by LEMPEREUR
“How are you, Charlie? I was worried about you.”
From the very first words, he recognized the old man’s voice. He could not see him yet, but the tone he used seemed friendlier, less domineering than during their previous encounters. He would have liked to get up and join him at the table but could not manage that yet. He had only just regained control of his thoughts; his will was not yet strong enough to command physical movement. His body ignored him. It remained deaf to his commands. Concentrating again, he thought he managed to move a finger on his right hand, but the scope of the movement was so small that he could not be certain. Perhaps it was only an illusion. Words would not come out of his mouth either, so he was unable to respond to Victor, who continued the conversation on his own.
“I thought you weren’t going to make it, you know. That surge was violent. It seems that your brain was not able to cope with the effects of convergence.”
Then the silence returned. Charlie perceived sound with unusual sharpness. He could hear quite clearly the old man swallowing his tea. He also heard the metallic sound of the biscuit tin being opened. It probably contained the delicious orange zest biscuits they had eaten together. Then came the sound of a soft crunch, followed by regular, conscientious chewing, of which he could hear every minute detail.
“I think you call it epilepsy; a disorder which we also know, but we have learned to limit its effects. I noticed when the first signs began. As for me, the metabolic decompensation was only partial, thankfully, but I couldn’t do anything to help you. Believe me; I’m very sorry, Charlie. I had to protect myself to avoid the seizure becoming too severe. I’m not sure you would have survived total decompensation of both our brains. Even if you had survived, the intensity of such an electrical surge would probably have erased your memory, which is something I want to avoid at all costs. Do you understand? In a way, you could say that I just saved your life, but it’s the very least I owed you.”
Charlie began to move his jaw slightly and could now flex all his fingers. The old man fell silent again and swallowed another mouthful of tea before placing his cup delicately on its saucer.
“Come along, Charlie. These biscuits are delicious. I’ve left some for you. I know you love them.”
“I’m not sure if the effects of convergence were the only cause of the seizure,” said Charlie, who had summoned all his strength to respond.
“Ah! It’s about time you woke up!”
“Yes, I’m back, but I’m not sure whether I should thank you for that yet.”
He struggled to his feet as he spoke and came to join Victor at the table. Without a word, the old man smiled and gestured for him to sit on the chair he had already pulled out for him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, calmly.
“Just before passing out, I saw a large part of my life flash before my eyes.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“What surprises me is that a lot of the images and memories were not my own. How do you explain that, Victor?”
The old man took time to think before replying. His smile had faded slightly, but he did not seem overly concerned by the question.
“You know, my friend, I am not omniscient. That is precisely why I needed your help. However, you are undoubtedly right; convergence was probably not the only cause of the seizure. When Emma asked us if I was ready to follow her and Senec, it was like an electric shock to me. I had such an intense feeling of guilt and then a whole raft of memories came flooding back which I couldn’t control. And it wasn’t only memories that came back.”
“They weren’t simply memories! The surge of emotion they brought was violent! I suppose that’s the very reason you buried them.”
“You’re not wrong, Charlie. I didn’t have the courage to join them in their adventure. And yet I loved Emma deeply. I have always loved her, but she was my cousin so it was not allowed.”
“I thought that it wasn’t a true memory. I thought it was only a virtual experience that we were building together – a sort of waking dream that allowed us to look into the deepest parts of your memory. Isn’t that what you told me, Victor? I didn’t dream that too, did I?”
“That is effectively what happened, Charlie. The experience you just had never existed, except in both our minds at the moment when convergence made the two of us one and the same person.”
“But how did you memorize the information used in that dream, then? Have you ever even been to the space center?”
“Emma and I maintained a relationship by correspondence after she went away to study in Irignia. After a long period without any news from her she suddenly began to write letters which came to me covertly, through one of one of her friends. She knew her mail would be monitored by the Council, as was the case for all personnel working at the space center. She was in the habit of confiding in me, but her last three letters were of quite a different nature. She gave me all the details of the project she and Senec were working on and asked me to join them as soon as possible.”
“And you never did.”
“No, I didn’t even answer her.”
For the first time, a tear flowed out of each of his large, gray eyes. This new fragility made a poignant figure of the old man from the mists of time. Charlie knew that he was only an image, a symbol of the true Victor; the colossus that lay alongside him in the great hall of domes. Even so, he wanted to take him in his arms and console him, as he would have done an old friend on the verge of breaking down and confiding his pain to a lifelong companion. He had only known him for a few weeks, but convergence had united them forever; maybe not as Jacques and Charlie were united, but in another way; a way that was both virtual and quite real. It was the union of two minds, two fundamentally different lives; an unnatural union whose full extent they probably had not yet measured. Charlie would never be the same again. Victor would always be a part of him and he sensed that, even though he was not fully conscious of it. Even so, he could not quite bring himself to touch him, and settled instead for looking at him with a face full of compassion.
“Why not?” asked Charlie.
“I don’t know. I think I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of everything; afraid of the Council, especially afraid of dying. I didn’t have it in me. I was afraid Emma would see that. I would have had to face up to her and my brother. And then there was my wife. I didn’t want to take the risk.”
“You didn’t believe in their project.”
“The Council had been conditioning us daily for several years to believe that there was no viable alternative to choosing one of the two solutions they offered. Senec and Emma’s project was so complex it seemed almost utopian to me. What’s more, there was a real risk that the Council would hinder its development or even derail it and punish the culprits, of which I would have been one.”
“And yet, in the first memory, you seemed to say that you had complete confidence in Senec. You said he wanted you to know about the failings of the Exodus project so you could make the information public. At that point, you said that you had decided to stay behind with him, too. Senec himself seemed to think that the hibernation bases were a good alternative to the Exodus project, and unless I’m mistaken, at the time he was already working on the development of an independent waking system to compensate for the risk of the Exodus mission’s failure. If he had actually managed to get his programmed waking device to work, I would have understood your decision to stay with him on one of the hibernation bases; but apparently he set off on another track, so why such an irrational choice?”
“The choice wasn’t totally irrational. Senec actually did set up a waking device, using a computer program implanted in the whole operating system for the hibernation bases. If you are here talking with me today, Charlie, it’s because it has functioned successfully.”
“Millions of years later! Why wait so long?”
“That, I don’t know. Nor do I know what the criteria are for its
activation, or what its source is. But what I do know, thanks to you Charlie, is that Senec and Emma probably made it possible for a whole section of the population to continue evolving, somewhere in a city called Australopolis. They must have died a long time ago, but it is possible that a part of them lives on in each one of you, unless they didn’t survive or they never managed to escape their underground city.”
Listening to him, Charlie understood what he meant when he mentioned the possibility of a part of his brother living on in each of them. He could not help thinking back to the day when he had come into contact with Victor for the first time, or rather, with his body. He had felt uncomfortable faced with a physical form at once so gigantic and yet so profoundly similar to that of a human. Victor was alluding to the possibility that a branch of his species had managed to survive on Earth and continue evolving over millions of years until it finally became Man. That called into question everything he had always been taught about the origin of the human species, but the evidence was right there and was not going to go away. Perhaps that evolution had been made possible because of the XK207 project’s success and because of Australopolis, even if there was no concrete evidence yet. Neither he nor Victor could know for sure, but a common intuition was leading them in that direction.
“Forgive me, Victor; I’m not sure if I should tell you this. I sincerely hope it’s not news to you, but I think you are alone here. According to what I’ve been told, you are the only N.H.I. who’s been found on this base. What happened? Do you know?”
“Are you sure?” he asked, without showing any sign of surprise.
“Well, that’s what Giuseppe has led us to believe, in any case. You know, my brother and I were brought here just a few weeks ago and we only know what we’ve been told. You don’t seem very surprised. Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right, Charlie, and yet I know that there were nearly 5,000 of us hibernating on this base.”
Charlie remained silent, not understanding where this was leading. A moment ago he had been worried Victor would break down, but his reaction was nothing of the sort, although the idea of losing his wife and possibly being the sole survivor of his kind should have overwhelmed him. After a brief pause, Victor continued his explanation.
“Each dome is designed to keep one individual in hibernation at a time. Before entering this one, I was personally present while my wife was put to sleep in Sector 24. One of the former connection candidates was a technician who had worked on fitting out this base. His name is Elias Conti, if I remember correctly. As I told you, no one but you has truly entered into contact with me. However, I have been free to explore their minds while they wandered, lost in their own dreams. That is how I obtained the information about what really happened when this base was colonized by humans. I think, my friend, that Giuseppe has not told you the whole truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you that prior our first conversation; you had only been wandering in the corridors of your own mind, without ever really entering into contact with me. If you remember our conversation correctly, I added “apart from certain details”. What I meant by that, was that certain details of your dream did not come directly from your own memories or imagination. I voluntarily allowed those details to filter through, as I had done with each of the other humans who tried to infiltrate my mind – except that none of the others before you was able to identify them, but you did! You seemed very different. Your mind clearly distinguished between what came from you and what didn’t. You seemed accustomed to living in duality. You noticed those foreign elements immediately and wanted to know more about them.”
“The map!” exclaimed Charlie. “You’re talking about the symbols that I found in the endless tunnel, under a layer of lichen.”
“Yes, Charlie,” he answered calmly.
“The map showed symbols that I didn’t understand, but when I stepped back to look at them, I had the feeling it was a map of the base. I also remember being intrigued by the appearance of constructions that I didn’t recognize, as if there had been wings which no longer exist today.”
“Which no longer exist, or which it was deemed unnecessary to tell you about”, Victor pointed out.
“You think that Giuseppe may have deliberately concealed the existence of a whole section of the base? But why would he do that?”
Charlie was questioning Victor, but deep down inside, he was not really surprised. He had already suspected as much, when studying the map. And the last conversation with Jacques had only served to reinforce the suspicions he had about Francisco and Giuseppe especially. Of course, Francisco was incapable of lying. At least, it seemed doubtful that his personality would be capable of such a thing; but maybe he could omit certain details if he was asked to.
“Those wings do still exist, but access to them has been kept secret. Elias knew that. He had worked on building the containment wall that divides this cavern into two parts. Unfortunately, you may not be able to count on his help to find the other zone – the “no-go zone”, as they call it. I have no idea what has become of him since the connection. My source of information is limited to what those of you who have visited me know. Neither do I know what sort of mental state he is in today. He seemed to be deeply affected by the experience and failed to cope. His anxiety quickly got the better of him, filling the virtual reality I left him in with a number of elements stemming from his own fears. He was unable to leave the connection of his own volition. The departure was too brutal for him not to bear significant scars today – if he’s still alive.”
These words sent chills down Charlie’s spine. What would happen when he was separated from Victor? They had only been in the connection together for a few weeks and yet it seemed to him that the experiences he had been through here made up a large portion of his life. The passage of time – or at least his perception of it – seemed completely distended. To begin with, it was a while since he had been subjected to a cycle of alternating periods of sleeping and waking. Even his internal clock seemed to have been disconnected, so that only physical and emotional exhaustion had sometimes allowed him to experience the impression of sleep. Just as the sleeper does not know how long he has been asleep, he had no idea how long he had been deprived of sleep. Should he even think of things in those terms anyway? Francisco had warned him that he would neither be asleep nor truly awake for the duration of the connection.
“You’re worried about yourself, Charlie. You’re thinking that you may have reason to fear the effects of our separation. Our experiences together will certainly have rearranged your mind. I must admit, several times I was afraid I’d lost you, but you survived and now nothing will ever be the same again – for you or for me. When you return to your reality, when your senses fill your mind with a flood of familiar information and sensations, you will know how to get things in perspective. I’m sure of it. You were never alone, Charlie, and you never will be. A large part of what I know, and my way of thinking about that knowledge, is inscribed in you forever. In a way, I will continue to guide you on your quest, even after we are separated.”
Charlie understood just what Victor meant. He had always lived in symbiosis with his brother. He had never had his own world all to himself – he could not even imagine what that meant. In the end, this experience with Victor had not been so very different to the way he had always lived. Of course, his communion with Jacques was not of the same sort, but recently telepathy had brought them even closer – if that were possible – a sort of convergence of their minds and bodies, imposed on them by nature. What is more, he and Jacques had always shared the same daily life; the same experiences. They had been around the same people, confronted by their attitudes, since infancy. The resulting suffering did not need to be discussed specifically in order for each of them to know what the other felt. In a way, they had always been the ideal candidates for the connection and somehow Francisco had seen that before anyone else.
“Am I to understand that the
time has come for us to part, Victor?”
“I’m afraid so, Charlie. It’s not that we have nothing more to learn from each other. On the contrary; I’m pleased to have met you and would have liked to take the experience further, but I’m afraid your body may not stand the effects of convergence or lack of sleep for much longer.”
“So that was the help you needed. You wanted to know what had happened to your brother. It’s strange, but I feel I haven’t contributed much at all. You could probably have found it out for yourself. All the information was there, buried in your memory. One day or other you would have become aware of it. You didn’t really need me for that. I guess the fact that you have been sleeping for an eternity could have prevented you from searching your memory efficiently, but your gradual increase in wakefulness would no doubt have allowed you to access them.”
“That’s possible, but it’s not the only thing I wanted from you, Charlie.”
“You want me to find your wife, don’t you?”
“Yes, Charlie. Right now that’s all I expect of you, even though I’m not sure you have enough influence to ensure that nothing will endanger her life. Despite the fact that my size and mental abilities are far superior to yours, it’s obvious that I am powerless to help her. I have no choice but to leave her fate in your hands. I only hope I’m not mistaken and that I can count on you?”