A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  Melvin was startled when strong clear notes rang above the din of the storm, and then it knew this was a portable virtual piano Pan now played. The android Fred was apparently the power source for the instrument. For a moment Melvin’s mind was cast far into the past as it remembered Milly listening to music recordings. Melvin felt sad. It had loved Milly so much, but she had grown old and it couldn’t bear witnessing her death, and so Melvin ran away into the wilderness of Earth. It had returned to the Hole several times over the centuries but could never bear to see what became of Milly. Now Pan’s music lifted Melvin out of despair and almost made it glad to have given up its isolation from humans.

  Pan played through the storm and with the storm, following thunder with his own musical crescendos, then sending chords and melody up to the dim and distant ceiling in the quieter moments. As the storm abated, Pan performed with greater coherence and finer technique. The music moved Melvin deeply. It had forgotten how well its species had adapted to the mathematics of human music and how strongly they had absorbed the meaning and emotion of it. Melvin wept long before Pan finished his concert, and perhaps Pan stopped because of Melvin’s reaction. Pan put a hand on Melvin’s shoulder and waited with concern until it could function better.

  “I’m okay,” Melvin sighed. “That was wonderful! Fred told me you were a musician and I thought little of the fact, and now I’m overwhelmed. How can the human race be so horrible, yet make such transcendent music? I think you are a great musician, Pan. I wish I had known you sooner.”

  “And I you, Melvin.” But Pan could not leave Melvin’s words to themselves. He felt unworthy of such praise and he felt appropriately categorized by Melvin’s comment on horrible humans. “But I should tell you I’ve done bad things.”

  “I don’t want to know of it! Shut up!”

  “No, I need to tell you. I’ve killed people.”

  “Be quiet!”

  “In another part of my life I was an engineer, Melvin. I helped my brother Direk build a gate that teleported three Navy ships to Rhyandh, where millions of people were killed to bring an end to the war. During my long residence on Earth I’ve resorted to violence many times to try to bring order and safety to the lives of others. It may have been necessary or at least desirable, but I wish I had not done it. My music is very small credit against the debits of my life.”

  Melvin had covered its round copper-colored ears. “I didn’t hear that! Don’t say it again! I don’t care what you did! I care about what you are now. I care

  532 Far Freedom about you!”

  Pan felt this was a significant statement but he wasn’t sure what it meant. Did it mean Melvin had developed some emotional attachment to him? It would be both gratifying and troubling. He felt a strong affection for Melvin, perhaps that of a father for his child, although he didn’t know which of them was the child. Did Melvin have any choice in the matter? It seemed there was some chemistry that pulled them together. “Is it a good thing that we care about each other?”

  “You care about me?” Melvin asked timidly. “No, don’t answer that! If you would simply care about me as you obviously do about Fred.”

  “You’ve been alone for a very long time.” Pan sat down next to Melvin and motioned for Fred to sit beside him. “Do you know that Milly is still alive?”

  “She is?” Melvin felt dangerously and desirably close to Pan. Pan’s statement made it forget how close Pan was. Melvin wanted Milly to be alive, but alive in what terrible fashion? The Golden Ones had made many others live longer but Milly continued to slowly age. Laplace, Melvin later learned, had lost his sanity because of Milly. Laplace, above all but Constant, had devoted his life to Milly. What could be left of Milly after all these centuries? “How do you know?” Melvin asked, hating to sound so hopeful.

  “Did you know she had a baby, a son? His name is Samson.”

  “I ask you how you know this!” Melvin demanded, feeling desperate to know with certainty that Milly lived. “Please, prove it to me!”

  Pan told Melvin the story of Fidelity Demba and Jon Horss finding Samson in Africa, and the disembodied voice Samson knew as Milly that also spoke to Demba. This did not prove to Melvin that the real Milly was still alive but it gave some hope. Then Pan explained who the person named Fidelity Demba was. It could not be pure coincidence the woman was the mother of Petros Gerakis! It might not even be chance that Melvin had encountered Pan and Fred in the wilderness, and at this important moment in time! Melvin had to go back to the Hole. Melvin had to see Milly and know she was alive and well! Melvin had to help Pan and Fred kill the Lady in the Mirror!

  Section 016 All We Have and All We Are

  The narration of Samuel Lee resumes.

  I would always be a coward, and so I made myself think better of this gang of Cubans than they deserved. First of all, they didn’t look like a gang, not the 20th-century kind. There were no markings of body or style or uniform of dress that would brand them as members of a gang. They were alike only in a certain hungry look they gave me and Pete, a look that was also hopeful. Quite possibly they would all break and run if Pete demonstrated his physical power by injuring one of them. The gang members could have no slightest idea of how lethal Pete was. “Please,” I asked Pete, “don’t hurt anyone.”

  “You don’t understand what this means, Sam. They’ll rape your mind.”

  “I don’t see what we can do. More is at risk than just you and me.”

  I was surprised Pete obeyed my request. He must have remembered he was no longer in command of the universe. I was sure I didn’t want bloodshed, but I was not sure it should be avoided at any cost. Still, we couldn’t afford to come to the attention of the authorities any more than our abductors could.

  They put restraints on us and covered us with cloth bags. They stuffed us into some kind of small vehicle. Pete didn’t have the intra-cranial transceiver that allowed the rest of us a form of telepathy. I couldn’t talk to him and perhaps form a plan to escape. I was too distant from Jessie and the others to contact them. We traveled for an unknown distance after we were wheeled off the subway car.

  As I emerged from the bag I was disappointed to see we still had a full escort. The dimly lit room contained more than a dozen pod-like chairs, each connected somewhat haphazardly to a large buss with a tangle of cables. The ceiling and walls were textured, perhaps for sound deadening. Pete and I hobbled to a coffin-like cabinet in the center of the room. Many members of the gang began inserting themselves into the pod-chairs. More tangles of cables fed into - or out of - the coffin, forming several thick black snakes that curved across the floor toward junctions on the walls. The room was cluttered with other equipment, reels of cable, odd furniture, and it smelled of unsanitary human activity. I was long accustomed to near-magical engineering and efficient robotic janitorial service. This was too much like low-budget science fiction cinema - another disappointment of humanity’s future. I was disgruntled to have to suffer my fear in such a low-tech setting.

  “Who first?” the leader of the band of outlaws asked, which I supposed was a small courtesy. Pete and I just stared at The Mustache. It wasn’t moral indignation in our expressions. We weren’t that innocent. My expression was a mix of anxiety and interest. What would this do to my brain - just when I felt the little gray cells were about to make a comeback? I think Pete was just letting his combat computer play with a few deadly scenarios. Maybe Pete’s expression prompted The Mustache’s further comment. “We are not violent criminals but we will bleed for what we want. We will not physically harm you. We will not mentally harm you. You will be free to report us to the police when we are finished with you. Running from the law is another part of the entertainment we seek. Who first?”

  “I’ll be first,” Pete said.

  Pete levered himself into the human-shaped cavity within the coffin. They closed the lid. I stepped over to study the device and they pointed out the plumbing that provided air to Pete. All of the chairs were filled by members of
the gang. About half of the gang remained to guard me. The leader took a pod-chair.

  I sat on the floor and waited. Every body in every pod spasmed at the same instant. The pod-chairs wiggled continuously as the occupants reacted to intense stimulation. They writhed and grimaced and sobbed. It was over sooner than I expected. They pried themselves out of their chairs and looked at each other with wild eyes.

  Their leader approached me, wiping sweat from his face with a rag. He appeared disturbed, and disappointed. “Extreme,” he said, almost gasping for breath, “but not believable. We saw only what he allowed us to see. It was a playback of some kind of simple immersive game where you kill simulated opponents.”

  “Are you so bored with your own lives that you need to steal life from others?”

  “I learn from your question that you haven’t lived long enough to understand.”

  “I think you lack the imagination and the courage to live your own adventures.”

  “Courage? Do you know what law enforcement will do when they catch us? Worm soup! I was executed twice before. I’m a career criminal. I’m immune to psychological restructuring. They’ve wiped my memories almost clean and I just hunger for more. So do billions more who sit rotting between Mnro Clinic visits. Not everyone can be brave and imaginative, young man.”

  “I understand your motivation, old man. I don’t respect your ethics but I do sympathize. I was blessed with a long and interesting life. I’ll share it with you. What I remember of it.”

  They pulled Pete from the box. He seemed unaffected by his experience, I don’t think I could have detected any effect in Pete. “Are you okay?” I asked. Pete’s reply was cut off by the gang leader.

  “I’m disappointed in you!” The Mustache yelled at Pete. “We care little for simple violence. We want deep emotions and sophistication in experience. I hope your friend has what we want. We don’t have time to try you again. We have to move out of here as soon as possible.”

  Pete moved toward the gang leader, dragging his captors with him. The leader stood his ground. Pete stopped and loomed over the man. “Be very careful with my friend,” Pete said coldly. “Or I will hunt you down and end your criminal careers forever.”

  The gang leader took a step backward in order to look up and meet Pete’s eyes. Why have such a distinguishing mustache if you might need to hide from the police? Why have such a bird-perch if you want to be taken seriously? “I told you we wouldn’t hurt you! If we do, it’s a fluke. Come and kill us, then.”

  Pete turned to me. “I give you a choice, Sam. My life is yours to use.”

  “If something goes wrong, do what you will.”

  “You’ll let them copy your memories?”

  “How many people might ultimately experience what I give them?”

  “Too many. Why would you want to share what is private to you, what makes you who you are, with so many other people?”

  “I don’t know that I want to, but why are there so many unhappy people?”

  They put me in the coffin. The interior reshaped itself to precisely fit my body. What felt like thousands of tiny needles impinged on my neck and head. They closed the lid. Cool air flowed across my face. Nothing happened for a long period of time. My heart thumped heavily in anxious anticipation. I felt tiny electrical sensations across much of my scalp. I waited.

  “You’re resisting,” a voice said, startling me.

  “Resisting what?”

  “You have an abnormal neural configuration. Try to relax.”

  The dancing voltages on my scalp bothered me. I imagined myself rubbing them, smoothing them out. A curtain was raised and I could see Kansas! It was a memory I retained in every partition. Partition? Was that the right term? Books on a bookshelf. I could see or imagine many long shelves of books. Books with little windows on their spines. I leaned close to the little windows and saw bright images. I saw Jessie as I first met her: a truly magical moment in my life. Forces gathered to push me toward Jessie. I knew my rapists were that force, their urges crossing the bridge between our minds.

  The Kansas memory prevailed. Kansas exploded into focus, cold and bright, snow-white, sky-blue. My ears and nose burned in the freezing air. My breath threw moisture from my lungs in puffs of vapor. My feet hurt from unaccustomed walking. I could even feel the weight of my dad’s model 1911 under my arm. What was I doing out of the Hole? The little town on the prairie loomed ahead, the grain elevator standing above all the other structures. I knew what was going to happen and I couldn’t stop it. Karl was going to die.

  I never remembered it so clearly. It was as though a hypnotist regressed me and forced me to see things that I thought lost to the compression of storage in a faulty medium. It was painful to see that old reality again. I couldn’t pause it, not slow it down, not soften it, not reinterpret it. It cut through me like a knife. It was exhilarating. It was saddening. I tried to keep the image of Karl’s face in my eyes, because it was the only way I could keep him alive. But he was dead. Seven hundred years ago.

  The feedback from my voyeurs surged with excitement and urged me onward. How strange and impossible it must seem to them.

  I lifted the veil from her smiling face and saw Milly, needing only to kiss her to make her mine. I loved Milly more than I could bear but it was an untested love. I ached to see her more clearly as I lay in the hospital bed with bullet wounds in me. I felt her hand on mine. I heard her voice. My heart raced, the extra blood pressure making my wounds hurt in rhythm with my pulse. I loved her then as I had loved her in the beginning. I felt myself embracing the truth with joy and surprise. I discovered she loved me as well. That was a well-tested love, never to be lost. Then they were carrying me out of the hospital on a military stretcher, putting me in the back of a vehicle. We were flying, carried by a helicopter, and they were playing rock-and-roll music on the radio.

  The memory of those last few moments on Earth flew by: testing the Big Circuits, putting on the very heavy spacesuit, kissing Milly, seeing the Easter egg at the puncture site. Earth disappeared in an instant, like a dream of things that never were.

  I fell into a different place and tried to keep my feet under me. Vacuum no longer pulled my spacesuit outward. My eyes tried to focus on the geometry of the small room containing me. Gravity instantly decreased, easing the burden of the spacesuit. I moved around a little, touched a wall. Behind me an opening appeared in the wall and a small creature stood there, looking at me with deep blue eyes too large for its head. I was so shocked, so mesmerized by the golden iridescence of its naked body, that I tripped on some debris on the floor, lost my balance, and fell down.

  I lay on the floor and let the alien approach me. All I wanted to do was stare at it. It leaned over and peered at my face through the bubble helmet. It was talking, perhaps to someone else not in the room. I was amazed that it was humanoid, yet I was easily able to set aside the question of how improbable that might be, or of how some undiscovered process in evolution made it more likely. After a final exchange of words, it began probing the latching mechanism of my helmet. I could see its hands trembling, as four fingers and no thumb tried to unlock the latch. I helped, finally twisting the helmet to where I could remove it. I never thought about whether I could safely breathe the air or survive any alien microbes that might be present.

  “Hi,” I greeted it. “I’m from Earth. May I be your friend?”

  I smiled. It seemed to know what the smile meant. It reached slowly toward me with one shaking hand and touched my face. The touch was magic, whether or not this little alien had any special powers in its repertoire. That was the first time I saw Jessie. Memories of my later life with it/her imparted twice the emotion I felt originally at meeting her. It was so intense I couldn’t sustain the moment. I wept, whether in memory or reality, I didn’t know.

  More memories of my life on the other side of the universe flowed past, rather like an overview. I was perusing the little-window-titles of the books in my library. My memory was all
still there, just better organized and out of the way of my daily thoughts. It was difficult not to try to open every book. The pressure from my voyeurs was intense, and I yielded only to those glimpses of greatest… shock, I would call it. Alien civilizations, some of them not humanoid, some beyond comprehension and only describable with feelings and images.

  There were a series of special moments in our history together when changes in Jessie’s body became apparent, and I struggled to edit them for the sake of privacy while still celebrating the wonder and the humor of the unexpected metamorphosis. I arrived finally in those days of unbelievable joy welded to unbearable fear, as Jessie approached the end of her pregnancy. I tried to hurry it along, to lessen the pain, but even with the soft focus on the bloody details, the memory of the fatal childbirth hit me so hard I screamed. Everything went black.

  Then I stepped through the golden portal to the Freedom. There was Zakiya, looking so deeply into my eyes that she could see who I was: Samson’s father.

  The pressure on me to remember in certain directions lessened. I was able to pick my own subjects. It was always people and certain moments I had with them. I was able to linger and study details and reactions I may not have noticed consciously when I lived the moment. I always thought my new friends to be so much alike and worn smooth by their long years of existence. Now their subtleties came into focus. I saw the quiet clues to the inner thoughts and anxieties I now knew they experienced. I also saw how they looked at me and saw me as their friend.

  There was pressure on me to find more memories of Aylis Mnro. Aylis, more than anyone but Zakiya, appeared concerned for me. It was easy to place her in several important memories. I leaped to the day she held me under the plum tree, the day the Protector unlocked his black cube of null-time, the day Aylis and Mai saved Jessie from a fatal childbirth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have shared these memories, as it violated the privacy of all my friends. Yet, I felt it was somehow correct, even necessary.