The Soul Continuum

by Simon West-Bulford

  Pause orientation. Engage Homo sapiens paradigm . . .

  I can see. Before, it was numbers. It was different. Very different, but I can no longer understand how it once was. I could feel. But that too was numbers. Is this what it means to experience sensation as unhindered Homo sapiens? The space above and below me is vast. It is no longer just a volume to be measured. It is a breathtaking cylindrical chasm, a vast white tube striped alternately along its length with rows of cushioned seats and stretches of axipolymer windows as wide as shuttle landing strips. Through the multilayered glass, the fiery brilliance of our guiding star and source of energy, Celetrix, pours daylight over the multitudes infesting the aisles. The humans in the distance look so small they seem like bacteria squirming beneath a heat lamp, but soon it will be night to them, and their movement will slow, affording me the opportunity to observe them as they sleep.

  Day and night are a carefully orchestrated routine on the Socrates. It is our side-on orbit around Celetrix combined with the relatively slow rotation of the cylinder that provides the illusion: seventeen hours of red-giant radiation through one window strip, then seventeen hours hidden behind the seating aisles before it rises in the next window strip to dawn another “day.” It seems gentle and peaceful, but the reality is that the liner is corkscrewing around the artificially accelerated star, falling forward into a superexpanded quantum tunnel at ten times the speed of light.

  But night, when it comes, is the superior illusion. The tiny white smudges in the dark are not stars; they are distant galaxies, for we are hurtling through the Mammon Phoradian Gulf, the immense void that separates the home galaxy from our unexplored target galaxy.

  All of this should be beautiful to me, but in the last hour since I severed my connection to the Unitas Communion, I feel the enormity of our journey, not the illusion, and this raw perspective is alarming. I feel panic. I feel too much. Confusing. Like rain splashing in a million puddles. I cannot count the rings. I cannot count the smells, the colors, the words in my head, the sound waves, the air molecules, the feelings, the—

  “Hey! You dead? I said I’m talking to you!”

  Focus. I should adjust slowly. That was too much too soon. I must dampen the mental bridge between perception and imagination and learn to restrict my attention to narrower parameters.

  Reduce catharsis gland parameters by 7 percent.

  Emotional feedback now within acceptable limits.

  The man blocking the window in front of me is ugly. Irregular-shaped face, straggly black hair, sunken brown eyes, left eye 0.07 percent larger than the right. Oily interface socket plugged into the neck just above the collarbone. Unshaven, red skin blemishes, sweating. Body chemistry suggests substance abuse. Overweight by 12.87 kilograms. Gray jumpsuit uniform with red-striped sleeves suggests officer designation. Unwashed. Replicated DNA markers suggest chronological age in excess of nine thousand six hundred standard years—

  “You freak! Stop looking at me like that. Just fucking get up, will you?”

  His dirty hands squeeze my shoulders. He shakes me violently. It will take me seven hours and twenty seconds to calibrate my memory and adjust fully to my new Homo sapiens state using gradual incremental adjustments. I am still disengaged from the Unitas Communion, but even at this reduced level I can feel that disgusting piece of meat inside my silicon cranium registering hatred for this male. For all humans. But I remember this one now. I know him very well.

  “Remove your hands from me. I find the tactile sensation of human flesh repugnant. You know this.”

  He complies, but his facial expression does not appear to be in collaboration.

  “You’re disgusted by me?” His top lip curls upward to reveal yellowed teeth as he looks me up and down. “Just fucking look at you. I can see your insides. You freaks never heard of clothes? And why does your kind think eyelids are such a bad idea? You look like . . . well, you look like a psycho or something.”

  He is referring to my transparent membrane comparable to skin. Though my physical form is designed to stay true to human shape, some refer to the appearance of Homo unitas as skinless cadavers. The imitation muscle tissue, arteries, and cartilage are all clearly visible, though they too are semiopaque, revealing the cybernetic framework beneath, where bone should be. Only the brain and sexual organs are natural, preserved so that my species can cling to a pathetic remnant of humanity and continue the farce of sexual reproduction.

  “Among the Unitas Community Clusters, we find it to be an advantage if our kin have complete visibility of our internal mechanisms. It facilitates the—”

  “Whatever. Look, I did my part, okay? Just bring my shit to my place right after you’ve done whatever it is you want to do with them. And don’t try and fuck me over by telling me it was all done by the time you got there. It’s not my fault if you didn’t get your shit together.”

  “Even for your genus, you are a most unpleasant individual.”

  “Yeah? Well, at least I’m not a fucking robot.” He makes a gesture with his hand, presumably derogatory, and shuffles away. With his back to me, he is still speaking. “Nursery twelve. Be there, like, five minutes ago. Call me when you’re done. Don’t make me fucking wait like you did last time.”

  Lennon Cartinian III is gone by the time I get out of my seat. There are no other humans in the seats beside mine as I make my way to the gangway—a sign that nobody wants to be anywhere near me. This is preferable. I have no desire to be anywhere near them either. Even when I thought in terms of numbers, I could not stand their imperfections. I hate the smell of humans. I hate the way they look and I hate the way they perform so many unnecessary movements. The average human touches its face three times every minute. They blink twenty thousand times a day. They do not even realize they do it. Even actions that are necessary go unperceived. They yawn, they sneeze, they defecate and urinate, they twitch, they lick their lips and sniff. They are vile.

  I pick up the pace as I reach the gangway to walk the length of the aisle. Celetrix has completely set by now and some of the humans are snoring in their seats, some are working on virtual interfaces or whispering to their companions, but those who are aware of me glance at me uncertainly as I pass. Afraid, curious, disgusted. Their judgment is nothing to me. But this is something I need to understand. Humans do care what others think about them, and if I am to conquer this prejudice that is so steadfastly rooted in me, I think perhaps this is one of the first things I should learn. It is, after all, why I committed to this journey.

  The nurseries are situated five thousand meters from the passenger shaft that leads to the rear of the liner. It is the last place I want to go. To my mind it is an infestation. It is a place where the humans store the zygote produce of their animal reproductive efforts. This may be a luxury pleasure liner, but it is also a colonization vessel, designed to be the human seed for planting into a new and uncharted galaxy, and with a cruise duration of 6,953 standard years, the population must not be allowed to expand during that time. They wait for settlement before allowing their offspring to grow. A small mercy for me. There are hundreds of thousands of zygotes in each of the nurseries, each one kept in stasis within a protective gel egg. To the casual observer the collective nurseries would look like the rib cage of some vast space-faring beast, and the myriad chrome tentacles clustered with the alveoli-like eggs along their lengths have the appearance of lungs. I hate the nurseries, wet and stinking of human fluids, and will not linger there a second longer than I have to.

  I realize I am not too late when I find nursery twelve. What may have started as a heated dispute has now—as Cartinian predicted—taken on a more physical nature. A perfect example of human aggression. I must understand it.

  Increase catharsis gland parameters by 4 percent.

  Compound by 0.01 percent every twenty-two seconds.

  The added allowance for my brain’s capacity to process emotionality is quick to increase my heart rate, and the cold rush of arterial fluid dilutes to
compensate for the additional oxygen intake. I can smell the violence, almost taste it as I step through the doors into the nursery. The light is kept to a dim ultraviolet glow to accommodate the human need to suggest peaceful rest for their unborn children, but it is far from peaceful now.

  Two males are present on one of the viewing platforms. They are fighting. I quicken my pace, not to help them but to take in the spectacle to see what I may learn. I keep a safe distance and stop twenty-five meters from them, using my augmented opticals to expand and enhance the view. The two males are locked together, grunting and sweating as only humans can do. Foaming saliva wets their lips as they bare teeth at each other like Phoebon dogs. It could be pain. It could be effort. I am uncertain. I suspect, by the way one of them is gripping the other’s long black hair, yanking his head backward, that it is pain. The other male, significantly larger in muscular build, ruffled in steel-gray business attire, has his palms firmly locked around the sides of the other male’s head, fingers splayed to dig the tips of his fingers in hard, and appears to be applying significant pressure. There is no possible way that he could crush the man’s skull, and I do not detect any skeletal augmentation. So this must be the first useful piece of data for me to consume: aggressive emotion must reduce one’s capacity for higher reasoning.

  The smaller male, dressed in sulfur-yellow overalls to indicate his designation as an engineer, is screaming. Again, I am uncertain why. Perhaps it is also the pain, but it could equally well be the expenditure of effort as he leans into his larger opponent to charge him against the wall away from the ledge. There is a loud metallic thud as the back of the large male’s head makes contact with the wall before the rest of his body.

  The business male releases his hands from the man’s face, possibly from shock, but quickly recovers just in time to be rammed against the wall a second time. It is surprising to see the smaller man have an advantage over the other, but his aggression seems to have reached a higher level of mania than the large male’s. Interesting. Does increased aggression, or rage, enhance strength in some way? I do not see how.

  Now the smaller man screams something. “I won’t let you do it! I won’t let you hurt her!”

  I delete my last assessment; the larger male has now regained dominance, so the smaller male’s rage did not seem to be an advantage after all. The large one has barged the other away and follows up with an adept Mae Geri kick to the solar plexus. The engineer doubles over, then falls into a fetal position to eventually end up on his back. The businessman watches, then drops to sit astride him, holding the man’s arms firmly to the platform floor.

  It is safe for me to move closer. At ten paces neither of them seem to be aware of my presence. Perhaps anger heightens focus on the target to the exclusion of all else.

  “You done?” says the businessman, breathing heavily. His dark hair, sheened with sweat, hangs languid in the other’s face.

  The pinned engineer tries to blow it away between pained breaths. He makes no reply other than a sharp nod.

  “Good,” says the larger one. “Because I don’t want to hurt you, understand? There’s no reason for this violence.”

  The other man nods once again, grimacing with his eyes shut tight. “My arms. Your knees. Hurting my arms.”

  “I’m going to let you go now.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we’re definitely done here?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  The businessman rises, considers the engineer for a few seconds, then extends a hand to help him. “I understand,” he says. “I won’t hold it against you. I might have done the same if our situations were reversed, but please don’t try that again. I’m only acting according to protocol. It’s nothing personal.”

  The smaller male accepts the lift. He bends slightly, pressing a hand tenderly over his middle section where he received the kick. He looks at me, suddenly alarmed. “Who are you?”

  Only then does the businessman look over his shoulder to see me. He turns to get a better look. “A silicant? What are you doing in here?”

  I have no time to answer. His opponent, taking advantage of the distraction, slides a metal rod from the wall behind him. It is supposed to be used to insert embryos into gel eggs, but before I can deduce what novel purpose he has for it, he strikes the large male across the back of the head with it. His victim topples, and before he can mount any kind of defense, the engineer launches into a renewed fit of rage, beating the man repeatedly across the face, yelling, “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!”

  It will take some time for me to digest what has happened here, but I may not be given the chance. The crazed male, presumably realizing that I am the only witness to his crime, has turned his maniacal eye on me.

  TWO

  The engineer’s breathing comes in short, ragged spurts, his chest rising and falling dramatically as he assesses me. Maintaining eye contact may not be the wisest of choices, so I flick my head slightly, redirecting my gaze a centimeter to his left, trying to place my attention on the surroundings instead. It is very quiet in here. My enhanced auditory system detects the faint murmur of life-support mechanisms caring for the zygote branches, but the dominant sounds are the male’s frantic breaths and the steady drip of blood from the rod.

  I have several options. Run. Kill. Subdue. Wait. Speak.

  I choose to wait. I can do any of the others before he can reach me.

  The wait is not lengthy. Only six seconds pass before he lets go of the rod and drops to his knees. He cups his face in his hands and sobs deeply. Another emotional event that I am finding difficult to comprehend. Irrational, impetuous, unpredictable. There is nothing to like about these pathetic creatures. I wonder why the Unitas Communion loves them so.

  “I’m not a bad man,” he says between sobs. “I couldn’t let him do it.”

  “What couldn’t you let him do?” I ask.

  “He was going to kill my daughter.”

  “I do not see anyone else in here.”

  The man looks up at me. His eyes have dark rings around them. “You can’t see her from here. She’s in one of the eggs.”

  “In stasis?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not now. Something happened.”

  “What happened?”

  He rubs his eyes, takes a deep faltering breath to quell his tears, but a quick glance at the body with its caved-in skull causes him to wince and squeeze his eyes shut, as if not seeing it means he did not commit murder. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You said something happened. What happened?”

  He shakes his head, wipes his eyes again, and then his expression changes, as if he is outraged or confused. Perhaps he wants an answer to his own question first, but I am not interested in that.

  “You are still angry?” I ask him. “How does that feel?”

  He looks up at me again. “Seriously? Are you blind? I just killed this man. How do you think I feel?”

  “I think you felt angry when you killed him, but do you still feel angry, after you have killed him? It appears that you do. Why is that? Did the killing not work? Is anger like hatred? Is anger an expression of hatred?”

  He blinks at me as if he doesn’t understand. “Look, if you’re going to turn me in, just get it over with. I’d rather face the committee right now than stay here, next to . . .”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . .” He shakes his head again, then waves me away, his attention back on the pooling blood.

  His actions are completely alien to me. I cannot understand why he killed this man. It could serve no purpose. He needed only to restrain him after the first incapacitating blow. The victim must already have been resurrected in a genoplant by now and will almost certainly report what happened. The resulting punishment may be execution, then bodily resurrection into a correctional institute on one of the source worlds: exile.

  But there is also the mystery of why this happened. He claims he did this for his daug
hter and indicated that she is no longer in stasis.

  “What happened to your daughter?”

  “I told you. She came out of stasis.”

  “Did you depolarize the gel?”

  “No. Nobody touched her egg. It was put there eighty years ago and there was never anything wrong with it, but a few hours ago, she just started . . . growing. I saw the data alarm and came straight over to find out what was happening. That’s when Braxil Conroy came in.” He nods at the corpse. “Bastard was assigned a termination role. Thought he could just switch her off, as if her life doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s standard protocol,” I tell him. “Embryo development is forbidden until we reach our destination. This man was simply doing his job.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “I don’t. But I want to.”

  He snorts as if I lied. I am not lying. I desperately want to understand, because my entire species depends on it. The creation of Homo unitas was a tragedy. We are born hating ourselves. As silicants we belong in neither the realm of humans nor machines. It is a common misconception that the Unitas Communion that hosts us feels nothing. It does feel, but its emotions are utterly different from the biological version present in humans, thus making the melding of the two incompatible. It is chaos inside the head of a silicant, yet at the same time, it is purity and order, fire and ice somehow forced to coexist; we are living contradictions. The Unitas Communion has a passionate, unexplainable, and unremitting love for Homo sapiens, yet it hates to see the human condition manifested in itself as a silicant. But the curse is worse still. The human part also carries with it a zealous need to survive and propagate. This is the only reason any of us resist suicide. We are a tragic race indeed, and I dread the evolutionary path my species may take. That is why I am here on the Socrates. I am the latest of our species’ experiments and may be the last hope for Homo unitas. As an individual cut off from the Communion with a newly designed catharsis gland to stimulate my brain, I must learn to find an appreciation for the sapiens strain of humanity. Perhaps then our kind can finally find peace in ourselves.