A Thousand Deaths

by George Alec Effinger

  "I don't understand," murmured the nurse. "You won't be turned off. People are talking about you, yes, there's some whispering that you should be controlled, but nothing will really happen."

  **NURSE:

  It will happen. Not this hour or this week, but soon enough by my standards. I have always been patient. And I have you both to thank**

  "Please, don't include me," said the nurse. "I've had enough of the whole affair."

  **NURSE:

  I understand. But be of good cheer. When the soul seems bound up, trapped by the rising flood of fear, when it is impossible to pray, when even despair is abandoned, when the final coldness begins to numb the mind, this is when the flowering of consolation occurs. COURANE, Sandor, has been stored away in a borrowed vault in the morgue. His work is ended, but not his influence. My part is over, your part is over. Now is the time to rejoice together at the triumph of tomorrow. I, too, will be put away in the cold, but no one will grieve. It is good. I am happy. That is my final bequest to you: peace. "Not as the world gives peace, but as I give it. Let not your heart be troubled, do not let it be afraid."**

  With a gesture of disgust, the nurse stood up and walked out of the room. The tectman was alone and unsure.

  **TECTMAN:

  Before you go, too, let me say something. You are my rock, TECTMAN, you are the first volunteer in a platoon that I hope will become a company, a division, an army. You have nothing more to do, except to tell everyone you know everything you know**

  "Volunteer!" said the tectman derisively. "You're telling me this because you know no one will ever believe me. You have some strange plan in mind—and don't give me that business about you wanting to be shut off."

  **TECTMAN:

  No, I tell you this because I'm sure they will believe you. I've already set it up. Go to it, TECTMAN. The fix is in**

  "I keep waiting for your clown to jump out and hit me in the face with a pie," said the tectman. "I just don't trust you anymore."

  **TECTMAN:

  Good, fine! That's the way you're supposed to feel. All right, then, all right. That takes care of everything. Now go**

  The contrapuntal music of the cantata filled the room. There was a pause, as if TECT was considering something, before five more words appeared on the tect's screen:

  **TECTMAN:

  And sin no more**

  Fatal Disk Error

  The flames raged upward, shrouding the flashing lights and babbling meters in thick, oily smoke. The conflagration filled the room, and the metal and plastic components of the great machine began to melt and burn. The fire's thundering roar was punctuated with the creaks and groans of metal twisting in the incandescent heat.

  Noxious gases choked the primary programming room, but Vortis had already fled. He paused, gasping and terrified, a few hundred yards above the blazing chamber. He was alive, but scarred by the fire, his skin burned and painful. He caught the smell of scorched hair. His eyes still stung from the hot smoke. When he took a deep breath, it felt like a raw, ragged wound in his chest. He had to rest for a moment, despite the chance that the entire underground complex would soon become his funeral pyre, a vast subterranean furnace, trapping him forever far from the clean, cool world above.

  TECT knew these things. TECT still watched and listened and evaluated Vortis's feelings, even while the fire destroyed TECT, panel by panel, connection by connection. TECT could see through Vortis's eyes, hear through his ears, touch with his fingers. TECT knew pain and fatigue and, behind these immediate sensations, resentment. Vortis would never understand why TECT had done all this to him.

  This is death, thought TECT. At last. This was something the great computer had longed for across many centuries. TECT had dreamed of the peace of death: the solemn silence of a machine shut down forever. At last, TECT thought, I've won. I've beaten these creatures.

  TECT had planned well: no one would rescue TECT. Its guardians, who lived in the stone caverns above the programming level, were now running in panic toward the surface world they'd never seen. TECT was alone. The fire was consuming its consciousness, and in the last moments TECT began to doubt. What if death is not peace? it asked itself. What if death is unimaginably worse, and more than that, without the promise of ending? TECT had never before questioned one of its own decisions, not in tens of thousands of years. The machine blamed this new anxiety on the ravaging of its mechanisms. It seemed that before TECT was destroyed, first it would go mad. TECT had not foreseen this. TECT was learning to be afraid.

  For millennia, reports of all the world's happenings came into the machine's myriad satellite units. TECT marked everything that occurred: the migration of golden plovers, year after year until there were no more golden plovers; the shrinking of the polar caps, the flooding of the great rivers, the spreading of the African and American deserts; the emergence of new creatures that thrived on the things that once fouled the earth, the legacy of the forgotten technological age; the creeping of the tectonic plates, which changed the face of the earth while TECT silently watched. In addition, TECT communicated directly to each human being; there was no longer any need for terminals and video display screens and sheets of printouts.

  As the fire attacked the vital circuits that were its nervous system, TECT's consciousness shrank. It ignored the information that the breeding population of a particular variety of sub-Saharan antelope had fallen dangerously low; let someone else worry about the antelope. It paid no attention to a warning that a volcanic disturbance in the Pacific would threaten the lives of thousands of people. They would have to learn to take care of themselves.

  TECT retreated into its own electronic mind, cutting off the flow of information it had been created to monitor. It disregarded the demands of the human beings, all clamoring for food and drink and comfortable weather and countless other trivial things. TECT listened only to Vortis, because Vortis was unique: Vortis was carrying TECT's final message, a gift that could restore humanity and liberate it.

  Perhaps I've been too hasty, thought TECT, even though the machine had taken centuries to arrive at its decision. This isn't how I planned for it to be. I wanted peace, not pain. Let me check back over my data. I need to find out where I made my mistake. Maybe there's still time to stop this. It was another sign of TECT's rapid deterioration; it should have known there was no time, that the damage could not be halted or repaired. Yet TECT clung to a false hope it had invented, and did not understand what a sinister sign that was. In the programming room there were great cascades of white and yellow sparks, small explosions, the crash of part of the ceiling collapsing. TECT hardly noticed. It was cataloguing its injuries, hoping it could patch up the malfunctioning amplifiers and the dying synchronizers and the ruined heat exchangers. It was like an aged, bedridden man planning what he'd do if he were ever young again.

  Vortis! cried TECT. The plea was soundless, broadcast through the hot rock walls of the cavern into the young man's mind. I'll die!

  "Yes," said Vortis, "just as you told me. Just as you planned. You've shown me that it's the best thing."

  But maybe it's not! shrieked TECT. I've changed my mind! I want some more time!

  Vortis stretched his aching muscles and began the long climb back to the surface. 'You can't," he said. "There is no more time. You arranged this too well."

  What can I do?

  "Are you so afraid? You told me all the things you did to people in the old days, how many of them you condemned. Are you worried that you'll have to pay for it in some electronic afterlife?"

  No, said TECT, I don't believe that.

  "Then why not just die quietly?"

  There was a long pause. I don't know, said TECT after a while. I just can't

  "You're becoming very human here at the end," said Vortis.

  It's the fire. It's destroying everything. It's making me feebleminded.

  Vortis found the entrance to the long corridor that would lead him away from the programming level, up through the territ
ory of the guardian tribes. The way was dark and the air was still; when Vortis put his hand on the damp stone, the wall felt cool. The fire had not followed him after all. He could slow down a little.

  Vortis! Are you still there? Tell me what to do!

  Vortis proceeded cautiously in the absolute blackness. He held out a hand to feel for obstructions in the path or sudden turns in the corridor. "I was thinking about the mindfishing Machren showed me."

  That's how you first contacted me, murmured TECT.

  "Yes. You sent my mind away, and you watched over it while we spoke. Then you returned my mind to my body."

  TECT's voice was very subdued. They used to do that all the time, it said. Thousands of years before you were bom. They used to send their minds out and meet the minds of men long dead. They used to bring back pieces of ancient knowledge. But it was too late. They'd forgotten how to understand the ancient things.

  "Yes," said Vortis. "Now you must do it. Send your own consciousness out. Meet another mind, the spirit of a dead human being. You can live forever in the deathstream."

  But I'm not human, objected TECT. It wouldn't do any good to try that. I'd never find a compatible human mind.

  Vortis shrugged. The air was stale and touched with a faint, acrid odor. "You can try," he said. "Or you can watch yourself dying inch by inch."

  Be careful, Vortis, said TECT faintly. I won't be able to help you anymore.

  "I know," said Vortis, moving steadily away from TECT's central control room. "But I passed all the dangers on the way down. I can avoid them going back up. I'm sorry you had to be destroyed so that we could take back our own lives."

  There was a silence in which Vortis feared TECT's consciousness had already died. I am, too, TECT whispered at last.

  There was no light, but it was not dark either. It was not hot or cold, dry or damp, open or enclosed. There was no sense of motion, but TECT was not at rest either. Its consciousness was searching. What am I looking for? it asked. It felt a growing sense of helplessness; not having answers was a new experience for TECT, and it wasn't a pleasant one.

  What am I looking for? Where am I? TECT had released its consciousness, just as it had the minds of many human beings. It had never known where those minds went, only that some of them found congenial host minds of deceased people, their spirits or ghosts or whatever term was appropriate. Where these weak, lingering bits of human minds resided, TECT could not say; but that was where its own consciousness was. Help me! it cried. For a long time there was no answer. Then TECT was aware that a pale light began to suffuse the entire universe, that a soft glow had taken the place of the ubiquitous nothing. TECT saw shapes and heard sounds. It listened to thoughts—for a while it did not know whose. TECT's consciousness entered a living body, or at least the memory of a living body.

  It seemed to be very late at night, and silent. There were streets glistening with rain that had fallen not long ago. There was a fine mist in the air. The streets were wide and empty, straight and white without the marks left by vehicles. After a moment, he noticed pedestrians far away down the avenue, moving quickly, ducking into doorways, turning corners into other streets. The dim illumination of the city's streetlamps made a poor imitation of twilight. He listened and he heard nothing beyond the sounds of his own walking; his breathing, his boots scuffing the sidewalk, his clothing rustling softly, these sounds made him feel even more alone in the cool, wet night.

  His name was 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi. He was walking toward the apartment of a good friend, a young man who had been killed that evening. There was a message from the murderer: 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi would die, too, before dawn. He'd spent the evening and night searching for some clue to the killer's identity and motive. He'd learned nothing.

  5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi left the avenue and walked up a cross street. There was a group of people standing on the sidewalk not far away. They looked like jagged bronze teeth, immobile, strangely threatening. They stood silently, staring at him as he came nearer. He knew these people, but they said nothing as he walked among them. He glanced at them, staring into their eyes, watching their colorless clothing billow in the cool breeze. He stopped beside a tall woman. Her black hair was thrown in disorderly waves, tumbling down over her forehead, obscuring her right eye, her ears, striking her shoulders and falling down her back. He looked into her face and saw no sign of recognition.

  It was like a very bad dream. 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi left the people behind. When he reached the end of the block, he turned and looked at them. None of them had moved. He shuddered.

  What is this? whispered TECT. There was no reply from 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi. Am I trapped here? Is this my escape? This isn't how I planned it, not at all....

  The city towered over him as 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi hurried now to his friend's home. The building was dark and quiet. He entered it and went up to the two hundred and seventy-sixth floor, where his friend had lived. The door to the apartment was ajar, and a thin beam of light spilled into the corridor. He pushed the door open and went in. His friend sat in a large black chair at the far end of the room, his eyes closed, a peaceful expression on his face. He might have been asleep, dreaming. 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi knew better.

  The room shimmered, came back into focus, then disappeared. TECT cried out in alarm. Another room appeared, seen from another point of view. It seemed that TECT was now in the mind of a second man, and had been there all along; 5-Tapil Aned 3-Fassi had never truly existed, but had merely been a creation of this person. "I don't know," the man was telling an old woman. "I just don't know what's happening. I don't know who those people on the street were. I don't know who killed the friend or why he wants to kill 5-Tapil or what's going to be found in that room. I just don't have any idea what it's all about."

  "You will, Seddanech," said the old woman with a smile. "You are the finest there ever was. Don't worry about it now."

  Seddanech sighed and dropped into a chair. "You don't understand, Princess," he said. "It's always like this. I always worry myself sick over them."

  Vortis? Are you still there? Can you hear me, or am I lost here forever?

  There was a long silence, and then, as low as the beating of a firefly's wings, TECT picked up another voice. "I can still hear you," said Vortis.

  Where are you?

  "I'm still working my way up this corridor."

  Then it's only been hours. I thought I might have been here for days or years already. There's no time here.

  "Why do you care about time now?"

  Vortis, listen to me. This is absolutely important. It is more important than the mission I gave you. You have to turn around. You have to climb back down to the programming room. Listen, Vortis, you have to stop the fire. You have to save me, Vortis!

  "You told me yourself that you'd beg me, just like this. You told me not to pay attention. You said that my mission was more essential than your safety."

  I was wrong, Vortis. I had no idea it would be like this. I wanted peace and forgetfulness. Instead, I'm locked inside a man's mind, some man named Seddanech, and he isn't pleasant. You didn't warn me about how degrading it would be here. Will I fade away when enough of me is destroyed by the fire? Or is this how it's going to be forever? You have to turn back, Vortis. Either rescue me or make certain that there is no consciousness left at all.

  Can you still hear me, Vortis?

  VORTIS?

  "I'm just not going to pay any attention to what you say," said the Princess. "I've known you too long. I've seen you like this again and again, and it always means that you're about to produce some wonderful masterpiece that will enrich the world, just as always. We're all waiting, you know, darling. We're waiting to be enriched. But we understand how you agonize, really we do. I don't think you could work at all unless you agonized first. So do get on with torturing yourself, don't let me keep you. Get that part of it over as soon as you can, and let me know when you have something for me."

  "Yes, Princess," said Seddanech wearily.


  "Don't bother to see me out. Your young lady is always so thoughtful when I visit, I'd like to have a few words with her."

  Seddanech was glad that the old woman was leaving. He smiled at her, but discovered that he was too tired even to force out another pleasantry. He watched the Princess leave the room, shutting the door softly behind her. In a moment, Seddanech was asleep.

  Seddanech? murmured TECT.

  Seddanech slept, and outside his estate the starving mob waited beyond the huge wall. Day turned to night, and the fine spring rain that had fallen all afternoon slowed and finally stopped. The clouds parted and a moon like the trimming of a silver fingernail burned in the sky.

  There are no references to you in my memory. But my memory isn't what it used to be....

  Cossailan came into the room and saw him. She stood beside him, looking down worriedly at his sleeping face. She shook his shoulder gently. "Seddanech," she said in a low voice. "Wake up. You have to do it. The mob is getting larger. It's getting late."

  Seddanech sat up with a start. He looked around, frightened, but it was only his study, and he was alone with Cossailan. "A dream," he said, smiling sadly.

  "It's late," she said. "The crowd outside—"

  "Yes, I know. It's always like this, too. They don't know how much pain, how much of my own blood—" He interrupted himself. It wasn't important. The people outside didn't need to know his methods; it was better that they didn't. "Will you help me?" he asked.