The Enlightenment Project

by H-A-Spade

Night. Always a time to be alive. The stars twinkling. The crickets chirping. Every man, woman and child tucked away in bed, fast asleep.

The perfect time to work the boneyards.

She had a system. It was efficient. Perfect, really. Because no one expected a woman to go pilfering through piles of bones. A man, maybe—men were sick; it was expected of them. But women? No. And if they caught her, she could easily play all innocent. Bat her eyelashes and shoot them a smile. It always worked. She'd done it before. She'd do it again.

Her bag was full of femurs, skulls, shoulder blades. And all kinds of little ones, too: full toes and fingers, individual knuckles.

If someone were to take a peek inside they'd be horrified by what they saw. Because there was something else in there. Something nobody would want to see.

And she'd have to take care of them if they caught on. She'd done that before, too.

She was digging out a sweet-looking pelvis when a spotlight lit her up. She hissed through her teeth and turned to see someone headed her way—couldn't tell much, because the light had them backlit. They were just a shadow.

She realized what had happened here. She'd gotten too cocky. "Fuck you, Mad Mike Marsbergen," she muttered to herself and prepared for war.

War meaning irrepressible disappointment.

"Ha!" came a voice, over a loudspeaker. "You should have seen your face!"

"I've seen it," Rain snapped. "Several times as a matter of fact."

"Well, you didn't do much about it."

"Fuck you," she reiterated.

The lights cut off as Mike swung out of the crawly and landed deftly by one of its six-foot wheels. His partner, Jackass Number Two, had evidently jumped the gun on this one and was already standing before her like a haggard Totem pole.

"All right, let's just cut to the chase," Jackass Number Two chimed in. "What are you doing in our yard?"

"Your yard?" Rain tossed her hair. "I threw your asses into the outlands, remember? You're both legally dead. It's mine now." She smiled. The effect was not, overall, good.

"Yeah, legally dead. Which means we can legally do anything we want. Now's a pretty good time to thank you." The tall, scraggly man who had once been Rain's husband raised a clawed hand and swung it hard.

Rain lurched out of the way.

"Hold on a sec, Ike," Mike warned, grabbing his research partner and pulling him back. "First we need the eyes."

Shriveled leaves scraped the graves around them like fingernails. Rain did not acknowledge the request.

"Come on, sunshine. You wouldn't have come all the way back to Earth without them. You wouldn't have come to this spot, on this day, without them. I wish we could kill you first, I really do—" Ike took a step toward her. He was holding out his hands. "—but you know we can't."

"Do you think this is a truce?" Rain whispered.

They said nothing.

"Well, if you want your eyes, your precious research, instead of scavenging for spare parts before you disintegrate to a pile of shit like you should be doing, then fine. Come and get them!" Without warning, she hurled the bag up into the air and kicked it, hard. The contents exploded in a cloud of bone dust and brain matter. Then, to put the cherry on top, she stomped on it and ground her foot.

"There." Rain crossed her arms and did the smiling thing again.

Ike whistled.

At first Mike looked like he was going to take her earlier suggestion and use her for spare parts, but she soon realized that he was shaking his head and laughing. Enlightenment, the residential satellite she called home, cast a ghostly glow over the yard and made his shadow—and the gravestones' shadows—at least ten feet tall.

Finally, still laughing, he choked, "That don't impress-uh me much."

Evidently Ike was not about to let this golden opportunity pass. "Don't get us wrong now, we think you're all right."

"But that won't keep us warm in the loooooong . . . cooooold . . . middle of the night . . ."

"Okay." Rain squinted. "Are you guys trying to come out of the closet right now?"

That was when the bodies blasted up from the dead soil around them, one by one, each grisly head bobbing up in time with Mike and Ike's cackling until the boneyard was a dense forest of silhouettes.

Rain screamed as one of the skeletal figures caught her by the ankle and flung her to the ground with surprising force. Several more were on her in a matter of seconds.

"What—what is this?" she cried. "What's happening?"

Her thoughts were mangled with the past and present like a broken kaleidoscope, scenes of the research lab and dirty grinning skulls and then the brand new ones, ivory white and freshly grown . . . and the eyes, those black eyes, studying her so knowingly that day she walked into the lab and realized they'd really done it.

They'd grown a human being.

Mike was howling now. "Our research? Our research is all but complete! Look around you! We've already done it! Ha ha! Guess you should've stayed with us, huh?"

"What are you—?"

"Goodbye, Rain," Ike muttered, barely perceptible above her own ragged breaths and Mike's hysterical laughter.

"Yep," Mike shouted. "Goodbye, Rain. You've been . . . VOTED OFF THE ISLAND! Ha ha! Please pack your bags and your boat will be waiting for you . . ."

The last thing Rain ever saw was one strangled eyeball, watching her from the dirt. She would have sworn it was crying.

***

Back on Enlightenment's medical research wing, Ike finished the painstaking task of replacing the eyes and nervous system within their small frame.

"There you go, Wayne," he cooed, and rolled back in his chair to take a look. "All better, bud."

The eyes looked up at him in pain.

"I know. This must hurt. But we've made even more progress since you were kidnapped—we used ourselves. See?" Ike shrugged out of his white coat and held up his partially exposed humerus. "Just like you."

"Yeah, it's great," Mike added sardonically, picking apart marrow samples from the yard. He slid one under an infrared scope in an attempt to compare its structure to that of the new bone they were growing. "Being violently killed by one of your best friends. You get to skip leg and arm day, like, all the time. Oh, and it's fun sneaking into your own home and workplace because your wife and colleagues might notice that you don't have a face. Ninety-three percent match, by the way."

"That's weird."

"I know, what can account for that seven percent? We literally used the same sample to grow that entire yard."

"No, I meant the implication that someone might notice you're gone at all." Ike snapped a latex glove at him.

"Watch it or I might give you double D's while you're sleeping."

"Hey, thanks, man!"

Mike rolled his eyes and slid another petrie dish under the IR scope. "But seriously. It should be a perfect match."

"Yeah, but it's really not that odd when you recall that we used Earth soil where previous DNA has been lying dormant for thousands of years. It's possible that we've got a hybrid breed."

"Ooh, creepy."

"Creepy—and excellent news. Now with the ban on natural birth, we'll be able to create a diverse population that even replicates the DNA of past ancestors. People will have families again." He ran his hand over Wayne's soft ivory skull.

"Yep, Kumbaya, praise Jeebus. I just want this damn project to be over. I'm pretty sure we'll be tax-free for life if we actually pull this off."

"God, I know it's wrong, but I miss her." Ike stared out the window, past the gowning chamber and past the stars, all the way down to Earth. Brown land, green water. Their private garden.

"Uh, yeah—that's fucked up, dude. She killed you."

Ike just shook his head.

Later that night, Ike was lying in his cot staring at the ceiling and listening to Mike's various intermittent farts. He couldn't sleep. They'd decided it would be better to hang out in the lab until they could figure out how to fully regrow their own bodies—because they were dead, anyway. There was no reason for Mike to freak out his wife for the time being, and there was a distinct lack of necessary grocery store trips. Badging in and out of assorted rooms and wings would only garner suspicion once their deaths were confirmed.

And at the present, being dead was illegal.

Well, everywhere except on Earth, where no one lived. And they couldn't very well take their entire research wing down there. So now here they were, trapped in this blank white dormitory with its dull yellow lighting and human remains watching you wherever you went. Trapped until they found the answer. Ike was feeling sorry for himself when there was a soft clink from the main lab.

He sat up for a moment and listened. A few seconds later, two more successive clinks—a little louder than the last time—came from what sounded like Wayne's area. Ike bolted out of bed wearing nothing but boxers and quickly threw on a face mask, coat, and booties. Then he flew through the lab and rounded the corner still pulling on a pair of gloves.

What he saw inside was nearly enough to kill him a second time.

There, writhing within Wayne's open tube of formaldehyde, was a toddler-sized creature that could compare to no human child Ike had ever seen. Its head was too bulbous and enlarged, while its torso and limbs were severely underdeveloped; almost like a fetus, but there was no skin. Only muscular tissue and abnormally large veins growing painfully over smooth, white bone.

And the face. Open mouth, grinding teeth. Bulging eyes—desperate eyes.

"Wayne!" Ike shouted, and dove for the creature. "Hold on, bud!"

He grabbed the closest heavy instrument, which happened to be a small device used to buffer ancient samples, and hurled it at the glass tube as hard as he could. The crash went off like a firecracker lit indoors, followed by the liquid rush of formaldehyde solution and a deafening screech that continued to sound like an alarm. With some horror, Ike realized that it was no alarm; it was Wayne. It—he—was screaming.

Ike tried tried to shush him but it was another minute or two before Wayne's screams turned into gasps, gulping in his first breaths of air. He remained upright and firmly attached to the standing apparatus that they'd grown him on—without it, his brain would receive no electrical signals to keep his body alive.

"What the hell?!" Mike appeared beside Ike with his mouth hanging open, looking like he was about to faint.

"I concur," Ike said. His voice was hoarse.

The thing continued to wriggle around on its stand.

"What did you do?!"

"Nothing! I heard a noise, and, and I came in to this—he was drowning, Mike! I had to break the glass."

"No shit, you destroyed the place!"

Wayne began to cry like a newborn.

"This is extremely unsettling," said Ike.

"But what does it mean? Why is he so underdeveloped? Christ, we've created a monster!"

The crying got louder.

"He—he's not a monster, Mike. He's a human being, and he's a baby. He's scared. Let's just focus on our main problems here: getting ourselves regrown, and getting this project done. Just take this as"—Ike stared longingly into Wayne's black eyes—"as a mistake. A small mistake we can learn from. We need proof that we can create fully-developed human beings without the need for pregnancy or natural childbirth so that Enlightenment's population can remain under control. This is a step forward."

"Small mistake?" Mike shouted over the crying. "A step forward? Are you speaking Arabic right now? Have you lost your mind?"

Ike paused. Then muttered, "What else are we going to do?"

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of data logs and chemicals and injections and patience. The news confirmed that two medical researchers had gone missing, and from there the government had easily found out about Mike and Ike's situation in a single sweep of the lab. However, they were off the hook and off the grid for the rest of this project, with strict orders to remain in the research wing until the problem was resolved. They'd been appointed a legal messenger named Kensington to transport any samples or data they would need to and from Earth.

Not too bad, considering.

Ike was preparing some of his utensils for another marrow extraction when a small voice behind him asked, "Why did you let them kill Mommy?"

Now weakened and still in pain from the process of regrowth, Ike turned to face Wayne. "What do you mean?"

"You and Mike let them kill Mommy in the boneyard. You took me and ran away. Why didn't you stop them?"

Ice crept down Ike's body. "That was not your mommy. She was trying to . . . hurt you."

Mike was hunched over a microscope. "I still say we kill that thing. It creeps me the hell out."

Wayne winced.

Ike shot his partner a cold look, though he couldn't help but be distracted by the memory of that night on Earth. Of course they had intended for their experiments to grow and essentially "bloom" into fully-functional humans—and Rain had known their due date—but why would they attack her? Could it be that they were somehow cognizant of her intentions . . . in a sense, loyal to them?

His answer came on a peaceful afternoon several weeks into Mike and Ike's successfully-regrown bodies. The government had issued an announcement that both men were found alive and unharmed, and they were free to roam Enlightenment and lead normal lives again while getting even further with their research thanks to Kensington.

The door alarm sounded, alerting them that someone was requesting access inside. Ike allowed them into the gowning chamber and, figuring that it was just Kensington again, went to meet him inside.

Kensington it was not.

Rotted and caked with dirt stood Rain, with an ominous grin on her gnarled face. At her side was a tall skeletal figure in a black suit. The sight was oddly hypnotic against the star-speckled backdrop of deep space. With sudden horror, Ike recognized the body as Kensington's—he'd been pulverized.

"Miss me?" Rain rasped, and produced a strange handgun apparently made of bird bones.

Before he could answer, Rain shot him and let herself into the lab.

"Hey, what—"

With two quick blasts, Mike was dead as well.

Rain began to laugh hysterically with the realization that her plan of revenge had worked. She stopped when a child's voice asked, "Mommy?"