The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “How...” Kurt’s incisive words are still worming through my flesh. “You tortured her. I saw it. You tortured her and you’re going to tell me you care about her?”

  The car starts to move, it rolls over a few potholes. “George, George, George. You really don’t understand the world, do you? No wonder you’re so lost...” He tsks then looks over at the two bodyguards, both of them shake their heads. “You understand nothing of the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. It’s not one of hate... not for me at any rate. It was love. I was purifying her. Do you understand that?”

  “Beating the ones you love, are we?”

  He smiles. It’s forced. “You need to see the big picture and not feel a little tickle in your stomach and react by saying the world is evil. Or acts like mine were. Yes, I was rough with her. But it didn’t mean what you think it does...” He looks out the window. We’re going by a dark block that smells like curry and has dark men hovering around and eyeing us. “You shouldn’t be such a child all the time. It was love. I was helping her come to grips with the world. Helping her to let go of her past. Those hands that grabbed her? Those were her people. They told her to come back to me. They knew it was best for her. And it was. And it was for me too. I learned so much from her...” He pauses, a crack in his voice, and he looks harder at the street, now a bright one with well dressed people walking fast to their destinations. I can smell the perfume, though it’s the City still, so it’s mixed in with pollution and garbage water. “She was amazing. If you’d taken her, what would she be? Scurrying about in tunnels. Not helping humanity like she did when she was by my side. Not purifying others...”

  “Here,” says one of the bodyguards, and hands Behemoth a napkin. Behemoth takes it and dabs his eyes. Blows his nose.

  “Sorry for your loss.”

  Behemoth waves his hand at me. “No need for that. You can see why that’s such a horrible thing, the shooting of important people. It must be stopped.”

  “You think I’m behind all this?”

  Behemoth laughs. “If you were, you’d be in their hands.” He jerks his thumb at the bodyguards, who both seem to simultaneously puff out their chests, flex their muscles, whirl some mechanical piece of theirs, and growl at me. “No, what I want from you George, is the person who started this.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Yes you do. Turing.”

  And then it hits me: he was scared. That’s the softening in his face: it might have been the girl, but most likely it was the fact that what had happened to her could happen to him. I suppress a smirk. “Turing? Thought he was your boy. Your...” I point to the two body guards, feeling better about myself. About my station in life. “Dog.”

  “Easy, George,” Behemoth says, his voice back to being ice. “Don’t rattle their cage. They’re not leashed.”

  I try to play it off and glance out the window, but I know better than to mess with men with guns, when I don’t have them. I glance back at Behemoth. “Well, then. Is Turing unleashed now? Or did you never have him?”

  “We have him. We have others like him. Others more capable than him. That law that was signed in. We wanted that. We needed that. Don’t think it wasn’t something we had forgot to calculate. Look... I just need you to keep an eye on him.”

  I laugh. “Fuck you.”

  Behemoth holds up a hand. “Listen. I’m not saying spy on him. I’m just saying let me know what’s going on.”

  “So you have lost control of it all.” That makes me feel better. Not that it means that Behemoth is on the run.

  Behemoth looks me over, his face hardening. “I’m asking you to help your country again. To turn back from the road you’re on.” The car rolls to a stop. I realize that we’re on a gravel driveway with smells of freshly cut grass filling up the limo—did we leave the City?—and dogs barking. There’s still the city sounds beneath all that, though, but why have I been brought here?”

  I step out with Behemoth and the two guards. Helicopters churn air above us. Policemen are everywhere. There is, when we’r out in the open, a flash of fear on Behemoth’s face. I enjoy that weakness of his, but when we’re in the lobby, all shining marble-metal and perfumed smells, his face hardens up and he gives me the once over. “This isn’t for your kind. Unless you’re willing to cooperate.”

  “Look,” I say, understanding that I’m in the lion’s den, feeling the tremors of fear in myself. “I don’t know what to report. I think you’ll have better luck trying to hack into his system somehow.

  Behemoth doesn’t hide his disdain for my suggestion, and turns on his heels, leaving the lobby for some dark doorway. The two body guards give me a once over and follow their master. I’m left alone, and think hard about taking something from the lobby. But I chicken out and leave, walking through the gravel driveway, past some more guards, and find myself on the street.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  The soft voice startles me, then just as quickly, it soothes me. “Dalcia. What are you doing here?”

  “Who was that? A friend of Turing’s?”

  “No... well I don’t think so.”

  She sighs, and steps out of the shadows. There’s a seriousness about her that hits me hard: she is becoming more beautiful and stately by the minute. “You don’t think... Do you even know what you’re doing?”

  Do I? “Of course.”

  Another sigh. “How can you do something so big while not being certain?” She looks off at the rooftops. “Well, I know what I have to do.”

  I was expecting a hug, now with the shift in her tone—some disgust there—I know that it won’t be that. “Yeah?”

  “This is goodbye.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll be around. But if I see you... We’re enemies now.”

  “What?” I say and scoff.

  “We’re going to fight against you. Against Turing, at least. We can’t let this happen. To let a thing take over us.”

  I’m not sure I believe what I’m hearing. “Are you sure it’s Turing you’re against?”

  “Certain. You’ve seen what’s happened in the news. You have to make a stance.”

  “No one knows who did it.”

  “We do. It’s the same things all over again.”

  “What?”

  Nothing but silence. For some reason she looks at me expecting me to say more.

  She sighs, turns then stops. “I have a ride. You can have a ride home.”

  I shake my head, trying to ignore the trembling in my hands, the severing of a cord to my heart.

  “Bye.” Her footsteps echo around the corner, then disappear. Only then am I aware of her sweet smell.

  I start to walk home. The chemical smell of spent bullet shells hits me. There had to have been a firefight here. The tremors I felt just a little earlier hit me with a force I cannot comprehend. Is it the culmination of a day full of too many severs with my past? Maybe with the future? For surely Kurt has made his call, and perhaps Behemoth too (seeing that I wasn’t helpful) and now was not the time to be out in an open street. But I can’t be sure so I’m just scared of it all. Scared of every noise I cannot place. Hell, scared of every voice I can place too. Helicopters dart between the top the buildings. I never left the City, and yet I’m still lost. Everything goes blank.

  We watch as robots and drones tweaked to perfection descend upon other lands and secure freedom or rather secure the people from themselves or rather secure resources for us.

  No collateral damage here for by definition the robots perfection is a law. Across oceans and deserts stream countless of people. More robots still deflect them.back into the gladiators ring. The show must go on.

  I wake up starting at Turing’s face.

  “Turing.” I’m not even sure if I said it.

  “That’s correct.”

  “What have you done?”

  He pauses, a glass of orange juice in hand. “Done? Some of our workers found yo
u in the streets.”

  He has such a serene face.

  “The shootings. Who did it?”

  “That? We don’t know. But we’re on it.”

  That serene face again. “You think it’s Islamic terrorists?”

  Turing smiles. “Who knows. Doubt it, though.”

  I drink the juice. Gulp it down. Turing provides the breakfast. I’m tired but slowly come around when I get a few cups of coffee.

  “Talked to Behemoth.”

  “Oh?” Turing sits down next to me. His face is still sagging. It no longer has the fresh look of before.

  “Seems he thinks you’re behind it all.”

  Turing chuckles. “He’s in intelligence, your Behemoth friend. He’s bound to be a suspicious character.”

  I can’t argue with that. Most people in such jobs are usually the crafty kind, thus they think others are the same. Then I remember Dalcia. My chest collapses.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No. I was just thinking on Dalcia.”

  “You see her? We haven’t had her come around in some time.” Turing makes a concerted effort to look around, as if for her.

  “Yeah...” I hold off on telling Turing what she said about enemies, about us. “Talked to her and Kurt.” I remember Kurt’s words and wonder if it’s something I can talk about with a machine. But the time in the beach... “He was pissed.”

  “I know.”

  How? “He said that there was something I was missing. I’m not sure if he’s wrong about that... But you. You know a lot about our philosophy, don’t you?”

  “I know them all. And I can compare and consider them all at all times. I’m not programmed to have intransitivity.”

  “Oh?” Though I’m not sure that’s possible. It might just mean he’s not as capable as a human. “He said something like I was missing out on things in life because I had walked away from materialism too soon. And that now I was here, there would only be the realization that...” I try to think of his exact words. “Those who know how to best manipulate material would survive, and those, like me, would not.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Oh, and humans. Manipulate materials and humans.”

  Turing chuckles. I’m not sure about what. He has some odd chemical smell coming off of him. After smelling like normal, this seems odd.

  “What?”

  “You smell funny.”

  “Do I?”

  That serene smile. Like someone who knows what they have to do. But again, I’m assigning to him motivations that he does not have, that cannot exist as they do for us.

  “Well, the thing is,” he says, shifting to his haunches. “He’s not entirely wrong. Not from what I’ve studied.”

  “So that’s it, eh?”

  He studies me again, those eyes darting too fast for me to follow. “You don’t like it. That’s understandable. Your previous profession was, how do we say, romantic?”

  Sharp, that knife. “I suppose,” I say, my voice cracking, my insides churning.

  Turing pats me on the back. “But you’re with us now, and you can reverse that process.”

  “Right.” My face turns flush. And there, again defeated, again a man without anything, I wonder on the many things that have happened in my life, and though I want to strangle Turing, I remember that there was a time when he saved my life. Those bugs, whatever they were, that swarm. And Turing coming to save the day. But what of all that initial glory in that underground lair? Oh, but what of the bitter Behemoth and his woman—whom he may well have cared for—and the traps? Those were nothing to be loved, were they?

  “Remember when we first met. How, how, odd that place was?”

  “You always thought it was your place, didn’t you?”

  “No... Well, it felt like a place to escape.”

  “It wasn’t and isn’t yours.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “It’s ours. But we can’t go down anymore.” Turing looks off, lost-like, and stares at the distance.

  “That’s fine. That lake area was changing,” I say.

  “That’s the spirit—“

  A sharp flash, close enough that I can feel the following shockwave go through my chest. The building shudders, the lights go out and the fire sprinklers come on. The screams follow soon after.

  We rush out an exit in the back. Stunned people, and bionic men stumble about. Another bomb. The building turns to rubble. Turing and I immediately jump in and pull people out from the rubble. But it’s not people. Rather it’s limbs, but robotic, that we pull.

  “What the hell?” I say, as another arm turns to metal as the flesh slides off it. “Were they all robots?”

  “They were men and women,” Turing says sternly, as he pulls another limb.

  “Why so many limbs, though?” I ask. “It’s only supposed to happen when those who are carrying the bombs, strapped usually, are blown to bits. No one else is supposed to be just limbs. Turing mutters something under his breath as he pulls a leg from the rubble.

  When the first responders arrive, we leave. There is nothing to salvage now.

  “Behemoth,” I say, after we find ourselves in a hole in the wall cafe several minutes away from our now crumpled office.

  “No,” says Turing. “There is no way that Behemoth is behind this.”

  “How do you know? Didn’t I tell you that he was asking about you, that he was very suspicious that you might have been behind the assassination?”

  “He did. But that’s his job... Did anyone he know die?”

  “A woman. I forget her name.”

  “The one you saved from him?”

  “Exactly,” I say, only growing slightly perturbed that he knew about this. “Her.”

  “Shame. We should send flowers.”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking. “Sure, we should. We should also find out what our losses were....” I snap my fingers. “Fuck, Yusef.”

  “He’s fine. He was underground.” Turing waves his hand at me.

  “Okay, good.”

  Turing gives me a stare, like he wants me to be silent. I sip my coffee, thinking about what I could do to help.

  “So now the second level comes. Whoever did this, did not like what we were doing.”

  “Oh, I imagine that they didn’t.” I scrutinize Turing’s face. Why do I even try?

  A few moments pass by. A few sirens scream down a distant avenue, though at times the echo hits us just right as the sirens’ sounds bounces of the right materials at the right angles. And then disappear. What are we doing here? When a helicopter cuts through distant air, I feel tremors running through me. What am I doing here? Dalcia said I wasn’t certain. Was I really sleep walking through life? Making these decisions not for any of those amazing ideas I think I may want but because Turing evoked my trust? Why Turing? And what about the atmosphere in the air. The things that were happening in this amazing country of mine? My country. That’s right. And it was running scared. Or at least bleeding. Even the barista who served us, I could sense that fear in her eyes as they darted about, as she looked at our dusty, rubble encrusted arms and faces. Everyone knew it. Everyone felt it. Is this what it feels like at the beginning of a revolution?

  “They said that you were judging people now. That—“

  “The courts? They’ve been overwhelmed, George,” Turing says, now switching to an almost British laugh. That chemical smell is rising up out of him now. “We’re the first line. Helping to stream line the process. The real cases, the ones that are even possibly close, we send those up. A human deals with them there.” The word human is tinged with anger.

  “I suppose. And the assassination?”

  “Should we go over it again? Things are changing. Like I said to you: all your philosophies, all your love, and there is still only distrust. When you have iniquities like this, there is no way that your species sits there taking it. It simply revolts. It simply bites. There is nothing to help it or to stop it. It’s just the way
it is.”

  It makes sense, again. But my mind is to tight to do anything. “We should find out who killed her. We should bring them to justice.”

  “We will. Let’s find who attacked us. I have a feeling they are the same people.”

  Turing looks at me, then examines the table in front of us. “Humans and materials,” he says. He smiles. “It hasn’t really worked out so far, has it?”

  “I’m not sure—“

  He raises his hand to silence me. “All I’m saying is something you.” He points his finger at me. “Already know. There needs to be a better machination out there.”

  “You mean ideology.”

  Turing chuckles at my comment. “Of course.”

  In the end, after one too many silences, Turing makes some noises about how he has to go out and start the search. I let him be and spend a few moments sneaking looks at the barista.

  I step out, and feeling too much tension in the air, I walk towards our old office building. It’s surrounded by police and paramedics. Though there are many more of the former than the latter. Off to the side, I see a pile of metallic arms, and skulls on fire. A crowd edges the fire and there seem to be yells of anger mixed with happiness. I avoid that, and walk to the office foundation. Most of the rubble has been cleared and something compels me to wake past all the police and to walk to what was once the lobby of our building. I don’t stop and soon find myself alone in the midst of steel fingers, crooked, reaching to the sky. The elevator shaft. What brought me here? The shaft is covered with a large, heavy piece of sheet metal. After almost throwing my back, I open it a crack. Lying on the ground, I sniff the air, warm, hot even, rising up out of it. It’s foul. Human organic smells. I remember the room with the cages. Something in my heart curdles, I wince with pain. Placing my ear to the opening, I hear distant pounding, working, like a factory. It’s punctuated with screams. A few minutes later, positively shaking with fear, I leave the area. Run, really. I’m not sure what’s down there anymore. All I know is I want nothing to do with it. I wonder if I can find Turing. I wonder if I have been duped.

  I walk around for almost an hour before I realize that I have no wallet, no money, nothing. I’m entirely reliant on Turing. And for that matter I’m not even sure how to contact him at this point. And as if the bomb going off, signifying the first attack on us, on me, wasn’t enough, my stomach swoops and the ground before me goes soft. I am alone. No one. There aren’t even friends out there for me. And I don’t have a place to stay. How can it be? I pause, lean against a wall and stare forward. The sun is fast setting. I hear a couple laughing, enjoying themselves amidst this dreary violence. I fall to my ass. This is my life.