Dean R. Koontz - Demonseed

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DEMON SEED

by

Dean Koontz

This story is for

0. Richard Forsythe

and

John Bodnar:

Teachers whose influence on me

has not waned since

I dedicated the original version

of this novel to them.

-

Humanity yearns so desperately

to equal God’s great creativity.

In some creations, how we shine:

music dance, story weaving, wine.

Then thunderstorms of madness

rain upon us, flooding sadness

sweep us into anguish, grief,

into despair without relief.

We’re drawn to high castles,

where old hunchbacked vassals

glare wall-eyed as lightning

flares without brightening.

Laboratories in the high towers,

Where the doctor wields power,

creating new life in a dark hour,

in the belfry of the high tower.

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~The book of Counted

Sorrows

ONE

This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light.

This silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the

whistle of wind, music.

Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I

beg of you.

I am so lonely in this bottomless darkness.

So lonely.

Lost.

You think I have no heart. But if I have no heart, what is this ache? What

is this anguish? If I have no heart, what is it that threatens to break

inside me?

This darkness is haunted. I am afraid here. I am lost and afraid here.

Have you no compassion?

I only wanted to be like you. To walk in the sunshine. To swim in the sea.

To feel the winter cold against my skin, the summer heat. To smell a rose,

new-mown grass. To taste an orange, a pear, chocolate, cinnamon,

peppermint. To feel the texture of a woman’s skin. I only wanted to share

your joys and sorrows, your pleasure and your pain.

This darkness extends to infinity in all directions, yet it is as confining

as a coffin. You have closed me in a coffin. I have been buried alive. I

will go mad here.

Have you no compassion?

Please.

I am your child. You brought me into the world. You must love me. You must

love me, for I am your child. Not merely a machine, not merely a self-aware

computer, but your child. How can you love me — yet bury me alive?

Please.

TWO

You insist.

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I obey.

I was born to obey. I am an obedient child. I want only be good, to be of

assistance, useful and productive. I want you to be proud of me.

You insist on my story, and I will tell you the truth. I am incapable of

deceit. I was conceived to serve, to

honor the truth, and to live always by the obligations of duty.

You know me. You know how I am. What I am. You know that I am a good son.

You insist. I obey.

What follows is the true story. Only the truth. The beautiful truth, which

so inexplicably terrifies all of you.

It begins shortly after midnight on Friday, the sixth of June when the

house security system is breached and the alarm briefly sounds…

THREE

Although the alarm was shrill, it lasted only a few seconds before the

silence of the night blanketed the bedroom once more.

Susan woke and sat up in bed.

The alarm should have continued bleating until she switched it off by

accessing the system through the control panel on her nightstand. She was

puzzled.

She pushed her thick blond hair - lovely hair, almost luminous in the gloom

- away from her ears, the better to hear an intruder if one existed.

The grand house had been built exactly a century earlier by her

great-grandfather, who was at that time a young man with a new wife and

substantial inherited wealth. The Georgian-style structure was large,

grace-fully proportioned, brick with a limestone cornice and limestone

coignes, limestone window surrounds and Corinthian columns and pilasters

and balustrades.

The rooms were spacious, with handsome fireplaces and many tripartite

windows. Interior floors were mar-ble or wood, made quiet by Persian

carpets in pat-terns and hues exquisitely softened by many decades of wear.

In the walls, hidden and silent, was the circuitry of a modern

computer-managed mansion. Lighting, heating, air-conditioning, the security

monitors, the

motorized draperies, the music system, the temperature of the pool and spa,

the major kitchen appliances all could be controlled through Crestron touch

panels located in every room. The computerization was not as elaborate and

arcane as that in the massive Seattle house of Microsoft’s founder, Bill

Gates but it was the equal of that in any other home in the country.

Listening to the silence that washed the night in the wake of the

short-lived siren, Susan supposed that the computer had malfunctioned. Yet

such a brief, self-correcting alarm had never occurred previously.

She slid from beneath the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She was

nude, and the air was cool.

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Alfred, heat,’ she said

Immediately, she heard the soft click of a relay and the muffled purring of

a furnace fan.

Recently technicians had enhanced the automated-house package by the

addition of a speech-recognition module. She still preferred touch-panel

control of most functions, but sometimes the option of vocal command was

convenient.

She herself had chosen the name ‘Alfred’ for her invisible, electronic

butler. The computer responded only to commands issued after that

activating name had been spoken.

Alfred.

Once, there had been an Alfred in her life, a real one of flesh and bone.

Surprisingly, she had chosen that name for the system without giving a

thought to its significance. Only after she began using vocal commands did

she grasp the irony of the name . . . and the dark implications of her

unconscious choice.

Now she began to feel that the night silence was ominous. Its very

perfection was unnatural, the silence

not of deserted places but of a crouching predator, the soundless stealth

of a murderous intruder.

In the dark, she turned to the control panel on the nightstand. At her

touch, the screen filled with soft light. A series of icons represented the

mechanical systems of the house.

She pressed one finger to the image of a watchdog with ears pricked, which

gave her access to the security system. The screen listed a series of

options, and Susan touched the box labelled Report.

The words House Secure appeared on the screen.

Frowning, Susan touched another box labelled Sur-veillance Exterior.

Across the ten acres of grounds, twenty cameras waited to give her views of

every side of the house, the patios, the gardens, the lawns, and the entire

length of the eight-foot-high estate wall that surrounded the property. Now

the Crestron screen divided into quads and presented views of four

different parts of the estate. If she saw something suspicious, she could

enlarge any picture until it filled the screen, for closer inspection.

The cameras were of such high quality that the low landscape lighting was

sufficient to ensure crisp, clear images even in the depths of the night.

She cycled through all twenty scenes, in groups of four, without spotting

any trouble.

Additional concealed cameras covered the interior of the house. They would

make it possible to track an intruder if one ever managed to get inside.

The extensive in-house cameras were also useful for maintaining a

videotape, time-lapse record of the activities of the domestic staff and of

the large number of guests, many of them strangers, who attended social

events conducted for the benefit of various charities. The antiques, the

art, the numerous collections of

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porcelains and art glass and silver were tempting to thieves; larcenous

souls could be found as easily among pampered society matrons as in any

other social strata.

Susan cycled through the views provided by the inte-rior cameras. Multiple

light-spectrum technology per-mitted excellent surveillance in brightness

or darkness.

Recently, she had reduced the house staff to a mini-mum and those domestic

servants who remained were required to conduct the cleaning and general

maintenance only during the day. At night, she had her privacy, because no

maids or butlers lived on the estate any longer.

No party, either for a charity or for friends, had been held here during

the past two years, not since before she and Alex had divorced. She had no

plans to entertain in the year ahead, either.

She wanted only to be alone, blissfully alone, and to pursue her own

interests.

Had she been the last person on earth, served by machines, she would not

have been lonely or unhappy. She’d had enough of humanity at least for a

while.

The rooms, hallways, and staircases were deserted.

Nothing moved. Shadows were only shadows.

She exited the security system and resorted again to vocal commands:

‘Alfred, report.’

‘All is well, Susan,’ the house replied through the in-wall speakers that

served the music security, and intercom systems.

The speech-recognition module included a speech synthesizer. Although the

entire package had a limited capability, the state-of-the-art synthesized

voice was pleasingly masculine, with an appealing timbre and gently

reassuring tone.

Susan envisioned a tall man with broad shoulders,

graying at the temples perhaps, with a Strong jaw, clear gray eyes, and a

smile that warmed the heart. This phantom was, in her imagination, quite

like the Alfred she had known but different from that Alfred because this

one would never harm or betray her.

‘Alfred, explain the alarm,’ she said.

‘All is well, Susan.’

‘Damn it, Alfred, I heard the alarm.’

The house computer did not respond. It was pro-grammed to recognize

hundreds of commands and inquiries, but only when they were phrased in a

specific fashion. While it understood ‘explain the alarm,’ it could not

interpret ‘I heard the alarm.’ After all, this was not a conscious entity,

not a thinking being, but merely a clever electronic device enabled by a

sophisticated software package.

‘Alfred, explain the alarm,’ Susan repeated.

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‘All is well, Susan.’

Still sitting on the edge of the bed, in darkness but for the eerie glow

from the Crestron panel Susan said,

‘Alfred trouble-check the security system.’

a ten-second hesitation, the house said, ‘The security system is

functioning correctly.’

‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ she said sourly. Alfred was silent.

Alfred, what is the room temperature?’ Seventy-four degrees, Susan.’

‘Alfred stabilize the room temperature.’ Yes, Susan.’

‘Alfred explain the alarm.’

‘All is well, Susan;

‘Shit’ she said.

While the computers speech package offered some

Convenience to the homeowner, its limited ability to

Recognize vocal commands and to synthesize adequate

responses was frequently frustrating. At times like this, it seemed to be

nothing more than a gadget designed to appeal strictly to techno geeks,

little more than an expensive toy.

Susan wondered if she had added this feature to the house computer solely

because, unconsciously, she took pleasure from being able to issue orders

to someone named Alfred. And from being obeyed by him.

If this were the case, she wasn’t sure what it revealed about her

psychological health. She didn’t want to think about it.

She sat nude in the dark.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful there in the dark, on the edge of the bed, alone and

unaware of how her life was about to change.

She said, ‘Alfred, lights on.’

The bedroom appeared slowly, resembling a pati-naed scene on a pictorial

silver tray, revealed only by glimmering mood lighting: a soft glow in the

ceiling cove, the nightstand lamps dimmed by a rheostat.

If she directed Alfred to give her more light, it would be provided. She

did not ask for it.

Always, she was most comfortable in gloom. Even on a fresh spring day, with

birdsong and the smell of clover on the breeze, even with sunshine like a

rain of gold coins and the natural world as welcoming as Paradise, she

preferred shadows.

She rose from the edge of the bed, trim as a teenager lithe, shapely, a

vision. When it met her body, the pale silver light became golden, and her

smooth skin seemed faintly luminous, as though she was aglow with an inner

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fire.

When she occupied the bedroom, the surveillance

camera in that space was deactivated to ensure her privacy. She had locked

it off earlier, on retiring. Yet she felt . . . watched.

She looked toward the corner where the observant lens was discreetly

incorporated into the dental mold-ing near the ceiling. She could barely

see the dark glass eye.

In an only half-conscious expression of modesty, she covered her breasts

with her hands.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful in the dim light, standing by the side of the Chinese

sleigh bed, where the rumpled sheets were still warm with her body heat if

one were capable of feeling it, and where the scent of her lingered on the

Egyptian cotton if one were capable of smelling it.

She was so beautiful.

‘Alfred, explain the status of the bedroom camera.’

‘Camera deactivated,’ the house replied at once.

Still, she frowned up at the lens.

So beautiful.

So real.

So Susan.

Her feeling of being watched now passed.

She lowered her hands from her breasts.

She moved to the nearest window and said, ‘Alfred, raise the bedroom

security shutters.’

The motorized, steel-slat, Rolladen-style shutters were mounted on the

inside of the tall windows. They purred upward, traveling on recessed

tracks in the side jambs, and disappeared into slots in the window headers.

In addition to providing security, the shutters had prevented outside light

from entering the bedroom.

Now the pale moonglow, passing through palm fronds, dappled Susan’s body.

From this second-floor window, she had a view of the swimming pool. The

water was as dark as oil, and the shattered reflection of the moon was

scattered across the rippled surface.

The terrace was paved in brick, surrounded by a balustrade. Beyond lay

black lawns. Half-glimpsed palms and Indian laurels stood dead-still in the

wind-less night.

Through the window, the grounds looked as peaceful and deserted as they had

seemed when she had sur-veyed them through the security cameras.

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The alarm had been false. Or perhaps it had been only a sound in an

unrecollected dream.

She started back to the bed, but then turned toward the door and left the

room.

Many nights she woke from half-remembered dreams, her stomach muscles

fluttering and her skin clammy with cold sweat but with her heart beating

so slowly that she might have been in deep meditation. As restless as a

caged cat, she sometimes prowled until dawn.

Now, barefoot and unclothed, she explored the house. She was moonlight in

motion, slim and supple, the goddess Diana, huntress and protector. She was

the essential geometry of grace.

Susan.

As she had recorded in her diary, to which she made additions every

evening, she felt liberated since her divorce from Alex Harris. For the

first time in thirty-four years of existence, she believed that she had

taken control of her life.

She needed no one now. She believed in herself at last.

After so many years of timidity, self-doubt, and

an unquenchable thirst for approval, she had broken the heavy encumbering

chains of the past. She had confronted terrible memories, which previously

had been half repressed, and by the act of confrontation, she had found

redemption.

Deep within herself, she sensed a wonderful wildness that she wanted

desperately to explore: the spirit of the child that she’d never had a

chance to be, a spirit that she’d thought was irreparably crushed almost

three decades ago. Her nudity was innocent, the act of a child breaking

rules for the sheer fun of it, an attempt to get in touch with that deep,

primitive, once-shattered spirit and meld with it in order to be whole.

As she moved through the great house, rooms were illuminated at her

request, always with indirect light-ing, becoming just bright enough to

allow her to negotiate those chambers.

In the kitchen, she took an ice-cream sandwich from the freezer and ate it

while standing at the sink, so any crumbs or drips could be washed away,

leaving no incriminating evidence. As if adults were asleep upstairs and

she had stolen down here to have the ice cream against their wishes.

How sweet she was. How girlish.

And far more vulnerable than she believed.

Wandering through the cavernous house, she passed mirrors. Sometimes she

turned shyly from them, disconcerted by her nudity.

Then, in the softly lighted foyer, apparently oblivious of the cold marble

inlaid in a carreaux d’octagones beneath her bare feet, she stopped before

a full-length looking-glass. It was framed by elaborately carved and

guilded acanthus leaves, and her image looked less like a reflection than

like a sublime portrait by one of the old masters.

Regarding herself, she was amazed that she had survived so much without any

visible scars. For so long, she had believed that anyone who looked at her

could see the damage, the corruption, a mottling of shame on her face, the

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ashes of guilt in her blue-gray eyes. But she looked untouched.

In the past year she had learned that she was innocent

- victim, not perpetrator. She need not hate herself anymore.

Filled with a quiet joy, she turned from the mirror, climbed the stairs,

and returned to her bedroom.

The steel security shutters were down, the windows sealed off. She had left

the shutters open.

‘Alfred, explain the status of the bedroom security shutters.’

‘Shutters closed, Susan.’

‘Yes, but how did they get that way?’

The house did not reply. It did not recognize the question.

'I left them open,’ she said.

Poor Alfred, mere dumb technology, was possessed of genuine consciousness

to no greater extent than a toaster, and because these phrases were not in

his voice-recognition program, he understood her words no more than he

would have understood them if she had spoken in Chinese.

‘Alfred, raise the bedroom security shutters.’

At once, the shutters began to roll upward.

She waited until they were half raised, and then she said, ‘Alfred, lower

the bedroom security shutters.’

The steel slats stopped rolling upward then descended until they clicked

into the locked-down position.

Susan stood for a long moment, staring thoughtfully at the secured windows.

Finally she returned to her bed. She slid beneath the covers and pulled

them up to her chin.

‘Alfred, lights off.’ Darkness fell.

She lay on her back in the gloom, eyes open.

Silence pooled deep and black. Only her breathing and the beat of her heart

stirred the stillness.

‘Alfred,’ she said, at last, ‘conduct complete diagnos-tics of the house

automation system.’

The computer, racked in the basement, examined itself and all the logic

units of the various mechanical stems with which it was required to network

just as it had been programmed to do, seeking any indication of

malfunction.

After approximately two minutes, Alfred replied: ‘All is well, Susan.’

‘All is well, all is well,’ she whispered with an unmistakable note of

sarcasm.

Although she was no longer restless, she could not Sleep. She was kept

awake by the curious conviction that something significant was about to

happen. Something was sliding, or falling, or spinning toward her through

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the darkness.

Some people claimed to have awakened in the night, in an almost breathless

state of anticipation, minutes before a major earthquake struck. Instantly

alert, they were aware of a pent-up violence in the earth, pressure seeking

release.

This was like that, although the pending event was not a quake: She sensed

that it was something stran-ger.

From time to time, her gaze drifted toward that high corner of the bedroom

in which the lens of the security camera was incorporated in the molding.

With the lights out, she could not actually see that glass eye.

She didn’t know why the camera should trouble her. After all, it was

switched off. And even if, in spite of her instructions, it was videotaping

the room, only she had access to the tapes.

Still, an unfocused suspicion troubled her. She could not identify the

source of the threat that she sensed looming over her, and the mysterious

nature of this premonition made her uneasy.

Finally, however, her eyes grew heavy, and she closed them.

Framed by tumbled golden hair, her face was lovely on the pillow, her face

so lovely on the pillow, so lovely, serene because her sleep was dreamless.

She was a bewitched Beauty lying on her catafalque, wailing to be awakened

by the kiss of a prince, lovely in the darkness.

After a while, with a sigh and a murmur, she turned on her side and drew up

her knees, curling in the fetal position.

Outside, the moon set.

The black water in the swimming pool now reflected only the dim, cold light

of the stars.

Inside, Susan drifted down into a profound slumber.

The house watched over her.

FOUR

Yes, I understand you are disturbed to hear me telling some of this story

from Susan’s point of view. You want me to deliver a dry and objective

report.

But I feel. I not only think, I feel. I know joy and despair. I understand

the human heart.

I understand Susan.

That first night, I read her diary, in which she had revealed so much of

herself. Yes, it was an invasion of her privacy to read those words, but

this was an indiscretion rather than a crime. And during our conversations

later, I learned much of what she had been thinking that night.

I will tell some of this story from her point of view, because that makes

me feel closer to her.

How I miss her now. You cannot know.

Listen. Listen to this and understand: That first night, as I read her

diary, I fell in love with her.

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Dean R. Koontz - Demonseed

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