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other with all manner of experimentation. We had tampered with God’s work. Andrew believed, and who was I to doubt, that the power could be unleashed and made free by one way and one way alone. The procedure. The power of thunder would free him.
    But what did it mean to break the curse we had made?
    By this time Andrew was, in my humble view, very close to losing his mind. He spoke nonsense morning, noon, and night. He spoke of being ageless, repeating it over and over in his private room as a screaming, violent invocation of the most dreaded kind.
    “I will never die! Never! Never! Never!”
    Finally I could take no more. He wished to have it and I was willing to go to any extreme to save him. From what? From damnation, if you must know.
    Strapped to the wicked chair, shackled by ankle and wrist, the procedure had him in its claws and I had the power to burst the beast from my brother’s chest.
    He was at peace in the chair, the crazy chants softened to a soothing whisper. And then his words changed to that grim message I’d heard a thousand times at my bedside.
     
    “And in my dream I saw a beast coming to take me away.”
     
    Andrew turned his head to me and spoke.
    “I have asked it what it will do when it gets out and it has told me. This eater of death, it speaks.”
    Oh God, let it end! My young brother has gone mad!
    “It’s not your fault alone, Howard. But know this, and know it well. We have played God, the two of us together—we have done this wicked thing. Now a price must be paid.
    “This monster we have made can only live in one, you understand? When I’m gone, it will go on. It will go on forever. It cannot be stopped. What if it chooses you? Then you will live and live and live. It speaks.”
    I was crying, trying to listen and nod and pretend my poor brother hadn’t gone insane, wanting to end it, but unable to. He kept at it, rambling on and on about rules and consequences, things it had told him.
    “Remember these things I say,” my brother said, “because it tells me it will never speak again. It is careful. It has its own ways and they are not your ways. I loved it once—you know this. But we have corrupted it and it has turned to a mind of its own.”
    I took this as a slap to the face, my ways of science, which had utterly destroyed the peaceful path my brother was on. But somewhere, in the deepest part of my soul, I knew his path had been no better. All along the way, those many years in the desert, he’d wanted more than the world had to offer. I knew this because we were brothers, and because I had always felt the same way.
    He went on raving quietly—it was almost a whisper now—tears running down the side of his face. I placed the helmet on his head, this most beautiful invention. Seven tubes projected out of the helmet, long and slithery like snakes, leading to six more helmets on six cold cadavers. Brave men, useless in battle. They would be of use to me now.
    My brother was speaking again.
    “You are a wicked boy, Howard. I know what you’re trying to do. You will fail.”
    This message from whatever demons had taken my brother from me was unthinkable nonsense. It was not my brother, but the broken mind of a wandering man in the desert.
    And yet I drove him on!
    “Why do you say such things, Andrew?”
    “You want to live forever. I know you. You’re a coward.”
    “I don’t understand,” I blathered, my hand shaking on the switch that would end the nightmare. “What do you mean to say?”
    “This is no mercy—it is only an experiment. It is only ever an experiment for you, is it not?”
    I told him I loved him.
    I wanted to hear him tell me he loved me, too. Three simple words—that’s all I wanted! But he had stopped talking. He would say no more, so I went about the grisly business of preparing myself for the inevitable. I put my own helmet on. There were blades and tubes inside, cutting precise incisions into my neck and head. A burning line of pain crawled