Cronix (32 page)

Glenn looked at Fitch's blank shark eyes and staggered to his feet. He ran for the door, cracking his shin on the coffee table. One of the Colonel's goons effortlessly scooped him up.

“Don’t worry Glenn,” Fitch said, pulling himself to his feet. “Like I said, no one is going to die. That creature out there, it
is
you. All your memories are there already, albeit mixed with Lyle’s, but in time they will level out and you’ll be just like any other person, though incomparably more intelligent and experienced than you are now, or could ever have dreamed of being. Smarter than me, smarter than Frank. And you’ll live forever. We all will. But our friend there needs a donor. He already has your mind, so your body will be the perfect receptacle. Total synaptic compatibility. No new identities needed, not even a passport. But remember this, whatever happens in the coming months, Glenn, you will not die. You’ll survive. Believe me.”

Fitch might have continued at that point, but his voice was drowned out by an unworldly howl from Glenn as the Colonel's men dragged him through the hallway and down the dark stairs to the gym.

A few seconds later, silence once again reigned over the house on the plains.

***

“And so this … this creature,” said Poincaffrey. “It was you?”

Oriente exhaled slowly, then nodded. It had been a long, long time since he had let his mind wander to this place.

“How did it… feel?” the professor said. “To be instantly conscious, aware of what you were? A blend of two other people, fused inside a machine?”

Oriente closed his eyes, struggled to remember those brief, terrifying moments so long ago. “I couldn't really feel anything, professor. I was pure thought, aware of everything yet with no sensory perception. Detached, I guess you’d say. The closest thing to an emotion was claustrophobia.”

“Guilt?” offered Porter.

The question hung over the near-empty conference room. Only the two professors and Dean Wattiki had been able to make it through the curfew. Out of the streets, themilitia were trigger-happy and barely in control: rumors were flying that a new generation of Cronix was on the loose, sentient and capable of planned actions. People were terrified.

Oriente considered the question. “That came later,” he said. “At first, everything else was overridden by survival instinct. I had to get out of the machine, and avoid Lyle's conscious brain being smashed into mine when he was executed. That I achieved.”

He stopped. His mind felt clouded, as though it might be drifting off into its component parts.

“And then what?” said Poincaffrey. “I’m sorry, I mean, I realize this may be painful to talk about…”

“No, that's alright,” said Oriente. The fog lifted. “We negotiated. They needed me as much as I needed them. After they’d gotten everything they could out of me – the solution to effective uploads, the electro-chemical leaching process – they put my theories into practice.”

He took a swig of coffee from the mug in front of him.

“So they took Glenn Rose and … they leached him?” said Porter.

“I don’t know where they’d kept him all those months,” said Oriente. “Maybe he’d gone crazy in captivity and it was a mercy when they finally got round to…I never found out.

“But they downloaded me into his body. He was very weak. He’d been in an induced coma for a while, but to me, coming out of that machine, his body felt like…” he searched for a way to describe the sensation “…it felt like life itself. Like freedom, like a long draft of cold water in the desert. I was sorry for what had happened to him, but I have to tell you, I was glad. Mercilessly glad that they finally got me out of there. I would have killed someone myself to get out.”

The academics nodded in sympathy.

“And I vowed to myself that no matter what happened, I would never, ever, go back into one of their machines. Never. Not even when they claimed they’d built heaven itself. To hell with their paradise. I was staying here, and staying human. Or as human as I could hope to be.”

“And how did you eventually part company with Fitch?” said Dean Wattiki. “I mean, you were erased from all the official records. You became simply a legend, a myth. The Missing Link.”

“In the end, they just wanted rid of me. Too many awkward questions in the official report, about who I was, how I’d got there. When push came to shove, they decided it’d be better if they simply credited their own genius with inventing the whole process. And of course, once it worked, it snowballed quickly. First the terminally ill, then the elderly signed up. As their minds fed into the mainframe, they created a computer of unimaginable power, one that could solve pretty much any problem. I thought they might just kill me. I think the Colonel would have, maybe Fitch too. But Laura persuaded them not to. Because of Lyle. She was convinced part of her brother was still alive, in me.”

The academics nodded, faces grave but secretly elated. Oriente wasn't looking at them though. Instead, in his mind's eye he was seeing Laura, that very last time, when she dropped him off at Holsten City bus terminal. She gave him a kiss, gently, on his cheek. She looked much older, her taut face almost skeletal, but she was smiling.

“You see, I was right,” she said so softly he almost missed it among the tanoid announcements and the idling engines.

“About what?” he asked.

“There is a god after all.” Laura had smiled. “We’re it.”

She had turned and left him standing there, walked off into the crowds of travelers with their hotdogs and sodas, never once looking back.

***

They're here

Oriente opened his eyes in the pre-dawn darkness.

He desperately wanted to believe Lola's explanation that the voice was just some malfunction of the new chip in his head. But he couldn't. He knew it was something else, something much worse.

He looked at Lola asleep beside him. She was curled under the sheets, gorgeous and reassuring. He couldn’t resist kissing her.

“You know what,” he whispered. “I think I’m falling for you.” He wasn’t sure if she’d registered the words. She didn’t open her eyes, but a slight smile curved her lips.

He eased himself out of bed, pulled on a dressing gown. There was no one in the corrdior: the voice was just a hallucination, he told himself for the thousandth time.

Even the DPP guard was gone, drafted into the militia guarding the streets. Oriente took a long drink from a water fountain by the nurses' station. He splashed his face and didn't immediately notice the men walking towards him from the stairwell. When he finally heard their footsteps he looked up: four men in police uniforms. The one at the back bizarrely short for a cop.

“That’s him,” said a voice that sounded familiar but which he struggled to place.

“Luis Oriente?” the lead officer said. “I have orders to escort you to the DPP immediately,” the policeman said. “If you’d be so kind as to follow me.”

“What?” said Oriente. “What's this about?”

“It’s for your own safety sir,” the police officer said. “There have been a number of violent incidents in the city overnight, and the DPP, at the request of the Delpy Institute, has ordered your transfer to a more secure facility.”

“What about Lola?” He nodded at the door. The policeman looked at him blankly.

“We only have orders concerning you, sir. If this lady would like to join you later, I’m sure she’d be most welcome.”

Oriente was at a loss. “Give me a minute to get some clothes on.” He was only wearing a robe, slippers and his pajama bottoms. “I’ll have to tell my friend…”

The policeman stepped between him and the door. “Your friend can come later. Like I said. And don’t worry about the clothes, the van is heated. We can send someone for your stuff in the morning. But the streets are dangerous, and we have a busy schedule tonight. We have to secure a number of VIPs …”

The sense of unease had come hammering back. But there were four of them, and he could think of no way of refusing. Reluctantly, he allowed the officer to lead him by the elbow down the ill-lit corridor, a second constable walking at his other side, and two others bringing up the rear. Oriente glanced round at the very short officer trailing at the back. Scrawny and simian, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Wasn’t there a height limit for policemen?

They marched down the stairs and past the duty officer at reception. The man saluted lazily and they strode out into the courtyard where their police van was waiting, engine ticking over.

It was cold out, the last stars hanging in the turquoise sky. They climbed into the back of the van, its windows barred with riot grilles.

“After you, sir,” said the constable. Oriente was just clambering in when he remembered where he'd hear that familiar policeman's voice
.

He turned and lunged at the shrunken officer. The man tried to duck but Oriente snatched his cap and stared at the sunken features of the man he had met at the gypsy bar.

“Wexler!” The carpet-beater grinned and held up his hands as though it was he was being nabbed, not Oriente. It had been such a long time since Oriente had last seen him that he had almost forgotten about his existence. But Wexler wasn’t a policeman, and clearly he was not being escorted to safety. Oriente flung himself at the van door but strong hands reached out to restrain him.

Wexler retrieved his police cap and hopped nimbly into the van. The doors slammed shut. Through the wire grille, Oriente could see the clinic night guard peer curiously through the hospital doors. But all he saw was a recalcitrant prisoner being hustled off in an official vehicle.

“Lola!” Oriente bellowed, but the doors were locked and the van already was speeding out the gate, headed for the river.

Wexler straightened his hat and grinned his tombstone smile.

“Goosey-goosey time,” he said, his fingers making an absurd approximation of a beak in front of his mouth. “Time to fly south, Mr Oriente. Your sponsors are waiting.”

From the New York Times, Archive File #3271/3b

By Henrietta Fernandez

The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church last night voted overwhelmingly that the mental essence captured synthetically in super-computers does in fact constitute the human soul.

The decision by Cardinals meeting for an Ecumenical Council held at the Vatican Basilica for only the third time in history, and dubbed ‘Vatican III,’ was backed by Pope Pius XIII and opens the door for Catholics the world over to voluntarily terminate their earthly lives if they have been fitted with a ‘chip’.

The church had been under increasing pressure in recent years to recognize the procedure, which it had initially condemned as suicide and thus a cardinal sin in Catholic doctrine. But with so many millions of Catholics, particularly those in drought and famine-stricken regions of the Third World, pushing to sign up for what has become commonly known as ‘eternity leave,’ the Pontiff was forced to summon an extraordinary conference to rule on whether the soul is indeed capable of being digitally preserved.

“After three weeks of intense deliberation and depositions from scientific and theological experts, the Ecumenical Council has ruled that the process known as ‘soul capture’ does indeed constitute an extension of human life by other means, and therefore can be undertaken by Catholics,” said Roger Mendetti, the Vatican spokesman, at a news conference after the extraordinary meeting ended.

Dissenting prelates, including Cardinal Jose Cardenas of Mexico City, denounced the decision, saying it opened the door to “mass suicide” and even threatened that it could lead to the first schism within the church for centuries.

“This ruling is not only wrong, it is a sin and it will be punished by God,” said the Mexican Cardinal in a telephone interview last night. “We will not stand meekly by and allow this blasphemy to go unchallenged.”

However, Catholics around the world welcomed the decision, especially those in regions bit by poverty, disease and natural disasters. “This will provide a huge comfort to those wanting to leave a life of poverty and corruption and embrace immortality while they await the return of the Messiah,” said Father Benjamin Azikiwe, who ministers to a congregation of HIV-ravaged and impoverished fishermen on the shores of Lake Victoria. Hundreds of those dying of AIDS have already been chipped by western NGOs, who provide the service for free. “This will put a lot of people out of their misery in this living hell,” the priest added.

An estimated 300 million people worldwide have so far taken eternity leave, and now reside in a wide array of virtual worlds, ranging from exact facsimiles of the Earth to fantasy worlds in which they battle mythical creatures and conquer vast terrains. Many devout Catholics had however been reluctant to join this exodus, fearing that without church sanction, they risked eternal damnation.

Cardinal Cardenas warned that already there were splinter groups from the Catholic church as well as from other faiths, such as Buddhism, rejecting the hi-tech eternity on offer and insisting on the mortal term ordained by god. He said that one of these groups, the so-called Santa Muerte cult, which originated in the slums of his native Mexico City, had already carried out attacks on regeneration clinics and threatened more strikes in the future.

Additional reporting by Wayne Childers in Mwanza, Tanzania

From the Sydney Morning Herald, Archive File #4012/17F