The Zurvan in the Neverwhere rises from his knees and strides forward, ascending the ramp behind his real life counterpart and disappearing into the spaceship.
I’ve lost all sense of time while watching this memory unfold. Perhaps it’s the timelessness of the Neverwhere in general, but I’ve faded into the background as I viewed it, absorbing each new scene, enraptured as much by its twists and turns as by any Hollywood film. Likely more so.
I wait.
I hear voices. Datrica. She’s talking loudly and then yelling. Something crashes solidly and likely painfully into someone. There is a groan and a clatter. I’m frozen, unable to move. Datrica screams. Someone else shouts and then is promptly silenced.
I want to know what happens.
Cautiously, ever so cautiously, I creep forward down the inside of the crater. I keep my eyes fixed on the door of the ship. With each step I expect to see Zurvan reappear and accost me, but as I near the side of the craft, it becomes clear that I’m going to make it. I race up to the ship and hide under the boarding ramp. Zurvan hasn’t seen me.
Cautiously, I peer over the angled ramp, into the interior of the ship. From this angle I can see a corridor that rims the outside of the ship. It’s vacant.
Frustrated, I step around the ramp and carefully climb up it. The corridor on one side dead-ends leaving only the path toward the rear of the ship. I proceed quietly along it, watching for the first sign of my enemy. The corridor opens up into a larger room at the back of the huge sphere. Zurvan is there—closer now—kneeling again, facing away from me, still meditating this memory into existence.
His other living self is standing stock still at the center of the room.
Datrica is dead.
A pool of blood oozes out from beyond her prone figure. Due to the direction she’s laying, I can’t see her face, and I’m glad because what I can see in the vicinity of where her face likely ought to be, is the handle of Zurvan’s knife protruding toward the ceiling of the room.
I ought to be disgusted. I ought to be sickened or terrified, but what I am instead is awed, because beyond the standing figure of Zurvan is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on.
There is a crack in a machine. The crack is likely not a good thing and based on Zurvan’s rigid posture and shaking hands, I don’t think he is happy about it. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful. To say the crack was leaking colors would be too plain. It isn’t spewing rainbows. A rainbow by comparison would seem bland and mundane. The Northern Lights might be a better approximation, if the Northern Lights came in colors that defied explanation.
Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m dead. I’m seeing things I’m not sure my living eyes would have been able to comprehend. Colors that move like sound. Singing colors leaking in and out of the crack in the machine. A blended reality where terms like harmony and melody could apply to a visual spectrum. Because I am not looking at one color or twenty, I might be looking at all colors, but only if all colors never ended in their variation.
It’s awe inspiring.
Zurvan flinches. The living one. Someone else is here. Up the gangway stairs behind me, the old man and the thick woman are helping one another climb inside. I duck sideways, out of sight of the Neverwhere Zurvan, in case he turns his head. The old man and the woman shuffle down the corridor, then cross in front of me, unable to see me, and wait, keeping a respectful distance from their patient. Both of them have seen Datrica. I can tell in their body language the moment they lay eyes on her, even viewing them from behind, but they don’t cry out or scream. I suspect Zurvan told them what was going to happen and, whatever their connection to Datrica was, they were willing to sacrifice it.
The living Zurvan finally pulls his eyes away from the luminescent brilliance of the crack in the machine. He turns around and faces his companions. His expression is a mask of determination spread thinly over something darker. Fear?
He moves to the fallen form of Datrica, pulls his curved knife loose, and wipes it on her clothing. Next he walks toward the duo in the hall.
“What’ll ya do now, sir?” the old man stammers.
“It’s too late,” Zurvan replies. “It’s already begun to open.” He sweeps past the pair, his cloak billowing out behind him. He passes in front of me, and descends the gangway. “We’ll start again.”
When the three are gone, it’s only the ghost Zurvan who remains. He’s still kneeling, facing away from me and, from my position behind him, I can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed. If they are open, they are staring into the crack in the machine. He’s humming again. Humming into the light.
Singing to the void.
<><><>
Cornwall, UK, 2165
This is my second experience riding in a driverless car and, like the first time, I’m totally clueless about how to use it. Tucket has given it some guidance via the metaspace and the vehicle seems happy to comply, but I couldn’t begin to direct it myself. There are a few handles and knobs that look like emergency systems, but nothing lends itself to steering or even tuning the radio. It makes me wonder how I would survive in this decade without Tucket’s help.
“I guess they don’t design these for old school time travelers,” I say. “I’d never get out of the parking lot without a perceptor.”
Tucket processes what I’ve said, but then turns to the back of the seat and pops a panel loose. “Actually they do. They put a meta headset in here as a backup, in case someone is having issues with theirs.” He extracts a contraption that looks like a pair of sunglasses mated with orthodontic head gear, and hands it to me.
“I can wear this?” I fiddle with the unit, finagling it over my eyes and ears.
Tucket makes an adjustment for me and nods. “Yeah. That will work for you. Most people don’t like them though. You never really know who used them last. Kind of like playing pathogen roulette.”
I stare at him. “You tell me this now?”
He rummages around in the seat some more and comes up with some antibacterial hand wipes. “Oh. Here you go.”
I swipe the towelette out of his hand and rip the head gear off my head to get it clean. Tucket watches me for a moment, then hands me three more wipes.
Seated in the comfortable, rear-facing seat, I adjust to watching the world vanish behind me. It seems to parallel my life at the moment, blindly racing into the future while everything I’ve ever known vanishes into the past behind me. As the car makes its way onto the super expressway, the view out the window becomes a nerve-wracking blur. Tucket dims the windows on his side and slouches in the chair diagonal to me, eyes focused on some distant or imagined horizon.
I get the headset clean and readjust it, watching the horizon populate itself with images and streaming messages. I’m able to select different buildings and learn about them. I can follow links on virtual billboards to interactive websites, I can even select the vehicles around us to send them messages or learn about their occupants. The nicer looking cars are registered to individual owners and much of their information is private, but there are plenty of other public vehicles.
One car full of kids in the parallel lane sends me a chat invitation full of wiggling animal emoticons. When I click on it, the emoticons come alive and bounce around inside the car, cats chasing monkeys and some sort of green ogre that stops every few seconds to blow its nose. The kids in the car are laughing and pointing. Finally one of their parents notices what they’ve done and makes them close the link between our cars. The car settles back to normal.
Tucket watches me, an expression of benevolent amusement on his face, like a parent watching a child playing with a new toy. After fiddling with the other functions for a few minutes, I finally remove the headset and set it on the seat beside me. Tucket is studying a stain on the rubberized floor.
“Tucket, do you mind if I ask you a question? What is it about my time that made you want to come visit so badly? I look at all you’ve got here, the technology and the sus
tainability and stuff, it seems like a pretty sweet setup.”
Tucket frowns, but seems to be taking the question seriously. He thinks about it briefly before responding. “My roommate during my first year at the Academy used to tell me that I was an idealist. He said I only saw what I wanted to see in the world and couldn’t see the reality of things. He was wrong, though. I did see.” His gaze drifts out the shaded windows. “I know I’m lucky. It’s pretty baller to be born in a decade when I was. My dad wanted me to go into metaspace engineering. He says that’s where all the money is these days. That’s why he first sent me to school back in England. But I wanted something more . . . legit.”
“Legit in what way?”
“When I was young I used to visit my grandmother in her flat in Brighton. Dad had us living in the US, but we came back a lot to visit. I loved it. She had this library full of old books. Real paper books, you know? And one she had was all about the millennium and the people who lived then. It was my favorite book. It had so many great stories. People being real. It was so important then, you know? I mean that was when people even started making TV about reality instead of just making stuff up. It was almost like you could be a part of someone’s family, even if you didn’t know them. I thought that was really cool.”
“Uh, I don’t know that you want to base your concept of the millennium on reality TV. I don’t think the people making those shows were exactly about authenticity.”
“They weren’t?”
“Well, I suppose there might have been a few. I can’t say as I watch a lot of them.”
“I just think it would be so righteous to live in a time when people are so open that they’ll let you watch cameras right in their houses. In their real lives! Not even avatars. I heard that people in the twentieth century never even had to lock their doors. I think people were nicer then. We didn’t have any of this discrimination against synthetic intelligence yet. No synthetic intelligence existed, so I think it would have been cool to live in a time where that wasn’t an issue.”
I consider whether or not I should burst Tucket’s bubble. He seems so determined to idolize that society.
“You know, Tucket. It’s funny because a lot of people in my time like to get nostalgic for the 1950s or the 1920s. Some love the 1980s—”
“For Motley Crue, right? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”
“Uh. No, not necessarily, but I’m sure there are a few . . . I think people just like looking back at times they thought were simpler. It gets complicated though. In the U.S., anyway. The ’50s might have seemed cool, but not if you were black or gay or pretty much anything other than white. The ’20s were worse, especially for women, and the whole century pretty much smelled like an ashtray through the ’70s. Every decade had its problems. It wasn’t all glamorous.”
Tucket considers me across the car. “But you were all still human. That was something. Now half the people I know are already trans-humans. I hear the farther you go into the future, the more trans-humans start going fully synthetic. As time travelers, we’re not supposed to reveal the future to other people in this century. It’s part of our Academy oath, but sometimes I feel like shouting it out the windows, to warn everyone that we’re losing all the regular humans.
“But I don’t think anyone would listen anyway. Trans-humans get all the best jobs now. Everyone wants to be smarter and stronger and live longer. Everybody has the best health implants. I hear in a few years they want to make them mandatory. They’re going to put Vax plugs in everybody so you can update all your vaccinations and do cancer screenings and heart disease checks while you sleep.”
“I’ve seen a few trans-humans. It’s all about better organs and stuff, right?”
“Sort of. It’s more than that though. Companies like Ambrose Cybergenics started getting into body augmentation, but it was the metaspace and the advent of the synths that started changing things. Third Eye, the company that invented the perceptor, kept working on new ways to make the human brain work faster. It got a lot of support because people were worried that synths would somehow take over if they got too smart. Synths can process data so much faster than a human brain. The government came up with strict laws about regulating synth intelligence. They put limits on synthetic brain development. But some people have found ways to work around it, especially when Third Eye found ways to put the same improvements in humans. They claimed it would level the playing field and keep humans and synths equal.
“The first synths had a lot of limitations with their bodies needing maintenance, so there were far more advantages to being human, but the more synths developed, the better they became at adapting. When the metaspace came along, people interacted via avatars most of the time anyway. People stopped caring as much about whether the mind of the person they were interacting with belonged to an organic human or a synth. A lot of the old rules still exist to regulate the synth workforce, but support for those laws is eroding quickly. In a couple of decades, the limits on synth memory reclamation and processing speed are going to go away. It’s a major victory for synth rights, but regular humans aren’t going to be able to keep up. It even gets hard for trans-humans. If you don’t have money for upgrades, or work for a company that is willing to pay for them, it’s really hard to make a good living.”
I consider what it would be like to try to compete with a robot for a job. “I can see how having synth employees could be a big advantage for a company. They don’t really need to sleep or eat, right? They could probably get a ton of work done in a day.”
“There are still some really human jobs.” Tucket explains. “Creative arts are big for organics. Acting, music, that sort of thing. But even that is getting harder. There are some amazing synth composers. I think actors will hold out for a while, but even most of those have gone trans-human. They don’t want to age. They are usually the first adopters of image enhancements. They sort of have to.” He smiles wanly, as if to excuse their vanity as understandable given the circumstances.
Looking out the window at the glistening spires of buildings on the horizon, I get a new appreciation for what a foreign world I’m in. I recall being incredibly impressed by the massive farm towers in London the last time I visited. The world was making massive strides toward ending hunger and waste. Man’s impact on the environment had been vastly improved by innovation and smarter technology. As I listen to Tucket explain more of the logistics of an increasingly synthetic society, I’m forced to contemplate what the advances have cost us.
“Have you taken any trips forward in time since you graduated from the Academy?” I ask. “Have you gone to see what the world is like up there?”
“I just know what I’ve learned from alternate history classes and what I’ve heard from friends. When I got infused as a time traveler, the trip to see you was the first one I wanted to take.”
I recall Tucket’s jubilant expression when I found him on my doorstep, his beaming face and mismatched clothing. “Your vacation hasn’t exactly gone according to plan, huh? I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to take you around my century. You finally got your dream trip to the past, and I dragged you right back to the time you left.”
Tucket folds his hands in his lap and sinks a little lower in his chair. “I guess sometimes life has other plans. But when your friends need your help, you can’t very well say no. I think saving Mym is more important than meeting Marilyn Monroe.”
I settle into my chair a little deeper too. “Well, if I haven’t said it enough, I’m glad you came to see me. It’s not everybody who will travel across centuries to visit. And not everybody would head into danger to save someone they barely know. You’re a great friend.”
Tucket smiles, and this time it shows on his whole face.
We both go back to looking out the windows at the blur of the countryside. My personal outlook is daunting, and I have no idea what we might be heading into, but the talk has given me hope. For all the alterations going on in the future and the changes to man
kind in this century, it can’t all be bad because there was at least enough good in humanity that it produced Tucket.
Leaned back against the headrest, I close my eyes, doing my best to imagine myself somewhere other than a vehicle doing 400kph down a super highway. I wrap my arms across my chest and try to relax, but my mind flashes through the memories from last night, Mym’s terrified eyes as she was held by the hulking Eternals. Sadly, it was not unlike the expression she had when I was shaking her myself. Or the possessed version of me.
If I think about it, I can still feel the other minds, the way they battled inside my brain, taking away control. The feeling was so abhorrent. One chasing her, one fighting hard to stop. The third me. He was the one who took control, stopped whatever had me. Just thinking about it, it’s almost as if I can still sense him, lingering in the back of my mind, trying to make contact. He was scared too. Frightened for Mym, worried what might become of her. We are the same there. Both wanting so badly to keep her safe, but failing.
Keep her safe. Isn’t that what he had tried to tell me at the Academy? He warned me something bad was going to happen to Mym. It didn’t help.
As I remember him, I can nearly see him again. A version of me yelling for my attention. He’s worried. Something is after him out there. Something dangerous that wants to consume him. I’ve felt this before. During the race. During my dreams. It’s as if there is just the thinnest distance between us. No distance at all really. He’s here, in a car racing down the expressway toward London. I’m there in a ravaged city, staring at the fragments of St. Petersburg. Rotting spires of a ruined future. Looking at a crater glowing with fire. I feel the heat. I can smell the smoke.
My eyes fly open and I jolt upright in my seat.
No.
That was too real.
Tucket is staring at me. “Are you okay?”
“No. Not really.” The vision retreats reluctantly from my mind. I block it out, forcing myself to concentrate on the impending skyline growing closer. Not ruins. Not St. Petersburg. I’m not in the Neverwhere. I am alive.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 137
