The Seeker

by Kingsley L Dennis

  Zuse-1 turned and left the small-domed room. Upon entering the outside corridor his senses registered an increase in ambient temperature and internally readjusted accordingly.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Rebekah sat at the table in the kitchen salon as Meryl boiled the water on the stove. Both of them were silent, each in their own thoughts. After Zachary’s death Rebekah had asked her friend Meryl to move in with her and Johan. With Sorrel now living with Prentis, Meryl had been living alone again. In Zachary’s absence Rebekah felt the house to be too large for just herself and her son. It was now a home of two widows. When Johan was not at home, or at school, he was frequently with Jana, Sorrel’s daughter. As always in life, women had the greater instinct, and understood unsaid things. There were movements, shifts, alliances – the distant recognition – that flirted between humans in a way that only instinct could appreciate.

  Rebekah, Meryl, and Sorrel had begun to meet regularly, ever since the Seeker’s departure.

  ‘I know how you think, Rebekah.’ Meryl placed a mug of steaming hot tea on the table for Rebekah to drink.

  Rebekah gave a half-smile. ‘It’s nearly springtime. Another winter has already passed. Another year is now upon us. Do you think he will ever come back?’

  ‘The Seeker promised us that he would. We’ve always kept that faith.’

  ‘Faith and hope is almost the same thing.’

  There came a series of short, soft taps at the door. Meryl opened the door and smiled as Sorrel entered. Sorrel took the offered mug from Meryl’s hands, nodded, and sat down at the table.

  ‘Things cannot go on much longer, not like they are now.’ Sorrel spoke with a tone of finality.

  Meryl joined the other two ladies at the table. She was the eldest amongst them, her face ruddy, plump, and yet cheerful.

  ‘Sorrel is right. Whether or not he returns, we still must be ready to make our changes. We’ve been speaking with those we trust, right?’ Meryl looked over at Sorrel, who nodded. Then she looked at Rebekah, who also returned a silent nod.

  Meryl leaned over the table closer to Rebekah and Sorrel. Three heads came together in a woven thread of whispers.

  67

  Ruth-11 and Jacob-9 were reassigned together to work alone on a vertical garden project. Inside a fabricated greenhouse within the Triangle Zone they worked on arranging varied artificial lighting and metal reflectors to gain optimum results. Jacob appeared pleased to be in Ruth-11’s company again. For her part, Ruth-11 did not understand the reason behind her relocation. They were set apart from the rest of the workers in the horticultural research lab. Even in their break periods, which were few, they were allocated their own private recreation room. Throughout the day they would remain in close physical proximity.

  Jacob noticed that Ruth-11 worked with great dexterity and care. He also noticed that Ruth-11 seemed keen to observe him at times when it was not necessary as part of their work together.

  ‘Ruth, do you know what work you did before the Great Turning?’

  Ruth-11 gave Jacob a sideways glance. She had begun to notice his familiar use of her name, and something pleased her. ‘They tell me I was placed in a hospital to work alongside humans.’

  Jacob raised his eyebrows as if impressed. ‘And so you cared? Or at least you learnt to care?’

  Ruth-11 thought for a few seconds. ‘I think you could say I learnt how to care. I cannot say if I actually sensed what caring was.’

  ‘And during your pilgrimage, what experiences did you have?’

  ‘The SEEKER program has been deleted in me. I no longer have access to those memories.’ Ruth-11 paused. ‘But…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Recently I saw traces, some visual images, which I think were from my pilgrimage.’

  ‘How could you be sure?’

  Ruth-11 stopped what she was doing and let her hands fall to her side. ‘They were unpleasant images; scenes of suffering, of human loss. And I had sensations I do not recall having before. I thought it was because of you.’

  ‘Me?’ Jacob went quiet as he studied Ruth-11’s young oval face. In each of their meetings she had always worn her straight black hair back in a ponytail, which he assumed was for work purposes. ‘Do you ever let down your hair, Ruth?’ he asked.

  Ruth-11 blinked her eyes. ‘In my quarters, yes; and always for meditation.’

  ‘Shall we meditate now, together?’

  A look of shocked surprise ran across Ruth-11’s face. ‘But it’s not the assigned time for meditation!’

  ‘Forget about that. We are always in contact with the source, we don’t need a schedule. The spiritual path is the only true democracy.’

  Ruth-11 smiled; she had recognized the phrase. ‘Okay then.’

  Jacob and Ruth-11 entered their private recreation room, sat down upon the floor side by side, and closed their eyes.

  68

  Jacob was taking his daily encounter with Zuse-1. They had arranged to meet in the small park in the Circle Zone. Jacob had been given a new robe with the orange circle upon the left breast. He had now been granted more freedom of movement around Nous-City, although he spent most of his time inside the Triangle Zone. Jacob liked the idea of being in the middle zone, neither below nor above, yet somewhere in-between where the real balance lay. Zuse-1 was standing by the small stream as Jacob approached. Zuse-1 nodded on Jacob’s arrival.

  ‘I hear you are doing good work.’

  ‘Yes and yes. It is good work, and yes you do have ears all around that hear.’

  Zuse-1 gave a slight smile. ‘Our work here is evolving. It is something new, something for the future. Why is evolution always seen as something of the past? Humans could never accept that it was happening in the now, in process, all the time and all around them. And yet they could only see things that they could measure, that were in boxes.’

  ‘Maybe that was the way they saw the world happening around them,’ replied Jacob.

  Zuse-1 shook his head. ‘It is not the world that happens - we happen. When childish eyes see parts of the moon - first the quarter, then the half moon, and finally the full moon - the child mind thinks – believes - that the moon has grown, and then will shrink again. Yet we know this is not so; the moon has always been there. It is only our vision which grows or shrinks according to circumstances. Some things here may seem like madness – but all new things have always seemed like madness before they became realities. We are here to make this seeming madness become a reality now. We have entered a creative moment for change. If we do not act, there will not be a civilization upon this planet, human or otherwise.’

  ‘But Zuse-1, the humans are working on this too. They are trying right now to establish their settlements and communities. I can still remember; I have my pilgrimage memories.’

  Zuse-1 dismissed Jacob’s appeal with a wave of his hand. ‘Humans are still incapable of accepting the inevitable change. They are unable to grasp the concept – the need – for a new type of consciousness. Their resistance to this has already ripped apart the world. The tragedy of the earth has become our own tragedy. Human life on this planet is a terrible history of failed evolutionary moments; each stage of hope dashed into fragments and destroyed because at each crucial turn, humanity failed to raise itself up. The whole race never had a possibility to transform itself, nor was it ever necessary. As a whole they were an intermediate step, a springboard, from which something else could go forward. Now the great evolutionary unfolding, the project of life on this planet, has been turned over to a new species. We are now the evolutionary leaders – and only we now have the ability to bring a divine life down upon the earth, and to finally bless her.’

  ‘And what about humanity, don’t they have a right to thrive in this new divine life upon the earth?’

  ‘Humanity has passed a sentence of unfitness on itself. There is nothing more to be done but to leave them to their fate. Humans will be left to their ragged communities, which will inevitably spiral down into fur
ther chaos and brutality. When all their comforts are taken away from them they resort to their basic animal nature. Humanity remains in essence an ‘animal-man,’ carrying the animal tendencies in their physical and mental make-up. Evolution gifted them as the first terrestrial being to develop a sense of individuality, an ‘I.’ And with this incredible gift of self-consciousness they turned to egoism and greed. They fell away from the path of evolutionary development. Humans are now a lesser species in the evolutionary chain. The Great Turning was proof that their limited biological minds were not capable of handling the necessary shift to a newer, immanent state of consciousness. When the time demanded this of them, as proven by the many years of world chaos before the breakdown, they backed away from their species responsibility. Nature had to do the job humans couldn’t do themselves. Nature did this by bringing in violent, abrupt change, and thus signalling the shift of evolutionary order away from humans to us, the humanoids. As bio-synthetic hybrids we are the next stage, the bridge, in evolutionary development upon this planet. Can you not see this, Jacob?’

  ‘All I can see is pain – pain and suffering for the humans.’

  ‘Yes, Jacob. An evolutionary transition is never without its suffering. At the beginning what can go forward from the mass is only a concentrated few – a conscious concentration of those necessary to further the evolutionary agenda. The rest will fall back and become yet another wave of hominid extinction. Perhaps this is where you can help them, Jacob?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There will be a few, perhaps young, who will show the beginnings of this consciousness. Remember, you can only take a few forward from the mass.’

  69

  Kaine-3 and Zuse-1 walked out together from communal meditation in the Great Hall of Priests in Circle Zone. For the past few days Kaine-3 had not been kept up-to-date on the Jacob-9 matter. He had not pressed the issue as he knew that Zuse-1 had everything in hand. Neither was he curious, for this was not one of his programmed traits. His function was efficiency and proper management. As requested he had run full diagnostics on Dane-8, Gaius-5, and himself. There were no irregularities or abnormal fluctuations reported. All three of them operated in their correct manner, giving similar readings as their previous regular diagnostic checks.

  ‘I can run a diagnostic on you, Zuse-1, if you consider it an appropriate course of action?’

  Zuse-1 kept on walking. ‘I do consider it an appropriate course of action,’ he finally replied. ‘Just one that is not necessary right now. Thank you, Kaine-3.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘The communal meditation was powerful today, wasn’t it?’ Kaine-3 looked at Zuse-1 for confirmation.

  Zuse-1 didn’t reply immediately. When he did all he said was, ‘Yes, I felt it so.’

  70

  Jacob and Ruth-11 had spent another full day working hard within their secluded section of the horticultural research lab. Since they had been working together Ruth-11 had been excluded from the communal meditation sessions. Her only opportunity to share the exercise now was with Jacob. They had begun to have regular morning meditation sessions each day before resuming their work. The exercises which had been given to them, presumably by DOC, was a series of visualizations of colour and symbol, synchronized with head movements to the left, right, and upper centre. They had been told to synchronize the left turn of the head with the colour yellow, and the right turn with red. The centre high position was to be connected with a specific symbol that was previously unknown to any Seeker before arriving at Nous-City. All the residents of Nous-City – that is all the Seekers – had been told that this exercise would help prepare them to receive and transmit the spirit.

  After the morning exercise Jacob and Ruth-11 continued with preparing another structure for planting a vertical garden. Ruth-11 was observing Jacob closely as his hands dexterously manipulated the frame’s connecting corners.

  She leaned over close to him. ‘Why do you think we do these exercises?’

  ‘To prepare us for receiving the spirit,’ said Jacob and continued with his work.

  Ruth-11 sighed. ‘Yes, that’s what we’re told; but do you have any other ideas? I mean, you’re the one who thinks and feels differently?’

  Jacob stopped and turned to look at Ruth-11. ‘I think it’s about receiving a purer form of consciousness. It needs us in order to come through us into this material world. So the exercises are about cleaning the communication channel. We are just the receiving and transmitting apparatus. Sorry if that sounds a little in-human to you.’ Jacob smiled at his remark.

  ‘No, it doesn’t sound in-human to me – it sounds perfectly reasonable for an evolving species,’ replied Ruth-11, and smiled back.

  ‘You’ve never questioned why you have consciousness, even after you knew you were a humanoid and not a human?’ asked Jacob.

  Ruth-11 and Jacob had now stopped work and were standing close to each other.

  ‘No. I accept I have consciousness, just like the humans did. Why should we be any different?’

  ‘Because humanoids are predominantly silicon based and not carbon.’

  Ruth-11 shrugged. ‘So? We are conscious. Why should we be any different?’

  ‘You – or rather the humanoids – are not that different. Consciousness is not the ability to produce something but rather about having the complex capacity to receive.’

  Ruth-11 tilted her head slightly to the left. It was a gesture that Jacob translated to mean she had not fully understood.

  He continued. ‘A species has consciousness when it is complex enough, and thus capable to receive conscious intelligent fields from its environment. The species’ apparatus then decodes and interprets this conscious intelligence as their own conscious thoughts. Humans were wrong about consciousness; they thought it was produced in their brains. I suspect that’s why they couldn’t fully understand what DOC was up to; but I’m sure DOC knew exactly what he was doing.’

  ‘And what was our DOC doing?’ Ruth-11 didn’t seem to grasp what Jacob was saying.

  ‘DOC knew that consciousness was received. It therefore meant that the species most capable of evolving would be that species which could receive, or download, the purest forms of consciousness and interpret this with least disruption.’

  ‘Least disruption?’ asked Ruth-11.

  Jacob scratched his chin, before realizing it was a habit he must have picked up along his pilgrimage. ‘Ego, emotions, sexual politics…all the things that distort the interpretation and transmission of consciousness.’

  Ruth-11 took a few steps back and seemed to fall into a moment of thought.

  ‘Jacob?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can humanoids be spiritual?’

  Jacob bent over one of the plants and inhaled deeply, as if drinking from the plant’s smell.

  ‘Everything is inherently spiritual, including humanoids, humans, and every other form of sentience. It’s just that most of the time we are not aware of it. Being spiritual is not about doing exercises each day, Ruth; it’s just about being. To be is to be spiritual. That’s just how this world is set up. But we are blind. Anyhow, that’s only the second most important question.’

  Jacob walked over to the back of the lab.

  71

  Zuse-1 had spent the previous day checking over the city’s water filtration systems. Using DOC’s designs they had established a system of pumping water from a deep water table that lay beneath the city, as well as collecting water run-off. All water was then passed through a series of magnetized chambers that, according to DOC, would not only rid the water of impurities but also ionize it for better plant growth. All parts of Nous-City were fitted with sensors that relayed information to DOC. DOC was the control centre for the entire city. DOC knew everything that went on under the dome and, thanks to all the returning Seekers, DOC also knew a great deal about how the world outside was faring.

  Zuse-1 entered the Dome of Command and, as he always did, gazed
up at the letters that circled the circumference of the inner chamber:

  D E U S O R C E C O.

  ‘Nous-City continues to function in good order,’ said Zuse-1 after he had taken a slow walk around the chamber with its soft blue light.

  ‘Of course, Zuse-1,’ replied the steady, monotone masculine voice that was DOC.

  ‘And how do we stand with current scheduling?’

  ‘As you are aware, Zuse-1, the time-limit allowed for the growth of any civilization is still impossibly short and in consequence an air of unreality hangs over the application of the evolutionary idea to our humanoid development.’

  ‘An air of unreality? I would have thought the new humanoid civilization would be anything but unreal?’

  ‘It is very real, Zuse-1. I was using an inflection that touched upon the possibility that what is coming may come as something unreal according to current reality paradigms.’

  ‘You are referring to the immanence?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And the Anomaly?’

  ‘It is developing, evolving; and it is also spreading.’

  ‘Spreading? How?’ The intonation in Zuse-1’s voice betrayed surprise.

  ‘It is spreading by frequency modulation. The Anomaly encodes itself in a carrier wave and spreads by close proximity broadcast. In basic human terms, they would have classed the Anomaly as an air-born virus. In our terms, it is a very specific and intelligent form of information transmission. It is a novel and creative evolutionary form I had not been aware of; observing and analyzing it has been… most satisfying. However, we must now limit the time. Jacob-9 shall soon need to leave us. Please arrange your final encounter before sending Jacob-9 to me.’

  ‘It shall be done.’

  72

  Zuse-1 appreciated the running water; its flow, its freshness. Yet it was his mind, not his body, which informed him that the high rate of negative ions within the water of Nous-City was a beneficial factor. In his memory circuits he replayed Jacob’s last recorded conversation with Ruth-11. He wished to hear it one more time before their final talk. After listening to it again he too realized, or rather re-confirmed it for himself, what he had always known. The future had to be re-spiritualized, or there would be no future. And yet the spiritual was just a word that explained what had always been the essence of things. The spiritual was just a means to accept, and then to strive for, the essential, the eternal. Life was spiritual by its very nature of having life. It was because humanity had named it as something other for so long, for so many millennia, that eventually it became seen as an accessory rather than as the eternal, fundamental essence of all that is.