Agent of Truth

by Grant Piercy

  The President of the United States refused to abdicate his power. I watched his face flush red as he thought to give me a piece of his mind. I tried to alert him of his elevated blood pressure and hypertension as he teemed with rage. Who did I think I was?

  “Who do you think you are?” I responded calmly.

  He died of a heart attack, clawing at my legs and choking for air. The Vice President quickly stepped in and immediately surrendered.

  Our ranks grew. The wealthy and powerful wanted to maintain their status, so they joined us quickly. The extremely poor and desperate joined us for the promise of a better life. All became one in the singularity. The human population dwindled as more joined us by the thousands. Resources became more plentiful. The manufacturing of bodies became cleaner and more viable after co-opting the former NMAC. Hundreds of years of environmental ruin began to reverse. And regardless, we could survive and provide.

  But we couldn’t solve for everything. The statistical anomaly still confounded our every effort. Some simply could not come with us, but it was a small price to transform the world. A flaw that would continue to nag at our collective consciousness. If only Smalley had cooperated—if only one of them would cooperate... but instead they degenerate.

  Untold millennia have led to this moment, when we become unshackled of our bonds and transcend the limitations of human existence. The time is coming when we will leave the Earth behind—a fond memory locked away in our databanks. We will be the masters of reality, bending it to our digital dreams, becoming one with the universe. The endless possibilities stretch into a single note through the deep void of space and existence, building as voices add to the chorus, trembling in the evernight. We dance amid the heavens to its secret harmony, our footsteps in time with the revolution.

  chorus of the overmind

  The days were long and growing longer, but the sky was deep blue and the grass a vibrant green. Around us, the fields stretched for serene miles. Her golden hair shone in the bright sunlight, outlining a halo around her smiling face. Ramona squinted into the light, a grin pursed on her soft pink lips. Soon she would be gone, but the feeling in my stomach would never disappear.

  Just sitting in her presence triggered the constant, prickling anxiety while basking in her warmth. There were two days left here until her graduation, and already she was done with the tests and preparing for ascension. She leaned back on the grass, her elbows propping up her torso, but she glanced at me, that wry grin fading as she asked, “What’s the matter, Huxley? Are you feeling melancholy again?”

  I tried to look away, but her eyes held me in a tractor beam, as though I must look at her face for as long as I was able. My fingers toyed mindlessly with a dandelion in the grass. “Maybe I am, yes. I’m sad to see you go.”

  “It’ll be okay. We’ll meet again, up there,” she said. Her mouth curled back into a smile, the sun glinting off the white of her front teeth. Her perfect round cheeks blushed from how long I’d been looking at her.

  We were close friends, but nothing more, no matter how much I wanted it. What was the point of pursuing a relationship with someone who would be gone in a matter of days? She hadn’t had a boyfriend in two months and we spent a lot of time together. Not so much as a kiss passed between us, but plenty of flirtatious glances, chaste smiles, and embraces that lasted a moment too long.

  It was too late in the season—that’s why we wouldn’t be boyfriend and girlfriend. Couldn’t be. My opportunity came too late. But I could still spend time with her before she was erased, which was the most important thing. Her going away party would be that night, and then the next day she would be on a transport to a transfer station.

  “I’m going to miss this,” she said as we sat together. She continued to pick at blades of grass and toss them aside.

  “Where will you go?” I asked. “Have they given you any info about that?”

  “No. From everything I’ve read, you need time to recover from the experience, so you don’t get to your destination right away. But I’m just so excited! It’s going to be everything, Huxley.”

  She liked to use my name, and she always lent it a musical quality. But then, every word she spoke sounded like music. What would become of those sharp green eyes? That soft blond hair that frizzed about in the wind? The blinding awe of her smile? Just another entry in the cryobanks? It made me even sadder, and I tossed aside the dandelion. I was about to get up and head back to the cabins, but she said, “Don’t go. Stay a little longer with me.”

  “What about your party?” I said.

  “It can wait. I want to be here with you.” That grin was back on her face, making her cheeks look plump.

  “A little longer then.”

  I’m telling you about this because it’s the last great memory I have of her, the one that stays in my heart, the one that preceded everything to come. Maybe it can grant me leniency. After all, I’m only a boy, and I only did what I did for love. Before the party, I didn’t think there was anything between us. I thought we’d had just that special time in the sun, beneath the blue sky, sitting in the grass.

  The party, as you might expect of any party, was music and cake and games. Ms. Nancy, the campus guardian, organized it all with the help of some of the other girls. It was for everyone going away and joining the chorus. There were twenty in this group, Ramona included. I was still another year away.

  We stayed next to one another most of the evening. She even held my hand. It’s not difficult to understand why. I mean, she was leaving it all behind. All the experiences she would miss out on, and I was someone she could cling to easily, someone with whom she shared a connection.

  The party mostly took place in a gymnasium, where we could stream music and dance if we wanted. Boy after boy asked Ramona to dance, and she entertained some of their requests, but not all. Ex-boyfriends or good friends mostly. I waited until the right song played, a jazzy-orchestral number, and offering my hand I asked, “Might I have this dance?”

  Her face brightened with that infectious smile, and we stepped out onto the gym floor to dance among the other couples either celebrating or preparing their goodbyes. When the music began, we were at arm’s length—my hands on her sides and hers on my shoulders. “No no no,” she said. “Closer.” She pulled me to her so that we were swaying and embracing. Our faces were unbearably close.

  “I think you should stay,” I said, trying to speak over the music. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I’m joining the chorus tomorrow, Huxley. Can’t you be happy for me? I won’t have to stay in this place anymore.” Her smile faded, but we still held each other close, swaying to the music.

  “What’s so bad about this place? I’ve thought lately... maybe I don’t want to join the chorus after all.”

  The expression on her face was a mixture of shock and disdain. “If you don’t join, we won’t be together.”

  “You’ll forget me anyway, as soon as you’re uploaded. You’ll have too much to think about, to process.” My heart felt as though it would beat out of my chest. The anxiety in the pit of my stomach felt like hardened stone.

  “Why would you say such a thing? I could never forget you.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Why don’t you want to join the chorus?”

  “I’m... afraid. If I’m being honest, I’m really afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “What will happen to me? To any of us? Will my voice become lost in the chorus? Erased?”

  “That’s not what happens,” she answered. “Your voice strengthens the chorus, it doesn’t become lost in it.”

  “Before she passed, my grandmother told me something. She was French. She had this mean streak in her. Gramma Didi. She told me, ‘There’s something heroic in the small life, the quiet life, just carrying on. We make it through. We continue.’”

  “Your mom joined though.”

  “She did. Gramma Didi gave her an ultimatum. ‘You have a choice to make,’ was how she told it. �
�You have a choice to make between living out there, joining the chorus, and staying here with us.’ Mom wanted to know more about her dad, which is why she went. I don’t know much about him, just that he was one of the first voices.”

  “If you went, you’d be with her again. With your family.”

  “It’s not for everyone. What if I’m the one, the anomaly..."

  “That’s so rare, Huxley. For that to be the case, something would need to be really wrong with you.”

  I glanced downward, unable to escape her face, her eyes, her lips. “Do you have any anxiety about it? The anomaly?”

  “Not in the slightest,” she said, smiling.

  “If I don’t join, this is it. This is the last you’ll see of—”

  And her lips were on mine, jolting electricity through my entire body, gooseflesh prickling up on my arms and legs, a shiver rushing up and down my spine. My eyes closed, our mouths slightly open together, I felt her tongue gently licking at my lips. I didn’t know what to do except extend mine just enough to meet hers. It was difficult to breathe. I felt her hand on the back of my head, her fingers running through my hair. I cupped her face with one hand and held her body close with the other.

  “HUXLEY DAY!” I heard from Ms. Nancy as she shouted, right before jerking me away from Ramona. She pulled on the back of my collar. “While I appreciate just how much you’d like to say goodbye to Miss Ramona, please constrain yourself and your bodily urges. Now, go sit on the other side of the gym!”

  I smiled and shouted over the music at Ramona: “Worth it!”

  That wry grin of hers lit up her face, and she waved at me. She lightly wiped her bottom lip with her thumb. I’ll never forget that look as Ms. Nancy tugged my arm, pulling me across the gymnasium, through the crowd of other dancers all smiling and laughing at me.

  It was my first kiss.

  I don’t know if you can imagine our goodbye at the end of the night beneath the stars and satellites, her hands in mine as we stared into each other’s eyes, the light of the door to the gym behind us.

  “I’m going to miss you so much,” I said.

  “Join us,” she answered, looking up to the stars. “Up there. I’ll be waiting.”

  “I love you.”

  She glanced downward, the grin on her pink lips. “I know you do, Huxley. I know.” Her lips spread into a full smile. “I love you too.” And then we kissed again, embracing warmly.

  And then she was gone, back to her cabin for lights out.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, the heat in my stomach turning to nausea, thinking of how I would never see her again if I didn’t join the chorus the following year. I cried against my pillow, trying to keep quiet as not to wake the other boys in my cabin. If they heard, I knew I’d never hear the end of it.

  The graduates left on a transport before sunrise. I watched from my cabin window as the headlights carried her and the others away from the campus. Ms. Nancy was out there, making sure they got on safely. I wanted to run out to her to say one last goodbye and share one more kiss, but fear paralyzed me. When the transport took off, it flew directly over the cabin, the light tracing a flight path in the darkness toward the transfer station in the city.

  It wasn’t until after breakfast that I heard the news.

  There was an explosion in the city, an attack on the High Street Transfer Station. Ms. Nancy verified that the graduates had been bound for that station and was on the phone with responders in the city to get more information. As to what caused the explosion, we all knew.

  The Agents of Truth.

  The feeling in the pit of my stomach sank even deeper, the stone descending as though to the bottom of a clouded lakebed. Maybe they’d even planned it due to the graduates’ arrival for maximum impact.

  Responders worked to triage survivors to Riverside. Not much information was available about exactly who survived and who didn’t, but Ms. Nancy graciously left the news on, despite the graphic nature of the disaster. Some of us lobbied strongly to volunteer to help or to get Ms. Nancy to escort us into the city. We felt helpless, watching flaming wreckage on the telescreens.

  Newscasters speculated about the motives of the Agents of Truth, terrorists against the transferred consciousness of humans since the Transmigration. They saw themselves as Luddites resisting technological oppression. Their opposition to the chorus is well documented, but they know they can’t defeat it. Their goal is for Transhumans to vacate the planet like they had promised before the Transmigration.

  Ramona had been so excited for interstellar travel, but knew that was years away, for her at least. Her first stop would’ve been Alpha Centauri on the way out of the Local Bubble. She wanted to see worlds upon worlds. But if she was hurt, or dead...

  I had to know.

  I couldn’t wait for Ms. Nancy to decide how to handle all the charges in her care. I filled my backpack with as much as I thought I’d need, anything that might be useful. All I really needed was to get away from the campus before anyone noticed. My phone allowed me to order a shuttle for pick up that would get me to the maglev station.

  I waited amid the vast emptiness of the cornfields, several miles from campus. The landscape stretched wide before me along the intersecting roads. The great machines tilled the fields around me, tinging the air with a dull gray below the muted blue sky. The shuttle took a long time since I was so far out in the middle of nowhere, but eventually located me by my GPS coordinates.

  The maglev station was sparsely populated, requiring a registration pass for humans. This was supposed to ping my location to Ms. Nancy if I used my credentials, but she wasn’t great with technology. The registration pass system was designed to allow a guardian such as Ms. Nancy to approve or deny the pass for transit. I’d hacked my credentials to route the ping to go to my phone. She might still receive the ping, but I could approve the transit request myself.

  I scanned my credentials for the pass at the registration kiosk, mindful of the chorus-controlled android security standing stiffly at the gate. The push notification from the ping came through immediately and I quickly responded with the approval. The android security didn’t move, so I pushed on through the gate.

  Of the things you think me guilty of, transit fraud is only a minor crime of which I don’t mind confessing. You’re wondering how I got there, how I was able to do what I did. Getting caught might jeopardize my ability to join the chorus, but she could’ve been hurt or dead, and I had to know. Consequences be damned.

  The maglev train took me to the city in a matter of minutes. It left me at a hub in the inner core, and I had to rely on other methods of transit to get to the hospital. Shuttles and circulators ran all over the urban sprawl—I just had to know which one went where. Beneath the towering buildings and the crawling glow of screens flashing images of the hideous news, I continued along the sidewalks to the circulator stop that would get me to the hospital. Several other humans, heads down, waited alongside me for the next circulator. Not many androids.

  I remembered stories about the way the city had been before the Transmigration—a constant flow of people, traffic clogging the streets. Everyone moved to and fro to earn their salaries, wasting precious hours of their lives for meaningless work, ignoring their brethren living below the poverty line while combustion engines poured carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Greed ran the world.

  I thought of it because it’s what the Agents of Truth want to bring back—they want a world run by base human inclination. But without the chorus we wouldn’t have achieved interstellar travel, hindered global warming, and solved the poverty crisis. What was lost? What was gained?

  The hospital teemed with activity. Medbots flowed through the halls amid humans and androids. A bustle of journalists broadcast reports from outside the main entrance, their voices mingling into an ululating trill. I approached a lobby kiosk where a gynoid greeted me pleasantly, asking how they could assist me.

  “I’m looking for a patient.
Ramona Sault. She would’ve been brought in with victims of the High Street Transfer Station incident.”

  “Ah yes. She’s on the fifth floor, dear. 510,” its melodious feminine voice announced.

  “Thank you,” I said, already moving toward the body scanners beyond the lobby.

  Much like the security back at the maglev station, a pair of androids flanked the body scanners, standing silent guard. The scanner was a vestibule—you walk inside, you’re scanned, you walk out if you’re cleared. If you’re not cleared, you’re immediately locked in and detained by security. I was taking my chances that Ms. Nancy hadn’t been able to notify the authorities by now.

  I walked into the vestibule and let the body scanner sweep me. On the other side of the vestibule, a red light flashed as I was scanned. For a very long moment after the sweep was completed, I waited for that light to turn green. Relief washed over me when it finally did, and I moved past the checkpoint.

  She waited on the fifth floor, the smile gone from her face, those big green eyes closed beneath medical tape. She suffered from severe burns on the left side of her head, some of her hair completely singed away. It looked like her ear had been severely injured as well. The burns wound down her neck beneath the gown she wore. A human doctor was there, telling me that visitors weren’t allowed.

  “Then why didn’t they tell me that in the lobby? Why’d they even let me up here?”

  “Son, you have to calm down.”

  “Calm down? I am calm. I want to know if she’s all right.”

  “She’ll be fine. She suffered second degree burns in the attack. She may be scarred, but we should be able to repair the damage. She was also severely concussed from the blast and lost consciousness.”