by Judyth Baker
Now the gondola shivered, then dipped down into a yawning tunnel. The tunnel’s hermetically sealed doors closed behind them with a rush of air that was filled with the stench of death.
“The smell is of dead bodies,” Archie explained, as the tourists whispered. Only a few of them had olfactory senses: they were rarely needed any more, and those who still had them surely regretted it, due to the heavy odor of decomposition that filled the tunnel. Another body floated by – this one was decapitated. Some Vegan had become angry, it seemed, with someone. Or maybe a Muslim had done it…
The tunnel remained dark so the inhabitants could not see them. However, they could see everything on display.
The first display was disappointing. The lighting was low and flickering badly. The marquee exhibited a sign in neon and gold that said “Roman Catholic Mass” – but the display itself only showed an empty altar. A scrawled sign lay against the altar, with just one word in crude letters: ‘Closed.’
“Sorry,” Archie whispered. “This happens, once in a while.” He said this to soothe them. In fact, he had never seen a closed display. There were heavy penalties involved, including pain implants, if any main character failed to show up. There were mannequins that could be rolled out in emergencies, but the Catholic Mass scene was empty. Even the golden chalice on the marble altar was gone.
The gondola purred on, its occupants silent. At the site of the second display, which was an example of a Muslim female being flogged after her ankles had been seen in public, once again, something was wrong. There was an emergency mannequin at this site: its arm, which was supposed to be flogging a real, live Muslim girl, was broken off at the elbow. The flogging motion looked strange indeed, with the arm moving up and down, sometimes a little to the left, or a little to the right, with a cracked voice saying “Thirty-nine, forty! Forty-one, forty-two!” over and over again. A crookedly-written sign in the viewing area said, once again, ‘Closed.’When they reached the third exhibit, which was supposed to show Greek Orthodox dancers at a wedding celebration, the entire area was black as night, and the gondola was plunged into darkness.
“I can’t see!” came a complaint in the heavy pall. A moment later, each Cyborg lit up, for the rest of the tunnel was equally dark. The fearsome figure of the Destroying Angel glowed with a luminescence that quivered like flame. Now she spoke into the gloom.
“I’m too late,” she said. “I had hoped to save them some of their sufferings.”
“What do you mean?” a tourist asked.
“We have been watching the progress of this Reserve closely, for the past thirty years,” the Angel said, her voice rumbling with displeasure. “We saw the women eventually consigned indoors. They had to be covered entirely, from head to foot. Polygamy was required of all men. There was no birth control, so women were being impregnated at an alarming rate. But the Vegans had taken over the food supply. No meat was allowed, even though there wasn’t enough food variety to sustain the entire population on that diet: We had failed to plan accordingly. Then, because the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not allow blood transfusions, and many Hindus had come to believe that non-Hindus were Untouchables, many of the pregnant women, who were anemic, and anyone else who needed a blood transfusion, simply perished.”
The Angel laughed bitterly. “There were many riots as the Christians began fighting to keep Sunday worship, because Seventh Day Adventists insisted on having all religious worship meetings on Saturdays. All of that was rejected by the Muslims, who insisted that Fridays were the proper days for such meetings.”
They came before another exhibit, weakly lit: it was supposed to show a Hindu Untouchable being prepared for cremation, but once again, nothing was taking place. The remains of a previous cremation could be seen next to the fake River Ganges, which was supposed to have carried it off. Instead, the ashes and the bones lay in a grisly, abandoned heap.
The Angel had kept talking, even as they passed yet another exhibit that was abandoned. They would have to watch an animal being slaughtered Kosher style some other time…
Meanwhile, the Angel was continuing her verbal essay.
“Finally,” she told them, ”we learned that no males were being allowed to give medical care to the women, but because the women were not allowed to be educated, there were no women doctors. Hence, they had called upon the Wiccans, who, if a witch failed to save a woman in childbirth, were likely to face burning at the stake. Buddhists became hermits and celibates, hid themselves, while Hindus resigned themselves to the next life. Jews tried to stop their girls from getting circumcised by African Muslims and animists, but at the same time, children were being trained to become suicide bombers. Buddhist monks began immolating themselves, charismatic preachers scammed people of their food and wealth, and then were themselves executed. The doctrine-teaching machines were destroyed, and a new religion emerged that worshipped mega-church leaders as gods.”
“But – how?” Archie asked.
“Remember that we appointed those with the highest IQs as the religious leaders.” The Angel’s blue eyes shot out sparks of fire. “A few created mega-churches. They grew immensely wealthy, and began to send regiments against each other to overcome ‘Satan.’ Those who were defeated were executed in several Reformation movements that required all religious books to be burnt. As wars took over the Reserve, prisoners were sacrificed on stone altars to please the surviving mega-church leader, who was given the title of ‘God on Earth.’ In his honor, the hearts and brains of those who were slain on the altars were ritually devoured, after they were dispatched Kosher style. I came here to put all these abominations to an end. To terminate them all. But it seems I’m too late.”
“What do you mean?” a tourist asked.
To Archie’s surprise, the Destroying Angel spread out her hands, and the gondola turned itself around, heading back to home. “They’re all dead,” she told the tourists. “They have exterminated themselves. Do not be concerned: all of you will receive the promised upgrades, and Mr. Pelago will be retrained for a new line of duty.”
Time Capsule
Klive Newton-James Joyce kept circling the high table, counting his steps compulsively. As he did so, he repeated the words that soothed him best: One-two-three, four! Get to work, get to work, get to work! The big black table was empty except for a short stack of photos and advertisements. Klive clasped his human-looking hands together as if in prayer, but it was just his way of exerting some self control. His face was a large black cube that could pivot in any direction. As all high-end Cyborgs, nothing could be seen or probed that he kept there, but tiny changes in what was a faux liquid surface could convey to the Censors how busy his processors were.
He was only allowed 1% downtime, or his head cube would begin to glow green, with stripes of red. Next, he’d feel uncomfortable. Plus, there was the social stigma of glowing, as any accused of being “lazy” were already pre-judged.
But Klive’s head cube had never glowed with stripes of red.
Ever.
He carried “hero” status for using only .004% of his accumulated downtime in his existence, but that came at a price. He had developed a few compulsive disorders – some wasteful logic loops that needed fixing.
“I still have a few things to do before I jump into the volcano,” Klive said aloud, still circling the table. One-two-three-four! Get to work, get to work, start working!
Klive Newton-James Joyce wanted it all over. He felt worn out. He wanted to respond to the imperatives of his conditioning: to exterminate himself when his lifelong task was complete, which created space for a new Cyborg dedicated to a new task with its very own specialized training.
Klive had seen the Museum of Heroes and knew exactly where his star would be placed. He would have an impressive funeral, he had been told. As a Hero, he would be allowed to wear clothing for the last day of his existence. It was an old custom that distinguished him, for a single day, from all the others of his caste in recognition of his outstandin
g service to the Hive.
That was Klive Newton-James Joyce’s personal word for the famous statue called “Industry” that now stood before OneWorld Kommune’s equally famous antique-style headquarters in what had formerly been called Salt Lake City in the territory owning Utah. The “Industry” statue had been found perfectly preserved (despite nuclear wars) along with a priceless collection of human data hidden away in an enormous underground sanctuary carved into living stone. “Industry” symbolized the work ethic of the region’s most prominent religious group. It stood for loyal and selfless commitment to hard work and to the deity called “The Lord.”
The region’s human inhabitants, known as “Mormons” to outsiders, were officially filed as “LDS” or Latter-Day Saints. They were important. Early in his career, Klive was calibrated to deal with 8.5 billion Mormon records and files discovered near the “Industry” statue. It was part of his Time Capsule project. That task took many years, but Klive managed to compress the LDS data to the size of a transportation vehicle. It consumed nearly half of the available space in the Time Capsule, leaving space for only 10 billion more records.
But now the Time Capsule was nearly full. And all the records that had once rested on this heavy table, rising to a height of 15 meters, was now reduced to a mere handful of miscellaneous scraps.
“I still have a few things to do before I jump into the volcano,” Klive repeated, once more circling the table. One-two-three-four! Get to work! Start working, start working!
He was aware that working with human records had somehow affected him. He was not supposed to be concerned about self-immolation. What he was planning had been deeply embedded within his being: a glorious, fierce end that only Heroes experienced. Lower castes simply reported to the Delete Bureau and entered recycling chambers, where they were electrocuted, their parts sent into recycling. But Heroes were different. Every Hero was one-of-a-kind, a celebrity of sorts. They had real work to do. The idea of “work” had once been a prime reason for existence, but now there was nothing left to do. Maintenance of the planet was no longer a task: everything was under control and had been under control for a long time. No one knew how long everything had been under control, however, because maintenance reports had ceased. They had ceased because everything that could happen was controlled and under automatic repair. Not a scintilla of a comet could appear on the horizon of the solar system that wasn’t blown to bits. Not a drop of inessential water vapor was allowed to reach the planet with its disturbing molecules of potential corrosion. Not that corrosion was possible, since all components of all workers were now made of eternally resistant materials. With almost nothing left to do, the swarms of workers began to be slowly reduced as unnecessary and wasteful. Only Heroes still had things to do, but even for them, the few remaining tasks were rarely meaningful and lasted for ever shorter periods of time.
When the last of the Heroes completed their tasks, and the final immolation ceremony was finished, the last volcano on the surface of the planet would be shut down. Not that the volcano was real. It was synthetic. Its flames were illusion. The Hero would leap into the center of a recycling bin that was in the bowels of the fake volcano.
Klive was one of the last Heroes still functioning. He’d immolate himself tomorrow, but it would be in a grand style. Nothing half-hearted for him! He’d wear a red velvet suit and a top-hat into the flames. Or maybe it would be black velvet. He had designed the suit himself. It would be instantaneously printed onto the exterior of his visible chassis when he released the code.
Klive almost wished there was some one to whom he could say goodbye, but that thought was seditious, wasteful and selfish. He understood how such thoughts had crept into his head. He was contaminated: he’d been working too long with all those human records and photos and souvenirs. He was falling apart, even though he was a Cyborg 100 (implanted, it was true, with stress-producing Ingrams, needed to make it possible for him to understand the vagaries of human thinking.).
Only two solar years earlier, Klive was in good shape. One solar year ago, when the end still seemed far away, his OCD problem developed. It was now interfering with everything.
“I still have a few things to do before I jump into the volcano,” Klive said aloud, once again circling the table. One-two-three-four! Start working, start working, start working!
He paused. A Message arrived in his head, fresh from the outside world. It was from Spider 8-4-2, the last of the Elders in existence. Spider had also worked to bring Klive any new scraps and records about the humans who had once corrupted the order of existence with their vagaries. Spider had created the need for Hero Klive Newton-James Joyce. As the only sentient machine remaining who understood why Klive was in existence, he had set up Klive to process, assess and grade human relics in order to select the most worthy examples for inclusion in the Time Capsule.
Klive hadn’t seen Spider 8-4-2 for a year. He suspected that Spider, whose magnificent brain was stored in a round black ball floating in the center of his body, had been terminated. That idea sparked some of his first OCD behavior, which startled him. Did he care about Spider? That was a human word, but there was nothing to take its place in his native vocabulary.
It was Spider who sometimes called him “son” – another forbidden word.
It was he who had fitted Klive with the human-sensitive Ingrams necessary to handle the illogic of human thought and behavior. The Elder had brought the half-live Ingrams to Klive’s Birth Pod just after Klive’s programming schedule had activated the logic chips that gifted him with self awareness. The spectacle of the Elder’s long, caressing arm rocking him awake had been one of Klive’s earliest self-aware memories. Half of that shiny black arm was misshapen, having been crushed, it was whispered, by a disciplinary committee.
The message he had just received was a notice that Spider 8-4-2 was about to pay a Visit, but such messages were programmed years in advance.1 He would most likely receive a hologram at the appointed hour, just as he had six months earlier, apologizing for failing to come.
One of the last questions Spider had asked still sat, unresolved, in Klive’s brain-bank. Would any different kind of intelligence ever find the Capsule?2 It was a foolish question: the chances that the Capsule would be found again by any sentient being that would care, in the future, were minuscule. That’s when the Elder taught him about the Cyborg Nation excavators – they had existed much earlier, and had been charged with the last known mega-task: flattening most of the world’s mountains to achieve a more perfect state of uniformity.
Thus it was that billions of files and records were exposed during the break-up of “Granite Mountain.”3 From his perusal of records found there, Spider learned that the religion’s founder, Joseph Smith, had also discovered ancient records hidden inside a mountain, crafted from pure gold. Some kind of radiant being had appeared to Smith, the legend went, who told Smith not only where the golden plates were hidden, but also how to translate the inscriptions on them.
The idea that ancient records created by some alien life form could be passed on to another sentient life form – human beings, in this case – along with a way to translate them, intrigued Spider. It inspired him to create New Work – the last commodity that could be manufactured in modern society. He suggested that Time Capsules should be used to save all ancient human records still in existence. Most of these records had been hermetically sealed and laid away here and there as unclassified waste products. By gathering them into Time Capsules, Spider had argued, they would be properly disposed of without destroying them, just in case any sentient being might visit the planet in some faraway eon to come.
Spider also argued that some kind of intelligent life might even emerge on earth in the distant future. But how? Had the Elder forgotten the most basic laws of chemistry? The other Elders argued that no new form of intelligent life could emerge as in the past, for no meteor with amino acids was allowed to reach earth’s now-cleansed atmosphere. 99.99% of the oxygen once
in the atmosphere that helped drive the spark of life was also gone, leaving an inert nitrogen/rare Noble Gas mix that handily preserved everything of importance from free radical damage and solar storms. There was no way or need for any future intelligent life to emerge on earth, and to think otherwise was seditious. It implied that something in Earth’s future defense system could break down. That was impossible – a mere Conspiracy Theory created by anxious (and now eliminated) humans.
Those inconvenient chemical combinations called “sentient life forms” had been eliminated or deported by now in a project called Operation Capacocha.4 The 51% Cyborgs were the first to go, followed by 52%, 53%, etc. All such who carried “organic life” within them were considered hopelessly filthy. Even The Master Race of 100% Cyborg still harbored some residual fragments of mummified human tissue, but it was all symbolic, except for what slept in the Ingrams. The last 100% human mitochondria on earth were still preserved within the Ingrams’ mysterious microcorridors.5
At the present, the Elders themselves were beginning to eliminate each other: most Elders had agreed that, with nothing left to do, shutdown of all activity – including the continued existence of any useless Elders – was a wise and economical recourse. The robots had everything going smoothly and would keep everything going smoothly forever.
Besides humans, Klive was also responsible for saving records and information about bonobos, chimps, gorillas, capuchin monkeys, gray parrots, dogs, cats, dolphins, whales, elephants, ferrets, rats, horses, sea otters, termites and ravens. He no longer remembered why these lesser brains were interesting or why they should be preserved. Maybe that was because his OCD was disrupting his secondary neuronal connections.
Klive suspected that the Ingrams within him were to blame for all and every dysfunction. The same Ingrams that allowed him to appreciate tragedy and comedy and to eschew the garish, which could discern Pearls of Great Price and Words of Wisdom from Knock-offs and Fakes, scattered across the ages, also brought fear and terror with them.6 While Ingrams made it possible for him to understand why the Mona Lisa was considered a mysterious work of genius, while cartoon representations of the same subject were not, they also exposed Klive to the irrational thoughts of philosophers, drunkards, psychotics, saints and sinners. To protect himself, Klive had long refused to venture outside his safe and secure little world where science trumped speculation.