Glow, p.15
Glow, page 15
They wheeled him away to a recovery ward where he lay, staring out the window across a blasted, upward-tilting landscape of derelict cranes with shipping containers. Up and distant the landscape rolled, growing into concentric circles of faceless pumice, up and up until it prodded the darkness of space, awakening a huge presence that stirred and salivated upon the Earth like some monstrous wolf over a meaty bone.
“He’s ready for the next stage.”
He looked across at the one-eyed man with the massive curved nose.
“No please…” Rex’s voice ground through paralyzed vocal cords. “No more.”
Awake!
He cracked his head on the underside of the sink, stumbled upright and out of his room, clutching his bed blanket like a child’s comforter. Luminous wall arrows showed the way to the salvation booths, the only direction he could travel in his curfewed state. Banned from working with the dogs for two days after detectors registered Mrs O’s drink residue on his skin even though his blood remained clean.
He trudged the subterranean warren wondering which part of the city he was under now. Shadow people shuffled past, cloaked in bedsheets and bin liners. Sisters lurked in alcoves like guardians of the underworld, making sure each lost soul stayed on its designated path.
The salvation booths occupied one vast chamber with a curved basalt ceiling. Each booth a tiny cube with a desk, light, and chair. He flopped down and presented his wrists to the auto-clamps, feeling the prickles of needles and swabs sterilizing his skin and sampling his blood.
If anything could induce a good half night’s sleep, it was a tedious string of life-equations delivered by a prosaic monotonic robot voice. He read the lines on the screen, repeating them the required number of times and felt his body crashing.
“Food plus water equals healthy living.”
“Alcohol and drugs equals unhealthy living.”
“Exercise and hard work equals…”
His consciousness drifted, could Mrs O really live forever and find her Harold at the end of time? He jolted as the booth’s cuffs relaxed their grip. “You’ve been good Rex,” said the speaker-box. “You may now ask a question of the knowledge supervisor.”
Rex struggled upright as the moment of truth he’d been waiting for arrived. The chance to ask a question. But how to frame such a question without incriminating himself or implicating Mira or Mrs O?
“If – er – there was an animal, say a–” Don’t say dog! The Sisters hate it when I say that I was a dog, “–an ant and it had the brain of a human and was a good, er, ant, would that ant get to go to Haven? And if it did, would it be reunited with its fellow ants?”
Stupid! Stupid! He smacked his forehead on the table, frustrated at his inability to articulate a point.
There was a long pause and finally the machine spoke. “The Australian bulldog ant has the largest head capacity of any known ant. This is not enough space to fit a biological substrate capable of supporting human consciousness–”
Rex felt his head tilt down toward his chest. Visions of a jowly insect with mournful eyes lingered on in his mind while the speaker box jabbered.
“–an artificial substrate rated class-four or above on the Gordan-Jelleri Consciousness Scale might be worthy of salvation provided it had recognized and accepted penance for all its life’s moral and existential challenges, as detailed in Salvitor’s Manual of Salvation available on demand–”
His thoughts turned back to Mira and an alternative question sprang to mind. “Is there a forever-friend named Mira on Coriolis Island?”
The speaker-box clicked and went silent. Rex eased back in his chair and nursed his bruised forehead.
“There is a single reference to a forever-friend by that name.”
He sat bolt upright. “Where?”
“You have exceeded your question allocation. Your current salvation status is seventy-nine percent. For information on how to improve–”
“My percentage went down?”
“If you have an urgent need for information you may schedule a consultation with Sister-One. Please follow signs to the Tower of Knowledge. The current wait time for a consultation is–” click “–zero hours, zero minutes and zero seconds.”
Rex had never heard of the Tower of Knowledge, although he was sure the Salvation manual mentioned it, if he ever bothered to read the thing. It was probably in the part he’d used to balance out an uneven bed leg. The other half he used as a food tray and emergency toilet paper. It suddenly struck him that destroying salvation manuals might have a detrimental effect on his salvation rating.
Signs on the walls lit up as he walked, seeming to find his eyes. He climbed stairs and passed classrooms and offices onto a broad mezzanine. A balcony jutted out into the cathedral’s nave. Above him, like a thundercloud, loomed the ceiling vault, packed with accommodation units for “troublesome inmates”.
Spiral stairs took him higher, the stone steps curving in such a tight arc he had to twist and duck. The weight of the building crushed his soul as his shoulders scraped the ancient stone walls.
He emerged onto a roof garden full of plants and greenhouses on a neat grid, linked by slate pathways that converged on the bell tower. As high again as the building below, it thrust into the sky like a stone space-elevator, the great X of the Future-Lord’s multiplier adorned its peak and looked a lot newer than the rest of the building.
More stairs, more spirals that ended abruptly as Rex stumbled into a cylindrical room with slot-windows that looked out in every direction over the city.
Servers, screens and shelves of books and files had replaced the tower’s bells and striking mechanisms. Sister-One sat atop it all on a great wooden pulpit connected to the floor by a slim twist of steps. Like a proud eagle reigning over her informational empire, with her bookshelf wings spread wide on either side, her raptor-beak nose tracked Rex as he entered, and she regarded him through sagely eyes ringed with black circles like old-fashioned spectacles. Overhead hung the Sisters’ banner, “A True Servant Has No Needs.”
“Have you come looking for your past again, Rex?”
“Again?”
“You’ve been here before, different body language, different voice.”
“Did I find anything?”
“You were then and remain now an enigma, maybe the Nova-Insanity erased everything there was to know about you. Or you led the smallest of lives not leaving any trail, and then there’s the oddest possibility of all, that someone went to a great deal of trouble to remove you from all records.”
Rex’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t exist?”
“You exist,” she said, her voice losing its reverent power. “You have a body, a mind, and you remember things about your past. I assume?”
He nodded and thrust his chin forward in defiance. “I remember the surgery that made me into a human.”
“Rex, you are and always have been genetically human.” She eased away from her pulpit and floated down to settle by Rex’s side. “I am curious though. In your memory, Rex, who did this surgery and where did it happen?”
He turned away, angry that she seemed to be just humoring him. The windows of the tower flashed by, city cars so far below like toys. He settled in front of a window looking out toward Transit Mountain that glowed a deep orange in the impending dawn light. From the ground, the looming construct always looked flat, but from up here it seemed different. Shadows and color gradients revealed the plateaus as circular: great pumice disks piled on top of each other, stabbing through the cloud layer toward space. His gaze settled on the base and familiarity tickled his mind, cranes and shipping containers. For a moment he was tumbling, down through the immensity of Transit Mountain, its dark walls flashing past like… concentric circles.
The whole image gelled in his mind. “I don’t know who did the surgery, but it happened over there. Somewhere.”
The Sister stood next to him and together they stared out at the pointed mountain. “Then take a spare afternoon and go there, Rex. In my experience such journeys often result in the memories turning out to be false. If you find that they are real, then you have an amazing story to tell the Future-Lord.” Sister-One turned away as if finished with him.
“I just chased a false memory with my friend, Mira.” Rex explained his trip to Ridgeline and their lucky escape from Mr Gallonie’s clutches. “At the end, she remembered that her name, Mira, was stolen from her forever-pet. She doesn’t know her real name.” The Sister stared on, forcing Rex to keep talking. “If she’s to be saved then she has to know the truth. Surely the truth starts with knowing your own name?”
“A name is just a name, Rex. A label. It has little bearing on truth although it often serves as a mental mustering point, something we cohere around in the stories we tell ourselves about who and what we are.” She looked away and clasped her hands as if in prayer. Her drawn-on eyes refocused on the distant realm of information. “There is a record of a forever-friend called Mira in the Caelum district on the edge of Coriolis. It appears on a small database at the Immortal Dogs Rescue Sanctuary.”
A light flickered inside the pulpit behind her and the image of a small gray poodle appeared in the air a few feet from Rex’s nose. “Do we know who her owner was?” Rex asked. The excitement of the chase felt good.
“She has new owners now and their privacy must be respected, but her previous owner, Corrine Medlow, has disappeared from records and is presumed deceased.” Mira’s face appeared – or the woman Rex thought of as Mira. She looked healthy, normal; a warm glow of contentment filled her eyes.
“That’s her,” Rex said, reaching out to touch the image, causing it to break up and flicker across his forearm. “She’s not dead. I’ve seen her. For real. Not just in my head.”
The Sister continued. “She had a family. Husband Michel, and children Mark and Clara. They lived near Transit Mountain.” A photo shimmered out of thin air to hang in front of Rex’s nose. Nice house, exotic trees, a pointy-jawed man with proud eyes. Mark clung to his mother beaming broadly as Clara fussed with the poodle.
The Sister paused, seemingly reluctant to carry on. Then a news article appeared – shootings, gang executions. He couldn’t read it, too many words. “What does it mean, Sister?”
“Like many, Corrine used Simmorta, the GFC’s longevity drug. But the drug became too expensive after the Nova-Insanity destroyed the elevator and the supply chain to Earth. Corrine turned to other things, illegal drugs from dangerous sources. Her family paid the ultimate price – only she survived.” She waited as if expecting Rex to say something, but he had no words. “She buried her grief under drink and drugs and that’s where our records end. She probably lives on the streets, if she lives at all. And that corroborates your story of meeting her, Rex.”
Rex stared in silence at the floor suddenly hating himself for knowing. “Can she be saved?”
The Sister’s voice grew quiet. “She must know and repent for her past as all who wish to truly know the Future-Lord must.”
Rex turned away, crushed under this new burden.
“And find yourself, Rex!” she called, as he almost fell back down the bell tower stairs in his haste to escape. His head buzzed with voices, but they were all his, asking questions, talking over each other. If he was to truly seek salvation then he needed to know so much more about his past, about his sister, her name, maybe even find her. And now there was Mira, or Corrine. How could he ever reveal such a terrible truth to her? Surely not-knowing was better? And then there was the dead man in the alley… How does a murderer gain entry into Haven?
Out on the rooftop, Transit Mountain gleamed in the rising dawn. No longer the haunting reminder of a past disaster, it was now a calling, a beacon, a place of pilgrimage and answers. Somewhere he just had to be.
CHAPTER 21
Pattern Recognition
Jett didn’t like humans. Being on Earth, in Coriolis City, cemented his view – the voidian view – that people were fragile, unpredictable and emotional. Their lives were unnecessarily complicated and filled with the need for things like drugs, clothes, food, water, air. The need for more people.
But if Gale’s AI projection spoke the truth, and the voidian were to become humanity’s custodians, then he needed to study them, and accept that to become a guide meant also to constrain, and that sometimes, in order to create, he had to destroy.
Welkin park, busy and crowded. A racetrack with the competitors going in all directions around a circuit centered on the crystal Nova lake. Jett loitered at the park’s edge, using the mass of crazy, unique-looking humans that resided there as cover.
He observed patterns in behavior. Often, people did the same thing every day; they traversed the same routes through the city, glanced in the same direction as they passed the same shops and monuments. They even took the same number of steps to move between the same points: robots!
Human expressions became more familiar. He mimicked them on his fibrous face, although attempts at smiling at passersby had so far resulted in them breaking into a run or shouting for help.
Mood was an intriguing concept. A state of being from which a set of predictable responses emerged: same person, same stimulus, but a different mood equaled a different response. At one moment jittery, angry, eyes seeking things in the crowds, but the same person later in the day appeared calm and unconcerned. A mood change.
Other people were damaged by age or sickness. Jett heard their knees grind, recorded their limps and hobbles, their pallor, the lack of pigment in their hair. Then he saw them later and the damage was less severe. They moved with liquid grace. Did a change of mood make them healthier?
Jett deduced that these people were finding longevity drugs, and their acquisitions revolved around distinct nexus points within the city. These attractor-locations were often in heavily fortified areas with their own, more menacing, creed of militia.
He avoided those areas, focusing on their inflows and outflows until after three full days of observation, a new pattern emerged. A subset of drug users sporting unusually colorful clothing, strange hats, and baggy shirts. Tourists, his AI-tagger reported.
Drug tourists, Jett concluded. New flow patterns sprung out of new observations. Patterns leading straight to a flamboyantly dressed man conducting business right in front of the militia, in the middle of the most crowded streets.
Circus Ringmaster? The tagger guessed, but Jett saw no circus.
The man wore an overly large black top hat and long coattails. Hands waving like a conductor, he twirled a slim cane around agile fingers. His smile seemed to reach out to people and hook them toward him. Jett tagged him as Topman and kept him under a day-long observation, watching as people approached, paused, and listened. Some took notes before hastening away. Topman often wrapped a friendly arm around their shoulders, whispered in their ears, handed them cards. In return, people pushed coins and paper money into his top pocket, and he patted the pocket as if checking on its contents before moving on to a different square or street corner. Jett noted his random path around Welkin, covering each location exactly once and never going down the same street twice. He was a real-life traveling salesman, and possibly the solution to Jett’s quest for Glow.
The crowds thinned and the sky darkened into evening. Topman abruptly pulled his hat down over his ears and compressed its top making himself a whole head shorter.
He left the city center with Jett as a distant shadow, passing through a park lined with the stalls and the wares of an evening market. Topman paused and picked up food from a truck before striding off across a broad square dominated by a staggeringly tall and dangerously kinked tower.
Parallax Tower. Jett’s tagger threw out the name and its history scrolled past his gaze as he focused on following the little man while not being seen.
Taller than anything except Transit Mountain, Parallax Tower suffered alarming damage during the Nova-Insanity. A great kink in the middle followed by a dozen smaller bends nearer the top leaned the structure out over the city. One of the few tall buildings to survive the downtown nova blast, engineers surveying the building concluded that it would topple at any moment. But as engineers and governments changed and vanished, the building remained standing. No one had any real idea how to knock it down without taking out a huge swathe of cityscape.
Parallax Tower remained an icon of the city, a monument to pre-Nova-Insanity engineering. It even had tenants. Standing in its shadow, Jett looked up into dizzying heights and saw solar panels and wind turbines jutting from windows and balconies. Poles laden with clothes poked out like spines. Rope ladders and tenuous walkways created makeshift shortcuts and escape routes, or simply bypassed impassible regions within the tower.
Jett followed Topman in through one of the many open street-level window facades. He mounted a coiling service stairway and began a speedy ascent.
Jett hung back out of sight, tracking the man’s footfalls before following. They ascended through dozens of floors, some gaping open to the elements, others pancaked flat by internal collapse.
Jett’s street-beggar guise bounded up the stairs ten at a time, pausing at corners to let his quarry stay ahead. Around the two-hundredth floor the population thinned. Only the truly determined made it this far up, mixed with a handful of drunks that had somehow found their way up and probably didn’t know how to get back down. By floor two hundred and fifty, even they were a rarity.
Topman entered a door, slamming it shut behind, bolts and locks clicking into place. Jett took note of the location and explored the rest of the level. Nine other apartments lined the intact side of the tower, heat signatures revealed lone characters living inside, all spaced well apart.
Jett returned to the apartment and analyzed the door: stout, double-layered steel with alloy casing set in a reinforced wall with crossbars running top-to-bottom and side-to-side. He changed his body proportions, making himself shorter and stout, maximizing his ramming potential. Crashing through, he tore the door and a chunk of the surrounding wall away entering what appeared to be Topman’s living room.
