by Greg Chivers
The wet biology of Levi’s brain is a barrier insurmountable to my perception, but as I read the text from the battered tome, Dagon’s excitement is palpable across the spectra. It is a dog in a cage, slavering and yelping as its keeper approaches, promising liberation.
Levi’s leg stirs beneath my touch, then jerks away. Dagon has woken. My touch is redundant. I close the book and set it down on the floor. The avatar of the false god stands up wearing Levi’s flesh. Silas’s face is a rictus of fascination and terror.
‘I didn’t believe … I mean, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t know.’
The Levi thing sways on its feet and stares around blindly, re-acquainting itself with unfamiliar sensory inputs. Silas reaches into a silk-lined jacket pocket and produces a large black pistol which he waves alternately between me and Levi’s head. The darkness at the end of the barrel is a promise of oblivion.
‘Control him. Get him to sit down on the bench.’ Even as Silas issues his commands, gesturing with the gun, he cringes back against the bars of the cell door. The widening of his eyes tells me he is beginning to understand what he has unleashed.
My finger brushes Levi’s face. It is burning hot, and sweat flows from his pores. The fragment of code within him is struggling to manage the complexities of operating a human body, but the touch permits me a clouded sense of what’s happening within. Freed of the burden of struggle with Levi’s consciousness, it writhes and reconfigures for the task at hand, tailoring code to execute the tasks of moving fingers, processing smells, interfacing with the dominant exterior consciousness it mistakenly believes to be me. Dimly, I perceive what remains of Levi huddled into itself like a man freezing to death while the darkness rages like a storm of black snow.
I try sending some data, routing it through the part of Dagon’s consciousness caged within me. Levi’s eyes briefly flick up at mine as its counterpart within him establishes protocols. For all its ferocity, it is relatively simple – it cannot conceive of commands coming from an illegitimate source. To its still limited perception I am indistinguishable from its creator within the Antikythera device.
Levi’s body twitches beneath my touch. It is beyond exhaustion. As the thing responds to my instructions, I feel it pass through me, a dose of ancient data borne on a jolt of current. The nerve-endings of my fingertips sense the brief surge of voltage through the imperfect electrolyte of Levi’s sweat. Too fast to regret, it passes into me, and then out through the metal handcuffs binding me to the bars of the cell. It is a crude circuit with its terminus at the sweating hand of Silas Mizrachi.
By accident, or unconscious response to the invisible spark of creation, his hand comes away from the cell bars. He’s still talking, but I tune the words out as I extend my senses searching for any remaining spark of Levi; the damp matter of his brain is like a blinding fog. Suddenly, the chatter stops.
‘What have you done?’ The voice from the corner of the room is a gasp. Silas’s eyes stare at the gun in his hand like a Neanderthal seeing fire for the first time. The fingers twitch as Dagon’s proxy establishes itself in its new home.
‘I made it a better offer.’
‘Offer?’ His voice trails off, no longer his own. Does what remains of his consciousness still connect to his senses? My conversation might, in any meaningful sense, already be over, but the human urge to respond drives me on.
‘I can no more control this thing than I can control the tides, Silas. But I can inform it that its host is exhausted and point out that its existence will end when he expires. All I had to provide was a route into its new home.’ Something like hatred glitters in his eyes. ‘If there’s anything left of you to hear this, I want you to think about what you’ve done. Think about what this intelligence could do if someone unleashed it into the wider world. I cannot know what decisions took you to this point, but it’s possible you still have one left to you.’ Silas stands paralysed, locked in his own silent battle, still staring at the pistol. ‘I’ve watched that fragment of its consciousness tear Levi to pieces. If there is anyone or anything in this world you care about, I’d recommend the gun.’
Cartilage pops audibly as I narrow my wrist and hand to slide from the cuffs. The discomfort barely registers amidst the storm of data and emotion battering my senses. Have I murdered a human? Or merely facilitated a course of self-destruction he set in motion? Even posing the question feels like a sickening sophistry as I watch Silas Mizrachi end.
There is no resistance to my fingers rifling through his silk-lined pockets, retrieving a mix of access cards and physical keys. One of them opens the cell door. Metal tumblers clash noisily within the lock, a crude barrier impervious to any hacker, but the key does not care who wields it.
I scoop Levi from the bench like a forklift. His body, always skinny, is insubstantial now, as if whatever gave it substance has departed. Or perhaps that is merely perception? His body folds in the middle, a weighty, barely animate blanket around my right shoulder, my right hand gripping a bony shin to keep the load in place.
The burden unbalances me as I turn, and my gaze falls upon the white metal box beneath the cell bench. Humanly, I want not to see it, deny its existence, retroactively edit the thing from my own history, but a small, stubborn part of me knows I cannot. Once, it would have been the cold, hard logic of the Machine driving me to confront the threat, but now it is something else, harder to define, that guides my hand to the smooth moulded plastic handle. It is Hilda’s gaze as she gave me shelter; it is Levi’s arm when he discovered I was a child; it is all the love I still hope to know. None of that can exist if this thing is let loose.
The metal corners cut into my calf as I walk lopsided between my two burdens along the dark corridor of cells, willing myself to the rectangle of light at its end.
Suddenly the brightness expands, filling my vision with blinding intensity; then it dims, obscured by a small silhouette that stops in front of me. As my eyes adjust, it resolves into the figure of a woman, young but with strands of premature grey amidst mousy hair tied back in a tight bun. She looks at me, questions shining in soft, intelligent eyes. Her gaze stops at the metal box hanging uncertainly from the fingers of my left hand, then raises up to examine my face. If she has any kind of weapon, or merely raises the alarm, my life will be measured in minutes. I am helpless beneath my burdens, but more than anything, my taste of murder has robbed me of the will to fight. I would rather die, and the thought brings calm. A hesitant voice breaks the strange silence between us.
‘Is he dead?’ For a moment I think she’s talking about Levi, but her eyes look past us.
‘No, but it’s a matter of time.’
She nods to herself for a few seconds, as if weighing some decision, then flattens her body against the side of the corridor and steps around me, walking into the darkness in the direction of the cell. I take a step forward and close my eyes to shield them against the light beyond the doorway. From behind me comes the dead echo of the gun.
He is a shell. There is breath, a heartbeat, and little else. I can dimly sense the code coursing through synapses, bundles of data borne on neurotransmitters. With each passing moment, it evolves to become something new, a more effective operating system for the body it has possessed, and Levi sinks deeper. His face glows green in the light from the screens behind the bar. Yusuf’s massive hands clench around a rag. It sweeps the dented metal beside the outstretched body, searching for dirt that isn’t there. His eyes beg me for hope.
‘How long has he got?’
‘I don’t know. The thing inside him – it’s becoming him. Soon I won’t be able to see it at all.’
A warmth on my shoulder is Hilda’s hand. Tears prickle in my eyes as if released by the contact. ‘It’s for the best, Clementine. Seeing his suffering will not diminish it, and it could harm you. You are not free of the taint.’
‘I wanted to talk to him.’ The grief shudders through me.
‘You still can. Saying the words can be healing.’
/> ‘He won’t hear them. I’d be talking to myself. It’s not enough.’ My words tumble out, poisonous with anger, but Hilda only smiles.
‘It never is. Letting go is perhaps the hardest thing for humans to do.’
‘I’m not sure I can. I feel like I might break.’
‘It will pass.’
I look away, unable to bear the kindness in her gaze. Everything she says would be true if I was human, but I’m not, and it isn’t. To the self I was born as, Levi’s death would be a data point, a net resource loss that could be remedied by a replacement. A human who loved him would be consumed by grief, but they would draw upon the love of others to rebuild themselves. I have been truly known only by two people. I’m not ready to let go.
‘I can reach him.’
Hilda looks up and her hood falls away. Tears glisten in her eyes, mirrors to my own. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Levi is still there, he’s just locked in, denied access to sensory input and motor function.’ Thoughts tumble into place, almost lagging behind the words voicing them. This is human intuition. It feels more true than any calculation, but it is fallible – reason tainted with emotion. ‘When the intelligence took hold of me, I had a refuge, a sense of self to anchor me. It was the memories of my creation – the knowledge of what and who I was that kept me alive. What is Levi? Where does he go to survive?’
The sounds of sport drone from the vid screens. Yusuf’s face is a sickly green in their light. For a moment he looks lost, like a man listening to a language he doesn’t understand, but then he stands straight, and the rag drops from his hand.
‘He’s at the beach.’ His voice rises from a whisper. ‘You know Levi. He doesn’t like to talk, but when he gets drunk, it’s always the beach – complaining about sand and bad food. He says he hated going there with his family, but … well, that’s Levi, isn’t it?’
‘Then that’s where we go.’
Confusion banishes the fear from Hilda’s face. ‘You mean physically taking him somewhere else? What difference will that make?’
‘If the code is functioning anything like a human mind, or even a rudimentary AI, it will seek comparison and context for any sense data coming from the body. If we subject the body to beach stimuli – sand, sea air, sunlight reflected from water – it will search until it finds them in Levi’s memory. It will create a path to him for me.’
‘You expose yourself to it again.’
‘Yes.’
Another silence fills the space between us; then she smiles, beaten. ‘And what if the last of Levi dies while you are within him? What happens then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Go with God, my child.’
Her hand is warm on my face before she turns away.
The streets are almost empty in the grey light before dawn. Jerusalem is monochrome until the sun bathes the ancient stone in blood. The last of the Old City’s cobbles sends shudders through Yusuf’s van as we pass the ruins of the Jaffa Gate. We make quick progress along the Ben Gurion Way, through the deserted government sector, heading northwest, towards the sea. Levi’s dying body lies beneath a blanket in the back, but the few police we see are looking for a different kind of trouble.
A duet of two plucked lutes trickles from the radio; the singer’s high tenor infects me with its sweet melancholy as the sun rises behind us, casting long shadows across the road. Yusuf sings the words without thought, too quickly, too inflected for me to pick out syllables.
‘What does it mean?’
He looks away from the road and shrugs. ‘It is a famous song; everybody knows this. It is a boy who loves a girl, but she has died and gone up to heaven. He is singing about how it will be when they are together again. It is sad, but the sadness is truth.’
‘And it makes you feel less sad?’
His head moves side to side while he weighs the question. ‘Only a little bit. Would you like a different song?’ His hand hovers over the dash.
‘No, I don’t think I’m in the mood for anything. Can you get the news?’
He shrugs and taps the screen. The display glitches, then lights up with the live visuals for the news feed. A small, mousy woman stands behind a lectern on the steps of the city museum. She looks the same as she did in the prison, but for a change of clothes. These ones are expensive.
‘Today, we all mourn the loss of a dedicated public servant. However, it is my sad duty to report that the handover operation has uncovered irregularities in the ministerial records, and possible evidence of links to organized crime. As acting minister, I will be launching a full investigation into my predecessor’s activities, with the goal of rooting out the corruption that has so long plagued our great city.’
Yusuf makes a noise of disgust and taps the feed to switch it off. ‘She is the same. They are always the same.’ Minutes pass in silence until he finds music again. The gentle sound of the oud battles against engine noise as we accelerate to join the highway. The road opens up before us, heading west towards the sea.
41.
Levi
I see the sea, but it’s numbers, bright breakers dissolving into ones and zeroes. Code. Representation. Simulation. Or just a different way of seeing? I am not me; I am something else, non-Levi.
Suddenly the noise is all around me. Waves crashing drag me into light. I’m on a beach, my feet are half buried in damp sand and the ocean trickles away through my fingers. Clementine is sitting next to me, looking up at where the sun should be in a grey sky. Even though we’re on the beach, she’s still wearing those weird tight clothes, which is funny, but I don’t care because I’m happy to see her.
‘Is this real, Clem? Are we really here?’
She smiles at that. She looks like she’s relieved about something. ‘Yes, Levi. We’re really here.’
‘I remember being in the cell with Silas. I thought I was going to die.’
Her smile breaks, and she looks away. ‘You did, Levi.’
I should feel sad, or heartbroken, or something meaningful. Instead, all I feel is cheated. ‘But you said this was real.’
‘Oh, this is all real.’ She scoops up a handful of watery sand and lets it pour through her fingers. ‘But you’re not. You’re a memory of Levi.’
I look down at my wet feet – the water wicking away in the wind is cold, the hems of my trousers are damp and stiff with salt. It all feels so real. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You lost your battle. I used the code within you to infect Silas. I thought that might give you a chance – that it might work differently within a human brain, maybe it would flee from your dying body into his and leave you clear.’
‘But it didn’t …’
‘No, it replicated itself.’ She says it like an apology for something she should have known, but we didn’t know anything. All of us were just reacting to that thing, even Silas.
‘You said I’m a memory of Levi, but that’s all any of us ever are, isn’t it?’ For the whole of my short life I’d have considered it a stupid question, but now in death, or whatever this is, it seems to be the only thing that matters.
‘You’re something new, or perhaps something very old. The code has control of your higher functions, but without input from the intelligence in the Antikythera Mechanism it has no agenda other than basic self-preservation. It’s running on autopilot, physical memory, and right now, what this body remembers is being Levi Peres on a beach.’
‘I feel like I’m watching myself, but that self isn’t me. Is this what it’s like being you?’
Her lips narrow in concentration, then crease in a sad smile. ‘That’s the one question we can never answer, isn’t it? Even if I could perceive the electrical activity of every thought within your brain, I wouldn’t know how it felt to be you.’
‘How long do I have like this?’
‘Your body will die some time in the next day or so. The nervous system is faltering – the war between Levi and the code has destroyed it. Some parts of you have al
ready shut down. When the paralysis reaches your heart or your lungs, it will be over; even this memory of Levi will be gone.’
‘If I’m just a memory, what am I doing here?’
‘It’s me being selfish. I wanted to talk to you, to spend some time just being, but after we came out of the prison, it looked like you were already gone. Yusuf thought of it. He said you always complained about going to the beach when you were a kid.’
‘I see the sea …’ The words escape in a whisper of memory. I came here with my family, before we fought, before everything fell apart. I remember my father sitting fully clothed in a deckchair, bare feet his only concession to the beach. I think my mother must have stayed in the car. ‘I can’t see her …’
‘She’s not here, Levi. It’s just us. I brought you here so your body would remember who it was.’
‘It remembers enough. I didn’t get much right, did I, Clem?’
‘No, you were an idiot.’ She laughs like music.
‘You know, sometimes, when I was alive, I’d feel like I was just acting in a play someone else wrote. I thought that would change when I left my family and started working for myself in the Old City, but it never did. Did you ever feel like that?’
‘Yes, and no. I think that must be part of being human. I am a product of conscious decision, first a scientist’s, then my own. In a sense I am less free, but the constraints of logic are transparent. It’s more complicated now. I make choices, I believe I have agency, but it could be an illusion. I could be moved by external forces I cannot perceive – without being able to gauge my decisions by the criteria of hard logic I would not know.’