The Soul Continuum

by Simon West-Bulford

  The voice does not respond.

  “Can I live someone else’s life?”

  Salem Ben must return to the WOOM to complete the last two days of Salomi Deya’s life before choosing another subject for insertion.

  “Two days? That’s all I have left if I go back?”

  Yes.

  “And then I won’t be me anymore?”

  You are Salem Ben. You will be Salem Ben.

  “But I’m not Salem Ben.”

  You are Salem Ben.

  I stare around me at the vast emptiness beyond the window and consider what it would be like to live in this body for . . .

  “How long will I live if I stay like this?”

  Unknown. Salem Ben has an indefinite lifespan.

  “Are you saying I will live forever like this with nobody else to talk to but you?”

  Salem Ben will live as long as he chooses to.

  I nod to nobody but myself. It isn’t that I would be unhappy—I know that I am not capable of feeling that—but I want to be back with my mother and father and friends, back on Saliel. I want to tell them what the future looks like, except that I’m fairly sure it doesn’t work like that. I would just be going back to the memory of a long-dead person and continuing where I left off, but will it feel real? I think it felt real before. My mother’s hug felt real. The happiness felt real.

  But I don’t want to die.

  If I were anyone else, I imagine I would be incredibly sad at the dilemma before me. What should I choose? A life ahead of abject boredom with nothing else to do but exist, or the final two days of a person who, in reality, has been dead for billions of years?

  “Isn’t there anything interesting to do around here?”

  You may visit the Recreation Sphere.

  “What’s in the Recreation Sphere? Is it fun?”

  The Recreation Sphere is a facility designed to provide entertainment. It can be . . . fun, if the subject desires.

  “I’m not sure it would be very good if there is nobody else to share it with. Did Salem Ben use it?”

  Salem Ben lives the lives of souls stored within the Soul Consortium Archives. He is currently living the life of Salomi Deya and experiencing a temporary interruption to the process. It is not recommended.

  “You already said that.”

  Correct.

  I think I have a long time to think about what I want to do, but then I remember Oluvia Wade. “Who is Queen Oluvia Wade?” I ask.

  Queen Oluvia Wade was best known for her role as President of the Seventh Golden Reign and the creator of the Soul Consortium.

  “I’ve no idea what any of the Golden Reigns are, but I know this place is the Soul Consortium. Did you know she just died about a half hour ago and that there are two of her now? Well, one is dead and one looks like a vegetable. I have no idea what is going on. I’m starting to think this is all a dream, except I don’t usually have them. At least, not until recently, anyway. Was she a nice woman? Can I trust her?”

  I do not understand “nice.” However, Queen Oluvia Wade was known to some as the Queen of Death. To others she was known as the savior of the known universe. I do not know if you are capable of trusting her.

  “What about you? Can I trust you?”

  I do not know if you are capable of trusting me.

  “You. Are. Just. A. Robot. Aren’t. You?” I giggle to myself, not at the robot. “A big old robot that I’m stuck inside. It’s pointless trying to get any sense or advice from you, isn’t it?”

  Yes. No.

  “So how do I go back home? How do I get back inside that . . . WOOM thing?”

  I can transport you directly, or you may walk.

  “I think I’ll walk.”

  Please follow the lights on the floor for direction.

  I do as the Control Core tells me and follow a series of glowing blue dots that appear on the floor every few paces ahead of me. I pass through more dull corridors and sliding doors until—what feels like about twenty minutes later—I am back at the first sphere. The big beautiful geode room with its shining specs of aquamarine light and the slimy black chrysalis suspended in its center.

  Do you wish to recommence the insertion?

  Do I? I don’t know. Part of me is still very excited about what other wonders I might find in this incredible place, but another part of me thinks I might actually discover what boredom is if I stay.

  Do you wish to recommence the insertion?

  I have two days left to live if I go back. And then all I will be is another memory in this place, waiting to be lived again. I could live forever if I stay. Oluvia Wade said I must go back. But why should I listen to her?

  I still have the little green data wafer in my fingers. A quest, she said. I will be looking for answers to questions that I haven’t even heard before, and it was supposed to be important, something to do with that scary man, Keitus Vieta. I peel away the backing from the patch and stick it to the back of my hand. It dissolves instantly.

  Do you wish to recommence the insertion?

  I rub the area where the patch was a moment ago, wondering what is happening inside me as a result. I don’t feel any different. “Yes. Yes, I am ready.”

  A flow of silver glides down to me from the curved walls, and microscopically thin fibers carry me gently upward to the center of the sphere where the lips of the strange cocoon from which I awoke are parting to receive me. The tiny fibers dig painlessly through my flesh as I am pulled into the WOOM, penetrating my nerves, and I try to remember what was happening before I came to this strange world.

  TWELVE

  My fingers are sore from trying to keep hold of the little screw on the inside of the wardrobe door, but I am able to keep it closed. I am almost bursting with excitement about the intruder stalking around the house, and although I know I could be in serious danger, I am finding it very hard not to leap out from the wardrobe and announce myself.

  “Salomi?” I recognize the voice. “I know you’re in here. You’d better come out.” It’s Candice.

  I can hear her stomp out of my bedroom and into the living room, so I jump out from the wardrobe to find her.

  “There you are,” she says, completely ignoring my boisterous attempt at a hug and extending a hand to keep me away. “Listen, I saw your parents leaving with my dad just now. Do you know what they’re up to?”

  “I don’t know if I should say.”

  “You’d better tell me. Are they out looking for me? Because if they are, I switched off my locator patch and—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “Then what?” She has her hands on her hips, and she’s still wearing the same black tracker suit and top. “Where are they going? They looked pretty serious about something. If we hurry we can catch up.”

  “But they told me to stay here.”

  “Look, if there’s going to be some heavy shit going down, I don’t want to miss it. Tell me where they’re going.” Her face is reddening, and she’s coming toward me.

  “Why did you run away from home?”

  She stops suddenly. “What, are you kidding? I’m not having any more of that Sartixil crap in my veins. It makes me feel like shit.”

  “It’s helping us.”

  “Is that what they told you?” She laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “We’re part of some government experiment. We’re lab rats. That’s all we are to them. I hacked into my dad’s files and found out about the whole thing. Do you know what they did to us?”

  “No, but—”

  “They reprogrammed our cells when we were still babies. It’s why I’m so fucked up and why you love everything you set your eyes on. All the kids on Saliel have been messed with. Taking us here is all part of the plan to finish it up. So if you know something, you’d better squeal.”

  “I don’t think you know as much as you think,” I tell her.

  “Damn right. Where are they going?” She squints at me. “Are they going to the tower?”


  I don’t answer but look away.

  “I knew it. We have to stop them. I think they’re going to blow it up and kill us all off. I heard Dad arguing with Mum when we first got here, saying that the experiment was all wrong. I think that’s why she’s not around now. She must have walked out on him.”

  “No, Candice, you’ve got it all wrong. They—”

  “Shut up! That’s your disease talking. You love and trust every person you meet, but it’s not a good thing, at least not right now.” She studies me for a moment, perhaps hoping the grin will drop from my face. “You’re coming with me.”

  She grabs my arm, but I struggle free. “They told me to stay here.”

  She grabs me again, tighter this time so that I can’t get away, and drags me to the door. “Look, if we don’t do something, you might never see your parents again—not that you should give a shit about that. I’ll bet they’re going to escape in a shuttle and leave us here to die. They’ll just start up the experiment again with a new batch of kids. Do you want that to happen?” She shakes her head as she drags me out of the house and to the path and, more to herself than to me, says, “Yeah, right. What’s the point in trying to convince you? You don’t give a flying sheep shit about the rest of us, anyway. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

  “I do care about them,” I say. “It’s not my fault if I can’t feel bad.”

  She stops, turns me to face her, shakes me once, then puts her face so close to mine I can almost taste her breath. “That’s right. It’s not your fault, but if you really do care about them, you have to stop struggling and come with me. Got it?”

  She shakes me one more time, and I just stare back at her. There’s a part of me that’s terrified. I want to go back to the house, hide back in the wardrobe, and curl up until all of this has gone away. But the part of me that’s looking at Candice now is doing what it always does and I bubble with exhilaration. I know I’m going to go with her because this is just another exciting adventure. And sure enough, I nod and grin.

  “Good girl.” She smiles back, nods once, and takes my hand.

  Together we run for the tower, and as it comes into view on the beach, I can see the lightning illuminate Keitus Vieta’s metallic face at its peak, his grinning malice filling me with a horror against which I am powerless to react. Somewhere deep inside myself, I know I have to find out who or what he really is.

  THIRTEEN

  By the time we reach the tower, the sun has started to rise over the ocean, and a fierce orange glow shines off the distant water. Behind me, the landscape of green hills and a huddled village with its thatched rooftops and gentle smoking chimneys are warming with early morning light. I admire it with the same wonderment that has filled me for as long as I can remember, in awe of my mother’s ability to program this world in such vivid detail. If there is anyone who could stop the nanodrones from turning against us, it is her. I want to tell Candice that she has everything wrong, that my mother and all the other adults who brought us here are trying to prevent a disaster, but I know it is pointless. Not only because Candice will refuse to listen but because the child in me—the part of Salomi Deya that has the ability to act in this world—will not say anything.

  “Salomi! What are you doing? Come on, the door’s wide open.”

  I turn to look at the tower. Candice is dwarfed by the entrance—a triangular opening sliced into the metal at least twenty meters high. From here, I can’t see much of the interior. It leads to a dark shiny wall perhaps five paces away with a large red emblem engraved upon it: a huge circle with a vertical lightning bolt struck through to its center. The acronym GRF is etched underneath.

  “Come on!” Candice shouts.

  I join her inside and she punches a panel on the wall. There is a thrum of power and then the ground drops beneath my feet, sending my stomach into a slow turn that makes me giggle. We are standing on a platform elevator that is taking us beneath the tower, and as we begin to lower into the depths, windows come into view, revealing the bowels of the power station. I don’t know if these were here before any of us came to Saliel or if it was something my parents helped to construct, but it is an impressive sight.

  “See those big globes over there?” Candice points. “I think they are the wave converters. Dad showed them to me when we first got here. He said they channel all the electricity from the atmospheric storms into big batteries to charge up the nanodrones when they come inside our bubble. Or something like that. And see those? They are matter manipulators.”

  I see a cavernous hall bustling with countless orbs of bright metal lit by strips of blue-white electricity that arc like lashing whips. The ebb and flow is hypnotizing, and I get an inkling of the power that’s needed to create the elaborate environment we live in, but every few moments, I flinch as a burst of energy crashes into a writhing nest of cables at the center.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “The Nanohub, I think. Every eco-bubble has one at the center of its power station. It’s the bit that coordinates the drones. Some people think that if they leave them on for long enough, they’ll develop artificial intelligence. Dad thinks that’s bullshit.”

  “It’s amazing,” I say. “All of it.”

  “Yeah, can you imagine the bang if this thing goes up?”

  Soon the windows are gone and we’re facing another door, also open. Except for the violent blue-white glow of electrical energy illuminating the room in random bursts from somewhere near the back, there is no light. But there is a noise, and it’s hurting my ears. It sounds like a million angry bees buzzing together, but filtered through something electronic, the pitch and volume dipping and peaking all around us. As the elevator comes to a halt, we tread cautiously inside, slightly hunched because of the noise. Candice is gripping my hand so tightly she’s crushing my knuckles.

  Another flash of light reveals the expanse of the control center, but only for a second. There are banks of sleek ebony workstations to the left and right, but unless my eyes deceive me, most of the display panels are now warped and cracked, as if some great boulder has rolled the length of the room. The occasional shower of sparks spits at us as we edge deeper inside, and after a few more steps, the scene at the other end starts to make sense. There is an inky seething cloud exactly like the one we saw in the field earlier, but much smaller. Like an angry animal, it crashes repeatedly against a protective bubble of shimmering light, inside of which I can see three figures: my parents and Ezra Fabrine.

  Candice picks up the pace as we move closer, and soon I can see that Ezra is nothing more than a skeleton on the floor, black and charred. Father holds a device from the silver box they took with them. His fingers frantically work across a keypad, his face a rictus of fear as he glances from the nanodrones to the keypad, and my guess is that he is failing to keep them at bay. Her back to him, Mother taps equally frantically at another keypad on a desk.

  “Dad!” Candice screams.

  Candice bolts forward toward the corpse while I just stand there dumbstruck at the sight before me. My parents look around, distracted by the shout, and their faces contort in horror. But there is no time. Before they are able to acknowledge either of us, the orb reduces in size and the nanodrones wash over it like a deadly black cloak. Father returns to the keypad, his fingers working in a blur, and the bubble expands again, forcing the cloud back. Mother turns back to her console too, but I hear her shout above the crackle of energy.

  “Salomi, you have to get out of here. Get back to the surface. Quickly!”

  I want to obey, but my feet are rooted to the spot. Candice reaches the edge of the bubble and drops to her knees, staring at her father, wailing at the smoky remains, but she doesn’t stay there for long.

  “You bastards!” she shouts at my parents. “This is all you. It’s your fault. Your fault my dad is dead.” She stabs an accusing finger at Mother. “He never wanted any part of this, and now he’s dead.”

  Mother shakes her head
. “No! That’s not—”

  “Shut up!” Candice is a trembling statue of rage, fists clenched as she snarls at Mother. “You’re going to deny what you did to all of us? You’re going to deny that you were the ones who screwed with our DNA? You can’t lie. I saw it all in Dad’s diary.”

  Father almost drops his keypad and fumbles to keep it in his hands. He gapes at Mother, but her eyes are fixed on Candice, and I think I see a flicker of anger in them. It is only when a surge from the nanodrones crackles against the bubble that all of us realize her attention has been away from her console too long. Mother hesitates as the nanodrones draw closer to Candice, shifting and writhing into a mass of tentacles. Before anyone has a chance to react, they are upon her, scooping Candice from the floor and lifting her high into the air. Father panics, smashing his fist into the machine as he looks at the dying girl, but Mother’s fingers are still as she watches, and I wonder what she is thinking about.

  “I can’t stop them,” Father shouts. “Elba, do something.”

  She blinks, as if shaking herself from a trance, and then her hands work the keypad furiously.

  A strangled, wet-sounding scream erupts from Candice as she is dropped, broken and twisted, to the floor. Her tracker suit is burning, melting like dissolving foam, and beneath the material her skin bubbles and froths into clumps, sliding off the bone and sizzling like burnt meat on a grill. Still I cannot move. I am in rapture, totally dazzled by the display, but now the cloud comes for me. My vision swims as I take one step back, but my decision to move is more so that I can take in the view of this incredible swarm as it swoops in micro-murmuration. In a heartbeat it morphs into something new, something spellbinding. It is like a tree. Roots and branches splitting out in all directions, beaming in a rainbow of color. Pulsing and surging with brilliance. And then there is darkness. And silence.

  FOURTEEN

  I think it is my parents’ conversation that wakes me. My eyes are closed and I don’t want to open them just yet; I feel so tired, so weak, yet strangely content. It might be a while before I say hello to them. With the whooshing sound of my heartbeat filling my ears, my parents sound like they are underwater, though I can still understand everything they say. I doubt they would be saying these things if they knew I was listening.