“It’s flat!” Enzu exclaimed. “A flat printing form.”
“Yes,” said Illamadu. He nodded, and the servant slid the clay beneath the frame. “In order to hold the sign-cubes, I’ve had to give up the cylindrical plate.”
Illamadu lowered the frame into the clay; when he cranked it back up, the new tablet had taken a crisp impress. The servant slid out the clay, and began wiping the plate with a blackened rag.
“Amazing,” said Enzu. “This will make it possible to set up and change texts at will. With a ready store of the sign-cubes, it could be done anywhere, and cheaply.” He thought for a moment. “But, it still doesn’t address the weight of the tablets. What about that?”
“Suppose, Enzu, the plate did not have to press the signs into the surface?”
The servant had slid a sheet of papyrus onto the stone, and Illamadu lowered the frame. Even before it was raised, Enzu knew what he would see.
Neat rows of signs, imprinted in black, across the surface of the papyrus.
“Continue this line, Enzu. Cheap, portable writing. Texts that can be cast and printed in minutes. We have broken words down into bits. If the word is made of bits, why not the world? I could use a scribe who can help me imagine this world.”
Enzu saw it at once, entire. “This is what will make it all possible. The breaking to pieces, the explosion of texts, the world of multiple voices, that’s what will create readers who can envision with relish change points and alternatives.”
“I admire your single-mindedness,” Ilammadu laughed, “But such fiction is still a long way off. There are many painstaking, necessary steps, innumerable small battles to fight, and an enormous weight of tradition to overturn. In the meantime, would you work with me? Move your family down here, become my scribe, and help me make this change happen.”
There was no question in Enzu’s mind. Fiction could wait, for now. It was only a matter of continuing the line. For he could see, branching out into the future, not only a limitless ocean of texts, but a strange, unknowable pantheon of possible readers, there, latent, in the simple bronze blocks of the Ash-ba-zu.
Revision Point
Media are tools, and it is axiomatic in media theory that such tools are profound shapers of the cultures which employ them. By around 2350 BCE, the Sumerians had a rich scribal tradition, an increasingly abstract inscription system, some level of general literacy, and a language well suited to phonemic—as opposed to phonetic—representation.
Suppose, at this point, someone discovered that the technique used for reproductions of small texts (the carved cylinder seal) could be scaled up to produce full “pages.” The invention of printing would likely have been as explosive for this culture as it was for Europe in the years before the Renaissance.
The title is an homage to a book by one of Marshall McLuhan’s collaborators, Dr. Robert K. Logan, called “The Alphabet Effect.” McLuhanesque theorists—sometimes called media ecologists—are particularly interested in the impact of the highly abstract alphabet on culture; my deviant assumption here is that simplified cuneiform might have exerted a similar force.
Who knows? Perhaps a print tradition built around the phonemic—rather than phonetic—might even have avoided some of the worst excesses of Aristotelian logic. At least, one can hope.
J.G.McD.
A WORD FOR HEATHENS
by Peter Watts
I AM the hand of God.
His Spirit fills me, even in this desecrated place. It saturates my very bones, it imbues my sword arm with the strength of ten. The cleansing flame pours from my fingertips and scours the backs of the fleeing infidels. They boil from their hole like grubs exposed by the dislodging of a rotten log. They writhe through the light, looking only for darkness. As if there could be any darkness in the sight of God—did they actually think He would be blind to the despoiling of a place of worship, did they think He would not notice this wretched burrow dug out beneath His very altar?
Now their blood erupts steaming from the blackened crusts of their own flesh. The sweet stink of burning meat wafts faintly through my filter. Patches of skin peel away like bits of blackened parchment, swirling in the updrafts. One of the heathens lurches over the lip of the hole and collapses at my feet. Look past the faces, they told us on the training fields, but today that advice means nothing; this abomination has no face, just a steaming clot of seared meat puckered by a bubbling fissure near one end. The fissure splits, revealing absurdly white teeth behind. Something between a whine and a scream, barely audible over the roar of the flames: Please, maybe. Or mommy.
I swing my truncheon in a glorious backhand. Teeth scatter across the room like tiny dice. Other bodies crawl about the floor of the chapel, leaving charred bloody streaks on the floor like the slime trails of giant slugs. I don’t think I’ve ever been so overpowered by God’s presence in my life. I am Saul, massacring the people of Amolek. I am Joshua butchering the Amorites. I am Asa exterminating the Ethiopians. I hold down the stud and sweep the room with great gouts of fire. I am so filled with Divine Love I feel ready to burst into flame myself.
“Praetor!”
Isaiah claps my shoulder from behind. His wide eyes stare back at me, distorted by the curve of his faceplate. “Sir, they’re dead! We need to put out the fire!”
For the first time in what seems like ages I notice the rest of my guard. The prefects stand around the corners of the room as I arranged them, covering the exits, the silver foil of their uniforms writhing with fragments of reflected flame. They grip not flame-throwers, but dousers. A part of me wonders how they could have held back; how could anyone feel the Spirit in this way, and not bring down the fire? But the Spirit recedes in me even now, and descending from that peak I can see that God’s work is all but finished here. The heathens are dead, guttering stick figures on the floor. Their refuge has been cleansed, the altar that once concealed it lies toppled on the floor where I kicked it just—
Was it only a few minutes ago? It seems like forever.
“Sir?”
I nod. Isaiah gives the sign; the prefects step forward and spray the chapel with fire suppressants. The flames vanish; the light goes gray. Crumbling, semi-cremated corpses erupt in clouds of wet, hissing steam as the chemicals hit.
Isaiah watches me through the smoky air. It billows around us like a steam bath. “Are you all right, sir?” The sudden moisture lends a hiss to his voice; his respirator needs a new filter.
I nod. “The Spirit was so—so . . .” I’m lost for words. “I’ve never felt it so strong before.”
There’s a hint of a frown behind his mask. “Are you—I mean, are you sure?”
I laugh, delighted. “Am I sure? I felt like Trajan himself!”
Isaiah looks uncomfortable, perhaps at my invocation of Trajan’s name the very day after his funeral. Yet I meant no disrespect; if anything, I acted today in his memory. I can see him standing at God’s side, looking down into this steaming abattoir and nodding with approval. Perhaps the very heathen that murdered him lies here at my feet. I can see Trajan turning to the Lord and pointing out the worm that killed him.
I can hear the Lord saying, Vengeance is mine.
An outcast huddles at the far end of the Josephus platform, leaning across the barrier in a sad attempt to bathe in the tram’s maglev field. The action is both pointless and pitiful; the generators are shielded, and even if they weren’t, the Spirit moves in so many different ways. It never ceases to amaze me how people can fail at such simple distinctions: shown that electromagnetic fields, precisely modulated, can connect us with the Divine, they somehow conclude that any coil of wire and electricity opens the door to redemption.
But the fields that move chariots are not those that grace us with the Rapture. Even if this misguided creature were to get his wish, even if by some perverse miracle the shielding were to vanish around the tram’s coils, the best he could hope for would be nausea and disorientation. The worst—and it happens more than some would
admit, these days—could be outright possession.
I’ve seen the possessed. I’ve dealt with the demons who inhabit them. The outcast is luckier than he knows.
I step onto the tram. The Spirit pushes the vehicle silently forward, tied miraculously to a ribbon of track it never touches. The platform slides past; the pariah and I lock eyes for a moment before distance disconnects us.
Not shame on his face: dull, inarticulate rage.
My armor, I suppose. It was someone like me who arrested him, who denied him a merciful death and left his body lingering in the world, severed from its very soul.
A pair of citizens at my side point at the dwindling figure and giggle. I glare at them: they notice my insignia, my holstered shockprod, and fall silent. I see nothing ridiculous in the outcast’s desperation. Pitiful, yes. Ineffective. Irrational. And yet, what would any of us do, cut off from grace? Would any straw be too thin to grasp, for a chance at redemption?
Everything is so utterly clear in the presence of God. The whole universe makes sense, like a child’s riddle suddenly solved; you see forever, you wonder how all these glorious pieces of creation could ever have confused you. At the moment, of course, those details are lost to me. All that remains is the indescribable memory of how it felt to have understood, absolutely and perfectly . . . and that memory, hours old, feels more real to me than now.
The tram glides smoothly into the next station. The news feed across the piazza replays looped imagery of Trajan’s funeral. I still can’t believe he’s dead. Trajan was so strong in the Spirit we’d begun to think him invulnerable. That he could be bested by some thing built in the Backlands—it seems almost blasphemous.
Yet there he rests. Blessed in the eyes of God and Man, a hero to both rabble and elite, a commoner who rose from Prefecthood to Generalship in under a decade: killed by an obscene contraption of levers and pellets and explosions of stinking gas. His peaceful face fills the feed. The physicians have hidden all signs of the thing that killed him, leaving only the marks of honorable injury for the rest of us to remember. The famous puckered line running down forehead to cheekbone, the legacy of a dagger that almost blinded him at twenty-five. The angry mass of scars crawling up his shoulder from beneath the tunic: a lucky shockprod strike during the Essene Mutiny. A crescent line on his right temple—a reminder of some other conflict whose name escapes me now, if indeed I ever knew it.
The view pulls back. Trajan’s face recedes into an endless crowd of mourners as the tram starts up again. I barely knew the man. I met him a few times at Senate functions, where I’m sure I made no impression at all. But he made an impression on me. He made an impression on everyone. His conviction filled the room. The moment I met him, I thought: here is a man untroubled by doubt.
There was a time when I had doubts.
Never about God’s might or goodness, of course. Only, sometimes, whether we were truly doing His will. I would confront the enemy, and see not blasphemers but people. Not traitors-in-waiting, but children. I would recite the words of our savior: did not the Christ Himself say I come not bringing peace, but a sword? Did not Holy Constantine baptize his troops with their sword arms raised? I knew the scriptures, I’d known them from the crèche—and yet sometimes, God help me, they seemed only words, and the enemy had faces.
None so blind as those who will not see.
Those days are past. The Spirit has burned brighter in me over the past month than ever before. And this morning—this morning it burned brighter still. In Trajan’s memory.
I get off the tram at my usual stop. The platform is empty but for a pair of constables. They do not board. They approach me, their feet clicking across the tiles with the telltale disciplined rhythm of those in authority. They wear the insignia of the priesthood.
I study their faces as they block my way. The memory of the Spirit fades just enough to leave room for a trickle of apprehension.
“Forgive the intrusion, Praetor,” one of them says, “but we must ask you to come with us.”
Yes, they are sure they have the right man. No, there is no mistake. No, it cannot wait. They are sorry, but they are simply following orders from the bishop. No, they do not know what this concerns.
In that, at least, they are lying. It isn’t difficult to tell; colleagues and prisoners are accorded very different treatment in this regime, and they are not treating me as a colleague. I am not shackled, at least. I am not under arrest, my presence is merely required at the temple. They have accused me of nothing.
That, perhaps, is the most frustrating thing of all: accused, I could at least deny the charges.
Their cart winds through Constantinople, coasting from rail to rail with a click and a hum. I stand at the prow, in front of the control column. My escorts stand behind. Another unspoken accusation, this arrangement; I have not been ordered to keep my eyes front, but if I faced them—if I asserted the right to look back—how long would it be before a firm hand came down on my shoulder and turned me forward again?
“This is not the way to the temple,” I say over my shoulder.
“Origen’s blocked to Augustine. Cleaning up after the funeral.”
Another lie. My own company guarded the procession down Augustine not two days ago. We left no obstructions. These two probably know this. They are not trying to mislead me. They are showing me that they don’t care enough to bother with a convincing lie.
I turn to confront them, but I am preempted before I can speak: “Praetor, I must ask you to remove your helmet.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, sir. The bishop was quite explicit.”
Stupefied and disbelieving, I undo the chin strap and lift the instrument from my skull. I begin to tuck it under my arm, but the constable reaches out and takes it from me.
“This is insane,” I tell him. Without the helmet I’m as blind and deaf as any heathen. “I’ve done nothing wrong. What possible reason—”
The constable at the wheel turns us left onto a new track. The other puts his hand on my shoulder, and firmly turns me around.
Golgotha Plaza. Of course.
This is where the Godless come to die. The loss of my helmet is moot here; no one feels the presence of the Lord in this place. Our cart slides silently past the ranks of the heretics and the demon-possessed on their crosses, their eyes rolled back in their heads, bloody rivulets trickling from the spikes hammered through their wrists. Some have probably been here since before Trajan died; crucifixion could take days even in the days before anesthetics, and now we are a more civilized nation. We do not permit needless suffering even among our condemned.
It’s an old trick, and a transparent one; many prisoners, paraded past these ranks, have chosen to cooperate before interrogation even begins. Do these two think I don’t see through them? Do they think I haven’t done this myself, more times than I can count?
Some of the dying cry out as we pass—not with pain, but with the voices of the demons in their heads. Even now, they preach. Even now, they seek to convert others to their Godless ways. No wonder the Church damps this place—for what might a simple man think, feeling the Divine Presence while hearing sacrilege?
And yet, I almost can feel God’s presence. It should be impossible, even if the constables hadn’t confiscated my helmet. But there it is: a trickle of the Divine, like a thin bright shaft of sunlight breaking through the roof of a storm. It doesn’t overpower; God’s presence does not flood through me as it did earlier. But there is comfort, nonetheless. He is everywhere. He is even here. We do not banish him with damper fields, any more than we turn off the sun by closing a window.
God is telling me, Have strength. I am with you.
My fear recedes like an ebbing tide. I turn back to my escorts and smile; God is with them, too, if they’d only realize it.
But I don’t believe they do. Something changes in their faces when they look at me. The last time I turned to face them, they were merely grim and uncooperative.
Now, for some reason, they almost look afraid.
They take me to the temple, but not to the bishop. They send me through the Tunnel of Light instead. They tell me it is entirely routine, although I went through the tunnel only four months ago and am not due again for another eight.
My armor is not returned to me afterward. Instead, they escort me into the bishop’s sanctum, through an ornate doorway embellished with the likeness of a fiery cross and God’s commandment to Constantine: In hoc signo vinces. In this sign, conquer.
They leave me there, but I know the procedure. There will be guards outside.
The sanctum is dark and comforting, all cushions and velvet drapes and mahogany bones. There are no windows. A screen on one wall glows with a succession of volumetric images. Each lingers for a few moments before dissolving hypnotically into the next: the Sinai foothills; Prolinius leading the charge against the Hindus; the Holy Grotto itself, where God showed Moses the Burning Bush, where He showed all of us the way of the Spirit.
“Imagine that we had never found it.”
I turn to find the bishop standing behind me as if freshly materialized. He holds a large envelope the color of ivory. He watches me with the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.
“Teacher?” I say.
“Imagine that Constantine never had his vision, that Eusebius never sent his expedition into Sinai. Imagine that the Grotto had never been rediscovered after Moses. No thousand-year legacy, no technological renaissance. Just another unprovable legend about a prophet hallucinating in the mountains, and ten commandments handed down with no tools to enforce them. We’d be no better than the heathens.”
He gestures me toward a settee, a decadent thing, overstuffed and wine-colored. I do not wish to sit, but neither do I wish to give offense. I perch carefully on one edge.
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