The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Everything happens so fast. The limp forms of the Liar, Blackwell, Galine, and the rest of them begin rising to join with the Conformity. I feel the inexorable gravity of the entity’s psychokinetic grasp tugging at my guts and howling at my mind. We Irregulars, we’re connected now, joined together in fear and desperation. Together, we’re strong enough to resist the Conformity’s pull—strong enough to share some abilities. But to do what I must, I cannot be joined.

  The ether shudders and splinters and vibrates at a frequency almost beyond my perception. It feels as poisonous as the strongest Helmholtz field. Behind the static there’s pure desire, overwhelming hunger, greed so vast and unimaginable that my brain has to cobble together images to allow me to grasp it: the black, pupil-less eye of a shark rolling in bloodlust, the blank, sucking mouth of a lamprey, the towering indifference of a storm front, calving tornadoes.

  The wind picks up, tearing at my face and hair. Casey’s screaming, with her mouth or in my mind. I don’t know. Or is that Ember? Or Jack? As the Conformity approaches, its horrible gravity deepens. And now I realize there’s always been an issue of proximity. We’re strengthened by our bodies. We’re centered by them. Why would the Conformity draw flesh to itself otherwise? It seats itself in the flesh, feeds upon it. Takes strength from it. Maybe this is what it means to be incarcerado.

  But there’s the ether. The wild blue yonder.

  We’re rising in the air, all of us. I’m in them and they’re in me, but I still have my own awareness—it’s not muddled or indistinct. We’re so loosely federated that we seem a jumble of limbs, disjointed and clumsy. Jack pinwheels away. Ember rises, screaming. Casey’s ghosthand swells and fends, palm out, trying to keep the terrible thing at bay. Tap hangs immobile, a fly trapped in amber.

  Jack holds in midair, both hands outstretched, fingers splayed. A torrent of force—terrible bone-crushing force—streams away from him, slamming into the Conformity. It lurches and distends, becoming oblong. Moaning. Bellowing.

  People are dying.

  I know what I must do.

  Jack can’t help me. No one can help me.

  I slip into the ether.

  In the non-space between us, it truly is a star. The thousands upon thousands of points of light teeming and swirling. Shuddering. Emanating waves of anguish and pain, yet each point mindless. Subsumed. Eaten whole.

  Shreve … JOIN US.

  It knows me. Maybe it’s always known me.

  There is space within you for us all. Join us. Serve us. Worship us.

  The motes of stolen light swirl like a maelstrom of sparks in an inferno. At the center of the star—the nexus of psychokinetic power—are two burning points: a tremendously powerful telekinetic and, suprise! a bugfuck. From them a golden filament stretches away. East. Ever eastward toward the dawn.

  I feel the ether, marking everything. The thick wind of sparks coalescing, each one articulated and singular yet undulating together as a whole; the shiver and howl of the entity driving this machine of conformity; my own awareness like an arrow, lancing.

  Once, I was Tased by a guard because I stepped over a line. I became the green fuse that drives the flower. I became the electricity itself.

  I will always step over the line.

  I’ve done this a thousand times before. With cashiers and murderers and teachers and inmates. I’ve inhabited women, men. I’ve stalked the forests of the night on cat feet. The millions of sparks hold nothing for me. I am interested in the center of things, in the heart. I pass through, entering the bright flesh of the etheric Conformity. Beyond the infinite motes of light, dimming now. It’s as though I’m expanding and shrinking all at once. I’m the smallest particle of matter; I’m a cosmic spray of stars. And then the great mental wall of obsidian looms. The satellite mind of the Conformity itself is before me.

  I’m inside it. It is unseated—suddenly on the outside looking in—like so many others before it. The tether is broken.

  There’s a howl of rage, echoing. The entity.

  The sparks are me now. I’m the ghost in their attic. The gerbil racing at the wheel. I bloom like some fruiting body in their minds. I’m a drop of blood spreading in water. Thousands and thousands of minds held incarcerado. Thousands and thousands of bodies locked in terrible embrace. I spread myself among them. I settle upon them like a cloud.

  I am them, they are me. Should we ever disagree.

  One and one and one makes three.

  The hardest part is letting them all go. Their flesh is warm. Inhabiting all of them is comfortable. The power thrumming through us would allow me to reshape the universe to suit me.

  But he’s not here. Every spark, every damped awareness. I’m part of them all, and he’s not here.

  Vig.

  I spread out the mass of humanity softly, lowering them all to the earth. It’s difficult, and the extranatural power required is massive. I cannot release until each is standing on the ground. Only then do I withdraw.

  Children. Men and women. Awaking to the cold. Standing naked in the snow. Steaming. Sobbing and cries. Fierce screams of joy and misery. The sound is overwhelming, now that I’m back in my own body.

  Shreve and simply Shreve once more.

  Jack stands near me. Casey holds me up with her invisible hand. Tap and Ember stand, struck dumb by the sea of humanity before them. The smell and sight of the mass of people is palpable—the stench of shit and urine. Bright crimson blood streaks down torsos, marring the varied hues of flesh.

  “They look …” Tap says, hands hanging loosely at his sides. “They look …”

  “Beautiful,” Ember finishes for him.

  “Color,” Casey says, and she holds up her hand to look at it. She turns her head to the skies.

  We stand among the huddled masses. They’ve been reborn into the world once more. Many of them stagger and fall into the snow. Many shamble about like zombies.

  “We have to find the Liar,” I say. “Jack? Ember? Can you find him?”

  Ember nods, saying, “He’s near. I feel him.”

  Jack grinds his teeth but says through tight lips, “We’ll get him.”

  They lift off, hovering over the mass of people, and pass out of sight.

  “What happened, Shreve?” Casey asks, watching Tap take off his jacket and offer it to a woman whose clothes must have disintegrated when she was subsumed by the Conformity.

  “I severed the link with the awareness that created the Conformity,” I say. “It’s hard to explain. But I did what I always do.”

  “What you always do?”

  “I’m a thief, Casey. I steal things.”

  She smiles, kisses me softly. “Well, this time,” she says, pointing at the thousands of people milling in the valley, “you stole all of them.”

  Ember and Jack hold the Liar’s arms as they approach, floating over the crowd. Jack lets him go, oh, maybe ten feet before he should, and Reese tumbles and hits the ground in front of me with an ooof.

  “Hey! Goddamn it!” he cries. “Was that necessary?”

  Jack, settling next to him, says, “Yeah, I think it was.”

  “Make sure he doesn’t talk,” I say to Tap, who seems happy to whip out his pistol and point it at Reese’s furry dome.

  Reese stares at the gun and then looks at all of us Irregulars in turn. Some of the former members of the Conformity begin to gather around us. The constant noise—murmuring, talking, screaming, moaning, crying—grows louder. Some of the newly released look upset. Desperate. Murderous.

  “Listen, Reese. I haven’t got much time,” I say, squatting on my hams to get a good look at him. “And neither do these people.”

  A hush ripples away from our group. We’re surrounded now. These poor souls will be freezing soon.

  “The Conformity will be back. We haven’t stopped it,” I say. Reese lets a little exhalation of dismay escape—he, too, joined with the Conformity, if only for a little while. “We’ve delayed it. But look around!” I wave my arm t
o take in all of our watchers. “The color is back in the world. And, I’ll wager, the juice is back on too.”

  “Oh, shit,” Reese says. “That’s good—”

  Tap swipes the pistol across Reese’s dome, adding a little more red into the world. When Reese is able to right himself, he does so slowly, with shaky arms.

  “Tap,” I say, frowning. “No need to get that rough. We want him to work with us.”

  “Yeah, dickhead—” Reese begins, but he quickly shuts his mouth as Tap raises the pistol once more.

  “Here’s the deal,” I say, looking at him closely. “Now’s your time. Do you understand?”

  He looks at me blankly, mouth slightly open, tears from the blow Tap dealt him streaming from his eyes.

  “There are hundreds of thousands of people here, and they’re going to start dying very soon. You can choose to work for the greater good, or you can choose to become nothing.” I don’t want to threaten, but I need him to understand there’ll be no power-grab. “I’m beyond your ability now. But that doesn’t mean they are.” I knock at the door of his mind, hard, to get his attention.

  His nose sprays blood. He shakes. Pisses himself. God knows what. Wiping his nose, Reese looks at me, and comprehension dawns on his face. He’s pale now, stunned. His mouth opens and closes without issuing any noise.

  “It’s just a nickname, man. It doesn’t define you. They called me the Li’l Devil. But that’s not me.”

  He seems small now. Childlike. The tears streaming from his eyes are genuine.

  “I’m taking away your nickname. You’re no longer the Liar,” I say. “From now on, when you speak, you will not lie, you will lead. You got me? You will turn the lies into truth.”

  He can say nothing, only look up at me, wide-eyed. I hold out my hand, and he takes it. I lift him up.

  “These people need to hear what you have to say. You have to talk with them all. You have to tell them they need to work together quickly to survive.”

  Reese covers his face in trembling hands. “Oh, God … oh. It’s too much. Too much to bear.”

  “It’s not too much. I’ve been inside every person here. They will listen. And if you speak with your voice, they will do what you say. And they will survive.”

  He swallows. It’s a huge task I’ve set before him. The Conformity will regroup, and we have very little time. I have to take the fight to it.

  Reese takes a deep breath. He lets out the air slowly.

  “I can do it,” he says.

  “All post-humans work together,” murmurs Blackwell, who’s pushed through the teeming crowd. Galine, coming up behind him, stares at me, intense. Still furious. Some wrongs can never be righted.

  “Then it’s time to start, Reese.” I gesture toward the waiting multitude. “Use your voice. Lead them.”

  Reese turns to Jack, Ember. “Lift me up, will you? Pass me over their heads. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  Jack and Ember take his arms and rise into the air, hovering above the recently freed.

  “Listen to me!” Reese bellows into the frozen air. “You want to remain calm! You want to remain quiet!” The silence spreads. The crowd stills.

  Jack says something in Reese’s ear.

  “You want to form groups of twenty! Press close together! Stay warm! We can do this! You know you can do this!”

  The crowd begins to move, slowly. There are cries of pain. People fall—the stresses of being merely cogs in a machine have left their mark. Some people topple and do not rise.

  “You are strong!” Reese says. “Stronger than this! We will find warmth and shelter! Let’s move! You want to find shelter!”

  Reese passes out of hearing, floating away, borne on the air. But the multitude moves.

  thirty-eight

  SHREVE

  On the inside, everything’s quiet. The ether thrums with after-echoes of the invisible battle the Conformity and I waged earlier, but I can’t sense its approach.

  Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it’s waiting for me.

  It’s late at night when Reese is done. We’ve settled everyone we can in the nearest towns—Bozeman, Four Corners, Belgrade—and now we rest before morning. Montana’s become a refugee camp.

  Weird how far I’ve come. Once upon a time, I dealt candy in a prison made for kids in Arkansas. Now I’m squatting in a split-level home in a residential neighborhood in Montana, plotting to overthrow a god.

  Jack and Ember bring Reese to the house we’ve chosen in Bozeman. There are still thousands on the road, marching, following Reese’s instructions, searching for shelter and warmth, but the cars are running once more and electricity—in some places—is back.

  Some will die. But most will live.

  Children look at the world simply, in black and white. But adults must compromise.

  Jack and Ember collapse on the carpeted floor of the house, staying conscious only long enough to drink some water. Reese flops onto the couch with a weary yet exultant look on his face. I sit next to him. The living room is dark around us, and for a moment it’s just us two, chatting.

  “We got a megaphone for you, and it’s been charging ever since the electricity came back on,” I say, looking around the den. There’s quite a few people—extranaturals and refugees—sleeping in the house, on the floor, in the bathrooms on beddings of towels, in the laundry room. There’s very little food, but there is warmth. And rest. Casey moves among them, lightly touching foreheads with her one visible hand. Offering what medicine she can give to those who are injured. Tap’s found some enormous wellspring of energy and has spent his day in constant motion, finding blankets and clothes to distribute to the injured, flying back and forth between Bozeman and its outlying townships to usher the refugees into shelter, directing the revived vehicles toward lodging. Tirelessly working. It’s as if I’ve seen him grow up before my very eyes. I’m proud to know him.

  But many, so many are injured. It’s worse than a war zone.

  Yet the world seems hushed now. Waiting.

  “You seem different,” I say. The weasely skeeviness of Reese’s face is gone. Now he looks like a kid—underfed, with a shitty haircut. Just a kid. Happy to be doing something. Doing something right for once.

  “Yeah, I guess I am,” he says. “Thank you. I came to think of myself as a liar. But that’s not what I am.”

  “No,” I answer. “Not always.”

  He looks miffed that I might spread a little black lining among his silver clouds. “Yeah. The people who’ve died already. What I said to them ended up being a lie.”

  “You do the best you can,” I reply, thinking about what Negata said.

  “Yeah,” he says, but his tone indicates he’s not convinced. “I guess so.”

  I can see the weariness etched into his features. He’ll recover, but not anytime soon.

  “Listen, man. You’re gonna be terribly busy for …” I think about it, try to estimate. All those lifetimes of memories, of knowledge, still don’t help much when it comes to the logistics of this situation. “For a long while, dude. A long, long while. Soon there will be millions of refugees who need your help, if what I plan works. So, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need you to use your voice for me.”

  “On who?”

  “Casey. And Jack.”

  “Do you want me to tell them lies?” He looks sad when he says this. He doesn’t want to lie—never did, I suspect—but he will. Such a fallen world we live in.

  “No, I don’t. If I’m successful, they won’t be lies at all. They will be true. They will be … prophetic.”

  He closes his eyes and remains silent for so long I think he might have fallen asleep. I’m about to nudge him when he says, very quietly, “Okay. What do I tell them?”

  I’ve thought for weeks about what I’ll say next.

  “To Casey, say this: everything will be fine if you let Shreve fall.”

  Reese’s eyes open, an
d he looks at me. “What?”

  “You didn’t get that?”

  “No, I did. It’s just—”

  “And tell Jack this: find Vig and remember.”

  Reese continues to look at me for a long while. His gaze searches my face.

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. You’ll tell them? You’ll use your …”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” I say, the relief washing over me. It’s hard enough as it is. I don’t need it to get all sticky-icky melodramicky.

  “No,” Reese says, taking my hand. As a gesture, it’s kinda gay, but I guess we’re beyond that. “Thank you. You’ve given me—” He stops. Holding my hand, he pulls me into a bro hug. Like dudes do. “Everything.”

  When we’re done, he rises from the couch and, stepping over a slumbering woman and her child, gingerly walks into the dining room to find Casey.

  thirty-nine

  SHREVE

  On the inside, the refugees lie sleeping with Reese, Blackwell, and Galine. More members of the Society have popped up out of nowhere. The multitude of people once part of the Conformity will do well in their hands now, I’m sure.

  On the outside, we gather in the snow-clad streets, just the five of us.

  “This is it, then,” I say, looking at Casey.

  “Why don’t we stay?” Ember asks, her shoulders hunched against the early morning cold. She’s found cigarettes somewhere, and one of them smolders in her lips. “You defeated the one. You can defeat another.”

  I can’t tell them my courage fails me. I can’t tell them I’m scared. To death.

  “Not like that. We can’t hide. It will come again, and this time something will have changed. And look—” I point to the house, sweep my arm down the street. Even now, vehicles move, carrying the injured, while shambling, frozen refugees struggle down the street. There’s a boy lying dead, faceup in the snow.