Cosmos Incorporated

by Maurice G. Dantec

  1) Are you now a member of, or have you ever belonged to, any of the following organizations: NSDAP (the Nazi Party), the Communist Party of America, CCC (Combatant Communist Cells), the Red Brigades, Islamic Jihad, the Armed Islamic Group, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Symbionese Liberation Army, the KKK, the Al-Aqsa Brigade, Jemaah Islamiya, the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (Al-Qaeda) or any related group (list available on request), the IRA, the Union of Christian Volunteers, the National European Bloc, the Russian Resistance Group, the Patriotic American Force, the Legion of King David, the Catholic Church, the schismatic Presbyterian Church in America, or the Rebel Protestant Congregation? If yes, check all that apply.

  2) Have you ever been found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or acts of terrorism?

  3) Are you currently wanted for nonconformist religious proselytizing?

  4) Did you enter American or Canadian territory with hostile intentions?

  5) Did you leave your home territory with hostile intentions?

  6) Are you the carrier of a virus, bacillus, or other contagious or noncontagious pathogen?

  7) Are you transporting a weapon of mass destruction?

  8) Are you transporting parts or plans for a weapon of mass destruction?

  9) Are you transporting artificial intelligence whose sale is prohibited on land?

  10) Are you transporting personal weapons of a type prohibited on pan-American territory?

  11) Do you intend to remain illegally after the expiration of your six-month temporary visitor’s visa?

  12) Have you responded truthfully to all the questions I have just asked you?

  NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. YES.

  Subsidiary questions for religious control, UHU, Council for Ethical Vigilance:

  1) Are you affiliated with a legal religious organization? If yes, which? The Transnational Association of Worshippers of Nordic Faiths.

  2) Which personal God do you worship? Ragnar the Viking, avatar of Odin, number A-128457, Official World Catalogue of Names of Personal Divinities.

  Everything here can be controlled, so everything is. In this world, there is no infinity other than the parameter that indicates the improbability of its appearance or, rather, the probability that is constantly nullified by the calculators of the human world.

  But he passes the test with no difficulty. He does not even have to lie; the new express polygraph model used by the astroport’s service cannot detect any abnormal neural activity at the fateful moment of response.

  Because, for the moment, he still knows nothing. Or almost nothing.

  And it is this fact that reveals that all has been foreseen. It has all been studied, planned, programmed.

  And yet, in truth, in this territory that he discovers in simultaneity with his own self, none of it has been mapped out in advance. Here, nothing can be charted by the Control Metastructure.

  He might be compared to pure white noise; he is simply matter to be molded, broken, corrupted, dissolved, invented. He is in that limbic state that occurs after birth but before the umbilical cord is cut. He is not yet someone, in the full sense of the word; that is to say, he is not an autonomous human, even though he possesses a name and a small store of information and emotion that allows him to pass for a living being.

  For all intents and purposes, he is even more false than the world surrounding him, but this is what makes him the only truly solitary being among the millions of solitary beings that pass through here each day via the stratosphere. This, indeed, is necessary so that he can lie successfully in a world that has become expert in separating fact from falsehood. He must be completely innocent. If he is to deceive the Global Memory of the Control Metastructure, he must have no memory at all.

  So it appears that while his false identity is in the process of becoming true, the real world has disappeared and a forgery has taken its place that is so true, so diabolically natural that, as in the Turing test, it is impossible to tell it apart from what was once the human world.

  For the world, from now on, will be populated by machines—machines that call themselves men. Like the human security officer who has allowed him access, finally, to the Metropol Network Center, and is already waiting to question the next traveler.

  He has left the Control Arch, but he is still under surveillance. The cameras are invisible, tiny devices the size of pinheads lodged in the walls, door latches, lighted signs, television monitors, plasma waste cans, escalator ramps, and elevator floors. They form the myriad facets of a single, monstrous insect eye that watches not so much the individual members of the hive as the entire hive; not so much the people as single sources of information, but the entire crowd as a statistical, relatively predictable system.

  It becomes clear that there are other humans present here.

  In very large numbers.

  We are now inside the United Human Universe, also called UniWorld. We are inside Unimanity.

  Everywhere, there are messages reminding us of the federative planetary slogan:

  ONE WORLD FOR ALL

  ONE GOD FOR EACH

  UNITED HUMAN UNIVERSE

  The Control Arch of the terminal was silent, empty, immaculate, seemingly peopled only by machines and signs. The kinetic, though, is a showplace of living beings passing through the Network Center en route to their various destinations on the North American continent. But are two places really as different as all that?

  Security androids patrol beneath massive halogen-lit ceiling panels. There are some human agents among them, but it is practically impossible to tell them apart except for the insignia they wear—legal devices specifically intended for the information of the Universal Citizen.

  Whatever he knows about this world, he does not know where it comes from—for he still knows nothing about himself. It is as if the purely mechanical cogs of this mechanical universe hold no secrets for him.

  What he does know is that the Supreme Court is considering a case, Costello vs. Vermont, to determine whether or not a UniPol-approved android policeman can be considered human enough to read the rights of a person it has arrested.

  He also knows that an Android Liberation Front has formed somewhere in orbit, that it has already claimed responsibility for a handful of assassinations, and that it is developing a clandestine network for the repatriation of androids in orbit or on the moon to Earth.

  He knows, too, how the Collective Intelligence and Control Metastructure of Human UniWorld works; this Unimanity with which it surrounds itself by means of the now intramediary intermediary of its billions and billions of neuro-electronic connections, some of which can be found in this particular international astroport where transoceanic zeppelins, antipodean shuttles, and standard-line North American planes meet and mingle. Where, each day, millions and millions of people—millions and millions of brains—cross paths.

  He understands all of this with a sort of hard, metallic clarity—an illumination even colder than the vast halogen lights in the aerostation ceilings: Machines have more of a soul than most of the men that swarm ceaselessly on this globe, doing nothing more than keeping those machines in service. They knew how to overthrow us so easily that it was done with a kind of gentleness, and before we knew it we had been dispossessed not only of our world, but of ourselves. And the most thrilling adventure to be had in a world dominated by such a paradigm is the rediscovery of what makes a man human, and of that which the machines so painlessly relieved us: our own inhumanity.

  That is why he has come here.

  That is why he has just left the final checkpoint of the Windsor, Ontario, aerospace terminal, and why he is now heading for the vast mechanical staircases that will take him to the magnetic monorail station and then on to the city of Grand Junction, with its private cosmodrome.

  Yes. This is why he is never more than an identity in training. He is part of a secret greater and more terrible than himself. He is part of an infrawor
ld that can be seen only in the traces of death he leaves behind.

  He knows, now, why he has come. Come here, to this particular city.

  The memory bloc falls together softly in his mind. Fragmented recollections reassemble, accompanied by feelings, simple knowledge, images.

  It is enough to let him remember the basic truth: if he has come here, it is to kill a man.

  > FIRST OPERATION

  This is the MagLev™ suspended monorail.

  The unifying slogan of UHU hovers like a huge protoplasmic cloud above the aerostation.

  ONE WORLD FOR ALL

  ONE GOD FOR EACH

  A concrete ramp fitted with superconductive alloy coils traces a clean line away beyond the horizon; a pure geometric quadrant, etched on what looks more like a map than an actual piece of land, a rectilinear serpent, tetanized by an invisible flash, stretches across sixteen hundred kilometers under a spitfire sky, enshrouded by a cloud as dense as molten metal.

  By magnetic train, it will take him an hour and a few minutes to reach his destination.

  It is an endless thread that uncoils from the enormous complex of the Windsor International Astroport Terminal and winds, via its northeastern line, toward what is left of Montreal—largely abandoned now, thanks to the drastic population drop that has taken place over the last twenty years and the irreversible rise of the salt waters of the Saint Lawrence River—and through the private seaside towns of Labrador and northern Quebec to its terminus. In the other direction, it connects the cities of the Canadian West that were spared by the various chemical, bacteriological, and nuclear attacks of the Black Years. The line forks, as far as he can tell, around a hundred kilometers northeast of Windsor.

  He registers the layout of the local network in his memory. Departure destinations. Arrival schedules. Topological and histological organization of the system. He is still little more than a sponge, a giant antenna capturing every signal within reach.

  He walks toward the open air now, across a vast concrete slab that leads to one of the aerostation’s MagLev™ platforms, accessible via a number of lifts built into the immense dome that covers the rail station.

  It is very hot. His neuroptic environmental analysis system, which posts an LED display on demand in the upper right-hand corner of his field of vision, informs him that it is 8:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, and that the temperature is exactly 40 degrees Celsius. His anti-UV thermofuge suit determines that the sun’s rays are of the usual strength for this latitude at this time of year.

  Everything is completely normal. The World is dissolving.

  The high-speed train is a long, bronze-colored serpent of anodized aluminum. It is perfectly silent as it glides along the boarding platform. Its electric doors hum softly as they slide open; the tiny sound resonates in the vast subterranean hall, built to protect against nuclear attack.

  Like all the technological objects he has seen since his arrival in this world, the high-speed train seems to represent a kind of paradox, a link, “the glue that holds the world together.” Here, the more recent the technology, the older it seems; the newer it is, the less efficient it appears. There is a strange sort of reverse progress here, he notes. The older man gets, the less he knows how to do.

  The high-speed train, for example, is around twenty-five years old. It represents a crest—a cliff—a summit in railway engineering. But it is the last train; after this one, there will probably be no more. According to what the data sent by the instruction program tells him, almost no more serious scientific research exists that might help the technology to progress in the years to come. The high-speed train is, then, the apogee of human knowledge—a machine that is already nearly obsolete, with no successor in sight.

  At top speed, the train will glide at almost six hundred kilometers per hour on its magnetically cushioned monorail. Such speed was an achievement twenty-five years ago. Soon it will seem like a miracle; after that, it will seem impossible.

  During the voyage, the rest of his memory implants, which have remained deliberately inactive until now, will release their stores of information and thus complete the making of this Man who has come here to kill another man.

  The first coil begins to unwind, and he learns that his Russian cortical nanocomputer, bought from the mafia, is a pirated derivative of the “secret defense” neuroprobe used by the combat team controllers of the United American Republics’ Aerospace Force. Logically, the technology went unrecognized by the astroport’s security systems. It passed the test. It is essential—and quite fascinating.

  The next thing he learns is that, over the next few days, this bio-computer will autodevelop within his nervous system, giving him a complete ensemble of neuroportable weapons. The modifications will take place at night while he sleeps; he won’t feel a thing.

  The World—in. The World—out. His personality autoforms. Cortical bootstrap under the tungsten ramps of the magnetic train’s corridors. He is Sergei Diego Plotkin. He just arrived at Windsor’s international astroport en route to Grand Junction. He is carrying clandestine technology. And he must execute a man.

  The compartment door slides open when he swipes his UniPol-approved intelligent travel card. He sits down in the window seat registered under his name.

  Immediately, one of his nanomemory implants issues a warning. The Order has ensured that your first-class, high-security, four-seat compartment will be empty. Do not talk to anyone, except in case of force majeure, during your trip to Grand Junction.

  He has no idea which Order this refers to, but no matter. He knows that he will be traveling alone.

  The wide glass windows give an expansive view of the world outside: an unlit, iron-gray sky supports the horizon-scratching high tension wires of Hydro-Québec; it forms an ashy dome over the remnants of an industrial-age aluminum city, long abandoned, with an enormous, oxide-scorched sign bearing the letters ALCAN on a rust-streaked blue triangle. The scene hovers in the foreground for an instant. A deserted road cuts a rectilinear line through its center.

  The scenery of southeastern Canada unrolls in fleeting, overlapping lines, intercut by successive flashes of recollection, at almost three hundred meters per second.

  The plains are blue in the twilight air. They quiver gently all the way to the banks of Lake Ontario, whose waves roll away beyond the line of the horizon, disappearing into the pale, green-lit sky.

  Childhood. The courtyard of a dilapidated tenement for career soldiers, where the idle children of an unpaid army play soccer in the overheated August air.

  “Boris!” cries one of the children. “Pass, Boris, pass!”

  “Sergei, are you crazy?” replies the echo of another voice.

  The second voice whirls in the glittering emptiness of a Catholic-school afternoon. It is a Catherine wheel of metallic spokes shrieking in tandem effort, while a ribbon of gray asphalt, seeming to fill every inch of space, unwinds in a long stone-colored spool.

  Here he is, riding his old bicycle through the suburbs of Novosibirsk. He is twelve or thirteen years old. Tall metal chimneys, grouped in enormous tubular polypods, jut into the sulfur-colored sky. Petrochemical factories send their undulating flares toward the horizon like banners of war in an industrial crusade already lost. He is a Russian child; it is the beginning of the twenty-first century. He knows his country squandered everything during the preceding century. He knows his people are slowly disappearing. He knows that in this downtrodden world, big dreams don’t have a chance.

  Objective vision: an unused electronuclear power plant on the Ontario–New York state border. It has been abandoned for more than twenty years, like many industrial facilities in the area, a neural implant tells him knowingly. The postwar world is much like an interminable prewar one; all Unimanity seems resigned to the slow death of the globuscule. The ultimate depletion is so close that each individual thing shines with the intense light of extinction, just as stars glow brightest before going nova, then supernova. Nature may have been pushed asid
e by ecoglobal planning, but human cities are turning back into jungles: half-petrified virgin forests in the stagnant water of this unified human world, barely distinguishable from what remains of the natural wilderness around them, or from the out-of-control efflorescence running riot in the deserted streets, the silent highways; the empty buildings, shopping centers, and subway stations.

  In these dead cities, cities abandoned by men, nature has become savage again, escaping the automated cycles and engineers of geo-global planning. It is the last vestige of liberty left by technology to the world of Homo sapiens. It does not lack a certain tragic beauty.

  So, he is Sergei Diego Plotkin.

  But who is Sergei Diego Plotkin?

  Why is he here, on this train? Why am I here, on this train, he asks himself.

  To kill a man, that is certain. But who? And why? For whom? With whom?

  A flying advertisement has just plastered itself to the train window. The intelligent follicle of celluloid has somehow—he has no idea how—found its way here. It is a message from a Catholic station outlawed by the UHU’s Council for Ethical Vigilance and cites the words of the Gospel of John about the Antichrist in small luminescent phrases that tremble a little in the prism of the Securimax™ glass: He is king of the sons of pride.

  The clandestine prospectus is finally detected by the MagLev™’s internal network, and a small electrostatic discharge breaks its hold on the metaglass. It disappears as quickly as if swallowed by an abrupt depressurization.