The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3)

by Anthony Caplan

  The band, a six piece, major chord, power metal outfit -- James Hobo Revival out of Scotland -- so popular with the Sunnis and all the former third world people, started up with a medley of its greatest dance numbers, and the crowd seemed seized with a panicked sense of fleeting time, desperately mobbing the dance floor, instantly convulsed with a unifying tremor that resolved in a sustained jump-up. Before the song could end, Fatima, Ludmilla, Antwine and Jesus had found their way out to the dance floor and had joined in the frenzy. They all sang along to the chorus of the song the Revival was covering, the iconic escapist hit of a few years back, Sasha’s Bummer:

  Sasha, you could be

  The only one for me.

  All the time, in state,

  I’ll never hesitate

  In Sasha’s bummer.

  As soon as the song ended, Ludmilla smiled as if breaking the spell and walked away through the crowd, looking everyone in the eye with the sustained thought that unmitigated festivity was a thing of the past and everyone needed reminding. Inescapable mortality had once encumbered the people with a sense of despair and shame that was only lifted in shared moments of dimmed consciousness. Now it was like a sated diner insisting on his favorite slice of cheese out of a sense of obligation to his former vices, an illusion of choice that no longer had a reason to be.

  “Excuse me,” said a familiar voice. Walking between two tables, it was Prince Bantar.

  “Oh, hello, Bantar,” she said, trying desperately to come up with something better, but nothing was occurring to her. The Augment was just plain unreliable. But instead of dismay, she felt oddly happy, as if liberated from the need to be at her most clever.

  “Are you having fun?” he asked. His deep-set eyes were difficult to read, but his voice revealed no ironic undertones. Maybe he was genuinely curious as to her state of mind. She could understand that, since it was unclear to her exactly what she was feeling.

  “Fun is so over-rated, don’t you think?”

  “No. For me it is not. What else is there?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I suppose you mean that from the perspective of some kind of universal intelligence, is that right?”

  ”In terms of affective neuroscience.”

  “The forming of emotional bonds. Is that important, really?”

  “I want everyone to have fun tonight. You’re playing with me. That is understandable. You are American, no?"

  “No, don’t go, Bantar. Let’s talk. I didn’t mean it. I try not to be curt,” said Ludmilla, not even trying to keep her voice from cracking.

  “Would you like to see my collection of vintage video?”

  “Well, yes. That would be fun, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes. And we can keep talking. Follow me.”

  Bantar exchanged quick glances with his bodyguard, a giant with a shaved, glistening, perfectly domed skull who looked quickly around the roof-top and stepped away, letting Bantar and Ludmilla negotiate the cramped space around the dance floor.

  Nobody noticed as they passed through a sliding energy panel at the top of the elevator shaft and were quickly swooped down to Bantar’s gymnasium and theater complex on the 67th floor. The aluminum glass walls looked out at the black of the ocean and twinkling lights of drone aircraft patrolling the city’s airspace against terrorist threats. It had been months since any suicide bombing missions from Turkmenistan or the tribal areas along the Burmo-Cambodian border. The favorite targets were the CUA’s research facilities. There was always that possibility to guard against. The Sunnis were in an interesting position, though, with traditional ties to both the Turkmen and the Burmese tribesmen.

  They watched Hashtags #MyPetisWeird; Why Hollywood Won’t Work Anime Anymore; I Dare You Getting Tased and I Dare You Eating Man-Dogs’ Dinner. They watched Prince Christmas Special followed by Top Ten Amazing Facts about Ireland. They watched The Useless Sin of Avarice and Pope John Paul, Hero or the Anti-Christ. They watched Islamic Gay Fashionistas Istanbul, Spring. This last didn’t have a year in the title. Ludmilla was bothered by this fact, which seemed to rob the viewing of any causal or correlative link. For a long time they watched, Ludmilla hoping that it would suddenly right itself and make sense. But then Bantar suddenly got tired and for some reason switched to Al-Jazeera yearly news wrap-ups for the years 2060 to 2068, with the ceaselessly tiring, asexual Sunni newscasters in their bland Borg voices. He never laughed or passed comment. There was something atavistic and full of mystery about the selection process. She could see the lineup of videos as recorded by the nanoscreen’s memory.

  “Do you find these entertaining?” she finally asked Bantar. He was quiet. She guessed that he couldn’t answer. She didn't know what to make of it. There was nothing coming to her. And she still couldn’t tell how she felt. There was an emptiness inside her that was ultimately frightening, if she thought about it. She shivered. Bantar put his arm around her shoulder. Sports fishermen in Bermuda shorts and sunglasses cast nylon lines from a large bass fishing boat, while a man in a South American accent spoke in hushed, reverential tones about the technical specifications of their equipment.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m coming down with something. I can’t think.” She jumped up suddenly.

  “You can lie down. Don’t get upset. If you find it unsettling, we can turn it off and go back upstairs.”

  “Did you put something in the drink?” asked Ludmilla.

  “No, of course not. How can you think that?”

  “I’m falling asleep.”

  “You must be tired. And the sedative effects of random patterning, of course. That’s the point. We can get the thoughts to slow down without conscious meditation. But sometimes what comes up is fear. Do you feel afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “What has been lost? You have a secret.”

  She sat back down. His piercing eyes had an uncanny ability to focus on some aspect of her face that revealed something. She felt naked and afraid.

  “How can you tell?” she asked. “Are you on the INN keys?”

  “No. I don’t want the responsibility. We Sunnis have bigger plans than that. You know, of course about the prophecy?”

  “No.”

  “The time of the Caliphate is at hand. On the seventh wave Mohammed's army will rise from defeat. This is the seventieth anniversary of the second intifada of the devout against the Shia apostasy.”

  “I see.”

  “But anyway, that is all I know. You have lost something. Tell me.”

  She confessed she was worried about Chagnon. Not knowing what the truth was about his location had upset her. She wasn’t thinking straight. And the Augment was suffering some strains due to flattening dynamism over the last several months. Bantar flicked his wrist to turn off the screen display. The lights dimmed and all they could see were their artifex lights. She had a couple of messages: Fatima and Jesus both asking where she was.

  “Allah’s purposes sometimes are difficult to discern, especially to the impure. Sometimes we need to turn to tradition and the deeper wisdom of the elders. Who are your elders that they may advise you?”

  “You mean my father. We haven’t spoken recently. Thinks of me once in a blue moon. My grandfather? He’s dead. Oh, but you can still access his mind if you link to the facility. It's not very user friendly. Kind of like an oracle, I guess. Not very comforting to me. I would much rather seek solace among the living, Bantar.”

  “I understand solace. Your predilections are known to me.”

  “So?”

  “You are like an eagle flying by two lights, seeking your home among foreign cliffs.” He sounded so much like an Al-Jazeera broadcast.

  “Bantar? Are you saying I’m lost? Is that a judgement? How can you judge another person? We’re all imperfect, joined together in a quest for higher order and, I don’t know, greater harmony. There is no straight or true path in the desert. You should know that.”

  “The way of the prophet makes all paths straight. Gives u
s ultimate peace, yes. But your path, oh my God. Talk about twisted. I guess that’s why I like you, though. What about a family, a husband?”

  “That’s important, I guess.”

  “But what do you really want? Where do you seek your liberation from your occupation, from your public persona, from your augmented life? There must be a higher ground for the eagle in you.”

  “Knowledge. Knowledge is a relief to the mind of the weary and the captive to mortality. Spinoza.”

  "Spinoza," he scoffed. “Knowledge.”

  Her heart twisted. Was it hate? That would be better, a start at least.

  "What do you seek, Bantar?"

  "The gold standard. Worldly power."

  "We don't have individual power in the West. That's what gives us our comparative advantage. The global order of the Augment seeks only the greater good of intelligent creation. My children. Your children, the children of all the people, all the thought forms out there in time.”

  "That's very big of you. Do you actually believe that shit? What about unequal access? Generations stagnating in slow connection while the sons and daughters of bankers and INN keys, etcetera. What about us? This?” He waved his arms around as if signifying the night itself.

  "Are you trying to upset me?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Well, you've succeeded."

  "You are very attractive when you are upset."

  She studied Bantar’s face in the dim light and shadows of the room. She was aware of herself making choices and slowed down to study the moment, see what she could learn about herself. Bantar was a man who viewed women as prizes in a grand game, a game set to him by his position in society as much as his gender, but a game nevertheless. He might even have spiked the drink. She felt she needed to rebuff his advances, to send a message that women were never just an end in themselves, but like men were a means, sometimes just a way of passing the time, but nevertheless there was an equality to the process of being a means rather than an end. But a) Bantar would fail to see this no matter what action she decided upon, and b) Bantar was a means for her of for instance learning something new about herself. She wasn’t sure what that lesson would be or where it would take her, but learning in and of itself was a useful thing, a provocation, a stirring of the dusty synapses crying out for information, for relevance, for the speed of light.

  With a quick breath, she stood before him, leaned down and kissed him. His mouth opened and a slick, warm tongue darted in and out of her mouth, like a viper’s. His small, thin-boned hands fumbled around her waist trying to get under her shirt. They fell together on the sofa and caressed like awkward teenagers, groping for flesh wherever they could. Ludmilla undressed herself completely, standing naked before him. He looked at her. She was astounded at the pleasure it gave her. He was saying something. She couldn’t hear.

  The party was still going strong hours later. Ludmilla exited the shaft and walked over to the edge of the deck where she stopped to look out over the city. Bantar made his way through the crowd largely incognito. His security detachment fanned out around him, spreading like a dark liquid in the darkness of the dancers still performing on the stage. Ludmilla checked her artifex and spoke softly with her wrist upturned.

  “Where are you guys?” she asked.

  “In the pool,” said Fatima.

  “How is that?”

  “Hot. Sweaty. Crowded. We’re thinking of getting out. How about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “No. Or rather, yes. It’s not. What is like me, Fatima?”

  “Sure of yourself. On solid ground. What would I do without that, Lulu? The rest of us are slipping and sliding.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to come to the pool?”

  “Not really. Could you take me home?”

  “Of course.”

  At street level, the night sky was obscured by clouds. The portercabs circled like rodents searching for food, untrusting of the algorithms, insisting on the primacy of intuition and providence. Fatima said she had left Antwine and Jesus at the pool with magenta mimosas, happily melting in the tub along with some Belgian helidrome operators. Her hair was wet and lank and her face clean and unlined, almost saintly in the flashing yellows and greens of the portercabs and streetlights. Ludmilla told Fatima about Bantar and the false feelings of intimacy she did not trust. She had learned that there was nothing in her mind that she could hold on to as a bulwark against insanity. She even questioned whether it was worth talking to anyone anymore, wondered would it be wiser to take a vow of silence and spend the rest of her life in private contemplation. Then she confessed that she feared for their survival. This strange sense of doom had eaten at her for the last several days. She had been toying with ideas of escape, of death. She had anxiety, dreams drenched in blood, exploding planets. The Oort cloud was about to unleash its barrage. Chagnon had bailed, not wanting to face the chaotic wreckage that would ensue once news leaked out of what was happening. Ludmilla sensed catastrophe looming for the powerful classes. She had not been able to keep it a secret any longer. What would Fatima say now?

  “I admire you, Ludmilla. You’re our best hope if things go south. The way you’ve been keeping it together? I just think you are the best.”

  “Thanks, Fatima. By the way it’s called incurable optimism.”

  “I just need to believe in something, and that’s you. What do you want to do now? That’s my question.”

  “Just go home. Sleep. It’s hard being the only one in the room that knows how imminent disaster is.”

  “Now you have me.”

  “Yes. But don’t tell Antwine or Jesus.”

  “Isn’t there something to do?”

  “Well, I’ve pretty much run through the options. Without a smoking gun all I have is hunches and wishes.”

  “Someone you can approach who you trust?”

  “Nobody except you and Samael. But there is a way to access the Augment in an investigative function. We have the night maneuver.”

  “Chagnon has the night machine?”

  “I should think so. He invented it. You’re led by your neural profile to seek out areas of the Augment that have an impact on your shadow self.”

  “How?”

  “Well. It involves circuit of consciousness nanosensors arranged to match the neural profile of the agent. You launch into the server bank at a strategic intersection and then from the administrative end you wait and track. There is a bit of a recall glitch since the nanosensors have not been designed specifically to interact with the broca neurons. They do better with visual imagery.”

  “So…”

  “So any synthesis from the program usually comes after months, sometimes years of decoding.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “I’ll try anything at this point. Don’t you think?

  “You are the brave woman.”

  “Well, I’m going to bat for myself in this case."

  “Can I help?”

  “Maybe. Might need you to reel me back.”

  “Are you asleep?”

  “Yes, hooked up by IV to the computer bank either at the CUA headquarters or in Chagnon’s office.”

  They both slept late. Ludmilla couldn’t remember any of her dream. But she remembered the clarity of her decision the previous night. She called the CUA head of research, a woman named Dawn Heffley. After hearing Ludmilla’s dispassionate explanation, Heffley seemed almost to welcome the chance to perform the insertion. They were just lying fallow anyway, she said, waiting for decisions to be made. Ludmilla did nothing to dispel Dawn’s assumption that her request for insertion had Chagnon’s blessings.

  That afternoon, around three, just before the sun disappeared in a wintry cloudbank, Ludmilla and Fatima walked across the empty Plaza Piula over to the sprawling research wing. Ludmilla was wearing a simple neoprene coat and synthetic glass pants and high heels. Fatima wore a long, bl
ue, artificial silk dress. The wind blew in from the water, and the wind turbines spun out on the bay.

  Dawn showed them both into the design wing and had them change into hospital scrubs. Then she gave Ludmilla a pair of ear protectors and had her lie down on the bed that slid into the barium chamber for a brain mapping. Once the circuitry had been assembled on the grid of sandwiched silica tubes, about the size of a small button, Ludmilla was asked to lie down again, and this time two chimera with lolling tongues applied the needle in her arm and hooked the wires to the nanoscreen controller. Ludmilla rolled her eyes back in her head. Fatima felt her hand go limp. One of the chimerae asked her to sit down. It would be a long wait before Ludmilla would regain consciousness.

  “How long?” asked Fatima.

  “You could go home and wait for a call. Or stay around in case it happens.”

  “”She wants me here in case she needs help.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Reeling her back in.”

  “Some of them don’t want to come back.”

  “Why?”

  “They see things. Hear things. The siren call.”

  ‘Yeah. Not Ludmilla. She’s pretty clear-headed. Not falling for any sirens.”

  Neither of the chimerae answered. They both lay down in dog-like poses in front of the controller. They were making themselves comfortable. Fatima waited.

  There.

  It is brilliant in the dark. I can see diamonds, pin pricks, and taste the minerals seeping in the drips of water. There are voices, people searching for a way. They are disembodied. Is this right, part of the process? I hear the voices of Samael Chagnon and my grandfather interspersed with the singing of whales. This is heaven or hell, a highly personalized version I am privileged to receive. I am one of the lucky ones. I am responsible. I must help. I cannot lose.