Nihala

by Scott Burdick

  Am I dreaming, or is this another recording from the VR Archives?

  Unlike when she had viewed the memories of Peter, Kayla lacked a physical form at all. As strange as inhabiting Peter’s body had been, this ghostlike existence proved even more disorienting.

  Laura continued her report. “Presidents, prime ministers, kings, religious leaders, and all the members of the recently formed World Council are in attendance.”

  Laura motioned to a large crowd of dignitaries taking their seats before a raised platform with a table and several microphones perched atop it. A few billowing clouds drifted in the summer sky. Behind them stood the Wall, with its final segment hanging from a crane.

  I’m seeing Potemia’s Founding Day. A date every child of her village learned before any other: March 21st, 2080.

  “Our sponsor for this broadcast is Babies-to-Order. Experience the joy of parenthood without the hassles or uncertain results of old-fashioned pregnancy.” Laura smiled and winked. “Full disclosure—I’m a frequent customer! Thanks to our sponsor’s generous support, our coverage is live in Virtual 3D with three full legions of micro-cameras in place so you may wander at your leisure throughout the proceedings.”

  So it was a news broadcast from the virtual archive rather than a dream. Is my subconscious mind seeking these recordings out? Or is someone sending them to me on purpose?

  Kayla shifted her viewpoint past Laura and through the assembled crowd of dignitaries. At least she had more freedom of movement in this dream.

  The reporter’s voice remained clear, despite her distance. “After the horrors of the Neo-Luddite Plague, it will be a relief to rid the civilized world of these heartless criminals.”

  The audience sat grim-faced. Few spoke. Though their clothing and skin colors varied wildly, every one of the men and woman looked no more than twenty-five years old.

  “I myself lost a husband, as well as …” Laura trailed off and took a ragged breath. “The truce and subsequent peace deal has been a bitter pill for all of us to swallow.”

  Kayla drifted toward the platform, where VIPs sat in dour judgment.

  “Most citizens would prefer seeing the Neo-Luddites face justice for their crimes against humanity,” Laura said. “Rewarding them with the entire African continent seems beyond absurd.”

  A man shuffled up the stairs of the platform and headed toward the other dignitaries. He looked out of place in his well-worn tweed jacket with the obligatory elbow patches of a university professor. A sprinkling of gray flecked his tousled brown hair, and his sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and sagging shoulders suggested long months of toil and exhaustion. A hundred glares followed his every movement.

  “The controversial Professor Reinhold Watts is taking his seat,” Laura said. “Whatever your opinion of this man, he remains the greatest scientist and inventor of our era, having solved the mystery of aging, creating the quantum processor that has made the thriving new society of Ixtalia possible, and, of course, synthesizing the antidote to the Plague virus within a week of its outbreak.”

  The professor nodded to those to the left and right of him, but received no response.

  “It’s fair to say that without him, the Neo-Luddites would have succeeded. Although many claim that it is through this very treaty brokered by Professor Watts that they have succeeded.”

  Laura paused in her commentary, and Kayla drifted through the crowd.

  “Filthy Neo-Luddite sympathizer,” one woman grumbled to her husband. “They should lock him inside the Wall too.”

  “I agree,” the man said. “It’s like retiring Hitler to a Caribbean island!”

  Kayla approached the wide platform with around a dozen dignitaries seated at the back. At the front of the stage sat a carved table with a few papers rustling in the slight breeze, held in place by a glass paperweight of the Earth. The backdrop of the Wall reflected the scene in reverse and lent a sense of unreality to everything.

  Laura’s disembodied voice resumed her narration. “Without the great scientist’s threat to withdraw his immortality pill from the world market, there would have been no cease-fire, and the Neo-Luddite War would likely still be raging.”

  Kayla brought her viewpoint closer to Professor Watts. He slumped in his chair. Below dark-rimmed eyes, his cheek twitched now and then. A tremor rattled his right hand.

  “African leaders have called the evacuation of the remnants of the continent’s population racist, though many aboriginal tribes blame technology for the destruction of their way of life and have elected to stay in Potemia.”

  The clomp of boots announced the arrival of General Colrev onto the platform.

  The professor nodded to him, but Colrev walked by without a word and took a seat on the opposite side of the podium.

  “Our audience will notice no love lost between Professor Watts and the illustrious—some may say infamous—General Colrev. It’s been reported that when the professor delivered his ultimatum, the general attacked him and would have killed him but for the intervention of security.”

  Laura’s tone switched to upbeat. “And now, a word from our sponsor.”

  The scene morphed to the smiling face of a woman whose beauty nearly equaled Fatima’s. Two adorable newborns lay swaddled in her arms.

  “Here at Babies-to-Order,” the spokesmodel said, “we take the stress out of baby-making.”

  The scene cut to the face of an ordinary mother. “I’ve always wanted a big family, but dreaded the messiness of pregnancy and the oppression of genetic chance.” The view pulled back and revealed three dozen toddlers playing on the floor. “But Babies-to-Order solved all that, and I had my dream family within a year!”

  “That’s right,” the spokesmodel said. “With or without a spouse, we can customize your newborn to your own specifications of height, looks, sexual orientation, and even natural-born talents—within the government’s Gene-Purification Guidelines, of course.” She winked.

  The spokesmodel strolled toward a clear chamber radiating a series of wires, tubes, and sensors. She motioned to the empty cylinder with practiced gestures, highlighting the features.

  “Babies-to-Order uses the latest in gestational technology to safely and conveniently grow your new family members in one of its millions of artificial wombs.”

  The spokesmodel joined a gleaming robot changing diapers. Its chest telescoped outward into an approximation of a chrome breast, tipped with a wiggling grub nozzle. A bar-coded infant latched onto it, like a carp snagging a bait line, and began sucking. Other robots instructed older children on the basics of reading, arithmetic, and art.

  “And be sure to sample our newest line of Robo-nannies. They make raising children as easy as making them!” The spokesmodel smiled, showing off a display of sparkling teeth. “So contact your Babies-to-Order sales agent and place your custom order immediately to take advantage of our two-for-one limited-time offer!”

  The spokesmodel dissolved back into reporter Laura. “Yes, indeed, the Plague years reminded us all of the important things in life, and the subsequent baby boom has been unprecedented.”

  An approaching helicopter broke into Laura’s on-air advertisement. “This must be the arrival of the treaty’s signatories.”

  The helicopter landed in a backwash of wind. The rotors slowed and then came to a stop before a large door on the side hinged open onto a short stairway. A woman in an elegant red-and-gold Indian sari glided down the stairs and made her way onto the platform. Like everyone else, she seemed in her mid-twenties. Applause greeted her as she took a seat at a table on the front of the platform.

  Laura continued her play-by-play. “Despite the unpopularity of the peace deal, World President Kasturba Gandhi’s poll numbers have remained high, with few blaming her for the painful choice forced upon humanity.”

  The crowd fell silent. Soldiers attached a long ramp to the helicopter’s stairs.

  “This will be the world’s first broadcast view of the mastermind of the Neo-Lu
ddite movement,” Laura said.

  An old man in a wheelchair emerged in the doorway, and Peter rolled him down the ramp with deliberate care.

  “And there he is,” Laura said. “The man known by the Neo-Luddites as the Founder, accompanied by his closest co-conspirator, the infamous Peter Nighthawk.”

  Peter ignored the sea of angry faces as he guided the wheelchair down the ramp. After so many dreams viewing the world through his eyes, it was strange looking at him from the outside.

  A few in the crowd gasped at the sight of the wrinkled skin, long white beard, and curved back of the Founder. Arthritic hands lifted an oxygen mask to his face, and he inhaled a few wheezy breaths before gazing beyond the crowd to the Wall. His eyes gleamed with emotion.

  “Only after agreeing to the peace terms did the world learn the identity of the man the Neo-Luddites call the Founder. As every person on the planet now knows, he is none other than convicted terrorist and murderer, Theodore John Kaczynski, better known as the University and Airline Bomber—or Unabomber for short.”

  The magazine in the desert with the drawing of the hooded man wearing dark glasses! The crumbling article inside had said that the terrorist attended Harvard at the age of sixteen, become the youngest Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, and then abandoned society in hopes of fomenting a revolution against technology.

  Just like the Founder of Potemia. How could I not have made the connection earlier?

  Kayla moved closer to the old man in the wheelchair and stared into his dark eyes—the eyes of a visionary prophet—and the greatest mass murderer in all of history.

  The reporter continued her narration as officials placed the treaty documents before the two leaders. “The Unabomber’s string of terrorist attacks killed three and injured twenty-three, but failed to spark the uprising against technology he’d hoped to inspire. To avoid a lengthy trial that might have given this madman a public platform with which to preach his doctrine of violence, the government offered him a deal of life imprisonment, which he accepted. He then faded from public consciousness in his near-complete isolation in a maximum security prison in Colorado. It is a decision everyone now regrets.”

  President Gandhi signed the treaty and handed the pen to the Founder. “Thank you,” he said. She made no reply, her face tense.

  The Founder signed his name to the document—Theodore John Kaczynski. A group of farmers standing within the Wall applauded. They wore the type of homespun clothing Kayla had grown up with and would have fit right into her home village nearly five centuries later.

  Their faces glowed with the ecstasy of seeing their wheelchair-bound savior. As Tem often pointed out, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Soon, the towering structure of the Wall would separate these incompatible viewpoints permanently.

  Peter took the pen from the old man’s trembling hand and set it on the table.

  “Let me have a word with my old friend,” the Founder said.

  Peter rolled the wheelchair to Professor Watts. “In 1857,” Kaczynski said, “Carlo Pisacane said that ideas spring from deeds. It is where the term Propaganda of the Deed has its origin. At long last, our deeds have won our freedom, my boy!”

  Professor Watts shook his head. “You may have achieved freedom from technology, but what of the freedom of the mind to search for truth? These people you’re leading into exile may have chosen freely, but have their children and their children’s children?”

  “They will be freer than those outside the Wall,” the Founder said. “Technology will demand absolute enslavement. Mark my words.”

  “You see only the negative side of science. For every old freedom lost, a new freedom is gained.” The professor’s voice rose with passion. “Life is change. The entire history of the Earth is a record of constant adaptation. Evolution requires it. Freezing progress at one arbitrary point is impossible, don’t you see that?”

  “But I have done it!” The Founder gestured toward the Wall.

  Here was the actual man Kayla had been taught to revere alongside God himself, the prophet who preserved one continent from the degradations that would sterilize the rest of the Earth. Savior, environmentalist … murderer?

  The Founder took another breath from his oxygen mask and smiled at the professor. “You haven’t forgotten our conversations when you attended my class at Berkeley, have you?”

  Professor Watts had been his student? Such irony seemed beyond comprehension.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Professor Watts said with a note of sadness.

  “I can’t convince you to join us?”

  The professor chuckled. “A tempting invitation, indeed.”

  The Founder looked at the Wall and the settlers beyond it. “In my younger years, whenever I turned despondent, one place gave me solace—the final untouched plateau in a remote part of Montana. You would have loved it. Rolling hills, deep ravines, waterfalls—wild, unsullied by man or machine.” His skeletal fists clenched, and his eyes dropped to his lap. “I went there for the last time in the summer of 1983. The bastards had bulldozed a road right through its heart. It was as if someone butchered my mother.”

  The Founder looked back to the Wall. “That was the moment I decided to fight. If not for that single road in the middle of nowhere, Potemia would not have come to be.”

  Professor Watts nodded to his old friend, and Peter maneuvered the wheelchair through the hostile crowd toward the final gap in the Wall.

  A dozen soldiers accompanied the pair as a security detail. As they neared the Wall, one guard in front of the wheelchair turned and lunged at the old man.

  “For my dead children!” the soldier screamed and tore at the Founder’s throat, knocking him from his wheelchair in the process. Not one of the other soldiers moved to stop him.

  Peter clamped a marine-style headlock around the soldier’s neck and dragged him off the elderly terrorist.

  Soldiers yanked Peter off their compatriot. Angry shouts arose from the settlers inside the Wall as guns leveled at them.

  “Kill them all!” someone shouted from the crowd. As the soldiers sighted down their rifle barrels, their hatred seemed unstoppable. Was she to see yet another massacre? The terrified faces of the Neo-Luddite families mirrored those whom Peter had killed so long before in Iraq.

  A woman stepped forward from the settlers and held up a metal canister. Though she wore the dress of a farmer, it was Peter’s lover, Susan.

  “Let them go!” Susan shouted. “Or I will release this second virus into the atmosphere, and the war will continue.”

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd of onlookers, but none of the soldiers lowered their weapons. General Colrev made no move to stop them. Susan raised the canister higher, her eyes narrowing.

  “Stand down!” President Gandhi ordered. Not a single soldier moved. “General Colrev, I’m ordering you to control your men.”

  Colrev sighed. “Stand down.”

  The gun barrels lowered, and Susan relaxed.

  Two soldiers led the sobbing would-be assassin away, and the Founder waved off the doctors. Peter lifted him back into the wheelchair, and they continued forward. Blood leaked from a gash on his temple, and he labored for breath.

  The faces of the settlers glowed with awe and love as their savior approached.

  When only a few feet away, the Founder held up a hand, and Peter stopped. The man once known as the Unabomber took a deep breath from the oxygen mask, then tossed it aside as he labored to his feet. His back bent nearly double, and he held on to Peter and Professor Watts for support. “I won’t have that thing pollute my paradise,” the old man said as he looked with loathing on the wheelchair. He placed his hand on the smooth, mirror-like surface of the Wall. “I’ve done it,” he whispered.

  The Founder looked toward the faces waiting on the other side and shuffled toward them, his breaths coming in hoarse gulps. Then he slumped to the ground. A gasp rose from the crowds on both sides of the Wall
.

  “Do you want a doctor?” Professor Watts asked.

  “No, I’m ready …” The Founder’s breath wheezed from his chest in a long sigh, and none replaced it.

  Peter lifted the old man in his arms and carried him across the temporary walkway spanning the gap that would receive the final piece of the Wall. The settlers sobbed as Peter gave the body of their savior over to them.

  Susan ran to Peter and embraced him. Ten years had aged them both without youth treatments, but they looked young enough to start the family that would someday lead to her, unless …

  Unless my memories of Potemia are an illusion.

  Workers removed the walkway, and a crane maneuvered the final section of the Wall into position. The metal slab swung into place and slid one hundred feet into the concrete hole at the base of the Wall. The seams of the final metal section glowed for an instant before flowing into the smooth, unbroken surface that would separate the two societies for half a millennium. The milky energy field climbed skyward, and Kayla’s dream ended.

  She opened her eyes and sat up. Surrounding her bed was Ganesh, Sir Richard, and Tem.

  “Thank Vishnu you’re all right!” Ganesh said. “A medical drone is on its way—”

  “I’m fine,” Kayla said. What if an examination revealed her other secrets? Then Fatima’s words flooded her mind, and a crushing despondency swept through her. “Fatima said that all of my memories are lies.”

  “Ignore that devil of a girl!” Sir Richard said. “That’s only one explanation among dozens.”

  “Can you name another?” Kayla asked.

  The panther spluttered. “Well, not at the moment, but I assure you there must be at least one.”

  Tem knelt beside her bed. “Regardless of where they come from, the memories make you who you are.”

  Kayla turned away. “All my actions and thoughts are based on my experiences and choices. If someone manufactured every one of them, I’m nothing but a puppet programmed to react in a way someone else wants me to.” Kayla closed her eyes and lowered her head so her hair spilled across her face. “Without my memories, everything I am is a lie.”