The Soul Consortium

by Simon West-Bulford

  I glance at Brother Tennison, the gardener standing to my left, the intensity of his thoughts obvious by the V-shaped crease of his brow as he stares at a lost companion. My interviews with him suggested no clear motive. Yes, he is certainly a strong enough man to commit a murder of that kind, and the murder weapon was a gardening tool, but the previous murder weapons were not. Although I can read a guilty secrecy in the man’s eyes, I am not convinced it relates directly to any of the murders.

  Brother Veguelle maintains his staunch belief that Sunny is the culprit. Sunny’s reputed tendency for violence makes him a suspect, but Brother Makeswift vouches for him, and for the moment, I am inclined to trust his judgement rather than Veguelle’s. There are others I prefer to question again before Sunny.

  As for Brother Makeswift, he is the one who summoned me in the first place. Veguelle could also be a candidate, but his fear appears genuine, and I can’t help but like him.

  That leaves Brother Simeon Kayne, the doomsayer. And Abbot Deepseed. Everything points to the abbot. My intuition and logic tell me that he is more likely to be the murderer than anyone else—the killings began after his mysterious resurrection (a mystery which, once solved, I fear may add yet further complications to my investigation), he was there at the scene, and there is an atmosphere of evil that broods in his wake like a cloud. For that last reason alone I find myself reluctant to give in to the obvious evidence and confront him. The abbot is the final authority here at the order too, so even if I can prove his guilt there is little I can do. With all these things considered, I am not content with accepting Deepseed as the murderer; over the years I have learned never to jump to conclusions in this line of business.

  So today after the burial of Brother Flavius, I plan to question Brother Kayne. And as I have yet to be taught my next lesson in Codex illumination, I will combine the two.

  “Good evening, Brothers.” Abbot Deepseed steps up.

  The low light reflects our mood, and the wind, calming to a steady breeze, hot, like the burning of ceremonial coals, disturbs our robes.

  The abbot drifts slowly around the oblong pit. He holds a small book in each hand. The pages flap as the wind ruffles them, but the abbot is not even looking at the words while he quotes from the text. “‘At the end of things, he will find the beginning of things. It is the way of things … At the end of days, our brother will be caught up together with the others in the clouds to meet Pandora in the air. And we will be with the goddess forever … For those that choose this path are blessed among all …’”

  “Is this normal procedure after a death here on Castor’s World?” I whisper to Veguelle.

  “Only since he came.”

  “Abbot Deepseed? But he’s been here since—”

  “Dear boy, you know that isn’t Deepseed. He’s dead, you saw his body, and people don’t come back to life here like they do where you come from.”

  Two other monks glance at us.

  Tennison snarls at them before turning to me. “Veguelle’s right. It isn’t him.”

  Veguelle nods. “I don’t know who’s prancing around in Flavius’s body over there, but it isn’t our fucking abbot.”

  “Is it just your little group that think this?”

  “No! Can’t you feel it?” says Veguelle. “The man just isn’t … right.”

  “Before the abbot changed, death was treated differently,” Tennison whispers. “We buried the bodies with hardly a word of ceremony. But whoever this man is, it’s as though he never knew that.

  “After Deepseed supposedly resurrected himself, it wasn’t long before Brother Caltus died, and then, from what we’re told, Deepseed looked through the library for books on death. At the burial, he started quoting randomly from The Book of Deeds and other holy books nobody has even touched for centuries.”

  “Of course we were suspicious and baffled”—Veguelle takes over—”but nobody dares challenge him.”

  Deepseed sets the books aside and scatters spices into the pit. “‘From the soil man came and to the soil man must go … At the end of things is the beginning of things. It is the way of things.’” Without further address other than a signal to two of the closest monks to begin filling in the grave, the abbot turns and heads inside the monastery.

  The rest of us start filing back inside too.

  SEVEN

  Brother Simeon Kayne is old. Perhaps the oldest of the monks in the monastery, but he shows none of the signs of infirmity that I have learned to expect from the inhabitants of Castor’s World since my arrival.

  Ordinarily there is nothing unusual about a youthful demeanor in advanced years: technology has taken human beings to an almost miraculous level of biological security. We rarely die, we cease aging at a time of our choice, and sickness and disease are concepts as old as the age this order was modeled upon. But therein lies the problem; these monks, believing the comforts of this modern era are a distraction from true enlightenment, are proud of their detachment from technology. So much so that they have withdrawn themselves not just from the negatives of the machine age but the benefits too.

  Yet they are not immune from hypocrisy, and they are not as detached as they claim to be. The environment outside could not possibly support the crops they need to survive without artificial support. The monks still accept imports and communicate with neighboring star systems when they are in need, and they use data brains to help them in their study of the Codex. But most of all, many of the order have the blessing of longevity that came with the introduction of optional genomic stabilization.

  Brother Kayne, however, makes no effort to hide his love of machine assistance, and this is a possible connection to Deepseed’s suspicious resurrection. Aside from his good health, Kayne’s work with the Codex boasts the technological aids he uses.

  Stepping into his room is like stepping into a sophisticated Observation Sphere on one of the Consortium moons. It has the same antique furnishings and rustic design as the other monks’ chambers, but a few seconds after my entrance, all of it is washed into black oblivion by the intricate projections of subatomic design. I feel I have intruded upon holy ground—a trespasser within realms only ventured upon by gods and angels.

  And at the center of the void, like a medieval sorcerer, stands Brother Simeon Kayne, his arms festooned with ribbons of roaring fire, tracing circular motions in the air and leaving trails of glowing dust, which form the twisting, turning molecular models that build our solid world.

  “Brother Soome,” he greets me without turning. “You’re a little early. I’m just making sure the firmament is ready for your pleasure.”

  A blast of hot air ruffles his dark beard as molecular patterns chase each other above our heads.

  “I can come back if—”

  “No.” With a final swoosh of his left arm, the molecules vanish to leave darkness in the room. “Everything is ready now.”

  “It’s an impressive study you have here. How long did it take to create?”

  Kayne turns, smoothes his hair, and straightens his robes. “Longer than I would have liked. The abbot—the real abbot, I mean—was strongly resistant to all technology as I’m sure you’re aware. It took decades for him to even allow me the pleasure of multidimensional projectors.”

  “So what changed his mind? How did he end up allowing all this?”

  His eyes narrow. “Results, that’s all.”

  “Brother Makeswift said that you may be one of our most accomplished illuminators. Is that correct?”

  “Only through experience. There are others here—Sunny for example—who are far more naturally gifted than I. And I am somewhat ashamed to say that my particular skill has a certain morbidity about it. Not my fault, you understand. While the abbot was still alive, he saw things that caused him grave concern. Sunny confirmed some of them, and the abbot asked me to focus my own studies on them too. It brought me a rather unfortunate epithet.”

  “The doomsayer?”

  “Yes.”


  “What was it you, the abbot, and Sunny saw that caused such concern? The murders?”

  “I saw many of the atrocities here at the monastery before they happened, though not in precise detail. The predictions were confused … contradictory …”

  “In what way?”

  Kayne stares past me into the dark, a frown deepening into a contortion of fear. “I’d rather not—”

  “I’d rather you would.”

  The monk’s sallow face flashes with anger for a second before melting into resignation. “I know I must be one of those under suspicion, but I urge you not to leap to conclusions.”

  I don’t have any conclusions yet, only questions, and he has just added more to my list. A few answers would be welcome at this stage. “I need facts before I can draw conclusions, and getting facts involves asking questions. I’m sorry to insist but … you understand?”

  Kayne takes in a deep breath, appearing pained by my persistence. “Would you mind if I began the lesson first? I find the subject difficult to express without finding comfort in my illuminations.”

  “Will it help answer my questions?”

  “It will make the answers easier to understand.”

  “Then please go ahead.”

  “Good.” Kayne lifts a single finger, points directly ahead of us. An illusion of distance produces a pinpoint of firelight far ahead. “The first spark of existence,” he says, not without a tone of drama, “gives birth to all of this.” And like a conductor in an orchestra of millions, he sweeps his arms through the air.

  Unprepared, I take a step back, knocking against an invisible chair as the pinpoint bursts outward into an inferno. Stars explode into life over my head, planets rush into view to my left and right, and grassy valleys and snowy mountains rush to greet my feet. People, places, events, disasters, creations, dreams, and art churn like individual whirlpools of time all around me until I stand in an exact mirror image of the monastery within its vast crater.

  “In ancient days when our primitive ancestors believed in magic,” Kayne says, taking a step back to stand beside me, “they used to say that to name a thing is to control a thing, and their beliefs had a certain ironic poetry about them.

  “As soon as mankind named all the building blocks of nature and finally understood the immutable laws of the universe, the uncertainty principle wasn’t quite so uncertain anymore, and the rest, I am sure you know, is history.”

  “The AI Reductionist Codex.”

  “Exactly. The image you see around you now is not a recording. It is a simulated image constructed by the data in the Codex.”

  “But how?”

  “Watch.” Kayne spreads his arms, then claps, and the darkness returns. In the distance, the pinpoint of light returns, and with the twitch of a finger it expands but not as dramatically as before. This time it is a familiar image known through elementary physics lessons: a series of demi-praxons jiggling about each other to form a triad of quarks. He expands it further, and I see an electron, then an atom and finally a hydrogen molecule.

  “The mathematics is simple enough now. We can predict the path of each particle and therefore predict which molecules are formed and how they react with each other. The Codex is the pathway of calculation from the very first spark—the Promethean Singularity.” He smiles. “The ancients from Old Earth used to call it the big bang.”

  “How are you able to predict the future from the Codex?”

  “It isn’t easy, but classical reductionism shows us that from the first spark and the application of fundamental universal law and the equations within the Codex, we should be able to trace every event all the way until its conclusion. Obviously we’re dealing with an almost infinite quantity of data, so for the human being it’s simpler to use a form of pattern recognition. Do you recognize the pattern before you now?”

  “It’s a hydrogen atom.”

  “And this?” Kayne ripples his fingers, and the pattern changes.

  “Carbon.”

  “And now this?”

  The image blurs and changes, but this time the combination of molecules is so complex I have no clue, and I shake my head.

  “Perhaps you would understand it better this way …”

  The pattern blurs again before reforming into a familiar image of a human cerebellum.

  “Yes, I see it now.”

  “As I said, it’s all a matter of pattern recognition. Over the centuries we have refined our search parameters to hunt through the Codex to find certain patterns of mathematics. Individual molecules are easy to see but tell us almost nothing because they are everywhere. Obviously, finding the pattern of a human brain shows us a human being, but we have honed our science to such a degree that some of us have learned to recognize emotional patterns within a mind, the wave pattern of gamma rays from an exploding neutron star, even a word or sound.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Decades of intense study, discipline, and perhaps a little luck. Of course, all of us have become specialists in different areas of pattern recognition. I have learned to see disaster—there are certain repeated patterns of grief, ecological shock waves within the patterns, shifts in energies that help me recognize certain cataclysms. It is my job to seek these out so people can be warned in advance.”

  “Can you tell me what the others specialize in? You mentioned Sunny. What does he see in the Codex?”

  “Sunny is a remarkable case. He—”

  “Sunny say! Not Kayne. Not Kayne.” The loud voice comes from behind us, and we both turn. Sunny enters the room, hunched over, looking at us with his bulging, frightened eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” Kayne relinquishes control over the Codex, and the room dissolves back into its original setting of sandy walls and heavy wooden furnishings.

  “Sunny came to see Soome. Tell Soome about what he sees.”

  “And what have you seen?” I ask. “Is it the murders?”

  “Sunny sees Keitus Vieta.”

  “The abbot? The … other place?”

  Sunny looks at me with such intensity it seems he is trying to tell me everything in a single expression of desperation. “We must stop him. But cannot stop him. Someone else must stop him.”

  “Stop whom? The murderer? Keitus Vieta?”

  “Keitus Vieta. M … must stop him.” Sunny moves closer to me, his fingers clasped tightly together, stumbling over his words to get his message across. “H-he … hurts the Codex.”

  “Slow down. How can the abbot hurt the Codex?”

  “Perhaps you should explain your gift to Brother Soome, Sunny,” says Kayne. “It may help him understand.”

  “Yes, show you.” Sunny heads to the door, beckoning us to follow.

  I oblige, and followed by Brother Kayne, we move quickly along the passage, around several corners, and through a number of heavy doors before reaching Sunny’s chamber. It looks much the same as the others but with a magnificent exception: the walls are covered with portraits and canvases, all with beautifully crafted designs. Some are half-finished, some in pastel shades, some in oils.

  “They’re amazing. Where did you learn—?”

  “This. Look this.” He stabs a dirty finger at the painting he is currently working on and then stares at me hopefully. “You find.”

  I shiver when I see what Sunny has painted. It’s a room, probably one somewhere inside the monastery, dark and hard to make out at first, but then I see an arm, a gaping face, a half-rotted leg amongst the gray and red patterns: the room is filled with naked cadavers.

  “You want me to find this room?” I ask him.

  “I think,” says Kayne, “Sunny is saying that you will find this room.”

  Cold, I look at them both.

  Sunny is nodding vigorously.

  “You saw this in the Codex?”

  Sunny continues to nod.

  “Some gift!” I stare at the bodies in his picture, and the stench of death infecting the atmosphere of the monastery comes back to me agai
n.

  “Sunny hasn’t told you what his gift is yet.” Kayne turns to the excited monk. “Will you explain?”

  Sunny screws up his face, as if frustrated, then ambles over to a collection of discarded drawings stacked in the corner by his bed. He flicks through them, then pulls one out, hands it to me. It’s a white background splashed with a series of black dots and lines.

  I study it, and just as I’m about to tell them I see nothing there, a recognizable form leaps from the canvas—gothic spires, gargoyles, and turrets. “It’s the monastery.”

  “Yes,” says Kayne, “but it took you a moment to see it, didn’t it?”

  “Because of the way it’s been drawn.”

  “Look closer and understand why.”

  It takes me another few seconds, and then I see it—the shape of the monastery is made from the white of the canvas rather than the few black markings Sunny has spread over it.

  Kayne smiles. “Sunny does not see the patterns created by the Codex. He sees the subtle negatives; he sees the aberrations: the differences between what the Codex predicts and what we, in reality, are actually seeing and experiencing.”

  “Keitus Vieta!” says Sunny, and starts rummaging through his sketches again.

  I stare at the drawing. “But … that means the Codex is wrong.”

  “A paradox, wouldn’t you say? The Codex is never wrong.”

  “But it must be. If the predictions are different from what actually happens, it must be wrong.”

  “Not so. The Codex has replicated history exactly with its data for billions of years. It has never been different, never been inaccurate, which is why its open revelation to the masses caused such terrible chaos. But now we are seeing a divergence, and Sunny here started to see it.” Kayne raises his chin a little. “Would you care to guess what else coincided with the divergence and Sunny’s gift?”

  “Illuminate me.” But I already know what he’s going to say.

  “It all started when things changed in the monastery, specifically, when Abbot Deepseed began to notice the oppression around us, as if we are being …” Kayne twirls his hands. “For want of a more accurate description, haunted. Not that any of us believe in specters, you understand.