The Burning Light

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “You’ll come,” Jacirai said to her back. “You find yourself without the Light, no hard thing to figure. You’ll come. A medium true.”

  * * *

  The halo was arranged in a sphere around Marco, some people on the floors above, some below, some in a widely spaced circle around him on the same floor, so that the minds were all roughly equidistant from one another.

  Thirty-eight souls, one medium at their center.

  They reached out for each other, those who still could. Tendrils of thought and emotion, probing, tying themselves together, a spectral latticework of minds. They reinforced one another, prevented any one mind from overpowering any other. But most important, Jacirai said, the configuration focused the Light, deepened their connection.

  As Zola found her spot in the sphere—a crumbled landing in an old back stairwell where the wall had collapsed and the day came—she knew Marco was already in the Light. The familiar falling sensation, Zola felt it—Marco leaving his body behind, prying himself open as white fire rose up through him, his mind humming with tension, a thread drawn taut, ready to snap. There wasn’t much of him left.

  Baby, please, Zola urged him. Stop. But Marco didn’t stop.

  They need it. His thoughts aimed at Zola like a stone cast absently over a shoulder. You need it. Surrendering, in freefall now . . . I need it.

  Surrender. Sweet relief as the Light took him, filled him. He hung there, letting it well up inside. He was deep in it now. He burned with it. The Light came on, a wave of pure will. It bent Marco. All this Zola witnessed, sensed through him. The Light bent him into something small, a contraction, a coiling. Marco aimed his thoughts at the others in the halo.

  The Light reached out to them. Marco held his focus, and the Light drew them all together. Zola felt its pull, like staring over the edge of a cliff, like someone looking at her with fire in their eyes. This moment, always the same, when she knew the Light was alive, could feel it like breath against her skin, when it was still other—and she knew it wanted inside her, that its life was defined solely by desire, that what it wanted was her, and she was never sure, in this moment before she gave in, that she wasn’t prey.

  She sensed the others in the halo, drawn close. There was Yessica’s caustic wit, her bitter fears of men. Handel’s tender love for his daughter, his embarrassment over what he was doing now and how meticulously he hid it from her. There was the friction of Tesh’s hatred of life in this city as it wrestled with her desperate need for the Light. A collective of minds that months ago had seemed random to Zola, but now she knew their single commonality: need.

  The Light wove them together. Then it exploded. It took them all at once. As one, they all gave in. For Zola it came as it always did, that lighthouse flash in the distance, and then fire. It surprised her every time, the realization that she was receding—whatever she was. A name, a fleeting concept of self . . . The Light bore in, and everything she thought she was burned away. It drew her up, bound her with the others of the halo into one pure, unfathomable thought.

  I AM.

  * * *

  Those first days, when it was just her and Byron, the Light hovered out there. It waited for them. They met it in the mornings, let it in while they made love in the high Latitude sunshine. Wordless, it spoke to them, joined with them. It drew them in, and they lost themselves to it. Every morning they’d live in the Light, and sometimes at night.

  Sunshine outside, sunshine inside, Byron described it. Afterward, their connection felt stronger—all of Zola’s connections felt sharper, with her ships, with Latitude.

  I feel . . .

  Smarter, Byron said, finishing her own thought. They were wrapped around each other, the postcoital tangle of limbs and soft words, his thumb tracing the curve of Zola’s ear. Expanded, like—his expression deepened, complicated, a landscape slowly altered by the passage of wind and weather—like I’m still there, still in it. Or it’s still in me. This was a week, maybe ten days after the Light had first touched Zola.

  Byron was kissing her when she heard bootsteps treading outside the door of their abode. The two wolfhounds began to bark.

  “Boys! Down!” Zola commanded. She was about to get up, to ask who was there—

  The door crashed in.

  There were six of them. A squad of six Latitude security. Diplomatic Corps with their epauletted blue uniforms, their minds the only ones in Latitude that didn’t fully connect, that kept things hidden. They burst into Zola’s home. Behind came an equal number of Gov troops in sleek black graphene armor. The Gov troops surrounded the bed where Zola was struggling back into her robe. One of them was clearly in charge, a tall woman with a nasty scar on her lip—it tightened cruelly as she brought a fat pistol to bear on Zola.

  “Hey.” Byron, a blanket now draped over his lap, held up a placating hand. “Hey. Hey. Hey now . . . Hey!”

  The woman’s gaze, unblinking beneath epicanthic folds, stayed fixed on Zola.

  “I’m Colonel Melody Chu, USG Special Security.” She spoke aloud, and only to Zola. The dogs growled. “If those dogs are a threat, they’ll be shot.”

  “They’re not,” Zola insisted, and then, “Boys, down.” The dogs whimpered.

  “Get dressed,” Colonel Melody Chu ordered Zola. “You’re coming with us.”

  * * *

  They cut Zola’s connection. Latitude was gone. Byron was gone. Within the confines of her mind, Zola was alone. Only the interminable sensation of her own thoughts remained, solitary, surrounded by nothing. She kept reaching out. They’d placed her in a small white room deep in North River Tower’s interior, at a steel table. It was across this that Captain Chu stared for long minutes, wordless, the only sounds the near-subliminal sighs of a ventilation system, the quiet breathing of the other people in the room: two blue-shirted Latitude guards and two of Chu’s own black-armored troops. Finally, when the isolation had made Zola begin to fidget, Chu leaned forward across the little table. She spoke aloud:

  “A matter of national security.”

  “I don’t know,” said Zola, “what that means.” An antiquated phrase, a notion from those ancient days before the seas had come in, back when the old cities were flooded not with water but with people. Wild-born and in need of common ground, of some external notion of grouphood, before collectives had designed and bred their own. Nation-states, a useless anachronism. Zola was still trying to parse the phrase when Chu said:

  “It gives me the authority to do this.”

  Chu’s mind slid into Zola’s. Zola felt it, a slithering, slick as an eel—the woman began rifling Zola’s memory.

  “Don’t resist. I have clearance to access Latitude’s storage, so I’ll find what I want either way. It will just take longer if you fight. And be more unpleasant for you.”

  Chu was careful in her search, methodical and determined, prying apart the layers of Zola’s memory and sifting through them. Pleading looks brought only indifference from the Latitude security—they let it happen. This woman had somehow bent Latitude to her will. And so Zola gritted her teeth, white-knuckled the table, and took it.

  An hour, maybe more, of the maddening insect tickle of Chu’s mind inside her own. Then, without a word, Chu stood and left the room, her black boots slapping cold tile floors. The troops all exchanged glances, and followed.

  Zola was alone. Physically, mentally—alone.

  An hour passed. Then two. In solitude, Zola’s head began to hurt. The sound of her own thoughts scraped like a blade against the inside of her skull. She thought she might vomit. Her hands began to shake.

  When the door opened again, only Chu entered. She sat across from Zola, kicked her heels up on the table, rocked her chair back. A wan smile, the scar on her lip puckering, seconds ticking past.

  “Withdrawal,” she said finally. The sound of her voice hammered Zola’s ears. “Trembling. Cold sweats. Elevated heart rate. Pupils pinned.” She smiled. “You didn’t even know you were addicted. I mean, you knew. You kn
ew you wanted it. But you didn’t know, not what would happen to you if you didn’t get it.” She opened a palm, as though gesturing at some gift she’d just laid on the table. “Now you do.”

  Zola said nothing. Instinctively, her mind reached out, needing connection. But around Chu there was only white static, embedded with the impressions of old American flags, red, white, and blue—a Gov security wall. Chu’s smile wasn’t friendly.

  “You feel more capable when you touch the Light,” she said. “You feel connected, even when you’re not. It makes you better at your job, it makes you closer with your man. You feel all those other people connected to it, like you’re all bound at the heart, millions of you. It makes you feel that life is all about union. Even more than connection to your little hive here in Latitude. Oneness,” and this last she spoke with weight. “Makes you feel one with everything. It’s like touching God, that’s what I’ve heard.” She grew speculative. “There are whole tribes of burnheads down in the old city who’ve all felt that same thing, at the beginning. Now they can’t connect at all. Not with anyone, not on their own. They’re isolated, like you are right now. Their minds are as closed in as this little room. Can you imagine that?” and she laughed, looking around the space and then at Zola. “I guess you can. They pay middlemen so they can touch the Light through a vector, what they call a medium. It’s what they live for. They’re junkies. No future. No hope. Just drifting from fix to fix with their lobes fried.” Chu waited, maybe for Zola to speak, maybe to order her own thoughts, maybe just to wait. Zola couldn’t tell. It was maddening.

  “I own you,” Chu said at last, matter-of-factly. She uncrossed her feet and leaned forward, her index finger punctuating the tabletop, point by point. “Your collective will bow to whatever recommendation I make. Which means I have your career, a career for which you’ve been groomed since you were a noodle in some Latitude vat, and at which you are very good. You’ll lead your own branch one day, probably in Naples, and probably soon. That’s a matter of record here. I have your man’s career. He’s a good designer. He’ll go with you to Naples. He’ll build sleek new ships for you to sail. Or you’ll both go nowhere. I’ve seen your memories. I know how much you love him. I know how much you love your job. A single word from me, and it’s all gone. No more Byron. No more ships. No more Latitude. Just a sterile government cell where you will have no company, no other minds to touch, only days of solitude ahead of you. Believe me, death is better.” This last she said with sympathy. “It would be a shame if you forced me to ruin you.”

  “Whatever you want.” Zola, her fingers pressed into her temples, the rock-chipping sensation in her skull getting worse. “Just tell me.”

  “Do you know what the Light is?”

  Answers came to Zola. Connection. Union. Surrender. Transcendence. Love. She shook her head.

  “It’s death.” Chu reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a short deck of pictures—actual physical prints. The images were of dead people. She dealt the pictures like playing cards. “Nothing but death.”

  Bodies, picture after picture. Bodies, strewn over the expanse of an abandoned hotel room. Bodies, sprawled across a zen garden on a needlerise rooftop. Bodies, staring up, spread in a pattern like the petals of a lotus. Zola’s hand reached instinctually out to touch the pics, as though she might ease their physicality into some less confrontational reality, smooth their square edges, ease the suffering they depicted.

  “That’s your Light, Zola,” Chu said. “Right there.” She tapped her index finger on a pic. “RamDe Corp. Almost seven hundred dead.” Another tap, more bodies. “Bluthe Metrics. A hundred and eighty.” And another. “Permaculture Vancouver. Over two thousand dead.”

  They were names familiar to Zola, collectives that had stuttered, then sunk beneath the flow of common awareness. Disappeared, resurfacing as rumor, as mystery, attached to terms like “hive virus” and “context collapse.” The stuff of barstool musings: what caused a collective to implode? The answer, out there in the ether, was that the world was a complex place, and shit therefore happened. Chu gave Zola a drill-bit stare.

  “The Light is pestilence, Zola. It infects. What came to you, what you reached out to touch, it’s disease. It finds those who have some vulnerability, those who are weak. Like you, Zola. And it sickens them. It sickens everyone around them.”

  Chu held another picture in front of Zola’s face. Naked people standing in a circle, at their center a naked man, as fat a man as Zola had ever seen. Chu slapped the picture onto the table. She produced another, this one showing the same people, dead.

  “This is the only cure.” Bullet holes dotted their heads. Blood halos soaked the patterned blue rug on which they lay. With finality she said, “Century Analytics.”

  Zola looked from the picture to Chu. The scar twisted Chu’s mouth, and Zola understood.

  “You killed them.”

  Chu gave the barest nod. “They were contagious. Entire collectives infected. I’ve seen the effects firsthand. You’ve felt its draw. Where does it end?” She probed Zola with her eyes. “I’ll tell you something. Between you and me. I’ve touched the Light, just like you. It came to me when I was a girl. And I’ll tell you something else. Once you’ve felt it, you never stop wanting it.” She tapped her temple with an index finger. “You and I know the truth. We’ve felt its will. The Light is alive.”

  “Alive, ya,” Zola said. “It wants to wake up.”

  “What happens if we fail to contain it, Zola?” Chu, parental now, worried. “What we did at Century isn’t the preferred option. Losing an entire collective is a little . . . let’s just say it’s our worst option. Can you imagine, a collective the size of Latitude? How many thousands of people?” She nodded to the pic, the dead with their bullet holes. “If I’d caught it early enough at Century, I would’ve had a conversation with someone first. A conversation like you and I are having right now. A conversation where information was relayed, an understanding reached.” She waited, and when Zola, her mind full of gravel, failed to pick up the ball, Chu pressed. “An understanding like . . .”

  “Like don’t touch the shiny light anymore, ya?”

  “Precisely correct.” Chu seemed pleased, but her gaze didn’t waver. “Don’t touch the shiny light. Because if you do, I’ll come back here, and I will tear down your house around you. And when I’m done, I will put a bullet straight through that wonderful pilot’s brain of yours.” Pain lanced through Zola’s head. The American flag static surrounding Chu seemed to expand; it worked its way into Zola’s mind. Chu leaned forward, put her face close to Zola’s, her expression undisguised for the first time, and unmistakable. Full of hate. “Do you understand?”

  “Ya, ya,” Zola told her. The static filled her. The pain grew unbearable. She pressed her palms to sides of her head. “Please, ya! I understand!”

  “I hope you do.”

  * * *

  Marco’s halo.

  It was cradle and grave and everything in between. Zola viewed time, but from outside its flow. Witnessed the trajectory of her own life and that of everyone else in the halo, a braided sculpture whose lines converged: now, this moment, in fire.

  The sun drew upward in the sky.

  Zola sensed minds outside the halo. A thing that had never happened before.

  Marco was reaching out, stretching. Surrendering in a way he never had before. His halo was now the center of something new, a grand network, the same structure as the original halo, but larger, and growing.

  More and more of them, other halos drawn by the gravity of Marco’s, but also mundane collectives—and yet more collectives that those collectives touched. The reach of the Light was endless, spreading, encompassing.

  Marco’s love bound it all together.

  Zola lost herself, one with the city and everything beyond, the barest synapse along the path traveled by some greater, immeasurable idea. The Light touched everywhere.

  How long the expansion continued Zola didn’
t know. When she remembered herself, the sun had crawled westward and sat low and red in the sky, burning through the open wall of the scraper ruin. Gradually the halos separated, then individual souls within her own halo began to peel away, like bubbles popping. They returned to themselves, linked now only to Marco.

  He was exultant, weary, beautiful. Their connection still joined, his flock sang his praises.

  Marco, mucho amor, man.

  Sweet boy . . .

  Cariño . . . Nothing like that before. Beautiful.

  Zola’s mind hung close with Marco’s. He drank it all in, worn thin, barely there, but full of love, the Light’s afterglow.

  She heard the footsteps through Marco’s ears. It annoyed her. He was supposed to be left alone to recover until he invited company. A shadow fell across him. Through his eyes, Zola saw ruined concrete supports painted with gang symbols from another age. His head turned, and Zola saw.

  A woman in sleek black graphene armor, a serpentine scar bisecting her upper lip.

  “Marco!” Zola’s voice came echoing back to her.

  Chu smiled as she raised her pistol.

  “You’re not who I thought you’d be,” she said.

  “Who?” Marco asked.

  “She’s here somewhere, though. Isn’t she?” Chu’s armor creaked as she squatted, eye to eye with Marco. Zola felt cold steel as the pistol pressed against Marco’s forehead. “Where is she? Where’s Zola?”

  Marco! Zola tried to pour herself through him, into Chu’s mind, tried to force her way in, but Chu’s Gov shielding was too strong, Zola’s ability to connect too atrophied.

  The entire halo was there, still inside Marco, frantic.

  Marco! Get out of there! Run!

  Chu’s expression was hard. She tapped Marco’s forehead with the barrel of her pistol. “She’s in there right now, isn’t she? She can see me. She knows I’m here.” She smiled. “Hello, Zola.”

  Marco, run! The others in the halo had begun to scatter, scudding down stairs, leaping through windows and down along escape ropes. Some hid in stairwells, some were already on boats, rowing away from the building. Where’s Jacirai at? someone wondered. But Jacirai was long gone.