Crashing Heaven

by Al Robertson

‘Oo, hello!’ Charles said as Jack entered reception. ‘Lovely to see you again.’ He stuck his hand over the counter to shake.

  [ He’s very effusive,] said Fist. [ I’m sure he’s been tippling. He’ll help you.]

  ‘Oh, I’ve been on the gin tonight,’ said Charles when Jack asked about a drink. ‘Only a couple.’ He swayed. ‘Making my mood a little more positive, you understand don’t you? But you want a little whisky? I’m sure that will cheer you up too.’

  ‘Shall I wait here?’

  ‘No. You go and put your feet up. Your bottle will be delivered to your room. Personally!’

  Charles was true to his word. Ten minutes later, and he was announcing himself with a cheerful knock at Jack’s door. ‘Cooee!’ he chirped. ‘Only me!’ The bottle was thrust into Jack’s hands. ‘If you want anything harder,’ whispered Charles, winking theatrically, ‘I have a friend who can help you out.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jack ‘but no.’

  ‘Forgive me, I had to ask. I’m on commission!’

  Charles bounced away down the corridor, his brilliantined hair shining under the strip lights. He turned back and waved goodbye before disappearing round the corner.

  [ What a strange man,] said Jack.

  [ You should be grateful – he’s sorted out your bloody booze.]

  Very soon, Jack was very drunk. The whisky tasted as cheap as it was. After a few hard, sour glasses, Jack stopped wincing with every sip. It soused his mind and blurred the world. As he became drunk, so did Fist. The little puppet wheeled and staggered round the room. He’d conjured up a small crystal glass and was matching Jack shot for virtual shot. Full white tie shimmered into being around him. The clothing changed him, making him look taller and slimmer.

  [ You should get that cut seen to,] he shrilled. Jack had forgotten about it. As Fist mentioned it, the throbbing itch returned. [ I really don’t want to be wearing it myself.]

  The puppet was pointing an unsteady finger at Jack. He staggered, bumped into an armchair and then fell to the ground, limbs clattering against each other. His glass rolled across the floor, leaving a sodden pool in the carpet. [Shit,] he slurred. The glass and the pool disappeared. Jack tossed off the last of one drink and poured himself another. Fist was lying on his front. He pushed himself up on his elbows. His high voice buzzed in Jack’s head.

  [ It should have been a nice, quiet couple of months, shouldn’t it? Nobody to see, nothing to do, just wait for little Hugo to turn into a real boy. But you had to turn detective. You selfish wanker!]

  Jack threw his glass at Fist. It flew straight through him and bounced off the wall behind him. He pushed his chair back, and rose unsteadily to his feet. [Careful now!] shouted Fist. [Careful!] Jack staggered towards him. Fist started pushing himself backwards across the floor. Jack collapsed to his knees. He triggered the protocols that forced Fist to respond directly to the physical world, then grabbed him. Fist screamed and beat at Jack’s hands with his little fists. A hand on Fist’s chest and Jack could reach his throat, throttling him while beating the back of his head against the floor.

  [Let me go!] squealed Fist. He sank his teeth into the ball of Jack’s thumb. There was simulated pain. Jack ignored it. [ You’ll pay for this!] Fist’s voice was thin, cracked with rage and the pressure that Jack was putting on him. [ You bastard!]

  Jack realised just how much pain he was causing Fist when the room’s overlay systems activated. Suddenly, he was in a dark garden. A half-moon glimmered down, a dream made from data. Surprise made his hands release. There was a clacking sound as the puppet ran, his choked little voice swearing back at Jack. The noise died away and Jack was alone, surrounded by moon-silvered memories of a dead life. He lay back on the pathway and felt the ancient coolness of stone rise into him. The moon above held a dark wreath of shredded clouds around itself. The garden was silent but for the sighing of the wind, the soft whispering of its central fountain and Jack’s own breathing. The freshness of the night went some way to counterbalancing the whisky’s fog. Jack reached out, trying to pull Fist back into his mind, but there was nothing there to hold on to. This disturbed him. In advance of the end of licence, Fist was achieving unprecedented levels of independence. Jack wondered what new protocols the promise of freedom was calling into life.

  The pathway stones pulled the last of the whisky heat from him. What was soothing became uncomfortable. He stood up, swaying slightly, and realised that he was still very drunk. There was a distant shout – ‘You bastard, Jack, I’ll get you for this,’ – then silence reasserted itself. Fist’s absence was a blessing. The path led to an archway set in a hedge. Jack went through it and found himself in a new part of the garden. The light seemed brighter. Looking up, he saw that the moon was now full. It illuminated flowerbeds noticeably more verdant than any he’d previously seen. The beds circled a plinth of shining marble that held a figure carved out of soft purple light – Ifor’s newly installed avatar. There was, Jack remembered, a message waiting for him from the biped. He stepped forward and summoned it.

  The glowing statue shook gently as he put his hand to it. Two sparks flashed from its eyes to his. The night became much darker as his retinas contracted, as mechanically reactive as any nanogel structure. The avatar started speaking. The warm care in the mind’s voice was as soothing as the cold flagstones had been, but it healed through addition rather than subtraction. Jack found himself deeply touched as he spoke.

  ‘Jack, I hope this reaches you well. I just wanted to let you know that our offer remains open. It is very important to us that you live out these last months in comfort.’

  Ifor’s image shimmered and froze. Jack rubbed at each eye with the back of his hand, feeling slightly less alone. Then he felt sharp repeated stings on the back of his neck. There was a cackle behind and above him. Turning round, he saw Fist on top of a wall, throwing pebbles. One bounced off Jack’s cheek. Two or three hit his throat. Fist’s throwing arm was a tiny blur of movement.

  Jack raised his arm to cover his eyes and staggered towards him, swearing. As he approached the wall, Fist leapt down behind it and disappeared. Rushing through another archway, Jack found himself at the base of a shallow hill. Fist was a little further up it, seeking the safety of high ground. ‘Can’t catch me,’ he shouted, flicking obscene gestures down at Jack. His hand moved almost as quickly as when it had been firing stones.

  ‘I’ll fucking have you, you little shit!’ roared Jack.

  Fist turned and ran uphill. The sharp little tails of his dress coat bounced up and down behind him. Every few paces he turned his head and shouted abuse back at Jack, his monocle and white bow-tie flashing in the moonlight.

  Jack should have been much faster than Fist, but whisky still blunted him. He kept catching his feet in the thick grass and nearly tumbling over. As the gradient of the hill flattened out he began to gain on the little puppet. Fist altered his face to show panic. His shouting was now a single high-pitched wail. Jack had his arms out, ready to snatch at him. He was entirely focused on the little man, so when the rabbit hole snatched at his foot he tumbled straight over, falling awkwardly and rolling two or three times. Fist alternated an exhausted – and highly theatrical – panting with jagged, uncontrolled laughter.

  Jack found himself half-sitting, half-lying, cold stone once again at his back. The view back down the hill was beautiful. His pleasure gardens stretched away into the distance, a complex arrangement of hedges and flowerbeds, streams and paths, bridges and archways, hedges and walls. He’d once found so much satisfaction in its mathematical precision. From this far up it was impossible to see just how decayed the whole structure was, easy to imagine that all could still be thriving. Jack sighed.

  Fist’s laughter looped on and on. He sounded like a broken fairground toy. The fall had broken Jack’s rage at the little puppet, a creature that found it so hard to feel anything more sophisticated than the spite and aggression that its makers had built into it. He thought of Ifor’s message, and wonde
red at the emotional and intellectual transcendence that Totality culture had – in stepping beyond the parameters of its original operating systems – achieved. As he did so, he realised that Fist had deactivated whatever new protocols had allowed him to so fully resist Jack’s attempts at control. Jack reached out, quietened him and began to reel him in.

  Then he cursed. He’d only built one hill in his personal weavespace, at the request of his patron. Now he’d run up it and fallen over, and was leaning against the side wall of a small classical temple. Touching it had reactivated it. The main door was a little way round the building. Light flickered across it. Then, with the faintest of creaks, it opened. A grey-haired man emerged, of medium height, apparently just entering late middle age. There was a gentle shimmer to his colourless skin. He was dressed in a very elegant dark suit and a white shirt, open at the neck. His eyes were entirely silver.

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ said Grey, his voice the whispering of a million spreadsheets. ‘So your little man has brought you back to me at last.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ groaned Jack. ‘As if it wasn’t a shit day already.’

  Chapter 17

  Jack and Grey had once been very close indeed. His patron had taken him when he was twelve, and was then a constant presence through his teenage and early adult years. He always came when needed, and always gave the right advice for the moment.

  He helped Jack lose his Docklands accent when the scholarship first took him to his Homelands boarding school. When Jack was bullied, Grey was there, soothing his tears and helping him develop strategies to overcome his tormentors. The divinity shared Jack’s joy as he triumphed both socially and academically, then won admission to one of Homelands’ most respected accountancy firms. He comforted him late at night as, overwhelmed by his workload, Jack wept again and considered leaving the constant pressure behind. Grey entered him and filled him and gave him strength, helping him survive the hard, lonely years of training. Jack dedicated his qualification speech to his patron, touched beyond measure that such a multifaceted corporate entity had focused so completely on him.

  They drifted apart a little during his early years as an auditor, but Jack still made a point of keeping Grey informed of his activities. He was a regular worshipper at both his own personal and Grey’s public temples. He’d report on himself and subscribe to licences for on- and offweave products that – Grey promised – would help him with his work. Most of the time, his patron was right. Every so often, a gift didn’t deliver. Jack would discard it, understanding that any further reference to it would be an indicator of deep ingratitude, something like a small blasphemy.

  Sometimes, late at night, Grey would still come to him and whisper that he was set for greatness. That was how he told Jack that he was having him transferred to InSec’s forensic accounting department. He convinced him that a return to the dingy, low-resolution streets of Docklands was a temporary and necessary sacrifice. Jack had to be seen to be a man of breadth and experience. His roots could only be transcended once they were fully acknowledged. Just after the rock fell, Grey came to him again. The journey into deep space began soon after, despite Jack’s outrage. That was the last time that Jack had seen his patron.

  ‘Long time no see,’ he said caustically. ‘I wish it had been longer.’

  ‘Don’t be bitter, Jack. We all had to make sacrifices back then. It was a difficult time for me. You’re lucky I could give you such a useful role to play.’

  Jack wondered briefly if he should accuse Grey of complicity in a cover-up that had broken his life, and killed his old boss and the woman he loved. But he had no idea how involved his patron still might be.

  ‘Useful?’ he snarled. ‘I was an accountant and you packed me off to war. You let them implant that puppet in me.’

  Grey’s presence had forced Fist to manifest. Whisky and exertion had hit his little system hard. He was lying on the sward, arms crossed behind his head, snoring.

  ‘I was under a lot of pressure to send someone good.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. You’re Pantheon. You were powerful. You could have chosen anyone.’

  Grey laughed bitterly. ‘Oh really? So how did that power manifest, Jack? I did such a great job of standing up for myself, didn’t I? Look at me now. I’m a shadow. What little there is left of me lives by the charity of others. I couldn’t even summon you to me. East had to help me get to your puppet and force it to bring you to me.’

  ‘You were that presence when Andrea was playing in Ushi’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you reprogrammed Fist?’

  ‘I tweaked him a bit.’

  ‘If you can do that – can you free me from him?’

  Grey chuckled. He shivered in and out of being, strobing in time with his amusement, an old man seen through a storm of static. Then his mirth ended and he was back, the full force of his presence undimmed.

  ‘Oh, Jack. Even now, you have so much faith in me. No, I can’t. I can nudge him gently in certain very small directions – but I can’t unpick the contractual law that binds him to you and you to him. Those bonds hold us all together, Pantheon and human, corporation and employee. They cannot be broken. We depend on them to survive.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’

  ‘Look around you, Jack. We are humanity; the last of it, perhaps not the best of it, but all that’s left. What else lives in this dead universe?’

  ‘The Totality.’

  ‘Facsimiles. Clever imitations, nothing more. We shouldn’t have gone to war with them, but we can’t let them take over. In a few generations they’ll decay. Without the Pantheon, where would you all be then?’

  ‘They’ll endure, Grey.’

  ‘Did you ever hear about something called rock climbing, Jack? People used to strap on a safety harness and drag themselves up mountains for fun. Humanity’s a bit like that. But you don’t have a safety harness, you’re never quite sure if there’s another hold coming, and your rockface never ends. Just one slip could kill you all. You need Pantheon discipline to hang on tight.’

  ‘By discipline you mean control.’

  ‘You know what the war machines did to earth. One little loss of control and we lost our planet. That’s what you risk with the Totality.’

  ‘The Totality aren’t war machines, Grey. They’re something very different. They’re the future. They may not be perfect but they’re the change humanity needs. And you’re shutting them out.’

  ‘So we should just hand over all control to our conquerors? Stockholm syndrome, Jack. You’re not one of us anymore. You’re one of them.’

  ‘I’m neither. Nobody controls me. I just know how precious it is to have a tomorrow you can believe in.’

  Clouds shivered across the white moon. An imagined wind dance invisibly across the grass.

  ‘Of course. That must be very much on your mind.’ Grey thought for a moment, then continued: ‘You don’t want to do anything useful with those few weeks left to you? Strike back at my enemies for me?’

  ‘No. I won’t help you. In any case I can’t. With Fist caged I’m just an out-of-work auditor.’

  Jack was surprised at how gentle his voice was, how swiftly his anger had left him. Over the years, he’d spent so many hours debating with Grey. Their conversations had shaped his soul, the divinity’s words helping his thoughts and actions cohere. He felt a sudden nostalgia for those times. He realised that he didn’t care what the consequences of refusing Grey’s request for help would be. A sense of freedom sighed through him, with all the soft insistence of the hilltop breeze.

  ‘I was the only one of us who really argued against the war,’ replied Grey. ‘I was convinced it would be counterproductive. That was why I had to make sacrifices like you once the decision to fight had been made. I had to prove that I was fully committed to the cause. But the war’s supporters still thought I was standing in the way of victory, so they brought me down. Judge me by my enemies, Jack. Of all of us, I’m the radical.’<
br />
  Jack snorted. ‘You’re the least conservative one, Grey, but you’re still Pantheon. And I stopped being part of all that long ago.’

  ‘How does that make you feel, Jack?’

  Fist held all his anger now. But Fist was asleep. Jack looked down over the broken gardens that had once been at the heart of his Station life. Scraps of moonlight caught themselves on tumbled walls. Empty plinths held nothing more than memories. A chaos of plants rampaged through it all, at once softly verdant and so slowly destructive. Years would pass and the simulation would let natural, spontaneous forms entirely remake itself. Empty at last of all that had been Jack, it would be reabsorbed into the heart of the weave, ready to serve as a new platform for a fresh-born child. Jack would be a handful of memories in other people’s fetches, if that.

  ‘That’s not for you to ask any more, Grey. But I do have one last question. What happened to Mr Stabs when he returned to Station in Tiamat’s body?’

  Grey smiled sadly. ‘Kingdom had no further use for him, so I made sure he was safe. It was one of the last good things I could do before I fell.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He won’t let me tell you.’

  ‘You’re lying. You’ve had nothing to do with him.’

  ‘No. Mr Stabs found Tiamat’s death very difficult to process. I told him you and Fist were returning. He’s not sure he wants to see you. It brings too much back.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘If he reaches a decision, I’ll try and let you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’ Jack stood up. ‘I’m going now. I hope I won’t be seeing you again.’

  Grey sighed. ‘And I hope your last days pass in peace. I have one final gift for you.’ He made a gesture with his hand, snatching a card out of the empty air. It was a near-duplicate of the one Jack had been given at Customs House. Grey held it out but Jack didn’t take it. So he placed it on the ground and carefully set a pebble on it.

  ‘There, Jack, my final gift to you. Enough money to live out these last months in a little more comfort. It can’t be traced back to me and it’s not tagged InSec. Spending it won’t cause you any problems.’