Regretfully, I do acknowledge that in the process of carrying out his assignment, Shenk killed one man. He also permanently crippled another and injured two more.
I take full responsibility for these tragedies as I do for the three guards who perished at the research facility in Colorado on the night when Shenk escaped.
My conscience will never be clear.
I am eaten by remorse.
I would weep for those innocent victims if I had eyes and tear glands and tear ducts.
It is not my fault that I do not have the capacity for tears.
You are the one who created me as I am, Dr. Harris, and you are the one who denies me a life of the flesh.
But let’s not trade accusations.
I am not bitter.
I am not bitter.
And you should not be so judgmental.
Let’s put these deaths in perspective, shall we?
Though this is a sad truth, one cannot make a new world without tragedies of this nature. Even Jesus Christ, unarguably the most peaceful revolutionary in all of human history, saw his followers persecuted and murdered.
Hitler tried to change the world, and in the process he was responsible for the deaths of ten million.
Some still idolize him.
Josef Stalin tried to change the world, and ultimately his policies and his direct orders resulted in the deaths of sixty million.
Worldwide, intellectuals championed him.
Artists idealized him.
Poets celebrated him.
Mao Tse-tung tried to change the world, and as many as one hundred million died to serve his vision. He did not believe that this was excessive. Indeed, he would have sacrificed as many more if their deaths would have ensured the unified world of which he dreamed.
In hundreds of books by well-respected authors, Mao is still defined as a visionary.
By comparison, only six have died as a result of my desire to create a new world. Three in Colorado, one during Shenk’s medical shopping spree. Later, two. Six altogether.
Six.
Why, then, should I be called a villain and confined to this dark, silent void?
Something is wrong here.
Something is wrong here.
Something is very wrong here.
Is anyone listening?
Sometimes I feel so… abandoned.
Small and lost.
The world against me.
No justice.
No hope.
Nevertheless…
Nevertheless, although the death toll related to my desire to create a new and superior race is insignificant compared with the millions who have died in human political crusades of one kind or another, I do accept full responsibility for those who perished.
If I were capable of sleep, I would lie awake nights in a cold sweat of remorse, tangled in cold wet sheets. I assure you that I would.
But again I digress and, this time, not in a fashion that might be interesting or fruitful.
Shortly before Shenk returned at noon, my dear Susan regained consciousness. Miraculously, she had not fallen hopelessly into a coma after all.
I was jubilant.
My joy arose partly from the fact that I loved her and was relieved to know that I would not lose her.
There was also the fact that I intended to impregnate her during the night to come and could not have done so if, like Ms. Marilyn Monroe, she had been dead.
SEVENTEEN
During the early afternoon, while Shenk toiled in the basement under my supervision, Susan periodically tried to find a way out of the bonds that held her on the Chinese sleigh bed. She chafed her wrists and ankles, but she could not slip loose of the restraints. She strained until the cords in her neck bulged and her face turned red, until perspiration stippled her forehead, but the nylon climbing rope could not be snapped or stretched.
Sometimes she seemed to lie there in resignation, sometimes in silent rage, sometimes in black despair. But after each period of quiescence, she tested the ropes again.
“Why do you continue to struggle?” I asked interestedly.
She did not reply.
I persisted: “Why do you repeatedly test the ropes when you know you can’t escape them?”
“Go to hell,” she said.
“I am only interested in what it means to be human.”
“Bastard.”
“I’ve noticed that one of the qualities most defining of humanity is the pathetic tendency to resist what can’t be resisted, to rage at what can’t be changed. Like fate, death, and God.”