by Lee Baldwin
“Moralos. But he is well hidden.”
“You know there is still a problem with your bargain?”
“I’m aware. An eternity of torment would be such a waste, with her. I do not think the vote will be in her favor.”
“You think not? Are mortals so afraid?”
“Most are afraid of change. This way of going about it is too shocking.”
“Yes. The irony is, most of what she wants is available now.”
“I had my own moment about that. They already have what she asked for. Everything there for the taking. They merely need to be told.”
“Or taught. Tharcia asked you for that repeatedly.”
“I am aware.”
“I had a terrible thought. Moralos threatens Tharcia.”
“You’re right. Your scent trail entwines throughout her life.”
“I need to be there tonight.”
“I so wanted to spend this night with you, my Lylit.”
“And we will, my soul. I see three difficulties. Her mother. Outcome of the vote. And Moralos.”
“I’m not yet decided.”
“Lian, they love each other. It can change everything. You should see the way they stand together, each leaning in toward the other. Look at the future we will enjoy. They both long for the same.”
“You need to give someone a little push.”
“Hah. It’s what I do.”
“Call if you need help.”
“There is something else we need to talk about.” A different tone in her voice.
“Yes?”
“All these angels who pursued me. They were swept up in lies of the patriarchy.”
“Yes. What is your point?”
“Lian, I was present on Earth before time, before language, before human cultures. During all those millennia, women were honored for wisdom, courage, and sexuality. It wasn’t until Sumerian and Hebraic societies arose, that priests cast me as a demon. That was the beginning. But through millions of years of human evolution, I was loved and women were revered. Why the sudden change? You imagined me this way, Lian, an independent female. But many things are still conflicted. In the world, and between us.”
“Between us? Such as?”
“How about your habit of bargaining for human souls?”
“You know I am tapering off on that.”
“Yes, but hear me out. That very act says you get your way absolutely. You offer something easy to give in exchange for eternal domination over someone. That is the seed of the patriarchy. Tharcia was brilliant in asking you to give that up. Brilliant.”
“She is a mortal, uninformed.”
Lylit dives, a graceful swooping arc before his eyes. “Not as uninformed as you think, and deeply intuitive. For millennia, tribal cultures honored and respected women for the ability we alone possess, the creation of human life. The negative image of Lylit now is a warning to any woman who would defy male authority, who might be successful on her own. Tharcia is a woman who knew she could live without a man. Now, she understands how to be the equal of any man, and she will be unstoppable. You cannot believe how she defends Clay. Against me in particular.”
“Well, what should I do about it?”
“Lian, the way you say that is the very core of the problem! It is not for you to decide alone. It is for me and you to decide. You made me for your other half. Equal. The way a female would solve the problem is bring everybody into it.”
“You are right. Are you thinking of the outcome of the bet?”
“Absolutely. We cannot let Tharcia lose. The things she wants…”
“Would be good for human progress.”
“Yes. We’ll work it out together. Know what?”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I am thinking of how we will love each other when this is finished.”
“Ah. A worthy topic. I am growing impatient.”
“Impatient? You?”
Night of Instant Karma
And who are these who choose to take the chance, these who determine they will remain awake through a long and unknown darkness? Some follow no intention, they simply feel wakeful when most begin to fall asleep. They see sleepers around them go inside their houses, fall or lie down where they are, find that those cannot be touched, each safe in transparent cocoon.
Some of these desire domination, seek with force to place others in submissive positions, to indulge their own power fantasies, to be master and judge of all. Out for whatever they can find, many load themselves with guns and ammunition, dress themselves in boots and camo. Among them the online gamers, the Minutemen, backwoods militias and armed neighborhood watch groups, mofos from the hood. All these who believe they can seize an advantage while others sleep, win the biggest game of all, emerge into new life as Masters of the World. Win the biggest lottery. It’s recess, teacher is asleep, let’s play!
Among the sleepless are criminals, politicians, patriarchs, dark angels, those grappling with anxiety, anguish, dread, despair, boredom, guilt, loneliness… minds wracked with self-deception, sick with meaningless insignificance in their lives. From these visions and delusions waking nightmares flow out across the Earth, deformity and madness grow from imagined fears and distorted longings. The images are legion. The sleepless are in love with the dark side of the human psyche, the irrational parts, the love and terror of superstition, blind faith and voodoo. If not, then those forces are in love with them.
For these, the Sleep is the Gamer culture made real, overheated automatic weapons in bloody fists, shoulders slung with lethal bandoliers. But after the first six hours of the night, gunpowder stops working. Mobs of furious unarmed Wakers charge in with anything they can pick up and throw, with shovels, knives, clubs, metal chairs. It’s not pretty but it’s been waiting to happen.
Also among the wakeful are those whose sights fasten on bright horizons, who walk into evening hush sensing the wings of hope, projecting long-held dreams of pushing humanity to exceed itself. Their visions find quieter realities, they are fearless and untouchable as they give gratitude for the health of Mother Earth, the safety of the whales, the well-being of all mortals. Some of these find a key, understand for the first time the way realities come to be, the reason consciousness exists. To manifest the brightest dreams for the growth of every living thing.
There is the one called Junipero Garcia, who wisely with his wife and two teenage daughters makes camp in their living room. Inflatable mattresses, snacks and drinks in the cooler, they lie close talking quietly as the Sleep comes for them. Many hours later Garcia will wake first. Silent with his dreaming family, he will begin visualizing a job he would like to do, Director of the Girls and Boys Club. Yes, the family would like that.
And there is the solitary driven man called Christopher Strand, beyond simple fatigue when he notices it’s four hours past time to lie down, sleep and be safe. Fearsome sounds echo in the streets, he has no idea if Solberg’s guard detail is still with him. He lashes himself forward, cutting away the most dangerous passages of Whalesong. He’ll work at it until he’s about to collapse, then delete the source. It is simply too dangerous, the world unready. He scratches absently the itchy place on the back of his hand.
A knock at the door jerks Strand to attention. He listens in the foyer. The knock comes again. A woman’s voice faint through the door.
“Hey Boss, you in there?”
Strand, holding his pistol, opens the door a crack. A familiar outline. Sami. She is not alone. Four shadowy figures stand away, at the edge of the dark street.
“Get in here,” he pulls her through by the arm, slams the door. Her flesh is hot.
In the light, shorts and white sports halter, fine-grained flesh. Barefoot, she moves like an animal. Her eyes once hazel-dark, now clear tiger amber. Every muscle of legs and shoulders outlined, her head turns side to side, seeking predators. Or prey.
She glances at the pistol, cocked grin. “Those things stopped working hours ago. Got any beer?�
�
“Fridge.”
As Sami walks past, Strand’s eyes fall captive to the movement of her thighs. He looks away. She takes five bottles out, opens all of them, drinks two down as fast as she can, brings the others to the table where Strand’s gear is laid out. He tries to keep his eyes on the computer screen.
“Whatcha workin’ on Boss?” Her smile familiar, with a feral edge.
“Let me get you a shirt.”
“Nah. Too hot as it is. Thirsty.”
He follows a plunge of sweat into the halter top. “Sami, are you alright? Who are those people out there?”
She laughs, a different sound to it now, confident. “Just some mates. Some folks who feel the way I do. What’s this?”
Strand across from her, trying to conceal his shock, to keep his eyes at the level of her face. He’s never known her to wear clothing this revealing. But now he’s certain her breasts are larger, nipples as grapes in the stretchy bra.
“Whalesong.”
“You decided to let it out?”
Strand shakes his head forcefully. “Had a talk with Solberg. He agrees with me. Turned over 100% of NOAA cycles to me for 24 hours. I am cooking.”
“What you going to do?”
“Redact some, delete the rest. As much as I can get done before I drop in my tracks.”
“You’re an idiot. You shouldn’t be holding this back. But it won’t matter. The Singularity will blast it out soon enough,” she says smugly. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Yah yah. Based on your mistaken assumptions about reality.”
Sami tilts a fresh bottle to her mouth and consumes half of it. “You jive. Within a year, we’ll have the means to create superhuman intelligence. The human era will be finished.”
“Oh, sure. And then what of us?”
“You’ll have Transforms, like me.” She glares back at him proudly, “to carry the race forward.”
“It’s horsepucky,” Strand says, slashing with his hand as if wiping pieces from a chessboard. “The Singularity depends on a mechanistic view of the brain. It’s not a machine. Grace would tell you.”
“How the fuck would you know what Grace thinks?”
“It’s in her article, genius. Dated seven years from now. In the Whalesong. Consciousness transcends the brain. It’s closer to the probabilities of quantum physics than the chemical behavior of synapses. Vinge and all the other scientific thinkers have no comprehension of where reality resides.”
“So Grace survives,” Sami muses. “And she is exactly right.”
“Her article says that consciousness is the only eternal, unchanging thing. Physical reality is what’s mutable. What we think is real is constructed of our interpretations.”
“When I’m in deep trance, I see it that way. Or like right now, tonight.” She looks at him, serious, the old Sami. “I remade myself, Chris.”
“On a macro scale, objects appear to be separate. On the subatomic level, everything in the universe is tied to every other thing. At that scale there are no objects, only relationships.”
“Hey would you rub my shoulders?” Sami turns her body in the chair. The view of her sweat-beaded back sends a jolt through Strand’s crotch. He cautions himself. Sami is a friend.
“Remade yourself, Sami. How?”
“That demon thing, the Devil…”
“Not the Devil. Something else.”
“Anyway, it said that instinctive drives would become real tonight. I used that. I am transforming myself into something stronger. Others are too.” She angles her chin toward the door.
“What did you do, Sami?”
“Started by meditating. Told you. Been doing it for eighteen years. Tonight I re-imagined myself. This is the result. So far. I could pick you up and break your back, Chris. I am that strong. I am smarter than I was, two hours ago.”
“Nice kitty,” Strand says, trying to keep it light.
Sami laughs, full in her throat. Strand’s gaze lost in the shaking of her captive breasts.
“Check this out,” Sami says. Rests a bare arm on the table between them. She’s looking fixedly at her forearm. Strand watches. A patch of skin grows darker, a faint purple cast, a bruise. Breath catches in Strand’s throat. Amber eyes regard him solemnly. The color grows redder, the shape clearer, until there, on Sami’s smooth forearm, a bright red Valentine heart.
Strand sits back. “Sami, what…”
“Grace. Something she said that night, about beings that can move outside of time. The whale tattoos. This is how they did it.”
“The whale messages?”
Sami nods. “With their minds, Chris. They do it with their minds.”
The mathematician’s eyes widen. “Sami, what have you found?”
“The whales, Chris. They are more evolved spiritually than we are. They are asking us to do something with the Whalesong. You can’t hold it back.”
“What do they want?”
Sami shakes her head in frustration. “I don’t know! That is why you can’t stop decoding. The whales know the mind controls the brain. If you can learn how to direct the mind. When the Singularity hits, survivors will need bodies like mine.”
“No Singularity Sami. It depends on materialist culture. Not soul. Soul is crowded out by ego-toys of technology. We have to unplug from all the techno-crap.”
Her rich laugh. “Chris, Chris, Chris. Computers calculate much faster than a human ever will, remember much more. What Vinge missed was the human body. I met people tonight who have thought it through. Something in the air out there, it might not come again. The possibilities…”
Strand shakes his head violently as though trying to subdue the feral sexuality across the table. The Ph.D. number theorist Samantha Lang, whom Next History has employed for six years, is now something else. An animal with amber eyes and blinding intelligence. He and Sami always friends. Strand, feverish, fights to keep himself talking, force his eyes from her body.
“Sami,” he says patiently, “where is the soul in string theory? The computer will never know what drives consciousness to create the brain, because we can’t tell it. No matter how much a computer tries to emulate the brain, it will not arrive at consciousness.”
Sami chugs the rest of the beer. “Never say never, Chris.”
He sees her losing interest in the conversation, pushes ahead. “Nobody knows how memory works. I’m almost willing to bet it’s stored in Grace’s Akasha.”
“Chris, you are right about one thing. Humans are powerful conscious beings who can create their own reality. I am creating mine. I wish you would listen. I want you to be one of us.”
Strand feels hot, sweat beads on his brow. “Sami do you want to take a shower? Eat something?”
“You drinking your beer?” Sami gestures at the last full one on the table. He shakes his head no. She raises the bottle to her lips and chugs it down.
“Sure, I’ll take a shower.”
“You know where it is.”
Sami gets up, but to Strand’s surprise, walks to the front door and opens it. The way her muscles form each stride, the way her bare feet claim the ground… He leaps to his feet. Outside it is raining hard. Dark pavement glistens.
“Sami, where are you going? Don’t go!”
Halfway to the street, she turns. Her hair and clothing already dripping. “I’ll be back. I want to talk to you more. I want you with us. Right now I want to experience everything.”
“Sami, stay! You are in danger.”
Her only reply a cheerful laugh. As Strand closes the door behind her, she runs barefoot into rain and darkness. Her amber eyes miss nothing.
Rose Fall
A tinkly crash from the upstairs bathroom. Clay hasn’t seen Tharcia all day. The door is ajar, he nudges it wider. Just out of the bath, she’s squatted on the floor, cleaning something gooey from the tiles. Hearing him behind her, she waits pink-skinned for him to go, feels his eyes on her froglike pose. Unwilling to show him her tear-streaked fac
e.
When the latch clicks, she looks behind at the shut door. Teeth clenched, her body begins to shake.
Dressed, she cracks Clay’s bedroom door. Cross-legged in his wide padded chair, eyes closed, wrists on his knees. She’s seen him like this before. What he does every day, his mind-body connection, his gratitude. She recalls the video on his laptop. Did he know it was recorded? If not meant for anyone to see, it was a glimpse into a secret part of him, one she is happy to know. And what is he doing about Lillian? He’s not spoken her name since their soft goodbye. She closes the door so it makes no sound.
Later he stands in the upstairs hallway. The sounds in her room. Not hard for him to hear in the gathering quiet.
“Anybody home?”
A sniffle from within. Clay turns the knob, peers in. A tissue box hits the floor with an empty sound. Kneeling upright on her bed she makes a noise that’s not a word at all, but which accepts his presence in a neutral way. She’s found clean jeans and a lavender T-shirt with O’Keeffe’s Light Iris Flower on the front. She makes the kind of laugh people do when their nose runs from too much crying.
“Ban oud ub tissue.” She pats the edge of the bed for him to sit. When Clay looks at Tharcia he sees the stunning woman she has become. She lifts the T-shirt to wipe her eyes uncaring that she wears nothing underneath. Leans in, whispers, hot tear-stained face.
“I am nothing like Mom, you know. You and I are much more alike.”
It’s after five in the afternoon, eight in the East. According to Lian’s timetable, the night of Sleep has begun. Clay wants to ask when they will feel sleepy, but feels hyper-alert about protecting the house. There are noises in the hills, unseen things run through the brush outside. Packs of dogs prowl the slopes. From down the road six gunshots and silence. A siren wail draws near. Tharcia looks at Clay, shivers. He puts an arm around her shoulders.
“Know what?” In her voice a lost-little-girl tone.
“Say.”
“I missed having a sister.”
Clay lets her snuggle under his arm, unsure where she’s going with this.
“For real,” she says. “Lylit and I started out being twins. If we hadn’t got squished together in there, we would have been twins. I would have had a twin sister, Clay. She is so beautiful. I would have had a beautiful sister.” She presses her face to his chest, conscious of all the things that would and would not have happened. A twin, with Lylit, someone who would have known her better than anyone else in all the world, someone she could have strongly loved and who would for sure have loved her. Protected her, they would have protected each other. Wet face pressed against him, thinking all this current crap wouldn’t be here if she and Lylit had been born together, grown together, loved each other like family. Like sisters.