Transmigrant - Chapter 27
Copyright © 2024 Stephen B. Anthony
To break a man, one need not only shatter his body, but sow doubt in his soul. In the silence of captivity, it is the weight of betrayal, not the chains, that proves most unbearable.
—Katsu Niruku, Anatomy of Power
CHAPTER 27
Ray Decker sat at a table in a detention cell on the Leviathan. A chain passed through an eye bolt embedded in the table, shackling his hands. Strips of bloody cloth wrapped around his right hand. Soto sat across from him, a plasma pistol in his hand. A simulant stood next to Soto, wielding an electrified truncheon.
“Some people, probably wiser than me,” said Soto, “have claimed that a human being is more than the sum of his parts. But the math doesn’t really work out, does it? I think a man is less than the sum of his parts. Hear me out.”
Ray did not answer.
Soto continued, “For example, if you take a one-hundred-kilogram man and remove his hands, you’ve removed about a kilogram of his body. Just one percent. But you’ve diminished the man by more than one percent, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re a very sick individual,” Ray said.
“Similarly,” Soto said, “the head is maybe seven percent of a person, but if you remove that, you’ve arguably taken one hundred percent of what they once were. Am I wrong here? Help me with the math, Decker.”
“Maybe,” Ray said. “But if you remove the soul from a man, he weighs the same, one hundred percent of who he once was, except he’s no longer human. Instead, he’s a monster that works for Niruku torturing prisoners.”