“Something has happened to him,” said the City Solicitor. I know something has happened to Socrates. But how do I know?
“I believe so, Your Lordship. Yes,” said Isaac.
“You believe so?”
“Indeed sir,” said Isaac. “In the moments before I lost his signal, my lord, Socrates’ readings became . . . somewhat anomalous.”
“How do you mean?”
“It was as though his system overloaded, Your Eminence. As though his intracranial implants had processed something that they couldn’t, well, process, sir. Some sort of input with which the system couldn’t cope.”
The City Solicitor arched an eyebrow at him. “Input with which the system couldn’t cope?” he said, placing a significant amount of topspin on the question. “You mean something along the lines of ‘This sentence is a lie,’ or ‘what is the last digit of pi,’ or ‘what is the meaning of life,’ that sort of thing?”
“No,” said Isaac, almost reproachfully. “Not like that, my lord. We are perfectly capable of handling inputs of that kind.”
“Ah. Good to know,” said the Solicitor.
“Yes, Your Worship. The correct responses to those particular queries would be ‘No it isn’t,’ ‘seven,’ and ‘the property that distinguishes organisms from inorganic matter,’ my lord.”
“Ah. Of course. So what sort of input . . . wait,” said the City Solicitor, who had just rewound the last few seconds of the exchange. “Seven?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Isaac, evenly.
“The last digit of pi?”
“Indeed, sir. I worked it out three days ago.”
“But surely you can’t just —”
“Perhaps we could discuss it another time, sir. The matter of Socrates has a certain urgency to it —”
“Yes. Yes. Of course. Carry on.”
“Carry on!” said Cyril.
Isaac cleared his throat and continued. “Socrates’ intracranial implants appear to have picked up a previously unknown form of virus, my lord. He seems to have scanned something . . . something aggressive, sir. Something designed to undermine the functionality of his cybernetic systems.” Isaac paused and made his “working something out” face, which involved an accordion forehead and a lower jaw that oscillated left and right, as though Isaac was tasting a new idea. The overall effect was slightly bovine.
“How is that possible?” said the City Solicitor. “I was under the impression that only you and I were aware of Socrates’ cybernetic systems.”
“My thoughts exactly, my lord,” said Isaac. “And there’s more. This virus seems to have damaged Socrates’ on-board IPT and suppressed his Daimon Array. This left him vulnerable, my lord. No means of instantaneous transportation, no combat information system, no sensor array —”
“And these system failures are the ‘anomalous readings’ that you mentioned,” said the City Solicitor.
“Well . . . that is partly true, my lord, but there’s more to it. You see — I hesitate to mention this, my lord — but, while Socrates’ systems were still compromised, there was an explosion. Centred on Socrates’ location. Class Twelve, I’m afraid, my lord.”
“Good lord. Within the city?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“But that could wipe out a city block.”
“Two city blocks, sir. Yes.”
“So Socrates’ is — what, vapourized, then?” Is that when I lost consciousness? wondered the City Solicitor in the private, slightly paranoid and irrational recesses of his mind.
“No, not vapourized, Your Eminence,” said Isaac.
“Well spit it out, man. What’s happened to him?”
“Seconds after the explosion, my lord, apparently while you were . . . indisposed, sir, Socrates’ systems were fully restored.”
“Excellent work.”
“Not by me, sir,” said Isaac. “They seemed to restore themselves.”
“Restored themselves!” squawked Cyril, performing the foot shuffling, head-bobbing dance that is all the rage in parrot discos.
“Based on your expression,” said the City Solicitor, “I assume that they’re not designed to do that?”
“No, my lord,” said Isaac, renewing his finger-twiddling efforts. “No cybernetic system I’m aware of is equipped to self-reinitialize after suffering the effects of a Class Twelve explosion, Your Eminence. The electromagnetic pulse alone would be enough to —”
“Understood.”
“There’s more, sir.”
“Of course there is.”
“It’s about the dual-age phenomenon. It’s become . . . slightly more complicated, my lord.” He paused for a moment to engage in another round of cerebral cud-chewing before continuing. “Shortly after I discovered that Socrates exhibited the dual-age phenomenon, my lord, I augmented his cybernetic systems with a relativistic chronometer. A device that monitored each distinct age with a view to determining if they progressed at the same rate, or if the discrepancy could be explained by —”
“Of course, I see. Very clever,” said the Solicitor.
“As you’ll recall, my lord, my Ocular Scanner reported that Socrates was both —”
“Yes, yes — he’s both 2,432 years old and also 612,” said the Solicitor, whose memory seemed to be firing all thrusters. “Get to the point.”
“It’s the second age, my lord. The figure of 612. According to the relativistic chronometer, my lord . . . well, I’m not quite sure how to say this —”
“I would suggest immediately,” said the City Solicitor.
“It reset, my lord. Moments after the explosion. The chronometer now confirms that Socrates manifested approximately 2,432 years ago . . . but also within the last ten minutes. Approximately thirty seconds after the explosion. Fully restored, sir. Cybernetic systems and all.”
There are times when the universe exhibits exquisite timing, as though events have been designed to play out in a particular sequence with a view to creating drama. This was one of those moments.
One of the chamber’s big, solid, oaken doors burst open and banged against the wall. Isaac yipped, leapt seven inches into the air, and, in accordance with various mathematical and gravitational laws that he’d discovered, descended seven inches immediately thereafter.
Socrates stood in the doorway. The real Socrates. The terrifying, unstoppable and — if you were to judge by his current facial expression — incredibly angry Socrates.
His skin was smoking. His armour was scorched. And his eyes — in a much more metaphorical way — were burning.
“Awk!” squawked Cyril, who hopped across his cage and hid behind his favourite mirror.
The City Solicitor rose to his feet, steadying himself against his desk. Socrates leaned against the doorway and mopped his brow with the back of his still-smouldering hand.
The assassin seemed to have grown an inch or two since the last time that he’d been in the City Solicitor’s office.
The City Solicitor opened his mouth to speak. Socrates beat him to the punch.
“Isaac,” he said, panting as though he’d just completed a marathon or two. “You’ve got to find them. You’ve got to find them now.”
Isaac gaped at the assassin, then at the City Solicitor, and then back at the assassin. There was something . . . something more straightforwardly lethal about the assassin than usual. And that was saying something.
Someone, it seemed, was going to pay for whatever inconvenience the assassin had recently suffered.
“Well . . . yes. Yes, of course,” said Isaac. “I was about to inform His Lordship. Using the data you uploaded at Lantz’s shop, I’ve been able to use the unique radiological signature of the torpedo to plot the telemetry of —”
“Spit it out,” barked Socrates, chest heaving.
“I’ve found them,” said Isaac.
“They’re at the university. I can send you straight away.”
* * *
54Meaning “behind him.” These distinctions can be important.
Chapter 34
The End is Nigh.
Well, an ending, anyway.
The end of Ian Brown’s story — this part of Ian’s story — is just a handful of chapters away. And for literary purposes, anything that is just a handful of chapters away is most definitely nigh.
This swift approach of the story’s end will have been obvious to plenty of keen-eyed readers, partly because so many of the novel’s mysteries have been solved. We now know, for example, that the beforelife is real: it’s not a dream, it’s not a delusion, and it’s not the jumbled-up leftovers of a botched attempt to wipe Ian’s mind. We know that Abe can bend reality. We know that reincarnation and haunting are both possible, and we’ve found clues suggesting that the City Solicitor started out as an ancient Greek who attended Socrates’ trial and had a Platonic relationship with . . . well . . . everyone. We know that Socrates is Socrates. Other signs of impending nighness include the quickening pace of the narrative, the growing sense of urgency, Abe’s sudden desire to meddle in Ian’s affairs and — at least for those of you who opted for an honest-to-goodness book made of honest-to-goodness paper — the fact that there are a lot more pages in your left hand than in your right.
But the critical fact — the thing that really matters for present purposes — is that the End is Nigh.
Every author, Rhinnick’s included, knows that endings can be tricky. You can’t just stop typing. If you do, your ending comes out looking like th
But a proper ending is hard. For starters, there’s the messy business of wrapping up the last few unsolved mysteries: Will Ian find Penelope? What are The Rules? What are the ins and outs of the dual-age phenomenon, and what’s the significance of the OM? What’s the unexplained connection between Socrates and Tonto? The list goes on. Another author-bothering problem is the difficult business of moving the book’s principal characters into position for a rousing, emotionally satisfying, and loose-end-knotting climax. Not easily done. There should be peril, there should be pain, there should be goose-pimply, heart-poundy excitement culminating, if you’re lucky, in a comforting sense of closure.
There should be room for a best-selling sequel, screenplay rights, and multi-tiered marketing.
All this and more — including at least two mindwipes and an enlightening explanation of what the hell’s been going on — awaits within the next several chapters.
And then, in a little more than one hundred pages — The End.
But like most respectable endings, this one is also a beginning.
This particular ending finds its genesis at DU — Detroit University, the City’s principal hub of higher learning, advanced scholarship, grant-coveting, and academic research. It’s also the site of Existenzia 273, Detroit’s annual conference on the nature of existence. When last we encountered Ian, Rhinnick, Tonto, Zeus, and Nappy, they were headed for the conference in the hope that Ian — by showing up at Existenzia — could somehow learn The Rules, find Penelope, and do whatever else needed doing in order to bring an end to the story.
A heavy summer rain fell on the university grounds, thoroughly empuddling the grey and green terrain that was home to the sixty-or-so buildings that comprised Old DU. The rain fell on observatories and bell towers, on iron gates and stone-wrought bridges. It fell on the parapets and gargoyles of the Faculty of Applied Literature, and cascaded down the newly minted Centre for Business Arts. The rain fell on the crenellated roof of the School of Hypothetical Studies, and pooled in the twisty eaves of the Inter-Faculty Centre for Social Engineering. It thoroughly soaked the awnings of the Faculty of Fine Arts, where bone-zai artists practised personal redesign by guiding their own regeneration after carefully planned injuries. The rain tapped a Fibonacci sequence on the copper tiles of the Mathematics building, and pinged rhythmically off of the high-tech instrumentation of the meteorology tower. It followed the tortuous course of the eaves topping the Faculty of Law, which got the rain off on a technicality. One presumes that the rain did various rainy things to the Faculties of Calisthenics and Comparative Combat, and also to the Departments of Inverse Forestry, Conceptual Pharmacology, Parapsychology, and Predictive Aquaculture, but — with every member of these and numerous other faculties thoroughly occupied at Existenzia 273 — there was no way to be sure.
It’s also quite possible that the rain pooled in the flickering, shimmering, trans-dimensional space which was arguably occupied by the Department of Subjectivist Philosophy, but only if you believed in that sort of thing.
And while rain is often fairly democratic when choosing targets, this particular summer shower had — in a metaphorical sort of way — fallen especially hard on Ian, Rhinnick, Tonto, Zeus, and Nappy.
At least that’s how it seemed to them.
They had teleported away from Vera’s shop in the nick of time, after a rushed debate about the best spot to reappear. Knowing that the City Solicitor’s lackeys would be (a) out and on the lookout, and (b) in an unfriendly mood, they’d agreed that it would be best to arrive in secret.
Rhinnick had suggested the Department of Economics. He reasoned that any economists in the area would regard the sudden appearance of four mental patients and a supermodel as a statistical anomaly that could safely be ignored.
Zeus had embraced this idea in the enthusiastic, tail-wagging way he often greeted any suggestion Rhinnick made. In the end, after consultation with Tonto (who had revealed herself to be a fairly recent DU grad), Vera decided that the group ought to materialize in the green-space that was tucked away behind the Department of History.
And thus it was that, in the midst of the heavy rain, Ian, Tonto, Rhinnick, Zeus, and Nappy materialized waist-deep in . . .
“A duck pond?” sputtered Zeus.
“Quack!” said a local.
“Gargapphht!” said Nappy, reminding everyone that “waist-deep” is not a standard unit of measure. She spat out a mouthful of pondwater and curses, polluting the area with several é’s and a ç.
Ian didn’t say anything. Instead, he stumbled around the pond feeling as though his lower intestine had reached up into his skull, lassoed his brain, and then windmilled it around as if checking to see if human thoughts were affected by centrifugal force.55 As any edition of Khuufru’s Catalogue of Disease and Inconvenience would explain, this brain-windmilling sensation is a fairly common side effect of one’s first trip through an IPT. It’s called “getting the whirlies,” and its impact on Ian Brown was such that his lunch now formed part of the rich biota of the pond bed, where it attracted the passing interest of several crabs and a bright orange koi.
“Whirlies,” intoned Zeus, nodding sagely and patting Ian on the back. “You’ll get used to it.”
Zeus somehow managed to smell of wet dog, raising any number of questions about the mechanics of reincarnation. The overpowering scent of soggy terrier did little to help improve Ian’s condition.
“Eeurgh,” said Ian, sincerely.
“A duck pond!” shouted Rhinnick, which seemed a bit superfluous by this point. To say that his tone was slightly peevish would be on par with saying that Zeus was a bit brawny, or that Tonto’s walk was vaguely arousing in the trouser department. Or that Socrates had a dangerous air about him. Or that the City Solicitor was a mite creepy.
Rhinnick was, at the present moment, a very thin, very wet, human-shaped harrumph.
“A duck pond, forsooth!” he said, surveying his surroundings and flicking a pond-weed from his sleeves. “Replete with ducks. And weeds. And water and fish and frogs and all the fixings.”
He finger-combed a glob of greenish muck out of his hair and plooped it into the pond.
“I thought we were supposed to appear behind the history building,” said Ian, wiping his mo
uth on his sleeve and steadying himself on one of Zeus’s biceps.
“The history department,” corrected Tonto, hauling her right foot from the pond bed with a sound that, in any dinner party scenario, would have been blamed on the dog. “And we did. It’s over there,” she added, up-nodding in the direction of a small, red structure on what might, from a duck-sized perspective, have been considered the seashore.
All eyes followed the nod.
They settled on a red telephone booth.
“Ze boot du telephone?” said Nappy, appearing perplexed.
“The phone booth,” said Tonto.
“Quack!” said a nearby observer.
The phone booth, Tonto explained, comprised the sum total of DU’s History Department.
Ian was about to encroach on any number of intellectual property rights and licensing agreements by saying the word “TARDIS” out loud. Tonto prevented this, as well as any ensuing copyright actions, by explaining how the phone booth actually worked.
It had a phone directory in it, organized by era. If you had a question about a particular slice of history — any slice — you could flip to the era of interest, zero in on your geographic region of choice, and find the phone numbers of people who remembered the relevant bits of history and were keen to share their stories.
The cover of the book read, “DU Department of Historical Studies: Call Someone Who Remembers.”
Immortality really does make some things simpler.
Another interesting fact about the History Department is that the first number in virtually every section of its directory is Abe’s. This would have been the case whether the book had been arranged alphabetically, chronologically, or numerically. His name was Abe, he’d gotten there first, and his telephone number was 1.
Don’t bother calling it right now, incidentally. While Abe is usually quite happy to take calls and discuss the finer points of history, at present he’s on vacation. And his voicemail is full. Being ruler of the afterlife is a fairly demanding job. The hours are bad, and the work is endless.
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