Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec

  “Yes—a sort of giant simulator. A simulator meant to make selections among humans. The Professor is right when he talks about a Camp-World. Except that our destruction in itself isn’t the goal. I don’t know what the goal is—not yet—but it’s like I told you; it is connected to the zero point, let’s call it, and to Link de Nova. It’s connected to what we are investigating right now.”

  “The second mutation?”

  “Yes. And we might as well admit that it won’t be the last.”

  Surveyor Plateau juts up ahead of them, its ochre surface dotted with small glens and clumps of pine woods valiantly resisting the new climatic conditions. It is a vast expanse of rock and copses yellowed by the sun, in the center of which are blocks of mobile homes, cobbled-together shelters, and collapsible houses.

  Ten square kilometers now unfarmable, on which nothing will grow except a little more than five thousand souls.

  And among these “souls” is the one waiting for them. One that knows everything about everything. And above all, one that uses her tongue to make money whenever the opportunity arises.

  The very spirit of the territory. The very spirit of the World.

  The aluminum trailer gleams in the windshield like a chunk of diamond fallen from the sky.

  The door is open. Nora Network is waiting for them. The soul of the territory in all her splendor, says Yuri to himself.

  Perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t.

  “The guy you mean doesn’t live far from here; he’s at the city’s northern exit. I’ll give you his exact address if we can agree on a price. And there is another one, no doubt about it; a similar case on X-15 in Ontario. You know my contact there. If we can agree on a price, he’ll take you to the case in question. It’s a woman, as far as I know.”

  It could just as well be a striped antelope or a Louis Quinze chest of drawers, Yuri thinks. This old bitch lies like breathing.

  Chrysler knows how to deal with the old ex-millionaire of Surveyor Plateau. It is amazingly simple. All you have to do is “agree on a price.”

  He starts out by paying, as if he is at a poker table. He pays the fee to enter the trailer and bother Madame. By acting that way he shows that he is in good faith, and then the negotiation can begin without any tension, both of them well aware of how high or low the other can go.

  Pure negotiation. Business. The oldest kind of prostitution in the world. They could be selling Winchesters and doctored whiskey to the Comanche Indians, Yuri thinks, like in the twentieth-century westerns Chrysler has shown him.

  They sell information for information. They sell the survival of machines and the men connected to them, for information. They sell good-condition, ready-to-use materials, for information.

  They would sell the whole Territory for information. Yes, says Yuri to himself, not without amusement. They’re ready to sell the Territory for a map.

  A Samsung DVD player, restored to working order and immunized by Link de Nova; more than a hundred DVDs of every type; films from the twentieth century, compilations of television shows, military biographies. Yuri isn’t sure this is what the ex-millionaire from Oregon really goes in for, but he knows that after a dozen years even the pickiest people tend to compromise. This is the starting point, and it places Nora Network in a very agreeable position, even if the word sympathy obviously isn’t applicable to the situation.

  The second lot prepared by Chrysler is brought up after another ten minutes or so of negotiations, no more. A small microwave oven from the 2020s, in perfect working order. Yuri realizes that Chrysler, as always, has perfectly anticipated the price for which the old courtesan will sell her information. Especially after the excellent beginning.

  And finally, in return for access to X-15, Chrysler asks Nora Network if she has a special preference for any product, anything they might be able to get to her within the next forty-eight or seventy-two hours.

  Her appetite whetted by the newly restored antiques, Nora Network accepts this slightly unusual condition.

  She thinks for a few moments; then, struck by sudden inspiration, she stands and goes toward her bedroom, separated from the rest of the trailer by a series of Japanese partitions.

  She returns with several metallic objects in her hands.

  A few old Braun razors. Battery-operated lightbulbs, able to work within a mechanism or to function independently, with neon or xenon tubes. An antique portable record player for 45 rpm vinyl records. A fire-resistant ceramic miniradiator.

  Chrysler stares at the old woman uncomprehendingly.

  “These are just electric objects. No computer components. If they’re broken it is because they died a natural death. We can’t do anything about it.”

  Nora Network fixes her black eyes on Campbell’s. “No. You’re wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They didn’t die a natural death. Everything worked perfectly until yesterday. Everything. Ten electric lightbulbs with all the filaments still attached in a single block. Their batteries were new. Tested. They’re drained and can’t be recharged.”

  Chrysler inspects the objects one by one. “Yesterday, you said?”

  “Yes. Yesterday morning they stopped working.”

  “Just as the storm arrived in the Territory.”

  “Right.”

  “If you want me to help you with this problem, Nora, you’re going to have to give me some information absolutely free. Please understand, I’m not trying to take advantage of the situation. Necessity makes law, that’s all.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Are there other cases like yours in the area? A regression of the simplest electrical systems?”

  “I hadn’t heard of any before it happened to me; I swear, Campbell.”

  Yuri knows how much stock to put in one of Nora Network’s promises, especially when she isn’t bound by a real agreement, a contract, an exchange, a transaction. Business is just another form of prostitution for her.

  But he also knows they have no choice but to act like they believe her, or at least to accept her version of the facts while politely making clear that she isn’t really fooling them.

  They load Nora Network’s cargo into a Recyclo particleboard box that they then place on the pickup’s backseat, and bid their usual summary farewells to their old informer. The aluminum trailer shines for an instant in the windshield as Chrysler makes a half turn and pulls back onto the road that leads north from Surveyor Plateau.

  Nora Network was, as usual, very useful.

  Even better. For once, she didn’t just point out coordinates on a map. For once, she gave them access to a new map. One that is still indecipherable, true, but that just needs to be deciphered.

  Yuri has a hunch. They might easily find a connection between the “second mutation” about which they have been gathering data for more than two weeks and this new “illness” afflicting even the simplest electrical machines.

  If what Nora Network says turns out to be true, it means that the Post-Machine has kicked into a higher gear. This time it has decided not to leave any time for humans to adapt to the successive “Falls.” It seems in a hurry to finish things.

  Yuri is suddenly hit with the realization that only Gabriel Link de Nova can bring them the answer. Everything is converging to bring about a new meeting, outside the county of HMV and as soon as possible.

  And as soon as possible—he knows that Chrysler has arrived at the same conclusion when he parks the truck beside a collapsible house—as soon as possible means this very night.

  This very night, somewhere in the north of the Territory.

  The man from Surveyor Plateau is in what they have established as phase three of the process. The last alphanumeric phase before the transition to pure binary language. Phase one, syntactic dislocation of sentences. Phase two, compression into phonemes. Phase three, alphabetic atomization with systematic progressive serialization, the harbinger of purely numeric language based on the
binary code that will mark the fourth phase. Then comes phase five, or the “postlinguistic phase”: total digitization of language; transformation of the body into a modem. The phases overlap slightly during transitions from one to another.

  The man can produce only series of letters and numbers now. The most terrible part, thinks Yuri, is that the man can still understand what is said to him, and probably what is happening to him as well. Communication hasn’t been cut; it has been cloven.

  They discussed their plan only a little during the drive. Yuri knows they are on the same wavelength; a handful of brief exchanges is generally enough for them to agree upon what must be done.

  They, too, are kicking into a higher gear.

  Chrysler immediately injects the man with a powerful anxiolytic. Then he waits a little, and explains the situation and prognosis. He explains what they are going to do, and the procedure that must be followed. He tells the man what he must do if he is to have even a chance of survival. What they need him to do if he doesn’t want to die, leaving nothing behind but a digital map of himself.

  The man mutters something incomprehensible, his head bobbing endlessly up and down.

  Yuri is already preparing the various analytical instruments.

  There are orange suits at the city’s gate. Yuri recognizes them instantly as necro Triads. Clockwork Orange County, from the color of them. A half dozen men are busily occupied around two bodies laid out side by side on the public street. The rear hatch of an old ambulance painted in the township’s colors is open, ready to swallow up the crude stretchers on which the necros place the corpses with no more care than a farmer for his slaughtered livestock.

  X-15 is the main township in the north of the Territory, located in Ontario. It is on the peripheries of the counties of Grand Junction and Grand Funk Railroad, just on the other side of the hills abutted by Surveyor Plateau. The road leading to it is in a pathetic state of disrepair; Chrysler has to switch into 4×4 mode for most of the drive there, using up precious liters of gasoline. The spiny ghosts of tumbleweeds roll ahead of them on the path like vegetal advance men.

  But now, gasoline doesn’t matter much. Nor does the state of the roads. Or even the sandstorms.

  Yuri, maybe for the first time in his life, can see a shadow of worry on his colleague’s face. Chrysler doesn’t like this, this conjunction of events, and Yuri cannot blame him, even if he sees things with a certain degree of fatalism. The “second mutation,” the “Third Fall,” whatever you want to call it—the digitalization of human language seems to be happening in concert with a new attack on electrical technology. This time, its threat reaches down to the simplest current modulator, the smallest alternator, the most archaic battery, a simple neon tube. Down to the tiniest spark.

  And more worrisome still, this new attack seems to coincide with the upcoming arrival of a precious library in the Territory. And with the recent one of a man who presided over the design of the final version of the Metastructure.

  It is clear that a lot is going on. Much too much. Much too much to take it as any kind of coincidence.

  It is clear that the Post-Machine is taking the lead. It seems to know their resistance points, their plans, in advance.

  Eventually, Chrysler must admit that his young friend Yuri is right. It is like a game.

  A game on a global scale.

  A game that they have to win, at any price, to avoid complete extinction.

  The X-15 victim was indeed a woman. Nora wasn’t lying, muses Yuri to himself, almost disappointedly. It was a woman. Is still a woman, he mentally corrects himself. Which means that the moment when she will no longer be a woman is getting closer every second.

  A young woman a few years older than him; twenty-five or twenty-six at most. She is a Mohawk mixed-blood named Lucie Lebois-Davenport. She lives in a small makeshift hut built of various scavenged materials. Nora Network’s contact, a former cop with the Vermont State Police, has explained to them that she arrived in the area shortly after the “Second Fall” of ’63, from what remains of Montreal.

  Pretty, thinks Yuri, contemplating the nearly nude body stretched out on the helium bed.

  The neighbors are aware of what is happening, but they have no idea what to do, and they make no attempt to hide their mistrust of strangers—especially strangers like Chrysler and Yuri. Chrysler, however, immediately sets them straight:

  “We aren’t members of a necro Triad from Junkville, I promise you. If men like the ones you described to us have been lurking around this area, they weren’t us.”

  “Men in green uniforms with a white snake on the back,” one of the neighbors elaborates.

  Snake Zone Triads, both of them think immediately. The telepathic bond that connects them at such moments vibrates between their brains.

  The competition is getting fiercer; the race is tightening. The death benefits are increasing in value.

  “We want to try to understand what is happening, and to save this young woman,” Yuri says. “If you don’t believe us, go talk to Diamond-back Curtiss here in X-15, or ask Nora Network on Surveyor Plateau.”

  Chrysler takes advantage of the shock that Nora’s name still provokes in these parts.

  “In two days, three at most, this young woman will be dead. We want to take samples and conduct biotests. One of you can stay as a witness if you like. When we have the results of the first tests, we’ll tell you what we can do.”

  Yuri understands why his friend is lying to them. Of course they’re going to take the girl away! At any price—meaning, of course, as cheaply as possible. They will take her to Surveyor Plateau, where they will pick up the man in phase three, and then get everyone to the north of the Territory and Link de Nova. To the one that might be able to save them. To the one who needs to know—to let them all know—if he can do anything to help or not.

  The man and the girl are going to serve as guinea pigs for Link de Nova, Yuri thinks. And for us all.

  Young Lebois-Davenport is in the middle of phase four. She recites endless lists of binary numbers at a still-comprehensible but very rapid speed, something Yuri has already seen during his investigation in Junkville. But the juxtaposition of the two cases—the man on Surveyor and the girl here, so close in time and space—has ignited a spark of new understanding in his mind.

  As long as they are in the alphanumeric phase, they can still interact with the world, the outside, other men. With difficulty, certainly, but at least it is still possible.

  As soon as phase four begins, it will be over. Communication will not be cut or cloven, it will be saturated.

  And when they move into phase five, which is no longer really a “phase,” communication will be neither cut nor cloven nor saturated. It will become the body of language itself, in its entirety, transforming the body into a digital map of itself.

  They proceed with their tests and biopsies, and with the initial analysis.

  Chrysler turns his head toward the witness and asks him to go and fetch the authorities for the residential block; when they arrive, full of sympathy and interest in the “doctors” at work, he requests permission to take the “patient” to their “private clinic” in Aircrash Circle.

  The men and women of the neighborhood council deliberate for long minutes; then the spokesman announces, fatalistically, that they agree to Chrysler’s request. There is probably nothing else left to do, the man sighs.

  Chrysler thanks them as a humanitarian doctor would—if any still existed.

  Then they load the girl onto the military stretcher Chrysler inherited from his father, which can fit into any vehicle—helicopter, plane, tank, armored truck, warship.

  Or a Ford F-150 pickup.

  They leave X-15 and drive toward the center of the Territory as the sun is reaching its zenith. The sky is the color of the Atlantic Ocean at this time of year—a deep, cold blue containing the white-gold disk of the sun.

  Then, later, the black vehicle stops a few minutes away from the former
border of the state of New York, just long enough for a fourth passenger to take his place in the backseat next to the Recyclo particleboard box. This man does not speak as they cross the west of the county toward Aircrash Circle. Their “private clinic,” thinks Yuri, smiling.

  In the bed of the pickup, under the Atlantic sky and the white-gold sun, lying on a military stretcher dating from the Second Gulf War, a young woman recites an endless series of binary numbers, long sequences of ones and zeros projected toward the stars, hidden by the haze of day.

  15 > MIDNIGHT RAMBLER

  The ritual is always the same. They have been doing it for two years. Chrysler came up with it back at the very beginning.

  “The virus that attacked you and the one that attacks machines are of the same type. You must realize that your days are numbered. And you’re probably also aware that there is no known antidote. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

  There is a weak nod. The first of what will be more and more forceful confirmations, Yuri thinks.

  “However, even though there is no officially recognized antidote, you may know that there are some experimental methods that may stimulate a general remission. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

  The man nods again, a bit more firmly.

  “We can treat you using secret medicine. In exchange for certain items that are of interest to us, we can make this treatment available to you. Our first treatment of you would be purely experimental, though, and we ask nothing in return. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

  There is another nod of agreement, still fairly timid. Yuri knows the process to come by heart. Chrysler is openly acting like a pusher. First dose is free. But it won’t change anything important.

  “We cannot guarantee 100 percent success. Your syndrome is new. But we are the only ones in the Territory who can even attempt to care for you. We have healed people affected by both the First and Second Falls. Your case is a little different, but we believe we represent your last chance. If you understand me, nod yes.”