Dead Space™

by B. K. Evenson

  “When we are weak,” said Field, “we call on this.” He wrapped it in his fist and squeezed it, then closed his eyes, whispering something over and over again, a ritual chant or a prayer, soft enough that Altman couldn’t quite make it out. He didn’t want to make it out. He looked away from Field and saw that most of the others around them were doing the same thing, each holding something and whispering toward their clenched fists, their eyes closed. Slowly and quietly he shuffled his way free of the group and got the hell out of there.

  His interactions with the researchers were radically different than they had been before. Before, there had been a separation between Markoff’s inner circle and the rest of the scientists; now everybody seemed inclined to work together. There was a new sense of urgency, a sense—largely from the hallucinations (or “visions” as the believers called them)—that time was of the essence.

  For the first day or two, he just listened. Researcher after researcher approached him, telling him what they’d been able to discover. Most of them had faces lit with zeal, either religious zeal or the zeal of discovery. Either way, it scared him.

  As he listened, started seeing data from the tests, and began to interact directly with the Marker itself, he became convinced that he’d been right to begin with, that the Marker had a purpose that had nothing to do with the good of humanity, though what that purpose was he was still unable to say. Lying in bed at night alone, wondering where Ada was and whether she was still wrapped up in the madness of the Marker, he turned it over in his head, becoming more and more worried. All the talk of Convergence and everlasting life that had started with the hallucinations was not so much a lie as it was something related to the Marker trying to express itself in human means, manipulating the imprinted memories of loved ones and conforming to their words. But what was that something? The Marker itself? The beings that had created it? Some sort of protective mechanism? Something else entirely? And whatever it was, something was being lost in the translation: nobody was sure what the Marker wanted from them. Becoming more and more nervous, he opened a vidlink to Stevens.

  Despite the late hour, Stevens did not look like he’d been woken up. His voice when he spoke was as mellifluous as always.

  “Altman,” he said, not a hint of surprise in his voice. “What can I do for you?”

  “You’re awake?”

  “Don’t sleep much these days,” said Stevens. “Too busy talking to the dead.”

  “I have something I need to talk over,” he said. “It’s about the Marker, about the messages it seems to be sending through hallucinations. I don’t know who else to ask.”

  “Go ahead,” said Stevens. “I’ve been thinking about it myself.”

  “I wonder about its purpose. I don’t know that we should trust it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think we read what the Marker says positively because we are prone to believe in a life beyond this one and because it speaks to us through voices of people we are close to.”

  “Fair enough,” said Stevens. “Clearly it wants us to think of it in a positive light.”

  “But if you listen closely to what the hallucinations are saying and try to think of them as being the words of an alien presence channeled through human memories, and try to forget that you’re being told them by someone you know and love, there’s another interpretation for Convergence, for becoming one.”

  “Yes,” said Stevens.

  “What if Convergence means not eternal life or transcendence, but radical subordination? What if it means unity more literally, the destruction of the individual to a larger communal self?”

  “Like the way some insect colonies function,” said Stevens. “The individuals all subject to the will of the colony, a kind of hive mind in control of all the individuals.”

  “Yes,” said Altman. “Or maybe even more extreme. What if it’s being literal? What if it means somehow to transform us from many creatures into one?”

  “That doesn’t sound feasible,” said Stevens.

  “This is new territory,” said Altman. “We hardly know what’s feasible and what’s not. In any case, it’s dangerous. We may not be heading for utopia but instead toward destruction.”

  “Which raises an important question,” said Stevens quietly.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever we’re looking for from the Marker, whether we see it as something to be mined for power or something to be worshipped or an object of scientific inquiry, are we using the Marker or is the Marker using us?” For the first time, Stevens’s smooth exterior broke, and Altman saw something like a glimmer of anxiety burst through. He covered his eyes with his hand. When, after a moment, he moved his hand away, the smooth exterior had returned.

  “One other thing,” said Stevens. “The dead talk to some about unity, others about a ticking clock. What does this refer to? How does it relate to Convergence? Is the Marker awakening now to punish us for not making the most of our time here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Altman. “It may be something less threatening, but I think it might be more. The dead act as though we have been facing a deadline. A deadline that we have evidently crossed. Convergence is talked about as starting over, but I don’t know that it’s likely to be a fresh start for us. Maybe it’ll just be a fresh start for the Marker, or whatever controls it. Maybe Convergence means wiping us out to start some new cycle, some new phase of whatever strange process we seem to be a part of.”

  “If you’re right,” said Stevens, “the human race is on the brink of extinction. Either way, this Convergence represents the end of life as we know it.”

  “Yes,” said Altman.

  “So what do we do?”

  “It should be stopped,” Altman said. “But I don’t know how. Now that it’s active, I don’t think it would help to simply sink the Marker again. We have to satisfy it enough to make it fall silent and leave us alone for a while, but not enough to move completely forward into Convergence. I don’t know what else to do but try to keep understanding what it’s saying to us before it’s too late. Maybe once we understand what it’s saying, we can figure out how to talk to it.”

  “But you may be wrong,” said Stevens. “The Marker may actually be promising us eternal life.”

  Altman nodded. “I may be wrong,” he said. “But I don’t think I am. You told me yourself: suicides are up, violent crimes are up. Some people’s headaches are so bad that they try to stop them by banging their heads against the wall until it cracks open. All the infirmary beds are filled and there are still people screaming and with nowhere to go. Once respectable scientists are painting their walls with their own shit. Does that sound like eternal life to you?”

  Stevens sighed. “It could be just an intermediate stage. Do you know Pascal’s wager?” he asked.

  “Who’s what?” asked Altman.

  “Blaise Pascal,” said Stevens. “Seventeenth-century philosopher. Mostly forgotten now, though one of the first ships destroyed in the moon skirmishes was named after him. His wager argues that since the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, an individual should live as if He did exist since he has very little to lose if God does not exist and everything to gain if He does.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “I’m getting to that,” said Stevens. “I can either believe what you’re telling me or I can believe that the Marker has our best interest at heart. If I believe what you’re telling me, then that means that most likely humanity is a lost cause anyway and I’ll spend my final days beating my head out over a problem that can’t be solved. If I believe the Marker has our best interest at heart, then I move forward full of hope, toward my own salvation.”

  “Oh my God, you’ve become a true believer,” said Altman.

  “Why else do you think I convinced Markoff to have you released? I have to wish you the best of luck,” said Stevens. “If you’re right and I’m wrong, I hope you can figure it out and save all of u
s. If you’re wrong and I’m right, then I have everything to gain by believing.”

  “That’s not how belief works,” said Altman. “You can’t just decide to believe.”

  “Apparently, you can’t,” said Stevens. “But I can. I hope you’re wrong.” Altman watched him reach out and cut the link.

  Stevens’s attitude, Altman realized, was likely be shared by many, though very few would be as rational-sounding or as coherent in the way they managed to deliberately shut their eyes to the danger. By raising it with his colleagues, he risked their resentment and, even, their attacks. Even if they believed him, it might well mean that panic and fear and depression might compromise their ability to work.

  No, he was going to have to make a little gambit of his own: Altman’s wager. He’d wager that he could pretend to proceed as if he agreed, pretend to move forward with fulfilling the Marker ’s will, and then at the last minute, once he’d learned enough to defeat it, turn things around. If he won, then life would probably continue on roughly as it was. If he lost, then he’d probably be dead, and maybe everyone else would be as well.

  Not good odds, but they were the only odds he had.

  54

  It was Showalter who made the initial breakthrough by suggesting a possible function for the Marker. The symbols, he theorized, were mathematical codes that symbolized DNA. The Marker itself was a representation of a DNA sequence.

  The scientists set about decoding the sequence. Another scientist, a radio astronomist named Grote Guthe, made the next breakthrough, suggesting that the Marker ’s signal could be read as a transmission of a sequence of genetic code. Field made sure that Altman heard about both.

  Showalter’s team sequenced the Marker itself, and came up with a genetic profile that was, so he told Altman, remarkably similar to that of humans.

  “So something like humans?” said Altman.

  “Maybe,” said Showalter. “Maybe even something exactly like humans. I think that the Marker has the DNA code for our ancestors.”

  “So it records our genetic code,” said Altman. “So what?”

  “Not just records,” said Showalter. “We think the pulse transmits it as well, deliberately changing genetic structure slightly in existing human organisms. It may, in fact, have been the beginning of human life.”

  Altman didn’t know what to say. It was staggering to think that human life had neither evolved naturally nor been a gift from God but was, instead, based on the Marker.

  “But why would it be rebroadcasting our genetic code?” asked Altman. “We’ve already evolved. What would be the point of that?”

  “Have you talked to Grote Guthe?” asked Showalter. “He’s hit a snag. For God’s sake, go talk to Grote.”

  And so he did. The German scientist was not what he expected he would be; he was small and very thin, and had a skin condition that had left him hairless. He looked harmless, almost helpless. He seemed to be expecting Altman.

  “Yes,” he said, “Herr Doktor Field has told me about you. You are one of us, yes?” Altman neither nodded nor shook his head, but Guthe went on. “You want to know about the pulse,” he said. “Whether my team has decoded the pulse. Perhaps Herr Doktor Shovalter has said something, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Altman.

  “We have decoded the pulse, perhaps. But we have struck a complication.”

  “What’s the complication?”

  “My team has decoded the signal and we think it is decoded correctly. We understand it to be a code and we understand what that code is. Herr Doktor Shovalter thinks he has decoded the signal and he, too, thinks it is decoded correctly. The complication is that we have different answers. For him it is a code that is a step upon the sequence to human life. For me it is something else entirely, not correlatable to a known species. I am making a synthetic version of mine now, to get a closer look at it.”

  “Perhaps one of you is wrong,” said Altman.

  “Perhaps,” said Guthe. “Or perhaps the pulse signal is transmitting a different code than is recorded on the Marker.” He leaned forward and gave Altman a steady look. “I must say something to you,” he said. “I am a believer, you must not doubt my belief. But I am also a scientist. I have looked carefully at Herr Doktor Shovalter’s calculations and I have looked carefully at my own. Our calculations are correct. If the Marker was the beginning of human life, then it has no need to be broadcasting this now. And yet it is communicating a pulse, one with an unfamiliar genetic code. Perhaps it is communicating a pulse, but perhaps it is a flawed pulse with a flawed genetic code. Perhaps this Marker has begun a process of deterioration.”

  “The Convergence,” said Altman.

  “But maybe it has simply become confused,” said Guthe. “We must try to understand it. We must work with it.”

  “But what if this is what it’s meant to do?” said Altman.

  Guthe groped his necklace out of his shirt, clutched the icon of the Marker in his fist. “No, it cannot intend this,” he insisted. “The Marker is here for us. It has simply become confused.” And then he looked at Altman for guidance.

  Altman just nodded, and left without another word. I’m surrounded by madmen, he couldn’t help but think. Fanatics.

  But later that night, he began to have doubts. What if Guthe was right? What if the Marker was just broken? Maybe they could fix the Marker by returning the core sample to its rightful position.

  That’s ridiculous, he thought. It was transmitting its signal before the core sample was taken.

  He lay in bed staring at the ceiling until another idea came to him. But maybe it was transmitting a different signal then, the correct signal.

  He couldn’t sleep until he at least tried.

  He woke up Showalter, explained what he wanted to do.

  “Already been tried,” said Showalter. “Doesn’t make a difference.”

  “But maybe—”

  “The missing piece isn’t crucial,” Showalter explained. “In fact, no single piece is crucial. The Marker is a complex but internally replicated structure in the same way, for instance, that the pattern of a nautilus replicates even as it tightens. Even if parts of it are broken or damaged, it still works. Probably the only way to stop it from working would be to pulverize it.”

  Depressed, Altman went back to bed. Chalk one up for the Marker. Not damaged, or at least not damaged in a way they could understand. Which meant it must be acting the way it was for other reasons. Either it was working for their own good or for their destruction.

  55

  Herr Doktor Guthe had been up for hours. With the help of his team, he’d sequenced the synthetic strand and then had it biotically assembled by a nanosystem. Then he’d meticulously gone over the results to make sure it was right. It was rough, hardly the kind of job that he would be proud of, but it was accurate. If he could get it to replicate, he’d be able to make some extrapolations about the original strand, about the purpose of the mutation, and this might in turn tell him if the Marker was broken or if it was working intentionally.

  His team had stuck with him around the clock until the moment when they’d injected the sequence within a proxy nucleus into four dozen embroyonic sheep cells, followed by chemical encouragement to get them to divide. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Either it would work or it would not. For the first time in several hours, he looked around at his team, saw that they were haggard and frazzled by turns, some of them barely standing. So he sent them to bed.

  Herr Doktor Guthe had intended to go to bed himself. Only he wasn’t tired. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been tired. He hadn’t slept for days.

  And so he had stayed on, alone, in the laboratory. He waited, motionless, sitting on his stool. He felt as though he had entered a completely different state of mind, one that did not need sleep. He expected never to have to sleep again. This, he was sure, was due to the Marker.

  Upon thinking the word, he pulled the necklace out of his shirt and
clutched the icon in his fist. Would she come? If he thought hard enough, would she come?

  And then she stepped out of the wall and toward him. At first she was no more than a blur, but as he squeezed the charm and concentrated, she began to change. The shadowy air around her was cut away and she became herself—tall, thin, a perfect face save for one small scar just above her left cheekbone.

  I missed you, she said.

  “I missed you, too,” he said.

  She smiled, and a little blood dripped out of her mouth, but not too much. He tried to ignore it. Except for the blood, he loved the way she smiled.

  What are you doing? she asked.

  “An experiment,” he said. “I’m trying to understand the thing that brought you back to life.”

  How flattering, she said. But I wish you wouldn’t.

  “I wish I would have spoken to you then,” he said. “Back when you were alive. I watched you, you know. I followed you everywhere.”

  I know, she said.

  “And then you died and I thought I had missed my chance. But now you are here again.”

  I’m just a projection of your mind, she said. You know that. You told me that yourself. You know that I’m a construct made from your memories.

  “I know,” he said. “But you seem so real.”

  She smiled again, wider this time, and blood began to slip down her cheek and to her chin. He had found her like that, twenty years before. He hadn’t even known her name. Then, as now, he was unsure of what had happened to her. Then, she was as good as dead when he found her. Now she kept dying but kept being brought back to life again.

  You musn’t . . . , she started, and then she slowly faded and was gone. He sighed. He never got much further with the message the Marker sent, never heard as much of it as his colleagues had. He figured it was because his desire to see the girl was too strong, too intense.

  He took a look in the cooker, was surprised to see that all forty cells in all forty receptacles had multiplied. That was unprecedented. Also unprecedented was the speed with which they multiplied—he had never seen anything like it. It had been only a few hours, and already the sample was visible to the naked eye.