“Nobody has a right to exist,” I said, “but once it happens, don’t they have a right to take themselves out of it?”
“You’re asking an impossible hypothetical.”
“That’s the problem,” I said, “I’m not asking a hypothetical. I don’t have the ability to cease existing. And anyone you force this on will also have that ability taken away.”
“This is a useless talk about metaphysics,” Patrice said, leaning back into her seat, “it’s only if people realize there is no escape that they’ll see things clearly. They’ll see that they have a vested interest in making this a better world.”
“I’ve been alive for a very long time,” I said, exhaling slowly and looking out the tinted window, seeing groups of people milling aimlessly about the PRA’s dilapidated sidewalks, burning garbage for warmth outside government-owned hovels. Darryl Gibson’s enlightened proletariat, liberated from their uncomfortable freedom. “The greatest evil has always come from some humans thinking they know what’s best for other humans. They conquer and subjugate, imposing their will on the ‘uncivilized.’ They rationalize this as an act of kindness. But it’s just barbarism cloaked in euphemisms and self-congratulation. A way to stroke their own ego. By making people’s lives only become meaningful if they can exercise the generosity of their self-appointed betters.” I looked into Anita Patrice’s eyes. “What you’re doing isn’t for ‘the people,’ it’s for yourself. It’s as much for yourself as what Lind is doing for himself. If you cared about ‘the people’ you wouldn’t have experimented on people to get what you want.”
“That’s why you should help me with this,” she said, “we can stop all of the human experimentation. All of the subjugation. This, I think you can agree, is the least painful way.”
“If you want the world to be a better place, why not just do it with all the money and power you have?” I asked, “Stop the human experimentation. Stop exploiting the poor and hungry. Use that money to-”
“And that’ll work well for what? Ten years? You of all people should know that anything I can do now would be temporary. I don’t know why you’re so against this.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not completely without compassion,” her old eyes, glazed with alcohol, stayed fixed on mine, a hint of melancholy entering her voice. “I know I’ve been involved in some…terrible things. But sometimes a person has to be pragmatic. Calvin Lind is blinded by his desire to never die. He thinks Jiang Wei is the key to that. That’s why he let that bastard do whatever he wanted.”
“Has Benecorp gotten Imelda back?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Sachi is dead,” I said, “and I will be soon, too. Will Benecorp come for Asset A?”
Anita Patrice sat quiet for a moment. She took a sip of her bourbon and then a deep breath. “When Marianne Worth was assassinated, Darrel Gibson became PRA chairman. He forced Benecorp out. But what you have to understand is that while the PRA is authoritarian, they’re actually quite weak. Even weaker than the CSA. They aren’t afraid to repress their own people, but as a regional power, the CSA would destroy them if their security wasn’t being ensured by Brazil. All their socialist economics and social justice programs are expensive.” She laughed, “I’m sure you noticed that there were no white men in the hospital. That they have Gender Justice wings or whatever the hell they call them in the hospital.”
I said nothing.
“The PRA is trying to eradicate white males,” Patrice said, a look of incredulity on her face, “in order to right historical wrongs or however their propaganda goes. Racism and patriarchy and all that. When a white boy is born, the parents are forced to bring them up as girls. They’re forced to give them female hormones and sexual reassignment surgery as teenagers. It’s all very expensive for the government. Especially trying to cover it up from the rest of the world. But it’s this social justice ideology that gives them legitimacy with their supporters.” She shook her head.
“How is that much different from what you’re planning?” I asked, “forcing something on people for your own self-serving ideology?”
She waved her hand dismissively while finishing the rest of her bourbon. “The point is, the PRA’s sold off a lot of assets to prop up their expensive programs, including military equipment. Lind and Jiang Wei both knew about this, so Jiang Wei turned the Shift gangs into a small army to keep the PRA weak. If Benecorp wants something from the PRA bad enough, they’ll get it.”
She fell silent, her smile slowly fading as she watched out the window. She realized the alcohol had her being too straight forward. “We should be there shortly.”
The limousine stopped in a mostly empty parking lot of a five-story building. As the driver helped me into the wheelchair, I looked off in the distance. Detroit’s derelict skyline grasped toward the sky like a skeletal hand from a shallow grave. One tower of the GM renaissance center was absent, the center cylinder a twisted frame jutting up from piles of rubble. The One Detroit Center was missing its top, the crenelated rubble fixed like merlons on a castle ruin. Numerous other buildings I could vaguely remember were gone, reduced to heaps of wreckage and blasted carcasses. UAVs shining spotlights down into the city’s remains could be seen scanning across the horizon, like flies swarming through the vile specter of smoke clinging to a starless sky, scavenging the cities remains.
“Welcome to the PRA’s big problem,” Patrice said after I had been settled into my wheelchair. She got behind me, the smell of bourbon following her.
“Is this where asset A is being kept?” I asked.
“Right inside,” Patrice said, pushing the wheelchair toward the five-story building, going through the large, automatic sliding doors.
As Anita Patrice wheeled me through the building, I found it oddly empty. It looked like a hospital, but there weren’t any orderlies or nurses in the hallways. Most rooms we passed by were empty. Some still had furniture, but nobody occupied them. We passed by a few people, some apparently doctors, but nobody said anything.
It was too close to Shift gang territory.
After we got into the elevator and went up, I felt a migraine coming on when we came to a stop on our floor. She pushed my chair out the elevator, clearing her throat.
“I haven’t brought you here just because you were the only immortal available to me,” Patrice said in a soft tone, “I happen to think that you’re uniquely qualified for this. I don’t think Jiang Wei was ever all that interested. Christ knows why. Sachi I don’t know that well, but she seems as interested in ruling over the future as Lind does. But you want what I want. You want to make the world a better place. Asset A is how we can do that without having to do any more human experiments.”
“The fact that this is what you want to do,” I said in a low voice, looking down at the cast over my left leg, “just proves to me why it was a bad idea to begin with. But…even if I don’t want to, it doesn’t look like I have much choice, do I?”
“Of course you do,” Patrice said, “you could do nothing. Refuse to help and wait to die, being reborn again. But I have a feeling that you will make the right decision.”
We turned into a room near the end of the hall. Patrice stopped pushing, walking around from behind me, joining Doctor Hunt and a young orderly with dark hair and a blank stare.
There’s something a little off about that orderly…maybe the fact that he’s a white man?
“It’s been a while,” Doctor Hunt greeted me with a wan smile.
I didn’t respond, sitting in the wheelchair staring. The room was dimly lit, a bed behind the three of them with someone in it that I couldn’t see. The walls were barren – no pictures, no shelves, no mirrors. Only the medical equipment keeping the woman alive and a nightstand next to the bed. On top of the night stand stood a stack of journals with similar ware and tear as the one Patrice had shown me.
“Is everything okay?” Hunt asked, “are you…having a split-brain experience?” He sounded hopeful.
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br /> “No,” I said, feeling like I might pass out from the migraine.
Hunt smiled again, “the implant, then.”
Once again, I didn’t respond, my tongue feeling too heavy for idle chit-chat as the migraine surged through my skull.
“Will that be a problem?” Anita Patrice asked, looking to Doctor Hunt.
“I don’t think so,” he said in a reassuring tone, then looked back to me, “shall we get started?”
“Started?”
“Yes,” he smiled, “I don’t think we should waste any more time.”
“What…what is it I’m supposed to do?” I asked.
Patrice and Doctor Hunt exchanged glances and then looked back to me. Doctor hunt then took a step to the side, Patrice following suit, revealing the lump in the bed.
“Alia?” Hunt said
“Not now,” the lump said, “I’m watching a movie in my brain.”
“We have a visitor, Alia,” Hunt said in a gentle voice, “a very special visitor.”
“They’re all very special,” she said.
“Don’t be rude now, Alia,” Hunt said, his expression becoming impatient.
“Fine,” she said, pulling the covers off herself and looking over to me, “how do you do, special visitor number forty-two? Care for a tissue sample? Everybody loves tissue samples. They’re ever so important. Number twenty-six told me that-” She squinted, “hey, you don’t look like the usual visitors.”
“I guess I’m not,” I said, not really putting much thought into my words.
She was a middle-aged woman, I guessed around fifty, but she was in terrible shape. Her short, graying hair was splayed on the pillow above her gaunt head like a rat’s nest. Ashy brown skin pitted with wrinkles hung lazily to her skull. She had a hospital robe draped over her small frame, twisted about her emaciated bones. At first glance, she looked like just a crazy person. But there was a sharpness behind her dark brown eyes, a longing, as if she was the reverse of Anita Patrice and Doctor Hunt – an old body but youthful eyes.
“Sorry I don’t have any fresh drinks to offer you or anything,” she said sardonically, signaling to a cup of water on the night stand near her bed, “my…companion,” she signaled to the orderly, “doesn’t drink. Certainly not anymore! But I forget myself. Introductions are in order. They keep calling me Alia, but I’m not sure if I really believe them. It’s a funny thing, being called something. Categorized for your perusal. A before B and B before C, as people come. Order and law or law and order…which one came first, you think? Does law come from order or does order come from law? At what point does the causality break down so that there isn’t a tit-for-tat and a tat-for-tit,” she chuckled, “we imagine we can design a-”
I coughed and she looked over to me. “Oh, sorry,” she said, “I’d offer you some fresh water, but statistically speaking, you’ve already drank some of the water molecules I have to offer. Unless a statistical anomaly happened and all the water from deep in the earth or outer space got into one cup. Improbable, but not impossible. But that’s a cop out when you-”
“It’s fine,” I said, wincing.
“We’ll let you talk and figure out what needs to be done,” Anita Patrice said, starting toward the door.
Doctor Hunt looked like he wanted to protest but followed behind his boss without saying anything. The orderly remained, regarding me with his odd look.
Alia’s eyes never left me as the other two exited. Finally, she said, “you aren’t one of those suits, but you’re not a patient either, are you?”
“I probably should be,” I said, still wincing at the throbs of my headache.
Alia cackled at this, “probably we all should,” she said, “sanity is only what most people agree on, you know. If we all saw unicorns everywhere, we’d all think it was insane when someone didn’t see the unicorns galloping about on rainbows made of sunshine and dreams,” she giggled, “the way we perceive the world is merely a way for our own minds or organize reality in a way that’s understandable to us. Into a way that fits the templates of our mind. Space, time, causality, substance…all manifestations of our mind more than how reality actually exists. Categories of understanding, archetypes, Forms. If we could experience reality without negating all other possible points of view, we might…oh, there I go again. Come here and sit by me. Though it's not like you’re sitting far. Distance in space and time are not only relative, but yet another category in which our minds operate so that we can understand the noumenal world as a phenomenon that-”
“Babe,” the orderly said, looking to her, “maybe we should focus.”
“Yes!” she said, looking to me, “I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced you to Richard.”
“Your personal nurse?”
Alia laughed. “No, silly. He’s just an illusion. An artificial intelligence.”
I looked back to Richard. An uncanny smile remained on his lips.
Projected on my Ars…sort of like the trick we used to get Sachi away from her family eighteen years ago…
“You named it Richard?”
Alia’s smile faded. She waved a hand and the projection disappeared.
“Just something to keep me company,” she said, “since…” she looked back to me, furrowing her brow, “come closer.”
I took a deep breath and slowly began inching myself closer, wincing at my throbbing head.
“You don’t look so good,” she said, furrowing her brow at me.
“It…happens,” was all I managed.
“Have you ever heard of mirror neurons?” Alia asked.
“What?”
“Mirror neurons are cells we all have in our brains,” she explained, “they mimic feelings we see other people experiencing. When you see someone break a leg, it makes you flinch because those mirror neurons simulate that experience in your own brain. That’s how humans can empathize with each other. We can enjoy a show we’ve seen before vicariously. We can feel sad looking at scowling faces and happy seeing smiling ones. Although, some people say that smiling can actually change our mood. Oh, causality, you slippery bitch. What comes first? Does it matter? Einstein’s theory of relatively says that two people can see things happening at different times, but even then, causality is preserved. David Hume said that our notion of causality is simply that we see two things in conjunction often enough that we just make the connection and say that ‘A causes B,’ but there is no way to actually know that A was necessary for B. This reminds me of a-”
“I don’t…”
“Of course, you don’t,” she cackled, “the very idea is absurd! At least when we-”
“The mirror neurons…” I winced.
“Ah yes!” Alia said as she reached a hand up and put her gnarled fingers on the side of my head, turning my face toward hers. I could see every wrinkle in her skin, built up grease, blemishes and scars. And in her eyes, I could see something both vibrant and tired. There was life, but also a deep pain.
And then everything – the room, the colors, the shapes, the pain – seemed to fade somehow, as if it was less there, ethereal, but only for a moment. And when it came back, the migraine gone.
“W-what the hell?”
Alia smiled, “you’re…different,” she said.
“How did you do that?” I asked as she set her hand back in her lap.
“It’s a trick I learned a long time ago…was it actually me that learned it? What about me is preserved through time, I wonder? And does it even matter? All of time, as we understand it, is a slow process of death and birth, as you transform from one person to another all the while…” she stopped, shaking the thoughts off. After a few moments, she said, “Why did they bring you here?”
“Because they think you know something,” I said, “and they think I’m the one that can mediate it for them.”
Alia smiled, “it’s always about the math with them.”
“They can’t figure it out,” I said.
“And they think you can translate it for
them?” she asked, “these primitive fuckwits wouldn’t know math if it was all around them,” she chuckled, “and it is! Sweet Odin’s balls, it’s all around us! An elegant dance. One I was partner to a long time ago. Oh, how we would Waltz. Beautiful and ugly at the same time, at the crossroads of contradiction and paradox. An unstoppable force halted by a massless immovable object,” she chuckled again, “on a floor made of an infinite dimensional fractal. And yet, not the dance partner I would have wanted…” she stopped, bringing herself back to reality, furrowing her brows at me, “so, why are you here again?”
I shrugged, “I probably know less about what’s going on than you do.”
She cackled, “Everyone that comes in here seems to be clueless, all the while pretending they know what they’re doing. Of course, most of them are old people with fancy suits and a look of self-importance. Apes sheathed in the flesh of decaying plants and animals. Covering their shame. Always shame. And they call me crazy,” she chuckled, “the world spins inside an infinite vacuum. A vacuum that’s right there, above our heads. No ceiling, no roof, no barrier. Just somethingness fading into nothingness. All dictated by the math. And they scurry about in their shame, fearing everyone they meet on the street. The fact that you aren’t like that makes me like you,” she smiled, “even if you’re not telling me everything you do know.”
I sighed, “they want something specific from your math, and they think I’m the key to their understanding of that.”
Alia said nothing, her gaze signaling me to elaborate.
“This might sound crazy-”
“You’re in the right place,” she grinned.
I sighed again, deciding there was nothing to lose, “I have this…condition, where I am reborn every time I die. I’ve been alive for all of human history, coming back in new bodies in random places every time.”
Alia kept her eyes on me a moment, then said, “Yes…yes. That makes sense.”
“It does?”
Incarnate- Essence Page 110
