Software Evolution

by John Fajo

  ****

  Nameless Andrew could hardly believe that he had survived. He lay unconscious for some time after hitting his head on the control panel. Now he was floating in the airplane, which by some unexplainable luck remained in one piece. He thought this crash was inevitable, it would have occurred eventually. The engines were old and rusty, and with each flight less reliable. Then they finally had given way somewhere between the mainland and the island. He was returning to the island after a hectic night with the general. He often visited her nowadays. He thought she was charming and intelligent, a woman who knew precisely how to satisfy him. The only thing he disliked about her was the unending speeches she gave while he lay half-conscious, and simply wanted to embrace her. Of course, the theme always concerned the scientist of whom she spoke with little regard. He wished he was able to rejoin her statements if only for once, but he was lamed and numbed. He was sure this was all part of an elaborate plan.

  He peered out of the shattered windshield and thanked Heaven for the calm ocean. It was dawning. The early sunlight lit up the willows, and he rocked very gently while watching the disarrayed control panel. None of the devices worked, he was unable to call for help. He drifted with the elements.

  His thoughts wandered back to her. He thought she was too smart, too independent, seemingly in no way vulnerable. He liked that, and yet was bothered by it. He felt he had only a minor role in her life. A nighttime pleasure or perhaps a tool against the scientist. Nothing more. He always noticed a cool reserve in her eyes. He wanted to open up to her, but her piercing and investigating look always changed his mind. This was a different look than the scientist’s, in some ways more discomforting, because he perceived a hidden grudge depicted in the general’s mesmerizing eyes. He had questioned her about this, but she managed to evade answering by talking about something entirely different. When he was fretted due to her silence or disappointing replies, she tried to satisfy and calm him in other ways. After a while, he had grown used to being angered in order to collect the reward. He began to pretend. His inquiries had lost their vigour; he staged them more for the sake of wont than for truly expecting answers. In addition, they had depleted all possible topics except the one relating to the ongoing negotiations between the scientist and the baron, which the general always attempted to broach. Unsuccessfully. He didn’t understand the negotiations wholly, and he feared he might squeal something that could have put his employer in an awkward situation. Therefore, he had held his tongue. Thus, they had had fairly little to speak about, their relationship had foundered. But he couldn’t help going back to her, the general’s eyes compelled him. But he didn’t know what compelled her. He wondered. He could never be sure whether she was to come to meet him or not. She was unpredictable. He was jealous of her armada of friends, whom she always had to kiss all over when they met. At such times he had simply stood by refraining himself from using some brute force, because despite all his differences with the general he loved her. But did she love him? Or was he all part of her job? He simply couldn’t know for sure. His own identity had suffered greatly while working for the scientist, or rather listening to the scientist, and he was nearly deprived of it when she lectured him. He felt like a bouncing ball, which everyone kicked a little, but no one knew where it would end up. What worried him was that he personally had no idea in which direction he was heading. Even the scientist had begun to remark that he had changed from a brute to a semi-intelligent person. He had to thank him for these complements, although he had been keener to punch him or grab him by the throat. He thought the scientist had aristocratic and snob tendencies that made him sound and act extravagantly mad now and then. The scientist had explained this had been due to him absorbing Nameless Andrew’s lost impulsiveness and was not at all smugness. Yet, the scientist reasoned, he hadn’t been able to accommodate this gained personality into his own, and thus the turmoil involved with accommodation turned outside and resulted in raging. This had been unpleasant for everyone and everything unfortunate enough to exist in the vicinity at such times, because the scientist was preternaturally strong despite his meagre body. He crushed chairs, the laboratory equipment was shattered, and co-workers scarred. Others, including Nameless Andrew, had accounted successive failures for the scientist’s behaviour. It seemed the scientist was unable to digest failure.

  Nameless Andrew scrambled out of the cockpit onto the top of the airplane, and basked in the morning sun, while massaging his forehead. The weather was excellent, a slight breeze steered his craft. He felt secure and at ease. He wouldn’t have minded to starve to death right there, or to be dehydrated by the sun. The ongoing war was far, the ocean was kind. He let himself be rocked into a doze. In the meantime, he was unwittingly floating away from land, advancing deeper and deeper towards the open sea. Nor was he aware of the sharks, whose interest had been attracted by the shabby craft and kept circling it. They had appeared all of a sudden out of the blue. There were a lot of small fish among them, no doubt expecting some crumbs of meat from the sharks. But, at present, they had to wait. The prey lay safely and soundly on top of the airplane for the time being unconscious of the fact that tempest clouds were gathering on the horizon. The sharks knew though. They were also sure once the storm arrived they could have their feast. They were very smart, patient and well organized creatures.

  When Nameless Andrew awoke and first spotted the sharks he was amused and mistakenly believed them to be dolphins. They had a dolphin-like appearance indeed. He was certainly easily fooled. But then one of them made an ambitious jump towards him, and its teeth left no doubt as to its being. Nameless Andrew groaned. His fists were useless against such adversaries, slippery and beyond his reach, nor had he any weapons. The only thing he could do was to shrink himself on the top of the plane and watch as the clouds slowly stained the sky grey-white. Somehow, the thought of being sunk among a dozen or so sharks made him shiver. It was an unworthy death against which he couldn’t protect himself in any way. The situation started to look hopeless. The craft was continuously filling with water, flowing through small chinks and cracks, the results of the crash. Consequently, the plane was sinking. He was angered, because there wasn’t anything he could do, he was left to the mercy of the elements and the sharks, both of them merciless.

  He had been misled by the calmness of the ocean earlier, and this displeased him the most. The scientist had been proven to be right, he was easily manipulated, he believed the apparent. Was this so concerning the general as well? He dreaded to think her love was pretended, that she had a greater devotion to her cause than to him. But it was possible. As much a fool he had been everything was possible. And what about the scientist? What was his role in his plans? Perhaps bait for the baron. Certainly, the concocted explanations of the scientist regarding his employment seemed at best ludicrous to him now. He was supposed to be the sensitive and impulsive right arm of the scientist. What a joke, he thought. Maybe no one had been telling him the truth. Then again, the scientist detested using words like good, evil, truth, right, absolute etc. So he had been telling him the truth satisfying one model, but not another, Nameless Andrew argued.

  Considering these details his plight seemed no longer miserable, at least he knew what to expect from the sharks. Their pretension of being dolphins was simply revealed, their plans were obvious. Nameless Andrew thought it was better to die this way after all than to serve as a tool in someone’s hand for some obscure and abstract reason he couldn’t care for any less. Here he knew the purpose he was serving in form of a good meal. It was comforting to know the purpose. His purpose. This was the first time in his life he believed to have known.

  But he couldn’t fulfil his purpose. As the clouds gathered into a storm and the first drops of rain merged with the grey sea the scientist emerged with a new catamaran. Nameless Andrew contemplated before eventually stepping into the ship.

  ****

  “Come on,” she said.

  He still hesitated for a moment, bu
t the general in a white transparent cloak was hardly a woman he could refuse. She knew how to turn him on; she knew that she was beautiful. It was a dangerous combination, Nameless Andrew thought as he was dragged along by her holding hand. There was no escape for him now; he stepped inside the tomb of the sect of love. It was the meeting place for an organization renowned and notorious for the brutal executions its members committed in the name of love. They specialized in killing the famous, the rich or anyone with differing political views. It had been an unpleasant surprise when the general told him that she was the leader of the sect. He asked her right afterwards whether she would have eliminated him as well if he called the police. She simply smiled at him and answered that no one would have believed his story anyway. Besides, she probably would have eliminated him, because no love could be strong enough to endure a treachery like that. For some reason he hadn’t made any phone calls on that day.

  On the other hand, he felt that entrusting him with this secret was truly proof of her devotion and love, because this information could have destroyed the general. The baron, unnerved of the disappearance or murder of his best agents, had put unravelling the sect on top of his agenda, second only to the negotiations with the scientist. The secret thus bound Nameless Andrew and the general together by jeopardizing their existence if found out. This wasn’t a bond Nameless Andrew wished for, but he was left with no other alternatives than to accept the situation as it was at present. His relationship with the general led to unforeseen depths of misery and dark corners he didn’t know how to avert.

  The tomb was occupied by lightly dressed individuals, their faces showing signs of prolonged exposure to the narcotizing smoke filling the place. Their eyes protruded and were swollen, and reminded Nameless Andrew of a pilot he had seen, whose features were distorted beyond recognition after excessive acceleration. He hoped the ceremony, or as the general had called it, the meeting, would be quickly over.

  They cut through the crowd, the members forming a wall on both sides while clapping their hands. A podium stood opposite from where they had entered to which they ascended. Nameless Andrew noticed the smoke didn’t rise beyond his feet once up there. It gave him the impression as if being above the clouds, which he deduced, must have been the idea. The members looked up at the half-Goddess, unattainable and beautiful beyond imagination, the effect enhanced by the narcotizing agent. Nameless Andrew glimpsed at the general’s victorious countenance and thought this wasn’t the woman he had fallen in love with. His model was inadequate to describe her, he pondered sarcastically, as the scientist would have put it with his usual lack of enthusiasm concerning such matters. It was a moment of disillusion meant for Nameless Andrew. He could overlook the general’s coquettishness, but not the bloodthirstiness now showing on her cheeks.

  He became aloof when she started addressing the gathering, watching the events from an insuperable distance. He wished he were far away, beyond the reach of the baron, the general and the scientist. But he knew of no such place. Wherever he went, he was confronted with at least one of them. He wished he lived in prehistoric ages, when brute force and simple cunning had decided life and death. He would have folded the baron into a cylinder, rolled him down a mountaintop, kicked the scientist off his artificial cliffs into the sea filled with sharks, and beaten the hell out of the general. He imagined her in prehistoric clothing with prehistoric intelligence meaning neither lectures nor slyness enough to rule a sect. She was adorable and desirable that way. On the other hand, without her lectures and slyness, she was nothing more than a skeleton, a sexual object, he thought.

  At this point Nameless Andrew discovered that his affection for the general was no longer there, he saw only a woman with no respect for others, who used her physical charm to achieve her selfish objectives. Yet, when the general held his hand and raised it above their heads while continuing speaking, he felt an urge to embrace her and never let go. He gathered this was a sexual impulse he had no control over. He looked down at the crowd and despised those more than he had ever thought was possible. Their delirium-filled eyes showed no signs of intelligence; they were the lowest kind he had seen so far. They did as they were told without any questions asked, committing suicide with mirth if required by their Goddess.

  Suddenly the general released his hand, and kissed him theatrically. “The power of love,” she shouted hoarsely and emphatically, “will make this man strong enough to deal with his oppressor once and for all.” He was stunned that she had called him a man, as if he had just popped into her life. And what oppressor was she talking about? “The scientist must be eliminated, because he hates love and everyone who loves. Kill Him!” she stirred up the crowd with success. In a moment, the pathetic figures all shouted: “Kill Him, Kill Him!” The general whispered into his ears: “Do it for me”, and smiled at him the way she knew made him shiver in excitement. “Kill Him, and I’ll always be yours.”

  Nameless Andrew was silent, the crowd more and more aggressive. “Say yes,” the general told him and stared at him summoning all her charm in one blink. He shook his head. In response, she looked at him with hate. “Say yes, or the crowd will grind you to dust. Do it,” the general ordered him. “Obey.”

  Nameless Andrew looked around, saw maniacs and uttered in despair: “Yes, I will do it.”

  ****

  He collided with the scientist in one of the hallways. He was about to ascend to the surface when this incident occurred. He almost banned being entirely under the influence of the sect episode, which he tried not to deal with in vain, because not thinking of it didn’t allow him to think of anything else either. He became somewhat paralyzed and dispatched of the world’s happenings.

  “How are you?” the scientist asked more out of politeness than of interest.

  “Fine,” he murmured morosely.

  “Heard the news on the news channel? They finally found a flying saucer they claimed.”

  “No, have heard nothing of it,” Nameless Andrew said, while definitely not looking at the scientist.

  “This is a typical baron trick. Very soon the whole affair will be denied by the military and high-ranking officials. You see, sometimes the baron tells the truth he believes in when he denies things. But he denies them so vehemently that people start to think. And they think exactly what the baron wants them to think. It’s an indirect control. Brilliantly applied. Of course, I do not deny the possibility of extraterrestrial life, in fact, probability indicates its existence simply because the Universe is so immense, but I doubt any of these news could be true. For if I am so developed as to traverse space from one planet to the other then hiding myself should be a triviality. Besides, why should these highly developed creatures care about us? Perhaps they are already here, and we simply do not recognise them, because they look just like us. Either due to natural evolution or self-construction.”

  “Perhaps you are one of them,” Nameless Andrew said.

  The scientist laughed, then continued pacing along the corridor.

  ****

  A historic moment was in the making. The conference hall was filled with prominent delegates once again, all sitting around the oval table in great anticipation. The baron and the scientist had drawn the outlines of a compromise, a draft document that was meant to end the raging battle. It had been astonishing that the baron had been willing to yield important concessions literally from one moment to the next. The scientist had argued the baron had realized power had been slipping out of his hands, and the best he could do was to compromise. That is, give up some power to retain the remaining. There were many contestants for the baron’s position lately, attacking him from all sides. He seemed less and less able to protect himself, although must have believed an alliance with the scientist would have given him the upper hand again. Even now there was a vice sitting next to him, quite different in character, being lean and with hooked nose. A vice character indeed.

  But what made the scientist commit himself to a compromise when victory
was so close? The foundations of the baron’s empire were crumbling; cracks were emerging on the walls of the skyscrapers. It was just a matter of time before the baron would go under. Obviously, the scientist wasn’t interested in destruction, he didn’t wish the skyscrapers to collapse.

  Nameless Andrew looked at the vice on one side of the baron opposite to him, and then at the general on the other side. For a moment, he felt sympathy for the bulky peanut eater, and agreed fully with the scientist’s decision. The baron was still the best option for a swift and peaceful transition, one requiring no martyrs or heroes. He was still the most decent of the lot among the vultures and sect leaders, who would have torn everything to pieces once he was gone, good or bad, useful or waste. To them only powered mattered, power, which they could use to control others. Neither the scientist nor the baron wanted a disassembling of order and law, this was one of the few common views they shared. The baron, old and weakened, became a mild dictator fearing anarchy. Fear made him hesitant and disorganized, attracting numerous possible usurpers. The baron relied more and more on the general and the vice seeing in them his only allies. If he knew, Nameless Andrew thought. And if the scientist knew. Nameless Andrew wanted to tell him about the sect, about her, but he had been stunned that each time he broached this topic the scientist simply ignored him. In fact, the scientist’s dislike of the general had dampened with time; he had stopped criticizing him for his relationship with her. It seemed he had accepted the ostensible state of affairs. Nameless Andrew resented the scientist’s attitude, he felt his employer became less wary and prudent, overlooking vital details. This was true also for the research the scientist conducted; he began to neglect it. He didn’t rage any more over failures in the laboratory and had even elaborated a systematic plan to lower the artificial gates and let the ocean into the lagoon. Nameless Andrew had tried to point out the sharks swimming by the cliffs, awaiting a chink to appear, clearing their way in to the shallow water, but the scientist never heeded his warnings. He was sure of himself. Too sure.