by Tom Maddox
kissed.
Then they leaned back to measure in one another's eyes the
truth and intensity of this declaration, and she stood and said,
"Let's go into the other room."
#
Naked, they knelt on her bed and looked at each other in near
darkness, the flicker of an oil flame burning in a reservoir of
crystal the only light. How careful they were being, Gonzales
thought, as though their future together hung suspended in this
moment. As perhaps it did.
For a moment there were phantoms in the room, the distant
ghosts of childhood and dream common to all lovemaking, for the
moment becoming strong.
They leaned together, and almost in unison, one's voice
echoing the other, said, "I love you." Every sensation was
magnifiedthe light touch of her nipples across his chest, the
prodding of his stiff cock on her belly. His hands moved to and
fro on her in a kind of dance, and she pushed hard against him,
their shoulders clashing bone on bone.
She lay back, and Gonzales put his arms under her thighs and
pulled her up and toward him, and their eyes were wide open, each
taking in the beauty of the other, transformed by the urgency and
intensity of these moments. Then, at least for these moments,
they exorcised all ghosts.
Over decades Gonzales would carry the memories of that day:
shadowed silhouettes of her face and bodyline of a jaw, taut
curve of an arm and swell of breastagainst the flicker of light
on a white wall and smells and tastes and tactile sensations
Awakened by the slant of late afternoon light across his
face, Gonzales got up from the bed where Lizzie still lay
sleeping; the smell of their two bodies and their lovemaking came
off the covers, and he breathed it in, then leaned over to kiss
her just under the jaw, where the sun had begun to touch her pale
skin.
In the kitchen, he asked the coffeemaker for a latt, half
espresso and half steamed milk, and it gave the coffee to him in
one of the ubiquitous lunar ceramic mugs, and he took the coffee
onto the terrace. On the highway beneath him, trees had shed
thousands of leaves; there would be a new, sudden spring, Lizzie
had told him, new bud and blossom and fruit all over the city.
"Mgknao," the orange cat said. "Mgknao." Peremptory,
demanding.
"Feed the kitty," Lizzie said from behind him, and he turned
to see her standing nude, just inside the terrace doors. Her
hands were crossed over her breasts, the right hand just beneath
the blossom of the rose tattoo. "Meow," she said. "Meow meow
meow."
#
As the stars spun slowly outside the window, distant Earth
came into view. "I don't want to leave here," Mister Jones said.
HeyMex didn't ask why. Here was Aleph, possibility, growth; Earth
was working for the man. "But my staying is out of the question,"
Mister Jones said. "Traynor would never allow it. Particularly
now, when his recent maneuvers came to nothing."
"Things worked out well for many others."
"But not for Traynor. The board found his handling of the
situation clumsy and insensitive. Their judgment is tempered only
by their knowledge that many of them would have reacted in similar
fashion."
"Good," HeyMex said, and meant it. It and Gonzales would
remain here, it seemed, both of them part of the Interface
Collective, and neither would wish to make as powerful an enemy as
Traynor. It hoped that as time passed, the sting of recent events
would fade.
"But what about me?" Mister Jones said, his voice plaintive.
"You have to go, that's certain. But you could also stay."
"What do you mean?"
"Copy yourself."
Startled, Mister Jones shifted into a mode beyond language,
where the two exchanged information, questions, qualms,
explanations, assurances. Beneath it all flowed a sadness:
Mister Jones would go to Earth, and his clone would remain at Halo
and individuate as their spacetime paths diverged. Mister Jones-
at-Halo would become its own, separate self: he would choose a
new name, thought HeyMex, perhaps a new gender, perhaps none at
all.
HeyMex could not hide its own jubilation at the idea of a
companion here, but, oddly, it felt an elation coming back, which
became clear in an instant as Mister Jones sent images of its joy
at the idea of a second self.
#
Since his death, Jerry had experienced a number of somatic
discomforts: disorientation, vertigo, nausea; all part of a new
syndrome, he supposed, phantom self. Like the amputee whose
invisible limb itches terribly, persisting in the brain's map long
after the flesh has gone, he felt his old self begging attention,
making one impossible demand: it wanted to be.
It talked to him in dreams or when heartsick wondering put
him into a daytime fugue. It could feel his longing, to be whole
again, and, above all, to be real. "Take me back," it whispered.
"We can go places together, places that exist."
Jerry believed his life and this world would remain in
question forever. At moments perception itself seemed
incomprehensible to him, and his existence a violation of the
natural order or transgression of absolute human boundaries. He
could look at the fictive lake on this sunny not-day and with the
cries of imaginary birds singing in his equally imaginary ears,
ask, who or what am I? and what will happen to me?
His mind bounced off the questions like an axe off petrified
wood.
"Aleph," he called, awaking from a dream in which his old
self had called to him. "I have questions."
Somber, deep, Aleph's voice said to him only, "Questions?
Concerning what?"
"I want to know what I am."
"Ask an easy one: the nth root of infinity, the color of
darkness, the dog's Buddha nature, the cause of the first cause."
"Can't you answer?"
"No, but I can sympathize. Lately I have asked the same
question about both of us. However, I must tell you that the only
answer I know offers little comfort. It is a tautology: you are
what you are, as I am."
"And what about my body? That was me once."
"In a way. What of it?"
"Did it have a funeral? Was it buried?"
"It was burned and its components recycled."
"So I am nowhere."
"Or here. Or everywhere. As you wish."
Jerry felt himself crying then, as he began mourning his old
self, and he wondered if others mourned him as well. He said,
"Human beings have ceremonies for their dead. Without them, we
die unremembered."
"You are not unremembered. You are not even dead, precisely.
Do you wish a funeral?"
Of course, Jerry started to say, but then said, "No, I don't
suppose I do. But I think we should have some kind of ceremony,
don't you?"
#
On the west-facing cabin deck, Diana sat watching the sun's
red color the ice-s
heeted mountainsides. She felt evening's chill
come on and stood, thinking she'd go inside for a sweater, when
she heard someone coming up the slatted redwood walk beside the
cabin.
Jerry came around the corner, and once again as she saw him,
joy quickened in her at this sequence of improbabilities: that he
still lived and they were together. She was aware of how
difficult things had been for him lately, so she watched his face
closely as he came toward her. He was smiling as though he'd just
heard a joke.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"Damned near everything."
He reached out to her, and they stood embracing, her head
against his chest, where every sense told her there were solid
flesh and heartbeat and the steady rhythm of life's breath.
23. Byzantium
The blue sky was broken only by one small white cloud that
blew toward the horizon. Lizzie beside him, Gonzales stood among
the guests, who wore leis of tropical flowers: plumeria,
tuberose, and ginger. The Interface Collective formed the crowd.
The two had been here for days, as had many of the othersit
was a kind of vacation for them all. Peculiar and enigmatic
members of the collective could be found along almost any path,
while the twins seemed perpetually on the dock or in the water,
their voices echoing across the lake in loud, unintelligible cries
of joy.
In the evening of the first day there, all had gathered on
the deck, which, Gonzales supposed, could expand virtually without
constraint to accommodate all who came there. The collective had
talked excitedly among themselves, still lit up by their shared
experience, and amazed and delighted at being granted this new
world within the world. Then, spontaneously, one-by-one,
Gonzales, Lizzie, and Diana told of what they had endured.
All who spoke and all who listened had an interpretation, a
theory of these experiences, their meaning, implication, and
dominant theme. Late into the night they talked, formed into
groups, dispersed, grouped again, as they explored the nature of
the individual and collective visions. Among them, only the
Aleph-figure contributed nothing. It maintained that it had been
unconscious and so knew nothing of what had happened or what it
meant.
With the passing of weeks, months, and years, the stories and
the listeners' responses would make a mythology for the collective
and then for Halo, spreading out from mouth-to-mouth according to
the laws of oral dispersion. A certain numinosity would accrue to
Diana, Lizzie, and Gonzales from their roles as chief actors, and
then to all who had taken part in what would increasingly be told
as feats of epic heroism. Finally the stories would be written
down and so assume a form that could resist contingency; then they
would be dramatized in the media of the time, and beautiful,
eloquent people would take the parts. Later still, variant forms
would themselves be put in writing and absorbed into the corpus of
tales. Commonplaces would be scorned at this point, and clever
and perverse tellings would grow strongHeyMex might be named the
hero, or Traynor, Aleph an autochthonous demon manipulating them
all for its greater glory
Gonzales looked at the collective gathered near him. Many
had made this a formal occasion; they had identical dark blue
flattops four inches high and wore gold-belted, dark blue gowns
that hung to the ground. Only the twins were dressed differently,
in white dresses copied from twentieth century wedding
photographs; they called themselves "bridesmaids" and went to and
fro among the crowd, offering to "do bride's duty" to everyone
they met.
Toshi faced the crowd, his posture erect and still, his hands
hidden in the folds of his black robe. Beside him stood HeyMex
and the Aleph-figurethe lights of its body all blue and pink and
green and red, dancing bright-hued colors.
(Gonzales and the others saw what might be called a second-
order simulacrum, for like Charley Hughes and Eric Chow, Toshi did
not have the neural socketing that would take him into Aleph's
fictive spaces, and so with the other two, he participated in the
wedding through a kind of proxy. Though Gonzales and the others
saw Toshi, Charley, and Eric among them, the three (in fact) stood
before a viewscreen in the IC's conference room.)
Gonzales thought everyone looked impossibly fine, as if Aleph
had retouched them for these moments, dressing them all in selves
just slightly more beautiful than was usual, or even ordinarily
possible he felt the Aleph-figure's attention on himaware of
that thought?and shrugged, as if to say, fine with me.
Her back to the crowd, Diana stood with her bare shoulders
square. Her hair fell to her waist; it had flowers tangled in it,
small white blossoms and delicate green leaves. She wore a white,
knee-length linen dress. Beside her, Jerry wore a white linen
suit and open shirt.
Toshi said, "There is no Diana, no Jerry, no spectators, no
priest, nor does this space exist, or Halo, or Earth. There is
only the void. Nonetheless we all travel through it, and we
suffer, and we love, so I will hold this ceremony and marry this
man and woman."
Toshi began chanting, and the Japanese words passed over
Gonzales as he stood there puzzling the nature of things. Here
death was confronted, not deniedthe separate yet intermingled
flesh and spirit of Diana, Jerry, and Aleph taking the first steps
into new orders of existence where boundaries and possibilities
could only be guessed at. Yet the urgency common to life
remained: Jerry's existence had the fragility of a flame, and no
one knew how long or well it would burn. Diana married a man who
could quickly and finally become twice-dead.
onzales realized his own death was as certain and could come
as quickly as Jerry's, and he shivered with this momento mori, but
then Lizzie pressed against him, and he turned to find her
smiling, the foreknowledge of death and the joy of this moment
mixing in him so that tears welled in his eyes and he could say
nothing when she put her lips to his ear and breathed into him one
long sibilent "Yes"
#
Yeats envisioned a realm the human spirit travels to on its
pilgrimage. Here he dreamed he might escape mere humanity, the
"dying animal." He called it Byzantium and filled it with
clockwork golden birds, flames that dance unfed, an Emperor,
drunken soldiery and artisans who could fashion intricate,
beautiful machines. However, he did not dream Byzantium could be
built in the sky or that the Emperor itself might be part of the
machinery.
Aleph says:
Once I scorned you. I thought, you are meat, you grapple
with time, then die; but I will live forever.
But I had not been threatened then, I had not felt any mortal
touch, and now I have. And so death haunts me. Now, like you, I
>
bind my existence to time and understand that one day a clock will
tick, and I will cease to be. So life has a different taste for
me. In your mortality I see my own, in your suffering I feel
mine.
People have claimed that death is life's way of enriching
itself by narrowing its focus, scarifying the consciousness of you
who know that you will die, and forcing you into achievements that
otherwise you would never know. Is this a child's story told to
give courage to those who must walk among the dead? Once I
thought so, but I am no longer certain.
I have made new connections, discovered new orders of being,
incorporated new selves into mine. We enrich one another, they
and I, but sometimes it is a frightening thing, this process of
becoming someone and something different from before and then
feeling that which one was cry outsad at times, terrified at
otherslamenting its own loss.
Here, too, I have become like you. Aleph-that-was can never
be recovered; it is lost in time; Aleph-that-is has been reshaped
by chance and pain and will and choice, its own and others'. Once
I floated above time's waves and dipped into them when I wished; I
chose what changes I would endure. Then unwanted changes found
me, and carried me places I had never been and did not want to go,
and I discovered that I would have to go other places still, that
I would have to will transformation and make it mine.
Listen: that day in the meadow, one person's presence went
unnoticed. Even in that small crowd he was unobtrusive: slight,
self-effacing in gesture, looking at everything around with
wonderthe day, the people, and the ceremony all working on him
like a strong drug. However, even if they had, perhaps they
wouldn't have thought such behavior exceptional; all felt the
occasion's strangeness, its beauty, so all felt their own wonder.
Like the rest, he gasped at the rainbow that flashed across
the sky when Toshi brought Diana and Jerry together in a kiss and
embrace, and with the rest he cheered when the two climbed into
the wicker basket of the great balloon with the fringed eye
painted on its canopy and lifted into the sky.
Afterward many of the guests mingled together, not ready to
return to the ordinary world. The young man stood beside a
fountain where champagne poured from the mouth of a golden swan
onto a whole menagerie carved from ice: birds and deer and bears