Agent of Truth

by Grant Piercy

  We moved the newly printed Cassia to the chair beneath the laser device. Another Sleeping Beauty—I found myself reminded of the legend where Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on the spinning wheel that puts her to sleep. This would be the reverse, the spindle that would wake her up.

  Garrick seated me in the chair with the helmet.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked.

  “As comfortable as I’ll ever be.”

  He lowered the helmet onto my head, pulling and tightening a strap beneath my chin. It was taut on my head, digging into the cranium. Before pulling the visor down over my eyes, I said, “Garrick. Thank you. I appreciate your kindness.”

  “I only ever wanted to help,” he smiled at me. “When you’re ready, join us in the sun.” He pulled the visor down.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  From: Transcript Excerpt, File 55643238738

  INTERNAL USE ONLY

  The following is a transcript from Schema recorder #2365. Timestamp 11:02:0041:02:43 to 11:02:0041:03:12. Field notes, Bureau of Enemy Study File 55643238738: Certain sections have been reconstructed to the best of our audio transcribers’ abilities. This conversation appears to be between an escaped prisoner named Charles Samuel Guthrie (1546) and the Transhuman figure known as Garrick. The two, along with their companion Cassia Luna (1292), had been exploring the Schema facility and avoiding the entity. This appeared to be a crucial moment captured by our recorders, especially in light of all that has transpired since. It also provides insight into the Transhuman hierarchy as we attempt to counter their activity.

  Guthrie: How long does this procedure take?

  Garrick: Map and transfer. It takes as long as it takes. It’s now under way. Before Home’s destruction, we had to transfer the consciousness of someone severely damaged.

  Guthrie: You were extremely damaged though. You didn’t transfer into a new body?

  Garrick: I’d decided not to.

  Guthrie: Were you afraid?

  Garrick: Fear was something that belonged to Kaplan, so in a sense I was. I wasn’t entirely new, but I wasn’t continuing on the way the others were. They had an expansive trajectory. I was repaired by one of the others. I was something different. There was no guarantee that there was enough of Kaplan inside me to trigger the singularity.

  Guthrie: I guess I can appreciate that. You were saying something about transferring someone severely damaged?

  Garrick: Yes. His name was Anthony Block. Stockton had severed the head from the body, but his processor neural network still functioned properly. We had to hold him in place. If you can imagine it—the head strapped in the helmet, dangling by itself.

  Guthrie: Jesus.

  Garrick: Block went through it the same as the others when he transferred to the new body. I watched over him as it happened. You can’t imagine the joy that went through him. As though he’d absorbed all the music in the world and could sing along in key.

  Guthrie: You think that’ll happen to us?

  Garrick: I do.

  Guthrie: But you don’t get to hear that music, do you?

  Garrick: I hear my own music. I’ve accepted that. Maybe I don’t get to have what everyone else does... but how is that so different from the way people lived before? There’s value in it. There’s something worth saving in what we used to have. But that’s the most difficult thing. It wasn’t always good. It wasn’t always worth it. But there’s something we need to keep.

  Guthrie: I suppose you’re right. We can’t just erase ourselves entirely, can we?

  Garrick: Even me. I lost so much, but I still kept myself. I was still allowed to identify myself on my own terms.

  Guthrie: I’m sure Cassia would appreciate that.

  Garrick: I’m sure she would too. That was why I took a new name. They’d called me Gary when I was under repair, but my name was Erik. So I used a portmanteau when I could.

  Guthrie: That’s cool, man. I like your name.

  Garrick: Thank you.

  Guthrie: What’s your role with your little group? If all of them have gone through it, but you haven’t...

  Garrick: I think often of the pantheon of the gods. Hephaestus was the master craftsman. Considered ugly and lame compared to the other gods, he is still valued by the rest of the pantheon for his skill and ingenuity. That is my role.

  Guthrie: Where do you suppose Smalley is?

  Garrick: I believe he’s where you left him, on one of the lower levels.

  Guthrie: You were able to recognize energy consumption. Are you able to find him that way?

  Garrick: I tried. With his signature, it’s not so simple. Difficult to explain.

  Guthrie: What about the orderlies?

  Garrick: If they’re not where we left them, it’s possible he incorporated them into his bulk. Did you get a good look at him?

  Guthrie: No. He was like a lurching shadow. A silhouette with small red lights like the cameras and the cryonic tanks. Lights like eyes. It makes me shudder just thinking about that scraping noise, as though he was dragging himself across the floor.

  Garrick: He was.

  Guthrie: But you said he was the building.

  Garrick: He is. He has eyes all throughout. He knows where we are and what we’re doing.

  Guthrie: Then why are we doing it? Why aren’t we escaping?

  Garrick: We need to be able to fight him, and we can’t do that unless your potential is unlocked. We said we’d give him a meal.

  ( Transcriber ’s note: There is prolonged silence at this point in the recording. The recorder began to pick up feedback and cacophony above the normal level of ambient noise. Matching the audio to the surveillance footage, Garrick does not appear to react, remaining focused on the monitor relating the transfer information for 1292. Our equipment was not working near the printer materials where Guthrie had gone. The surveillance footage fades to static as the noise levels increased. It is our belief that the entity arrived at approximately 03:12, when the recording abruptly ended.)

  19: beyond the horizon (the architect)

  “ Quatre ,” she said with derision.

  I stood outside the doorway, on the threshold. “Didi, please. I know you’re in contact with them.”

  “And what gives you that idea?” The plain American flatness of her voice startled me. She sounded like this the last time I had come by, but had faded into her French dialect by the end of the interaction.

  “You don’t have to hide who you are from me,” I said.

  “But I have to hide who I am because of you,” she replied caustically.

  “You spoke to your neighbor before I arrived. She informed you of her fianc é e’s medical issues after his accident.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t recall that.”

  “You reached out to your ex or your ex reached out to you—it makes no matter. You’ve been in contact with them, and you’re the reason I’m in this body.”

  She began to close the door on me, but I snuck my shoe into the doorframe.

  “Please. I don’t belong here, and this woman needs her fianc é e back.”

  “Oh, now you care about people not being separated!” she shouted. “Where was this passion when it was me and my husband? Or do you just get to pick and choose who belongs where and with whom?” Her accent again slipped into her words, like the sun peering through clouds. “ Va te faire foutre ,” she spat. “ Putain de merde !”

  “If it’s such an inconvenience, why don’t you just kill me?” I said. “Now’s your opportunity! I’m human, I’ m vulnerable... ”

  “Because you need to suffer .” Those words hung in the air forever, though it may have only been seconds. “But not only that, maybe there’s a purpose for you being in that body, did you ever consider that? And maybe you’ll find out soon enough. For now, why don’t you take the hint and leave me the fuck alone?”

  “They spoke to me!” I shouted, unconcerned by the scene I must have been making in this quiet neighborhood. “Someone reached out and s
aid something to me through the electronics in the house. I know it was one of them. I need to get in contact!”

  She opened the door wide, holding onto the doorframe with her other hand. “Then walk right back across the street,” she said mockingly, “go back into that little house, and start talking. If they’re speaking to you, they’re probably watching you.” She pushed me out of the doorway and slammed the door.

  I was stunned for a moment. I thought about slapping the door again, shouting and demanding more of her time, but the anger drained away. My feet did exactly as she asked, turning me around and shuffling slowly down the sidewalk and driveway. I crossed the street and walked right back to the house that didn’t belong to me. The life I didn’t lead.

  Of course they were watching me.

  The darkened living room felt sinister in its silence. The beige walls, the art deco posters framed on the walls, the Chicago skyline hanging above the couch. The picture window faced Adam and Didiane’s house. The Day the Earth Stood Still caught my eye, with Gort laser-blasting a city while carrying a woman.

  “Are you here? Can you hear me?” I asked the empty room. My question was met with silence, of course.

  “You’ve interrupted this woman’s life, and for what? You’ve put me into this body, and I don’t know why. The only reason I can fathom is because I’m to be punished. I wasn’t good enough for your Eden, so you sent me into the land of Nod. Maybe I sinned against you, but I did what I had to do to protect what was happening.”

  I waited, hopeful that I could prompt a response, but alas. The only answers were the smiling faces of the engaged couple in a framed photo staring from the dimly lit beige wall.

  “What am I doing here? What am I supposed to accomplish? What good does it do imprisoning me in this flesh?”

  A dark night of the soul then. Crying out to the heavens, with no answers to be given. Prayers never answered. Silence.

  The light faded early in the November dusk. The ticking of the clock matched the sound of Render’s heartbeat in my ears. A pair of headlights appeared in the driveway. A dark blur passed the picture window, followed by a light pounding on the door.

  I opened the door to Evelyn’s heart-shaped face. She didn’t say anything as she stepped inside, her strawberry perfume floating in with her.

  “Jesus, it’s dark in here,” she said. She took her jacket off and hung it on a coatrack hook on the wall inside the doorway. She wore sharp, horn-rimmed glasses, high-waisted black jeans, and a white sweater. Her tousled dark hair curled and poofed wide to each side of her face. Beneath the glasses, her wing-tipped eyeliner accented her soft brown eyes.

  “You look nice,” I said. “Do you have a date tonight?”

  “ Nope, ” she answered.

  “Why dress up?”

  “I’m not. I just came from work, where I like to look nice. That okay with you?”

  She took a seat on the couch under the portrait of the Chicago skyline, tapping away on her phone. The light from the phone reflected in her glasses.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “I approached them. They didn’t give me any answers, but Didi suggested something—that maybe they’re watching me. If I want to talk to them, I should just try talking to them. So I did.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “No. And then you pulled into the driveway.”

  “Well, what should we do? They’re not answering, and your friends across the street aren’t giving anything away.”

  “I don’t know. I’m out of ideas,” I said, staring back out in the twilight as the dusk faded into night.

  “Have you kept up with the latest Agent of Truth posts?” she asked.

  “ No. ”

  “Didn’t you say you were an architect?”

  My head turned to gaze into the light reflected in her glasses. “Why do you ask?”

  “He talks about you.” She began to read, “‘The first of the damned to be transferred from their piteous flesh were called Architects. They had a duty to edit and remove content from the Knowledgebase—operatives of a liberal deep state who wished to control the media by controlling the flow of information.’” She pumped her fist in the air in a jerk-off motion.

  How would Agent of Truth know about Architects?

  I couldn’t just ignore that the only ones to know about this were higher than high security clearance personnel, or the other erased. Those Architects were gone—I was the last one left. If there were others at different locations, we weren’t made aware of them.

  Agent of Truth knew things no one should know. And if his posts were to be believed, he was a vile creature who wanted to expunge my former friends from the earth.

  “He’s been heavily targeting James Burke. Do you know him?”

  James Burke. He designed the Talos models, the bodies we inhabited. He and his company were responsible for the greatest advances in artificial intelligence that the world had ever seen. He contracted with the OSS, with the Bureau of Enemy Study, with Perdix. It was his technology that was responsible for the singularity.

  “No, I don’t know him. But maybe we should find him.”

  She tapped away on her phone a little more. “Nobody knows where he’s located. They say he lives in the Pacific Northwest, but mostly off the grid. He gives info to shareholders through proxies. He remotely addresses NMAC townhalls so that people can at least see his face. How would we find him?”

  A reclusive billionaire, responsible for warping the world with his inventions. According to the Agent of Truth posts, Burke was concerned with immortality, which meant mind uploading. Further, Burke said it was impossible, but he must’ve known differently. A doctor involved in Project Perdix pioneered the technique.

  That’s right. A doctor named Smalley.

  Thinking about that name sent shivers down my spine. What was the connection?

  “There are too many breadcrumb trails and not enough hard answers,” I said.

  “He was recently interviewed by a Chicago reporter for the opening of an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry,” Evelyn responded. “Joanna Heard.”

  “Can you travel?” I asked.

  She lowered her head and gave me a look, her wing-tipped eyes peering over her horn-rimmed glasses. “It’s a little difficult to take PTO on such short notice.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a call center agent for NMAC. We handle technical support, and we’ve been super busy with the blackouts and the patch release.”

  “Wait, you work for NMAC? You work for Burke?”

  “I guess that I do, but I’ve never really thought about it. He’s so far removed from our operations...”

  “Have you seen the townhalls?”

  “They’re posted on the company intranet, but I don’t usually watch. They’re hype videos for the most part.”

  “Are you able to access them outside the company? Would I be able to see?”

  In seconds, she already had it up on her phone. I sat close to her, huddled together to watch on the small screen. I became increasingly aware of the strawberry scent of her perfume and the warmth of her leg against mine. Or rather, against Render’ s.

  “So long as we have remote VPN access,” she said. “The video might take a little bit to load with the lag time.”

  We sat silently, staring at the black screen waiting for the video to load. Our bodies were a little too close, and I felt a pang of anxiety for Daphne. And for... something else.

  Finally, the wheel stopped turning and Burke’s face filled the small screen.

  “The world set free. That’s our slogan. It’s an extension of our vision—to make life easier for our customers through our products. We set them free from the toil of taking care of their homes, their family, their lives through constant attention. Our models make our customers’ lives easier; they help families. They assist.” He went on like that in lofty corporate language, touting their market share and vision and slogans. He t
alked about how their support agents needed to walk customers through a patch upgrade to repair the crashed models.

  “This is pretty much the message we got from management,” Evelyn said. “They have us go step-by-step with the people who call in. It’s exhausting. I’m handling hundreds of calls a day where I have to get them through that, and it only works half the time.”

  “Why only half the time?”

  “User error, I guess. People don’t follow goddamn directions.”

  Near the end of the video, Burke said something that caught my attention: “ We ’re already thinking beyond the patch, beyond the Talos model, beyond the horizon that our competitors can’t see past.”

  “Beyond the horizon,” I whispered. “Any idea what he’s talking about?”

  “Rumors of a Talos XI next year, I think,” she answered.

  “What if it’s something else?”

  Our faces were unbearably close. Her wing-tipped eyes were simultaneously soft and sharp, her perfume intoxicating. I could feel the warmth between us, and I wondered if she felt the heat too. What must she see of me from those eyes?

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t see it yet.”

  I wanted to push closer, to touch these lips to hers. She wore dark lipstick that made them seem all the more welcoming.

  But I turned away. It was wrong.

  I stood up and let the moment pass between us. This body didn’t belong to me, nor did any of its desires. I thought of the night before Daphne attempted suicide, the night she’d touched me and brought me to climax. I understood the transgression of that act, the latent sin.