by Tim Kindberg
“Anchor.” I, Pempamsie, had a weakened mind. I could barely grasp the conversation.
“Your mind,” sniffed Dirac, “is rather attached to your body, is it not?”
“Not as far as she is concerned. She was going to suck him dry.”
“We can thank Coleridge” – Dirac looked down at the dog by my side – “for chasing her off. Not to mention Breakage for having the presence of mind – now there’s a questionable use of a phrase – to release him.”
“And I? Am I, Pempamsie, not impervious to her after all, then?”
“Your vodu pervades your mind,” said Higgs. “A tiny modulation on every thought you have. Were Obayifa to enter your mind, she would not be able to avoid contact. Which is why it’s so important to hang on to these bones. Without them, she can’t extract your vodu. Thus she cannot consume your mind.”
“And what are you two doing with the bones now?” Dirac was watching as Higgs manipulated the skeleton parts within their mesh of wires.
“He’s busy,” said Dirac. “We retrieved the creature’s brain signature.”
“How?”
“From Breakage,” said Dirac. “He managed to record her last night. As a result, we may be able to adapt the circuitry so that it will become her prison. We’re not exactly dealing in matters we understand. These are electro-psychic, supervirtual phenomena. The algorithms—”
“I do not need to know your algorithms, Professor. Please, do your work. And what of David? What are you doing to make him well?”
“We’re sending a signal through his beads,” said Higgs, “which we hope will restore order. The mind is plastic and quite robust. The signal should bring his mind back to something like normal parameters. He’s dreaming a dream I have manufactured, a dream both of and for restoration.”
I watched these two work for a while, fascinated by their combination of virtual and physical manipulations, the way they had cast their differences aside but still fussed irritably over what each was doing. I became increasingly helpless as my identity came apart, bit by bit, as my memories were redacted. I no longer even tried to remember anything before the icestation: the failure was unbearable. I was becoming an anonymous locus of perception. And yet, I was known, in a limited sense, to these two scientists and, above all, to David. Yes, he had touched me. By attending to me even as I fell apart.
I said to the pair, intent on their work, “Supposing you succeed in adapting the bones. What of I, Pempamsie – will it work on the vodu inhabiting me?”
Dirac looked at me with disdain. He still hated me. Were David not there, he would have shunned me entirely, I am sure.
Higgs rose from his work, abstracted, as though he had just remembered that I was in the room.
“We don’t agree about you,” he said. “The professor thinks you’re an unimportant variation on vodu inhabitance. And that you’re expendable – were it not for the evident affection David holds for you.” Dirac averted his eyes from me. “Whereas I,” continued Higgs, “think you’re the key.”
If I’d had myself back, I would have had no truck with these flesh. I wanted to go back to David, but I needed their answers. Were they really capable of being the saviours of flesh in the Between? Did saviours have such a bent to self-absorption and, in the case of Dirac, such a mean bearing? What accord had they entered into?
“Explain,” I said.
“You’re a failed Westaf experiment like David,” said Higgs, “but you’re close to what I seek: a true non without removal of your beads. You defeat the network at the mental interface. It’s just the side effects—”
“The side effects? I am decaying, ceasing to be. You know not what you are about.”
“Dirac seems to want to avoid the conclusion, but I think you represent hope for flesh – for humankind, I should say. All sensa would be redirected to chimeras in Big Mind, to phantoms such as you have become. Virtually speaking.”
“And really speaking. You must not do to the genpop what has been done to me.”
“Of course, you’re still a botch. I had nothing to do with their work on you, by the way. But they really are on to something. You are inhabited by a vodu that is subtle but not subtle enough, that’s all. If we can only create harmless vodus, we can release them into the fleshwork, cast ourselves off, all of us in the Between; we’ll return to being ourselves again.”
The following day, I was yet more lost. What was this “I” that had this thought? A thing. A no-thing. A no-name. An impulse. The “I” recognised this man lying on the bed. It was David. David loved me.
The door opened.
“I think we’re going to need more time.” It was Dirac.
“He’s not reviving.” Dirac touched his forehead. “We’ll have to try another way. Or another dream.”
I had not seen this look on him before: he was exhausted, at his wits’ end. Sleepless. In his eyes, a deep worry. He thought the one in the bed might be lost to us. For what is flesh with his mind unseated? Drifting loose – where? In what space?
I had no name. Everything was now. Even these flesh present before this “I” – the one unconscious, and the one evidently doubting his ability to revive him – even their names were fading. I was becoming a dem to all intents and purposes, although intelligently aware of my loss. I sat, cognisant, as I was eaten away by my inhabitant.
The visitor left. I was somehow the cause of this misery. I, whoever “I” was, had better not be there any longer. I had to leave. I rose from this flesh’s bed, walked through the door. Paused. Went to the room where Dirac and Higgs worked on the bones. Returned. Past a table and chairs in an empty meeting space. There was a dog, leashed to a black lamp by a wall, another dog with a bowl of water beside it. And in the corner beyond them the “I” pressed a button. A door swished open, then closed behind. Another door. “I”, this mobile entity that could be named no longer, stepped out. The “I” held out a hand: the same hand against the changing scenery.
Obayifa. That was one name the “I” could remember. Obayifa, in the tall castle. She wants this “I”. She will have it. And then this “I” will no longer be a burden on the unconscious man left behind. He was better off without the thinker of these thoughts. And the object of this self-consciousness? She was better off dead. Obayifa could bring this about. She could have not only this mind alone but the whole life.
Yaa’s face, at the door where he had to say goodbye. Her mother. Yaa laughing. Her mother dying. Lights throbbing. Retinal after-glows. No retina. Lights behind eyelids. No eyelids. A dream entered its own botched storyline, something about a rococo Italian bridge lined with arcades and a dash for transportation that would not arrive. The bricks fly apart. The story melts, folds over itself. A complete absence of physical sensation. Floating. Even the vodu is lost. Alone with the caged vodu, in outer space. Silence. The little light of stars. Impossible levels of coldness, which does not matter: there is no body. Yaa dancing in a light blue dress, her large eyes glowing, lambent. The only joy.
A voice, grating. A hard landing. Pain shearing the spine, temples ringing. The voice becoming clearer.
“David.”
The vodu is ahead of him, sinewy eyes watching from within.
“David.” A face distilling from cloud. A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down.
“Can you hear me?” Dirac. His face taut and red.
David closed his eyes, opened them. Dirac was still there.
“Where’s Pempamsie?”
“Ah, David. It’s good to have you back. Now, close your eyes again and get some more rest. We think you’re going to be all right, but it’s early days.”
David woke to find breakfast beside him. Where did Higgs obtain his supplies? It hardly mattered. He was famished. Toast and coffee, engorging them gratefully. A little strength returned to his limbs. He sat up in bed, blearily dragged on his clothes and went to find Pempamsie.
Dirac and Higgs’ heated discussion ended abruptly as he entered.
>
“What are you two fighting about now?” David’s nerves were frayed. Coleridge, lying by the wall, looked up at David then laid his head back on his paws.
“Where’s Pempamsie?”
Dirac snorted. Higgs stepped around the desk where they were working and approached David.
“Bad news, I’m afraid. She’s gone. While you were out for the count. Her condition was worsening, but we were rather preoccupied not only with adapting the bone circuitry but with re-bolting your mind to your body. Without that vodu in there you’d have been relieved of your mind entirely, at least if the creature had had a bit more time. It was the key—”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“She walked out, told none of us.” Dirac could not hide his pleasure.
“And she seems to have returned to Avonmouth city,” added Higgs. “At least, she took the module and boarded an N-car bound for there.”
“Alone? You let her go out alone?”
“Obayifa cannot touch her vodu-filled mind,” said Dirac.
“But she can kill her.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Dirac.
“You say that but we hold the bones. If Obayifa can’t follow her orders – if they can’t have their vodu back – there might be a deathly plan B.”
“Actually, we no longer have the bone circuitry,” said Higgs.
“What?”
“Pempamsie took the bones with her. We both slept. She came and fetched them.”
David thought about Pempamsie, alone in her fractured state. Vulnerable to a preying psychic vampire, carrying potentially the means of her undoing. Once her vodu was removed, her mind was Obayifa’s for the taking. And, since he loved her, he would not be able to go near her again – any more than he could visit Yaa.
But the circuitry was incomplete. “You were experimenting with the bone circuitry. How far did you get?”
“We’ve unlocked it.” Dirac’s smile was grim. “So that it can be used to extract and store any vodu by touching its beads to the host. You touch it once to prime it, touch it again to extract the vodu. It will store as many as you like, in supervirtual cells.”
“And the beads? And the minds of the crew? You mean they aren’t needed anymore?”
“We don’t believe so,” said Higgs. “The recording Breakage took of Obayifa was invaluable. It was all encoded in there: the minds she’d stolen from the crew, and the beads. All signalling in their different ways.”
“And who is it primed for now?”
“Pempamsie,” said Higgs. “And you, David. We touched the beads to you while you were unconscious.”
“To me? But you can’t extract mine. It’s caged.”
“We’re not sure,” said Dirac. “But we may be able to. In melding your mind back to your body we uncovered the nature of your vodu’s constraint. It was, after all, put there by flesh, however inadvertently, and is not some miracle. It’s fascinating. If we didn’t live in a world beholden to fatuous pleasures derived from mental content – if we had remained a society of scholars and not merely software engineers – it would have caused the greatest philosophical stir since Descartes.”
Higgs added, “David, we were waiting for you to revive, to relieve you of your vodu as soon as you woke from the coma. Then we’d have used them on Pempamsie. It’s most unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate!” David shook his head slowly, unable to take in his loss. “And Obayifa.” He tried to pull himself together. “What were you going to do about the creature?”
“We primed the bones for her, too, simulating the touching of beads using the same data Breakage recorded,” said Higgs. “But we thought the best solution to our vampire problem was this.” He picked up the gun. David snatched it from him.
“I’m going after her.”
“Pempamsie?” said Higgs. “You can’t. What if she is no longer inhabited? Since you have feelings for her, she’ll be vulnerable to your vodu.”
“When she left,” said David, “did she know what she was doing? How far had she deteriorated? Did she realise she could use the bones on herself and on Obayifa?”
Dirac looked down at his feet. “She heard some of our discussions, but we really can’t know what she was capable of comprehending in her depleted state. Leave her to it, David. Let Nature take its course. We’ll construct the equivalent of the bones ourselves, with help from Westaf if absolutely necessary. We’ll still save you.”
Higgs stared Dirac into silence. “Her mind was in a terrible state, of almost complete dissolution. I’m not sure what, if anything, she knew of our achievements. She came and watched us from time to time but mostly sat by your side. She was all but a dem, David. Walking off like that. If she was going to use the bones on herself, then given the threat from Obayifa…”
“Then it was suicide. Is that what you want to say? It might not be too late. I’m going to find Obayifa and kill her with this.” He waved the gun. “At least I can do that, if it’s not too late. Where’s Breakage?”
“He’s gone too,” said Higgs. “We don’t know where. Can you contact him?”
“Did he leave after her?”
“Yes, it seems he followed her when she left,” said Dirac, with a note of shame.
“Breakage,” David called through his beads. “Where are you? Are you with Pempamsie?”
“Breakage following Pempamsie.”
“On what initiative?”
“Breakage initiative. David needs bone circuitry. David needs flesh known as Pempamsie. Breakage left as soon as Pempamsie left.”
“Where is she headed?”
“Unknown. Has left N-car in Avonmouth city. Breakage awaiting bod substitution. None available. Reserve power.”
“Keep going. I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Silo
An “I” exists. The “I” holds a case. What does it contain? The means to remove an invader, to restore a true “I”. But why does this “I”, this anonymous “I”, want back a so-called true “I”, an “I” which it cannot know? Because it is true. This “I” knows itself to be depleted, stripped – and it knows a true “I” is best.
But if this locus of thought – this agency – were to use the contents of the case – which is a circuit of bones that can lure an invader and hold it fast in its osseous embrace – then the true “I”, like a flower suddenly bloomed, would be available for plucking.
If the true “I” were to exist for mere seconds, it would be better than this. Why protract existence? In a universe of thirteen billion years, why last for years and not seconds? Isn’t it all the same – a coming to an end?
Ah, but there’s a rub. Would it be an end, an extinction, or prolonged torment in a vodu’s lair, licked by a vodu’s tongue – an evanescent lolly for the sucking?
There is a better way. To use the bones first on Obayifa, to suck out the vodu that would feed on this “I”. Then to use it on this thinker. Two vodus in a receptacle – I care not about their fate together. Two vodu-less minds. One, this one, returned to truth. The other: what vestige of humanity would remain?
Obayifa is nonned, as is this entity that cogitates, this awareness of a thinking thing, this sum of qualia, this electron cloud of consciousness. How, then, to find one another?
By retracing steps. Back to the Royal? No. To the place where she was seen, espied by the man who is now fallen too. The old silo, like a castle, thrusting up through the near-above. Her lair.
Pempamsie’s departure filled David with a recurrence of the panic and despair he had felt at leaving Yaa behind. He had taken the module which Dirac had programmed to return by itself as long as any of their party remained in Super Mare. His knuckles were white as he gripped a rail in an N-car which glided to Avonmouth.city, bathed in morning steam from a white sun. More and more flesh came on board, distracted by sensa, making way for bodais who serviced their spurious needs. The passengers were like infants; the whole scene was algorithmically directed; on
ly scraps remained of what once was called humanity. The network fucked them inside while the over-warmed planet elevated the temperature of their skin. David wanted to slap them all, shake their oblivious, scuppered minds into revolution, uprising. Bloody rioting.
Coleridge lay alert at his feet, like a symbol of Pempamsie’s absence. David no longer had the requisite authority, but he called ID Central about the delay in Breakage’s bod substitution anyway. An officious bodai responded.
“No case recognised. Client authority unrecognised.”
“I’m a concerned citizen. There’s going to be a murder. Do you understand? Total loss of data. Bodai assistance required. Now get one of your bods to Breakage so that he can prevent it. First priority.”
“Please repeat. All is known.”
Eventually the bodai gave way. It was programmed to respond at least minimally to suspected criminal acts of the first category of ID crime: ID destruction.
“Breakage, where are you?”
Silence. The N-car was reaching the outskirts of Avonmouth.city, and David had no idea where to go next.
“Breakage?”
“David. Please formulate question.”
“Where is she?”
“Breakage followed Pempamsie to grain silo.” David felt Breakage through his beads. Breakage was outside the silo where he and Pempamsie had seen Obayifa: where the vampire had perched looking for prey. He could picture it: the silo’s sheer sides, built to store grain in the nineteenth century, rising to a castellated crest. The silo had asserted itself somehow, despite its obsolescence and disuse, against the near-above, the twenty-first century’s rambling reification of the network, which strutted around the edifice in an elevated sprawl of glass, concrete and steel. Perhaps demolition was impossible now, given its proximity to so many nodes and transitways.