The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  I lean back, releasing all the tension in my head and laugh.

  Turing laughs, though now he seems out of place, like he’s mimicking me.

  “Do we have a spokesman?”

  “A spokeswoman do?”

  “Dalcia?”

  “I think she could help. She’s very...”

  “Mature for her age? Well-spoken and thinks before she speaks?”

  “Exactly.”

  But the cells cease to have luck for the next two days. No more outages or plane delays. The snatches end because there’s no way to do it with all the billionaires staying indoors or being surrounded by scores of bodyguards (also a mix of secret service agents who all seem to be government appointed so as to stop any further destabilization of the nation). Turing calls me to meet up. I break with Dalcia—we were walking through the Met, enjoying looking at some of the best art out there—during another one of our meets and head to the lake to deal with the emergency. Dalcia doesn’t seem too sad to see me go. We’d been arguing about the protests. She thinks, still, that only the sick would want to change too much about foreign policy.

  When I make it down, it’s an overcast day at the lake, though I never expected it to be anything but perfect out here. Chilly, in fact; chilly enough that I’m hugging myself, scanning the beach for Turing, because he’d claimed he was down here somewhere. A sneeze starts when I stand at the edge of the lake, and when my nose starts to run, I walk down the beach toward some movement and after a few minutes of walking, my shoes on because it’s too cold for anything else, I see that there’s a man—Turing?—hunched over a decrepit boat, hammering away at some rusted bolts. After another minute of walking, those wicked birds flying in the distance—perhaps spying on me?—I see that it’s Turing.

  Even when I’m standing right behind him, he doesn’t seem to notice; he just bangs away at the side of the boat. I think he’s trying to shape it.

  “Turing?”

  He jerks, surprised, turns, and leaps up, hammer raised, before a glint of recognition flashes across his face and he lowers the hammer, a smile creeping across his face.

  “George. Glad you could make it.”

  “What are you doing, Turing?”

  “Ah...” He looks down at his hammer, then back at the boat.

  I realize that he’s dripping in sweat. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen him sweat before. “You’re working hard?”

  “I’m stressed. I’ve heard that banging away at something physical, and not so mental can help with that.”

  “Oh?” Stress? What the hell is he talking about? Since when do robots have stress, and why is he sweating? But wait, the stress, there’s something else going on here. Has he been programmed to feel stress? And why, if so? This is the last thing he needs.

  “What? You don’t think my kind should have stress, do you?” His voice is full of hurt.

  “No.. ‘Your kind’? Christ, Turing...” I think of a hundred slurs to launch at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just saying. You think I shouldn’t feel stress.”

  I pause, biting my tongue. Should a robot feel stress? Why program him as such? Well perhaps it’s a matter of overheating, or being attacked via viruses. And Yusef, or whoever created him, has decided that to react to it he’ll at least act like he’s stressing. No need to get emotional about Turing reaching into humanity’s toolbox.

  “Well?” Turing snaps. “Can’t you answer a question?”

  I raise my hands, hoping for a detente. “Sorry, didn’t mean it like that...” We both look off at the birds circling us. “You call me for something?”

  He looks me over. “You haven’t heard?”

  “What?”

  “We have a mole. Someone, somewhere is giving up our cells.”

  “What? I ha—“

  He silences me by thrusting a tablet in my face. But when I take it and start to scroll the article, he doesn’t allow me to read.

  “Four of the cells have been caught. Killed.”

  “What?”

  “The SWAT team went right for them. At the same time.”

  “So there’s still one out there?”

  “They’re in hiding. I’ll talk to them soon, but my guess is that they might be dead sooner than we like.”

  “Fuck,” I say, my body reacting before I can even process. Suddenly it’s not chilly anymore but warm, my ears burning up. “How—“

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out.”

  I look over the pictures. “It says the raids ended in bombs—“

  “They were dedicated until the end. Blew themselves up so they wouldn’t be captured.”

  I never knew they were that dedicated. “Really? The hostages—“

  “Them too. But who cares about them.”

  I look at Turing. Maybe it’s good that he’s still a robot. I don’t think I can handle knowing we blew up essentially innocent children.

  “We have a mole.”

  “What?”

  “A mole. Someone working for us is the mole.”

  “Who the hell else knows about these cells?”

  Turing stares at me for a second. “No one that I know. But someone could be snooping around.”

  Instinctively, I glance off at the birds. “Are you certain about that?”

  “I’m certain. All of this was kept off the net. Off anything that could be hacked.”

  I look at Turing wondering if someone could hack him. If, perhaps, Dalcia was right and he’s really being controlled by someone else. Would he even know it then?

  “I can’t be hacked, George.” That tone, like he’s talking to a child, just barely putting up with me.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “We’ll have to go through everyone who could possibly have overheard any of this. Or...” He again looks at me like I’m some mere mortal. “That you need to look for those you think are close to me.”

  Naturally, I think on my wife. Ex-wife. Cold thoughts, melancholy drift through my blood. Then my mind drifts over to Dalcia. A warmer feeling here. But Turing still stares at me. “I’ll keep an eye out. It’s possible that they were just caught.” I look down at the tablet. There are pictures of the ensuing destruction. Turing has harvested some comments and articles, highlighting each with the word “Truth”. The comments appear to me to be something like conspiratorial comments from the darker side of the internet: some focus on the act as something the government came up from start to finish with; some are focused on the fact that the government simply killed some innocents; others yet claimed that more violence was needed from the State so that the people who dared breach its walls will not do the same again; more seemed to blame it on Islam as this seemed like a bunch of suicide bombers. I realize then that I never took the time to get to know any of the cells. I just took Turing’s word that they were dedicated; what was I thinking. I scroll through more pictures of the aftermath: the usual thing that happens after a bombing, especially one this large, one with so many pounds of explosives—these cells were not aiming just to blow themselves up: the building collapsing, the fire that spreads, the cars that burn, the victims. And I see it, like a sick flashback of what happened in Iraq: the deaths of so many innocents, never mind the hostages, and how some must have been trapped, or knocked slightly unconscious and awoken—who knows by what, the fire itself singing their hair, their skin?—only to be trapped under rubble, and a slower death awaiting them. And I, because I didn’t take care to make sure that these proxies were vetted, that I’d worked with them enough o know them, that I’d sent wolves out to massacre sheep.

  I never wanted this in my own country. Never. I am, was, will always be a patriot. How did this come to be?

  “What?” Turing says, leaning in.

  I must have said the last part out loud without knowing it. “Nothing.”

  “We have to find the mole,” says Turing. At least he doesn’t understand to what I was referring.

  I scroll
through the tablet. “Were they Muslims? The comments you highlighted seem to say that a lot.”

  “Just seeing how... your kind reacts.”

  I smile. But Turing’s smile doesn’t assuage my sense that something is horribly wrong and that I’m in charge of it all and thus must pay some price for all of this. “Why did they kill themselves?”

  “What other choice did they have?”

  “So we are certain that they blew themselves up? That they did this act?”

  “I’m guessing that’s what happened. The government would not have done it, given the hostage situation.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Especially since the hostages were people the government likes.”

  I look up studying Turing hard. Hate. In his voice. I know it’s not real, or it’s programmed, but still. That thought doesn’t last long as I look at the tablet. “Fuck. I can’t believe it.”

  “The bombing? You’re focused on the bombing? People are bombed everyday. We need to focus on the mole.”

  If I’m not mistaken, it would seem that Turing has been programmed to be a fundamentalist. “Listen, Turing. This bomb. This isn’t good. Yeah, we can focus on the mole. But we can’t have our people do this. We’re going for peace. And I thought they were only there as a contrast. Not to wreak real havoc.”

  Turing’s face, at first filled with a disgust-filled pity for me, lightens up and he smiles. “Of course. I think the cells must have been lost. I’ll make sure that no more do it. All right?”

  “Good. Because the end point for this is something like an end to needless wars.”

  “Well, there needs to be a large level of checks.”

  We have not thought this through entirely, have we? “Well, let’s just use what people have started and end what’s going on there right now. End this war.”

  “What a fine, small goal.”

  A bird aqua’s close enough to me that I flinch. “What did you say, Turing?”

  “Oh,” he says and raises his hand. “I mean that a small goal is more realizable. We should go for it.”

  “Good, I’m glad. And no more deaths.”

  He smiles. “Never.”

  Is that sarcasm?

  “So, will you float this thing?”

  “Float? No, it’s only for the exertion.”

  I kneel down, feeling my tight joints as I do. Reminds me of the way I was old, and I could imagine myself with one foot in the grave, now or even a little older than now, everything hurting. Everything full of pain. This is the future I envision for myself. It’s either that, or I’m dead before the pain grows anymore. “That sounds great, Turing.”

  For a few seconds I watch him hammer away at the boat, the sound almost painful. Finally he stops and chucks the hammer off to the side.

  “Not working?”

  “I’ve got too much on my mind.”

  I smile. Perhaps it’s a programmed affectation in him, but I do like this Turing even more than the previous one. “Is that a fact?” I suppress the need to ask him what exactly has him bothered, especially when he can hold so many ideas at once inside that infinite—given cloud theory—capacity. “What’s the issue?”

  “That our endeavor might not have an end. Or perhaps once someone figures that it ends with us, they can finish us off. Then what?”

  Oh, Turing. You are truly a brother in arms. I want to hug him. “Well. I think no action is without a reaction. We’re going to get that. But, after the matter, there’s also the people we influence....”

  “They’ve made people and their ideas disappear, merely for opposing them.”

  I raise my hand. “I know.”

  “History is a nightmare from which we may never awake.”

  The quote, practically a cliche, though one that’s not believed enough, hits my hard. Tightens my throat. I look at the sand, some of it disturbed and exposing a now drying moist under layer. And instead of thinking on the task at hand, on the future of this path we’ve started on, I think on what else could have been—christ is that not the one true sign of impending doom or at least of old age?—on the dreams, the shared future me and my ex-wife talked about with her head resting on my arm, both of us staring at each other or at least at the ceiling above. My throat tightens even further, so much so that I know I cannot talk. My ex-wife, that shared future was, in many ways, something like this strong moment with Turing. Except that would have included living near a beach where one would be allowed to live one’s days in relative peace and tranquil. I grin. “You’ve been reading Joyce, Turing?”

  “Love Joyce.”

  I smile. “Of course you do...” The birds are still hovering around us. The sail boat in the distance is floating closer. “Listen. This isn’t going to be easy. But we fight. We get the protests going, and we’ll have more. But we get the ideas out there. Let them go all over the place and nothing will stop letting those ideas proliferate.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I promise.” I don’t know this, but I do know that there are times when one needs to disregard all possible angles. When one needs to focus on the task at hand. And right now plowing forward is the only way. One of the birds dives in at us. Turing stares at it.

  “Just a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What do you want from all this?”

  Never thought the day would come where Turing asked something this deep. Or perhaps it’s not. “I’m not sure what you mean? The same things as the rest of us: that we make this world a better place.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “Your wife.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Of course.”

  “She wouldn’t want any of this.” I pause, letting a cold we pass through me. “Doesn’t—“

  “Want anything to do with you. I know.”

  “Thanks...” I know he doesn’t mean to be an asshole, but come on, robot. “For stating it clearly.”

  “Of course.”

  I chuckle and shake my head.

  Turing observes me for a second, a bemused look on his lips. “I just want to know if you think this will win her back.”

  “No...”

  “You have to let her go. This is simply something we must do. No glory.” Turing’s face flinches.

  Turing. What are you becoming? What wisdom have you gleaned from the annals of the internet? “I got it. Trust me. I got it.” Shifting my weight, I fall back on my ass, then back and stare at the gray sky, noting the many shades of gray and false silver linings.

  That following week, we start the peaceful protests. Full on take overs of public space. End the violence at home. Bring the troops home. No more blood for money. I expect a little disruption. But there’s more. Markets tumble. All nations in hand with us withdraw even though our officials claim that everything is nonsense, that we should support the troops, that we’re killing morale in the troops. But, even though we don’t own the internet anymore, we have enough people and web crawlers on all articles making sure the conversation never goes completely against us. It’s not easy, of course. And we make sure that the officials are never ahead of us. We even manage to hack—human infiltration that I was a head of—the teleprompter of an official and he tells the world that they are there to bleed the world. He apologizes. Pundits on the internet claim that we are truly children for such a low blow, and yet they and the officials are more than willing to stuff words into our mouths. We make sure we have signs that say: support the troops, bring them home.

  And the public space takeovers are still untouched, though we know it can’t go on forever. We make sure that there are cameras all over, making sure that everything is seen. The police, as usual, are foaming at the mouth to get at those who would take money out of their and their masters’ pockets. We make sure only the most hardcore protesters are there.

  Meanwhile, the final cell is cornered, and they too blow themselves up. I watch with Turing. He doesn’t seem to mi
nd. I do, but we make sure we distance ourselves from everything that they are and that they represent.

  But after the first month of peaceful protests, without too much going our way, there’s a bomb. It hits our peaceful protesters. We have no idea where it comes from. The officials try to pin it on us. We try our hardest to combat it with words of our own, and when that doesn’t go so well, we disrupt what goes out from all the major media outlets, hacking teleprompters, or just sending our violent corps to destroy a few of the outlets. Just when all seems lost—they’re labelling all the peaceful protesters as terrorist sympathizers or terrorists. We fight back, but there is a big outcry of propaganda aimed right for us. We try more specific things like it was the government, and we up the peace message, while at the same time upping the attacks.

  We’re not sure if things are going all that well. Several times in an hour I freeze, fear spreading everywhere, thinking that helicopters are nearby, that I’ll be sniped for certain, that the world is collapsing in on me. Then, when it’s least expected, they call for a detente.

  We choose from a handful of our most eloquent agents; ones we trust. Finally, Turing goes out to meet the officials. They have had enough. And we decide that Turing is the best to meet them, as he’s the most astute and well-put-together. I personally can’t believe it. Perhaps there will be peace. Will there really be peace?

  I go and visit Dalcia at the art gallery. She’s there with Kurt.

  “What’s up?” I nod at Kurt as I walk in.

  “How’s the movement, Che?”

  “Where have I heard that before?” I say and fake punch him.

  “Looks like you have them running scared.”

  “Isn’t that what we all want?”

  Kurt laughs. “Christ, you sound like you’re running for office.”

  He follows me inside. Dalcia is watching a TV screen with a few other people who, given their piercings and obvious tattoos, must be other artists. Dalcia sees me and moves to hug me. She holds me tight.

  “Where have you been?” she says and kisses my cheek.

  “Just working.”

  “Missed you.” She smiles.

  “Thanks.” I smile, turn almost red. Her hand lingers on mine, but instead of holding it, I let it slip. I have a sense that this is merely short term. That I need as few real connections as possible. I turn to the TV, indicating to Kurt to get out of the way. “You see what’s been happening?”