by David Beem
“Telling you,” says the short man in a hushed voice. “It is of the devil!”
Nigel tilts to the side to whisper into my ear. “That’s what they said about The Beatles, you know.” I recoil slightly. His breath’s like too-strong Earl Grey. “Proper Earl Grey, you mean,” he adds.
“Yes, yes, Jean,” says the tall man, glancing over his shoulder. “There’s no need to state it explicitly where uttering such risks a rope around our necks.”
“His witchcraft needs to be dealt with,” says the one called Jean.
“How?” asks the medium-size man. “Shall we call upon Father Timothée? ‘Hello, Father. I believe we three have been possessed by the spirit of another man!’”
“Of course not,” says Jean. “I mean to confront Master Nostradamus himself.”
“Fine.” The tall man glances over his shoulder again. “We’ll call upon him at sunrise. Will that not suffice?”
Jean shakes his head. “He means to send the manuscript to the publisher with all haste.”
“But not, I think, in the middle of the night,” says the tall man.
“Dare we risk it?” asks Jean.
The men’s faces begin vibrating, and the world again grows brighter. The soul-stars fall like a blizzard of light. Soon the world is featureless save for the Tree of Life on the horizon. Mary, Bruce, Nigel, and the white park bench, now longer than ever, materialize.
“Needs a bit of sprucing up, doesn’t it?” asks Nigel, his gaze traveling from left to right. He raises his arm and wiggles his fingers. A metal pole appears where a woman bearing a striking resemblance to Mary is dressed in a thong and hanging upside down with spread legs.
“Are you kidding me with this?” I ask.
“Well, I suppose it could use…” He wiggles his fingers again, and a disco ball appears over her head. The Mary look-alike glides down the pole, flips upright, and lands with a chest-bouncing thud. Real Mary’s lips pull back on one side. Bruce waves his hand, and the stripper, pole, and disco ball vanish.
“Thank you, Nigel. That’ll be all for now.”
“I was going to order us jalapeño poppers.”
“That’ll be all for now.”
“And beer.”
“Nigel—”
“And lap dances.” Nigel wags his eyebrows, then fans a sheet of one-hundred-dollar bills open in front of his chest.
Bruce glares.
“Oh, fine,” says Nigel. “I’ll go where the fun people are at Club Brain. Don’t say I never tried.” His color grows pale like oversaturated film until matching the sea of white, and Nigel vanishes completely.
“So that’s the downside of being in each other’s heads,” says Mary.
“Count yourself lucky,” Bruce replies.
“That was lucky?” I ask.
“Nigel also writes poetry.”
Mary’s lips part and turn down, and I follow her train of thought to the station. She’s getting the hang of it. Through the Collective Unconscious, we can extrapolate all sorts of Nigel’s “experimental” poems.
“But you can also extrapolate relevant data,” says Bruce, redirecting us to what he has in mind.
“The church.” Mary nods. “Église Saint-Laurent de Salon-de-Provence. That’s where we were! And the men’s names… One of them was Jean. He was Nostradamus’s clerk.” Her gaze turns inward.
“They were talking about a heretical prophecy Nostradamus intended to publish,” I say. “Those three men stopped him.”
Bruce nods. “Yes. While the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wouldn’t come along for another three hundred years, Nostradamus had already prophesied Nietzsche’s Übermenschen.”
“Oh-kay,” I say. “But if he prophesied it three hundred years earlier than Nietzsche wrote it, then wouldn’t that make Nietzsche’s writings plagiary?”
“No,” replies Bruce. “Because they kept a lid on it. Understand, these were deeply heretical concepts to sixteenth-century Christians.”
“Refresh my memory a bit on Nietzsche’s Übermenschen,” I say.
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Bruce replies. “A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, which introduced the prophecy of the Übermensch and the parable on the death of God.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s the heretical part.”
“It’s all heretical,” says Bruce. “The book chronicles the fictitious doings of Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s Superman, who turns traditional morality on its head by placing truthfulness as the highest virtue.”
“Is that so bad?” asks Mary.
“Well, that depends,” Bruce replies. “Zarathustra is meant to be the pinnacle of human evolution in a postmoral society. For Nostradamus, this means transforming humanity into a unified consciousness subservient to one ruler for all time.”
My head ticks back. “Well, that sounds like him, not me. I thought I was Zarathustra.”
“Not to Nostradamus.”
“I’m tired of this,” says Mary. “Look. Context is good. Understanding the enemy is good. But what does it matter how Nostradamus interprets the ramblings of a nineteenth-century German philosopher? Why can’t we use the Collective Unconscious to track the lives he’s lived into the present day?”
“We can,” he replies.
“Then why aren’t we?” she asks.
“Understand, knowledge that is gained through compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Only by falling can one rise.”
She rolls her eyes, and her gaze lands on me.
“Fabio and I used to add the words ‘in bed’ to fortune cookie fortunes,” I mutter. “It’s fun.”
“Data is less than information,” he continues, his tone imploring. “Information is less than knowledge, knowledge is less than wisdom. Mary, you correctly grasp the Collective Unconscious is an unfathomable resource, but you fail to understand it is limited by what you’re able to receive.”
She raises her hands in an exasperated gesture and turns to face me as an idea—mine this time, I’m certain—pushes to the surface.
“Okay, fine,” I say. “What he’s saying is you can’t push broadband through dial-up, but even if you could, what is your processor capable of doing with the information? It used to take floor-to-ceiling-size computers to process a fraction of what the modern smartphone can now.”
Her eyebrows rise, and her gaze turns blank.
“When I developed that AI for Mikey at Notre Dame,” I continue, “he and I talked a lot about the DIKW pyramid: Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom, where wisdom is at the top, okay? The gold standard was an AI conscious of its reasoning process to the point it would know its position in the pyramid hierarchy on any given issue, at any given time. But if you think about it, wisdom isn’t an endpoint in the process, because we often get new information that forces us to reevaluate what we thought we knew, thereby looping us backward in the pyramid so we can reevaluate. Our AI had to be capable of constant development. Like a human brain.”
“This is meant to clarify things?” asks Mary.
“In other words,” I say, “Bruce is saying we’re in the data-gathering stage, but you’re asking to skip over information and go straight to knowledge in the hopes of gleaning wisdom.”
“Very good.” Bruce folds his hands in front.
“Oh my God,” she says. “Edger, sometimes I forget what a big nerd you are. And I love you for it. Really, I do. But listen, both of you. I don’t speak philosophy. I speak gun. I want to know what body Nostradamus is using today so I can shoot him in the head. No head, no consciousness transfer, no immortality. I’m ready to end this. Bruce, show us who Nostradamus is today.”
“Very well,” he replies, folding his hands in front and pointedly avoiding eye contact. “But if you choose this path, you must do it alone. I cannot risk capture, if that is indeed what he is doing.”
I straighten. “Risk? Risk, what do you mean?”
“I can
not follow him too close to the present. He will sense me. As a soul, I am vulnerable.”
“And we’re not?” I ask.
“You’re among the living. He must track you down in the physical world, remove your mind-control-canceling technology, and invade your soul that way.”
“Bruce,” says Mary, her eyes brimming with concern. “You think this is what happened to Killmaster and Shakespeare? They got to close to who Nostradamus is today?”
“I don’t know. But if he invades even one of the minds on our side of the curtain, all the dead will fall.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Our feet touch down at the tail end of the sixteenth century, where an old man sits alone at a wooden table inside a dirty hut. The soul-stars’ sparkling light is still lifting off our limbs when a fist bangs on the door. I spot Mary standing in the far corner.
“Hey, I—”
“Come,” says the old man, and the door bangs open where she materialized. She catty-corners the room in two long strides, phasing through the table, and joins me in the opposite corner.
“Hey, I don’t know if we should be doing this,” I whisper. “Bruce made it sound like—”
“Shh,” she whispers back, her mind probing the two men: Claude and Pierre.
“Man, you’re good at that.”
“Shh.”
Pierre saunters over the threshold, the purses on his belt jingling, his fine silk robe gleaming in the candlelight. He rests his meaty hands on his belt buckle and stares down his nose at the old man.
Claude, says Mary, nodding to indicate the old man.
I got it, thanks.
Tax collector, says Mary, nodding at Pierre.
I could’ve told you that without the Collective Unconscious, I reply, facing jowly Pierre. Where’s Robin Hood when you need him?
Claude’s gaze rises to meet Pierre and a pencil-size golden bar of light extends from the old man’s forehead, reaching across the room and connecting with Pierre’s forehead. Pierre gasps. Mary pushes her palms out in front of us, and a transparent, gel-like substance materializes between us and them. Pierre’s lips pull back in a silent scream. His arms splay, his chest juts forward. A golden mist shoots off his body. He teeters—
Thunk!
I turn toward the sound. Claude is facedown on the table.
He’s untethered from the Collective Unconscious, says Mary.
“Holy shit!” I cry, stumbling backward and phasing through a chest of drawers. Mary’s hands tremble, her face is white, but the shield she’s holding seems steady. “How did you do that?”
“Instinct.”
Pierre touches his temple and grabs the back of the only other chair in the room. His knees buckle, rattling the wooden chair legs before he steadies himself. He blows out a long exhalation.
“He’s weak,” says Mary. “Good to know.”
“You scare me sometimes, you know that?”
Pierre’s gaze rises and directs through me. Still standing in the middle of a chest of drawers, I hurry to the side. On top of the chest of drawers is a green tarp covering something rectangular. Pierre rounds the table and throws off the tarp. A wooden chest. He opens it, reaches inside. Two heavy volumes are pulled out. Books tucked under his arm, he passes right through us before we can step out of the way—
“I really hate that,” says Mary.
—and, facing the oak door, his hand on the doorknob, he pauses. “Au revoir, mon ami.”
He throws open the door, and soul-stars swirl around us, flinging us again across the netherworld abyss.
“Why are you so ridiculously good at this!” I yell.
“You’re just jealous!” she yells back.
The past resolves into focus again. Pierre is grayer now. He’s trotting down the stairs in a large manor as fists beat his front door this time.
“This is going to be so tedious,” I say through a set of floating teeth, and the rest of me phases in. “We’re going to find five hundred years’ worth of these little episodes?”
“Open up! The king will have your head!” cry muffled voices outside the front door.
“Oh, that’ll get him to open the door for sure,” I say. “Jehovah’s Witnesses? No way. King wants my head? Oh, sure, come right in! I’ve got a guillotine around here somewhere…”
“I’m getting the hang of it now,” says Mary from behind me. “I’ll see what I can do to speed things up.”
“Girl Scout cookies and promised beheadings,” I mutter. “I open the door for nothing less.”
She steps out from behind me to face the door.
Fists still banging, Pierre crosses the parlor to another chest, this one featuring a dark, swirling grain, shining luster, and gold hardware.
“What do you want to bet he’s got his books in there?” I ask.
“Probably money.”
Sunlight streams through the tall sitting room windows as Old Pierre crosses to the fireplace. He lifts a small ivory carving of a frog from the mantelpiece and slides open a secret compartment on its belly. A crash whips Mary and me around as the door is battered off its hinges. Three men enter, each brandishing razor-sharp sabers.
“Now these guys really could be the three musketeers,” I say, and Mary’s arm crosses in front of me as her gun sweeps up from her free arm. I gently lower both, and her posture relaxes.
“Gun spectating.” She hefts her gun sheepishly as one of the king’s sword dudes phases through her left shoulder.
Pierre sticks the key into the chest, turns the lock, and opens the lid. Inside are gold coins. Lots of them.
Mary wags her eyebrows at me.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t his porn stash,” I mutter.
“Arrogant bastard!” cries one of the soldiers. “See how he flaunts his stolen wealth.”
Pierre turns around to face them, and the strange golden light issues from his forehead. Mary’s hands rise, and again, the gel-like shield materializes. One of the armed men lunges, his sabre piercing Pierre’s heart as the golden bar touches the attacker’s forehead—
I turn away and face a painting of a woman with a bird on her shoulder, and my adrenaline kicks in again.
“That’s a neat trick,” says Mary, still facing the action.
“No,” I say, shaking my head and facing her. “No, it’s a horrible trick. How many times are we going to have to watch this rerun anyway?”
“We should’ve been doing this from the start,” says Mary. “Look at what we’re learning. That move? Nostradamus could do that to you.” She mimes the lunge and sabre attack, then winks. “Hashtag: The-more-you-know.”
“Hashtag: And-they-say-fencing-is-a-gentleman’s-sport.”
“Hashtag: Say-hello-to-my-little-friend.” Her sidearm morphs into a sniper rifle.
A disgusting squish claws for my attention as, from the corner of my eye, all three swordsmen stab Pierre’s fallen form. Three swords buried in an empty husk.
“That one is Raphael.” Mary points.
Raphael, his grip tight on the hilt of his saber, blinks rapidly, like he’s just coming to his senses. Pulling out his sword with a lurch and a splotching noise from the corpse, he faces the other two.
I wrinkle my nose. “So gross.”
The golden bar of light issues from his forehead, splits in two, and touches the other two men. Mary’s hands fly up.
“Oh, snap!” I say, hurrying behind her shield. “I didn’t know he could split it like that!”
“See?” Mary drops her shield now the threat has passed, and her sniper rifle rematerializes. Idly, she aims it at Raphael. “The more you know.”
“No—wait!”
She pulls the trigger—bang! My hands clap my ears. Jeez, it didn’t leave even a nick in the wall. I lower my hands.
“Is that necessary?”
She winks. “Now we can rule it out.”
I stick my finger in my ear and jiggle it.
“Oh, stop,” she says. “Your ears are fine. They�
��re not even real ears.”
“Get it all packed up,” says Raphael, and the two swordsmen hasten deeper into Pierre’s manor as Raphael crosses to a cabinet.
Mary taps my arm. “Let’s go. We’ve seen enough.”
She summons the soul-stars, and their silver light is vibrating this time. Our history lesson speeds past like flipping pages. Raphael leaving his fortune to the prince—then becoming the prince. The prince becomes the king, and the king becomes the prince. Again and again, his schemes play out. But it’s not just fortunes and annihilated souls; now his cabal is growing. World leaders. Backroom deals. The Illuminati. Mind control, bribery, extortion—
The soul-stars simmer and liquefy, hot on my subconscious—
“Mary! Slow down!”
The liquid light boils—
History flashing past faster than I can process—
Nostradamus’s golden light has dimmed to a deep dark purple—
Molten lava showering over us—
“Stop!”
The world snaps into focus beneath our feet. My legs are shaking. My chest is heaving.
I grab a nearby doorframe and turn my gaze toward the light. The sun is shining. Lawn mowers running, birds singing. The air is thick with gasoline and pollen. I touch my forehead and sway before righting myself.
Glinting light. Chrome. A Lexus? I’m in someone’s four-car garage.
Mary winks into existence at my side and collapses to her butt, then topples into me, pushing me back into the doorframe. I work my hand between my knee and her shoulder and ease her upright. Her bleary eyes rise and search my face.
“…got him…”
I lurch upright, and the Collective Unconscious supplies the details.
The year is 2009. The place is Silicon Valley.
Rustling.
The telltale click of a cabinet latch closing.
I ease Mary against the Lexus and peek over the top of the car. A man in his forties is pouring gas into a riding mower. Gardening gloves, jeans, UCLA tee, and a Dodgers baseball cap.