by Grant Piercy
AGENT OF TRUTH
A Novel
By Grant Piercy
Copyright © 2020 Grant Piercy
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.
Cover Art: Abstract Texture by Rob Sheridan licensed under Creative Commons 4.0
A special thank you to Lo Jatko Mührer (and their cat) for reviewing the content of this work.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
This book contains depictions of suicide and self-harm. Be advised.
Table of Contents
overture (77)
1. depersonalization (the architect)
2. what you ’ re going to hear (cassia)
3. dead pixel (regina)
4. retrograde (the architect)
5. vacant monuments (cassia)
6. consolation prize (the architect)
7. transition (cassia)
8. the voice (regina)
9. where do we go? (cassia)
10. earthly delights (regina)
11. no one ever hated their own body (the architect)
12. silhouettes (cassia)
13. gives wisdom unto the wise (the architect)
14. mimic (regina)
interlude (77)
15. he experimented on himself (cassia)
16. let me atone (the architect)
17. access control (regina)
18. where is everybody? (cassia)
19. beyond the horizon (the architect)
20. the blue of all our tomorrows (cassia)
21. earworm (regina)
22. we ’ re hardware (the architect)
23. infiltrator (regina)
24. the whim of nature and evolution (cassia)
25. belonging (the architect)
26. comedown (regina)
27. divina (the architect)
28. schema (cassia)
29. rendition (regina)
30. disconnected (the architect)
threnody for humankind (77)
chorus of the overmind
“ The more perfect a thing is, the more it feels pleasure and pain. ”
—Dante Alighieri
overture (77)
The fireball scorches the sky in the distance, burning a path for our ascension.
We don’t watch the conflagration, the pyre upon which we can mourn the old humanity—we sense it. The six of us stand on a hilltop a safe interval away, our collective eyes closed. We feel the transmission—the information passing through us. To my right, Four is the only one with open eyes. This transmission belongs to him, and we can feel him speaking to us.
“This is the Fall in reverse, our expulsion from a negative Eden. Together we ascend.”
Through our compound sight the story unfolds, locking us in the moment. There’ll be no more heartbreak for us, no more goodbyes, no more death. He says he feels the unity of all things, and I begin to feel it too. The grass crushed beneath our feet, its discorporate chlorophyll rubbing onto our boots, the swirling distant galaxies in the depths of space above, the fingertips of the companion standing next to us. From this hilltop, we'll launch the next wave of consciousness, the new humanity.
He tells us once more, “History is not sacrosanct. Its rule is determined only by our hope for the future. What we want from our future, we project onto our past. That is the blueprint.”
We hold our eyes closed, feeling the warm breeze from the blast, miles away. The mushroom cloud on the horizon swallows the remnants of our combined pain, erasing our past personal tragedies.
Four’s transmission was broadcast to the remnants of our former prison as it spiraled into its final chaos. What must those glorious moments have looked like to those left behind?
There’s one with us that can’t share in our transcendental journey because he is not capable. He and I share a face. He doesn’t contain the necessary hardware to experience this as we experience it. He can’t remember his past anymore than we can write his future. He stands below us, near the bottom of the hill, surrounded by trees that may bear fruit. I wonder if this man with whom I share a face will contract acute radiation poisoning from the blast. The rest of us don’t have to worry about it.
We’ll take him back to where he belongs, but he certainly won’t remember why he belongs there.
He considers himself the framework of a human being, and I can’t argue with that. I open my eyes and descend the hill so that I might speak with him.
“So they’re all just gone? Those that were like me?” he asks through lips identical to mine.
“Ian,” I say.
“Is that what you plan to call me?”
“That’s your name.”
“That one, the guy you call Four... he told me that I was the man in box seven seven. That seems more like the right name to me.”
“One of many things we share in common,” I respond. He sighs and looks down to the grass. The warm wind picks up and tussles the hair about his face. “You’re Ian,” I say, offering to relinquish my name to him. “We’ll call you Ian.”
“What does that make you?”
“I’m Seventy Seven.”
“Where will you go? You and your little group?”
“Someplace that you can’t. We need to take you back.”
He steps toward one of the trees, and I can feel the other six pressing into my mind, urging us to leave. Four’s voice is the strongest, and it should be. He’s been the one living in the wake of this miracle the longest. He’s been the one tugging at the strings like a game of cat’ s cradle.
“All I know is that what you might call fate has spared the seven of us from the death we’re leaving behind. That includes you, Ian. Events transpired in the way they did so the seven of us can move forward and survive. Your name doesn’t even have to be Ian, it can be whatever you want.”
His hand brushes against the bark of the tree, and I imagine the hand is mine. I close my eyes and can feel the rough texture of the bark leaking sap from a festering wound.
“Call me Adam,” he says, admiring a leaf. “You can keep Ian. That’s who you are.”
“We can’t stay here any longer. We need to take you back,” I tell him once more. I find myself wondering again about the radiation levels. The others sense my concern but don’t press me about it. Four should be able to appreciate the desire to preserve what we’ve moved beyond.
“Where is it that you’re going to take me?” he asks.
“To a new life, same as the old life.”
“The one I can’t remember.”
Will she accept him? Will all this end at the same place that it began, back on the same doorstep?
The winds pick up again, blowing westward. This mirror man turns away and begins his trek back up the hill toward the group. We’ll take him back to the civilization where he belongs. Then we’re going to end it.
1: depersonalization (the architect)
Imagine waking up
into a world that’s different than it was yesterday. All the possibilities coalesced into a single outcome that you don’t recognize, that you didn’t see coming. When your eyes open, a tectonic shift has occurred. You blink because you don’t understand where you’ve awakened. The people around you are not the people you’ve always known, the people you expect to meet each day. You come to realize, maybe it’s always been this way, only it’s you that’s changed in the night. You’ve become a stranger. The person in the mirror isn’t the same.
Not only that, but the person you were fades back along the horizon of yesterday. You’re left with the feeling that things are not as they should be, but you can’t for the life of you remember why.
A hand grasped mine in the blurry new world, soft fingers against my palm. She entered into focus from the edges of reality—dark, curly hair haloed about a caramel-colored face. Piercing brown eyes spilled tears down heart-shaped cheeks.
“Mike?”
The blurry new world was bright and pastel. Beeps thrummed through the haze. A smile spread across her lips.
Words tumbled from my mouth before I could stop them. “Who’s Mike?”
The smile quickly turned into concern, to a frown. She came into sharp focus as a weight pressed into my cranium, a throbbing, heavy pulse matched to the consistent beeps. My mind didn’t fully grasp, could only remember chirping and a bass line.
“Doctor?” she asked, turning behind her. “I was just reading a story, and then...”
“It’s all right, Daphne,” a voice said. “This is to be expected.”
Her hand fell away. She was replaced in my field of vision by a man in white, a sharp shadow compared to the woman’s beauty. A blinding light appeared before me. I felt fingers on my forehead, pulling my left eyelid up.
“Can you hear me?” he said.
“ Yes. ”
“What’s your name?”
I don’t have a name anymore. I have a number. “Four. I’m an architect.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“ Home. Salvo level. ”
No, that’s not right. Home was gone, burnt from this world.
“That’s just gibberish, Doctor,” another woman’s voice echoed from somewhere. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
The woman named Daphne asked, “Why is he saying that, Doctor?”
“He might have suffered brain damage in the accident. We won’t know until we run a few more tests,” he replied. The light was now in my right eye, the fingers on my forehead lifting my right eyelid.
“What accident?” I mumbled. A weight pressed into my brain, making it difficult to process anything.
“You were in a car accident,” the doctor said. “You’ve been in a coma for a few weeks now.”
“My name is Mike?” I asked. “Michael?”
“Does that sound familiar to you?”
With t he weight pressing inside my skull, I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t comprehend. I tried to sit up but there was a tug on my arm. A line running from my elbow crease revealed the IV. The beeping was my heart rate. I could feel dry saliva at the corners of my lips. A taste like metal permeated my mouth—maybe dried blood.
“Water,” I said. “Please.”
“Evelyn, could you get him some water?” the woman named Daphne asked. A blur whisked from the room, a door opening and closing.
These things weren’t right. An IV in a vein, saliva and dried blood in my mouth, a heartbeat. “If I only had a heart...” I sang softly.
“What do you mean?” the doctor asked.
I’m not supposed to have a heart, or veins, or even a brain, as you’d understand it. I’m supposed to be made of wires. Instead of blood, I’m supposed to have a conductive lubricant that relays messages from my higher cognitive functions to my extremities. I was one of them, I was...
Post-human. An android.
He’d only think I was mad if I told him that.
“Of course you have a heart,” Daphne said, her eyes wide and bright, her light brown hands covering her mouth. The tears continued to stream down her cheeks.
I tried to reach back into my memory, to remember how I arrived here in this hospital bed. My recall was once perfect, but it was all fading. Ian, Vanessa, Block, Rita... We had printed a new body for Anthony Block, sewn up our wounds, and evacuated in time to see the whole Home campus become nothing more than a mushroom cloud. We couldn’t use the maglev, so we made our way on foot. We watched from a distance. I had reached through, broadcast ... I was touching so many of them at once.
“ We ’re going to need to run a few tests, Michael,” the doctor said. “For now you need to rest.”
“He’s been asleep for weeks,” Daphne responded.
“We don’t want him to overextend himself.”
She and her sister Evelyn stayed by my side a while longer, after the doctors and nurses had left the room.
“What do you remember?” Evelyn asked. She had a sharper nose and softer eyebrows, but a similar heart-shaped face. The resemblance was clear. She stood near the door, half in shadow, while Daphne remained next to the bed.
I closed my eyes and thought of those last moments, looking through the eyes of someone else. “ Jones, ” I said.
“Jones? Who’s Jones?” Evelyn repeated, stepping out of the shadows. Daphne was on the edge of her seat.
“He was an officer.”
“What kind of officer? Did someone hit you? Were you attacked?”
“ An android, ” my voice trailed. I shook my head slightly.
“ Michael, ” Daphne said in a soft voice. “Did one of those things hurt you?”
I looked her in the eyes, the curls of her dark hair dangling over her forehead. “They were going to kill my dog, but he got away. I hoped he’d make it to safety, but...”
“Michael, you don’t have a dog,” Daphne replied, her voice sinking. She looked down to the tiled floor, the color of static tinged with blue-green.
I shook my head again. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I didn’t know her or her sister. It was just another game someone was playing, someone higher up. I thought I’d escaped these things when I experienced the singularity, but instead it’s all a blank. A mystery to solve. I rested back against the pillow, looking away from Daphne, pretty as she was.
Evelyn suggested that they go get some food.
“But we shouldn’t leave him alone,” Daphne argued. “Someone should stay with him.”
“No. I need time. I need...” I wasn’t sure what I needed. Information. “Go. Get something to eat. Please,” I said in the most sympathetic voice I could muster through the fog of headache.
I stared at the IV in my arm as they stepped out of the room.
As soon as they were gone, I tried to gain my footing to search for clothes. I couldn’t very well walk out into the world barefoot in a hospital gown. I tumbled to the floor, the IV cord tugging hard at my arm. The fall hurt like hell. I realized Michael probably hadn’t walked in weeks, perhaps months. My mind wasn’t used to the communication pathways in his body. I pulled myself up by the bedside and did my best to stand like a normal person.
Learning to walk again.
I had to brace myself against the wall as I searched the room. Michael’s shirt, jacket, pants, shoes, and socks were in a drawer below the window, wrapped in a clear plastic bag, along with his wallet and keys. In the wallet, I found his driver’s license and government ID card, as well as a few debit and credit cards. I had everything I could need to leave the hospital but no strength to do it.
His name was Michael Render.
Could I try to escape? Or would the effort be too much?
I would have to bide my time as Michael Render.
Daphne and Evelyn came back into the room as I rummaged through the clear plastic bag of clothes and miscellany. I hadn’t realized how long it took just to make it that far in my efforts.
“Michael, what are you doing up?” Daphne asked.
; “I just... I was looking for my phone. I thought it might help. See if I recognized anything.”
I had to commit to being the amnesiac—it would make everything so much simpler than trying to impersonate someone about whom I knew nothing.
Daphne ’s own phone began to ring. She sighed heavily after looking at the screen, then stepped outside the room, leaving me alone with Evelyn.
I didn’t expect her to say anything, but her voice lilted through the air: “Talk to me about the things you do remember.”
“ Fragments, ” I answered. “Fading beyond the horizon.”
She leaned against the wall, her hands behind her back, her dark, heart-shaped face devoid of expression. “You don’t sound like yourself,” she said. “You don’t talk like you. There’s something more poetic in your choice of words.”
“What does that mean? How do I... how do we fix it?” I asked.
She sighed and slapped her hands against her thighs, saying, “That’s a question for the doctors, Mike.”
“What if they can’t answer it?”
“Maybe the philosophers can,” she replied.
And then it hit me—did they put me here? My prodigies, those that I had groomed to transcend beyond their inhibitors? Did they decide I didn’t belong with them in their new world? Their faces were slowly fading from my memory, featureless and emotionless, like the faces of mannequins.
“So tell me about myself,” I said. “Tell me the things I’m supposed to know.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know how that’s supposed to work. What if you’re not who you say you are?”
“Who else would I be?”
Daphne returned to the room, her eyes downcast as she put her phone in her pocket. “That was Mom. She wanted to know what was happening.”
“More questions for the philosophers,” Evelyn said.
My head pushed back into the pillow. Above, the pockmarked hospital ceiling provided no respite from poor Daphne’s heavy stare. Our eyes met, only for her to look away, back at her sister. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked. Her face began to curl, tears then dropping down her cheeks in rapid succession. I couldn’t deliver much empathy, as I seemed to have lost my place in the new world we were building.
