by Ned Rust
“Are they from the new hydroponic facility in Farmington?” asked Kempton.
“Umm, yes,” replied the big-nosed man, preoccupied with his binky.
Kempton grabbed a handful and—before stuffing them into his mouth—explained, “Farmington has one of the most advanced agricultural laboratories in the world—this new strain of water chestnuts is one of the very latest cultivars. Our gen techs are amazing!”
“Jentex?” asked Patrick.
“The genetic technicians in the Bureau of Comestibles,” said Kempton.
“Oh,” said Patrick. “I thought you told me one of your rules was you aren’t supposed to do genetic stuff?”
“Ha!” snorted Kempton. “At least here on Ith, water chestnuts come from plants, which are not creatures. So, no, we have absolutely no prohibitions about genetically altering plants. Nor, for that matter, are there any issues with harvesting or eating them.”
“Just no meat or fish?” asked Patrick.
“Nor other vertebrates, invertebrates, protists, or motile bacteria.”
“What about mushrooms?”
“Mushrooms—fungi—are not considered creatures, either. Do you consider them so on Earth?”
Patrick shook his head. “So, like, you’re all basically vegetarians.”
Provost Bostrel looked up from his binky and raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, you don’t eat any meat,” explained Patrick.
Bostrel returned his eyebrow and turned his attention back to his screen.
“Most of us,” said Kempton, “consume—in various forms—all manner of unfertilized eggs, dairy products, fungi, vegetables, fruits, saps, cotyledons, and endosperm.”
“Okay,” said Patrick, and then, though he instantly regretted having done so, asked, “And what’s endo—umm—sperm?”
“Um, the nutritive part of a seed,” said Kempton.
“And what was the thing you said before that?” asked Patrick.
“Cotyledons are the ‘seed-leaves’ of a nut or seed. Sometimes, as in walnuts, they are even the dominant caloric feature.”
“And you don’t eat meat because it’s against the law to harm animals?”
“Yes—what, are you obsessed with Tenet Ten? Also, eating meat is highly inefficient. To say nothing of the cruelty involved, the energy and resource requirements to develop a kilogram of meat are tens or even hundreds of times what is required to generate a kilogram of equally nutritive plant-based product.”
“Oh,” said Patrick. He wondered what kind of reaction he might get for admitting he’d eaten beef, lamb, ham, chicken, turkey, and—once, memorably on account of how his face had swelled up like a balloon and he’d been taken to the emergency room—a fried clam (that vacation day on Cape Cod having been the day his shellfish allergy had been discovered).
On the whole, he was just glad this was a dream because he’d surely miss his two favorite foods—bacon and cheeseburgers—very, very much if he had to live forever in a world in which they were forbidden.
Another thought struck him: “What about the eyeball in the camera?”
“What do you mean?” asked Kempton.
“I mean that was a real eyeball—don’t you kind of have to hurt something in order to take its eye and stick it in a camera?”
Kempton started to laugh but the provost once again looked up from his binky.
“Vitrogenics,” said the provost.
“Sorry?”
“Laboratory-based tissue generation. What do you call it on Earth?”
“You grow eyeballs in labs?” asked Patrick, his stomach flip-flopping some more.
“Well, we can’t break the Twelve Tenets,” said the provost. “So of course we have to generate our own utility organs. Are you saying you don’t have vitrogenic technology on Earth?”
Patrick was pretty sure he would have heard of people growing eyeballs in labs if that was a thing, and shook his head.
The provost’s binky beeped for his attention and Kempton was already looking at his, so Patrick looked down at his own. He decided to look up the Twelve Tenets that people kept talking about.
Now that it was displaying in regular English, it was much easier to use.
The Twelve Tenets of Rex Abraham
1. Promote order.
2. Combat entropy.
3. Shun the sickness of uncertainty.
4. Resist the contagion of complacency.
5. Conserve resources.
6. Respect directives.
7. Achieve measurable productivity in all tasks.
8. Seek all actionable knowledge.
9. Provide all actionable knowledge to your admins.
10. Do not harm the flesh of any living creature.
11. Do not alter the flesh of any living creature.
12. Disobey the Minder’s emissaries in nothing.
“Patrick,” said the Provost abruptly, “I don’t suppose you’ve had any recollection about your Hearer yet?”
Patrick shook his head.
“No,” said the man, squinting his eyes and looking back down at his screen.
“So, was that a human eye?” asked Patrick.
“What, in the camera?” asked Kempton, raising his binky in front of his face. “It’s a modified squid eye. Probably Onykia ingens. Here, I’ll do a rezref.” He read aloud from his binky, “‘Deep-water squid possess some of the most supreme light-gathering organs in the animal kingdom and, with appropriate modifications to the lens and the introduction of avian cone cells for red-spectrum and high-definition viewing, they make ideal—’”
“Thank you, Kempton,” sighed Provost Bostrel.
“‘The most impressive model currently in production,’” continued Kempton, “‘is the civic broadcast camera SBK43. It employs an Architeuthis vitroplant.’”
Patrick didn’t know many scientific names but he at least recognized the single one his brother knew—Architeuthis, the giant squid. Patrick had been forced to watch more Search for the Giant Squid documentaries on TV than he could count. He didn’t quite get the fascination—and it had always seemed pretty odd to him how there could be so many nature specials about an animal that had only once or twice been seen alive (and then by a robotic camera)—but he had to admit he preferred watching them to ESPN, which otherwise was Neil’s top choice.
“You don’t recall this technology from Earth, either?” asked the provost. “What about organ or limb replacement?”
“Limb replacement? You mean, if you lose an arm here, you can get a new one?”
“Yes,” said the provost. “Provided it was purely accidental and that the replacement is generated from your own Minder-decreed genetic map—and is in no way augmented or altered—a replacement is not an alteration of the flesh.”
“So the new arm couldn’t be stronger or longer than the one you lost?” asked Patrick.
“Precisely right.”
“That’s amazing,” said Patrick. “So people aren’t in wheelchairs or anything?”
“Wheelchairs?”
“You don’t have people who can’t walk on Ith?”
“Can’t walk?” asked Bostrel, as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
“People they can’t fix after an accident or that maybe were born without legs or something…”
“What’s a wheelchair?” asked Kempton. “A chair with casters that you can roll around?”
“Never mind,” said Patrick. “What about blind people? And deaf people?”
“Accidental blindness or deafness,” explained the provost, “can be redressed. Any deficiency that comes about due to external influence can most always be reversed.”
“So you’re saying that only if you are born with it—”
“Yes, and then only if it came about from non-external factors.”
“That’s amazing,” said Patrick, thinking of all the people on Earth whose lives could be helped if this weren’t all a dream and they could come here.
&n
bsp; “Well,” said Provost Bostrel, looking up from a message he’d received on his binky. “It has been suggested we show you Rex’s wikimentary.”
“What’s a wikimentary?”
“This is a wikimentary,” said Bostrel, standing and moving to one side so that he wouldn’t block the window, which Patrick now realized was rather part of the highest-resolution, most realistic-looking 3D display he’d ever seen in his whole life.
“Begin Rex Abraham: Edit twelve point seventeen,” said the Provost.
The flag and field disappeared, as did the entire office wall—and much of the ceiling and floor. Speakers pumped the room full of studio silence and the remains of the room descended into inky darkness.
CHAPTER 28
Sunshower
The Griffin and Tondorf-Schnittman twins stood at the mouth of the garage, staring into the damp gray woods past the driveway. A tiny slate-colored junco hopped among the leaves.
“Bird!” yelled Paul Griffin.
He took off in a purposeful if somewhat unsteady sprint. His three comrades laughingly followed. The sun was breaking through from the east and—had they not been so transfixed by Paul’s chase—they might have noticed a rainbow arcing across the sky behind them.
The Griffin parents joked that their oldest son, Neil, was part Labrador for the way he chewed up his lacrosse mouthguards. Lately, they had also begun to joke that their youngest son, Paul, was part bird dog. The boy had chased birds since he’d been old enough to run. It was cute on most levels—and it certainly seemed to have helped him become a very fast little boy. But especially when a seagull was loitering across a parking lot, a crow was perched on the other side of a stream, a sparrow was hopping down the middle of the bike path, or a pigeon was strutting along the curb of a busy street, it could create stressful situations for his parents.
He’d never quite caught one—much less thought through what he’d do if he did—but his dedication to the sport never wavered.
He chased the junco up and over the small wooded rise and then quickly forgot all about it because he was now able to see down to the golf course pond. A seven-foot-tall timber crucifix covered in vines had been stuck in the middle of its perfectly round island. In front of the cross, a large animal he had never seen in any museum, zoo, TV show, website, app, or picture book was bent over a cell phone.
“Guinea pig?” asked Cassie Griffin as the sun escaped a passing cloud and added ultravivid flecks of green to the prevalent early spring grays.
“Gi-ant ham-ster!” yelled Chloe Tondorf-Schnittman.
Across the shallow water, the creature looked up at the children and shook its antlered head with no small degree of mortification.
CHAPTER 29
The History of Ith, V. 12.17
Wikimentaries, Patrick came to discover, were basically like Wikipedia entries, only they were videos. Very fancy videos.
The latest release on Rex Abraham—“Emissary from Earth and Savior of Ith, v. 12.17”—was a sweeping recreation of the historical record including dramatized scenes with skilled actors and the latest cutting-edge graphics, camerawork, and 3D effects.
Set to a majestic orchestral score that Patrick recognized as the basic tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” the movie began with scenes of modern Ith life—sky-cars, satellites, public markets, pristine mountains, burbling brooks, sprawling sport stadiums, glass buildings that truly seemed to scrape the sky, gossamer communication satellites, massive robotic container ships, and taper-nosed trains that traveled too fast for the eye to resolve.
The scenes were incredibly realistic, and fully three-dimensional. A sky-car big as a baseball diamond seemed to take off through the ceiling; a speeding courier drone caused Patrick to duck as it swooped through the room and back out again on its way to deposit a package in the hands of a smiling businessman.
The immersive montage went on for a few minutes and then another spider-carrying-a-stop-sign logo filled the screen. Animated beams of light radiated from its hexagonal head:
As the design shimmered, a narrator—a man with all the vocal charms of a middle school basketball coach—began:
THE TWO PRIMARY SENSES ARE THE MINDER’S GREATEST GIFTS TO HUMANITY. BUT AN ORDERLY BALANCE BETWEEN THE TWO MUST BE STRUCK!
IF THE INTERRELATION BETWEEN SIGHT AND SOUND IS NOT PROPERLY MODERATED, CHAOS QUICKLY TAKES ROOT!
What followed was unlike anything Patrick had seen before. It basically told him the story of Rex Abraham, emissary from Earth and savior of the human race.
When Rex arrived, Ith was still in the Stone Age. He, on the other hand, had arrived in black ankle-high boots, jeans, black turtleneck, and was carrying a knapsack filled with high-tech gadgets, including a binky. Patrick immediately wondered about this—how could a man have arrived fifty years ago from Earth and yet be just as, if not more, modern than Earth was now?
Rex wasted no time introducing the wonders of technology to the primitive world and quickly unified Ith’s people under the banner of progress and science. He introduced to them everything from the periodic table of elements to the quadratic formula to Newton’s laws, Avogadro’s theorem, Planck’s constant, Mendel’s squares, Griffiths’ inequality, and even Einstein’s theory of relativity.
And so machines were invented, chemistry was advanced, diseases were cured, agriculture was revolutionized, communications were systematized, self-correcting bureaucracies established, knowledge compiled, language homogenized, and a new era of progress and harmony began.
And then it was explained that the whole reason Ith was lagging behind Earth in the first place was because the world had long been infested with Anarchists. These were some very bad, bad men—in the film, they wore long beards, brown robes, and pointy hats. For millennia they had been living in secret, emerging from their subterranean chambers only to stir up trouble, cause wars, engineer plagues, and set loose genetically engineered monsters, all with the single goal of causing chaos and generally keeping the human race from achieving its potential.
Now, Rex knew all about the Anarchists and it was his goal to advance technology far and fast enough that he could free Ith of their influence.
Battle scenes followed, in which they watched Rex driving a sky-car chasing a bat-winged serpent, Rex leading a troop of heavily armed soldiers as they gunned down a bigfoot-like creature, Rex standing on the bridge of a battleship as it shelled a tentacled sea monster almost as big as the ship itself, Rex flanked by a dozen broad-chested commandos breaking into an underground conference room filled with pointy-hatted men and making them all get on their knees …
But just as it looked like Rex and the people of Ith might triumph, might finally and completely rid the world of the Anarchist menace, the bad guys struck back. They unleashed the most deadly virus ever known—something called Solipsis Variant 4.
The plague had what was called a two-pronged vector: it traveled both through the air and via some very creepy little skin mites—tiny spidery things that actively stalked people and could lie dormant for weeks. This meant that even people wearing respirators were not immune.
Once inside the body the virus attacked nerve cells, and was lethal to people whose brains were past a certain stage of development. There were a lot of fancy terms including myelination, but the basic deal was that it killed everybody over the age of three. Everybody. Patrick kept closing his eyes to the enormous piles of dead people.
And yet there was a glimmer of hope. In the final days—as the plague raced around the globe (a single carrier of the disease could infect an entire community within a matter of hours)—Rex gathered the world’s best young scientists to develop a vaccine. But before they could begin an assembly line to mass-produce the stuff, before they could even make enough to save themselves, a horrible monster—a revolting, filthy creature that was some sort of cross between a vulture and an overgrown pit bull (and not at all unlike the creature that Kempton had killed in his video game)—came onto the scene. It flew high ove
r the laboratory where Rex and the scientists were working and dropped a single, very powerful bomb.
Rex crawled from the smoldering ruin. Bleeding and burned, he held a single glass ampule. The narrator explained:
WOUNDED BUT ALIVE, REX SURVIVED THE TERRIBLE BLAST. HE EMERGED FROM THE CONFLAGRATION WITH JUST ONE DOSE OF VACCINE AND, NOW, NO WAY TO MANUFACTURE ANY MORE. BUT HE WAS NOT THE ONLY SURVIVOR.
A soot-stained girl—maybe ten or eleven years of age—also clambered out of the debris. She was apparently the child of one of the scientists and, understandably, was crying her head off.
Rex went to her and gave her a hug. And then, for the first time in the film, he spoke.
“You must help all the little children you can find,” he instructed the girl, handing her his phone and then taking her face in his hands. “Although it will be tempting and their cries will break your heart, do not spend time with infants. They are too fragile, and hard to care for. But any child who can walk and talk—you must be their shepherd. They are still too young to be harmed by the coming disease. But they must be protected from wildlife, from cold, and they must be fed. This binky of mine will tell you all you need to know about finding food, shelter, and medicine. You may ask it any question and it will answer. Do you understand?”
The girl, clearly terrified, nodded bravely.
“Good girl. In this device is all the wisdom of the Minder, and all the achievements humankind has garnered from across the three worlds. You must be brave. You must be strong. And you must work to keep hope alive and well. Now, go live in the Minder’s wisdom and adhere to the Twelve Tenets. And, most important of all, fear no evil.”
The little girl was crying her eyes out again and—though he’d seen better acting before—Patrick felt pretty bad for her.
“Take comfort. For even beyond this binky, the Minder will speak to you in dreams, and he will look after you. You are now his special one, you are the protector and savior of Ith. You are this world’s Seer.”