Gestalt Prime

by Ignacio Salome

  But this only raised more questions. The intelligence refused to answer if it was responsible for opening the gateway or if the gateway was a natural occurrence much like Wei had thought and his ability to communicate with it was accidental. Of course, the answer would not come. Perhaps he was being kept there on a need to know basis. As a pilot of prototype aircraft, he understood that information must only be disseminated to those who needed and could be trusted with it. Maybe he was not trusted with the answers. Strangely enough, at that moment, over two hundred years since he had stepped into the gateway, the intelligence spoke to him. And when it did, it appeared as if he had gained its trust for the information he received was a vision of the future.

  Within an unspecified amount of time, a young man would make contact with him by accident. When this happened, the intelligence communicated Mikhail to help this man with information he would need to build the correct communications protocol. The intelligence did not want Mikhail to complete the journey across the Celestial Gateway but instead gave him the means for another one to do so. While the time came, Mikhail asked the intelligence for another mental journey. After all those years, passing the time in those fabricated realities had become a drug to him. The more intense the experience was, the more he wanted. And the intelligence obliged.

  *

  About twelve years later, Mikhail was swimming deep in the Pacific Ocean when a male voice interrupted his focus, knocking him out of the fabricated reality. He found himself sitting on that same place with the cloudy azure sky and the mirror-like surface. The voice sounded much like a teenager who repeated the same words over and over again. Mikhail had to make an effort to understand the words that were being spoken in English.

  “Test, one, two, three,” the voice said, echoing in the field from all directions. Mikhail for a moment wondered what was going on but then remembered the task the intelligence had assigned to him all those years ago.

  “Hello,” Mikhail said when he failed to come up with something better to say to the first human he had spoken to in centuries.

  “Testing, testing,” the voice continued, ignoring him.

  “Hello, Ethan Sommers,” Mikhail tried again. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  The young voice he identified as Ethan stopped. Several minutes passed then a hint of static in the air told Mikhail this person had reinitiated the connection. Then Ethan said, “Cesar, get off this channel, it’s not funny. Or is it Steven?”

  “Negative, friend. My name is Mikhail Novak.”

  “Listen you asshole,” Ethan said, annoyed. “Whoever you are, this is a test channel so get off of it. And stop it with the weird accent.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not something I do on purpose,” Mikhail added as he stood up from the mirror-like floor and walked slowly as he had done before when he needed to concentrate. The intelligence had vaguely shown him how to modulate communications across the link Ethan had established but he still needed practice. Eventually, the signals he wanted came out of his mind in a formless, abstract shape and he awaited Ethan’s reaction.

  “Hello, comms HQ,” Ethan’s voice said echoing with a slightly different tone.

  “There, much better,” Mikhail said. “We can now talk to each other through your telephone.”

  “What the hell? What’s going on?”

  “Please, do not be alarmed,” Mikhail said tactfully. “The link you established to the gateway is acting as an interface between us.”

  “What gateway? Who are you again?”

  “Apologies. The link you established with the zero-point reactor. Mikhail Novak, just call me Mikhail.”

  “Yeah, I needed a power stream for a prototype voice channel. How did you know I bypassed regular power routing and went straight to the source?”

  “I know much and I’d like to share this knowledge with you.”

  Ethan’s voice stopped for a while then he chuckled and said “yeah okay. Well, I have to go talk with the toaster now. But don’t worry, we’ll stay in touch,” he added sarcastically then hung up his phone, cutting the link.

  Mikhail sighed then sent out the signal that out there in the physical world would make Ethan’s phone ring but his call was ignored. Nonetheless, he did not want to disappoint the intelligence. Just like it granted him access to the pleasant fabricated realities, he figured it could turn on him and put him on any sort of hell it could devise. It never happened before but he was not about to tempt it. And still, it would take weeks before Ethan would take him seriously.

  *

  “Well, if you think about it, them finding out what the Mother really is will prepare her for what’s coming,” Mikhail said, doing his best to comfort Ethan whose voice sounded as if under great stress.

  “And then my daughter is going to find out her whole life is a lie I fabricated. I’m tired, Mikhail,” Ethan said, his voice echoing in the loneliness of the blue sky field. For thirty years, Mikhail had transmitted to him whatever knowledge he could interpret from the intelligence’s memory seeds and the whole plan was about to come to fruition. But then there was the unexpected turn of events when Sophia destroyed Francisco Citadel in a sort of self-righteous vengeful fury she thought would balance what humans did all those years ago when the Celestial Gateway was opened.

  “So am I, but you must hang in there, old friend. We’re almost done,” Mikhail said hoping to cheer him up.

  “Yes. And when we’re done I hope it was all worth it.”

  “For the greater good, it will be.”

  “For the greater good,” Ethan said then cut the call.

  “For the greater good,” Mikhail muttered to himself when he was again alone. Up to that point, he had only talked to Ethan but he didn’t even know how the man looked like. Communicating with him was limited to a voice stream and so he would never see the things Ethan saw. The death and the destroyed lives. It was easy to say that the end goal was too important to let a few lost lives bother him but the reality was that out there in the physical world, real children with real lives had been expended in order to fulfill the wishes of the intelligence.

  “Why?” he asked out loud like so many times he had done before. And like many times before, there was no answer. But suddenly, an image formed in his mind. The purpose of the Controller Program fully realized from beginning to end finally opened to him and it weighted against his heart, causing tears to form in his eyes.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “It must be completed at all costs.”

  Then the images vanished and Mikhail was again on his own.

  Aurora

  FORCED CONVERGE ENDS and I feel I’m losing balance. I kneel down and grab onto the floor which is a grainy mirror and the reflection of Alexia’s body looks back at me. It was a convergence like no other. My perception centers felt as if I was Mikhail. We were both one at once and I saw what he saw. Felt what he felt. I look up and I see him standing there, still in the pressurized suit he wore centuries ago when he attempted to traverse the Celestial Gateway.

  “I see,” I whisper, as I sit down, still processing everything I saw.

  “Tell me, how was your experience converging with the emulator?” he asks then approaches and sits just a short distance away.

  “What emulator?” I answer with another question then I remember the words engraved on the container where the Francisco Citadel reactor encephalon was kept. Gestalt Emulator. “You mean the gestalt.”

  “Call it as you may,” Mikhail replies. “It was one of the greatest achievements of the Program.”

  “What does it emulate?” I ask.

  “The intelligence on the other side, of course,” he replies with a smile. “Your father and I worked very hard to make sure you would be able to successfully traverse the gateway and meet it.”

  “Don’t call that bastard my father,” I spit out when the memory of my sister’s last moment is immediately summoned.

  “Oh but he is. You may hate him all you want. But the reality is that ever
ything we worked on was for you, Aurora,” he points out then laboriously stands up.

  “He called me an accident,” I say and as the words escape, I remember how much they hurt. They’ve always hurt.

  “Oh, my dear Aurora. It was quite the opposite. The one goal of the Controller Program was to create you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, looking up. “He always made sure I was aware of how much of an unexpected burden I was to Alexia, his model student. His beloved daughter.”

  The old man chuckles and looks at me in a way that feels oddly reassuring. We’ve just met and yet he inspires trust. Then he says “Alexia was his stepdaughter whom he always understood one day would need to be sacrificed. But you were something else. Dozens of test subjects minds had to be destroyed in order for us to find the optimal procedure to encode your brainwaves to a compatible protocol the Gateway would accept.”

  As he speaks, a bright object appears in the distance. It is a cloudy whirlpool about as large as the perfect sphere I once thought of as a reactor and a pure white glow escapes it as it spins slowly.

  “Interesting,” he says as he turns to observe this phenomenon. “That’s new. I guess the intelligence can’t wait to meet you.”

  “I saw one of these test subjects,” I say while I stand up and test my balance, still watching the construct in amazement but avoid the conversation veering off topic. “I saw how badly damaged their minds are. I saw how they keep them chained in beds while they soil themselves. Explain to me how their sacrifice ensures a future for mankind.”

  “You also saw how Ethan captured those minds in daemon form inside the emulator, did you not?”

  “The gestalt? Why would you have to emulate the intelligence?” I ask.

  “What you call the gestalt is a collection of all these intact minds. All those who failed where you succeeded are now being rewarded for their sacrifice by living countless happy lives over and over inside the safety of the one physical encephalon required.”

  “Perfect lives? It’s all lie. It’s a fake paradise. The gestalt lied to Sophia and caused her to abandon her duties as Controller and ultimately cause the fall of her citadel. You and Ethan built the gestalt then you are directly responsible.”

  “Yes,” the old man says, looking down perhaps in shame. He does so with such exhaustion in his body language that I am disarmed to continue accusing him. “Sophia’s actions were completely unforeseen. Her idea of happiness was a world returned to its natural beauty and the gestalt obliged. We did not expect her to purposely destroy her Citadel when she chose to join it.”

  “Why poison her mind with those lies in the first place?”

  “It was the final test. A test she failed and you passed.”

  “To decide whether or not to accept the gestalt’s fake paradise? What kind of absurd test is that?”

  “Aurora,” he says while motioning to the cloudy whirlpool. “Anyone can walk through the fourth-dimensional anomaly that lies at the core of the Celestial Gateway but it requires a perfectly encoded mind to complete the journey across it. Mine was not prepared and that’s why I am stuck in this buffer. By rejecting the gestalt, your brainwaves were encoded to the same complex pattern as the reality that exists beyond, on the other side.”

  “I don’t think this disgusting experiment justifies its human cost.”

  “But it does,” he says while I detect urgency in his tone. “From the moment you were born, so to speak, you’ve been a mind without a body. This isolation from the sensory realm of the physical world outside appears to be essential to successfully traverse the Gateway.”

  “What is it?” I ask, again facing the strange construct. “What’s on the other side?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a different reality. Another dimension if you will. The Celestial Gateway does not lead to a region of space but an entirely different universe. And in that other reality, physical manifestations don’t exist. Energy is all there is. The only way a consciousness can reach the other side is for brainwaves to carry it.”

  “This intelligence on the other side is a being of pure energy,” I say, stunned when the implications become clear.

  “What do you think was powering the citadels for the last 246 years?” he says, nodding with a smile. “Up there in that incomprehensible reality, the intelligence or Gestalt Prime if you will, absorbs consciousnesses into its whole just like the emulator would have done with yours, had you accepted its paradise. Over time, it gave me the knowledge to produce the correct brainwave pattern to not only complete the journey but also to prevent assimilation. Ethan and I used this knowledge to create the Controller Program and by extension, you.”

  “And I’m supposed to just accept my sister’s death and walk through that light?”

  “Yes. It’s your purpose. Go and fulfill it.”

  “What’s going to happen if I go through?”

  Mikhail looks away from me and speaks carefully as if measuring his words. “The transmission that was initiated on the day of the Orbital Synchronization Event will be completed. This buffer will be erased and the Celestial Gateway will collapse.”

  “But it’s the Citadel’s energy source. Without it, the barrier will fall.”

  “Correct. And not only Angeles Citadel. All other citadels use a similar anomaly that draws power from the one Gateway. Once you go through, all remaining citadels will fall and mankind will be wiped off planet Earth.”

  “I refuse to. I want to go back,” I plead in horror, rejecting to comply with the wishes of this Gestalt Prime.

  “There is nothing to go back to. The body you once shared with Alexia was annihilated by extreme gravitational forces, just like mine. These bodies we’re using right now appear to be creations of the Gestalt Prime and are limited to this buffer. If you fail to fulfill your purpose, cosmic radiation will eventually penetrate the planet’s mantle, making it impossible to survive even under the citadels and mankind will become extinct which is even worse.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense. There is no choice, it’s human extinction either way,” I say, trying my best to grasp the contradiction.

  “No. If you traverse the gateway, you will survive on the other side. This is your ultimate purpose and the reason so many lives were sacrificed so you would exist. You will be the last human out there, sharing that reality with the Gestalt Prime, never becoming a part of its whole. The storage module you carry which you call the Library contains the sum of all science, art and achievements ever recorded in human history. Otherwise you will stay here with me, trapped for all eternity,” he says now practically pleading. “I’m tired, Aurora. You must release me.”

  “Why me? Why do you have to make me choose?”

  “The encoding will prevent your consciousness from being assimilated. You will remain you and carry on the legacy of the human race in that other reality long after this one dies from entropy.”

  Not too long ago I swore I would get answers from Ethan before I killed him but now that I know where it all led, I am not sure what to do anymore. Mikhail looks at me expectantly. It’s in his best interest I cross the gateway. How has he not gone insane from being trapped here for so long, all by himself?

  There really is no choice. It’s not up to me. In the end, I was but another pawn of the Gestalt Prime and all that is left now is to fulfill my role. But so much is at stake that I can’t let my hatred for Ethan make me ignore the big picture.

  Completing the transmission through the gateway means death for all remaining humans on Earth. A much more monstrous act than the one committed by Sophia. Who am I to judge her anymore?

  But not doing so means the gradual extinction of the species.

  And much like Mikhail when he first stepped in the gateway, I have nothing to lose. My sister is dead and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I look at this man standing next to me awaiting my decision then at the gentle, cloudy whirlpool in front of us. As I wonder who will bala
nce my actions, I make my choice.

  “Very well,” I say. Mikhail smiles in relief.

  “You’ll make a fine representative to humankind,” he says solemnly.

  I nod and step away from him. Whatever happens it will all be over soon. If only I could talk to my sister once more. If only she could know how sorry I am for the way I treated her all these years. But I can’t. I can’t help but hate myself for not reaching to her and attempting to be a sister instead of a burden. What’s done is done. This Celestial Gateway Sophia knew had been opened by overly curious men who damned us all awaits. I look back once more but Mikhail is nowhere to be seen. It seems I’ll be completing my journey all alone. So be it.

  There is no point in waiting any longer and so I step into the whirlpool as my mind tries to even begin to comprehend what awaits for me on the other sid-

  Joel

  THE DEAL WITH Solis had been to wait 15 minutes then recall the elevator but Joel couldn’t help himself and pushed the button, closing its doors and sending the cab upwards. Alexia had asked him to stay there as she walked to join the former Director of Control Administration. The man with nothing to lose and a computer that gave him full control over the Citadel. They stood there with some distance between them, their voices muffled by the deep, subtle vibration caused by the construct Joel had once thought of as a reactor.