Asher hid in the library for five hours every night, from nothing more specific than the world, unless it was from himself. He buried that self in books, from the most ancient treatises on humours to the latest manuals on machining. Anything that quieted the voice of God within his head. His liturgist claimed rote would do, but Asher's experience was otherwise: repetition merely heightened the experience, the demands, the condemnations.
He knew better than to contradict his liturgist, of course. Asher learned well, both from his own mistakes, and from others'. Five warning lashes gave him the ability to imagine twenty, or two hundred seeing twenty on another man. And always, the voice of God calling for his own mutilation. But he was clever enough to see through the rhetoric, as well—it was not eye or hand that offended God, not truly. It was his mind—yet how could he cut out his mind and leave the rest of his vessel to do God's duty?
It was not his intent to learn. If he'd allowed himself the thought, a moment's curiosity at his proclivity, he might have taken the lashes instead. But his mind had outsmarted his will, and when he slept it chewed thoughtfully on every morsel he had fed it. It knew from research the memes instilled by culture and by history: it could separate those from meat. It could discern that the God, the God Asher heard, was nowhere to be found so compellingly as he heard it.
During the days, Asher attended to Father Isaiah—and had for the majority of his twenty years. He fetched meals and packages, dispatched messages, kept books. He made the odd prototype based on this or that idea Father Isaiah, as Chief Technician, wanted to see fleshed out. Asher filled his mind as much as he could with disparate menial tasks, meditatively letting any self-originating thought float away and fill in with some other random tedium. His mind, of course, was wise to this, and rarely let a thought reach consciousness—but it would slip the odd urge now and again, to further its purposes, a whim or desire.
Twenty-three beakers of aether collected at differing concentrations, elevations, and locales, and a recent treatise on steam engines gave his mind the idea. Asher didn't notice a thing as he laid his head down on the table, and awkwardly bored through his own skull with a small mechanical burr. His other hand captured the trepanned spirits with an empty beaker as they, by the laws of God and physics, began to disperse.
He was still in a hypnogogic state as his body walked to one of the prototypes he had built for Father Isaiah. It was a small mechanical man composed of quite intricate gears and springs, and the tiniest steam engine Asher had ever constructed. He opened its chest and expanded the accordion, filling it then with the aether which had until just recently been housed within his skull. He compressed the accordion, holding down the stop so as to store the energy, then closed its chest.
Asher came to, slowly, while counting out inventory. His head ached dully. The events replayed themselves as he itemized: Cogs, Two Inches, Twelve Teeth. Cogs, Two Inches, Twenty-four Teeth. The voice was gone. He waited for the recrimination: Cogs, One Inch, Nine Teeth. Cogs, One Inch, Twenty Teeth. There was only silence.
Was he so weak that the demon of his mind had truly cast out God? Asher bit his tongue, stamping the ground to not cry out. He feared for his soul: he had to confess, be granted absolution. Perhaps the lash would open his flesh and let God back in. Perhaps it was a test. He feared he would lose his mind, then hoped he might, if that would cleanse him. He ran from the room, oblivious to anything but the pounding in his veins.
Outside the now-claustrophobic room, he worried he would draw the wrong attention, and tried to slow down. Head bowed, he walked briskly towards his cell. He wished he were an anchorite, separate from the world and at one with the voice. If he hadn't fought it, if he'd accepted it, if he'd followed its dictates—but no, he thought he was smarter than that, he thought he knew what it wanted, and now it was gone. Now he was damned for sure.
He slipped through the Transept, picking up a relic cat-o-nine that had once belonged to Saint Ignatius. He prayed that the Saint would see fit to help him find absolution. When he reached his cell, he stripped his vestments and knelt on the cold cobblestone floor. Asher picked the cat-o-nine up, and, gritting his teeth, began to flagellate himself across the back, rhythmically, praying for his soul.
The pain layered on pain, slowly building up echoes of itself; he could feel his body, swinging, could smell the sweat and blood, the dankness of his cell; but at the same time he was floating above it all, separate from it. He could feel the same trance he had entered before, that he had tricked himself into—or been tricked into. Which was it? What did God want of him?
No, his was not to wonder. He simply had to listen: open his soul, and listen.
He imagined he could feel the ground shake just out of step with his heartbeat. He could almost hear the voice of God, feel it in his bones, like it was coming for him. Asher relaxed into the ecstasy of divine revelation, prayed to be worthy, prayed to be cleansed. He felt the hand of God kiss his cheek—and was flying.
He hit the wall with a gristly crack from his shoulder. He tried to push himself up, but his right arm wouldn't responding properly.
The voice of God was back: screaming death, destruction, obedience. It wanted his eyes, his limbs.
Twisting to the voice, Asher beheld: an angel of fire, like his steamwork man had been but a maquette. It had built itself larger, a frame that shook through the very foundation of the cathedral with its movements. Had it been an angel trapped in his head, then? Metatron itself, perhaps? Fire raged in its eyes, heat made the air shimmer; steam flowed as pistons pumped, gears whirred, relay sparks flew. Its metal glowed.
Asher rose to his knees and prostrated himself before it, praying as best he could with one arm. It kicked him; he felt his ribs shatter like brittle metal, felt that he was drowning and burning. This was his epiphany. This was his moment. This was what God demanded.
This was everything he had been afraid of, everything he had been running from. But now he would accept it, accept the screaming condemnations of God, accept his sins and his due.
But this was not right.
This could not be the God he worshipped; he was insignificant before the almighty, yes, but this was not—
Fire belched from the belly of the beast, melting the flesh on Asher's side as he flinched. He coughed on blood and smoke. This was the demon he was born with. That was his command. He should never have let it escape. Asher cursed the irony...but it wasn't too late. He could hear it in his head, and it could hear him as well.
Asher stood and grasped the boiler door; his flesh and muscle fused with it in a flash, but he pulled, the pain fueling his fervor and desperation. The demon lived inside that boiler door, a plasma, nothing more than aether compressed and heated. He could take that in himself, once more.
He stuck his head into the beast; inhaled deeply.
Ringing through the rushing air and his crackling flesh was metal falling on the stone like bells, a heavenly chorus guiding him home.
-FIN-
First published in Fantastique Unfettered, issue 1, 2010-12-15. Reprinted here by the author.