The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “Hedge fund?”

  “Yes, it’ll help pay for all this.”

  There’s a slight somewhere in that last comment, but I ignore it. Since when did Turing gain such confidence in his speech, demeanor? “What did the generals want?” I ask.

  “We’re helping them collect data on terrorists. We’re helping those in the intelligence community to use data and come up with ways to predict potential revolutions... People get antsy, you know.”

  I feel a shiver run up my body. “Do they?” I say as I clench my fists.

  Turing looks at my fists for a split second and grins. “Of course. You’ve read history. You know.”

  I do know. “Are you planning on stopping any revolution for these guys?”

  “Revolutions are bloody. I want no more blood for you.”

  You. He means us. Condescending bastard, I think, before reminding myself that he’s nothing but algorithms. A complex series of if then statements; I remember that the first few mistakes I made in programming class was growing angry with the computer; it’s a dumb slave that does as it’s told. Surely he could’t be condescending. It’s just a glitch. And I’m supposed to be his guide in this manner. “Fair enough,” I say, trying my hardest to be measured. I turn and look at the lights moving in the constant movement that is New York. A few honks waft into the room. One scream. For a second I can touch all of humanity, feel its pain, its love, its happiness. We should work together. “You sounded a little condescending on that last part.”

  “Oh?”

  “Even that. It’s a little irksome.”

  “Okay. This better?” His face turns sterner. I realize he’s wearing a glove to cover each hands.

  “Much.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He places that metal hand on my shoulder. Even through the glove and in this warm room, it’s cold, heavy. “What were you just feeling?”

  “What?”

  “There was a change in your... in your face.” He moves his hand in a too perfect a circle in front of his face.

  “Ah, that. Well...” How does one explain that? And for some reason, I’m certain that this feeling, this sense of attachment to all human beings can explain religion, can explain love for one another (possibly explain what drives us to procreate), can explain how humans are able to remove that sense of being a lone soul of consciousness from inside themselves?

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about. What’s going through your head?”

  I say nothing, just stare at the glow of a window.

  “This is what I mean, George,” Turing says, softer than ever.

  “You’re right. Sorry. Sometimes one isn’t... smart enough to answer. But I’ll try.”

  “It’s all I ever wanted,” he says, again in that soft voice.

  He’s not wrong. I’m here to teach him. “Well, I talked to you for a second. I think I was pissed about the condescending tone you were taking. I felt angry, but I also knew I was here to help, right? And so when I looked out there.” I sweep my hand at the scene before us. “And I remembered I was supposed to help and I could feel all the humans out there just struggling trying to get by. It fills me.” I tap my chest. “With a very certain warmth... which I’m not sure I understand... though it does make me want to help them all. But what I thought next was that this desire to help all or this warmth... I’m not sure what it is, or if those two things are the same, but it definitely replaces the sense of loneliness that can fill us humans at times. Even when we’re with others.”

  “Hence your literature. Your art. Your love.”

  I turn and look at Turing who appears almost misty eyed. “You getting soft on me, Turing?”

  Turing grins. “I am made of flesh.”

  I chuckle with Turing.

  “And now?” Turing says after we watch a set of sirens run up a long avenue.

  Some yells from the downstairs drift up to us. I can tell our workers’ voices because of how rigid they seem to sound.

  “And what you did to Kurt...”

  “Bringing him back to life?” Turing asks, twisting his face up.

  “No. Coming in here... I could see the fear in his face. Humans are not meant to be treated like that.”

  “Are you certain about that?”

  I’m not certain about that. But what do I want to teach Turing?

  “I mean if I’m wrong, I’ll change. But I’ve read about you. I know how it goes in history. Most of you have to be told to do a thing. Right now we need workers. We don’t have the money for anything else and so I brought them back to life. And for them to work hard at rebuilding this place, I need them to fear me... Is there another way?”

  I let out a sigh. I know how some people need that authoritarian whip to make them work. “Kurt was never like that. And maybe if you need them like this, that’s fine. But I think that you do get the most out of humans when you step away from fear. When you allow them to create...” I stop, not sure what I’m saying is getting through, or is even making sense to me.

  “I see,” Turing says. He whistles. And a few seconds later Kurt comes up the stairs. Turing turns my friend and places his bare metal hand on the man’s skull. A few seconds later Kurt shakes himself off and stands in front of us both.

  “What?” Kurt says to Turing in a very angry tone.

  Turing shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  After a few seconds, Kurt walks out, giving me a nod as he does so.

  A helicopter flies by low, shaking the windows. Turing watches my flinch. “You shouldn’t worry about that anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re off all the lists.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “They have other issues now.”

  I nod my head. “How did that negotiation with the generals go?”

  “Well. They liked me.”

  I smile, thinking about a curt Turing and how the generals would have liked that. “And what of the deals? Is this how you’re helping?”

  Turing shrugs. “I’m not going to lie. Right now it’s all for the money.”

  That relieves the tension I’d felt in my heart some. Still.

  “But we need more people to help us...” Turing says, then mimics the hand to chin posture that I’ve assumed.

  I look at him, then back outside, with lights moving everywhere.

  Turing pulls out a tablet that looks unlike any other, more like a thin sheet of aluminum, in fact. But when he presses it, a video appears and I see that another news reel. “See?”

  Most of it is taken from phone cameras and the like, but it’s all very violent. Some of it’s extreme Islamists shooting down their opponents in broad daylight, while others have people going about their business when a swooshing sound precedes a trail of smoke and flash (too quick to really tell). Then the cameras scroll to dead bodies. Blood all over the crumbled building that the people were next to. Men, always men, pounding their fists or trying to appear to be extremely concerned as they speak, usually to the need for more attacks. Then back to the literal stream of bodies, of baby shoes littered with blood, of women crying, of men crying (usually followed by these men being angry), of children crying. I watch, shocked. Now there’s a man being forced by Islamists to dig his own grave; he claims his family was killed for his sins; he’s duly shot, toppling over like a any other weight with his shape and density. Now there’s an explosion. Now there’s a mass grave. Sometimes the images move back to the past, to World War II where these images were also plentiful, though never to this visceral. Now we see cement barriers, a child being shot for throwing rocks. Then the view of a shining technological achievement, smooth and phallic, then it going through a building, then the screams and blood all over again. I can feel a heat growing in my chest. Soon the warmth has spread to the rest of my body. What does one do with all this?

  “How do you explain this?” Turing asks. “How do your people deal with this?”

>   “The hell...” I say, or ask.

  Turing turns his eyes from me to the scene of New York unfolding before us. “All this requires some level of subjugation, doesn’t it?”

  I’m not sure, I want to say, but nothing comes out instead.

  Turing, doesn’t seem to be concerned with the silence. He turns to observe my voice. “Are you fine with people not reacting to such things?”

  “No one’s fine with it,” I lie.

  “And all this. This art, this city. Doesn’t it require such things to happen?” Turing asks. I’m not sure I understand, though I sense that Turing knows the answer.

  “I sense hesitation,” says Turing. “There are specific rights and wrongs in the world, aren’t there? There is morality... injustice, isn’t there?” Turing shifts his weight and eyes me.

  “I...” Yes even here I’m not so certain; I’m hesitant when it comes to revolution. But why?

  “As we speak, your police forces are becoming tools for the powerful. They care less and less about the law and have become nothing more than the kings’ guard.

  “That—“

  “It has worsened and you know it.”

  I bite my tongue sending something else besides this dissonance through my brain. “I see,” I say.

  “I’ll take that as a yes?” Turing says, turning to smile at me.

  I feel close to the robot, and I also sense some elation beneath my heart, a swell that fills me with the strongest kind of hope I haven’t had in a long time. But all that’s interrupted by a loud scream and the sound of metal crashing, grinding. A horn sounds off, endless, and a wail breaks through between that and a car alarm. I step up to the window, there I see a crowd gathered around a crumpled body. Two cars are smashed into each other. One with a hole through its windshield. But something about the scene whispers to the back of my head. I look to a quiet corner. There is Behemoth and that woman in red, that beautiful woman I saved. Behemoth tips his hat—he’s wearing a bowler hat now—at me and his eyes twinkle.

  “What is it?” Turing says, his eyes following mine. “A troublesome accident, no more.”

  “No,” I say, nodding my head towards the quiet corner. “Look there.”

  I hear Turing’s eyes trying to adjust. “I see nothing, George.”

  I blink a few times, but can see Behemoth and the woman as clear as day. My body remembers some of the torture, the stress positions and it shivers. An ambulance arrives and drives by, covers, the corner. When it moves, Behemoth is gone. “You really didn’t see anything there?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Someone you know?” Turing asks.

  “I...” My eyes focus back on the accident. “Can you tell what happened?”

  “It wasn’t an accident, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s the skid marks. That car,” Turing says and points at the car which obviously went over the lane and into the man who was lying so still on the road’s car. “Did not brake once. And it was going at such a speed that they wanted to hit this other car.”

  “Behemoth,” I whisper.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I sleep. I wake up late in the night after all the workers have gone and all that remains are a few sirens a few taxis in the street. The next day, I wake up in the same room where I had pledged a sort of allegiance to Turing. The noise of footsteps gives rise to more dust. Not in so many words, but in my mind, after seeing Behemoth, I know something has to be done. I eat breakfast, brought to me by Turing, who places a tablet in front of me and lets me watch the news as I chew through perfectly made scramble eggs with sautéed onions. Again there is violence in the Middle East. This time in Iraq, a place I served two tours in. This time there is something akin to the Mongols coming through. Everyone is horrified. All media outlets claim that this is truly a scourge.

  “Thoughts?” Turing asks.

  “I’m on your side, remember?” I say, annoyed; the sense that I’m being turned hangs in the air. I look off at the intersection, which is the same except for a handful of cops hanging in one area, talking, not really paying attention to people around them. There are a few young males eyeing the cops, but no one is really doing anything. That’s the method these days: if there is crime in an area, you send out cops and it usually calms things down.

  “You see?”

  Turing turns my attention back to the tablet. I lose my appetite. It’s Behemoth, except this time he’s wearing a uniform. A general. Saying that they will have to deal with the threat to Americans. Saying that there is nothing that works as well as a few bombs in those hapless villages to keep the barbarians from the gates.

  “What do you make of all this? These lies?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I’m thinking on Behemoth. What’s he doing? He’s trying to crush all rebellion against mother Empire.

  “Nothing? What about the fact that there’s a truth out there?” Turing says. “That we should make sure that it comes out in the end?”

  I look over Turing. “I said I was on your side.” I look him over again. Does he not understand? Another thought tickles my skin, it crawls up, and I realize that Turing has two hands made of flesh. He looks completely like a real man. Even the air that hangs around him when he speaks is that of a real person. “Still, when you have people being massacred, it’s hard to not take sides.”

  “But shouldn’t those who created the situation, those who produced the filth which got people sick, shouldn’t they be punished?”

  I don’t know what he’s trying to do, so I don’t answer that exact question. Instead I let my mind race to other topics. “It’s hard to discern at times. It’s hard to go far back enough into time and blame just about everyone.”

  “It’s a cycle of subjugation over and over. One can never tell how to break it,” Turing says, a little too cheery for me. It’s as if he wants me to complete that sentence, like a teacher who knows the answer and is trying to get the child to come up with it. I am no child.

  “Not always.”

  “No?”

  “No. We have peace.”

  “Under a knife.”

  No. “No. We can, at times, achieve a little more than that.”

  “Oh?”

  “Like now. What we’re doing. We’re helping to...” No, I don’t even know the exact ends to what I’m helping Turing do. I need to know, and I think until now I’ve been holding back on it. And even though that’s true, I should know where I’m stepping, I see the same mistakes. I see that I want to blindly go forward and have someone tell me it’s okay, that there’s nothing to worry about, that I’m doing good in this world.

  “We need a strategy, don’t we?” Turing says, using that teacher tone again.

  “Of course,” I whisper, looking at the tablet.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What?”

  “When you look at him, I can tell you have such apprehension, like you know you’re looking at something evil. And yet, your words.”

  I half smile, not at Turing’s words, but at my silliness. This is no time to be species centric, is it? “You’re right. We need to move forward and usurp those few who threaten the many.” A relief goes through me.

  “Exactly.”

  Turing nods at me. And I take a deep breath and start to talk. We will need people to get the word out, we can use Turing and Yusef’s programming skills to help with the Internet, and start to change opinions, though we will need people on the ground as well.

  “And attacks?”

  The tension creeps back into my chest. “No... the word needs to get out.”

  “No name for us.”

  I’m not sure if he’s asking or telling. “No name,” I concur.

  Turing hands me my backpack. I didn’t know it was gone. “There’s some cash to help you get started. You can thank Mathewsfor this.” He hands me a suit. I put it on slowly. It’s si
lky to the touch. Expensive, I gather. And it fits so well that by the time it’s all on, I understand what bespoke means.

  A few minutes later, with a bag full of cash, I’m on the subway. Turing told me what they were doing to maximize profits off the market, right now our only source: Mathewshad set up a hedge fund and Turing, and his many algorithms had set up small micro-second buy and sell points on millions of stocks around the world. And by flooding twitter, google, and almost all sensors with false information (that is only corrected a few seconds too late) we know how the computerized algorithms (slower than ours) will react, and we cash out. A few cents in a million places every fraction of a second. All day every day.

  I’m somewhere in midtown, so I don’t know whether I should talk to random people. I wait. Most of the people in this part of town are very well dressed, or at least well created. They won’t be the type to come to work. I wait until the subway turns darker. We’re in the Bronx now on the D-train. I wait until there’s a young man with a box full of candy. He starts: “Hello ladies and gentle men, some of you may know me, some of you may not. I am Dane, New York’s very own candyman.”

  I pull out a twenty. He sees me out of the corner of his eye and makes his way to me. He smiles at a beautiful young woman and tries to get her number. She smiles back, but leaves at the next stop. Dane makes his way to me. “What will it be?”

  “Just a little of your time.” I hand him the twenty and pull out another.

  He eyes me warily for a second then sits down next to me, making a sigh and setting down his wares on the floor.

  “You work alone?”

  He looks around. Nods.

  “You keep a cell on you?”

  Nods again.

  “How much you make a day?”

  His face turns grim.

  “Come on. I just want to know.”

  He shrugs, as if that’s his way of convincing himself. “Hundred a day.”

  “What for?”

  He looks me over, thinking. “I’m a musician. Gotta pay the bills though.”

  I’m not sure what I’m asking here. “Of course. I was just wondering if you would be willing to work—“

  He tsks and screws his face up at me, trying again to size me up. I wonder how many times he has been asked this. How many times it’s been an indecent proposal.