10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights

by Ryu Mitsuse

  Siddhārtha observed the man closely. Though he stood only a meter tall, the man’s eyes, nose, and ears were fully formed. Those expressionless features, like something molded out of clay, his round head, and slender arms were elegant in their shape.

  “Are you an A-Class Citizen?”

  The man looked up at Siddhārtha, his face a mask, leaving Siddhārtha with the nagging feeling that there was something lacking in the man’s expression.

  Something is very amiss here, Siddhārtha thought, trying in vain to discern exactly what it was about the man standing in front of him that bothered him so much. “Tell me,” he said at last, “what is different between you and those who are in revolt in the streets outside?”

  The man stood, listening intently to Siddhārtha’s words before he spoke. “They are B-Class,” he spat. “Robots, nothing more.”

  “Roh-bots?” Siddhārtha echoed. The word was unfamiliar to him.

  “Yes,” the man replied impatiently, “that’s how they are different from us. They’re robots.” He seemed to have already grown disinterested in the topic of conversation.

  “And what are robots?”

  The man looked around uneasily and said nothing. The light Siddhārtha’s projector cast on the man’s expressionless face contrasted starkly with the gloom of the stacked compartments behind him.

  “What are robots?” Siddhārtha asked again, feeling that he had heard this word before, but a very long time ago. He tried to force himself to recall its meaning, when he felt part of his mind grow suddenly tense. There was something in that word that he found desperately tragic, a tragedy that seemed out of place here in this quiet, cool underground world. Seeds of memory drifted up from the outer darkness that was his distant past, striking the surface of his mind where they bloomed into dark premonitions. He tried to read the message they contained, yet frustratingly found that his memories remained incomplete. It would take a considerable amount of time before they were ready for him to access.

  “I ask again, what are robots?”

  The man turned suddenly to look at Siddhārtha, a look of blatant surprise on his face. “Who are you?” he asked, wide eyes taking in his visitor from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes. It seemed that Siddhārtha’s presence had finally become real in the man’s mind.

  “Before I tell you this,” Siddhārtha said, speaking slowly while keeping eye contact, “you must answer my one question.”

  “Who are you and where did you come from?” the man asked again as Siddhārtha asked, “Why do the B-Class Citizens rebel?”

  The two questions crossed in midair, like salvos from two ships. The two stood, glaring at each other.

  “Why do they rebel?” Siddhārtha asked again before the man could say anything more.

  “There is a rebellion?” the man asked, his face softening once more.

  “Yes. One that threatens to destroy the city.”

  “I know nothing of this.”

  “How could you not know? Do you not live here?”

  The man swayed slowly back and forth, showing no interest whatsoever in Siddhārtha’s words.

  Siddhārtha frowned. “Do you even understand me?”

  “Where is this place?” the man suddenly asked.

  “What do you mean? This is your city.”

  The man laughed out loud, a sound like a discordant harmony in the key of A. “No,” he said, “this is not our city.”

  Siddhārtha looked around, agog. “But—”

  “Listen,” the man said. “I know not how this place appears to your eyes, but I know that it is empty. Not a single one of those people outside may enter this place. Not a one.”

  “The people outside?”

  “You call them B-Class Citizens, but no one has called them that for centuries. Their very existence is immaterial to us now.”

  “And you are no longer called A-Class Citizens, I suppose?”

  “Those words are meaningless,” the man said simply.

  Siddhārtha pondered the situation, trying to make something out of the confusion and disorder. “Then perhaps you can tell me something else,” he said after a pause. “What is the name of this place?”

  “You are in ZEN-ZEN.”

  “Zen . . . zen?”

  “No, ZEN-ZEN,” the man repeated, accenting both words equally.

  Despite the lacunae in his memory, Siddhārtha was fairly sure there was no city with such a name in the solar system he knew. Not just in the solar system—in any of the twenty-four inhabited star systems in the Milky Way. At any rate, certainly not in any of the thirteen systems on the side of the galaxy closest to his own. He wondered about the other eleven, his eyes going blank as he reached back into the depths of his memory, finding nothing.

  Suddenly, a great fear washed over the man’s face, and he clung to Siddhārtha’s arm.

  “What’s wrong?” Siddhārtha said, almost shouting.

  The man’s ears perked up, listening for a far-off sound.

  “What is it? Can you hear something?”

  Siddhārtha trained his ears on the darkness beyond the light of his projector, but he heard nothing. All was unmoving light and shadow, a stillness more quiet than death.

  “Did you see God?” the man asked, his grip on Siddhārtha’s arm tightening.

  Siddhārtha reflexively pulled away, feeling only the slightest amount of resistance. It was as though the man were practically weightless.

  “I have seen no god,” Siddhārtha replied, wondering what sort of deity would be worshipped by the strange people of this strange city, and at the same time feeling a strong desire to meet one. “Although,” he continued, “I was under the impression that it was a god who led me to your world.”

  The man blinked as though waking from a dream. “God brought you here?”

  Siddhārtha looked up at the countless small lockers covering the vast wall while the man continued talking, his tone pious. “When the signs of our world’s demise became clear, we abandoned the city. Our God protected us, preventing all fear and destruction from reaching this sanctum. Here, we know eternal serenity.”

  Siddhārtha gaped, finally understanding what it was he thought was missing from the man’s face. What he noticed wasn’t a lack, but the presence of a complete emptiness, the sort possessed only by those who have obtained absolute tranquility. Those who are connected to an existence greater than their own.

  I must see this god of whom he speaks. Siddhārtha strode forward.

  “The audience is over,” the voice from the ceiling announced abruptly. “The subject will return to his sleeping nest.”

  Siddhārtha had forgotten about the crab. The silvery hoist was stopped on the rail above him. It must have been listening to them the whole time.

  The crab moved its multi-jointed limbs, forming them into four individual small diamonds that whirled above the man’s head. What remaining expression lingered on his face disappeared. His widely separated eyes completely lost their focus and his already small ears lost their lobes, leaving the sides of his head perfectly smooth as a veil of weariness wrapped around his body like a thin cloud. The man turned his back to Siddhārtha, then moving like a shadow, he lay down in the gondola in which he had arrived.

  “What is a sleeping nest?” Siddhārtha shouted.

  The gondola glided soundlessly up a vertical lift rail until it was drawn back inside the hoist.

  “The sleeping nest protects its occupant from all physical and chemical change, preserving and recording their biological characteristics in their original form, so that they may be reconstituted perfectly whenever the need arises.”

  Siddhārtha quickly worked his supplementary processors, trying to chase down the connotations of the crab’s words. To his disappointment, he found no mistranslations nor any marked untranslatables in its statement. “What does that mean?”

  One of the crab’s arms rotated in a large arc, extracting the single square piece of metal from the hat
ch in its side, then it swung its arm around again, replacing the card on the dish inside the compartment. The hatch closed. There was nothing organic about the crab’s movements. Everything was smooth, mechanical.

  “You may leave,” the crab said from above.

  “What is that card inside the locker?” Siddhārtha shouted out to the crab as it began to drift away along the rail. “Wait! That thing I just met here was not human!” His voice echoed hollowly off the high ceiling. Siddhārtha ran. “Answer me! Do any living people remain here at all?”

  The crab continued to recede into the distance, moving faster though making no sound. Siddhārtha chased along beneath it until his way was blocked by another row of metal lockers extending as far as he could see.

  “Answer me!”

  The crab twinkled with a silvery light before it disappeared. There would be no more answers here. Siddhārtha stopped running. There was nothing left for him to do but extract his information in a more direct fashion. He ran up to the bottommost row of lockers and placed his hand on the metal door of one. It didn’t budge. Siddhārtha curled the panels on his shoulders, narrowing their discharge surface, and directed them toward the door. A brilliant blue light erupted, dissolving the door into a rain of silvery metal. The silicon fiber door beyond the outer door burned easily. The flames extinguished themselves in a moment, revealing an additional lead-colored metal barrier. Siddhārtha punched the paper-thin barrier with his fist, and it shattered into several pieces on the floor.

  He reached in and plucked out the square metal card on the tray inside. The card was covered with indecipherable symbols. The back was scorched brown. Siddhārtha slid it into his pocket, when a high-pitched whine tore at his eardrums. He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. Crouching low, he clapped his hands over his ears. All the blood in his body rushed upward into his head. Siddhārtha looked up, seeing the crab return, quick as lightning at the edge of his vision. Fighting to retain a hold on his fading consciousness, Siddhārtha prepared for the crab’s assault. But try as he might, all he could do was sway back and forth as wave after wave of dizziness swept over him.

  His vision dimmed. A faint feeling of regret gnawed at his heart. I should never have trespassed here. What if this is Jesus of Nazareth’s trap?

  The image of his enemy’s face, covered in hair and grime, flickered like distant lightning in a corner of Siddhārtha’s mind.

  Several dozen beltways extended from the terminal in every direction like the spokes of a wheel. Some immediately began a gentle upward curve, while others disappeared sharply downward, while still others went upward in a slow spiral, like a tangle of ribbons that could never be undone. Each beltway carried an immense number of people and goods, looking like dark spots scattered across the glowing luminium of the belts. Another terminal hung in space several hundred meters up. All beyond that was lost in a thin mist. Far below, a third wheel-like terminal floated in the depths like an aquamarine star.

  A single rotodyne descended through the foggy night air. As Siddhārtha watched, its wings morphed into different shapes to navigate traffic. The rotodyne left a trembling wake in the mist above it.

  Immense walls rose all around this vast space, suffused with darkness. The walls were made of translucent glass, inside of which could be seen sparkling colors like the broken fragments of gemstones. There seemed to be many layers of glass, more than a thousand, through which cavities and passages housed the daily lives of all the people in the city. A thick outer wall, built to withstand all climate change and drastic weather, separated them completely from the world beyond. A nuclear reactor on the bottommost level of the city powered a vast electrical network. The citizens of this place had no need to work at manufacturing or production of any kind. They were—

  What is this place?

  Siddhārtha stood, blinking. The city vanished from before his eyes. He stood, and a powerful dizziness struck him. What he had seen was no vision or dream. The giant metropolis had been there, right before his eyes, a classic tower city capable of supporting a vast population and completely shielded from the outside world.

  With dark eyes, Siddhārtha looked over the row of lockers in front of him.

  “We abandoned our city . . .” Siddhārtha said, repeating the citizen’s words. Siddhārtha looked up and saw the crab hanging in space over his head. He tensed, readying himself for another psychic attack.

  When nothing came, he waited awhile, then spoke. “There is something I want to ask you. Why did you have to abandon your city?”

  Deep silence swallowed Siddhārtha’s words.

  “Also, has a man calling himself Jesus of Nazareth come here?” There was no answer, but Siddhārtha continued on regardless. “Just now with my own eyes, I saw a massive city stretching into the sky. I believe that this is a virtual city, its citizens the memory cards found inside each of these lockers. You are keeping them there, protecting them from the world outside, watching over them—you are their god.”

  “This is so,” said the crab from high above. “The great city you have just seen was revealed to you because you interfered with one of the circuits.” The city, the crab explained, was generated using perfect hypnosis that allowed people to walk through its streets, to live their lives in the company of others. Yet it was all a phantasm, taking place in the span of a few minutes during which time the person might still be sitting or lying on the floor.

  “But the people in these lockers—only their biological patterns have been encoded. You might inject one into an artificial body as you have just done, but that does not make it human—it does not even make it alive!” Siddhārtha said, choking back rust-colored nausea.

  “Are you any different?” the crab asked. “Can you say with absolute certainty that the planet upon which you were born, the objects in your life, and all of the events you have witnessed are not aspects of some grand phantasm?”

  Siddhārtha shook his head. “I can make observations that are shared universally between people—”

  “And what if all these people are in the same virtual world, experiencing a shared phantasm?”

  “What?!”

  “Physical phenomena are not an emergent property of reality. No technology or means of observation can prove that they are.”

  “Strange to hear an agnostic argument from a god,” Siddhārtha said.

  “To call something unknowable is to assume that anything can be known,” the crab replied.

  Siddhārtha smiled. “What happens to the self when you’re on one of those cards?”

  “What happens to the self when you are asleep?” the crab rejoined.

  When you’re asleep, or when you’re dead . . . Siddhārtha shook his head. “Why did you abandon your city?”

  It would’ve taken a bit of courage to call the line of silver compartments Siddhārtha could see in the light from his projector “rooms.” Each compartment sported a circular silvery hatch of an unknown alloy, and their contents were a mystery. The compartments lined both sides of a dark hallway that continued on for what seemed like an eternity in both directions. Electroluminescent material on the ceiling sagged and faded like old paper. He wondered how much time would have to pass for material like this to cease bearing its own weight. He guessed it would have to be counted not in thousands, but in tens of thousands of years.

  He walked down the hallway, eventually coming to a place where it split in two, then again into three. No matter which way he turned, the same silvery hatches lined the walls on both sides.

  It’s like a mass grave.

  Siddhārtha considered the mindset of the people living here in the stagnant air and desiccated darkness, never showing their forms. To them, Siddhārtha must have been an unwanted interloper, a terrifying enemy from the outside. Yet he encountered no signs of resistance, nor any obvious security. Either the city was defenseless, or its architects were confident that no one would ever be able to remove those silvery hatches that doubtlessly held their citizens.<
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  As he walked, he wondered how many levels there were in this place and how far it stretched in every direction. He had been walking now for what seemed like days, at first looking for information, but now looking for a way out.

  It’s a trap!

  He had suffered the same worry since the moment he set foot inside the “city.”

  Siddhārtha walked up to one of the hatches, illuminating it with the beam of his projector. Set in the middle of its compartment, the hatch had a slight outward bulge, like a convex lens. Siddhārtha connected the output from his micro-reactor to the maser on his arm.

  A brilliant red beam of light struck one of the hatches, continuing its assault for ten, twenty, then thirty seconds. The hatch glowed like a gemstone with reflected crimson light.

  No good!

  The light of the maser faded, and darkness massive as a mountain settled over Siddhārtha. The faint reddish glow of the hatch quickly faded. The citizens of this city were well protected in their castle. No wonder they required no alert system or defenses. Siddhārtha had been able to infiltrate all the way to this corridor, what should have been the heart of their fortress, only to find his way blocked—and no exit in sight.

  Removing one of his discharge panels from his shoulder, he connected it to his high-frequency agitator and pressed it to one of the circular hatches. Faint, high-pitched vibrations began, softly at first, then increasing in strength. The silver hatch began to audibly whine as the frequency climbed. Siddhārtha lifted his maser again, directing a beam of light toward the center of the vibrations. The ghostlike report of a brittle fracture echoed down the hallway. He turned his maser off at the very instant that the hatch ruptured and fell to the ground.