Cronix

by James Hider

  Part III

  Messengers

  The nations bred out of them

  Their buildings no longer silting the skies

  Their magpie hearts finally, forever

  Distracted by the fireflies and glow worms in the ever-lingering dusk

  Wesley Potter Larringer, The Clouds at Noon

  Life is no way to treat an animal

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Human history is nothing more than a trail of semen, feces and ashes.

  General Grosvenor G Wharton, Commander of the Orbiter 1 Defensive Shield, during the Diego Garcia missile crisis

  For the first few days, there was little for Glenn to do. Laura left early every morning and returned late at night. She never told where she went. For most of the first day, Glenn sat quietly in the empty wooden house and listened to the wind whistling through the eaves, the haunting tinnitus of the open plains.

  Laura had instructed him not to go outside. To keep him busy until what was meant to happen actually happened, she gave him a pile of books and magazines to read. She also gave him some TV footage to watch, most of which seemed to date back several decades. Stuck in the house, Glenn tested out the reading material, but found most of it too academic. Only one caught his attention, an old article from the mid-nineties, and only because he recognized the author’s name: Tom Wolfe. He had read The Bonfire of the Vanities back when in his student days, and quite enjoyed it, though he would have been hard pressed to recall more than a basic plot outline now. The article before him was entitled, intriguingly, “Sorry, but your soul just died.” He had high hopes for it, but struggled through the surprisingly scientific style, only completing it after several naps on the sofa. Afterwards, he was left with a disturbing aftertaste: the author seemed to be arguing, via several dramatic references to Nietzsche and a host of biochemists, that everything people think or do is genetically predetermined, that there was no such thing as a soul or free will, and that when the general population discovered what neuroscientists were already beginning to suspect, violence would erupt on such a scale as to make the wars of the twentieth century’s look like child’s play.

  It was an odd thing to be given by your new employer. Seeking reassurance, he put in a DVD that was labeled ‘Doug -- Faith Matters.’ The quality was scratchy, either through repeated use or age, or both. It featured some dull late-night chat show, men with bad haircuts and 1970s corduroy jackets, like insects caught in fashion amber. A priest with a dewlap overhanging his dog collar was holding forth about the eternal values of the Christian faith while the host respectfully nodded, chin cradled between clasped hands. Then another man came on and waffled on at length about post-Christian social values. Bored, Glenn fast forwarded until a third guest appeared. The man had thick, gun-metal grey hair, the imploded cheeks of a life-long smoker and the gelatinous, searching eyes of a shark gazing up through a shallow reef at its prey. He pressed the play button.

  “… are we really unchanging?” the man was demanding of the priest, in a deep, tobacco-brown voice. Glenn was surprised to see that the speaker had a lit cigarette in his hand, despite being in a studio. The footage must have been pretty old.

  “Am I the same person as when I was six years old? Clearly there’s a line of continuity there, an unbroken chain of events, feelings and memories that causes me to believe that I am that same person. Yet I bear hardly any physical resemblance to that boy, I see the world in an entirely different way to him and all the cells that once made up his body have died off in the intervening half-century or so and been replaced by new cells that produce this…” He gestured at his own body with a dismissive shrug.

  “Now, assume I have extensive surgery, say, a heart and lung transplant, maybe a false leg or even two…to what extent can we say I am still that boy? What makes us believe in such a continuity? Branding, that’s what. I am instructed by society to believe I am that same person I was then.”

  The camera panned back to the priest. “But Professor Fitch, what you’re saying, that one day a computer will be able to ‘store’” -- he waggled both index fingers to indicate quotation marks -- “the human mind is clearly absurd. It’s not as if we were a wine to be decanted into a new bottle. We are physical beings with emotions, urges and desires, we are flesh and muscle, that’s what creates our dual nature…”

  The shark-eyed man had an amused leer on his face. “There is no dual nature, Larry. We are meat, that’s all. There is no ghost in the machine. There is a steam that rises from the machine, an evolutionary byproduct that has convinced itself it is the soul of the machine, but it evaporates as soon as the machine shuts down. And as for the technological aspect, need I remind you that the church originally saw something as innocuous as eye glasses as the devil’s work, an unwarranted intervention in His divine will? So please, don’t tell me…”

  There was a sudden clatter at the front door. Glenn hit pause just as Laura stumbled in, laden with shopping bags and a laptop case slung over her shoulder.

  She muttered a greeting, then saw what he had been watching and put down her bags.

  “Good to see you’re doing your homework,” she said. “That one’s pretty old, but hopefully you’ll get an idea of what they’re talking about. Done much reading yet?”

  “Er, yeah, a bit. Well, not much actually. Pretty heavy going, for a non-scientist like me. I’m more into the arts and stuff, you know.”

  “Well, you don’t necessarily have to remember or understand it all. We’re not going to test you on it, don’t worry.”

  “Is that the bloke you were talking to on the phone the other night?” he asked, pointing the TV at the scientist on the screen.

  She nodded. “Yep, that’s Doug Fitch. The one and only. He stopped doing public appearances a while after that.” It was difficult to tell from her tone whether she liked this man or not. Glenn was just about to ask more about him when she pointed at the bags. “Here, help me get this stuff through to the kitchen. You hungry?”

  They drank white wine over dinner, which proved to be a pre-packaged stew of lamb and dried apricots that tasted surprisingly good. Despite having told Glenn to try and educate himself about her project, Laura was surprisingly coy about revealing exactly what they did out here in the middle of nowhere, instead preferring to tease details of Glenn’s own past. She listened and nodded, but her attention seemed to be elsewhere. Nevertheless, he told her of his artistic struggles, how he had once worked in a mental asylum and how depressing he had found it, especially the old people, often mere husks shunted out of sight so as not to trouble the young by reminding them of their own mortality.

  “Yeah, getting old sucks,” said Laura, pouring herself another glass of wine. Sensing she was about to disappear into her study or bedroom again, Glenn decided it was time to get some answers.

  “Hey Laura. What do you people do out here?”

  She took a sip, her eyes fixed on the table, then nodded.

  “Good that you asked. I was talking with Doug again last night. About you, in fact. The thing is, what we do here is classified. Not in a James Bond kind of way, but to protect the research from our competitors. Now, Doug was a bit…concerned that I had brought you in in such an unorthodox manner, though I managed to convince him, eventually, that you would be very well suited for the position. The thing is, you’ll have to get clearance from the security people, so they’ll be here to talk to you, probably in a day or two. They’ll ask you some questions, run a few checks…” again, she caught the look of alarm on Glenn’s face, and seemed to file it away in her memory even as she reassured him. “Nothing intrusive, just so we know you don’t have any prior associations that could compromise our work out here…then, in a few days, Doug will be here in person with his team and he can explain to you more or less what we’re up to. Happy with that?”

  Glenn wasn’t happy with that at all. He didn’t want any security types prodding into his past, but saw he had no choice. He nodded.

  “G
ood,” said Laura, standing up. “You can finish the wine.”

  ***

  The university archive where Quin worked was in the grounds of the British Museum. The grand Victorian pile still housed remnants of vanished worlds of antiquity, though much of its treasure had been stowed away in security vaults during the Exodus. A few gold-masked mummies, Sumerian seals and marble nudes still huddled in its dimly lit halls. The space that had been freed up was used to display artifacts from the last days of pre-Exodus humanity, some of the curiosities that had caught the eye of the curators: coins with images of long-dead monarchs, scuffed mobile phones with missing keys, an array of bent and misshapen latex sex toys that looked like they had corroded inside some bodily orifice.

  Swaincroft’s office was a large, airy room overlooking the park behind the museum. The room was packed with electrical recording devices, ancient and modern, many of them disemboweled, halfway to resurrection.

  “It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid,” the young academic said. “I try not to let the cleaners in here too often. They move stuff around and then I can never find it again. Would you like a cup of tea, by the way?”

  Milky tea in hand, Swaincroft led Oriente down to the main lab, where the projection room was set up. “I teach a number of classes here, but restoring equipment’s a hobby of mine. Well, a passion really. It’s a funny thing: during the Exodus, with all the human minds feeding into what was effectively the most powerful computer system ever to exist, they solved all the old problems besetting mankind – cures for cancer and aging and dementia, nuclear fusion, all the energy stuff that had messed up the world and made people want to leave in the first place. But by the time they had it, it was pretty much redundant: the lure of paradise up there was too strong, so no one really bothered investing it down here. Now we scrape by with ancient cars and recycled projectors, and no one really makes anything anymore. The only facilities the Eternals are really concerned with are the regeneration centers, to make sure they can come back any time they want to.”

  There was no rancor in his speech, Oriente noted, only a sense of bemused irony at the twists and turns of human fate. Unlike many Sapiens, Swaincroft was not bitter or angry at the more perfect branch of the species, just curious. The man was a born anthropologist: no wonder Lola was having a hard time getting him to stop observing evolution and start participating.

  Swaincroft was scrolling through an index of film, muttering to himself. “I’m working on a reel for my Exodus class right now,” he explained, not taking his eyes off the wall screen. “Still in the editing phase, but I have Fitch’s funeral here somewhere.”

  The images flashed before them. “Slow down a minute,” said Oriente, taking a seat. “Some of this stuff… it brings back memories.”

  “I’m sure it does,” said Swaincroft, looking hopeful. “I’m more than happy…if you have the time?”

  “Poincaffrey gave me the morning off. He’s off at some conference on Cronix sentience. Now, what is that…?”

  The film had slowed over an image of bedraggled refugees wading through waist-high flood waters. The people stared blankly at the camera as they passed by.

  “Could be just about any scene from the mid twenty-first century,” said Swaincroft. “Awful time for most of the planet. But these particular wretches are…” he checked his notes … “Bangladeshis fleeing coastal cities flooded by rising sea levels…wait a minute, if we go forwards a bit more we can see the evacuation fleet leaving the Maldives, which happened about the same time…no , wait, that’s the ruins of Ankara after the great quake...”

  The pictures sped by, images of a civilization in collapse – Mongolian horsemen herding yaks past the empty, glassless skyscrapers of Ulan Bator, farmers in the wheat fields of Kensington Gardens, miles and miles of cars laboring under the weight of bags strapped to their roofs, fleeing the infamous Dead Zone of the leaking Houston refineries – all accompanied by the enthusiastic burbling of Swaincroft. He paused the slide show over an image of a rusty freighter stranded offshore, overlooking a rich seaside resort. “Oh no, that’s not it,” said Swaincroft. “But this one is quite interesting in itself. Does this bring back any happy memories?”

  Oriente shook his head. “That is the Jamaican freighter Marcus Garvey. This is film of the first pirate raid against the United States coastline in, ooh, it must have been 400 years. Key West. Two hundred Jamaican Yardies stormed ashore with guns and machetes, took the coast guard completely by surprise, what was left of it by then. Most of them had already been chipped and gone topside… Anyway, Key West was looted and burned to the ground. But the whole coast was devastated a few years later by a monster hurricane and the Florida Keys were abandoned, so it probably made very little difference in the long run.”

  Swaincroft scrolled on through the images.

  “What was that?” Oriente said. Another ship, though much smaller this time, and people leaping off into broiling, bloody waters. Swaincroft smiled, a connoisseur of human foibles showing off a prized item.

  “Ah, yes. Macabre, isn’t it? That’s just off the coast of South Africa. Extreme sports: cage diving without the cage. Amazing what people did, once death was commercialized. Even with a chip, I don’t think I’d fancy being torn to pieces by Great Whites. But there you go. It was a kind of ritualized breaking of ancient taboos, the overcoming of the fear of death for the first time ever. They used to call these people thanatics, if you recall, after Freud’s death drive. From the ancient Greek angel of death, Thanatos.”

  Oriente nodded, squinting at the arterial eddies in the churning water. Swaincroft finally found what he was looking for and paused: a huge crowd of people on a grey day at the Washington Mall, thronging around a funeral cortege. A black hearse inched through the masses, which were held back by metal railings and cops in rain macs.

  “This is the funeral of your friend Douglas Fitch. January 17, 2025.”

  Oriente stared at the screen. A light drizzle was falling on the crowds, and people clutched umbrellas and sodden bouquets. The news cameras followed the funeral procession as it pulled up in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where President Landis gave a moving oration, comparing Fitch to Moses, “a visionary who led his people out of slavery to the Promised Land, only to die himself before that final, hallowed destination could be reached.”

  “Of course,” interjected Swaincroft, “he tactfully doesn’t mention that the analogy would have worked better had Moses tried to dash across the River Jordan and drowned before reaching the Promised Land.”

  Oriente frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Swaincroft tried to muster a concerned look, but Oriente could tell he was bursting to tell the story. “Well, Fitch died just a month before the first successful recorded upload. But there were unconfirmed rumors that emerged years later, that Fitch didn’t want to die any more than the rest of us. You’ve heard of the Haitian Voodoo Head, of course?”

  Oriente nodded. Even someone who had tried to cut himself off from the world as much as he had couldn’t fail to have heard some version of the legend of the first mass foray into the virtual afterlife. It was a favorite horror story told by mortal mothers to terrify their children on dark winters nights, a gruesome warning of the folly of trying to cheat death.

  “Horrible,” muttered Swaincroft. “The authorities always denied it, but according to the reports at the time, a hundred and twenty five terminally ill Haitians were persuaded by their houngons, or priests, who were actually in the pay of a private consortium that would later become the MEvolution Corporation, to have themselves chipped. Unfortunately, the afterlife environment had not been perfected at that point. They were unable to sleep, and started going insane. While the programmers tried to fix the problem, the Haitians all somehow fused into one amorphous mass and started popping up like ghosts on computers around the world. Kids would be surfing the Internet and suddenly this screaming, tortured soul would appear on the screen. They had to shut down the program completely.
The full story didn’t emerge fully until years afterwards, and MEvolution sued anyone who propagated the story. Might have slowed down the Exodus a bit if people had known what could really go wrong with the system at that point.”

  Oriente grimaced. “And Fitch?”

  Swaincroft looked at the floor, almost apologetic now.

  “He had been diagnosed with cancer of the lung and esophagus. They say he tried to insert himself into the doomed Port au Prince experiment before the risks were fully appreciated.”

  There was a long silence, before Oriente shook his head and rubbed his face. “The ghost in the machine,” he said, as though remembering something. Still staring at the screen, he asked, “You have any of that in your archive?”

  “Unfortunately that was never captured on film,” said Swaincroft. “Or if it was, the government and MEvolution stashed it away somewhere well beyond the reach of lowly academics like myself. Officially, it never happened. Old wives tale. No one I know of has ever seen it.”

  “Maybe not so unfortunate,” said Oriente. Swaincroft stared sheepishly at the floor, realizing his academic enthusiasm had outstripped his human sympathy.

  “Do you have footage of the actual funeral service?” said Oriente.

  “Sure. Let me see.” Swaincroft leafed his notes, the scrolled the slides forwards. A picture of an open casket flashed up, and Oriente found himself staring at the familiar face, gaunter even in death than it had been in life, cushioned in the coffin's silk lining. The hunter leant close and took a deep breath.

  “Yes, that’s him alright.”

  Swaincroft nodded. “That is indeed him. So…I don’t know who or what your wolf was, but I very much doubt it was Douglas Fitch.”

  ***