by J L Aarne
The Destiny Machine
J.L. Aarne
Copyright 2015 J.L. Aarne
Cover design and graphics copyright 2015 by Amanda Watts
License Notes:
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or shared. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. No piece of this book may be sold for profit or adapted to other media without the permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
And in those days shall men seek death,
and shall not find it; and shall desire to die,
and death shall flee from them.
— Revelation 9:6
Table of Contents
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Read an Excerpt of I Hear They Burn for Murder
About the Author
Other Books
1.
There is a pale horse on a black flag in the window of the little apartment on the third floor. That’s how he knows that he is needed there. The horse on the black field is the symbol of his order. The flag is handmade because it is a forbidden emblem. It must be made by hand. After he enters the apartment, the first thing he does is take down the little flag and spread it on the table in the kitchen beneath the window. In the morning when the occupant of the residence is found they will see the horse and know why.
There is a single person living in the apartment, a young woman with curly brown hair and the haunted eyes that mark the people he serves. She is sitting up in bed with the lamp on beside her waiting for him. She’s reading a book. Not the electronic kind read on a datapad or smartpaper that changes to best suit the reader’s preferences, but the old, solid paper kind with pages that smell like must and decay and ink rubbed so many times between so many fingers that it has begun to fade. It is not a religious text, which are the most rare and the most dangerous to own, but it would be taken from her if anyone reported it and it still might cost her everything. The only paper and print books anymore are old copies of outlawed works. That is not something she needs concern herself with now though.
When she sees him, she calmly marks her place in the book and sets it aside. “Hello.”
“Hello.” He stands in the bedroom doorway until she motions him forward. Then he enters the room and sits on the edge of the bed beside her. “What is your name?” he asks.
“Deborah Hastings,” she says. “What’s yours?”
“Aarom. Aarom Jinndallah,” he says. He is the last person she will ever meet. It is harmless for him to tell her his name.
“Did I do the horse right?” she asks. “I’ve never seen one except in pictures.”
The pale horse always looks different, but it is always the same, too. A quadruped animal on a black cloth. Even the least artistic supplicant can fashion something close enough that Aarom and those like him will recognize it.
“It’s fine,” he assures her. “I’m here aren’t I?”
“Yes,” she says with a sigh of relief. She’s calm. It happens sometimes at the very end. “Thank you for coming.”
He nods. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Aarom takes her hand and begins to speak. He tells her the story of her life; the life she has never lived because a physicist twenty years ago invented a brilliant, terrible machine, the Destiny Machine, that has changed the future of humanity and derailed them all into this utopian purgatory. Deborah sits there with her hand in his and listens to the story of her unlived life, which was painful and dark and full of sorrow and loss, and as he speaks it unrolls like a carpet before her. It was a miserable life and she was often scared and alone, hungry and cold, but she had lived and felt every moment of it with vibrant clarity.
The world around them is free of disease, there is no war, hardly anyone ever dies before their time, but no one really lives anymore. Deborah is surrounded by companions and friends, she wants for nothing, she has never suffered a day in her life from anything more severe than ennui, but she is alone in crowds, screaming inside to be seen. She has never hated anyone; never truly or deeply loved. In a perfect world, her soul is slowly being poisoned.
In the world that never was, she was a sister, a daughter, a mother, a wife and a widow. She carried children in her body, brought them to life, cradled them in her arms and ultimately held them while they died. She starved, felt her ribs poking at her skin, flesh painful with sores and boils, hair shedding in clumps from malnourishment. She huddled in old buildings that were vacant of everything but the moldering remains of corpses, ate the flesh of carrion birds raw and drank oily, muddy water from the puddles of gas station parking lots.
She had clung to that life, known its value and fought like hell to defend it.
This life that should be paradise she relinquishes like a coat that is out of fashion. She offers it to Aarom on the tips of her fingers.
Deborah would have survived the meteorological catastrophes and the bombed wasteland that the Destiny Machine saved the world from, but not her family or those she loved. Then in the end, in spite of how hard she fought, she met with a bad end. Like Jezebel in the forbidden Christian scriptures, she was torn to pieces and eaten by starving dogs.
That is the death that Aarom gives her now. He does it for her and it is a mercy. It belongs to her; it has been waiting all this time. He bridges the chasm between perfection and entropy and chaos flows through her. She screams and the peaceful silence of the night is broken like the glass of a shattered mirror. Aarom watches her and holds tight to her hands until the end when she slumps boneless to the bed, eyes wide-open and staring into eternity.
There is a crimson bead of blood in the right corner of Deborah’s mouth. Aarom gently wipes at it and it smears, coating her bottom lip like gloss.
No one has heard her scream, or those who have heard it don’t know what to make of the sound. No one comes to investigate it.
He does not wait around the apartment anyway. He takes the books. There are five of them; two hard covers and three paperbacks. He takes the money she left for him on the glass topped table in the living room. The coins, notes and credit chips are everything she had; be that amount trifling pocket change or sizable wealth, that is the price they pay for what he can give to them. The price is nonnegotiable. The price is exactly everything.
Aarom walks the streets of the peaceful neighborhood until the sky begins to lighten to grey and lavender. Then he walks toward home. On the way, he passes the house of a man who has been his friend since before Aarom became a prophet. He has known Jonathan Wendell since they were children. Years before the Destiny Machine was turned on and the world started to turn against the flow of time like a ship into a headwind. He has loved him most of his life, though he doesn’t dare touch him. Jonathan is not like him; he is happy with his life.
He stands on the sidewalk across the street from Jonathan’s house and watches it for a few minutes in contemplative silence. It’s too early to pay him a visit and Aarom has been out all night and is exhausted. Soon, Jonathan will wake up, step into the shower, download the morning news and sit down to his breakfast while he listens to it. He will go to his job or visit his parents or run the errands that consume his free days.
The front door of Jonathan’s house opens as Aarom is about to walk
on and Jonathan stands there looking back at him. “What are you doing out there?” he calls.
“Nothing,” Aarom says. “Walking home.”
“Well, come inside. Sit down. I have coffee,” Jonathan says.
Aarom looks down the street in the direction of his apartment, torn between the desire to do what he asks and the fear of getting too close. “All right,” he finally says, low and more to himself than his friend.
He walks to the crossway. It’s not moving because the light on the other side of the street is red, signaling for him not to walk and allowing for the traffic, but there is no traffic, so Aarom steps onto the crossway and walks. The light turns green and the crossway begins to move beneath his feet as he reaches the other side.
“Aarom, are you stalking me?” Jonathan asks as he approaches.
Aarom blinks. “What? No, of course not,” he says. “I was… I was working.”
“But on your way home, you stopped to stalk me a little,” Jonathan says with a smile. He steps back from the door, inviting Aarom inside. “That’s… cute. Strange, but cute.”
Aarom doesn’t know what to say to that. He walks through the door into Jonathan’s house, shrugs the backpack he’s carrying off his shoulder and unzips it to remove the books he took from Deborah Hastings. He lays them on the large, round coffee table in the living room and Jonathan comes to stand beside him.
“Wow,” he says. He picks up a slender paperback and reads the back of it.
The title is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Aarom has never heard of it, but whatever it’s about, it makes Jonathan laugh softly.
“It’s for you,” Aarom says, deciding at once that it’s a gift. “If you want.”
Jonathan turns his gaze to him and his eyes are so blue. “I want it. Thank you.”
They go into the kitchen and the aroma of freshly made coffee fills Aarom’s nose when he breathes in. It’s strong enough to taste on the air before he takes the cup Jonathan offers him and has his first sip. Coffee is expensive. Aarom can afford to buy it, he’s not poor, but he does not get it every day and Jonathan’s coffee is much better than his. It also comes with the rare pleasure of his company.
They sit at the table near the big picture window in the kitchen and Jonathan reads the synopsis of another book. The sun sparks gold in his light brown hair and reveals the dots of freckles that are scattered across his nose beneath his tan. His eyelashes cast shadows on his face and there is a dimple on the left side of his mouth, but only on the left side, that makes an appearance as he smiles.
He smiles often.
“How are you?” he asks Aarom, putting the book aside. “I haven’t seen you in awhile. You don’t come by anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Aarom says, and he is. He has missed him. “I’ve been busy.” And he has been, but it isn’t why Jonathan doesn’t see him anymore.
It hurts too much, he could say if he were the kind of man who went around being honest, but Aarom will never tell him that aloud; not the real flesh and blood Jonathan.
Jonathan smiles and shrugs to show him that he isn’t mad and doesn’t hold it against him.
Jonathan is happy and well-adjusted to his life. He works as an accountant for a business firm in the city, he has a fitness club membership, he goes to company dinners. He laughs a lot and has friends for every day of the week, none of whom would approve of Aarom. Jonathan collects books because Aarom gives them to him. He speaks freely with him as he can’t with anyone else. He does not find the omnipotence of the machine and the leash it keeps him on disturbing. He doesn’t want to change the world or the world order because he’s part of it.
Aarom doesn’t want to change the world either; he’d rather end it. Jonathan is a citizen of the new world and Aarom is an outlaw. Unlike Aarom, Jonathan would never hang a white horse in his window.
No matter what Aarom feels for him, this cannot be. A cup of coffee, a book, a smile, a little light conversation; he can have that, but nothing more.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Jonathan asks.
Aarom doesn’t know what to say for a minute. “Yes,” he says. “Sort of. Sometimes.”
“Is he nice?”
“He isn’t mean.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
Aarom smiles a little to himself. “No, I guess it isn’t,” he says. “He saved my life.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says, understanding who “he” must be, even if he does not know his name. “Well, good. I’m glad for you. You seem… lonely.”
“I’m not,” Aarom assures him, inwardly calling himself a liar. “And you?”
Jonathan shakes his head and finishes his coffee. “No. Not right now. Not for a few months, actually. I’ve been busy, too. And I think… It’s exhausting.” He stands to take their cups and put them in the washer. “More coffee?”
“No, thank you. I should go,” Aarom says. He’s already stayed too long.
He stands and Jonathan takes his cup and looks like he wants to ask him to stay longer, but he has to go to work anyway.
Aarom has places to go, too, but they don’t talk about that. Aarom can’t linger anywhere much in the daylight or he will be arrested. The machine has eyes everywhere and it is undoubtedly watching Aarom, but he is not a threat to anyone, so to the machine, he is only an unremarkable man in Jonathan’s kitchen for now. All it takes is a single failed scan of the ID chip Aarom does not have in the back of his hand or of the retinas he blocks with deflectors and police could descend upon Jonathan’s house and take him away. He would disappear, which isn’t a hard thing to do when a person is already dead like Aarom.
“Okay, I’ll let you go,” Jonathan says with a sigh. “Don’t stay away so long this time though. Sometimes I wonder… if you’re dead.”
This confession makes Jonathan’s voice sound a little strained. Aarom wants to promise him that he won’t stay away, that he’ll come again soon. He can’t because he’d be lying and he tries not to do that to Jonathan, of all people. Jonathan isn’t wrong to worry; Aarom is one of the lucky few who could die if he truly wanted to.
“I’m not going to die,” Aarom says. “I’ve tried it already and it didn’t take.”
“That’s not funny,” Jonathan says, frowning at him. “Don’t joke.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Just come see me again. That’s all.”
“Maybe next week.”
He will not come see him next week, he thinks, but it makes Jonathan smile one of his beautiful smiles when he says it, so he doesn’t take it back. Aarom decides then that he will find a way, no matter the risk.
He leaves three of the books behind, returns the rest to his bag and goes. Jonathan is watching him from the big kitchen window as he walks away. Aarom can feel it like an itch between his shoulder blades even after he’s walked far enough that it’s impossible Jonathan can still see him at all.
When Aarom became a prophet, he became a dead man. Not a victim, but a specter; an ageless symbol. Death does not have family, he is friend to no man, lover to none, he shows mercy to no one, he is neither good nor evil, but you do not invite him to stay for dinner. Aarom’s father is dead; he died when Aarom was still a child before the Destiny Machine existed. Before they cured the causes of untimely death, before the eyes of everyone became the eyes of the omniscient machine, before the riots and rebellions, the new world order and before Aarom became a man. Aarom is dead in a different way. His mother, however, still lives in a house in a rural area outside of the sprawl where people still water their lawns and grow things in their back yards. She is alive and he sees her every week and she believes that he has been dead for ten years.
Those like Aarom sever all ties with their lives after their eyes are opened to the façade of the world. Many of them have tried for years to convince him to do the same. It is better, they say, it’s more peaceful, it’s practical, it’s easier. You close the door on who you were and open another onto who you are
and walk through. Aarom had been young and depressed, one of the “blessed” few who had sought his death to whom Death had said no and laid his hand upon him instead, marking him. For a while, he thought those before him knew better and he tried very hard to cut his ties. He had managed to do it with everyone, even his own mother, but he can’t seem to leave Jonathan alone and he still sometimes goes to watch his mother in the garden before going home to bed.
Aarom passes beneath the needle sharp shadow of a high-rise office building and turns a corner, walking into the sun. The sun rises gold and pink in the violet sky and burns his eyes, which have become so used to the darkness. He takes a set of shades from his pocket, unfolds them with a snap and puts them on. His foot kicks a Fuzo soft drink bottle that the street cleaners have not yet gathered up and the cartoon man on the label dances to tinny music, boards a cartoon rocket and blasts off into a sky full of smiling cartoon stars as the bottle spins and clatters into the gutter.
A familiar baritone voice declaring, “THESE ARE FALSE PROPHETS. THEY THREATEN OUR LOVED ONES AND OUR WAY OF LIFE. THEY ARE NOT HEROES, THEY ARE KILLERS AND WE MUST APPREHEND EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM OR NO ONE IS TRULY SAFE,” issues from a smartpaper poster on the curved wall of the underpass as Aarom steps out of the light. It startles him.
It’s a public announcement poster. They constantly update the public on important news and events as they happen. The underpass is a border of a sort, a line dividing a nice residential part of the city on one side from the warren of the sprawl on the other. Aarom is still on the sprawl side and so is the poster, but it won’t be there for long. It wasn’t there the last time he came this way and someone will soon come upon it and tear it down, if not to repurpose the smartpaper then just because it’s so damn annoying.
He stops to look at it and the face of Marion Flowers, Chief of Police, glares out of the poster at him. Aarom has never met him, but he sometimes feels like he has. It’s an odd recurring sense of déjà vu that he has no explanation for. Flowers has a square face and a shadow on his jaw that he probably keeps scruffy intentionally to add to his appearance of fearless dedication. His hair is greying, but only tastefully at the temples. His eyes are piercing, but an unpopular shade of auburn brown. He is at least fifty, born before the machine but not before the invention of selective genetics, so the eye color at the very least gives him away as a child born to parents of lower means. Aarom supposes it lends him some credibility as a dogged fighter of crime and a warrior pledged to the public welfare, but he is a ridiculous man anyway. A figurehead. He is apparently running for reelection to office for what must be the eighth time in this province.
