The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “If you want to call them people. They certainly aren’t humans,” Behemoth says, then lowers his head when Mary glances his way.

  “He’s right. We’re not sure what they are, but he’s slowly enacting laws that will forever damage this republic.”

  “Like what?” I ask, breaking my own self-imposed silence. “Like who?”

  “The UN always had an international spy branch. But knowing that tyrants would get their hands on it, use it for evil, we never tried to empower it. Now it appears as if the UN has a drone fleet. Spy capabilities and much more. Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “It doesn’t. Why should it?” I say, scaring myself with these words. “It’s about time that an international body of great strength was created.”

  “And what about this country? You would see it lose out?”

  I know better than to answer that. Or even react to it. She looks over at Behemoth when I don’t respond.

  Behemoth takes a few steps towards me, glancing over at Mary as if wanting to challenge her, but he clears his throat instead. “World’s a complex place. I know that. I know that you know that. But even if we’re trying to paint a simple picture, doesn’t mean that we’re lying.” He eyes me. He’s not in his element, trying to turn someone. Not like this. His turning includes the separation of flesh from soul. The grinding of a man until he has no where to turn but Behemoth and then, when Behemoth has him, he’ll turn him, he’ll use him. He tried that with me and probably doesn’t like this intellectual attempt at standing up for his own side. Funny thing to see a man one once thought of as powerful start to look out of place. I don’t say anything.

  “We’re not. And we need your help,” he says, though that definitely looked like it hurt him to say it. He’s not in his element when asking. He’s the kind to tell. To turn screws. He lets out a sigh and glances at Mary. She’s looking at the two of us like we’re some species of apes that she doesn’t really care for.

  “You may think you have a handle on things,” Behemoth goes on, now a little more assured. “But you don’t. Hey, even I was in your shoes once.”

  Mary shifts in her seat, a surprised look on her face.

  “Oh, yes,” says Behemoth. “I thought I knew it all, that those who fed me were certainly on the wrong side and that I should help... the people suffering... You see something that happens today, something wrong and you have this thing that happened,” he says and picks up a coaster from the table, turning it in his hands. “And you’re thinking, what is this? What do I do with it? It’s not really something I’ve come across before. So you have to compare it. It’s all we can do, these days, the comparing. But what do we compare it to?” Behemoth takes another step to me. There’s a sense of violence in all that he’s doing, like in his mind’s eye he’s carrying out the most gross violations of my body. “So we look to the past, because that’s all we know. And we look for something similar.” He grabs another coaster, holding a napkin to it. “And we see this, and we assume that the two things are related? And that’s how we go through life, this silly comparing. But since we have nothing else to do, we’re left with this, and so we make assumptions about the now and the past. And even if two things have nothing to do with each other, they... well they look the same. And with these two things, we make an assumption, like...” He looks at a glass in front of Mary and takes that. “Assume that certain people are involved when they’re not.”

  A silence falls on the room and Behemoth places all his props back on the table. “I used to be like you,” he says with an unwarranted confidence. “But now I know that I was simply lost. Don’t make the same silly mistake that I did. It leads to unneeded stress. Remember that. Remember how light you felt before. The weight. Give it to us.” He gestures with his hand. “Help us. Help yourself.”

  He may make a great case, but my mind cannot separate what he did before to what he’s saying now. The silence in the aftermath of his last words settle all around us. It’s finally broken by sirens outside, then a helicopter rattling the windows. I flinch, though the helicopter is far away.

  “Here,” Mary says and hands me a card. Her tone is now like that time I saw her, when I was running, when she looked down on me with a great disgust, though she’s trying her hardest to camouflage that. “Take this and when you change your mind call me. I just hope it’s not too late.” She bites her lower lip, as if to hold off on the pain of dealing with me, with me not choosing correctly. “Just remember that we’re the good guys, whatever it is that you may think.”

  I turn.

  “And George.”

  I turn back.

  “He’s a machine. Don’t forget that. No matter how he acts, he’s only programmed to act that way. You shouldn’t anthropomorphize it.”

  “Of course.”

  “She means it,” says Behemoth. “We all anthropomorphize even simple machines. Don’t make the stupid mistake of basing a large life decision on it.”

  That stings. Not wanting to give them anything, I turn away and walk as slowly and stiffly as possible, feeling their eyes on me. Out in the hallway, my legs go weak, and I fall tired. I fight off the need to sleep and step to the elevator. My heart pounding, I leave the lobby and find myself in the street. Alone. I stare at the card, wondering how easy it would be to give Mary a call.

  I swear at myself and start to walk in a haphazard manner, looking over my back to make certain I’m not being followed. After a few steps to the side I get to the burning hulk of what used to be our building. I find the metal plate over a hole and I spend all my energy trying to shift it over. When it’s done, I lower myself down. I can’t feel a ladder or anything to hold on to, so I push my back against one side, and my legs on the other. Slowly, I slide down. I hit the ground hard, but not hard enough to break anything. Still, I wince on the ground, massing my joints, all the old injuries surfacing now. My stomach too starts to churn, though this time it’s from hunger. I let that subside, massaging my legs, then I pick myself up.

  It’s dark down here. I can only see the opening of the hole I came down in. I try to think on where in the underground place I could be. But nothing seems familiar. Nothing smells familiar. It all smells like a chemical that I think smells like metal in petroleum jelly. Then I hear a voice. It’s distant, but I can tell which direction. So, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, I stumble down a hallway, one I’m sure I’ve been down before. I place my hand on the wall, a cold wet stone wall, almost greasy, and keep shuffling forward.

  Finally, after I fight off sleep, after the darkness starts to permeate my ideas, something that grows worse once I realize that I can close my eyes and it doesn’t make a difference, the voices I thought I was following disappear. I stop moving and listen to my heart beating, and the air scraping along my throat. A light comes on. It’s just a crack, but I see it clearly leaking out from under a door. I step towards it. The voices are louder now. I place my ear up against it. It’s Turing. He’s talking. I twist the door and open it. A hallway. An open door to my left. I shuffle, as silently as I can. I’m still in darkness while the room, filled with Turing and some other people, has all its light from a naked bulb swaying from the ceiling.

  Turing is addressing the men around a table with a map and what seems to be a handful of bearded men. Most seem Arabic. I hold my breath, wondering if I should step forth from the shadows or if I should listen in. I step away, just listening now. I look down on my hands and realize that they’re red with blood. At first I wonder if I’ve cut myself, but it’s too dry for that. I smell it. It’s blood all right. Then I wonder why there was blood on the wall. The only wet thing I remember touching.

  Turing’s voice startles me as he speaks:

  “On September the eleventh, the year two thousand and one of our Lord and Savior the Jesus Christ.” Some harsh laughter cuts the speech.

  “Something absolutely beautiful happened. I’m talking about beauty of a very specific type. No, I’m not speaking of the brave
firefighters and other rescuers who saved innocent people from the rubble. I’m speaking about a man, a solitary man, who decided to recruit people and gave up all the riches in the world to do so. I’m also talking about people—the man’s entourage, or disciples—who used the same memes and actions and reasons of an Empire against it. One could say that it was almost funny. Of course, one would have to be an absolute sadist to believe this, but there you have it. One of the only sad things to arise from this is that the Empire itself could not see the humor in what had happened. It didn’t even stop to wonder if what had happened to it was poetic justice, or if perhaps a taste of its own medicine would be too much. This, of course, is to be expected when one considers that a mob rarely considers poetic justice, even though, every so often it manages to carry out acts in that very manner, it’s usually a matter of luck rather than forethought. It was not more than a decade and few years later that the Empire caught the man, the money, the soul, behind this act of defiance, and shot an unarmed old man, along with his unarmed man, on the pretext that they were too dangerous. This was carried out by men who were professionals who could shoot the fly off a bison’s ass from a hundred meters, who fired with these weapons of theirs close to a million times. So we can be certain that there were no mistakes. The Empire cheered, happy that this moment of history had finally turned out like those closely controlled games that they loved to watch. A last minute come back, one would call it. And in all those cheers for the death of an unarmed man and woman, there was no moment in which someone stopped to think, or to say that perhaps we are acting in the same manner that they are.

  “Why am I bringing up this moment? When two gleaming birds flew into two buildings and spat out fire and concrete dust and love and hate, and blood and flesh, the world could not have been said to be a tranquil place. It was, though, a more tranquil place than it had been in the past. This act of defiance wasn’t an entirely altruistic one. But for anyone with an eye to history, and by history I probably mean his propaganda and what we make of it, would have seen the act as almost noble. The man who carried it out, or helped to finance it, were both ones with an eye for stopping past injustices. A billionaire, with a family, with wives, decided to throw it all away for he believed in nothing better. This is not his hagiography, so we will dig into him soon enough, but one has to step away from misanthropy and at least tackle the demons of humanity one at a time. His worker bee was a man who had been disrespected repeatedly in the Empire. Overly sensitive, he had finally figured out a way to fight back. To him the largest demon was the Empire. He was not entirely incorrect. And that, my friends, is the overwhelming question in any man who looks to right the wrong. What should a human do in the face of overwhelming evil and power? And, given that there are numerous amounts of powers doing evil, which should one tackle first? Not an easy question, especially if one thinks that doing nothing in the face of evil is simply wrong. And, funny enough, it is living in this Empire that I have learned that allowing evil is an offense punishable by death. Of course the trials where this was first established were nothing more than victory trials, but that’s the way of the world. The trials enshrined in the nation-Empire, a horrid sense of pride in all its actions. But at least it allowed for that question to stay in the back of the minds of sensitive people: what to do, when nothing is not an option?

  “Well, my friends. You all know this. You all, I can see from your faces, know what the truth is. But the people out there, they know nothing of this. So we are here to change their minds, to work against a tyranny that is more than willing to kill whomever it is to get them out of the way. Remember that. Always remember that.”

  These words, and what they mean, aren’t apparent to me right away, and it takes a few seconds before I see that Turing means what he says. Or perhaps it’s what his words mean. And now I’m not sure about anything, and as I stare at my hands, and stare at the ground, I feel my legs give way. I breath hard and think on what it is Turing is saying, and I look for some hope, because I want to know that my life has not been for naught again. And I wonder how idiotic I was not to take the offer from Mary, though there’s still a chance, isn’t there? But then what am I doing here?

  There are some murmurs of approval and some short grunts of approval. Most of the voices are without any accents, Americans, really, but some of them have British accents, and others still have Arabic accents, though I cannot place from where. The voices now drop into whispers, as papers are shuffled about. Turing states that these are their orders and if anyone has any questions about them. There are none, and Turing dismisses them.

  I take a few more breathes, thinking that maybe I misunderstood Turing and that he’s not really a man who thinks mass murder is something morally correct. I remember how he treated Khalid when he brought him back to life and how he corrected his actions. Yet what happened to Khalid in the end? My heart flutters. I place my hands on my knees. There must be a way out of this dilemma

  I find my strength from nothing but a memory of Turing saving my life (or rather the derivative emotions from that memory) and of Behemoth torturing me, of him calling me broken. I’m not sure why, but this fills me with enough energy to allow me to stand. I can change Turing. And besides I’m not sure what he’s saying to them and what their orders are.

  The men file out, some with beards, others without. They’re all dressed in suits. Some glance at me and seem to recognize me. I nod at them, while hiding my hands. I cannot tell if any of them are bionic, or robots or even if they’re men. When they’ve left I turn into the room, expecting to see Turing, but there’s nothing. Just a projector throwing up a map of New York with a few red Xs on it.

  I see a door and walk through it. Another hallway. This one white and with hospital sterility, though it’s abandoned. At a water fountain, I wash off the blood. I hear Turing’s voice again. Again he’s talking like he’s addressing many people. There’s even a few yells of approval. I lean up against the door. I can smell fresh air. I push through.

  I find myself overlooking, from a corner, something like an outdoor amphitheater. There are a few women and bearded men standing around Turing, who’s on the top of a stage. Turing’s in full swing. He’s talking to the people now about 9-11 again.

  “And on that day something beautiful happened. The Empire which had killed with impunity was given a black eye. And what happened after that? There was a reaction. An expected reaction, but they waded into a mess that they had no moral right to start. Or rather,” Turing says and stops to pause, to smile and to hear the murmurs of approval, “they continued to do what they always did and they failed for that. They had no moral right to begin with and who did have the moral right?”

  “We did,” yells someone in the crowd.

  “That’s right. We did. We faced an Empire with money, who walked in and tried to bribe everyone we knew. Our friends, our imams, our governments, and after they were done with taking down all we trusted with corruption they kept on bombing our cities and telling us that it was all right. Burning our children and telling us it was all right. But were were not dogs. We would not go quietly into the night. We showed them that Allah...” And here he paused so that the group of people, now swelling in ranks, cheered. And despite the content of his speech, only a couple of them looked Arab. Many were white. Some were black. That makes sense, I suppose, as no matter how much Turing knows, he did not sound like a learned imam, and that would be a big red flag to any truly devout Muslim.

  “Allah could not be corrupted. And so they made fun of Allah, of our religion, but we stood fast and would not budge. For they struck first. And they were the ones who only cried because we struck back. And so they would be the ones who paid. Injustice will always be repaid.”

  And the crowd yells. I turn away and walk back into the hallway, my heart beating fast again. What is he doing? I turn back in to see sheets of papers, order I imagine, being handed out. Were Mary and Behemoth right? What use could Turing possibly have for stirring u
p unrest with a few Muslims?

  I catch Turing in the hallway, as he’s whistling and twirling what seems to be a baton.

  “Turing.”

  He spins and stares at me before breaking into a smile.

  “George?” He smiles even wider. “What are you doing down here?”

  I want to tell him that this place is my sanctuary, and what has he done with it, but I don’t. “I came to see you.” I swallow, a tremor runs through me and feeling out of place, like perhaps I’m in the presence of a traitor, that a SWAT team could come through at any moment. “We need to talk.” It comes out more stately than I intend and gives my conscience some reprieve from the waves of guilt hitting me, making me think on Mary and her intelligent eyes.

  “Oh?” Turing turns into what seems to be the wall, but when he touches it, a door hisses and it slides.

  “Yes,” I say, now feeling bolder and following him into the room, which turns out to be another presentation room. “I—“ There in the corner is Yusef. Kneeling, facing the corner. For a second, I only think it odd. I look again. My body knows something is wrong and it is alert, fists clenched. Yusef is not merely kneeling. He’s shaking, his head down. Defeated. “Yusef?” I ask. A glance at Turing, who’s shuffling papers, tells me that the machine does not care. I step towards Yusef. Another odd detail: his tie, red, slung over his shoulder has a ringed hole at the bottom. His shirt is soaked with sweat.

  “Yusef?” I ask and tap his shoulder. He flinches. The very real air of a human suffering pierces my heart. I lean over and pick him up. He neither helps nor fights me. I lift him all the way up, hesitating before I let him go because I’m not sure he can standoff his won two feet. He does. The slumps against the corner wall, taking deeper breaths.

  “Yusef,” I say again and tap him harder on the shoulder.

  He startles up and his eyes go from scared to angry. He pokes me hard in my chest with two fingers. “What?” he asks.