Options flashed through Abe’s mind. Shouting for help. Sneaking a hand into his pocket and blind-touching 911. Hurling himself forward in a football tackle.
Instead he raised his hands and backed up a step. “No need to shoot me, son. Come on in. Take whatever it is you’ve come to steal.”
The kid glowered. “I’m no thief.”
“Then what—”
“Keep quiet— please!” Still covering Abe with the gun, he edged through the door, wary as a cat entering a room that stank of dog. His eye fell on the portrait of Spock that Abe had hung above his desk as a joke. He raised his free hand, fingers splayed in the classic Vulcan V.
Abe was confused. “You really are from the Church of Spock?”
The kid nudged the door with his shoulder, closing it. “Yes.”
“What is it you want?”
The kid hesitated. “To talk. I… need to tell you something.”
“You need a gun to do that?”
The kid didn’t answer. He glanced around.
Abe’s living room was cramped. Messy. Dusty bookshelves, forgotten coffees growing mould. Hardly the Mecca the followers of the Church of Spock might have imagined.
Abe scratched a gray-stubbled cheek, careful to move slowly. If he could talk the kid into putting away that gun, maybe nobody would get shot. “What’s your name, son?”
“Sonny.”
It took Abe a moment to realize this really was the young man’s name. His writer’s mind played with the pun: the Prodigal Sonny.
“Say your piece, Sonny. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Sonny held the gun in one hand: a novice shooter. Recoil might have thrown off his aim, if Abe wasn’t so large a target. He glanced at Abe’s desk, at the flexiscreen that lay unrolled on its surface, the squares of the integrated keyboard still glowing.
“I came here to kill you.”
Abe’s stomach clenched. He reminded himself that if the kid really was capable of killing, he’d be dead already. Sonny had made it this far, gun in hand, but now he wanted to be talked out of pulling the trigger.
“Why would you want to kill me?”
“Because of that story you wrote.”
Abe sighed. “I’ve written hundreds of stories, Sonny. Which one?”
Sonny nodded at the peel screen. “The one that’s just been wiped from your computer. The one titled ‘Sixers.’”
“Oh.” Suddenly it all made sense. This visit. The gun.
Abe had only just finished the story’s first draft this morning. Hadn’t even proofed it yet, let alone uploaded it to his publisher’s site. The Church of Spock must have hacked his computer.
“And now you’re going to wipe me, too. Right, Sonny?”
Sonny nodded. He hadn’t fired the gun yet, though. Abe might still be able to talk him down.
“Have you read ‘Sixers’?”
Sonny shook his head. Someone had sent him, then. Abe could work with that.
“Then how do you know the ideas in it are dangerous?” Abe let his eyes bore into the boy’s. “I’ll tell you how: somebody in your church told you they were. You’ve taken their word for it— taken it on faith that I need to be killed, yet you haven’t heard the core argument of ‘Sixers’ yourself.”
One of Sonny’s eyebrows rose, skewing their perfect V-shape. “You’re going to try to talk me out of shooting you, aren’t you?”
Abe nodded. “Yup. But hear me out. See if my logic is skewed.”
The eyebrow settled back into place. “All right.”
Abe took a breath. “OK, first, here’s the science behind ‘Sixers.’ Have you heard of the ‘God gene’?”
Sonny shook his head.
“Back in 2004, a molecular geneticist named Hamer looked at the DNA of people who were especially ‘spiritual’— people who reported experiences that involved a sense of oneness with the universe, or self-transcendence. He found they shared a particular variant gene, one he called vesicular monoamine transporter number two, or VMAT 2.
“While Hamer was able to correlate this variant gene with spirituality, he wasn’t able to link it with formal religious practice. The folks he served didn’t necessarily believe in a deity or follow religious doctrine. He said they were ‘spiritual without necessarily being religious.’”
Abe paused. “You with me so far?”
Sonny’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not stupid.”
“I’m sorry if I implied that.”
The kid nodded.
Abe continued: “A few years after Hamer’s findings were published, another geneticist, Ravi Gill, did a study of people who exhibited the reverse: belief without spirituality. Belief in the utter infallibility of religious doctrine, or in ghosts, ESP, UFOs, past lives, conspiracy theories— any belief that flew in the face of physical evidence, common sense or logic. Gill discovered there weren’t just two variants of the VMAT gene, but six. The variant all these hard-core believers all shared was VMAT6. The ‘belief gene.’”
It was also, Abe knew, sarcastically called the “one-born-every-minute gene.” But he didn’t tell Sonny that. Nor did he quote the dialogue from his story that was rattling through his brain just now.
Just because everyone says there’s a Santa Claus doesn’t mean he exists, he’d written. Same goes for God. But some children never grow up. They go on believing what their parents told them.
“I wasn’t the only one to see the obvious connection,” Abe continued. “VMAT6… six-six-six… the number of the beast that ‘slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.’”
Sonny frowned. “Huh?”
“Sorry. I slipped into a quotation there: Yeats.” Abe waved a hand. “A writer’s habit. Anyhow, all of the evidence shows that believers — Sixers — are dangerous. Just look at what belief without question or analysis has given us: stoning to death a woman who’s been raped because she’s committed ‘adultery,’ preaching about forgiveness and then shunning people who stray from the rules of the faith, holding all life from conception on ‘sacred’ then breaking the sixth commandment by shooting an abortionist…”
Abe paused, eyeing the gun. That last one had been a little too close to home. “Where’s the logic in any of it?” he quickly added. “In all of those examples, the resulting action directly contradicts the belief. And yet it’s driven by the belief in the first place.”
Sonny nodded. Grudgingly.
Abe was wound up now. “It’s like that old film, The Life of Brian. The one where people mistake an ordinary shmoe as the messiah and argue about whether he wants them to worship a gourd or a shoe. When he tells them not to listen to him, but to think for themselves, they slavishly paraphrase his exact words: ‘We must all think for ourselves.’ Classic Sixers, all of them.”
He paused. This was the make-or-break moment.
“That’s why I made up the Church of Spock,” he told Sonny. “To point out to people that they should think for themselves. Replace religious doctrine with critical thinking. But like Brian’s speech, it backfired. The Sixers made the Church of Spock a reality and turned logic into a commandment. And now you, Sonny, are about to perpetuate that very logic flaw.”
Sonny frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“The story your cohorts are busy erasing imagines a world in which genetic screening is performed on every fetus. Those that carry the VMAT6 gene variant are aborted — something I don’t agree with, personally, but it served to make a point. The result is a world with spirituality, but without religious doctrine. A world without stupid arguments about whether women should cover their faces, whether people should eat sitting on the floor or at the table, about whether ‘Adam and Steve’ are less worthy of sharing love than ‘Adam and Eve.’ A world without the brand of unthinking, unquestioning, slavish loyalty that mistakes
‘My religion, right or wrong’ for spirituality. A world without war.”
Abe shrugged. “That last bit was probably just wishful thinking. Even without religion, people will always find something to fight over.”
He pointed at Sonny’s tight-fitting uniform. “Just look at you, Sonny. Look at how you’re dressed. Does your religion make any more sense than the rest of them? Can you honestly tell me you’re not a Sixer?”
Abe spread his hands. “Your superiors are worried that my story will give people ideas, cause a culling of the potential faithful. They’ve wiped it from my drive and sent you to erase the last remaining copy.” He touched a finger to his temple. “This one. On the surface, that seems the logical thing to do, in order to perpetuate your faith. But think about this, Sonny. Ideas are like viruses. They can’t help but spread. This one’s already inside the heads of whoever hacked into my drive to read my story. They’re going to tell someone, sometime. And then—”
Sonny looked smug. “No they’re not. They’re dead.”
That sent a chill through Abe. He glanced at the gun, wondering if it was still warm.
“Not me,” Sonny said. “They did it themselves. Poison.”
Abe didn’t have the balls to ask what flavour of Kool-Aid. “You realize you’ll have to kill yourself, after you shoot me.”
Sonny’s expression flattened. “Yes.”
Abe felt a trickle down his sides. The armpits of his shirt were soaked; he could smell his own nervous sweat. Keep talking, he told himself. Keep trying. He took a deep breath.
“Take a good, long look at yourself, Sonny. At the gun in your hand. You’re about to kill a man in cold blood. The founder of your faith, for Christ’s sake! But you don’t have to. By coming here and pointing that gun at me, you’ve showed me what my story will inevitably lead to. I don’t want to die, Sonny— you can believe me when I promise you that I’m not going to rewrite that story. I don’t want to go through this again. Ever. So think about it, Sonny. Is killing me still the logical thing to do?”
Sonny closed his eyes and gave a long, slow sigh. “No,” he whispered. “It’s not.”
His gun hand drooped. If Abe was going to tackle him, this would have been the moment.
Abe nodded to himself. He’d talked Sonny down. Abe would give him a moment more, then gently take away the gun. “It’s all right, Sonny,” he said softly. “It’s over.”
Sonny’s eyes opened abruptly. “No. It’s not. There’s still one thing left for me to do.”
He stuck the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Flame roared into his mouth and his cheeks puffed open. Brains and skull splattered the door behind him. The body collapsed with a thud to the floor, acrid-smelling smoke seeping from its nostrils. Blood trickled down the door in an ugly pattern.
“Jesus,” Abe whispered, his voice tight.
Yet in hindsight, he realized there could only ever have been one conclusion to his conversation with Sonny: this one. Logic had done battle with belief, and in the resulting battle, both had come out victorious.
And a teenage boy had been the collateral damage.
With a shaking hand, Abe pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in 911. He spoke in a wooden voice, reporting the suicide, promising to remain on the line until it came. As he sat, phone pressed to his ear, he stared at his flexiscreen. Posting the video had been a terrible mistake. The story he’d completed this morning had compounded, rather than repaired that error. As the sirens drew nearer, Abe had one additional realization. However well a science fiction writer might try to predict the future, it was impossible to see clearly what would truly unfold.
Only hindsight was 2020 vision.
* * * * *
A native Vancouverite, Lisa Smedman is the author of seventeen science fiction and fantasy novels, numerous short stories, two best-selling books on Vancouver’s history, and dozens of roleplaying adventures, primarily for Dungeons & Dragons. She also writes plays and screenplays. Her fiction explores both Canada’s past (the steampunk Apparition Trail, set in the 1800s) and its possible futures. A journalist for many years, she currently teaches game design at the Art Institute of Vancouver. She hosts a biweekly writers’ group that grew out of the B.C. Science Fiction Association thirty years ago. She is also a mom to two humans, three cats and a pug.
Why Pete?
Timothy Reynolds
Lilly laughed. Drugs will do that to a girl. Then she giggled for a full five minutes before she nearly threw up. Drugs will do that to a girl, too, even a thirty-one-year-old navy pilot with combat experience. The kinds of drugs Lilly was riding, though, had very little recreational value, unless waking up in complete darkness, unable to move, with cotton-mouth-from-hell was a girl’s idea of recreation. It wasn’t Lilly’s, or at least she didn’t think it was. She wasn’t quite sure.
“G’morning, Lill.”
“What the hell? Pete!” Her buzz vanished and her disorientation grew.
“Not exactly. Pete’s voice and personality overlay, but not Pete. We thought that a familiar voice would be the best welcome.”
“But my ex-husband? And welcome where? I can’t see a damned thing and I can’t move.”
“Let’s take it one thing at a time, Lill. You’re in a deep-sleep pod.”
“I… remember.” And she did. “Now, why can’t I move or see, yet?”
“I’m running diagnostics right now to get an answer for you. The cabin illumination has malfunctioned and your restraints are on a timer, to keep you from thrashing about and hurting yourself if you awaken disoriented. Your restraints will release two minutes after your resting heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration indicate that a degree of calm has been attained. You’re not there, yet.”
“It could be the damned voice you’re programmed with. There was a reason I divorced Pete a year after training started for this mission. He was a lying, cheating, bastard.”
“I can’t change the pre-set wake-up procedure but once we’re done with that you can select another voice. Who would you prefer? Your mother? That older actor you like, Justin Bieber?”
“Definitely not my mother. J.B. would be fine. Now, what about the dark?” A soft glow lit up Lillian’s world in the sleep pod, but beyond the little window in the lid it was still dark. “That’s a start.”
“It will have to do for the moment.” Pete’s lying, cheating voice continued. “Your heart rate is one-twelve so the restraints will remain in place a short while longer. Your blood pressure is improving and your respiration is within the normal range.”
Lilly detected a subtle background sound that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Is someone playing a guitar?”
“Pre-recorded. From the playlist you created pre-departure. It seems to be helping as your heart rate is slowing. Now, while we have a moment, let’s check your other functions, starting with cognitive. Name this song, the artist, and your memory associated with it, please.”
“Um…” Her thoughts felt ragged and torn and she was still recovering from the shock of being awakened by the voice of the man who’d slept with her sister. “Um… Gordon Lightfoot, If You Could Read My Mind.”
“Name the song, the artist, and the memory associated with it.”
The A.I. was being picky. “If You Could Read My Mind. Gordon Lightfoot. It was the first song I heard my father play on the guitar.”
“Correct. What is pi to four decimal places?”
“Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine.” That was an easy one.
“Pi to four decimal places. Please.” The voice was steady, with no particular emphasis on any of the words this time.
“I just did… oh. Four places. Three-point-one-four-one-five.” It wasn’t just her memory that was being tested; she was also being tested for impairments in her ability to hear, proce
ss, and understand what was being said.
“Which of my podcasts did you first hear?”
“Which of your…? Oh, which of Pete’s… Um, it was his live reading of The Little Prince at The Smithsonian for The First Lady.”
“Correct. Who was the visiting team when I proposed to you on the Jumbotron at the Mavericks’ game?”
“I nearly punched you in the head for that.”
“But you didn’t. You said yes. That’s not the question, though. Who was the visiting team when I proposed to you on the Jumbotron at the Mavericks’ game?”
“Damn it. The Toronto Raptors were visiting.”
“Correct. How many times did I propose to you before that night?”
“Forty-one.”
“Incorrect. Forty-two.”
“That time in Tobago doesn’t count. He passed out drunk before he could finish the question.”
“The correct answer as determined by yourself during the programming of this procedure is forty-two, so at some point you must have decided that the Tobago proposal was valid.”
“That’s bullshit! You never finished the question! For all I know you were asking me to hold your drink while you threw up.”
“None of that matters, Lill. We’re trying to establish the state of your memory post-deep-sleep. We can argue the semantics and technicalities of the actual proposal later.”
“Fine. Since we’re testing my memory, do I remember correctly that there was a second set of questions created as a back-up?”
“Yes there is.”
“Then reconfigure Cognitive Evaluation with the back-up series. That is a Command Order.”
“Done. List the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Network Television, who first listed them, and which one does not belong on the list.”
“Really? I hate those words, or most of them anyway.”
“List the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Network Television, who first listed them, and which one does not belong on the list.”
Tesseracts Seventeen Page 4