Chaos Cipher (26 page)

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.