by Adam Roberts
‘You can get up, and even move around if you like,’ said Marie, squatting down next to me. ‘If you are able. But you must wear these.’ She was holding some plastic cuffs.
‘You don’t want me helping myself to a gun,’ I said, smiling.
‘You do not blame us for that,’ she replied.
‘You think I’m a weapon,’ I said. ‘But I’m not that sort of a weapon.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘I am,’ I said. I had not eaten since the plane. And since then - unless it had been a fever hallucination - I had thrown up everything I had eaten. But it was no fever dream; there were stains on the front of my clothes.
And I could not get up under my own steam. I struggled with shuddery legs, like a newborn calf, and made no headway. So Marie helped me to a chair, and strapped my wrists together with plastic, and another Schäferhund fetched me an untoasted crumpet and some fruit juice. I sat and ate and drank, my hands together like praying, and I watched the comings and goings in the eerie multiple lamplight.
A house full of Schäferhunden, and me, and one other.
I tried winking at key-boy, but he was too busy jinking out of the way of the various people to pay me much heed. He’s not so interested in me, any more. I can’t exactly blame him.
My head ached. I tried asking for painkillers, but people were too busy to attend to me. If I closed my eyes then things throbbed and swirled in an unpleasant manner, so I did not try to sleep. It occurred to me, as I sat there - and I don’t know where this thought came from, exactly - that key-boy had something to tell me, but was coy. What he had to tell me, freighted with the horrible veracity of death, was the answer to the really crucial question. The question was: why do men make war?
Question is linked etymologically to quoi and que and quis, I suppose. But it is a word that means more than what? Why is more than what, after all.
Eventually Marie pulled a chair over and sat beside me. Three or four other Schäferhunden loitered around us both.
‘You were NMA, once upon a time,’ she told me. Without her helmet, her face illuminated in a more conventional manner, it was apparent that she was a striking-looking woman - handsome in a gaunt way, with clear skin, short dyed hair, something of the look of a David Bowie or a Jerry Groopman (when he was making music, I mean; not after the surgery and those films). ‘Because you were in Pantegral, we respect you.’ She was speaking English.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and winked again at the key-boy, who had come a little closer. He approached to eavesdrop, I suppose. You know how kids are.
‘You will speak to us all? We must vote on you, and the threat you represent.’
‘I understand,’
‘You will address the entire body? Explain yourself?’
‘Gladly.’ I said, my throat dry. ‘Plug me in. Link me up.’
She looked intently at me. ‘You think we are fools?’
I blinked.
She repeated the question: ‘You think we are fools?’
‘No,’ I said, slowly. ‘I do not believe so.’
‘You want to infect us with a virus?’
‘To, let’s say,’ I replied, staring straight ahead, ‘degrade your firewall? Mess up your connectivity? I won’t do that.’
‘Do you swear?’
I breathed in deeply. ‘I swear.’
‘Do you swear on your own NMA? On the honour of your own NMA?’
‘I do.’ My heart was doing some vibrant syncopated thudding in my chest. ‘Besides, you won’t take any chances.’
‘We won’t.’
‘I can speak on your wiki if you like. I don’t need to log in.’
‘Oh.’ she said, her eyes fractionally wider. ‘We had no intention of permitting you to log in.’
And that was that: things were quickly set up for the Q and A: a range of individual cells of the larger Schäferhund body coming on to the wiki, or addressing me directly. I put my sweaty face alongside Marie’s. That was all I needed to do.
She introduced me, and then asked me: ‘You came to Strasbourg as a weapon,’ she said in a severe voice. ‘You are here to try kill Schäferhunden.’
‘That’s why they sent me.’
‘To try to kill,’ she repeated gravely.
There was a mob of questions from a string of people with Germanic or East-European names. It was a bit bewildering. Many were in German, of which I understood only a small part. Some spoke English.
‘[You took part in the killing of Giant Fortbras?]’
‘Not I.’
Somebody else: ‘[How did you do it?]’
‘[You are bomb.]’
‘[How to rewire you, like Terminator-man, and send you back to conventional army?]’
‘[How?]’
‘You understand,’ Marie put in, ‘we ask you politely, as one NMA to another. I hope you will do us the courtesy of answering this most important question.’
Another Schäferhund said something, in German this time, but I missed the beginning bit, so I only heard ‘[We also have . . .]’ I asked him to repeat it, and he said it again, more slowly, still in German: ‘[We also have the option of torturing you.]’
‘That’s not what it needs to come to,’ said Marie. ‘How do you kill giants? This new US strategy. We need to know about it.’
‘Benni said that - is Benni here?’
‘In this room? Obviously not.’
‘No, I mean, is he on this wire?’
‘[Benni is not logged in.]’
‘Nice guy,’ I said. ‘Good shot. He said it was a virus. Or was that the other one? The other guy who said that?’
This produced a shiver of traffic. ‘[Is it a computer virus?]’ one of them demanded, in German. Overlapping with him a woman in the room said, in English: ‘We intercept many attempts to hack our wiki connection.’
‘Is it some sort of computer virus?’ asked Marie. ‘Regular military thinking believes our network is our weak point?’
‘What’s that film, where Peter Sellars plays the Indian?’ I said. But that wasn’t right. My head was jangled. ‘No: I mean, where he plays the German? Strange-something? He pronounced computer just like that, just the way you do.’ The dipthongal u, the palatized d. I almost laughed. Could it be that I was enjoying myself?
I was looking around the room. Key-boy was over by the blank widescreen television. He was at the bookshelf, where the books had been arranged not alphabetically but - it was evident, even from where I was sitting - according to size and the colour of their spines. He was standing underneath the lintel in at the kitchen door, through which a redder light was coming. A different type of lamp must have been lit in there. He was standing in front of the curtains. A modest room in a modest house.
‘You tell us, please,’ said Marie. ‘Or, you confirm, please.’
‘Confirm?’
‘[There are many theories.]’
‘[Ever since Fortbras, there are many theories.]’
‘Theories,’ I said. I was sweating, though neither with fear nor heat.
‘[Virus, is one theory. You are carrying a virus?]’
‘[You are sick, I think?]’
It was delicious. ‘You think I am sick with a computer virus?’ I said. ‘Which would work how?’
‘[Never mind that],’ said somebody else. ‘[Is it computer virus? Is that the weapon that brought down Fortbras?]’
‘There are too many ways round network blocks. Wirelines and wifi are too ubiquitous. Antiviral programming in the noughties was too successful and too ubiquitous.’ This did not seem to satisfy them, so I tried: ‘The network is too rhizomatic. ’ A stack of incomings. ‘Really, people,’ I said, feeling myself hilarious, the whole situation hilarious, feeling myself on the very edge of collapsing into laughter. ‘Really people, you’re looking at this entirely in the wrong way. Entirely!’
Key-boy was standing right in front of me now. I felt the desire - and I had never experienced this feeling before - to reach out and
take hold of his key with my right hand, and - what? Pull it out? I would pull all his brains with it. It would crunch open his cranium and everything would gush out. The key was the wrong way round; the metal circle in the lock of his skull, the jaggy square staircase of the tines poking out. Should I take hold of the end and try and turn it? It would be like twisting a knife in a wound. Nothing would be unlocked. And could I even apply the pressure needed to turn the key, with my scarskin tight little fists? But I felt the urge nevertheless. I reached out with my right hand and because my wrists were tied together my left hand came out too.
A Schäferhund had his pistol aimed at my head. When did he unholster that? Quick-draw.
I looked again, and key-boy had done his Banquo disappearing act. Of course I was used to that.
‘What I do,’ I said, lowering my hands slowly, steadily, to my lap. ‘I present myself as an honest broker, with connections to the regular army and with my NMA experience. Though you have rather shortcircuited that by snatching me from my hotel room.’ I had everybody’s attention now. ‘I meet as many of you as possible, on the pretext of wanting to broker negotiations. You understand my English? Yes?’
‘[Genenj phage,]’ said one of the Schäferhund cellular components.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, innocently.
One of the Schäferhunden in the room spoke, reading off his arm-screen, his accent fogging the meaning: ‘The rumour is of a specific neural phage. Designed to migrate to the ventromedial frontal lobe,’ he said. ‘It’s designed to degrade neural connections in there.’
‘Is that the latest conspiracy theory?’ I answered, with my best impression of light-heartedness. ‘Doesn’t sound very plausible to me.’
There was a harum-scarum babble of voices, arguments.
‘Your head,’ said somebody, and had to repeat it several times to bring the chatter down.
‘My head?’
‘It has a metal plate in it?’
Incoming, some German, some English: ‘[Do not dissemble.] ’
‘[We ran an airport security sensor over your head, and it beep-beep!]’
‘There’s a key in my frontal cortex,’ I said; and straight away I corrected myself: ‘I mean a plate. I mean a metal splinter. Metal webbing. They patched over a certain lesion in the—’ But I lost my own thread as I was speaking.
The buzz rose again. ‘[Eliminate is the only option!]’
‘[We must execute him! I put forward the proposal!]’
In fluent, melodious German: ‘[It is premature to put forward proposals at this stage.]’
‘[Is it a tracking device? Will it guide Regular Army to you?]’
‘[We are not keeping this asset in the same place for longer than a few hours at a time.]’
‘They sent me to kill you, you’re right,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. The idea is to hijack your firewall AI-worms and turn them against you, a sort of computer-AIDS. But AI is a tricky and chaotic thing. The guy who designed this was a geezer called Donaghy. He had his own reasons not to want to toe the US line. He made something else: not malware. a seed.’
This last bit didn’t go over: the AIDS reference had gotten in the way. ‘[It makes you sick?]’
‘You’re not hearing me,’ I said.
‘[It kills? People, or . . . networks?]’
‘No! See, that’s how it is different to a conventional computer virus, to conventional cyber war. It’s not trying to crash your wiki. It’s trying to hijack it. But what I am, is something else. What I will do is kindle you - kindle you to something new.’
‘[Which variant AIDS?]’ asked somebody.
‘I shouldn’t have mentioned the AIDS. What you need to understand - and I’m not putting it very well, because I didn’t understand until . . . look. Do you know the story of James and the Giant?’
‘[David and the Giant?]’ somebody said.
‘Peach!’ I barked. I really wasn’t handling this very well. ‘Shoot me, by all means. Maybe you should. I’m not saying that Donaghy’s experiment will be good for you - or for me - or for anybody. That’s not the point. That’s not his point. Not even he is quite sure what will happen. He’s just sure it won’t be what the US Army want it to be. At the start of James and the Giant—’ I hiccoughed, or coughed, at this point, for my throat was not good at all the talking; and the same person as earlier corrected me once again: ‘[It is David and the Giant. It is James and the New Testament Epistle.]’
‘The strange old man gives James the beans, or crystals, or pills, or something. He’s supposed to eat them but he spills them on the floor. And they wriggle down, and the next thing the peach and all the insects . . .’ I was rasping by this point; barely able to understand myself.
‘Trooper,’ asked Marie, in the tone of somebody determined to cut through the foliage and get at the heart. ‘What is this metal web in your brain?’
‘A step up in consciousness,’ I gasped. ‘Something wonderful, something unpredictable. Giant consciousness.’ I was shivering again. I wasn’t at all well, you know. I was a flu’d up. I was ill.
And there’s key-boy! He hasn’t disappeared at all; he’s just hiding behind the settee! That’s the sort of game a ten-year-old likes to play. Peekaboo, and hidie-seekie.
Marie looked at me. ‘Tell us how you killed Fortbras.’
‘I’m no threat,’ I said, glancing down at my scorched and broken body. ‘I’m nothing but opportunity.’
‘You are carrying something,;’ said Marie. ‘A virus. You are a weapon because of this? Yes?’
Which war film has the line who lit this fire in us? I did feel flames in my brain. What is the name of the fire? Really it doesn’t need sinister evil scientists and universal plague. Think it through. Never mind who lit it - what is the nature of that exquisite combustion? Naturally it is a tumbling of dominoes, a spreading wave. Naturally it is ignition followed by a swift spreading in every direction, and a self-generating process of interconnecting complexity. That is what it is. We know that from our own processes of thinking. The raw potential being there, all that is needed is the ignition.
‘How?’ pressed Marie. ‘Tell us how.’
‘[It is the network!]’ boomed somebody, in German. There was a confusion of people replying. Somebody else said: ‘[Of course it isn’t the network! You think they couldn’t hack the network from outside? They send him into the midst of us, so it must be us.]’
They brought me a little water, and that soothed my throat a little. I sipped, and sat, and tried to gather myself. But I was buzzing inside. Besides, what could I say to them? There was nothing I could say to them. Could I tell her what was written, in no human language, on the metal web in my skull?
‘[Why did you turn your coat?]’ a man asked.
‘Excuse me.’
‘[For the Americans. You were NMA, yes?]’
‘Put yourself in their place,’ I said, a little lamely. ‘I was in Pantegral. What did Pantegral do? It wrecked the south-east of England.’
‘Hardly the first war fought in that place!’ Marie noted.
‘Right. But look at it from their point of view. This new thing was suddenly everywhere. NMAs leaping up from the soil and standing with their heads in the fucking clouds. The Americans were content to watch, for a while, on the grounds that all this destruction and death would open neat-o markets for reconstruction and so on. But things didn’t dampen down. They got worse. Then they had all that business with their own Liberty armies. Now, belatedly, they’re realizing that they’re not dealing with the flare-up of ancient European intra-belligerence. Or they are dealing with that, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that real democracy has come back. And that’s a problem because real democracy is a fire, a plague, a weed, a fever, a river, a storm. Real democracy is the opportunity for people to express the true nature of people as a mass, and that true nature is—’
I stopped speaking, because key-boy was looking mournfully at me.
‘Yet despite having this contempt for democracy,’ said Marie, with asperity, ‘you joined Pantegral?’
‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ I said, wearily. ‘Better live free than as a slave. Better to live with fire than without. But fire is destructive too. People forget how very much so. And I’m only trying to explain their point of view. What they think is wrong with an NMA. There’s no margin in democracy once it starts getting in the way of trading and making money.’