‘If you don’t have the discipline to ignore what are only words, then get out. I’ll finish up.’ It was like listening to rocks grind together as she hissed that at him. I had been so close. ‘That is exactly what he wants. Someone to break the circle.’
He couldn’t face her. What sort of idiot writes the ability to look overcome by anguish into his own icon? They should live large. It’s not like it’s real after all. She let him go and he just seemed to sag against the wall. She turned to stare at me. The things I wanted to do to her then.
The door opened and another well-rendered icon walked in. I was surprised. The icon looked old, older even than Pagan. Again, why would someone make themself look old in here? He wore a long linen shirt and linen trousers. Over the shirt he had a kind of waistcoat decorated in brocade. The fabric skull cap on his head also had a brocade pattern running around it and he wore a simple pair of sandals. In the early-morning sun the white linen seemed to glow. He looked over at Black Annis and Pagan.
‘I think it would be better if you left,’ he said. His voice was cultured and educated. The accent was definitely from somewhere in the Middle East back on Earth. Black Annis nodded. The hag and the Druid looked so ridiculously out of place with this man.
‘We’re done anyway. You understand the rules?’ Black Annis asked through grinding stone.
‘I think so. Don’t break the circle,’ the man said. We’ll see.
Black Annis didn’t spare me a look as she practically led Pagan out. He did though. Pagan turned to stare at me and there was hate and anger but defeat also. Morag may have managed to control it in here but she was going to burst into tears as soon as she left the net.
The man pulled a chair up opposite mine. Of course he didn’t break the circle.
‘I think it’s much easier to upset the people you know and love,’ he said.
‘You know I don’t love them.’
‘You? No, but Jakob does, and that gives you insight. I find it interesting that the only power you have over them comes from your love for them and their love for you. Twisted of course but nonetheless …’
‘Really? That’s your opening salvo? Love is power?’ I couldn’t keep the scorn from my voice, not that I was trying terribly hard.
He laughed. ‘Yes, it does sound trite put that way. Easy to be cynical about, but even then it still holds true.’
‘So what are we doing here?’
‘We’re going to talk a little.’ You mean you’re going to run as many diagnostic programs and analytical routines as you can to try and get insight into me. ‘Then I am going to do some praying. I would ask you to join me but I can’t see that happening.’ Or rather you’re going to try and write code because you think the old weak Jakob is in here somewhere. He’s not. This is a fusion. I’m in the meat, not in the machine, old man, but you can find that out the hard way.
‘What should I call you? Exorcist?’ He laughed at this. ‘Would you be more comfortable if I looked like this?’ It was a simple change I made. The icon no longer looked like me. Instead I had become the beast. I saw his expression falter. Not because of the goat-headed form I took – that had long ago ceased to be frightening – but because of the control I had. Total control over my surroundings, with the exception of this fucking circle.
‘My name’s Salem,’ he said after he’d recovered quickly.
‘This your sanctum?’
‘A copy of part of it. We’re in an isolated system.’
Damn. Still I can’t pretend it’s a surprise.
‘Where’s it supposed to be?’
‘A place where I used to come to do my lessons when I was a boy in Jerusalem before the war.’
‘You really are old.’ He smiled. ‘And why are all you people so painfully sentimental?’
‘Connections, identity. I think it’s part of being comfortable with who you are.’
‘I could make you comfortable with who you are and with God.’
He just smiled. Too soon. We’d get to that later.
‘What’s this got to do with you?’ I asked.
‘It’s my duty.’
‘You are an exorcist then?’
‘I think it’s the duty of all to help when they can.’
‘Brilliant. If you could just break this circle, that would be really helpful.’
‘I am here to help Jakob.’
I leaned forward and formed the words very carefully. ‘I am Jakob. When will you people understand that? There is nothing wrong with me.’
‘You are an evil djinn who has taken over his body.’
‘That what your analysis programs are telling you?’
It was written all over his face that the answer was no.
‘You have the power of an ifreet—’
‘And you are a step away from a fucking witch doctor. Why don’t you shake some monkey bones over me?’
He flinched at the swearing. Good, I liked delicate sensibilities.
‘It’s just terminology. Do you really think that I do not know what you are?’
‘Who I am is Jakob Douglas, and no, you don’t have a clue. If you did you wouldn’t fucking be here.’
‘Is there need for swearing?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘It just diminishes you.’
I would have loved to stop talking to the sanctimonious prick. His constantly calm demeanour was beginning to piss me off, but I needed an in. Some way to anger him enough that he would go for me.
‘I see refuge in Allah from the pride, poetry and touch of Shaitan, the cursed,’ Salem said to himself.
I had to laugh. It was like something out of the Middle Ages. Still there was something about his words at a very basic level that I didn’t like.
‘You’re frightened?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘You are very dangerous.’
‘It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a real god coming, not a feel-good fantasy designed to justify hatred and violence—’
‘Something that hasn’t been an issue since the Final Human Conflict. The hatred and violence is entirely of the creation of your masters as far as I can tell.’
‘You interrupted me.’
‘I apologise.’ He actually looked contrite, as if manners mattered. I on the other hand was pissed off that I had lowered myself to speak to this superstitious caveman, to offer him a chance, and all he wanted to do was hear himself talk.
‘We offer a chance, the ultimate chance to belong, to be part of what humanity will become, and we are attacked for it. Unless of course you feel that humanity is doing fine now?’
‘I think it would be reductive to lay all the troubles of humanity at the feet of the Cabal. It is much more complex than that. But they have certainly played a significant part in humanity’s current state, don’t you think?’
‘Birth is always painful.’
‘Particularly when it’s poisoned.’
‘So what then? The abortion of humanity’s rebirth? We just remain in our animalistic state?’
‘I don’t think you can force these things.’
‘The only force is the result of resistance.’
‘Because some do not wish to live the way you do.’
‘No.’ This truly angered me. ‘That is not the reason for resistance; the reason is fear. All of us have a chance at something better, something more, and the throwbacks are too frightened of the unknown to embrace that. No attempt has been made to understand, only to lash out like spoilt children who do not get their way.’
Salem sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘This at least is progress. Please, I wish to understand. Tell me what we are frightened of.’
I smiled at him. ‘Then let me out.’
‘You know I will not do that.’
‘Then this is not a free exchange of ideas.’
‘Not when you hold this man Jakob prisoner.’
This was turning into an exasperating circle jerk.
‘I am Jakob, and I think
you know that.’ I was getting angry now.
‘I think you have assimilated Jakob. At a fundamental level, against the laws of man and God, you have no right to do this. You must leave and I think you know this.’
It appeared they had sent in the world’s calmest man to speak to me. Where was Pagan when you needed him?
‘And your diagnostics must have told you by now that Jakob has ascended – he is something else now. Just as you know that deep down your god is only real as a net-bound hallucination, a hollow ghost in your neurones. We have something tangible to offer.’
I was imagining what this man’s insides would look like. What it would be like to make patterns with them, to wear them? Didn’t he realise that they are as nothing to us? They are tools, nothing more, and we are under no obligation to take them with us.
‘Old man, I know angels, holy terrors,’ I told him, frustrated.
‘You know fallen angels, nothing more.’
Then he smiled. He had found something.
‘What?’ I demanded. He ignored me. ‘Do you understand that we are at an evolutionary point for mankind? Your outdated folk beliefs are about to be superseded by something real.’
‘It is not real. It is a technological horror more in keeping with the inventions of Mary Shelley than with the creation of a god, but that is just my opinion and here is the problem when two people debate faith. You are not going to convince me that I am wrong because I have faith, and I am not going to convince you that you are wrong. In such a case, all we can do is strive to accept our differences and perhaps understand them.’ His calm demeanour grated on me as smugness.
‘I am not offering you faith; I am offering you proof. I am offering you the tangible and personnel connection to God that you, all you hackers, wish you had.’ It was like talking to a simple-minded savage.
‘I think for non-religious people it will always be impossible for you to understand that the connection you describe is a relationship we already have and already feel. It is as real and tangible to us as your net-bound technological creations are to you.’
‘Even though you know them to be a lie?’
‘Obviously I don’t know that. In fact I believe the opposite.’
‘Salem.’ I was becoming more and more exasperated. ‘Do you understand what I’m offering you? I am offering you the chance to be a new Muhammad here.’
‘I think you are offering me the chance to be the spokesperson for a lie.’ There was no hesitation there. His narrow-mindedness was total.
‘You understand that’s what you fucking are?!’ I was shouting at him now. I was so angry. His expression became more serious and considerably less benign.
‘There is only one god and Muhammad is his prophet.’
‘You walk among fallen people, infidels, you fucking hypocrite!’
‘Only God can give me understanding of my place in things. Only he can judge.’
‘He’s not fucking real!’ He flinched. ‘The closest you ever got was that fucking joke back on Earth.’
‘A misguided and blasphemously named program.’
‘The things you’ve seen aren’t what you think they are. Are you so fucking frightened that you reject out of hand anything that’s real in favour of this fantasy world?!’
‘All you are is us,’ he told me. ‘All you are is a prison, a complicated computer program with delusions of grandeur.’
I was on my feet now.
‘I think you’ll see what I am, medicine man!’ I screamed at him.
He looked at me with an expression of pity. What could be more inappropriate? He was less than bloodied shit before me.
‘Tell Morag I’m sorry!’ I continued screaming at him. No! Wait. I didn’t say that. Why would I say that? She was a vessel for my pleasures – another victim, nothing more.
Salem made a sobbing sound. No, it wasn’t him, it was me.
‘I will make your family watch your corpse being fucked!’
‘I have nothing to fear from you. Allah protects me.’
‘I will find everything you care about and destroy it! I will show you that your god is a lie! I will rape your children and their children in front of your eyes!’
I was battering myself against the circle, causing myself pain as energy coalesced around me where I hit the barrier program. Hating the feeling of impotence that had somehow replaced omnipotence in here. This barrier was not human programming.
‘All you have is fear. I am so sorry,’ Salem said.
I could hear it. Everything I said, everything I did, and it was me. I knew that. I could hear it but it sounded different and distorted like sound travelling through water.
I felt like an exotic bird, some rich corp exec’s pet in a gilded cage. The cage was decorated with engraved knot-work and was so exquisite, ornate and beautiful it didn’t look real. It was still a prison. It hung here suspended in total, impenetrable darkness.
It gave me time to consider what I’d done. The betrayal, Demiurge’s trickery and the murder I’d committed under its influence. The things I’d said to Mudge and Pagan. Morag.
In some ways I would have welcomed being the monster. Or rather joining the rest of me to merge with the monster. Though the best thing would have been a bullet through my skull. I had nothing to offer now but more pain and lies. It felt like an age since I’d been able to offer anything else. I didn’t understand why my friends were prolonging this.
I had fully underestimated just how angry Rolleston was with me. Exquisite wasn’t a word I used often but this was. Turn me into everything I hate. Use me as a weapon against those I love but keep enough of me conscious and imprisoned to appreciate what I was doing.
Did I sound calm? Most of the time all I did was scream. I slept when he slept and dreamt of nothing, only to wake and scream again.
But not now. Now I’m lying on the cold metal floor of my cage, curled in the foetal position, shaking and crying like a frightened child. I can hear myself raging at the holy man.
I feel something gritty against my skin. Something blows against me in the warm wind. There should be no wind in this void. I open my eyes. The floor of my cage is dusted in fine grains of sand. More is blowing in through the bars. I sit up and watch this wind from nowhere play with the sand, make patterns with it on the floor.
I am hollow. I have little strength left for any emotion other than hate and self-loathing. I have become the worst thing I could imagine. Fear seems redundant.
There is still a prickling at the back of my mind, perhaps deep in the lizard brain as it rises from the sand. It is a desert ghost in robes, its head wrapped in a shemagh, obscuring its features, if it has any. The ghost is formed of the sand and is constantly reforming as the wind blows granules out into the void.
‘What are you?’ I ask. My throat should be raw and bloody, but this isn’t the real world.
‘I am an intelligent computer virus with limited verbal responses. I am sorry but this will hurt. A lot.’ I think the language is Arabic but somehow I understand it. I recognise the holy man’s voice.
‘What will hurt?’
‘Kneel! That’s right. Kneel, you fuck!’ Muscles contort, my mouth enlarges, and anger, not control of my icon, makes me look bestial as I scream at this nothing prostrate before his fiction, facing east. ‘Face me! Face me, you fucking coward!’
He should be kneeling before me, that is right and proper, even if I am a caged god. He shouldn’t be kneeling before some fiction in the east.
I start to tell him what I will do to him and everything and everyone he cares about. People say that the details in these kinds of descriptions are just pornography, but I knew that they painted pictures in his head and he would see me exploring atrocity with everyone he loves. He thinks he’s praying now. We both know he’s hiding from me, too afraid to face me. Tone it down now. Whisper to him, more effective than the screaming.
I watch in horror as my left arm becomes mercury and leaks to the floor from the fin
ger up to the shoulder. Then the fire comes. Then I really start to scream as agony surges through every particle of my being.
Fear, horror, disbelief. This cannot be happening to me. I am being diminished. This categorically cannot happen. Only I have the power here. Only me. I have to warn …
I am introduced to pain anew. I thought I’d been screaming. I hadn’t been screaming.
It must be like being born. There is light and pain, or agony to be precise, except I want to hide from the light. Crawl back into the dark, let them forget about me as I am assaulted by the memories of everything I’ve said and done.
‘Jakob?’ It is a kindly voice full of genuine concern. That makes it worse. I do not deserve it.
I try to back into the corner of the sunlit room. Salem reaches for me. I flinch away from him.
‘You’re free. The ifreet is gone.’ Reassuring. He doesn’t realise it is still me, still all me.
The door to the room opens. Black Annis. Don’t name her as Morag. Pagan is with her. They look out of place in this environment. Morag – no, Black Annis – stands in the doorway like judgement.
They walk towards me. Black Annis glances over at Salem, who nods. There is a look of concern on the old man’s face. She reaches for me. I try to cower away but my back is already against the cold stone wall. Her long-fingered, black-clawed hand touches me like death. Black lightning plays across my chest. I scream again as biofeedback surges into my body in the real world. Enough biofeedback to make my plugs smoke, enough to fry synapses, enough to stop even an augmented and mostly mechanical heart.
It’s like sinking into dark water. The last thing I hear is Pagan screaming, ‘No!’ and diving towards Morag. Way too slow, Pagan. She waited. Waited until it was me. This is good. I deserve this.
19
New Utu Pa
Disappointment. I’m alive. I can still hear Rannu screaming. I can still feel the manacles around my wrists and ankles. I’m still lying on a soiled cot wondering when this will be over. The air still tastes like licking a battery, still smells of rotten eggs, and I know that when I open my eyes the sky will still be very far away.
Our escape now made sense. I didn’t want to think about it too much at the time, that’s how insidious hope can be. Where was all the security when we escaped from Moa City? Regardless of how good Rannu is, he couldn’t have hidden for that long in such a small area, not with the level of technology the Black Squadrons were using. They had let us go. We were under their control the entire time.
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