SF in The City Anthology (23 page)

             
“Our data indicates that one of the CA’s most talented snipers, Devon Globa, has started to lose his edge, psychologically speaking. After he assassinated an author for us and had a brother put in the hospital, he seemed to have suddenly entered a depressive spiral. Some of his behavior has been erratic as of late, so we’re retiring him early.”

“By using Traore to commit a murder/suicide, we’ll kill three birds with one stone – eliminating Globa, removing a religious fanatic from the scientific community and most importantly, reinforcing the alleged epidemic of ‘bestialism’ that has taken hold in The City. After all, if a rational scientist can suddenly lose his mind and murder a service man, you really can’t trust anyone. That’s the kind of mindset we wish to impress upon the masses. They
can’t even trust themselves.”

“Why would you want people to distrust each other?” Jihoon asked with concern written all over his face.

“Well I should say we want them to trust the
right
people,” Husher laughed out loud. “If you pay attention to the entertainment industry, which the CA has a
working relationship
with, you will notice that people like us, the secret agents of the world, are glorified as heroes, and the villains are always boys and girls next door kind of people. Don’t let that give you a big head though.”

“What is Eiran’s special assignment,” Willow asked verbally, with unhid
den jealousy.

“That’s between me and him,” Husher breathed a sizable cloud of smoke her direction. “As a matter of fact, I’m getting off with him here. Zhōu, you’re in charge of the operation. I’m sending you and the rest of the group t
he details now. Best of luck!”

*
**

It turned out that my special assignment was far more stressful than I anticipated. While it comforted me to know that Husher had the faith in me to give me this task, it also bothered me that I had some tough decisions ahead. Apparently a man named Ángel Ehrlichmann, a rich
individual with many contacts, had begun pulling people who had dirt on the CA into his sphere of influence. Husher shared photos of Ángel and his associates with me and related that he had suspicions one of my fellow team members had dealings with the agitators.

“If this Ehrlichmann is so wealthy, why have you had such troubles tracking him down?
” I asked Husher in disbelief.

“Economic warfare has always served Central Authority well,” he assured me, “but Ehrlichmann found ways to convert his money to untouchable assets. We were so used to controlling citizens through electronic currency, we didn’t know how to deal with a man who had physical, off paper, assets. He has shifted these material goods so many times through bartering, we can’t track him. With a sizable fortune, you would be surprised how easy it is for a
man to escape our detection.”

“Do you think any members of the Dark Unit have a more suspici
ous background than the rest?”

“Well if I was looking at it from the angle of ‘who has the least ethical qualms,’ I would say you take the cake, Mr. Clashtone. As you’ve probably realized by now, I’m not out to stop ‘criminals’ in the traditional sense. I’m here to fashion the world in the image the CA desires. From that perspective, I see Jihoon De Jon
g as the most likely traitor.”

“Yet you gave him a sniper rifle and a view overlooking the scene of our preplanned crime,” I shot him a suspicious look.

“Which is exactly why I want you stationed in the same building as De Jong,” Husher glowered at me, refusing to hide his disappointment that I questioned his judgment. “It’s on you to keep agitators from preventing our operation. They aren’t trained soldiers. The only reason they have foiled previous operations is because they have good sources of information. When we’ve actually had physical altercations with the agitators, they’re fighting skills presented no challenge to our troops. Kill them if they show their faces, and do the same to any member who betrays us.” 

***

In case you hadn’t realized it by this point, I’m not a very kindhearted individual. The brain hackers I killed had no mercy on their victims, so I merely returned the favor. My brief stint in the Dark Squad gave me serious misgivings about the ethics of the government I served, but my equivalent of distrust in them probably doesn’t match your’s. Don’t get me wrong, I still have faith in the idea of Central Authority, even after what happened that night. What really discomforted me was the thought of Devon Globa, a man who had served The City well, losing his life in such a dishonorable fashion.

Most of my teammates probably felt the same way, or at least I imagine they did. Jihoon’s lack of confidence in the CA gave me cause for concern, yet part of me wished he would save Globa.
I could still take Jihoon prisoner myself, earning me further respect from the boss while sparing a life.

As I sat in a building, known as the Leopard Complex, slated for destruction in a few weeks’ time, I listened to Jihoon, who sat only a couple floors above me. My specialized “CrocAudile” ear liners allowed me to detect sound patterns coming from Jihoon’s position. I could hear him set up the modified Nukpana OWO 23 sniper rifle assigned to him by the police force. For whatever reason, he preferred using a traditional scope rather than an EAS
(electronically amplified scope). Once he had finished setting up his rifle, I could hear him settle down and listen to something over his own ear liners.

I immediately suspected that someone was sending him instructions, but much to my chagrin, when I zeroed in on the sound in his ears, all I heard picked up on was Chopin’s “Grand valse brillante in E-flat major, Op. 18,” though I found out the song’s name only after the fact. Jihoon probably wouldn’t receive instructions through his ears anyway. If an agitator wanted to send him a message, they would do so telepathically. Husher had had communications monitoring apps uploaded into our brains’ nanotube networks. Our team’s sniper couldn’t receive information from any external source without a crew at Central Authority’s headquarters finding o
ut and alerting the Dark Unit.

Playing
Charon’s Bliss
’s latest album over my own ears’ micro-liners, I had always been a sucker for heavy metal, I looked out a window facing Khouri’s Café on Rebus Street. I could see Willow Blasé eagerly devouring her food, and eyeing Dr. Traore as a waitress seated him only a few tables away from her. Khouri’s Café was his “thinking spot,” the perfect example of the problem with geniuses: they’re creatures of habit.

Since I was allegedly on another assignment, the rest of the group was not in contact with me. I hate to say that loneliness descended on me; that would be too sentimental a feeling. Paranoia from a lack of communication with the others would probably describe my emotional state more accurately.  I finally saw Devon Globa arrive at the scene of the soon to be crime, but a hitch arose in the plan that I hadn’t expecte
d. He had his family with him.

Having switched off the music in my ears, I could hear Jihoon cursing upstairs, using the phrases I had thought inwardly. Why had Husher failed to mention Globa’s wife and daughter
would arrive with him? Did he suspect we didn’t have the guts to go through with the plan, or did even Husher run into variables on this project that he couldn’t control?

***

Dr. Chagai Traore took a sip of the raspberry tea his waitress had brought him. Now he only waited for his evening meal. Whether a curse or a blessing Chagai never stopped thinking about physics, even as he tried to get to sleep. His habit for self-induced insomnia caused his health to suffer. It hadn’t escaped his attention that the black circles under his eyes had grown darker as of late, and his paunch had extended as well. Throwing back a pill with the help of his tea, Chagai wished that this one would actually help him get some rest that night. He knew it wouldn’t.

He dwelt on the book he composed in secret and the possibility that he would never finish it if he continued at his present pace.
On Souls and Cyborgs
would be his magnum opus, a work capable of altering the naturalistic Weltanschauung that pervaded society. Having taken an interest in the allegedly nonexistent spiritual realm from a young age, Chagai read every text on religion he could get his hands on, even if it required hunting down works on paper.

Just what implications cyberization had for the spirit he couldn’t have guessed until he read the
Bible
in depth. He realized that this work offered a unique view of human beings that he found nowhere else. According to adherents of the religion called Christianity, God was a triune being. As he examined their scriptures, he found evidence to suggest that God’s assertion “Let us make man in our image”
[37]
had greater implications than people realized. As the First Epistle to the Thessalonians indicated, human beings were made of “spirit and soul and body.”
[38]
   For much of human history, philosophers and priests alike had erroneously backed the idea of dualism, with the mind and soul being all that made up a man or woman.

The tripartite human was a notion that explained the cyberization of beings within a religious context. Backers of physicalism, who seemed to make up the majority in this present age, thought they had won a victory when a human brain could be transferred to a cyborg body, with the person to whom it belonged retaining his or her identity. However, Dr. Traore understood that the soul really was “consciousness” as people understood it. Scientists weren’t mystics. Despite their claims that religious people should quake in their boots at the sight of a successful cyborg, they could have power over the body and part of the soul, but never over the spirit. Science could never intrude on the spiritual realm, and this comforted the doctor to some measure. He knew the answers to the questions “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?”
[39]
  With all the resources on Earth, he would never fully understand the mysteries of God.

Of course scientists still didn’t fully understand the brain and consciousness. Despite decades of research with the assistance of artificial intelligence, what made the human mind work still escaped the grasp of inquiry. Traore felt that his understanding of the difference between the soul and the spirit would give him an edge over other physicists, and his epiphanies had done just that; however, the soul was influenced by more than just the human brain itself. Something external, maybe the spirit itself, had interplay with consciousness. In all likelihood, the discomforting glitches that plagued full-body cyborgs would never be resolved.

Dr. Traore’s musings on the nature of spirituality in a changing world were interrupted by the memory that he had to actually write down his new found understanding of the universe and the people living within it. The naturalist paradigm would never be challenged if he didn’t finish his book, nor would the confusion of the soul with the spirit ever abate. Honestly, the doctor despised himself for hiding his candle under a bushel,
[40]
  so to speak. Being a closeted religious man wasn’t easy, and Chagai questioned many times whether he really should put off the publication of his book until after his death. He knew that if he admitted his new found faith in God openly, Ensample Laboratories would fire him in an instant. Wouldn’t it be selfish to deprive the world of his scientific mind by being open and losing his job? No one else would hire him after hearing such news, despite his stellar record.

It was during Chagai Traore’s intense period of introspection that he felt a small prick on his arm, near the elbow. Instinctively, he knew he had been bitten by a mosquito, and he tried to smack it to no avail. The little bugger had already meandered off.

As Chagai considered the possibility of creating a more effective means of connection between the brain and the cyber world than nanotubes, his arm began to spasm, as if his muscles decided to start operating on their own. He had always had shaky hands; a problem that had created difficulties when performing some of the more delicate of scientific operations, so he wasn’t as immediately alarmed as most people would have been in this situation.

Suddenly, Chagai’s hand shot under the table and pulled out something attached to its bottom. He looked down and attempted to scream, but something caught in his throat. A jet black handgun rested in his hand, a menacing sight for a mild mannered pacifist. Before he could react, the physicist found himself standing and pointing a gun at a man he had never met, a man with a family.

Sweat started to bead on Chagai’s forehead, as he struggled with all his willpower to keep his right index finger from pulling the trigger. It was as if some foreign power had possessed his body and directed all its attention on firing the weapon he now held in his shaking hands.
I am more than flesh and blood
, Doctor Traore thought furiously.
In this body, I have carte blanche to do as I please.

***

“He’s resisting me!” Cian thought to Willow in desperation. “Globa is a trained sniper. Even with his family there, it won’t take him long to size up our boy down there and determine a way to take him out. Kill both of them now!”

Cian stood inside the Dark Unit’s transport, his body mimicking the stance of the doctor whose body he controlled. He tried with all of his might to pull his index finger closed; firing the gun, but the doctor resisted him.
This is a really bad time to test the idea of mind over matter
, he thought solemnly. Then the cyborg’s left arm shot over and took hold of his right wrist, pulling it back with such force that it popped.