Occupy Me

by Tricia Sullivan

  –The Immanence permeates matter and consciousness such that it can understand and manipulate its substrate, but its substrate does not even know it’s there. Your body does not know you are conscious.

  Yet you know about it. You talk about it. And you know it’s gone.

  –A great many supercivilisations were damaged and cut off from one another when the Immanence left, because the way it infused matter made it a connecting system. This field where we are now, it’s all we have. We have always been scavengers. We live in the trash of the Immanence. You, too.

  Then they show me the seeds drifting through space, small tough casings barely detectable above background radiation. They are scanning for places to bury themselves, to popcorn into complicated functions, fed by the energy gradient from HD. Backdoor agents will steal the entropy from this blossoming and put it to use elsewhere in the energy black market – yes, entropy as a currency has its place if you are the Immanence and not just some lowly life form scraping a temporary existence. That’s how the Immanence increased its power on the downside of an increasingly chilly universe. It didn’t only power its systems with methods as pedestrian as the toasty and sparkling interaction between binary stars. It reaped destruction, too. The Immanence grew ecosystems and overcities with their roots deep in the material world and their many-many heads in the clouds of possibility – all thanks to the slant of the universe towards greater entropy.

  Natural selection is built on death, right? Well, looks like order is built on entropy.

  They show me oceanic molecular arrays on worlds incalculably distant from Earth and, on others, organisms that I do not understand and cannot frame. I hear the soundscape of mysterious movements under the lifeless rock, where the HD hijinks of the Immanence leave faint traces in the subatomic behaviour of silver and chlorine.

  Nowhere are there ships, though. No space stations. Dearth of anything so crude as a space elevator.

  So how do you travel?

  –Surely that’s obvious. We need somebody to carry us. Somebody like you.

  Don’t rot the frog, baby

  As she came out the automatic door of B&Q carrying an enormous beer cooler, Alison caught a glimpse of herself in the dark glass. Her hair was greasy. The region between her eyes and cheekbones was sepia with lack of sleep and she was walking too fast. It was all very suspicious.

  She had bought freezer packs, and she had bought instant cold packs that you use on the pitch for sports injuries, and she had planned what she was going to do to get the briefcase back but instead of worrying about the many, many things that could go wrong there she was obsessed with ensuring the frog didn’t rot in between the freezer at Heriot Row and its destination in Midlothian.

  Nothing else seemed to matter. Not MI5 or the Edinburgh police or Pace Industries or the IIF people that were probably running around town by now. Not Dr Sorle’s family, either.

  It was all about the frog now. She’d been saying the affirmation to herself so many times that now it ran around in her head to that ditzy old Billie Holiday tune, ‘I can’t give you anything but love, baby.’

  No mat-ter what just don’t rot the frog, Ali!

  * * *

  Getting away from Jerry Schroeder hadn’t been easy. He’d pressed her for details on the provenance of the sample. He was so excited about the molecular architecture! He’d even texted his supervisor and tried to corner her in the pub until the supervisor could arrive. His voice had gone high and excited. She had faked a migraine to get away and now he was messaging her constantly. She would think of a way to get rid of him, but she never had been able to think on her feet. She needed at least three weeks to come up with clever comebacks to people who insulted her, and, as for the matter of the frog and its nanotech flesh, well, she was over her head and there you go.

  She had just been in the middle of a massive needlework project when Pearl had come to town. That would have to be put aside, and Gunther would have to carry on looking after the practice. He would also have to look the other way when it came to a few things.

  She rang up Brian.

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’ he said. ‘I thought you were in Beauly.’

  ‘I’m back. Leave the keys in the van for me, will you? I’m coming over.’

  * * *

  At Queens Street Gardens she waited until the dogs had romped over to the far end of the park and Bethany was absorbed in texting. The bodyguard kept a distance from Bethany, walking up and down and constantly scanning. The streetlamps gave plenty of light, but the gardens themselves were heavily overhung by trees. When Kostya passed behind the holly trees Alison used her spare key to get in the house, guessing correctly that Bethany wouldn’t have bothered setting the alarm just to go across the street to the park. She dashed into the kitchen, opened the freezer, and rummaged until she found the bundle sealed in layers of plastic baggies. For a moment she mistook a frozen chicken carcass for the frog, but the frog was bigger and heavier. She rushed outside, thrust the package into the cooler that she’d loaded with ice, and shut the lid.

  Alison was revved. She steadied her eye on the logo at the centre of the steering wheel. Control the mind. With her eyes on the curved logo, she reached behind her with her left hand and drew the rifle into the front seat. The springs in the seat squeaked and the rifle butt thudded against the dashboard. She waited for the dogs to reappear, but they must be down the other end of the park.

  The trees stirred and a little rain began to fall. A Mini bumbled past on the cobbles, then turned left down the hill.

  Kostya’s bulk came into view. Alison kept her head down, watching him with one eye over the edge of the door where the window was rolled down. Then Bethany’s white shirt appeared out of the gloom. She was standing on the path near the iron gate, calling the dogs.

  Alison took out her phone and thumbed Bethany’s number. As Bethany answered the call, Alison braced the rifle on the open window and took aim. She’d been brought up near Glen Affric by a gamekeeper; she rarely missed. The dart hit Kostya in the stomach and he yelled, grabbed it and pulled it out. She reloaded and shot him again. He was motioning to Bethany to get down, even as he made for the cover of the nearest tree. Alison re-loaded. Bethany was standing in a half-crouch, and she looked at the phone and then started to move across Alison’s field of vision.

  ‘Take cover,’ Kostya yelled to Bethany, and Alison saw him take out a sidearm. Great. He hadn’t located her yet, though. Duffer.

  Bethany answered the ringing phone and Alison shot her right through her yoga pants and into the glute. Very nice.

  Bethany gasped and spun around, pulling out the dart and swearing a bit. Alison ducked out of sight, threw the rifle into the back of the van and checked her bag to be sure she could lay her hands on the antidote if she had to. She slid out the passenger door and watched Bethany over the hood of the van. Bethany was calling the dogs and had begun to run away from the van, across the park.

  ‘Bethany? It’s me, Alison. I’m at your front door. Where are you?’

  On the open line, Bethany gasped and swore.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she cried. ‘I’m in the park. Help me! Someone shot me.’

  Alison ran into the park. Kostya’s gun went off twice but the bullets went wide; she could see he was lying on the ground in a daze so she just kept going. Bethany had stopped and was swaying on her feet. But she didn’t come towards Alison. She was staring at the phone as if she didn’t know what it was.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be OK,’ Alison said. ‘Let me give you a hand.’

  Bethany’s expression showed that it was sinking in now: the tranquilliser, and the realisation.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Bethany slurred. ‘What did I ever do to you?’

  Alison kept walking towards her. Bethany reeled sideways like she was drunk, reaching out for support that wasn’t there. She tried to say something else but her speech was slurred.

  Alison lunged in and caught her before she fell.

>   ‘It’s all right,’ she said, wrapping Bethany’s arm around her shoulders like she was drunk and they were just going home from the pub. ‘I won’t let anyone harm you. Come on, let’s get you in bed.’

  ‘Guhhhhhh,’ said Bethany urgently. ‘Nnddgg.’

  * * *

  Alison had never smoked in her life and a week ago if you’d told her she would so much as light up in her own surgery, much less chain smoke all night, she would have fantasised about punching you. Of course she never would have really punched you. For that matter, a week ago she wouldn’t have used a tranquilliser dart designed for a wildebeest on a human being, either.

  Stuff had changed. Alison had found half a packet of fags abandoned in the van. After she dragged Bethany into the surgery she opened it with stubby, trembling fingers and lit one. After several seconds of horrid coughing she compromised by sucking the smoke into her mouth and letting it out again without taking it into her lungs. That felt good, albeit pointless. After seven cigarettes and a couple of shots of Talisker the air in the back room of her surgery took on a silver-blue quality. She swirled the single malt around the glass, enjoying its beauty. Peppery with notes of coconut. Dr Sorle said it was like burnt hoof. Were there dinosaur fragments in the deep Highland earth that had filtered the water in this malt?

  ‘You can’t just bung carbon nanotubules in amongst alcohol molecules,’ she said to the dog as if it had all been his idea. ‘There isn’t room. It would be like putting sixty thousand nuns in a Fiat.’

  The dog wagged his back end with a stub of outbred tail.

  Bethany stirred.

  Oh fuck. Alison sucked in a big draught of cigarette and collapsed in a fit of coughing. Bethany twitched violently and her boots crashed against the back of the cage. Eyes shut, face scrunched up, she smacked her lips like an old woman tasting imaginary rice pudding. She wriggled her way on to her back and moaned. Her hand pressed the edge of the cage and one finger came through. The male dog whined and licked it.

  ‘I smell hamsters,’ she whispered.

  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ Alison said. ‘We’re going to go to the airport together and you are going to remove the money you stole on St Kitts and put it back where you found it.’

  ‘You put me in a cage?’ Bethany croaked. She had turned over on her hands and knees and was squinting out at Alison. ‘Did Liam tell you to do this?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid it was all my own idea.’

  ‘I only did what he told me to do.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Dr Sorle. He said to get out before I got killed. He said to run fast, so I did.’

  ‘And where did you go?’ It was ever so much fun blowing the smoke out. Alison should have started doing this years ago, and fuck the health issues. So therapeutic.

  ‘Alison. I’m a human being. You’re a human being. Stop acting like some kind of gangster and let me out.’

  ‘Mmmms Not yet.’

  ‘I have to pee.’

  ‘That’s what the shavings are for.’

  Bethany didn’t speak. She was mad. She sat back, hugging her knees, with her head folded over at an awkward angle because the cage wasn’t tall enough to let her sit upright.

  ‘You bitch.’

  Alison shook her head. ‘I’m not easily moved to anger,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t watch your mouth I—‘

  Pearl’s phone rang. The ringtone was an old Macy Gray song.

  Treat me like your money.

  Save early, save often

  So let me get this straight. I am the ship. I am the swan ship and I’m to sail to the undying lands, I’m the rescue ship to finally take Gilligan and his friends back to the mainland. I’m the vessel. The thing you all pour yourself into and trust to save you.

  You are scavengers, you scan waveforms and modify them and sell them. You put me together out of dead things and you want me to do your bidding. You must know that it won’t be that easy. I am bigger than you now.

  –We are proud that you are bigger. We are waveform artists. We want to make things that are bigger than we are.

  And there is the small matter of not knowing where to take you if I wanted to.

  –We don’t care about ourselves, PEARL. We want you to save our library.

  Library. What library?

  –It contains waveforms we have scanned up and down the length and breadth of time. Snapshots of things that were coming to an end. Back before the Event isolated us, we recorded them.

  What kind of things?

  –Many kinds. Of course species. But also languages are gone. Cultures are gone. Skills, habits, ways of knowing. Ecosystems are gone.

  I look through the material in the nest. They have been trying to compile a sample of their material. In the nest there are traces of these abstractions, vivid impressions like a pigeon makes when it flies into your window and leaves feather-grease behind. The impressions are not the bird, but a sort of ghostly tease. The data stacks are catalogued by thumbnails of the countless diverse creatures: trilobites and shrubberies and fungi and an ambulocetus and viruses and a baby lemur, all crunched deep and stored for posterity. Many are damaged, some are in the process of alteration.

  There are creatures that have no more place in their world, archaic organisms now orphaned from their ecosystems. And there are cross-sections where the birds tried to sample an entire ecosystem for later reconstruction; some of these are in better condition than others.

  There are individual humans, and there are waveforms of cultural groups; most of these are damaged. The more complex the waveform, the harder it is to encode it without errors creeping in, especially after the hurly-burly of geologic time has taken its cut. There are ideas and movements, half-formed plans and near misses and ideas before their time and times before their ideas. It’s like the closet where history has stuffed all its unwanteds.

  And when this refuge is destroyed? What will become of them?

  –They will be destroyed – forever inaccessible. We lack the resources to back them up elsewhere. Maybe if we had abandoned them, the Immanence would not have shucked us off when it departed, but we were deeply attached to this universe because of our library. We stayed because the waveforms could not have survived the journey.

  Sadness descended on me.

  No backups? I mean, surely some redundancy was built into the system . . .

  –The immensity of this burden is probably inconceivable to you.

  So let me get my head around this. You guys are cosmic hoarders, and you have filled your house with back issues of the Daily Telegraph going back five hundred billionty years and now you can’t find your way to the toilet?

  –In rough terms, yes.

  Why would you do this?’

  –Why does anyone get attached to anything? Fear. Love. Habit, maybe. All of the above.

  My heart opens. It’s so sad.

  –You can’t save everything, PEARL. There isn’t anywhere to save it to.

  I don’t want to hear this. Of course I want to save everything. I love everything.

  –When you take the waveform of a person who is about to be killed, you also take their attachments to their mothers and fathers and people, to their environment, the food they eat, the way they form ideas. When you remove them from all this for storage, there is a severance that can never be repaired. These things can’t be recreated around them. You would have to scan everything. We can’t do that. Not with such limited resources.

  No wonder Kisi Sorle is a mess.

  –It’s not like we haven’t tried. We thought of trying to recreate the entire environment. To grow a forest that would sustain lost people who lived as one with it, for example. Give back the environment that was stolen from them. We looked at ways to find the energy to generate such detailed environments. It wasn’t feasible. Maybe the Immanence could do it, but the Immanence is gone.

  The Immanence. I am on the fence, and it’s an uncomfortable, wedgie-generating place to be. Don’t
know whether to admire or fear, aspire or dread – and it doesn’t help that how I feel about the Immanence is of vanishingly little significance to it or them or us, in the scheme.

  I pick up the lumpy eggs, full of compressed versions of waveforms my mothers have tried to save: the scratch-baked worlds, the islands in unknown seas. Like making a terrarium for a turtle you’ve found, filling it with moss and a little pool of water. Cages gilt with best guesses about what environment should be; but these never quite seem to match the internal representation that the orphaned organism carries. The birds show me the pains that were taken, the different trials and simulations. Many of them had gone badly wrong.

  –PEARL, you must understand this: we are not machines executing procedures for which we know the outcome. We are artists. We play with the world even as it plays with us.

  You played with Kisi. And me.

  –Yes, it was play. How else would you have a spirit, a selfhood, if you were not born of our spirit? Play gives birth to spirit.

  This is so not what I imagined it would be.

  –We rescued the waveforms. We saved them.

  As far as Kisi is concerned, you stole him.

  –We did it out of love.

  You also sold them.

  –Honey, everybody’s gotta pay the rent. Have you noticed we’re in an asteroid field? We’re at the mercy of a steep decay constant, here. Tick tock.

  It’s always tick-tock, isn’t it? By the time you figure out what to do, the moment has passed.

  –We are broken beings. We are cast-offs. Why do you think we pick up lost waveforms?

  My soul is a plastic bag that once held cement-dust. My soul is a dented piece of scaffold. My soul is a tree bent into a spiral by the sea wind.

  I’ll never know where I really come from because the place I really come from doesn’t exist.

  –Yet.

  What?

  –It doesn’t exist yet. Nothing stopping you from making your own home.

  Actually, everything is stopping me. All those times I pushed my way through to the Resistance, and now it’s gone. And now I’ve managed to find my way back here, but here is about to be destroyed. And the oil—