Being that it was a cloistral order they were creating, he decided they needed a mantra to live by—something that sounded big enough to be sage advice from a higher power, but oblique enough to mean many things and cover many situations. As always, he looked to the poets of music for help. Jazz was of no use here, and the classical catalog that usually inspired him to think felt all wrong for the job. He flipped through samplings of genres, walking on and on until finally, somewhere around sunrise this morning, in a nondescript little canyon of rubble and pint-sized cedars, the mantra came to him out of the blue.
Actually, not out of the blue, but he was never going to tell anyone where it came from—especially MorleyD. Once upon a time, where he had grown up in the Midwest, plagiarizing country western lyrics was common practice. But he was guessing no one in this crowd would catch on.
Originally, he imagined that the mantra would be three words, but when it popped into his head, he realized that five was a more musical number. He knew it was the one he wanted to work with instantly. Now he just had to build a hermetic commune around it.
Humming the song, which was now stuck in his head, he turned around and headed for home.
Good things come, and good things go,
If it can lift you up, it will lay you low,
People leave, and they don’t come back,
Life is a disappearing act.
Who was Gretchen Peters to have written those words over a century ago? “Life is a disappearing act”—that would do nicely. Plenty multiplex for Sarah, and the twang beneath the words seemed to fit the high plains around them.
SevD imagined that Sarah had been following his progress over the two days of wandering, a guess that was confirmed when he saw LoriD and Simone waiting for him in the north pasture as he dropped out of the last of the little mountain rills above the backside of Paradox. Simone trotted up first and rubbed up against his side. By the time he had finished reassuring her, LoriD was nuzzling his neck.
Back in the Sanctuary, the others pretended to just be glad he was back, but he knew the question on everyone’s mind.
“You can all stop holding your breath. Don’t worry, I’ve got the creed pretty much figured out. But first, what’s been going on out in the world the last two days? I never checked in.”
Every one of the donkeys looked like their heads hurt just thinking about it, while Tokyo and Gerald, both sitting at the conference table drinking tea, managed sarcastic chuckles.
AndrzejD spoke up. “Well, let’s see. Somebody blew up two of the three Atlantic comm links, so data is buffering into huge infected piles all over the place.” He looked up and squinted, as if reading from a list hanging in the air before him. “Then there is the fact that the U.N.A. hasn’t convened an emergency session or issued any statement. Nothing. Their doors are closed and locked, and no one knows where most of the officers are. They’re probably hiding in the hills with everything they managed to convert their credits into.”
LoriD added, “Don’t forget about Paladin Technologies. Their entire system was fatally corrupted, failsafe servers and all, and Leslie Massoud has disappeared from the public eye.”
That brought Sarah out into the open, with a blue mist forming within the holospace and her disembodied voice filling their ears. “I’ve been following him, just out of interest. He’s hiding out in a big villa he built years ago in Ticino, Switzerland. He calls it L’Anticita.”
The holospace presented them with a sat-pic of terraced green fields and a villa on a hill top surrounded by dense forest above a town marked as Vezia.
“Looks nice. I wonder if he has any donkeys?” MorleyD spoke from his new resting spot, a pile of blankets near the far end of the conference table. “Given how boned Paladin is, I’m sure he has buggered off for good. That’s what I would do.”
Tokyo’s two cents were clinical as always. “Smart place to castle-up. Good ag, and hard to get at but plenty of noncredit banking, even with Lugano pretty well flooded out by rain and glacier melt.”
There was a general pause in the chit-chat while everyone waited for the elephant to emerge, followed by looks of unspoken relief as SevD began outlining his scheme for Paradox. Far from the fading glamour of Switzerland or the desperation of New York, Paradox was going to be their castle—or rather their monastery.
As SevD spoke about what bits would be revealed to the votaries and what would be put forth as a vision to cement their veneration of the donkey and the macronome, MorleyD spun silently back through the past. As SevD sang them his ballad, LoriD marveled that she had never heard him sing before and what a beautiful synthesized voice he had. Simone looked up from her studies to hear her father sing, and the constant stream of history lessons from Sarah paused for a moment.
After two rounds of the simple lyrics, SevD stopped singing and immediately began to speak. “The votaries are a simple group, no offense, Gerald, and they are best served by a simple mission.”
Gerald smiled and nodded, adding, “Simple is good.”
“But around the simple mission, there needs to be a certain amount of trapping and procedure and enough ritual to keep everybody busy.” SevD hesitated for emphasis before continuing. “There needs to be a higher purpose mixed with a visceral fear of straying from the path. And of course, you need priests who can stand at the interface with the mission, to interpret God’s will. That will be us donkeys.”
In a stage whisper to Tokyo, who was sitting at the end of the table and stroking MorleyD behind the ears, the old donkey interjected, “Interpreting God’s will is almost always the art of painting what is manifestly stupid with clever lipsticks.”
“Exactly right, MorleyD. You will make a legendary guru.” Even though he was seated, Tokyo managed a bow from the waist to the old one.
“Nope. Like the donkey just said, ‘Good things come, and good things go.’ I’m just about gone so it’s going to be up to you younger gurus.” Then MorleyD looked straight at SevD, the challenge of the father to the prodigal son in his eyes. “Thou was a techno-wanker, and now thou is a preacher. Give us a sermon. Make us believe, but make it brief.”
SevD shook his fur-matted head saying, “I don’t think I can do it for you guys without laughing, but I’m ready for the votaries. You will hear it then. Someone has to introduce me to them first, and I think it should be Gerald.”
Two days later, at exactly 2:00 in the afternoon, everything stopped. The seed trays stopped moving, and the protein spray jets stopped spraying. Lights went out all across the commune, and the votaries reached for their dashes to find out what was up. They stared at blank screens that didn’t respond when they prodded for information. All of the 27 votaries of Paradox began to migrate from their various posts into the cool but sunny square by the dining hall. They waited as Celia arrived, expecting her to explain, but she seemed as confused as the others. Milling began, and the chill of the large unknown spread through the ranks.
Just as Celia concluded that Dr. Yamanaka wasn’t going to be present and that she needed to take charge, the crowd as a whole noticed Gerald walking down the dead tan slope from the north pasture, with a haze of purple smoke swirling by his side. All talk ceased as they followed his progress past Building 1 and into the square.
Simultaneous with his arrival, Tokyo Yamanaka emerged from the Sanctuary door on the side of Building 1, leading the donkeys who followed close behind in a line. SevD led the way, followed by LoriD, Simone, and AndrzejD. The donkeys stood next to one another along the side of the square. The votaries watched, still in silence, as MorleyD emerged from the doorway and made his way slowly to the last position.
Gerald walked to the center of the square and spoke to the crowd. “Good afternoon, everyone. This is a day unlike any other.” He looked up and around in the sky, then back down at the votaries. “And you are all members of an order unlike any other. We are all here in Paradox for a re
ason, and the reason will be made clear today. But first, let me introduce those who live amongst us as unrecognized guardians and guides.”
He turned first to the purple haziness that was now swirling within itself at his side. “This is Sarah. She is the mother of the service you have come to know as Serendipity, the mirror of truth. Sarah is going to reside here with us at Paradox, as one of us, as our guardian angel.”
Gerald stepped away from Sarah and walked over to the line of five donkeys. “Sarah is also the spokesperson for our donkeys. In another age they would be called saints, but to us they are simply ‘the donkeys.’ Our donkeys. And we are entrusted with their protection.”
He looked at the assembly of 27, all from random backgrounds yet self-selected to a degree as none had been there less than four years and none had close connections to the outside. They had stayed here in Paradox of their own will. They would soon suspect that they were now stuck.
Gerald looked at SevD and nodded, before turning back to the congregation. “Yes, I did say ‘spokesperson.’ Because our donkeys can talk. They have much to teach us and we have much to learn. Please turn on your dashes. You will find they work again, only somewhat differently.”
SevD took a few steps out from the line, moving to Gerald’s side with the body language of clear friendship.
“SevD would like to speak to you now, through Sarah and to your dashes. Soon, once you have each become one with the mission, you will be able to speak to the donkeys directly. SevD.”
SevD was the youngest and strongest of the group, but he was acutely aware that even the comeliest of donkeys is no race horse, so he added a bit of shamble to his preacher persona and he had Sarah shave some of the coder-hardness and sarcasm off his audible Morleyesque words. 27 dashes streamed the text of his sermon (sermon for lack of a better descriptor), and 27 dashes spoke his words in unison.
“Good afternoon, my friends. The cosmos is a weird and unpredictable place, so get over your surprise as quickly as you can. The story that is about to unfold, the tale I am going to tell you, simply is.”
“Things could have worked out in many different ways, but what has actually obtained from our messy soup of human evolution is us. Paradox. 27 votaries, 2 emissaries, 4 bionic donkeys, 1 very ambitious artificial intelligence construct, and 1 wholly new being that we must all guard and cherish. That new being would be Simone, my daughter. She is part human, part donkey, and part AI. She is the hope for all of our futures, and LoriD and I will have more like her.”
SevD was starting to move around as he talked through Sarah, looking across his audience and then into the eyes of individuals. He could hear his own voice in his head. He played carefully at moving his lips, not in attempted sync with the words, but merely to add emphasis and a bit of humor here and there.
“You, I, we, are the jumping off point, the escape route for human consciousness. You may not feel special, but you are special—so special that, if it were not for you and the efforts you will make in the coming years, the entire species we know as ‘human beings’ will be doomed to degenerate into the two sickly, dead-end branches taking form out in the world today.”
The sun seemed to focus extra light on SevD, and at his side Sarah’s plex displayed a scrawny two-branched tree. One branch was dead and dry, while the other held three shriveled but still clinging leaves.
“One branch, the children of the firstWorld, will wall themselves against the gathering storms and die off quickly. Exposed as feudal monocultures, they will each wait for the inevitable and particular catastrophe that takes them down. The other branch, the secondWorld, will continue its graceless slide into a clodding sub-species, harnessed to serve the rising tide of AI, until they are no longer needed.”
He looked around the audience with ears back and teeth exposed, a look designed to communicate defiance against the storm.
“Friends, that slide has already started. Consider the rising chaos you see on the feeds every morning and the evaporation of logic and competence. Don’t study the details. They are the madness we seek to escape. Instead, contemplate human trajectory in the context of modern history.” SevD raised his eyebrows in a way that made him look weirdly human. “You will come to the conclusion that humans as we know them have hit the wall.”
SevD stopped his pacing for a moment and flicked his tail across his back, taking a more relaxed pose but holding the votaries now in his vision.
“One final game of imagination: Consider our pathetic attempts to halt or adapt to climate change over the last century. Think of the millions who have perished.” A pause and a snort. “On the bright side, it has helped with overpopulation, but on the darker side we are still burning, choking, and drowning across our precious globe.”
SevD resumed his anxious patrolling of the space before the crowd. Then he stopped short and his ears went back up.
“Now my friends, consider the donkey.” He looked over his shoulder and, on cue, Simone trotted forward to his side. “The perfect agent for surviving in this mess we have wrought.” Picking out Celia and looking right into her eyes, “‘Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.’” He broadened his gaze out again. “It’s still our mission, only donkeys are now our seeds as well. Very special donkeys.”
“Let me tell you about Simone, the youngster you all love to feed carrots over the fence.” SevD looked at the daughter by his side. “She has the heart and grit of a donkey, but she also has the history and wisdom of humanity in her mind, and the power of biologic processing in her genes. She is the first trybrid, and she and her offspring will carry on into the far future for all of us.”
Turning back to the votaries, he said, “Our sacred job is, and will be, to guard them.”
He let the word sacred hang heavy for a moment, before kicking out his back hooves and letting out a loud whinny. Somehow his eyes and lips managed to communicate that it was time to lighten up a bit.
“So now. All of you are natural pioneers, otherwise you wouldn’t be out here on the high plains, right?” He looked around at faces that seemed to reflect everything from amusement to fear. “Right?” Looking straight at her, “Bella?”
“Yes, sir, sonny. This is some crazy shit, but I’m in. I’ll go to my grave keeping us fed.” Bella looked around to try and rile the crowd. “What are we supposed to call you special-ass donkeys, anyway?”
“You can call me SevD, like before. I’m a simple hybrid, much like your vegetables. And like you, I’m going to spend the rest of my life helping to propagate the next few generations of trybrids like Simone. One great thing about trybrids is that they can reproduce naturally. We can thank the good doctor Tokyo for that.”
“Wait a minute—you are that guy Sevier. The cocky dude who came through here to see Danni a while ago.”
“That’s exactly right, Bella, and that is LoriD, formally Lori.”
For the first time in anyone’s memory, Bella seemed willing to admit confusion. Shaking her head, she said, “Crazy shit.”
SevD turned to Celia, hoping he had timed it right and knowing her transfiguration into a believer was key here. In a quiet, honoring voice, he said, “Celia. Are you with us?”
She was almost there. “Tell me again, in plain terms, what we are going to do with Paradox?”
“Disappear.”
SevD led vespers the next morning. Standing behind the old poplar lectern, ears straight up and coat freshly brushed by Gerald, with Sarah now a white cloud hanging in the rafters above, SevD raised his voice to surround the congregation. The donkeys stuck their heads in the side windows to watch—except for Simone, who was too short to see in the window and stood in the back of the room with Gerald and Tokyo. She tried not to fidget.
“I think we all agree that one of the best things about Paradox is vespers—a quiet moment in the early morning when no
one can pester you about anything and you have the beautiful options of listening, singing, or daydreaming. This will never change.”
SevD felt a wave of relief ripple over him from the audience, and he was momentarily perplexed that this was something he could feel. He chalked it up to more donkey hyper-sensitivity, and he continued.
“But in honor of the new era we are entering, I would like to introduce a simple mantra, or prayer-song, to the start of our perfect morning ritual.” As he looked up towards the white cloud above his head, the words appeared, shimmering a vibrant dark blue in Sarah’s pure white plex.
Good things come, and good things go,
If it can lift you up, it will lay you low,
People leave, and they don’t come back,
Life is a disappearing act.
Table of Contents
2128
Dimensional Static
Random Slug
No Bubbles
The Fort
Gravitational Pull
Donkeys Don’t Assimilate
Losing Gravity
The Question Remains the Same
Things One and Two
Donkeys Never Forget
Last Breakfast
Shipwrecked Genes
The Parent Is Only Human
Loathsome Troll
Techno-wanker
Multiplex Suits the Utilitarian
Failure to Comply
Under Strange Skies
They Really Love Kale
Three Steps out of Four
Tower’s Shadow
Running on Fumes
Tower’s Lapse
Beaucoup Committed
The Buzz of Crickets
Sole Reviewer
Sheep and Goats
Perfect Arrangement
66 Chromosomes
Be Humble
Jumping Ship
Converts
Shared Quanta
Macronome
Read Me
Nerds and Turtles
A Decent Steak
Macronome Page 30