I hadn’t noticed anything but I looked in the direction Hector’s enormous hairy finger was pointing in. In the distance I could see a little smudge, a kind of smear of grey stuff. I had no way of judging how far away it was or how large.
‘Cloud Three,’ said Hector quietly. ‘Recently arrived from the equator where it normally resides, and judging by altitude and position a little worse for wear.’
‘So that is one of the Original Five?’ I asked.
‘Indeed. It was, as the name suggests, the third ever habitable cloud machine. Very crude even by our standards and obviously many generations behind Cloud Eleven, but serviceable nonetheless.’
‘And is this a problem?’
‘Indeed it is, dear chap,’ said Hector. ‘They are on your trail. Normally, you see,’ Hector sat down beside me and patted my knee, ‘normally we don’t have much contact with the Original Five. They tend to be a moody bunch. Not dangerous, they’re not pirates or warriors, they’re just in a bit of a sulk and they really don’t want you going back home on your own. They want one of their chaps to go with you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know, it’s daft and it won’t work, it’s a one-way ticket, but apparently they are convinced if they can send an emissary back with you, someone who can shake things up a bit, well, they think things might not be as bad as they are. At least that’s what some of them want, the bunch that are on that tatty old cloud.’
I looked back out of the window and noticed the grey smudge had drawn a little closer. It looked like a bag of rags floating in the air. I could sense now that it was a lot smaller than Cloud Nine, maybe only a few hundred metres long. It was long, low and fairly flat, it didn’t have any of the splendour of the towering structures of the newer clouds and dangling from the bottom were ragged strips of material.
‘What’s all that stuff hanging down from it?’ I asked Hector.
‘Ahh yes, well, that’s all that’s left of the lower section. It’s been badly damaged over the years. You see, when they come in close to the surface they don’t have the ability to control their elevation very accurately, so occasionally I suppose they’ve been blown along the ground. That can really do damage to your undercarriage.’
At this point Brad joined us. ‘Sorry, Gavin, there’s not much we can do, what is taking place is my worst fear.’
I looked out at the scruffy floating rag sack again and couldn’t see any reason to be alarmed. It was a tenth of the size of Cloud Nine and about as threatening-looking as a baby rabbit.
‘They clearly knew more about our movements than we thought. They will be docking with us shortly, we could raise our elevation beyond their ability to reach us, Cloud Nine is capable of reaching 12,000 metres and they can only get up to about 9,000, but that really would be an act of aggression and we have no wish to antagonise the Original Five.’
I shrugged, the sudden appearance of this raggy old cloud didn’t make much sense to me as I sat with Captain Hector, but that was all about to change.
26
I know I dreamt a great deal when i was on Cloud Eleven. I dreamt about Beth and our little house in Kingham, I dreamt about the mining equipment I had been working on, I dreamt about long-haul flights, airports, shopping, cars, food in restaurants you had to pay for, trees, dogs, cows in fields.
In my waking hours I was only dimly aware of these dreams, and as a rule I’d always been totally unaware I’d been dreaming when I woke up. People assured me that I did dream, that it was a natural thing the brain did and loads of people had studied dreams and tried to make sense of them. The whole concept had never interested me, I couldn’t see any use in worrying about dreams and I certainly didn’t recall them, they didn’t disturb me or make me wonder.
However, on the clouds it was all a little bit different.
I did remember little bits of my dreams as I woke up, just fleeting glimpses of what my soggy brain had been up to while I was sleeping.
I was a little bit annoyed that someone, somewhere, was recording my dreams, it made me anxious that I may have had dreams of a sexual nature, although I didn’t recall any. I suppose it’s likely, but the thing that did distress me was that dreams are often a bit mad. All sorts of weird stuff happens that doesn’t make any sense, the bits of dreams I could recall were often about being embarrassed or socially awkward, of people taking offense at things I said or did, of me being lost and confused. I didn’t relish the idea of some nerdy kid watching my dreams and having a chuckle about them.
This unusual state of affairs may have been due to the fact that the very nature of cloud travel was dreamlike. I became aware of the slightly different tone that everyone used on the clouds. It was as if they were barely awake and yet they and I seemed far more perceptive. I noticed things, tiny changes in the mood of another person, it was as if I was super-sensitive to my fellow cloud dwellers and this was not something I would ever have been accused of in my entire existence up to that point. I was always the one who was ‘insensitive’ and ‘emotionally blocked’ and ‘incapable of empathy’. Well, according to Beth anyway.
This increased perception became more apparent when I met Ebrikke Karensdottir again. She was instantly recognisable as the attractive young woman who’d checked my vitals when I’d originally landed on Cloud Nine. As soon as I saw her I registered with some alarm that this was not just a normal woman, there was something very abnormal about her.
By the time I saw her the second time I knew she was not only a crew member from Cloud Three but she was the first person I’d met who was genuinely part human and part machine.
Okay, so you could argue that the kidonge was a mechanical enhancement, but what I was to learn about Ebrikke went far beyond that.
‘I didn’t want to tell you about Ebrikke because I wasn’t sure how you’d react,’ Brad said quietly. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you unnecessarily.’
I was sitting next to Brad in the Cloud Nine observation tower as we floated over the English Channel. Not that I could see anything; the cloud cover was unbroken. All I could see was a flat grey cloud layer and the tatty outline of Cloud Three below us, now alarmingly close.
‘I was trying to protect you from her,’ said Brad. I turned back to face him.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Ebrikke. She is not entirely human, Gavin, it’s important you understand that.’
‘What, is she an alien?’ I asked. She had looked entirely human to me when she gave me a drink after my arrival.
‘Her body is entirely human, biological, organic. She was born of a mother and father just like you and me, but she’s had the most extreme inclusion of non-biological material into her brain stem that has ever been attempted.’
‘Eww,’ I said, ‘that sounds a bit gross.’
‘It’s not gross, Gavin,’ said Brad staring at me, slightly confused. ‘But it is something we have had to discuss at great length. We have procedures at our disposal, there is nothing remotely dangerous on a physical level, but the results we have seen in the past have been a little, well, I was going to say alarming but that would be to over-dramatise.’
‘A little alarming. You mean people just go stark-raving doolally?’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘They go mad, crazy, bonkers,’ I said.
‘Oh, I see. No, far from it, they become a real problem for mere mortals, that may be a better way of describing the results. We have had to introduce global legislation to contain the issues artificial intelligence brings up. Essentially anyone is allowed to have a 0.5 enhancement.’
‘A 0.5 enhancement?’
‘That means only a very small amount of the brain’s total mass can be enhanced, 0.5 per cent of total brain mass.’
‘So that’s what Ebrikke has had done?’ I asked, struggling to understand
what all this meant.
‘No, that would be fine and we wouldn’t be dealing with this problem. Ebrikke has very publicly confronted the legislation and the general global agreement on brain enhancement. She has had over 50 per cent of her original brain mass replaced with non-biological systems.’
‘Oh, right, I see,’ I said, trying to imagine what that could possibly mean. ‘That sounds like quite a lot.’
‘Yes, it is an enormous amount. This has resulted in her being classified as a machine.’
‘Wow, that’s actually quite cool,’ I said with a smile.
‘That appeals to you?’ asked Brad.
‘I don’t know, maybe. A lot of people have said I behave like a predictable machine. Well, one person.’
‘One person?’
‘Yes, my wife, but, well, that was a long time ago.’
Brad nodded. As was often the case I got the impression that what I’d just said to him was of such little importance it momentarily stumped him. He gave a big sigh and continued:
‘You see, Ebrikke presents as a highly intelligent woman, effectively she is the most intelligent human being that has ever existed. She is the most extreme example we know of.’
‘Well that doesn’t sound so bad,’ I said, even though I was grimacing.
‘I am happy you have this attitude and it could essentially be a good thing. Indeed, Michiyo Nishimura had a small enhancement inserted in the Beijing Culvert by the same team who worked on Ebrikke.’
‘Oh, right, well Michiyo seemed okay,’ I said, ‘she didn’t seem like a robot.’
Brad smiled. ‘No, we’re not talking about robots, Gavin. But Michiyo’s brain is 0.4 per cent enhanced, none of her original tissue was removed. Ebrikke’s case is very different. A very large section of her human brain has been removed, she has sensory systems and memory enhancements even we only barely understand. She has the ability to, as it were, read another person’s blood pressure and heart rate and her subconscious facial signal reading ability is beyond comprehension. She can’t read your mind as such, not without physical contact, but she can get so much information about you merely by staring at your face.’
‘Wow, that is incredible.’
‘Yes, and somewhat unnerving. There are many people who are strongly opposed to this procedure and only very few people have had it done. Ebrikke has always been a bit of a renegade. She is supposedly the first person to be born on a cloud. As far as I know she has never once set foot on the surface. Her family was a little eccentric, they originated from the Reykjavik Culvert but fled after some difficult times. She is therefore one of the founding members of the Original Five clouds and has become something of a hero to them. She is very uncompromising, a little confrontational and completely determined.’
‘Determined to do what?’
‘We’re docking!’ said Kirubel. I glanced at Hector and Kirubel, they didn’t seem overly pleased at this turn of events.
I looked out of the window to witness the dirty old ragbag that was Cloud Three eventually making contact with Cloud Nine and the comparison with old sailing ships was remarkable.
From my high vantage point in the observation tower I watched the small cloud pull alongside very slowly.
I saw what I guessed were men coming out of the cloud and throwing long ribbons onto the outer skin of Cloud Nine. These ribbons made firm contact with the material because they were soon pulled tight by unseen mechanisms and the two clouds become one.
Sort of.
One was huge, white, looked like a proper cloud and was rather beautiful. The other was a dirty grey colour, battered and tatty and looked like an old duvet cover from the 1970s that needed a good hose down.
‘We’d better go and meet them, they can get very moody,’ said Hector discreetly. ‘Don’t worry, they’re not violent in a physical sense, just very demanding.’
I followed Brad and Hector down the blue lift, which was now second nature to me.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ said Brad as we entered the long cream tube of the docking area.
Two members of the Cloud Nine crew were standing by an opening in the outer wall of the space. It looked a bit like the entrance to a circus tent, with two sides of material being held apart by silent crew members.
As I got nearer I could see what looked to be a truly terrifying kind of inflated gangplank that traversed the narrow gap between the two clouds. It was a narrow gap but below was, I’m guessing, 500 metres of nothing and below that the English Channel.
Without wobble or hesitation a group of dirtily dressed individuals walked across this gangplank and into the tubular space. I could feel cold air rushing in through the opening and that gave their entrance a bit of added drama. I felt very cold.
After a few moments, a long line of individuals was stood staring at me. At a glance they looked like a bunch of Viking warriors in full fighting regalia, although to be accurate none of them had any obvious weapons. However, there was an air of menace coming from these people. Their dress code was different to anything I’d seen on the clouds. What they wore looked like old-fashioned space suits from Soviet-era space travel, dirty looking and very battered. They all showed signs of wear and much patient repair.
These rather terrifying-looking chaps stood to one side, allowing a much more diminutive figure to cross the fabric threshold. I recognised her at once. She was pretty stunning.
Whatever else she was with her half-inorganic brain, a shrinking violet she was not.
‘Captain Hector, it is good to see you,’ said Ebrikke Karensdottir.
Hector and Ebrikke shook hands. While she was looking at him it seemed the normally rotund and tightly packed form of the Captain deflated a little before my eyes.
Ebrikke then turned to Brad. ‘Doctor Dorschel, it has been many storms.’
‘Too many storms,’ said Brad as he shook her delicate hand. ‘It is good to see you again, Ebrikke, you are looking very well, as is your crew.’
‘Our lives improve with each passing month,’ she said, and almost smiled. The smile dropped when her eyes fell on me.
‘Aha, the man of the hour,’ she said. ‘How are you, Mister Meckler?’
‘I have just been explaining—’ Brad stopped there because Ebrikke put her open hand toward his face. That’s a fairly clear indication that you don’t want someone to say anything more and it worked very effectively.
She stepped toward me, her rather gorgeous eyes staring without blinking into mine. I’ve never been good at the whole direct eye contact thing, but somehow I didn’t mind with Ebrikke.
‘Hello there,’ I said as calmly as I could.
‘Gavin Meckler from 1979,’ she said. ‘We meet again. I see from your cloud tan you have settled well in our world.’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘It’s been very—’
Again the hand went up, this time right in front of my face. I found it fairly annoying so I carried on talking.
‘—interesting and I’ve learned…’
I couldn’t say any more even though I wanted to. This woman had already rubbed me up the wrong way and I was feeling a little annoyed but I just couldn’t continue talking.
‘I know this,’ she said. ‘I know everything there is to know about you, which, to be fair, is not a great deal.’
She dropped her hand and I sensed a change in my entire body. It was mainly relief, almost as if she’d stopped me breathing and thinking for a moment.
We stood staring at each other and I was about to ask a question when she said, ‘Of course, I don’t have a kidonge.’
Had I never experienced the initial confusion of someone knowing what you were thinking this experience might have thrown me, but I was combat-hardened and determined not to allow her to have the upper hand.
‘I knew that,
’ I shrugged. ‘I knew that and I don’t care. I also know all about you, Ebrikke Karensdottir, the woman with a half-inorganic brain. I’m not that impressed to be honest.’
‘Funny,’ said Ebrikke with a kind smile.
At this point Brad stepped forward and said rapidly, ‘Gavin has maybe been slightly misinformed…’
‘He has a kidonge,’ repeated Ebrikke. ‘Not interesting.’
‘It’s only interesting in that it can clearly communicate with whatever enhancements you have implanted in your head,’ I said. ‘I probably know more about you and your history than anyone else in this dimension.’
I knew this wasn’t the case but for some reason I wasn’t entirely clear about, winding this woman up and annoying her was very appealing.
‘Doctor Dorschel, can you explain to Mister Meckler why his diminutive taunts are not very helpful.’
‘I can do my best,’ said Brad with a rather fake smile. He leant toward me and spoke rather rapidly. ‘We now understand, Gavin, that there are four levels of consciousness on the planet.’
‘Four levels of consciousness,’ I repeated. It was meant to be a question but it didn’t come out right, at which point I felt I had already lost a level of consciousness and had yet again revealed my caveman intelligence.
‘Four levels,’ said Brad. ‘A lizard for example would be at level one, a monkey at level two, a person, a Homo sapiens from your era, Gavin, would be at level three.’
I nodded, then just blurted, ‘Oh, wait a minute, you said there were four levels!’
‘Indeed,’ said Brad, ‘most cloud dwellers, for example myself and Captain Hector, are both level four.’
‘So you are more conscious than me?’
‘Yes, that’s correct, however, Ebrikke is level five.’
‘Level five!’ I said. Brad nodded.
‘But you just told me there are four levels of consciousness.’
‘There used to be. Ebrikke has developed higher reasoning and cognition due to her enhancements.’
News from the Clouds Page 21