by Jes
“Mmmm,” she says, all eyes snapping shut. “How do you not enjoy this delicious power?”
“Gotten used to it.”
A blissful smile on her face when she opens some of her eyes. She shivers, the eyestalks rattling.
Bertrand bows his head a bit. “Will you please?”
“One second.” She takes a slow, deep breath, savoring the momentary Superuser privileges given to her. Dropping the smile, she says, “All right, Berty, let's see what everyone's been up to.” And she's gone, mind somersaulting through the City's logs, boring in those rotting heaps of memory no one but her can handle, inspecting the software for fishy traffic, for anything out of the ordinary.
Bertrand sees a blank face before him, as if carved out of marble, unmoving, while she works at speeds no citizen can match. He gets up, pours two cups of tea from a copper kettle which holds a never-ending supply of hot water. It's been years since he's had visitors. She is probably the first since he's remodeled the place, made the change from lagoon to desert, hedonistic wonderland to ascetic temple. Blowing at his tea, he sits himself back across the Mathilde-shaped marble sculpture, wondering which part of the City's software she might be diving into now. A rare gift, that is. To take the data plunge without drowning.
Color comes back into the marble. She opens her eyes. Slowly.
“Not a lot of traffic.” She picks up the cup of tea Bertrand placed before her. “In fact, only one person has left the City the past thousand years.”
“Who?”
Taking a sip of her tea. “According to the census all citizens are still here, so someone’s Copy.”
“I presume you checked whose.”
She nods. “I tried. No data. Incognito.”
Bertrand smiles despite himself. “You know what that means?”
Her face is marble-like again. She's dead serious. “Our Patient Zero is a Superuser.”
He finishes his tea in one gulp. “Look on the bright side,” he grins. “This really narrows our search down.”
He reaches out, takes her power away.
~
Sitting cross-legged on cracked earth, looking up at the sky. “Have you contacted any of the other Superusers?”
That lag again, presumably while they process Bertrand's words for hazardous attachments. “No,” says the alligator on the left, wearing a black turtleneck. “When we first queried the City, your name was on top of the contact list. Alphabetically ordered.”
“Good,” says Bertrand. “There are four of us. I’ll discuss the matter of the Copy with each of the other three individually.”
The one on the right scratches his jaw with a claw. He nods.
“How are things going on your end?” says Bertrand.
A pause, then two grimaces which are meant to be smiles. “We are taking a different approach.” The one on the left. “Not so interested in the who but more in the how.”
“And?”
“Confidential.”
Bertrand sighs. “Of course it is.”
A bit of lag, then the alligator on the right says, “How familiar are you with your City's history?”
“Quite a bit, I suppose,” says Bertrand, shrugging, “considering I'm part of the older generations.”
“But not the first, am I right?” Scratching his jaw again.
“No,” says Bertrand. “Not the first.”
A flicker in their window, as if they've cut out a part of the transmission. The two heads look at each other, briefly. “What do you know about the first generation of citizens?”
“Only what they’ve chosen to share.” Bertrand thinks, tries to remember, his mind accessing unused pathways. “The City’s readme contains their notes.”
They nod. “We've seen the readme. Says the first generation founded this City by diverging from a bigger settlement. Took a bit of nanotech and launched it into space, regardless of direction. Do you know more, Bertrand?”
“I don't.” He shakes his head. “Why do you want to know? How's this relevant?”
Flicker. A cut out. “Thank you,” says black turtleneck. “That's all we wanted to know.”
~
“What did the bastards say?” Mathilde stands next to the kitchen sink, drinking tea.
He sends her a brief thought, summarizing his conversation with the bureaucrats.
“Huh?” She frowns behind the tea cup. “Why the heck they care about our history?”
“Weird, isn’t it?” Bertrand rummages through a closet in the far side of the hut. He pulls out a brown cowhide hip flask, unscrews the lid and takes a sip. He shudders.
“What's that?”
“Something to keep us warm. Come on, we're leaving.”
Mathilde sets the empty tea cup in the sink. “Actually, I’d rather get back to—”
“Please,” he says. “Don’t let me face the other Superusers alone.”
“But you’re such a fun bunch.”
He offers her his hand. “Please?”
Arms folded, her dozen eyebrows raised. “Who are we seeing first?”
“I figured we better start with the oldest. The bear.”
“Oh, goodie,” she says, sounding like she'd rather deal with the hazardous memes themselves. Sighing, rolling all her eyes, she accepts his hand.
The orangeness of the hut and the entire personal Bertrand-space dissolves, and for a moment the two of them are in no man's land, between the City's modules, but then a sudden cold snap clutches their bones and they find themselves in the middle of a snow storm.
“For fuck's sake.”
Bertrand extends his flask. She takes a sip.
“Well, we knew he wouldn't make it easy,” he says, tightening the hood of his newly-instantiated parka.
The curtain of snow between the two of them doesn’t prevent Bertrand from seeing her exasperated gray face. He points toward a patch of whiteness in the distance. “There,” he says. “Up the mountain. The bear cave.”
They climb up the steep slope, their boots digging into the layer of ice under the snow, meter by meter, helping each other up, as the wind becomes less forgiving. They take breaks behind frozen jagged cliffs when they can to sip from Bertrand's flask. It helps, though not much, in alleviating the pain in their exposed cheeks.
They endure the razor-sharp wind for several hours, their legs just about to give in, when Mathilde spots a grayish opening in the side of the mountain. She grips Bertrand's shoulder, pointing.
They enter the yawning cave, taking off their fur-lined hoods, finding themselves before a perfectly circular tunnel with no end in sight. The dim light from the entrance fades after several steps, and they rely on hearing, on the echoes of the clanking of their boots, for guidance through the twists and turns. The ground begins to vibrate. A low hum, almost imperceptible. It builds up into a buzz which becomes a roar. With the sound of stone grinding against stone, the bear says, “What do you two want?”
“Hello, Dasein,” says Bertrand, addressing the depth of the cave. “We need to talk.”
That grinding sound again, this time carrying no speech. A groan of frustration.
Bertrand and Mathilde wait in the middle of the mountain tunnel, expecting just about anything, even a strong wind to blow them out of the cave, but nothing happens, there's only silence.
Warm breath on their faces. “Hello,” he says.
Startled, they squint to make him out in the darkness but can't. Only his breathing, deep and slow, can be heard.
“Good morning, Dazzy,” says Mathilde. “It's a tad uncomfortable in the dark, you know I'm not used to it.”
A gruff chuckle. “Of course,” he says, and his silver fur sparkles with light coming from the deep end of the cave. The shape of a great bear standing on his hind legs resolves before them. Dasein yawns. “Now, what is it you two knuckleheads deemed important enough to wake me?”
Bertrand raises his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Bureaucrats are in orbit,” he says. “Quarantining u
s. Asking about our City’s early history.”
The bear grimaces, as if straining to recall something. “Bureaucrats?” He scratches his back, slowly, and just as he remembers he stops, his eyes widening. “They're here?” Enthusiasm in his voice. “They came?”
Bertrand and Mathilde exchange a brief glance. “You were expecting them?”
“I called for them,” says the bear. “Beamed out a Copy of myself. She must've finally come to their attention.” He laughs.
Mathilde looks at him, mouth agape. “Why the hell would you do that?”
Dasein drops to all four, turns the other way, starts walking toward the light. “Because we desperately need their help, that's why,” he says, suddenly very serious and quite awake.
The two of them follow after him.
“Wait, wait,” says Bertrand, quickening his pace to keep up with the bear. “You are responsible for a memetic hazard. The bureaucrats claim people have been killing themselves. You gotta explain yourself, Dasein.”
The bear stops for a moment. “Killing themselves?”
“Apparently.”
A frown on the furry face. He mumbles something under his breath.
“You have to talk to your fellow citizens about these things, you have responsibilities, you are one of the oldest—”
Dasein's roar echoes in the cave, escapes out the entrance, and Bertrand imagines avalanches caused by it. “You don't get to tell me about responsibilities here,” he says. “You have no idea the deep shit we're all into. You'd be thanking me by now.”
“Tell us,” says Mathilde, her hand squeezing Bertrand's elbow so he doesn't say anything to anger the bear any further. “What trouble are we into? Why have they cut us off from everyone else?”
But Dasein turns back toward the dimming light of the cave's end, disappears into darkness. It isn't long before a bundle of thoughts explodes their way:
<>
<
<
~
Bertrand tries to wrap his mind around the concept, to no avail.
“We're all patchwork,” says Dasein. “Parts of the City creator's mind, rearranged. Giving the illusion of diversity.”
Once they experienced the thoughts he sent, they followed him down the tunnel into a wide room, pressing him for more answers.
“How long have you known?” Bertrand sits on an ottoman made of stone, elbows on knees.
“Some time now.”
Mathilde taps her foot on the flagstone floor. She hisses, “You’re full of shit.”
“Believe whatever you want.”
“If this is all true why didn’t you tell us before? Why broadcast our shitty story to the whole universe?”
Dasein's shoulders constrict – a bear shrug. “It took me years to locate the culprit for all those horrible emotions torturing me, incurable with the most extravagant orgasmic pleasures. When I finally did, when I dug deep and revisited our history, recovered these old fragments buried in me, I put two and two together and realized we were all doomed. We are all variants of the same, after all. Left to fester in our solipsism, at a certain point we become less social, more and more depressed. We are degenerates made from an incestuous thought-pool. So truth be told, my dear half-sister Mathilde, I didn't feel like sharing my pain with another perversion. I wanted to talk to real human beings.”
“How come we don’t remember anything?”
“Who knows how this circus operates?” Dasein shakes his head. “I’m first-gen. Maybe that’s why things have seeped into me that probably shouldn’t have.”
“Where is he now?” says Bertrand, finding his mouth strangely dry.
“I don't know.” Dasein stands up before a reflective surface on the wall, and his fur paints itself in black and white, a drawing of a tuxedo. “Could be anywhere. Doesn't matter. You and her and me, everyone, we're all him, anyhow.”
Bertrand and Mathilde look at each other, then quickly look away.
“Did you know that in all our existence as a City, no one, not a single soul, has journeyed out of its confines?” The bear raises a paw. “We’ve all inherited that self-important bastard’s navel-gazing attitude. A million Cities orbiting a million stars and no one has felt the urge to travel.”
Mathilde crosses her arms. “Until you very wisely decided to take a fun little stroll and spread some death around. Where are you headed now? On another one of your fucking picnics?”
The bear scratches his neck where a bow-tie just painted itself on his fur. “I had no idea it would have such a profound effect,” he says, turning to face her. “I just wanted someone’s attention.” He turns back to his mirror. “Now that I have it, I’m going to speak to the bureaucrats about this whole mess.”
He steps through it.
~
Ten thousand faces go through a whole range of emotions as Dasein's booming voice spreads across the gigantic amphitheater. Bertrand stands close to the dais, casting quick glances at the crowd behind him, trying to locate Mathilde.
“We have two options,” says Dasein, his voice shaking the poplar trees at the fringes of the amphitheater. “The bureaucrats could intervene, injecting a massive amount of fresh thought-matter into our stale pool. We'll revamp the City's conception mechanisms to take it into account, revamp ourselves to take it into account, and only then will we be allowed to communicate with other Cities again.” He pauses, looking at the throng to emphasize his choice. “Or, we could continue this charade and become hermetically sealed, with no hope of traveling outside our cesspit.”
A wave of noise spreads among the citizens while they link up, synchronizing for questions. The most-voted question is broadcast to all: <
Dasein sighs like wind blowing down from a mountain-top. “You must realize we've endured years and years of corruption because of the original creator.” His stern gaze sweeps the crowd as if searching for the culprit. “Undoing it won’t be easy.”
<
“A complete cleansing from the memetic plague,” says Dasein. “Since it's been firmly established into our identities, it might take a long time, and some might be changed beyond recognition, but that's the point, and it is the right thing to do. We must free ourselves.” His paws banging on the stage.
<
“Yes.”
<
Dasein takes a few steps closer to the stage’s edge. “One hundred percent. The bureaucrats are never wrong.”
No further questions. In the turquoise sky a flock of birds passes, flecking the citizens with brief, fleeting shadows.
“We need a two-thirds majority for the referendum to pass. What is it you want: freedom, or to wallow in misery for eternity?”
Bertrand watches as the citizens vanish
one by one, retreating into their personal spaces to think.
~
“Go away.”
He leans on the portal to her space, raps on it gently again. “Please, I want to talk to you.”
“I don't.”
The data graveyard looms all around Bertrand, making him uncomfortable. Through her portal, the faint sound of scissors at work.
“Why weren't you at Dasein's speech?” He presses his ear against the cold wood.
Snip. The muffled sound of a branch falling to the ground. “Because it's all fake. A setup.”
“What is?”
“This City. The referendum. Everything.”
“But now the bureaucrats can help.”
Mathilde cackles. “Ha.”
“You don't think they can?”
Snip. Another branch falls.
Ghostly shapes of old data begin to rear their ugly heads in the distance. Bertrand closes his eyes. “Come on, Mathilde. We could really use your help with the campaign.”
The sound of glass breaking. After a moment she says, “Nothing will help you. We are a failed narcissistic experiment, but we are narcissistic nonetheless. Nobody will agree to identity changes. Your plan is doomed.”
“Please...”
“Go away,” she says, and sound no longer passes through the portal.
~
Preliminary polls show that support for collaboration with the bureaucrats is waning, quickly. Twenty minutes after Dasein's speech a third of the citizens support his plan, another twenty minutes later, a mere quarter.
Bertrand and Dasein flick thought opinions broadcast to the City’s public forums.
<
<
Some posts make it seem as if the mere knowledge of the City's history has hastened the arrival of the memetic plague, and people who were normally jovial and optimistic now find themselves in slumps of depression and hopelessness.