Insurgence

by Ken MacLeod

  Carlos could hear shuffles, coughs, the sound of cigars being lit or relit, the glug of bottles. Get on with it, he was thinking.

  “We’re all here in a strange place.” She swept an arm around the skyline. “A stranger place even than the sims some of us have been in before. But in one way it’s far more real than any of them, any of these speculations of far-future planets. Because it is a fantasy, it tells us the truth. The truth of the world we’re in is that it’s full of strange creatures. Ghosts. Monsters. Vast inhuman intelligences. Even zombies. But we”—she tapped a fist on her sternum—“are different from all of them.” She flung her arms open. “We are human!”

  A scatter of applause.

  “We’ve all come here from different places. We’re all, very soon, going out together to battle. In the next weeks we’ll be busy with training for that battle. We’ll find it hard to all come together at one occasion like this. So Durward and I thought this might be a good time, and maybe the last time, for us all to show each other we mean what we say.”

  She paused for a few seconds, and looked at, it seemed, everyone in the crowd. Carlos felt a momentary jolt, almost electric, as her eyes met his, fixed on them for a split second, and swept past his gaze to meet another’s. An old and easy trick, he knew, but an effective one.

  “We believe we’re human. Yes?”

  There was an awkward moment of silence, as if everyone were thinking, well, hang on, it’s complicated…

  Then came a yell of “Yes!” which launched a collective shout of agreement.

  “We believe human consciousness is the most precious thing in the universe. Yes?”

  “Yes!” This time it was immediate.

  “We know we’re in a simulation?” Her tone was almost quizzical, the crowd’s response braced with laughter.

  “We know that AIs and p-zombies aren’t conscious?”

  This time, the roar of agreement had an undertone of questioning.

  Jax smiled, as if acknowledging the query in the general tone. “Well, some AIs are conscious.” She put an arm around Durward’s shoulder. That got a laugh. Jax disengaged her arm and stretched it upward, so that the sleeve fell back. With the other hand she smacked the skin of her bared forearm.

  “This isn’t flesh,” she said. “Look at your own arms, your hands, your friends’ faces. This isn’t flesh.”

  “What’s she getting at?” Rillieux whispered.

  “Oh fuck,” said Newton, under his breath.

  “What?” asked Carlos and Rillieux together.

  “Wait, wait…”

  “It’s all electricity!” Jax shouted. “We’re all electricity!”

  Carlos shot Blum a sharp, querying glance, but Blum didn’t meet his eye, and raised one shoulder as if in half a shrug, or to ward off a blow.

  “It’s all electricity!” Jax proclaimed again, making lifting-up gestures with her hands.

  The crowd, or most of it, responded in a good-humoured chant. “It’s all electricity! It’s all electricity!”

  Jax now waved her arms downward. The tumult sank.

  “We all know these things. We’re all in agreement. Now—let’s see, and let’s show each other, how firmly we believe them. We’ve all, each and every one of us, killed p-zombies in training exercises.” Her gaze swept the crowd, challengingly. “Has anyone not?”

  No hands went up, but people were looking at each other, with puzzlement and in some instances, dawning realisation.

  “P-zombies aren’t human, and this isn’t flesh.”

  Jax gestured to the boggart. It picked up the spitted joint, apparently oblivious to the heat of the skewer, and laid it on one of the big serving plates on the table.

  “This isn’t flesh,” Jax repeated, pointing at the steaming joint.

  There was a collective gasp, a susurrus through the crowd.

  “Fu-uck!” Newton breathed.

  “So there can be nothing wrong with eating it,” Jax said. She stepped elegantly down from the bench, in a flurry of skirts and a fiery flash of jewelled shoe. No fake Docs for her today. Durward jumped down beside her, and picked up the carving knife and fork. He cut her a small, thin slice, and served it to her on one of the small plates. Jax very slowly and deliberately stuck a dainty fork in the meat and raised it to her mouth, then quickly stuffed the slice in and chewed it and swallowed.

  She smiled. “It’s good,” she said. “Tastes like pork.”

  Nervous laughter. Durward carved and ate a slice for himself, and nodded and smiled.

  Jax wiped her wrist across her mouth and chin, then she and Durward beckoned.

  “Come on, everyone!” Jax cried. “Show us all you mean what you said!”

  One by one, some eagerly, others hesitantly at first, people stepped forward for the symbolic repast. Durward carved, Jax served. The new lot were among the first, followed by Salter, Voronov and Paulos from the original Arcane squad, then Lamont and Singer from those who’d come up from SH-17 and brought in Baser and Newton.

  Carlos stayed right where he was. So did Newton and Rillieux. Blum took a step forward, then turned back to where Carlos stood. His face looked green. Carlos passed him a bottle of brandy. He swigged and handed it back. Carlos looked at Newton and Rillieux, side by side clasping hands, knuckles white. He shook his head slightly. They returned the gesture.

  Carlos couldn’t have explained why he didn’t want to partake. Everything Jax had said was true. Ethically, what she was serving on plates with little forks was on a par with any meat. Perhaps more so: you could be morally certain p-zombies didn’t have subjectivity, whereas with non-human animals it was a theoretical conclusion from the materialist theory of consciousness. That was the argument with which she’d goaded him to eat honey with her—honey with his honey—back in the day. Without language there is no subject, and what is not a subject is an object. He could even understand why Jax was performing this ritual of eating p-zombie flesh. Precisely because it was taboo, and precisely because the taboo was in the circumstances irrational, breaking it would bind together all who shared in the act. To refuse was by implication to accuse your comrades of being murderers and cannibals. To repudiate it later would be to accuse yourself.

  By now, everyone was in front of the four of them. Carlos looked at three variously dark, uniformly pale faces, one by one, and saw the same conclusion being drawn.

  “Let’s leave,” he said.

  Together they walked up to the house.

  “Are we being irrational?”

  It was a question so characteristic of Rillieux that Carlos and Newton caught each other smiling to themselves. The four dissenters had decamped to the back kitchen, warm in the late afternoon sunlight. Both doors to the room were open, as were the front doors of the house, and the sounds of distant revelry now and then rang along the long, high hallway. Carlos had an obscure feeling it was important that the doors be open, beyond letting fresh air in and the smoke from Blum’s and Rillieux’s cigars out. They didn’t want to feel like conspirators. Or to look like such, if anyone were to happen by.

  “In my case, probably,” Blum replied. He sipped brandy from a tin beaker, drew on his cigar and sighed out a plume that rolled across the table top like a morning sea fog. “I tried to nerve myself for it, but when it came to the bit my gorge rose.” He laughed harshly. “And I’d butchered the meat myself.”

  “Butchered it in every sense?” Carlos quipped, and regretted his words as soon as they were out of his mouth. “Sorry, mate,” he added at once.

  Blum flipped a hand. “No offence. Nah, on the narrow point at issue, well, the churl was coming for me with an adz. Put a cross-bolt through his chest, slashed his throat and dragged him off. We were…” He waved his cigar. “Tactical situation, irrelevant. The point is, I knew about Jax and Durward’s plan. We all did. The new squads were all up for it. I had given them the whole spiel about p-zombies, and convinced them, so they were happy to have their fun. Fell on the villagers like Bolshevik
s on kulaks.” His lips compressed. “Or Black Hundreds on a shtetl, if you prefer.”

  Carlos had no idea what Blum was talking about, but Newton and Rillieux nodded solemnly.

  “So…” Carlos said, to avoid any diversion, “you say you butchered the meat?”

  “Oh yes. Hacked off a leg, took it with us and hung it in smoke in the shepherd’s hut we used as a base for our raids. That was a couple of days ago. We brought the thigh here on the cart, wrapped in a combat jacket.”

  “You did all that and you couldn’t eat it?” Rillieux sounded incredulous.

  Blum shrugged. “Like you said, irrational.”

  “We’re not being irrational,” Newton said. “And it’s got nothing, nothing, to do with whether what they’re all getting up to down there is wrong in any sort of philosophical sense.”

  He looked around as if expecting disagreement.

  “I can’t explain why I wouldn’t do it,” Carlos said. “I mean, Jax was right.” He thumped a fist on the table. “This is all electricity. No animals were harmed in the making of this picture. So if you’ve got a good explanation of why we’re all here swigging brandy to keep our stomachs down and not down there wiping grease off our lips, I’m all ears.”

  Newton leaned forward, elbows on table, gesticulating as he spoke. “It’s an initiation ceremony. A hazing ritual. Because it’s shameful—and let’s face it, no one there is going to put this little incident on their CV or brag about it on a date—and because you have to overcome a revulsion you know is irrational but is still powerful, I mean like literally visceral, it binds you together, right?”

  “I had figured out that much,” said Carlos.

  “We all had,” said Rillieux.

  “Uh-huh,” said Blum.

  “Sure, sure,” Newton went on, a little testily. He placed his open palms in parallel, with a chopping gesture. “Just laying out the parameters, OK? The question is, why didn’t we want to join in? And I think the answer is we knew just what we’d be joining if we did. Well, what is it? It ain’t the Axle, we’re all in that, we’ve all fucking died for it already. And it ain’t Arcane, we’ve all proved our fucking loyalty to the agency, whether in the selection process or in the hell cellars. And whether we were taking it or dishing it out, let’s say.” He shot Rillieux a wry smile; she glanced away, as if abashed. “And it’s not loyalty to our squads. We don’t even have a squad structure sorted out yet, though I’m sure the warlock is running org tables in part of his mind as we speak. So what does that leave?” He scratched the back of his head, fingernails raking his short hair, and took a deep breath and laid his hands open on the table. “What we’d have been joining, binding ourselves into, is loyalty to Jax.”

  “Or Jax and the warlock,” said Carlos, recalling how they’d looked standing on the bench. “Yes.”

  “The Digby and Durward gang,” said Rillieux. “It does have a certain ring to it. I know a power couple when I see one.”

  “No, it’s Jax,” said Blum. “This was her idea, I know that. Durward’s…um.” He put his elbows on the table and clutched the sides of his head. “Durward has consciousness all right, but he’s in a very fundamental sense not human. It’s like Hume said, about reason being a slave of the passions. It’s Jax who supplies the passions in that set-up.” He looked around at the others. “It’s just a feeling I have,” he ended, lamely.

  Newton took a sip of brandy and chased it with a gulp of beer. “But am I right? That consideration’s what made us all step back.”

  Carlos nodded, the others too.

  “I’m sorry to say this, Carlos,” Newton went on, “seeing as you and Jax have previous and all, but I’ve got to say it: that woman is fucking dangerous.”

  Carlos had been drinking, slowly, all afternoon. They all had. None of them was seriously drunk. They were disinhibited just enough to be honest, or at least outspoken. It was like an after-the-pub bull session from his student days. The sort of situation in which he’d first got to know Jax and her friends.

  “Dangerous in what way?” he asked.

  “Jeez, Carlos,” said Newton, “we’ve just all agreed! What Jax has done out there is recruit everyone in this sim but the four of us here to a cult. A cult she and the warlock are the leaders of. Or the queen and the king of.”

  “But—Jax!” Carlos cried. “What would she want to be queen of? Why should she even want to be one at all? She’s completely committed to the Acceleration. For her to start a cult or a kingdom would be like…her turning Rax or something.”

  The others laughed.

  “Have I said something funny?” Carlos asked.

  “It pains me to say this, mate,” said Newton, the strain in his voice adding edge to his words, “but one of the things the Rax got right is that monarchy is a very normal form of government. It’s—well, I won’t say natural—but it’s an easy one for us primates to fall into. The default.”

  “Bollocks,” said Carlos. “That’s Rax talk. Most of the time since we became fully human we’ve lived in societies that didn’t have kings or chiefs or even big men, and they worked fine for tens of thousands of years. That’s the real human default.”

  “Well, let’s leave evolutionary psychology off the table for now,” said Newton. “There’s also the little matter of having a grand plan, which is roughly speaking to have a small group of people persuade a larger group of people that it’s in their interests to grab everyone’s stuff, to put it at the service of an enlightened project worked out and decided on by the original small group of people, and kill anyone who objects. Again and again people do all of that, by the book. And then, for some utterly inexplicable reason, it all goes horribly wrong. Every fucking time, again for some inexplicable reason. Baffled the best minds of generations, that one has.”

  “Come on!” Carlos said. “The Axle project was nothing like that. That’s just a malicious caricature.”

  Newton said nothing, he just looked as if he couldn’t be bothered to argue the point. So, for the moment, did the others. Carlos was suddenly acutely aware that there was a more than accidental connection between them all. He had been, and Newton was, a lover of Rillieux. Rillieux and Blum had been his and Newton’s interrogators. They had all faced each other across a table before, in the hell cellars. Blum, Rillieux and Newton had been together alone in these hell cellars, just a couple of weeks earlier. It had been in the cellars that Rillieux and Newton had hit it off. Or, to put it another way, it had been there that Newton had talked Rillieux away from him. How had he done that? And had Blum had any part in it?

  “OK, Carlos,” Rillieux said, “we shouldn’t have laughed and, yeah, it isn’t funny. But, come on. You’re not stupid and you’re not naïve. I do know these things about you. We have had conversations. So do a bit of thinking, I know you’re capable of it. And I know history’s not your specialist subject, shall we say, but you must have some vague awareness that this sort of thing isn’t exactly unprecedented? That identifying increasing your own personal power with advancing the interests of the cause has been our goddamn Achilles heel since forever? It’s not even like it’s a mistake, it fucking works! That’s why it’s so seductive, again and again.”

  “I do know about charismatic leaders,” Carlos said. “I just don’t see what Jax would get out of setting herself up as one. She believes too much in the Axle cause.”

  Rillieux looked exasperated. “Jax isn’t trying to set herself up against the Axle cause. I’m as sure as you are that she’s as dedicated to her principles as she’s always been. She wants the Acceleration to win. To bring that about she’ll use whatever power she’s got, and if a chance comes up to increase that power, she’ll grab it with both hands. She sees herself as building all her teams into a more powerful and united and committed force. They’ll bloody well need to be, after all, won’t they, to pull off grabbing the Locke module for ourselves? And then to fend off counter-measures from the Direction, or from the Reaction for that matter?”


  “When you put it that way,” Carlos said, still surly, “it almost makes sense, it almost makes me want to go back out there and fucking eat from the long pig. I’m gonna be leading these four squads of newbies into the Locke sim, isn’t that the plan? Maybe I should get out there and show them what I’m made of.”

  “You’ll get plenty of chances to show them what you’re made of,” said Blum, “in the next weeks of training. The best thing you can show them right now is that you’re not one of Jax’s cult followers.”

  “But I’m not showing them any such thing,” Carlos pointed out. “None of us are. We just skulked off.”

  “A situation where discretion is the better part of valour,” said Rillieux. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “So what can we do?” Carlos asked.

  “In the short term,” said Rillieux, “we drift back out there and mingle as if nothing had happened. If Jax or Durward or anyone else challenges us, plead visceral revulsion and look shame-faced and apologetic. And in the long term…”

  She glanced sideways at Newton and Blum, who both nodded.

  “We have a plan.”

  “Like I said before,” said Carlos, “I’m all ears.”

  “Remember what you were saying about going over to the robots?” Rillieux said.

  He gave her a wry grin. “I never forget pillow talk.”

  “Well, you convinced me,” said Rillieux. “Newton turns out to have had much the same idea. In the interrogation, he and I convinced Andre.”

  “Oh,” said Carlos. “So that’s what’s been going on.”

  “That and a few other things,” said Newton, looking across at Rillieux, who smiled back.

  “So,” said Carlos, impatient, “what’s the plan?”

  “Ah…yes, the plan. The first part was for me to befriend Baser. Done that. It took some doing, given that I’d captured it in the first place, but the poor blinker’s lonely and I’m patient. At the right moment, I get the spider out of the cellar unnoticed. It then makes its way to the portal in the garden. After everyone except us is just back from a training exercise outside the sim, Baser nips through and uploads to its robot body, whose bonds have previously been surreptitiously released. When the coast is clear, it gets on the transfer tug and stows away.