part, Adrian sat lost in thought. He wanted to believe the words he was hearing, wanted to believe to any degree he could reach. Within himself, he repeated the mantra, an internal chant without words, but a strong meaning and definition, he wanted to believe so badly.
He thought about Clarion, his home town, the old church, his family. He thought about the Maker, and his design for everything, his Great Plan. How he had wanted, even then, to believe, and yet, something, some nagging doubt had clutched into the fibers and sinews of his mind and refused to release him. His doubt had grown into an idea, and that idea into certainty which had finally coalesced into his own dogmatic refusal. I have come full circle, he thought, and indeed he had.
In an instant of motion, that was both rapid, yet exceedingly calm and calculated, the Preacher rose to his feet. "I am sorry then Adrian, to have wasted your time," his voice was low and sonorous, with a rich timbre and utter conviction in every syllable. Removing his hat in a flourish, he turned his own back on Adrian, who sat facing the opposite wall from the Preacher. "Your theory of evolution, it's a lie Adrian. There was a design, and there always will be. Perhaps He's moved on, I like to think not, but to say all of this, that YOU were a simple cosmic accident, destined by nothing more than mere probability...well my Son, I pity you then all the more."
Stepping with increasing alacrity towards the entrance way the Preacher turned back one last time to look upon the terminally ill doctor who's soul he'd come to save. Adrian had somehow followed the Preacher to the door, through some distant and instinctive means, he'd been drawn to follow the Preacher to the entrance of his abode, not out of any sense of propriety or well mannered intent, but just a need to see the object of his discomfort gone. They stood, one of faith, and one of science, before the yawning mouth to the rest of the world and gazed upon the other, pitying them their decision.
"Though you may not believe it, I do wish you the best in your works...two weeks left, before you are due to forever leave this land of the living, correct?" There was no mockery in the voice of the preacher, only concern, and even then, there was no condescension. Clearing his throat, more to buy time than because of any blockage, Adrian raised his eyes to the Preacher.
"Three weeks...before I have a total system's failure...they couldn't pin down the corruptive streams in time..." his voice trailed off, longing for more time. "I'll have my work, all the research, finished by then, there may be some finalizations that would need to be undertaken by my assistants from the lab...but everything NECCESSARY should be finished within the next two weeks." Despite the knowledge that the Preacher represented everything he was working to dispel from the psyche's of the world, he was comforted by the man's sincerity. But, evolution was a fact, and not one to be recanted, even when faced with death and damnation, a scientists mind refused it.
Nodding his head, the Preacher turned and strode through the portal. As he walked away from the fading dusk and into the evening, his form already silhouetted by the distant lamplight, Adrian caught the faintest glimmer from the corner of his eye. Stepping forward he dropped to his knees and came up holding a sprocket.
"Thomas!" Adrian called and stepped after the receding form of the Preacher. "You've dropped this, it looks like an inhibitor component for your ventilation systems." Dropping the sprocket into the outstretched hand before him he averted his eyes for a moment as the Preacher reinstalled the wayward component.
"Thank you Adrian," Turning once more, the Preacher, a look of weariness cast upon his visage, turned once more and walked into the rising night. As he stood in the doorway, watching the distant form fall into the shadow of the surrounding buildings Adrian's mind again turned from this distraction and back to his work.
Adrian shook his head as the iris of the portal fell away behind him ; Man had never existed, and had not designed HIM, in any way. The robot turned away from the darkening night and all its fairy tales. Turned back into the scorching luminescence of the truth contained within the yellowed halogen orbs. Back to the truth. Man was a lie.
