The Resurrected Man

by Sean Williams

  That bothered her, made her wonder if Jonah was faking infirmity to lull Whitesmith into a false sense of security, but she didn't voice her doubts. For the moment, she was in the back seat. If Whitesmith lost control, then she would step in.

  On the heels of that thought came another realisation: the look in Jonah's eyes wasn't one of malice. It was fear.

  “That's better.” Jonah glanced down at himself, then to one side as the medic reached down over his head to adjust the nanowire in his nostril. “Have I been sick? I look terrible.”

  “We'll need to run some tests to find out for certain,” said Whitesmith, “but it looks like nanoware's involved.”

  “I've been blitzed? Is that it?”

  “I doubt it. If you had been, you'd probably be dead now.”

  “True enough, I guess.”

  From behind Jonah's head, the medic gave a thumb's-up to indicate that the cage was in position.

  “Okay, Jonah,” Whitesmith said, “we're ready if you are.”

  “What's the procedure?”

  “I'll ask you some questions and you can answer them to the best of your ability.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “Minor details at first, to test how much you remember of everyday life. Then we'll move onto more pertinent information, like what you've been doing since you opted for Privacy. Okay?”

  Jonah turned to look at Marylin for a second, then said to Whitesmith: “No.”

  Whitesmith hesitated. “I'm sorry, Jonah? I thought—”

  “I know what you thought, but it isn't going to happen like that.”

  For a moment, Whitesmith was completely nonplussed by the sudden change in Jonah's behaviour. Bingo, Marylin thought.

  “Can I ask why?” Whitesmith eventually managed.

  Jonah raised a hand as high as he could. “You're looking for information, right?”

  “Yes—”

  “Well, so am I, and letting myself be interrogated isn't the best way for me to get it. Instead I'll tell you what I remember. I remember being woken up in my own home by people I didn't invite in. My physical condition was poor, yet apart from the bare minimum necessary to keep me alive and talking, these people haven't administered any form of medical treatment or given me a diagnosis. Neither have they offered an explanation as to why they're here or who they really are. All they do is mutter dark warnings about ‘leading’ me, as though I'm a witness to something, or under suspicion myself.”

  “Jonah—”

  “Let me finish, Whitesmith.” For the first time since his awakening, Marylin saw colour in Jonah's cheeks. “I'll say right now that I have no memory of seeing or doing anything recently that would warrant investigation—but until you tell me what the hell you're doing here and who you represent, I'm not saying another word.”

  “Listen, Jonah,” Whitesmith said, “I'm sorry if I underestimated your alertness—”

  “And overestimated my strength?” Jonah jerked against the restraints as hard as he was able, barely making the stretcher rattle. “You've got me strapped down, for christ's sake!”

  “We're operating under extraordinary circumstances. As I told you earlier, your housekeeper reported a disturbance—”

  “What sort of disturbance, exactly?”

  “It's not in your best interests to know—not at this point, anyway.”

  “No. Why not? It's my unit. Surely I have a right to know when something's wrong with it?”

  “Not necessarily.” Whitesmith's voice remained carefully level as he tried to make up lost ground. “You were deprived of certain rights the moment we found you here. There's enough material evidence inside this unit to get us any warrant we want, be it for your private files or the inside of your head. If I haven't bothered with the paperwork, it's only because I'd rather spend the ten minutes required going over this place while the scene is still fresh. Best if you cooperate and let us get on with it, eh?”

  “What evidence?” Jonah shook his head in exasperation, perhaps sensing the half-truth in Whitesmith's words: a warrant wouldn't be that easy to get without more concrete evidence. “I'm telling you, Whitesmith, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. As far as I know, the last time I saw my unit it was empty apart from my furniture and me. If anything's changed since then, it wasn't my doing.” Jonah swivelled to catch the medic's expression through his glasses. “Well? Am I telling the truth?”

  The medic looked uncomfortable. “It's hard to say. This isn't really my field, and your brain scan is irregular. I'm fairly certain the memories you've examined in the last five minutes aren't fake or implanted, but I'd hate to guarantee it.”

  Jonah turned back to Whitesmith. “That's good enough for me. What about you?”

  “I'll need a more definite response than that—”

  “How much more definite can I be? I've permitted you to attach a cage, so you can't say I'm being noncompliant. It's not my fault if it can't tell if I'm lying or not. Just give me what I want, and I'll happily and truthfully answer every question you ask. You can poke around in my head until your heart's content, provided only that you tell me whether I should be worried or not. And if so, why. That's all I really want from you. Is it so much to ask?”

  Jonah's hands shook as he pleaded for reason with Whitesmith. His eyes were sinking into their sockets, making his head look even more skull-like.

  Feeling it was time she stepped in, before Jonah lost what little remained of his strength, Marylin broke her promise to Whitesmith and spoke up. “You should be, Jonah. Worried, I mean.”

  “Thanks, Mary, and now I definitely am. But of what? Stop scaring the crap out of me and give me some answers, please!”

  “Odi?” she asked, turning to her fellow officer. “How about it? The interview's almost over, anyway.”

  Whitesmith locked eyes with Marylin. She was momentarily taken aback by the anger she saw in his expression, until she realised that it wasn't her doing, even if it was directed at her. He was frustrated with himself for letting Jonah out-manoeuvre him, and with the world for denying him an easy solution to his problem. Exactly what he would do next, how that anger would manifest itself, she had no way of guessing.

  The trouble was, she thought, both of them had a point.

  “All right, Jonah,” Whitesmith finally said through clenched teeth. “If you really want to know what's going on here, I'll show you. Marylin, give me a hand.”

  It took her a second to work out what he meant. By the time she realised, he had picked up the medic's field kit—still connected to Jonah by numerous patches and filaments—and began pushing the stretcher to the door.

  “Wait—Odi, you can't be serious!”

  “I don't recommend it either,” said the medic, grabbing one of Whitesmith's arms and attempting to hold him back. “My patient is in a serious condition—”

  “Fuck your patient,” Whitesmith snapped back. “My investigation is as good as dead, and that matters more to me at the moment.” He looked to Marylin: “And if he says he doesn't remember, well, this is a sure-fire way to jog his memory. Are you going to help me or not?”

  Against her better instincts, she nodded, grabbed one edge of the stretcher and began to push.

  All trace of colour vanished from Jonah's face as he was wheeled unceremoniously for the door.

  “Get the hell out of the way!” Whitesmith bellowed to an officer standing in the hall. “We're coming through!”

  The first bump cost Jonah his balance along with any remaining pretence of strength. He sagged down into the mattress, head rocking limply on his chest. Calling Whitesmith's bluff had taken more out of him than he could have imagined. His heartbeat thudded in his temples. He thought for a terrible moment that he was about to pass out, but held on to consciousness with all the will he could muster.

  He only needed another moment or two; just long enough to find out what sort of a mess he'd got himself into. After that, he could sleep for a week—if Whitesmith w
ould let him.

  Black-and-grey-uniformed officers scattered as they burst out of the hall. Time seemed to slow as the stretcher swung into the combined kitchen and dining area, then through an arched doorway, along another hall and past the bathroom. Everything he saw was loaded with significance, not all of it immediately obvious. Partial memories exploded in his mind like firecrackers.

  Click A painting of a mountain his father had sketched while on holiday in Quebec and finished shortly before his death—

  Click The sink in which he, Jonah, had vomited the night after taking a black market dose of anti-fatigue agents—

  Click Four statuesque sunflowers preserved in nanofilm, plucked from a field next to the graveyard in which his birth-mother's body lay rotting—

  Click

  Click

  Click

  The stretcher swung into the spacious family room and collided with a multilimbed automaton of unfamiliar design. The machine glided out of the way, followed by curses from Whitesmith as he wrenched the stretcher to face the far wall. There, framed by spotlights and surrounded by still more uniformed officers, was the unit's private d-mat booth.

  The stretcher jerked to a halt. Jonah slid further down, assuming a near-foetal position. His body was becoming increasingly vague, distant, irrelevant—

  “You sonofabitch!” Strong hands hauled him upright and lifted his head. Whitesmith's olive-skinned face pressed close to his. Fingers dug into his skull, wrenched him forward until he could see into the booth. “Look, damn you!”

  Jonah did look. At first his vision was blurry, despite the glasses. Then, suddenly, it cleared and he saw—

  Click

  This was the most vivid and painful memory of all. He was bending over his father's body where it lay tangled from the waist down in the wreckage of QUIDDITY. Blood had spread in a pool across the floor, and every step he took splashed more onto his shoes. He couldn't stop moving, even though he knew he was spoiling the crime scene; he cursed himself for it even as he cried. Pain in his shoulder nagged that he hadn't escaped the explosion unscathed, but he barely noticed it. All he felt was grief and guilt in equal proportions.

  It was clear what had happened: the bomb had been planted in the Science of Consciousness Applied Research building and Lindsay Carlaw had been as much its target as the experiment called QUIDDITY. But it was too late now to change anything. His father was dead because of him and there was nothing he could do to bring him back—not even Resurrection. Not for Lindsay—one of the few people Jonah considered worthy of a second chance.

  It wasn't until the bomb squad finally arrived, and gently but firmly pulled him away from the body, that he realised how trapped he was in the ruined laboratory. He was in a loop, enduring the moment of his father's death over and over again, unable to change the outcome, but equally unable to stop himself living through it again.

  Barely had he gone two steps when he was filled with an urge to run—to flee the scene he had left behind as though he could outrun it and escape to another reality in which his father had never died.

  But he couldn't. He had nowhere—and no one—left to run to. Not now that Lindsay was dead, and Marylin—Marylin had told him that morning—had told him—

  “Why are you crying, Jonah?” she asked.

  He raised his head and found himself back in his unit, strapped to the stretcher. It was her hand tipping his skull forward so he could see more clearly—see the pieces of flesh that had once been a human being piled like chopped wood in his d-mat booth.

  He tried to look away, but she wouldn't let him. The tears in his eyes made the blood run afresh, even where it had dried and stained his carpet brown.

  “I killed him,” he said, the words appearing in his mouth as though spoken by someone else. “It's all my fault.”

  “‘Him,’ Jonah? What are you saying?”

  He shook his head, scattering tears. “Mary, please. I can't take any more.”

  “Jon!”

  He turned away and closed his eyes, but he could feel her stare lingering on him like a brand. The accusation in her eyes hurt all the more because part of him—the part that was still, and would always be, trapped in the loop with the body of his father—knew he deserved it.

  From a position 36,000 kilometres above the east coast of Africa, SHE watched with interest as members of the MIU away team returned to Artsutanov Station from the latest disposal scene. Although each transfer took a mean of just twenty-two minutes—close proximity to the hub of KTI on arrival overriding the congestion that made the Pool sluggish that day—barely a dozen dedicated In-booths were being used to reintegrate the bodies of the human investigators and the equipment they had taken with them. It was not normal procedure for the team to be so out-of-sync; the backlog was symptomatic of constricted resources on the ground.

  The law was weak in that regard. It would have been much more efficient, and only marginally less safe, to d-mat two or three people at once in each booth. However, unenlightened humans tended to equate “less safe” with “dangerous” when applied to a means of transportation they still regarded with scepticism. Or so SHE had learned during QUALIA's two-year existence. As a further result of that learning process, SHE was beginning to sympathise with those humans who equated “unenlightened” with “in high Public Office.”

  Part of QUALIA had been monitoring the away team's raw feed, so SHE was ready when the unconscious Citizen (Private) Jonah Ran McEwen arrived on a stretcher. Public Officer (MIU Detective, Class 1) Odi Washington Whitesmith had arranged in advance for a full medical team to be standing by. When McEwen emerged from the d-mat booth, he was immediately whisked away to the low gravity environment of KTI's medical centre.

  SHE looked forward to studying him in detail once his examination began. The manifold senses of KTI would be much more revealing than the so-called visible spectrum relayed by the optic feed of a biomodified officer. Rarely did SHE have the opportunity to observe a human in such poor condition. The people SHE worked with were normally either in perfect physical health or dead.

  Whitesmith and his assistant, Public Officer (MIU Detective, Class 2) Marylin Agueda Blaylock, were not due for another ten minutes. Still, there were a myriad other ways SHE could add to QUALIA's already extensive database devoted to the Twinmaker murders. Of minor interest was the field report Whitesmith had sent to Public Officer (MIU Director of Operations) Jago Searle Trevaskis shortly before leaving the scene. Due to the abnormal congestion in the Pool, the file had been transmitted live via a satellite dish requisitioned from the Isobloc's security force and relayed through the old Teledesic satellite network to Artsutanov Station. The transmission also included the audiovisual feeds from scanners, automatons and MIU Officers, as well as the details recorded by the forensic robot nicknamed “the spider.” The file was encrypted, but as the holder of the decoding algorithms, SHE had had no difficulty translating it.

  SHE read the report out of curiosity, not because Whitesmith was privy to information SHE could not have learned elsewhere, but because SHE found his and Marylin Blaylock's viewpoints—so close to the centre of the investigation yet so coloured and influenced by their individual personalities—fascinating.

  JT,

  See below as per your request. Rough, I know, but best possible under the circumstances.

  At 0430 WAST, shortly before 0030 Goliath time, the housekeeper of Unit 114, NorthWest Isobloc, Faux Sydney, notified the local security force, in accordance with its programming, that it had discovered the presence of an intruder within its territory. Two officers went to investigate.

  When they gained entrance, they found a mutilated corpse in the unit's d-mat booth. Fortunately for us, they immediately left the scene and called their supervising officer for assistance. Normally, local security would handle any such incident on its own, as part of the Isobloc's Privacy charter, but in this instance the security chief recognised the MO of the Twinmaker from the alert the MIU posted last night and duly
notified us. We were in transit fifteen minutes later and arrived at the scene at six o'clock a.m. local time.

  In accordance with SOP, we sealed the area and arranged a doorknock of neighbouring residents by local security officers. We also sent a spider into the unit before entering it ourselves, to prevent any further contamination of the scene. The spider found the body in the location we had been told it would be. On-site testing confirmed it to be female and that it exhibited many of the signatures found on previous occasions. The spider also found two sets of footprints leading part-way into the apartment then out again. An analysis of imported material confirmed that these were the footprints of the guards summoned by the housekeeper. Once the spider had completed its examination and concluded that the house was unoccupied, we moved in to examine the scene ourselves.

  During the course of our investigation of the unit, one of our officers discovered what appeared to be a second dead body—an emaciated male completely submerged in fluid of some kind in the unit's spa bath. She reported it to me and I decided to look into it personally. My first thoughts were either that the officer was mistaken, somehow, or that the Twinmaker had committed suicide and left his body near that of his last victim.

  I was wrong on both counts. It was another body and it did look exactly like a corpse, until it moved.

  SHE retrieved from the raw data a recording of Whitesmith's expressions upon the awakening of Jonah McEwen: surprise, first of all, followed by an ambiguous look that might have been revulsion; then, when Marylin Blaylock had confirmed that the unknown man was indeed McEwen, triumph.

  As McEwen's examination had proceeded, however, and the situation had become increasingly uncertain, that look of triumph had begun to fade. Within thirty minutes, it had transformed into one of rage.

  Since achieving ometeosis—the phenomenon of “thinking oneself into being”—QUALIA had devoted a considerable amount of time to analysing the diverse responses of the people SHE dealt with regularly. SHE therefore felt confident that the plot of Whitesmith's changing emotional state was sound. But SHE was also aware that his actual state of mind was, to all intents and purposes, unknowable. Humans communicated only so much by means of their facial expressions, postures and tone of voice, and a significant proportion of this communication was not consciously directed. Although SHE was aware that humans possessed unconscious minds, SHE did not entirely comprehend how they functioned or what purpose they served.