Chaos Cipher

by Den Harrington

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Malik asked.

  ‘We’re taking you to the debriefing and then we’re bringing you home, sir.’ Felipe explained loudly. ‘Your family home. My home. We’re going to look after you and get you all the help you need after the debriefing. You’ve made so much possible for our family that…’ Felipe almost lost his footing as a sudden wind unbalanced him and rain swept beneath the blade of his shoes. ‘I’ll explain everything on the way.’ He said regaining his composure.

  *

  Filipe waited at the far end of the debriefing room, an old low ceiling facility with barely working light panels blinking above them, and there was the faint smell of coffee beans and stale wood. Facing him were smartly dressed men and women in white uniforms sitting in cheap plastic chairs, and Max and Tanya and Rufus were all on alert. Malik could see their gloves pulsing with energy as they prepared to stun him with their fancy martial arts moves like they did Barnes on a number of occasions back on Orandoré. Despite this, Malik largely ignored the threat and kept his gaze fixed firmly on the hologram cube on the table a foot or so in front of him. The cube was inactive, but its yellow light steadily pulsing on standby mode.

  ‘We apologise for this Doctor Malik Serat,’ said the gentleman at the front, taking a seat just before him. ‘I need to hear some things first.’

  Malik smirked with dimples as the man continued.

  ‘Where is Captain Zemi right now?’

  Malik looked about the room and scrunched his face in a confused wince.

  ‘I believe he’s dead.’ Said Malik, ‘on the Erebus.’

  ‘And where is Penelope Hurt?’

  ‘The Erebus,’ Malik explained.

  ‘Alive or dead?’

  Max was confounded by the line of questioning. They’d found Penelope’s carcass shattered in the cryonic sarcophagus. He let Tanya notice his bewilderment and she shrugged and they continued to listen as the man in the white uniform asked the question again.

  ‘What do you think?’ Malik crowed.

  ‘Well I’m more interested to hear what you think Doctor Serat.’

  Malik Serat sucked his teeth and sighed, turning his head to the door and wanting to leave. He could tell this was going to be a long and irritating process.

  ‘Didn’t you people learn anything about me from my interrogation back on Orandoré?’

  ‘Some believe you’re psychologically damaged,’ the man offered.

  ‘Oh,’ Serat smiled flatly.

  ‘But don’t worry. We’re not living in the dark ages now Doctor. We have neurological treatments that can get you right on track again. We can make you sane without all the mumbo-jumbo of mental hospitals like the old days. None of that barbarism.’

  Malik Serat sighed, irritable and bored. ‘What’s your name?’ he said suddenly.

  The students began moving their fingers and communicating without words. Malik watched them miming and muttering, their facial expressions changing, their eyes darting around, reacting to things within their heads, things filtering in from their neuro-ligature bond with the Nexus. He knew they were analysing his responses, he’d said something that had intrigued them.

  ‘My name is Oscar,’ the man smiled.

  ‘Well, Oscar,’ Serat began, ‘I think you are psychologically damaged.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Oscar smiled neutrally. ‘Why do you suppose that?’

  ‘You’re interested in changing the natural rhythms of human behaviour to suit your comfortable ideology. You have little power over your own life so you assume the role of a psychological authority to bring others into an order you yourself have been forced to endorse. You’re a coward, a dullard, and you have no real interest in what I am, merely how you can make me behave. I’m sorry to tell you Oscar but I have no strings to pull.’

  Oscar raised his eye brows, changing his tactics. He dragged a chair over to Malik and saddled over it, elbows on the backrest.

  ‘Everybody has strings, Doctor.’ He said. ‘You yourself know that.’

  ‘How did you feel?’ asked Malik, ‘when I suggested to you that your whole career hinges on manipulation?’

  ‘I didn’t feel anything,’ Oscar shrugged. ‘I simply don’t see things the way you do.’

  ‘But you aim to make me see things the way you do?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Oscar smiled amiably. ‘I believe you’re an interesting individual with a great story to tell. I think you have suffered but survived. That in fact does make you a fascinating psychological case study for me. I just want to hear your side of the story.’

  Malik Serat slid from his chair. Max took a step forward to let him know he shouldn’t try anything stupid. But Malik Serat was up to his old tricks. He marked an X onto the stony floor.

  ‘The pneumatans of my time believed that one black hole is every black hole,’ he said, returning to his seat. Serat kept his eye on the X carefully. ‘They believed it was the last hiding place of God.’

  Oscar rubbed his chin. The attendees in their lab coats were gesticulating in the dim light, reacting to their cybernetic induced neurological world, updating, analysing their subject Malik Serat.

  ‘I find it so very typical,’ said Serat, ‘that the neuro-clergy would try and build their image of God in the metaphysical realm of the quasiland, while assuming he must also exist in the hardlands. So they cram him far into the higher dimensional points of space where they know nobody can ever reach. They cram him into a black hole and say…there! That is the realm of God. That’s where he’s hiding. That last knowable thing of this physical world, the secret that unites all we know about the super massive and the super quantum.’

  They all watched the mark for a moment, Malik Serat’s eyes focussed intently on it, affixed to the single position unblinking. Perhaps a minute passed and the Chrononaut seemed to be holding his breath until eventually he sighed and looked back up to his staggered audience and smiled.

  ‘Oscar, are you a betting man?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t say that I am really.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’m sixty four,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I’m over two hundred years old,’ said Malik Serat, ‘and at the same time I’m not a day over thirty five. How can it be possible to be two things at once? Or have we got it all wrong? Is it all just a matter of perspective…is everything simply relative not to distance but to matter itself?’

  ‘Why did you make this mark, Doctor?’ He asked. ‘Does it mean something?’

  ‘Because if it’s just a matter of perspective,’ Malik Serat went on, ‘perhaps it would be more crucial for you to see it my way.’

  *

  Filipe led Malik out into the light pellets of rain and they were guided by a retinue of soldiers that stood apparently unarmed, but Malik knew better. Amongst them were Max, Tanya and Ed. The storm continued to ablate the evening sky with skitters of lightning, pulsing behind the clouds to illuminate them momentarily like vaporous bulbs.

  They guided the Chrononaut to a road where a dark and streamline V-TOL plane awaited his arrival. Max approached the cabin door attentively by the front of the long arrow-shaped craft. The side doors at the rear compartment glided up and opened like a gullwing. Filipe was first to step in and he gestured encouragingly for Malik Serat but he was occupied by the feel of the rain on his skin.

  ‘Hey,’ Max said. ‘You’re up. In you go Doctor.’

  Malik’s head eventually levelled and he licked his lips and opened his eyes. The water was more salty than he’d remembered but he was glad to feel it after all this time. He turned his head to the colonel and simpered.

  ‘This world has plans for you too Colonel,’ he said. ‘This is a place full of surprises. Everything has its place.’

  Max said nothing. He didn’t even know what the deranged bastard was talking about. Frankly he couldn’t give a toss. The sooner this weird prick was gone the sooner they could start having fun. Max nodded to the vehicle to encourage him
in.

  ‘Watch your head, Doctor,’ said Rufus sardonically, smirking proudly at his own wit.

  Malik stepped into the cabin and the door slid shut and the craft glided silently away on its large gold wheels. The men stepped back as turbulence burst from the engines and lifted the V-TOL plane vertically on its thrusters. At around fifty feet, the rear lights shone and the gravmex engines propelled them out into the dark until they were no less than a fading red spot.

  ‘Tanya, before you sign off tonight,’ Max started as he watched the vehicle vanish, ‘show me your findings on the foot finders. I want a full report on the whereabouts and activities of the Erebus crew during their mission.’

  ‘Yessir!’ She saluted.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  *

  As the V-TOL cruised the concords of the skies, above the golden roads that snaked below and the Eastern coastal cities that dimmed beyond hyper-spectral highways of light, the auto-pilot’s destination voice command reassured the passengers that their journey was set to take approximately thirty minutes.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Malik crowed. ‘Are you going to try and put me in a mental home?’

  ‘No,’ said Filipe, ‘it’s really like the cognoputic analyst said, that’s not the way we do things anymore, everything can be solved with either the neuro-ligature implants or super drugs and stability viruses. We have them. There are no mental homes and hospitals anymore. We have to get you re-integrated into the Atominii. Get you all wired up as they say.’

  ‘I see,’ said Malik, his pale and bulbous head catching the streetlights like a lobed moon. ‘And where can I achieve such implants?’

  ‘We can sort that all out later,’ said Filipe, ‘for now we will be using nootropics.’

  ‘And so who will pay for my treatment, you?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Filipe eagerly. ‘Your brother.’

  ‘My...?’ Malik Serat gasped as the pieces started sliding into place. Yes, who else would take over the Erebus investment? Who else indeed! ‘Impossible.’

  ‘He is still alive, Doctor Serat,’ Filipe explained. ‘And he’s eager to meet with you again.’

  All this time the planet had shifted into a tumultuous hell, his brother had meanwhile secured his heritage; Vance Serat. Then he would at least have answers.

  ‘How is it my brother Vance still lives?’

  ‘Genetic therapy,’ said Filipe, ‘it’s good for those who can afford it. And your brother is a very wealthy and powerful man. He has a lot of influence.’

  Malik Serat almost fell over with his laughter.

  ‘Ahh - genetic therapy.’ He said in a farcically nostalgic vain, ready to tell all about it. ‘Filipe, have you ever heard of genetic engineering?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Filipe, ‘it was the beginning of eugenics. It started all kinds of fields of thought regarding human behaviour and physical characteri-’

  ‘Yeah yeah yeah, exactly,’ Serat interrupted, ‘and what about it? Well…think about it.’ He said, deep in his own thoughts all of a sudden. ‘Think about those days when life was supposed to be mechanical, when the word design was inherent in both religion and science.’ Serat gave the boy a moment to consider it. ‘I mean before the Olympians and before Adamoss began designing things for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Filipe, baffled slightly. ‘Yes, I know. I follow.’

  ‘The way everything was referred to in a very mechanical sense. As though genes are something one can tweak without there being consequences.’ Serat then sat back and pondered, arms crossed as he glared out the window.

  ‘The Olympian Genetics,’ he started, ‘a genetic breed of people who came from competitive games. In my time…people would do almost anything to distract from the misery of their predicament. They were willing to send able scientists into a black hole simply to distract from the horrors of their own reality. No wonder the results became derogatory references like gene-freaks.’

  Filipe listened, and he offered a glass of champagne forth, but Malik Serat gave it no consideration. He eyes were unshakably locked.

  ‘The Olympians were early examples of mankind’s attempted domination of the genome. These experiments were terribly disastrous, resulting in abominations of humanity. Fearsome shadows of our libidinal imaginations.’

  Filipe nodded, sipping the drink lightly.

  ‘A slight change could make a sprinting athlete faster. But that one element would have disastrous consequences for all. Make a human athlete like a freakish mutant of nature, and you will come across conflicts. Herein begins the chaos. Imagine a world where hunger is everywhere, where hope is absent. Chaos is good. That was my world Filipe. That was my time.’ And Malik glared at the young man with an almost visceral hatred and envy.

  ‘My generation,’ he said, ‘was one of desperation and starvation. Science failed my world. Technology did not save us and neither did design. Only farce saved us from tragedy. So when you talk of gene-therapy…to me it means nothing.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Filipe began, bowing his head, ‘I’m amazed that you can believe all of that. Just look at this wonderful world.’

  Malik hadn’t seen it, and couldn’t yet. The buildings were more numerous and higher and more elaborate, huge glass towers lit with emerald lights and intersected with warmer, more golden tinctures. The pixel pigmentation designs of apartment windows stepped out of the edges of the tall standing towers, interrupting their uniformity in the architectural pattern that reminded Malik of one of his puzzle pieces back on Orandoré, towers like a half-finished game of Jenga.

  Distantly in the hardland precariat zones he saw frequent explosions and bistres of smoke, the soar of a strike-ship’s engines angling back towards the stratosphere as burgeoning napalm conflated below. And the sky was populated with floating shapes and objects he’d never before seen. The elevator to Orandoré was a grand sight to see from the coast, a silver belt tethered beyond the clouds. Even now its beacon shone and pushed one of the elevator vessels along its column, its light shields spreading to stop the photonic laser-beam from blinding the city population below.

  The technology blinked and illuminated beneath deadly super-storms. But it hadn’t saved mankind as supposed. Virtual worlds of the Nexus interface now generated the sub-real chimeras and programs of a new electronic ecosystem for the cyber-city. But even there imagination was generated, not originated. It was a world that existed digitally and occupied a visible space seen with the ocular contact lenses, but as far as he could see they were still constructs, still human, nothing of true transcendence, merely an instance of dependence. Still mortal and weak and dogmatic and deluded. Whatever happened in late capitalism caused a rapacious technological leap and a new dependency, but it wasn’t evolution. It was not saving humanity or Titanism or whatever these beings referred to themselves as now. Mankind was devolving into enfeebled dependant hedonistic idiots, stuck in a deadlock of want and superficial acceptance. The Atominii was devolution in glamour, all glitz, morally and intellectually meaningless, a cyber-utilitarianism of heightened pleasure and neuro-commerce, a prescribed utopia.

  *

  After about half an hour of flight time they’d dropped onto a highway and the wings of the craft folded away and they’d slowed down considerably. They streamed along a private road under a rhythm of streetlights that beat above the windows. The road snaked to a large open area and Malik Serat could see the blooming of soft light terra cotta tones coasting up from within the confines of a huge open quarry. And as the road edged around the top he could see over six hundred feet down into the hole in the earth where the lights illuminated a beautiful blue lake filled with yachts. In the north face of the quarry side was a multi-layered building of glass and pale solid concrete and it was complimented by a large waterfall, recirculated from the lake’s bottom to arch over the building in a colourful jet, shifting colour in harmonised nuances. Laser lights also beamed into the sky to pattern a criss-cross of beams, synchronised to form new patterns
and shapes in the spray of water misting below.

  The V-TOL plane drew gradually onto a platform, which stepped over the edge of the quarry, and rolled to a stop. A moment later the platform began to descend, gliding down towards the lake at the bottom of the scree where boulders rested and reeds strung across the conglomeration of rocks. Dry shoots and stalks nested in the marsh where artificial terns and plovers settled about the shallow. The elevator platform set down into the bottom and a narrow glass bridge ascended from the water to meet with the platform’s edge, constructing a roadway that led to the building and bridged the lake’s basin. They rolled smoothly across the bridge, its hydrophobic surface unsticking the water like skeltering beads of mercury that left it perfectly dry for the wheels. And they soon arrived to the building’s foyer where the golden lights bloomed from chandeliers. Holograms swept the sky and androids were serving drinks to the socialites and special guests who were fraternising and consorting in celebration this night. The V-TOL plane shifted slowly into the building and people stepped out of the way as tables slid apart to create a road and people on the banisters and stairwells were applauding and cheering.