“Can’t we sit down and talk about this calmly?”
It is the insurance agent persona talking, as if he were trying to sell a fire protection contract to a poor schmuck who just set his kitchen on fire. McNellis backs up slightly and gestures, hesitantly, through the open composite-paper sliding door at two armchairs facing each other in the neighboring room, Capsule 081-B. They head through the doorway together, a bit awkwardly, when a voice sounds from the sofa.
“Stay here. I’ll tell you everything.”
Which is already quite a lot.
But Plotkin understands that things are taking a completely unforeseen turn, one that not even the master spies of the Order could have predicted. In one second, the universe opens over an abyss. In this chasm, his body and falsified memory float toward a far-distant light. In this chasm is everything the instruction program did not plan for or anticipate. In this chasm is everything the Order’s biotechnicians were unable to imagine. In this chasm is everything unattainable even for a being as powerful as his guardian angel.
Because he recognizes the voice that has just filled the room. It is the voice of the young woman of fire. The one from his dream.
BOOTSTRAP
CORPUS SCRIPTI
You have created two things, Lord: one close to you, which is the angel, and the other almost nothing, which is primary matter.
SAINT AUGUSTINE, CONFESSIONS, CHAPTER VII
> LIGHTNING
Now, here is the woman.
Her beauty is indescribable. Words would need to be invented, in fact should be invented, here and now, just to describe her.
She is flame. Or, she is the light of a newborn universe created by a very ancient fire.
Her hair is very short and of an ash-blond color similar to the lunar quicksilver of her complexion. She is starfire—the living manifestation of starfire. She is there, beside the circular window overlooking the human world, and she is as beautiful and pure as an icon.
Look at her eyes, says a voice inside Plotkin that has nothing to do with the instruction program. Don’t lose sight of her eyes.
I saw her face
Now I’m a believer
Without a trace
Of doubt in my mind…
An old song from Britain’s Mersey Beat era of the 1960s? Why did it pop into his head just now, as he stands transfixed by this gaze that seems to look into infinity? A double abyss that blends into a single one, looking into the frontal lobe of his brain, just behind the skin and bones of his skull, just beyond the barrier separating the visible from the invisible, and shining with a strange light that seems to absorb all other light around it.
Her eyes may be blue, but they are quicksilver. They hold the same dark flame as her brother’s passionate gaze, but this flame seems somehow infrared: a point of dark red light, very dark, like a universe speeding away unimaginably fast; a point of crystal in the bottommost depths of a well impenetrable even by the sun. And, bizarrely, it seems that her gaze is a negative—that it presents an inverted image of the normal ocular structure. A strange consequence of their biomedical meddling with the gene for the degenerative retinal disease? Even more than that, he has the devastating impression that he is face-to-face with the organic materialization of a sort of internal eye.
At this moment, something happens deep in the heart of Plotkin’s altered consciousness. Something that threatens to smash the relative integrity and delicate balance he has managed to maintain until now.
He is no longer completely a man, but neither is he an android or a machine. It is worse than that; he is all of these, a multiple whose unity rings false.
And there, all of a sudden, is another.
In a dazzling flash, it is as if his entire being has been plunged into the depths of a river of fire. A microsecond before, he had been in the Hotel Laika, in Capsule 081, in the presence of Jordan McNellis and his sister. Now everything that he was has been consumed, and an eternity separates this life from the previous one.
He is not only another, he is two others.
And the worst part of it is that these two others form a single, perfect unit.
And what keeps them bound so closely is the same invisible fire that now flows in his veins, his nerves, his bones, cartilage, cells. He burns and he is illuminated. He is illuminated and he burns.
He is another multiplied by two, which makes three—because of this fire that is allowing the two others that are him to remain as one, this fire that seeks and destroys; he is plunged into it three times before surging up again, dazed, into another reality. This fire is language. Or, it is the fire that smolders beneath language.
And this is why what he is going through now is moving into the supernatural terrain of an experience in which he is only an instrument, and whose goal seems to be the elevation of this instrument into a sort of superior reality—into music coming from another sphere. He is no longer Plotkin; he is no longer in the Hotel Laika, in the city of Grand Junction, in independent Mohawk territory, in North America, in the Human UniWorld. He is no longer a man. He is no longer a machine. Nor is he something better or worse than either of these. But he is another.
He is a process ad infinitum.
Just like at the moment when his consciousness rose to the surface during his passage through the Windsor aerostation checkpoint, he is again a new world, a blank page, a newborn, a brain without a past—but this time, something has come to write directly on the passionate slate of his fused memory; something has etched what is in the process of happening—these lives that are not his own, these lives that belong to another world, but one that he now inhabits.
“You are what I am,” says the fire-woman who has just become his entire universe, a flaming substance swallowing and re-creating him.
“And I am what you are,” she adds, while in the Hotel Laika she has just cast the merciful shadow of a smile at the man paralyzed in front of her.
> HEALTH CONTAINMENT CAMP 77
YOU MUST NOT LOSE SIGHT OF THE FACT THAT YOU ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS CHARGED WITH A TERRORIST CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT.
The words are imprinted on his mind in capital letters, as if by a megalomaniacal and paranoid typewriter.
And you, he thinks, shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we are a little more than that.
It was he who had thought the words. And yet he is her. Entirely. He/she knew it with his/her whole being, even while the heavy face of the medical officer swayed ponderously, his small, crude, homeopathic smile undulating between his fat lips, under the cold yellow light of the checkpoint’s neon tube.
He/she is only one, like the human and divine parts of Christ are only one, while yet being synthetically disjointed. At his/her side, sitting on a rickety iron chair similar to his/her own, he/she sees his/her brother, Jordan June, eyes fixed on their interrogator. And the interrogator, a pompous Chinese military police major from Health Containment Camp 77 who, at the moment, is shuffling their files, printed on sheets of memory-cellulose, with a falsely careless air. Yes, Major Wu-Lei is a real son of a bitch.
He/she knows this all too well. He/she and his/her brother have been stuck in this camp for a week now. And in that seven days, the specific economy of Health Containment Camp 77, Hong Kong district, has been largely laid bare. Seven days has been more than enough to understand the genesis and operation of this humanitarian, UHU-approved concentration camp.
He/she has experienced it. And the still-separate part of the strange trinomial he/she forms with the fire that flows in his/her veins—between each of his/her cells, from one end to the other of his/her nervous system, even beyond his/her biological brain—the part that is still “him,” the part that comes from another world, a world that does not yet exist, the residual part of his past/future memory, knows very well that it has now been absorbed by the fire that separates as it unifies, and unifies as it separates.
Fire. Pyros. That which purifies.
“According to what it s
ays here regarding your identity in your personal report, Miss McNellis,” says Major Wu-Lei in his military-school English, “you are guilty of several counts of computer fraud committed since your departure from New Zealand. At our request, the Sri Lankan police told us everything. You also manipulated data in your genetic code at the time of your entry into India, and that caused you to be deported to Mozambique. From there, both of you passed through Yemen, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, and Burma. You then illegally entered Thai territory, and were subsequently forced to flee due to the war with the Malaysian Muslims, and now you are in your proper place. The New Zealanders never should have let you leave.”
“There aren’t any camps like this in New Zealand,” he/she replies dryly. “We aren’t criminals,” he/she adds, without any real hope.
The officer laughs, a dry bark, the noise of a machine grinding in a freezing room. “Of course not, obviously not. That’s why 250,000 of your compatriots died last year from a new mutant strain of Borneo bird flu. Here you are in the most secure territory on Earth with regard to health, young lady. It has been so for fifty years, despite all the wars. You should have known that before trying to play games with our mobile control centers.”
He/she thinks, not without spite, that the major is right: one doesn’t play games with the Devil.
“What are you accusing us of, exactly?” Jordan June McNellis demands furiously.
The major measures him up calmly; he tugs carefully on his sleeve in order to bring it back into precise, regulation alignment with his cuff.
“First, the manipulation of your IDs. Then, your illegal entry into the territory of the Asiatic Bloc Governance Bureau. As you must know, we now have a good idea of the basics.”
“Our right to enter Hong Kong territory is protected by UHU laws concerning refugees—”
Major Wu-Lei’s chuckle slithers from his mouth like a snake. “You are not refugees from any country on this fucking planet. And you know it.”
“What do you mean?” his/her brother persists, adrenaline obviously pumping.
“What do I mean?” The man laughs again, with what might once have been sarcasm. “What I mean, my dear Mr. McNellis, is that you have tried to disguise the fact that you are Spacians; isn’t that right?”
Spacians. The Anglo-Latin neologism coined for the first generation of humans born in orbit, in the Ring. Homo spaciens. He/she was born in the Ring.
He/she has always known it. He/she was born at an altitude of around 480 kilometers in an orbital colony called Cosmograd, which he/she left at around twelve years old with his/her brother, who was two years older, for southern Argentina to live with a Russian uncle after the accidental death of their parents during a mission on the moon.
The major continues without waiting for a reply, which in any case probably would not have been offered. “Then there is the fact that you are guilty of several infractions of the UHU’s global traffic system. Your illegal entries into territories that are health-controlled by one or another of our agencies have been tracked by our services.”
In his words, they feel—he/she feels, in unison with his/her brother—that this simple emphasis fills Major Wu-Lei with the pride of a servant of the state. In China, his/her brother had told him/her on the day of their arrival in the camp, they have a tradition in this sort of thing that stretches back thousands of years.
The major continues imperturbably, after a quick inhalation of breath: “And there is the fact that our health inspectors have decided to register you under security code orange while we wait for our genetics and biophysics laboratories to determine exactly what we are dealing with.”
Another breath. This time he fixes each of them in turn with his little black bug eyes—flat and dull, the eyes of a man born to be a chief inspector.
“What you are dealing with?” his/her brother asks, almost too innocently.
The little black eyes linger on him, bored charcoal marbles, extinguished from birth.
“Don’t play stupid with me, young man. We are well aware that you are both carriers of an unknown virus that is not listed on your UHU-approved genotype cards. We think it may be some new type of experimental neuroportable weapon, so we are very closely studying the analyses and samples taken when you entered Camp 77. If we have to, we will take others. We will find what we’re looking for.”
At that moment, the fire that is coursing through his/her entire being expands suddenly beyond its original boundaries, resulting in an intense surge in his/her energy levels. The light is no longer contained by shadows; it becomes heat that fills space and time, making the entire world his/her body. Next comes a violent increase in his/her body temperature; he/she feels more and more feverish. He/she fears the worst: Is this a new attack? But he/she continues to bear up under the cold stare of those eyes, lively as black holes, heavy as a dead moon settling onto his/her slender frame, exhausted in its chair. And you, you fat slug, health police my ass; you don’t even know what to look for or where to look. And neither do your so-called genetic specialists, he/she thinks.
He/she is filled with radiant, negative certainty. No.
No, they can’t guess a thing. They can’t know, they don’t know, anything. In fact they know less and less; it doesn’t matter if they’re Chinese cops or New Zealand doctors or global bureaus or local inspectors. UHU’s approved genetic operative is more than a hundred years old. It dates from Crick and Watson; it dates from the Meccano biological era. It dates from before the conjunction of catastrophes and the convergence of biocidal vectors. In any case, it dates from before he/she was even born.
Science itself spent a lot of time frozen in posthistoric stasis before beginning to move again—backward. It is as if the 1983 Nobel Prize, awarded to Barbara McClintock, had never happened—as if the woman had never discovered that DNA wasn’t a fixed “code” but rather a highly dynamic process open to the outside. It is like everyone decided to deliberately ignore the implications of a discovery as critical as that of mobile genes, called transposons, which are constantly changing their position in the genetic chain. It is like no one knows yet that RNA retroviruses are integrated into this same genetic base, continuously “retrowriting” vital information for the entire “code.” It is as if no one had ever moved beyond the famous “standard model” of the genomic operative introduced by Mr. Crick in 1980. As if a deliberate decision had been made to stay there, to be able to clone in series, or to graft a pair of additional breasts paid for by social security.
Everything is frozen in the state it was in fifty or sixty years before. Ninety-eight percent of the genetic code is still considered to be noncoding, and thus “garbage,” “junk DNA,” white noise, useless information—but it is there, and he/she knows it in the core of his/her being—that the real “code” lies, the “metacode” that deciphers all others.
The only technical progress now tolerated is the kind likely to produce comfort, atomic-social equality, or pleasure. Fundamental research is concentrated in the hands of telecommunications, operative biology, robotic, and geoclimatic control agencies, as well as the various poles of military sovereignty tolerated by the UHU. And yet their famous genomic card serving as the means to identify every individual on the planet persists in considering 98 percent of our genes as noncoding! The fire laughs, a cascade of plasma that blazes within him/her while the fever rises even higher, a sure harbinger of an attack. This interrogation needs to be cut short, and soon.
But the tremors spasmodically racking his/her back, arms, and hands and the sweat beading on his/her forehead have already attracted the major’s attention.
“Are you feeling ill, miss?”
The fire laughs again, and this time it comes streaming out his/her thirst-ravaged lips. “I’m wondering if the health conditions in your ‘health camp’ are in compliance with UHU regulations, Major. All I know is that your humid and poorly heated place seems to have caused me to come down with a sudden case of bronchitis. I’d like you to bring me
a large quantity of aspirin and an electric heater, please.”
The major makes a poor attempt at an apologetic gesture, but he cannot keep a tiny, cynical smile from turning up the corners of his mouth, a derisive relic of ancestral politeness. “Our civil war has caused us many problems, young lady, and now there is this eternal war in the Indian Ocean. Our funds are quite limited. The global economy, you know, has not been strong for many years. But I will do my best to get a heater for you. And Secretary Yu will give you an infirmary voucher for your aspirin.”
This gesture of leniency is probably a sign that the interview is over, he/she says to himself/herself. In any case, he/she says, in a voice slightly weakened by the mounting fever that is like a fire, a rocket, an atomic reaction turning his/her body into a living battery, a living bomb: “I appreciate it, Major Wu-Lei.”
Then he/she stands up as steadily as possible and says: “Good-bye, Major Wu-Lei.”
His/her brother does the same.
The major has already relegated their health files to a pile by his right hand and pulled out another from the pile by his left. He does not look at them again, or say another word as they leave the room.
Now, the cell. It is next to Jordan’s. The two rooms are actually in a reserved area, separated from the others by the most draconian health-security codes in all of Camp 77. They have been designated “code orange” they cannot leave these cells unless the containment camp cops decide they can. Actually, it is easy to imagine that they will end up in the code red area, which no one ever leaves. The genetic labs of Hong Kong’s health police won’t find anything, of course. There is nothing to find. Because human eyes cannot read the invisible—don’t want to see the invisible, even when it becomes visible, because if they allow themselves to see the invisible-cum-hypervisible, their entire pitiful world will vanish.
Cosmos Incorporated Page 19