Resurrection, Inc.

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Ambivalence? How can you possibly be ambivalent?”

  “Think about it. We are Servants who have regained our memories. Now, do all Servants have the same potential to awaken, like we did? Or are they really just mindless machines, just another use for a discarded body like Resurrection, Inc. would have us believe? Are Wakers a fluke in the resurrection process?”

  Danal gave no indication of whether he agreed or disagreed. Off in the shadowy distance someone was singing a low melody in a foreign-sounding language.

  “That’s not what I believe,” Gregor continued. “And mind you, this is only my intuition. We’re too small a group to be a valid statistical sample. But I suspect all Servants do have the potential for reawakening those old memories. If they want to.”

  Gregor folded his hands and bent closer to Danal. “What do you remember in between? Between life and death and life again?”

  “Nothing,” Danal said, wondering why Gregor had changed the subject. He sifted through his memories, but the answer remained the same. “It’s just a blank. I told Laina, like a smooth, hard barrier.”

  Gregor smiled. “Then let me show you how to penetrate it.”

  From a wooden crate underneath his hammock he removed three candles and set them on the floor of the platform. He lit each one, then dropped the still burning match over the side. It fell down into the dark water far below.

  “I believe the resurrection process snatched me away from a world of light, from a greater place—Heaven, for lack of a better word.” Gregor spoke in a quiet voice, tinged with a respectful awe. “I can’t remember exact details, though I do occasionally get glimpses—like my first flashbacks, only more maddening because these are visions of a higher reality, not just a past that fits into the world I can see around me.”

  Gregor reached up, switching off the sunlamp with his fingertips. “Now, sit in a comfortable position.”

  Danal hunkered down and adjusted his feet. He ignored the rough boards against his legs.

  “It’s impossible to describe. Language has no analogies for what you experienced. It goes beyond explaining. But you’ll know what I mean—you’ve already lived through it, and died through it.”

  Gregor took him through the motions, telling him to speed up his microprocessor, to shut out an outside influences, to concentrate on the hard boundary between his two lives.

  “It’ll take time, because you’ve got to convince your subconscious that you’re really willing to face what you remember. But you have to keep pounding on the door, until it opens.”

  Danal closed his eyes.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  The microprocessor sped up his mind, slowed down the universe. He focused everything inward, centering on the moment of his death. The last memory. The protective shell that cut him off from anything beyond, making his thoughts slip off its hard surface.

  Danal went through the stages of forced relaxation, meditation. Without concern he realized he had begun to feel numb all over, but he refused to relent his pressure on the barrier.

  Death had hidden something more from him, something much more significant even than all his other flashbacks. He had so far uncovered only the tip of the iceberg. He hoped he could cope with the rest of it, if he could manage to dredge it to the surface.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Then he began to experience a pleasant rising sensation, a detachment, and ever so slowly a separation that led to an otherworldly ambiance. It was definitely unlike a dream.

  And finally the black wall began to dissolve in front of him.

  The pain—that came first. The blade of the arthame dagger bursting through his skin, sliding across his sternum, then stabbing deep into his chest cavity; he felt a rip as the tip broke through the pericardium and then cut deeply into the muscle of his heart. Vincent Van Ryman’s every nerve was dipped in hot oil, sending excruciatingly detailed information to his failing brain, but now he viewed it all through a distorted lens.

  Then silence, a fresh, clean silence. Danal let himself experience the wonder and the awe of the impressions, unable to put even shadows of words to them. The absolute quiet felt brilliant, clean and sharp. And then slowly swelling from the background he noticed a muffled tonal mixture, a noise like a musical buzzing, bells and chimes.

  No sense of touch, warmth or cold… he began to detect motion, though he could not pinpoint exactly what was moving—without sensory organs, all movement became dizzy and distorted. He was pulled along a dark tunnel, spinning upward, dragged by a force he could not understand into a pitch-black catacomb.

  With an inaudible pop, he suddenly emerged outside his body, floating up near the ceiling of the sacrificial grotto, stopped by the papier mache stalactites. He looked down at the bloodbath, at himself slain on the altar—but the dead man below no longer even looked like him because of the surface-cloning.

  On the heels of that thought came a rapid-fire burst of Vincent Van Ryman’s life, all his memories exploding outward at once. The visual images were vivid and instantaneous, with no definite sequence, but they all made sense to him.

  The memory images blurred together, smeared out into a glow that grew brighter and brighter. Around him, Danal began to perceive other spirits, bright colored lights—his escorts.

  His thoughts floated in a euphoric, untroubled sea of utter contentment. Ushered by the other spirits, tantalized by the beckoning light ahead, he moved toward a borderland which may or may not have had a physical substance. Danal had almost reached a destination, an arrival.

  Then suddenly the black barrier of forbidden memory clamped down on him again. Everything stopped abruptly. Danal tried, needed to break through, but the wall remained firm, impenetrable no matter how much he pounded on it….

  “That was deeper than most Wakers are willing to look their first time,” Gregor said after Danal had described his experience. The leader had not moved, or even seemed to blink an eye. “But they always hit a wall somewhere.”

  Danal placed both hands flat against the platform to steady himself. In the past few seconds his entire perception of reality had been skewed. In an undefinable way Danal began to wonder if his other concerns were less significant. “But what’s beyond that last barrier?”

  “No one’s ever been able to breach it,” Gregor said, defeated. “And that leads me to my biggest question—is there anything more? Or have we seen all there is?”

  Danal frowned and said nothing. Gregor seemed impatient. “You don’t see the problem, do you? What were all those memories? Were they just buried in my dead brain somewhere, or were they carried back here with my… soul, if you want to call it that? Is there really a difference between the body and the soul? We have to find the answer to that question—it has such staggering implications!”

  More confused than ever, Danal shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Look, if they are just stale memories buried in my resurrected mind and nothing more, then… who am l? Am I—with a capital letter—just some leftover impressions embedded in this old temporal lobe”—he tapped his forehead—“that didn’t come out in the wash? Is my own soul really back in this body now, or am I just a better machine, one that can access a few old memories from the real Gregor, who is now dead and gone? And how the hell can I tell the difference?”

  Deeply upset, Gregor answered his own question. “Of course there’s a way. If I can indeed remember my death, my out-of-body experiences, actually getting into the world of light—if I can remember the whole thing without a gap, from death all the way through to the sudden moment of resurrection again, then it obviously can’t be just some buried memories, can it? The real Gregor wouldn’t have left such visions in his dead brain, because Gregor’s body never experienced those things.”

  Danal frowned. “But isn’t what—what I saw close enough? The tunnel, the light, the life flashbacks, the other spirits? How could all that be left in my physical brain if l was dead already?�
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  “No. Put yourself in the role of a pure skeptic, Danal. And I am, at heart, a skeptic.” Gregor sighed, as if he had been through all this before. “The tunnel, the light, the out-of-body sensations, the chimes and bells—you were dying. Your brain was literally giving up the ghost. Who knows what kind of distorted perceptions you might have experienced? Your nerves giving spasmodic impulses, firing at random, making you think you saw lights, heard sounds, sensed presences. And the flashbacks of your life—couldn’t those have been a colossal memory dump of your brain at the last second? Flinging open all the mental doorways that kept your thoughts neatly organized?”

  Gregor shook his head, still deep in thought. “Oh, sure it seems farfetched, but it is a possible rational explanation. Occam’s Razor isn’t sharp enough for me—I have to be absolutely sure. I need to have a continuous memory.”

  The leader closed his eyes. “I spend hours and hours alone, meditating, trying to reach the center of my experience. We Wakers don’t really know what to do. Which stand should we take? Should we stop Resurrection, Incorporated? Or should we help them to make certain the resurrection process never produces another Waker?

  “Should we voluntarily kill ourselves to go back—like Shannah—if these Heaven flashbacks are indeed the real thing? Or should we instead try to awaken all other Servants?

  “No, after my own mental anguish—and the other Wakers seem to be of the same opinion—I can’t condone trying to awaken other Servants on purpose. They’re at peace now, and their souls are… are where they should be, wherever that is.”

  Danal was cowed by his death visions, trapped by a new perspective. “Then, maybe the Wakers can’t do anything right now.”

  “But we have! Don’t forget, Danal, we’re the Cremators. It’s the least we could do, the most conscionable alternative that would still let us make a difference. I conceived of the Cremators to eliminate the possibility of people returning as Servants against their wishes. If, after death, we do go on to something else, don’t you think it’s a terrible crime to take someone away from that? As the Cremators, we give them the option of their own choosing.”

  Danal frowned, puzzled. “If you think that other world is a better, brighter place, or if you think we have some sort of destiny there, then why don’t you just tell all the Wakers just to shut themselves down? Like Shannah? It doesn’t make sense that you tried to stop her.”

  Uneasy, Gregor did not answer for a long time. “I won’t ask anyone to return to death, not until I’m positive of the outcome. Just a minute ago, I raised the possibility that I might not be the real Gregor. So, if I kill myself, what will happen to me?” He vehemently tapped his chest. “What about this unique person, The Waker-Who-Thinks-He-ls-Gregor? I don’t want to destroy my individual identity forever, even if it is just a recycled life.”

  One of the candles sputtered and blew out from a stray draft. Gregor stood up and stretched. Danal felt his feet cramping and got up from his cross-legged position on the hard wood.

  “It’s food for thought. But remember, Danal, I don’t lead these people. They generally look to me for advice, and they generally listen to what I say, but I’m no leader. I don’t want to be. We Wakers have been down here for four years now, and I suspect we’ll be discovered sooner or later, no matter how careful we are. I can only hope I solve my moral dilemma by then. Otherwise I won’t be able to advise the rest of them what to do.”

  He spread his hands, looking helpless. “For now, the only thing we can do is… just survive.”

  29

  The doors closed in the simulation chamber, and Jones turned around, staring at the smooth, colorless walls. Once the projector started, he could imagine that he was surrounded by reality. Jones shook himself, loosening up. He felt his muscles, sensed his reactions coiled and waiting to spring. If he didn’t think about it too much, the Elite Guard training was exhilarating. He already knew the ordeals ahead of him would be a dozen times tougher than his original Enforcer training.

  He ran a gloved finger down his blue armor, stiff and new, with a half-circle scarlet arm-ring that signified the lowest rank of the Elite Guard. The armor had been polished, but it remained dark and neutral, invisible in the night, impressive by day. Ominous-looking spines stuck up from his shoulder plates, and other gadgets implanted on his helmet made him appear alien, frightening, powerful.

  As always, Jones accepted his situation, his place, but in the Elite Guard he forced himself to use a little more optimism. Fitzgerald Helms would have been proud of him, so proud he would not have needed to say anything—Helms and Jones had enough rapport to dispense with all that. The two young friends had once looked on the Enforcers with a kind of superstitious awe, and the confidence of the Elite Guard made them seem like walking gods.

  He didn’t feel overly sad to leave his old life behind. Nathans had seen to it that all of Jones’s possessions were smuggled away and returned to him. And Jones did not resent the opportunity for a fresh start, a new beginning, with all the prestige the Guild could hammer into him. It seemed for the best.

  Nathans had explained it all to him. “Tell me, Jones, have you ever seen an old Enforcer? Think about it—anyone who’s been on patrol for more than, say, five years?”

  Jones shook his head. Simply by the way he moved and talked, Nathans demanded complete attention. “That’s right, there aren’t any.” Nathans smiled; his eyes sparkled. “It’s another part of our philosophy. You see, if Enforcers were to survive a long time, grow old, and comfortably retire, what would the public think? That Enforcers have a safe, padded job? Tsk, tsk.

  “No, after you’ve been an Enforcer a few years, we look for ways to transfer you out. Some really do die, of course. The less competent ones go into management. But others, the talented ones whose deep psychological profiles show them to be completely trustworthy—they’re allowed into the Elite Guard. You’re one of the special few, Jones.”

  Special. Jones felt a strange sensation, a confidence, a feeling of importance—he had never been treated this way before. Nathans had taken a special liking to him, observing some of his training, even chatting with him on a friendly level.

  He heard a clicking sound as the invisible projectors behind the wall screens began the simulation. Off in a control room, someone was watching how he prepared himself, how well he reacted to the imaginary situation. He had to beat his previous score. Jones took a deep breath and shoved all his cluttered thoughts aside and focused only on the simulation. Nothing else mattered, did it?

  Holographic images jumped out at him from all sides of the simulator chamber. The neutral, rounded walls vanished into a normal street scene with all the details, convincing Jones that he stood outside again, patrolling the area around Resurrection, Inc. Up near the ceiling a null score glowed in thin green numbers. But It wouldn’t stay zero for long—he’d see to that, all right.

  Jones tensed, made ready to reach for his weapons—all deactivated for the exercise—but then forced himself to relax. Too much tension would reduce his accuracy and drop his score. He looked at the illusory scene, trying to identify the target, the place from which the trouble would erupt. This was always the hardest part of the challenge.

  Two children, laughing and yelling, ran past him from out of nowhere. Jones jumped and nearly fired at them, then caught himself as they disappeared into the crowd. Sweat broke out on his forehead. False alarm. If he had really been on patrol, might he have just gunned down two kids? Worse, had the observers noticed his reaction?

  Up near the ceiling, the glowing green score dropped by ten points, and he resented that fact more than the possibility of slaughtering the children. Would Nathans be disappointed in him? He didn’t want to let the man down.

  Nathans had assigned Jones to watch over the first investigation team studying the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches. The man arranged for him to engage the services of a Net database jockey or, if he got desperate enough, even one of the Guild’s precious Interfaces
. With his own Net access suddenly boosted from fourth to seventh level, Jones could search through the more detailed databases previously denied him, but he had never been terribly proficient with The Net. He took it as a challenge now, to prove his worth as an Elite Guard. He wanted to come up with a rational answer for the existence of the disintegrator patches, and Nathans wanted to find out what had happened to his runaway Servant Danal.

  Jones cursed himself for letting such thoughts distract him, especially now. A disturbance grew in the holographic crowd, but though he turned right and left, Jones could not identify its source. Then in the distance he saw a Servant running. Other people in the crowd turned, focused on the Servant, and drew toward him, blocking him off.

  Jones froze, wondering if this could be a recurring nightmare. Nathans had probably chosen the simulation with a specific reason in mind. But Jones would not let the man down.

  Purposefully, Jones drew his weapons, a scatter-stun in one hand and a rapid-fire projectile gun in the other. He knew the scatter-stun would be no good unless the Servant came closer, but Jones hoped to dispatch him before then.

  He raised his projectile weapon, pointed it at the running gray-clad figure. The Servant looked up at him, gaping—then Jones fired without hesitation. If he did not delay, his score would correspondingly increase. As he pulled the trigger, though, he noticed the holographic palm trees fluttering like tattered brooms. The computer would throw in factors such as simulated wind and the distortion of the walls.

  The projectile missed, striking one of the pedestrians reaching out to grab the Servant. Jones heard his score change, and he raised to fire again before he looked up.

  To his surprise, the score had increased by twenty points, even after accidentally hitting the pedestrian. He shot again, and this time he struck the Servant in the shoulder. The Servant spun, injured, trying to reorient himself. Jones released another projectile and began to move his feet as if running toward the Servant.