by Jinn, Bo
“Naomi...”
Pope hummed and shook his head and began to pace around again.
“She has … obliged you to live.” It was the first time he heard the neuralist snicker. “The irony of you never ceases to fascinate me, Saul.”
“Where is she?”
“You ache for the release of death,” the neuralist continued as though he had not heard the question, “but as long as she lives, you cannot die. All this time and blood wasted chasing an illusion of freedom. Now you would beg us to take it all away from you.”
“You lied to me.”
“No,” Pope exclaimed, his voice deepening severely. “No, Saul. All we did was foster your own defective desires. The rest you achieved all by yourself. Fate brought you to us. You will come to understand all of this soon, and more – much more. We tried to warn you this would happen, but you refused to listen. You would not trust us. Even now, reduced to the point of embracing your own demise, you still perceive us as your enemies.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I am trying to save you.”
“Why?”
“A reasonable question. There are several reasons.”
Pope began to pace around again as he explained: “The UMC derives no benefit from your death. Every life lost anywhere, except the warzones, is a life wasted. Economic efficiency demands that we extract as much use from you as we possibly can by the means available to us. Not to mention the fact that rare oddities such as you provide us with valuable data for future research. Even if we fail with you, we continue to perfect our methods. We learn from your mistakes. That is progress.”
“Progress…” he repeated with revulsion.
“Yes, progress.” Pope had stopped pacing with his back turned. “Efficiency – quantifiable improvement – the continual refinement and unfettered expression of free man: Progress. It is, fundamentally, the only thing that matters. It is our purpose. Or, rather, I should say: it is our fate.
Pope turned on his heels to face him again and drew the long pen from his inner pocket. He raised his hand in the air and pressed on the end of the small device. Suddenly, something began to rise slowly from the floor between them: A small cylindrical pedestal. And as it rose, the light from above shone over a hollow set exactly in the middle of the top.
“Survival,” Pope pronounced, stepping forward, “the final adjudicator of truth.” He tucked his hand into his inner pockets and continued to speak. “We are, by definition, machines for the propagation of D – N – A. That sole purpose finds its root in our primordial beginnings down to the very last cell. From that premise we infer the only viable definition of insanity…” At this point, Pope drew the silver, cubic device from all their previous meetings, and set it in the hollow on top of the pedestal and little veins of light instantly shone along the outer shell. Something glimmered like gloss through the gloom, something broad and high -- the same distinct gleaming shimmer that followed the moment after a holoscreen was switched on.
Pope crossed his arms at his back and sauntered away, enunciating: “A firm and righteous determination toward feelings or beliefs consistently proven to lead to self-destruction, all the while expecting a different result: That … is insanity.”
He stopped on the last word and, with his back turned, continued:
“You are here, Saul, because you have failed the test of reason set by your very genes.” He began to pace around again. “Oh, I know what you are thinking: Why go through all the trouble of trying to change what is already inscribed in fate? Well, the simple truth is: we do not expect to change you. We never have. Like progress, change can be abetted to some degree. However, we realise that no one can truly change what they are – not ever…”
“You are wrong.”
An impregnable silence settled on the theatron with those three words.
Pope’s head rose.
“What was that, Saul?”
“We can change,” he said. “The world can change.”
“How?”
A rush of air filled his lungs.
“Love.”
“…I see,” Pope purred as he began pacing around again. “You believe that love is something more than mere natural impulse, a force for some greater good, perhaps.” The seriousness of Pope’s reply was almost as surprising as its accuracy.
“It has to be,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it changes people.”
“And you believe that it has changed you?”
Pope came full circle again and stopped before him with new deliberation.
His eyes wandered around the room and then fixed back on the neuralist, whose visage grew more ill-omened by the minute.
“Do you recognise this place, Saul?”
A strange foreboding bubbled up inside him.
Pope stepped forward and the shadows extended over his features.
“What if I told you that it is the sixth time you have been here?”
His heart stirred and the air flow through the mask quickened slightly. Detecting his sudden rise in pulse, he said nothing.
A long silence later, Pope raised his head, turned away and pronounced loudly: “Apollo. File; zero – zero – zero – seven – one – seven – one – six – six – one – five – zero – triple-eight… Retrieve.”
The string of numbers was followed by a pulse of blue light rippling across the holoscreen. When the wave of light diminished, the photons rearranged into line after unfurling line of text across the 3-D display, and a number of rotating images. It was a bio file from the UMC Nexus. Pope drew the pen-shaped implement and pointed it at the screen, amplifying one of the holographic images so that it extended across the whole display.
“Do you recognise this woman, Saul?”
New visions – glimpses of forgotten nightmares – instantly flashed through his mind again through a haze of red, when the image of a dark-haired, red-lipped sapphire-eyed woman appeared before him. The words “ubit menya” repeated in his mind like a litany.
“Who…” he faltered between breaths. “Who is she?”
“The last person you … loved,” Pope replied. “She was a walker from Durkheim. The rest of her identity has since been lost. No record remains of anyone deceased in Sodom, as you know. You had begun cohabiting with her exactly one hundred and thirty-four days before your previous cleaning.”
His thoughts stopped on the words “previous cleaning.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“You killed her.”
Pope’s expression assumed its usual severity, as he looked from the cold blue eyes to the nameless woman, and the same unsourced dread which marked the beginning and end of all his nightmares flared up inside him again.
“You are lying,” he said.
Pope, seeming to anticipate his answer, bowed his head and gave his back.
“Apollo,” he called. “Subject; Jason Solomon. Day seventy-three -- sixty-two -- three hundred and fifty hours.”
The instruction was followed by another ripple of light across the holoscreen. The image of the sapphire-eyed woman disappeared and another took its place. A sound like radio static filled the chamber. And then… voices:
“Jason … Jason…”
“Stop. Make it stop.”
Pope appeared as a figure of light pacing around him in a holographic reproduction of the same chamber they were in at that very moment. However, given that the second speaker appeared a few seconds later, seated in the same chair and in the same position that he was now, it took a moment for him to realise whose the second voice was: His own.
“Jason … do you know why you are here?”
“The nightmares … They just keep getting worse.”
“Listen to me, Jason. Focus: Why are you here? Do you remember?”
“She is dead. She is dead.”
His voice was wild and chaotic.
“Who is dead, Jason?”
“I had to. I could not
stop myself.”
“No. No you couldn’t.”
“I love her. I love her. What is wrong with me?”
“There is nothing wrong with you, Jason. This is what you are”
“I loved her…”
“Don’t worry. As long as you are alive, you can always start again. We will clean you.”
“I loved her… I loved her.”
Pope raised the thin pen-shaped device and pointed it at the screen and the recording stopped. He turned around and paused upon the mystified look in Saul’s eyes.
“Jason Solomon,” he pronounced: “One of your five predecessors. Each one of them came to us the same way as Saul Vartanian.”
Saul’s eyes shot to and fro behind tightly closed eyelids. The visions returned like a chain of explosions: visions of things he could not link with either dream or memory. None of it would process. And he kept coming back to the same default assumption: Pope is a liar. The Commission – all of them are liars.
“Is it really so hard to believe?”
He opened his eyes and shot a glance at Eastman, then all around the chamber and finally, Pope. His thoughts began to fall into place, slowly making sense of things.
“This is … my past.”
“Technically, no,” Pope replied, swiftly. “Like Martial Solomon, each of your predecessors all perished along with their pasts.”
“We are the same person!”
Pope slowly shook his head.
“No.” He began to pontificate again. “People -- identities -- are the collections and collocations of memories. Nothing more, nothing less. No memory remains of the individuals who preceded you, either in your mind or anybody else’s. They have thus been eradicated from existence and, soon, so will Saul Vartanian. All that will be left of you is a body and a blank slate ripe for the same story to be written again.”
He stopped, as usual, when he came full circle, as though the act of forming circles with his paces was meant to convey his purpose. It was a spectacle, a sermon and a trial all at once. It was all rehearsed. It was all a scheme.
“Why am I here?” he asked
Pope came forward, a second between each step.
“You are here because we are about to clean you,” he stated, categorical gaps separating his syllables. “You are at the edge of the abyss, where living or dying makes no difference, where the only thing keeping you alive is the resilience which defines you as a martial of your caste. “However, as is the case with all virtue: the same thing that makes you strong also makes you stubborn. You desire to be cleaned, but your commitment to this illusion you call ‘love’ will not allow it – that is why you could not kill yourself. That is why you want us to do it for you. But that will change. It must change. That is why you and I are here, Saul. It is vital that, before we clean you, you submit to us as you have done before. And we know that you will not do so until you know the truth. Under no circumstances may we violate your freedom.”
“What difference does it make!” he growled
“All the difference in the world,” the neuralist replied. “Freedom is the necessary condition of progress. Nothing can flourish if it is constrained. Thus we must preserve freedom any way we can if our efforts are to be at all expedient. It is, therefore, imperative that you come to us willingly and unreservedly.”
“What you want will never happen.”
“Ah but it will,” Pope gasped wondrously. “The will to die is already there. And the final illusion is always the last to fall … Love … The girl …” he whispered and raised his eyes up high. “She has brought you to this point of limbo -- neither willing to live nor willing to die. The paradox is less unusual than you might imagine. And there is only one way it may be resolved – only one way to dispel the illusion.”
Pope paused.
“The truth…”
He started to pace around again.
“The truth,” he echoed. “Tell me, Saul: What is truth?”
He detected in the tenor of the question that Pope already knew what his answer would be.
“Everything that is and was, in all places, everywhere,” he replied after a long pause.
“That would include the past.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you fear it now more than ever, don’t you?”
Pope stopped again and fixed on him with a piercing stare.
“Yes…” he hummed. “There it is; that fear. I can see it now as vividly as that very first day. It is the thing that turned you against us: The fact that we know the answer to your darkest question.” He paused that the question would be marked: “What – brought you – to – our – world?”
Pope bowed his head and the shadows formed over his eyes again.
Saul’s pulse soared. The air pumped into his throbbing chest. He swirled and scrambled alone in his skull, a whirlwind of consciousness, and the room began to spin with him. He blinked rapidly, squeezing his eyes shut. The visions returned, blazing past his mind’s eye. Then, suddenly, it all stopped. His eyes flared open. And all reality sunk back into the two points of Pope’s hollow eyes, flashing through the shadows.
“Do you remember … Vincent?”
“Vincent.”
Vincent.
Whispers shot through his thoughts:
Vincent.
I do not want to remember
For how long have they sentenced you
Life
Freedom is all that matters
Freedom
Will not change what I am
What I have done
We can, Vincent
We can
We can
We can…
“Saul.”
He opened his eyes and looked up.
Pope’s harrowing gaze still fixed upon him from behind the glare of the round lenses.
“Do you remember…” he asked, taking one step forward, “why you are here?”
His breaths had now become so rapid that his body started to lurch from the mould of his seat and the sweat broke over his brow in a thin film. All of the fear and dread climaxed to a point beyond even the imminence of death. It was the imminence of truth.
“The truth…” he mouthed.
Pope turned his back again and pronounced:
“Apollo. Subject: Vincent Caine. Day one…”
The light from the holoscreen stirred, the images ran with his thoughts and the jumble of chaotic visions fell into place, seeming to focus along a line of coherence in time so that something quite vivid and quite real played out both on the screen and in his mind.
He was in a small, gray room. A smell of rigorous sanitation was in the air. Building surveillance watched him from all four corners. A black and everlasting sky was beyond the glazed wall and not a light below it for miles.
It had been a three-hour trip and there were no windows in the back of the security vehicle that had brought him there. He had no idea where he was, but by the palpable change in the atmosphere he knew that he must have been somewhere on the border with the martial world. He rubbed the marks in his wrists from the shackles that had been removed from him by the escort of armed men in blue gear. Even though he was still wearing the numbered boiler suit from the prison, he already started to feel more like a free man.
He looked up from his sore wrists at the steel-eyed figure sitting across from him, who he had met only once before. It had been more than a year ago, but he was wearing the same suit and the same hollow gaze anatomised him from behind the glare in the round lenses of his pince-nez. There were many Commissioners with whom he had become acquainted since, but this man was the only one he remembered. His name was Pope.
There was an almost ascetic silence. No formalities had been exchanged and after a few seconds of the gravest silence, Doctor Pope took out a file marked with the insignia of the UMC and an air of content surfaced in his grave feature as the file gently slid across the table-top, past the unusual cubic device in the middle. He looked from the commissi
oner to the file and eyed it a moment before reaching out with peculiar hesitation.
“What is this?”
“This is you,” Pope replied. “The new you.”
He picked up the file, opened it and the silence quickly fell again as he browsed through the contents. The pages contained a long list of personal data: a martial identification number, addresses, bank accounts, PMC sponsorships, martial insurance details and a list of names which he presumed to be commissioners.
“Do you like your new name?”
“I never cared much for Vincent.”
“Vincent no longer exists.”
“Good,” he nodded. “Then, this is it.”
“Yes,” Pope nodded. “You have officially been released from civil jurisdiction. Once you are cleaned, you will be reborn, a child of martial order.”
“The highest caste?”
“But of course,” smiled Pope.
The file closed and was laid back down on the desk.
“You will be denied nothing,” Pope added. “As long as you live, we are your committed servants. And it will be my pleasure and privilege to fulfil the debt our world owes you – and a great debt it is.”
“So I hear.”
“Yes, it is a shame your celebrity must be lost forever. Are you at all lethargic?”
“No … I think I have had enough fame for one decade.”
“Well, that is hardly surprising. They have made you a villain. We will make you a hero.”
“It is all relative.”
“Quite,” Pope hummed and the smile enlarged eerily. “As long as we are agreed that you are here because you belong with us, that is all that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
Pope was silent and his smile softened.
“Let us say, simply, that we insist upon freedom,” he said. “We do not want you to feel as though you have been driven to us against your will.”
“I do not believe in will,” he answered. “War is all I have ever known.”
“And now, all you will ever need to know.”
Silence fell again.
From outside the door came the sound of heavy, marching footfalls. He expected the doors to open at any moment, and for the blue-geared men to enter and escort him away. But his anticipation faded with the sound of the footfalls as they carried on down the outer corridor. And then he was left wondering why he was still there.