by Travis Borne
Best to cut their losses and head back to town: whoa, what a brilliant fucking idea. But without wheels there’d be no way in hell to catch a man who could run doing ninety; but then again, Rafael was really, just a man. It was clear to each of them that Carlos was Rafael, although the transmuted midnight grouch he’d become, blazing through the desert like an enraged madman with a grudge, seemed anything but.
Except for Felix, whose jaw had swollen, making him resemble a steel-toothed henchman, they conversed a bit while walking: Jim with seemingly pain-induced nonchalance and one fewer eyeball, Jon, head glued to his right shoulder, and Rico with a cringe-worthy forehead gash.
It was nearly an hour into what was sure to be an all-night trudge—then they heard it. The crescendoing patter reverberated through the soles of their feet and grabbed their hearts. Jon turned about, crooked-necked. The others followed and all were rotating like the gears of a cuckoo clock.
“There!” Jim said, spotting it first—against the odds. The plume was back and heading their way, fast. “Carlos, it has to be!”
Just as suddenly as it started the ground pounding ceased. Silence reigned once again. And the distant plume melted back into the virtual earth. They all held still, frozen. Two minutes passed and none said a word. And the beautiful Milky Way was fusing with the horizon.
After they got tired of spinning round, looking for it, Jon whispered, “It had to be Rafael, but he’s—”
“I’m not going back,” a shadow said, approaching them from behind. It walked slowly, silently, and hauntingly, like a phantasm. The moonlight illuminated the person as he approached the unnerved, distorted, and incongruent band of misfits. “I cannot, I will not,” Carlos reiterated. “Now, I know the four of you mean well, but, I will end myself for good before I return to the land of despair.”
Silence. Ten seconds. The four of them stood like broken toy soldiers.
“We all carry pain within ourselves, Rafael,” Jon said. “It’s a part of being human.” Carlos took a few steps toward Jon, facing him directly. Jon tried his hardest to angle his head—his lips flared and his teeth ground together hard enough to produce chalk—but he could not upright it. Rafael raised his left arm and placed a warm hand on Jon’s neck. His fingertips began to illuminate with a faint purple glow, as if, they were becoming transparent.
“I remember you, Jon. I recall the first millisecond of the moment I met you in the lab.” Jim’s one eye widened. Felix stumbled back, murmuring. “That was a long time ago. Things were simple then. I thought logically, and calculated. I put the entire universe together so quickly after that. Math: child’s play. Physics: humans have been playing on a single tier and there are countless variations. I was saddened to learn human history, and saw also, it differently, then. I dabbled in emotions, thinking I had mastered them just like everything else. I remained humble, thanks to Herald, and Amy and Ana. Good people touched my life and I was content. And then I really felt emotion, a pain I could no longer control. I could no longer simply switch it off like I’d always been able to do, and it got worse.” He removed his hand from Jon’s shoulder; Jon straightened his neck in awe.
“Jewel,” Jim said, with an encrusted face that looked like he’d been hit with a bag of cement. His bad eye had drooled onto his face, making sappy gobs. Rafael sidestepped and took the same hand, without lowering it, and directed it to Jim’s face. The purple glow initiated once again as he palmed the side of Jim’s mug with his clean, dust-free hand. Jim’s one good eye opened as wide as an eye could: it wandered nervously, left to Jon, up at the sky, around a few times, then back and forth, to and from Carlos at least five times.
“Jim, I’ve only recently met you, but I like you. I can see your essence as clear as you can now see through my hand.”
The hand was purple, translucent, and Jim’s eye was repaired! He saw through the hand as if he wore a purple lens. The new eye wandered wildly like that of a startled rabbit. He saw Carlos before him as a bright-yellow, humanoid form: translucent skin contained a universe of light and myriad circuits were infinitely branching capillaries. Carlos removed the hand and Jim once again saw him as a normal man.
“A jewel, Jim,” Carlos continued. “I see you have been given something very special. And I also see you have a good soul, surrounded by many demons. But you are foremost a good man and I’m happy you came to me. I also relate my circumstances to a Jewel—I loved her and my emotions had been set ablaze. She, more so the love we shared—a deep connection on a very special level, one I could never explain with words—and the depth of the emotional experience—of which I cannot decipher in the least—changed me forever. Mankind’s history, which I devoured like a bookworm, my personal experiences, my friends, and the world at present, combined with harrowing future speculations—everything came crashing down when I killed her. The pain had finalized a transition within myself and I now possess, at least I surmise, what you humans live with throughout life. I cannot turn it off and no longer possess the seemingly omnipotent power I once had, all because of this new depth of perception that rips at me. I feel—now. But it’s more than that, perhaps. I take all I know—and it is a lot I might add—and this raw emotional power magnifies everything. So, I also surmise that knowing less really can be more. I do respect you, but I cannot go back.”
“We really need you,” Rico said. Rafael had lowered his hand while he let himself pour out. He raised it again. Rico looked like a clumsy, dusty pirate, his head was wrapped with a red T-shirt and it looked like he’d been shot with a gun that fires filled, used vacuum bags. As Carlos placed a hand on his forehead, once again it began to glow. Rico’s uncovered eye went up.
“I prefer to stay in this world, where I can control who I want to be—and here, I can shut off the emotions, dial it in if need be, control it just as I had been able to before.”
“Aye be ’ummin so-mun ’erse,” Felix mumbled through his broken jaw. He clenched tight as the pain shot into the side of his skull and rounded his ear, as if someone was twisting a corkscrew into the side of his head. He raised both hands to assuage his jaw—in vain. The bone on the right side was pushing out on the skin and becoming purple.
Rafael finished with Rico and, without lowering his hand, brought it to Felix’s crooked jaw. After the fix, Felix smiled as bright a smile as his good ol’ ugly self could. He worked his neck side to side, then his jaw, and said once again with an able mouth, “By becoming someone else, Carlos?”
Carlos nodded, humbly. “Yes. If I switch off the entire Rafael, I can become someone else, at least in consciousness. The pain subsides. I can control the flux of data as if I am a simple man and I can see through his eyes, his senses, as if from a distance—knowing less becomes so much more, a lifetime’s worth.”
“A safe distance,” Jim added.
“Yes, Jim.”
“We all run away sometimes,” Jon admitted. “We run and hide, to be somewhere safe.” He thought retrospectively. “It was my decision to stay in the cave rather than travel miles back to the spot where the ship had left us—and the best chance of rescue. And Jerry listened to me as the leader, at least for the first years, because I was so articulate and convincing. But articulation can only go so far. Life demands courage in the face of adversity. I realized I had to depart from safety, so I departed Herald’s ship and stayed here with Jim, and the many courageous others.” Jon thought how bad things had gotten those many years ago, with the storms, the nonstop barrage of searcher drones pointing out extermination targets. “Almost every time we left the safety of the cave we saw unimaginable horrors. Relating to the depth of feeling and perception—likewise I cannot describe those depths, how the sights, sounds, and smells of innocents being mutilated affected me—and all the while we were blocked and hidden, and by far, relatively safe. I hid from the machines—and it cost us years. Had I had the courage to go back, to that spot, Herald would have found us, and after having had talked to him, and hearing about how he searched, and s
earched…” He turned to Jim. “It’s my fault and I know it now, and I have to live with myself. Jim, your brother would be alive had he not listened to me. I made a choice because I was scared. He would be here with us now, Herald would have found us, Valerie, Jodi—” Jon fell to his knees and tears were an overdue deluge. His elbows stabbed the dirt and he broke down. “Oh God, what have I done!”
Jim reached to him, put a hand on his shoulder. “Jon, I will never blame you. You did what you had to do.”
“That’s why I stayed with you,” Jon said. “The guilt, running, hiding, it was eating me alive inside.”
Carlos put two hands on his face, and brought his fingers together at the front of his mouth. Jim continued kneeling, consoling his friend, then looked up at Carlos. Carlos was motioning just as Luisa had done, when he’d had his conversation with her after doing dishes.
“I lost my wife,” Felix added. Heads looked up or over, toward his direction. “Sure, Rosita is here with me, but she’s, well, different. Muchas veces I still see the sparkle in her eyes and I know she’s in there, but the memories we shared, the kids, Rico.” He turned to his son. “Hijo, I’m so sorry.” Felix teared up likewise; something was in the air, something bringing these five men together. A cool breeze, the most potent of the night, dried faces. Felix stood himself straight and took in a deep breath while Jon and Jim looked up to him from the ground. Rico hugged his father. “Hijo, I lost her that day and it ripped the corazon out of my chest.”
“But you went on,” Jim said. “We all make mistakes—” He stood up and lowered an arm to Jon and helped him to his feet. “—Jon, you can clear your conscience right now. Remember, I have been given those memories by the Amy I knew. To me, a very strong part of me, you are my father. You raised me. Possessing these memories bestowed unto me, it’s as if I was Amy—and I knew you and Jerry, and the women I considered my mothers, and I also know, you did the best you could. You survived.”
“Felix,” Jim continued. “I’m sorry for your loss, but you remained strong, you pushed on and helped build Jewel City. You enforced and instilled firm moral values. Because of you we’ve proven ourselves as a worthy society.” Jim stood erect and turned to Carlos. “We all make mistakes, they shape us, mold us into the strong beings we can potentially become, the person we need to be. Rafael, we need you. There is a time to hide and there’s a time to come out. Face uncertainty, face danger. We need your help and we need it now. We will not only take back what the machines have stolen, and the Earth, but we will reshape it our way, for good. No more wars. The history that touched you so powerfully, let it remind you, let it burn inside your chest, the love that you lost and the decisions you had to make, let it drive you—let it make you not weak, but strong.”
Felix turned to Carlos next and said, “Rafael, you were my friend and I’ve never thought of you as a machine—well, maybe at first. But that didn’t last. You're just as much an hombre as any human I know, and better than most. Will you join us?”
“Felix, thank you. Perhaps I have been a coward, hiding here. Perhaps I’ve been reluctant to face the pain again—to learn like humans are forced to do over the course of a lifespan, to control it. But still, I cannot—”
Jim asked, “Is it because of your family, the family of Carlos? We understand but—”
“Jim, things are not what they seem with my family. The town—besides six individuals, which includes you, Felix—are mere dream characters, but my family are not. They—are me. Each contains a part of me. Dividing myself was the only way to completely escape the depth of torturous subjectivity setting my thoughts ablaze. I am Carlos, standing here with you now, not Rafael. I have, however, tapped into a small part of him, his power, his memories—because of a key. My family, they are the other parts. Luisa, my wife of hundreds of years, is the rational one and bears the brunt of my emotions—and I don’t know how she does it, she is very strong. My four kids are extensions of the ever-developing being that is me, needed to contain the excess of my knowledge and growing power. And now, they each contain their own dynamically growing center, or self. To exit this system, I would have to join them and become one again, but I cannot exit into anything you have on the outside world. My old head, some body parts—enough to assemble another bot—reside in Jewel City but are hidden from you in the interior of a secret wall chamber, and unfortunately those cannot contain me. The system Herald and I developed is no longer sufficient for the purpose.”
“We found the head, Rafael. You can—”
“Then I suppose you must have found the builders as well. Do not leave them on long for they will eventually come to face the same fate—they need upgrades. The system Herald and I developed will last for only a relatively short period, and since I have evolved so immensely, that system can no longer contain me.”
“What about Nelman?” Rico added. “He survived for a very long time. Yes, we found him too.”
“Yes, Nelman. Nelman’s was my body, for a short time. Is he okay? His body would be quite useful.”
“He perished in saving us. They ground him down, blended him to bits.”
“I am saddened to hear this. The builders have yet to be turned on for more than two years, that’s total runtime, then, they were decommissioned, stored away. Nelman possessed much of my programming, and although his body would have been a perfect candidate, the sphere, cannot be upgraded, the source code is locked. Only Herald has the key, and without it even a system with the size and combined power of a universe, could not unlock it.
“In the center of the head resides this sphere, but it has limits to the total amount of life accumulation it can hold. In the case of Nelman I simply set an auto reset, a wipe, into his programming, and every year his memory would wipe, and he would reset. He would think he had been down there for a long time, and I ingrained a deep memory to elicit the idea, but in fact this workaround allowed him to live on for years with the same mind, never overreaching its capacity. Once the sphere becomes full, then overfilled, the despair kicks in, and with it the sense of irrepressible panic. The closest thing I can relate it to from my amassed knowledge would be that of a panicked acid trip, one that continues forever and cannot be contained. The trip is a spiral into madness caused by the explosion of knowledge beyond the capacity of the sphere.”
The idea triggered one of the transmitted memories Jim had received on a secondary tier, and although they were not as clear as Amy’s more direct memories, he’d been working to solidify them. It happened in the club when Herald had spilled all the beans: Herald’s mind, was it overfilled when he’d had his trippy experience? Herald’s mind exploded with feelings and new knowledge, which compounded the depth of his thought processes. It made him crazy and unstable, but he learned to control it, learned even, to rewire his own mind. Jim began to put things together and so often wondered how he could know all of this: Herald’s memories, before Amy was born. He always attributed it to stored memories in the chain of DNA. He accepted that they were secondary memories, and it was harder to latch onto them and pull them out, like a dream he’d forgotten. But whenever he was able to, he managed to elevate the memory to his primary tier where it could be retained longer; he didn’t want to forget any of it.
And Jim thought of the aforementioned sphere, how Marlo said it was unlocked. A gift from Herald before they departed, could it be an upgraded version? Would it work? He said, “Herald arrived, he saved us all, and he gave me something special. He referred to it only as—technology. A purple sphere and it fit right into the back of your old head. Marlo, the entity that resides inside the system, told us what it was after he’d scanned it. It’s unlocked, he’d said, and I assume it might be the upgraded version you need. Rafael, again, will you please join us. Find the courage within yourself. Together, each of us, a whole town behind us—we can be an unstoppable team.”
Carlos turned about-face and looked to the ground, then released a full breath. He looked up at the moon which had fully risen, the
Milky Way which was sinking into the horizon, and filled his lungs. He brought his hands from his hips to his face and slid them down in a motion such as cleaning a slate. After he dropped his hands, he turned around to face the group.
He’d changed. Carlos had lost his tan.
43. Abandoned
“I will.” It was all he said, as he rotated to face the four oddballs; Carlos was white—as if he’d died a week ago.
His countenance leapt off the bridge of well-being. The skin of his face went loose and his head fell forward, and he released a heavy sigh as if he really was dead, leftover gases spilling out for good. Then, and slowly, his muscles went tight. Tighter, and the color returned—just red, no other. Tighter, as if he was taking 21,000 gigawatts, and he pressed each of them with a stern glare, first Jim, then Jon, then Rico for what seemed twice as long, until Rico nervously shifted his head and eyes to his friends. Carlos peeled his glare from Rico and finally pummeled Felix with it, then he clenched his jaw and squinted what became evil-looking, angled eyes, almost glowing. And his muscles pumped themselves hard, solidifying from top to bottom and throughout his body. Redder, hotter, tighter—and then he bolted.
Illuminated by the moon, the pale dust plume billowed once again and the ground trembled beneath eight feet. Carlos, Rafael, whoever he’d become, was cutting the world in two, again. A wave of relief had painted four faces after hearing those two pithy words—I will—but they’d expected something besides sudden desertion—and that unsettling glare.
Distant sounds arrived on a gentle breeze, as well something else. They all heard it—he couldn’t be human with that much power—as if a thousand-gallon tank of compressed air was venting through a single throat, pushing vocal cords like a drill instructor warming up on the way to work.
“Death,” Jim said, the word falling out of his mouth. He could feel the misery of great loss penetrating his heart, coming from the very ground, the entire world. The breeze carried the roar, and unnerving feelings, but it was everything, the substance of the map itself.