Software Evolution

by John Fajo

  “Here I am,” he said after the general recognised him. He smiled at her.

  She shook her head in disbelief: “You just jump on me, and this is all you can say.” She sighed and waved her hands.

  Nameless Andrew mused what he should have said. “How about: I love you? Is that better?” he asked.

  “Please,” she said loftily, “I asked your help. So don’t try to take advantage of the situation.”

  “I don’t,” he rejoined offended. “You made me come here in the middle of the night without telling me anything. And this is what I get? You’re quite something.” He turned away from her, towards the harbour.

  She took hold of his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said taking his right hand close to her breasts, he could feel the trembling of her heart. She knew how to reconcile him fast. “The train which we must get on will be here soon.”

  “Must?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think the baron’s life is in danger. There are people who want to...”

  “Kill Him,” he finished the sentence. “I thought you were very much interested in getting rid of him as well. But not any more? Or is it rather me you want to get out of the way?”

  “No, no,” she said. “I like you.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You have always been wrong about me. I’m not as bad as you think. I may have made some mistakes now and then, but I repent nothing.”

  Nameless Andrew laughed and punched the general on the shoulder slightly.

  She exclaimed in pain: “You brute.” She went inside the station resentful; he followed shortly thereafter.

  “So who's trying to do the baron?” he asked her, but instead of answering, she looked at him in hate. “I can go if that’s what you want,” he said.

  He started pacing outside until she called him, then changed his direction and sat down on a bench. She soon seated herself beside him. They sat in silence peering at everything around except each other. Nameless Andrew was in deep thoughts. He was wondering how to break the silence, but couldn’t decide. And why should he always be the one who reached out to others, he asked himself. Why couldn’t she for once say something like: “my dear, I know I acted rotten, please do forgive me”, or perhaps not as high-flown, “the train will be here, so we better go”. But no. She just sat beside him staring at the walls covered with the lamentable signs of oblivion, a schedule ages old yellowish from the fumes of close-by factories, which had been closed for some time themselves. Puddles gathered on the floor, where the ceiling was disintegrating, everything was wet. Nameless Andrew could sense fishy smells taken by a breeze from the harbour. Yet this place would have seemed to him as nice as any other would, if he could just lay his head in the general’s lap. He felt tired. He wanted her to run her fingers through his hair, to pat his cheeks. But he feared if he told her what he longed for she would refuse him. Besides, he thought, she had cheated him. He didn’t need a liar like her, he didn’t need someone to take advantage of his weaknesses once he had opened up. On the other hand, it would have been nice to kiss her. Nameless Andrew was perplexed. Therefore, he made no breakthroughs; the differences between them were unbridgeable. He mused whether she felt the same way.

  Then the train arrived. It was rainbow painted, somewhat resembling a subway train in its appearance, a transport medium preferred greatly by commuters from the villages and outskirts surrounding the city as to the packed highways. At such a late hour, it was empty however, only a conductor fiddling with pennies by a small desk inside. When they paid the fare, he was finally informed as to their destination. They were going to an area about an hour from the centre of the metropolis.

  He leaned back on a seat opposite to the general and glanced at the foggy lights shooting through the darkness. He was completely detached from his surroundings, and hadn’t the slightest desire to get involved in anything that night. The general, on the other hand, was restless, her eyes circled the wagon, and she was clearly overexcited. She changed her position, occupied her hands in all sorts of conformations, her beautiful countenance overshadowed by grimaces. He glimpsed at her now and then, and felt sorry for her, yet at the same time thought she deserved to be anxious. Not long ago she had wanted to murder the baron; she made many successful attacks, which undermined the powerbase of the baron. He could hardly believe her concern was sincere for the man she had wished to oust. She wept possibly for some other reason, he thought. Maybe... maybe, he continued pondering, she couldn’t connect with the vice. Perhaps the baron was simply a punching bag now, on which the different possible predecessors tried their strength and endurance. In that case saving the baron from the others was a victory, just as killing him. This idea might have seemed to him absurd if he hadn’t been introduced previously to the true character of the opponents. Egoism and intolerance reflected in everything they have done. The general was selfish beyond limits; she called him only when she needed something. And this time obviously she required him. And he had run like a little poodle once again hoping to be able to lick miss princess’ toes.

  He clicked his tongue not as much in despair as to break the monotone jolting sounds of the train. Yes, yes, he told himself. Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed since ancient times. The scientist had been right, it was time for change. It was time for software evolution.

  “It’s the next stop,” the conductor suddenly said. “That’s where you have to get off.”

  Nameless Andrew looked at the general. “So, do you have something to tell me? How long are you going to keep me blindfolded?”

  The general contemplated for a short while, then whispered leaning close to him: “It’s the vice. He wants to do it. But we got to thwart him.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Don’t start again,” the general answered angrily which almost made him laugh.

  He wanted to start a quarrel, but they arrived before he could. He thought she deserved to be humiliated if only for once, to feel lonely and desperate. But instead of saying anything, he was on the heels of the general, and before he knew it they were seated in a taxi. The driver was a familiar face, the man whose hands he had crushed with joy. They moved with a frantic speed, the atmosphere tense. The roads were empty, there were no lights emanating from the houses, all decent citizens were at sleep.

  The general was sweating, perspiration settling on her majestic nose. He thought about licking it off. It was no doubt an abhorrent notion regarding evolution, he imagined, but he just couldn’t help wanting to do it. In fact, he wanted to lick her everywhere, smell and taste her, the woman he at the same time hated so much. He was interested in this duality; the conspiracy against the baron was irrelevant to him. What if he did it, he asked himself. What would happen if he bent towards the general and kissed her on the nose? Would she slap him? He thought it was worth a try to find out. He stooped over the general, slowly advanced, and then hit the seat in front of her.

  They came to a complete halt, they arrived and so he was thrown forward. He felt there was a bump developing on his head. He was certainly more disappointed though about the fact that his experiment thereby couldn’t even commence than his head aching.

  By the time he gathered himself, the cabdriver and the general were nowhere to be seen. The car’s doors were open on their sides; they must have been in a great hurry. He turned around a couple of times attempting to see where they could have gone, but no one was in sight, and everything was quiet except for a dog’s barking. The hound’s howling reminded him of the dogs of war. He thought he ought to find them before they would converge on the poor baron. Because who knew what might have happened if the baron were eliminated, he mused. Anarchy was a likely candidate to follow, and he thought the scientist would then have surely exploded, unleashing all his lifeforms in one final battle. The consequences being disastrous, he decided to save the baron’s life if he could even though he wasn’t fond of the man.

  He departed the vehicle after closing the doors, and re
lying on his instincts, went in one direction. He cut through bushes and undergrowth in the twilight of a street lamp alongside the road advancing towards a house. As he distanced himself from the light source darkness fell on him, and when about to arrive at a clearance stumbled on something. It was a big bundle of some sort, he couldn’t make it out, the lamp was too far and too weak. However the bundle moaned, and this gave him some idea as to its being. He investigated the tied person, and after some while concluded that it was the hideous character. He thought it was a nasty thing to do to anyone, that is, to tie him and then leave him in the foliage on a cool night like that. On the other hand, he felt he committed no crime if he left things as they were. After all, the hideous character would have been no doubt nothing but a hindrance on his mission. He patted the bundle on the shoulder encouragingly, and continued advancing on the house. He sensed he was at the right place, although all the houses in the street were similar. Nevertheless, this one was different, this one had a hideous character tied and hidden in its back garden. This must have meant something; he was almost proud of his own ingenuity and reasoning skill.

  He peered through a window, but perceived only darkness. He had to get inside the house somehow. He tried to force the window open, but it was tightly closed, and he was unaware of its mechanism. It certainly seemed complex and thick, not a window one would expect to find on a middle class home, he ventured to think. He stole along the wall up to the front of the house. Just for the sake of completeness, he checked whether the door was locked. It was, so he crept further. On the other side, he found a basement window shattered. He wasn’t surprised. The perpetrators had to get in somehow earlier. He had an eerie feeling as he squeezed himself into the house. He scented blood and felt nausea. He searched for a light switch, and in doing so once again stumbled on something. In this case, the something correctly described the three bodies lying in a great pool of blood he had tripped into.

  After turning the lights on, he saw the baron, an elderly fat lady and the cabdriver dead on the floor. They all had multiple shot wounds to the head. He leaned on a desk and hadn’t the faintest idea what to do next. He stared at the corpses. The baron lay in an awkward position, one of his arms beneath him, his wide-open eyes reflecting fear.

  With a sudden thought, he went to the body and pulled the arm from underneath it. The baron’s fingers were clutching something. It was small and darkened by blood. The baron’s fingers were still responsive, they released the object. Nameless Andrew carefully examined it, and realized it must have been some sort of a weapon. He had been quite fond of guns in his youth, had known all the existing types, but this was entirely different. He wondered if this was the murder weapon or perhaps something the baron had grabbed hoping to protect himself in the last moments of his life. In any case the result was the same, the ruler of the day was no more.

  Nameless Andrew put the suspected murder weapon on the desk and contemplated. The baron’s death had far-reaching consequences. The compromise would be the first victim, he thought, and the scientist would be certain to retaliate immediately. He didn’t know if that would be an all out offensive or a simple punitive action. He hoped the perfect machine wouldn’t start rolling, demolishing everything on its way eventually leading to complete destruction. But after having observed the scientist’s state of mind he could imagine all possible measures.

  He watched the blood coagulate on the floor in thin sheets. Time passed in coagulating thin sheets of blood, the only changes taking place in the room; otherwise, everything was frozen and immobile. Nameless Andrew was tired, his consciousness somewhere between dream and reality. His eyes were heavy with sleep; everything seemed to him to be out of proportion and floating. The whole situation was somehow incomprehensible and unreal, the baron, the man feared, hated and envied by the world was dead, his unhealthy paunch slackly spreading, forming a circle around him. He was a lamentable sight without any majestic or awesome features. The remnants of the baron reminded him of a slaughtered household pig, one which quickly inflated to a prominent size, but lacking any essence.

  Nameless Andrew wondered how the baron could acquire so much power in the first place with such qualities. He had certainly not been a genius or a great organizer as far as he could tell, and still... What was power about, he asked himself. Why wasn’t it the scientist who held power over others? It was he who was the genius, was the perfect machine, had visions of the future and came up with solutions. Delivered results on time. The baron had never done that. And yet the baron had been the baron. Was the question of who held power a matter of probability? A chance event, he thought. Or was it some hidden quality, charm, or charisma he had overlooked? In any case, he and the scientist definitely hadn’t possessed that something, they were outsiders, men who drifted to the periphery of society. And even though they mustered much more than the baron and his organization, they were simply unaccounted for.

  Suddenly he heard sirens and then a jolting noise, the front door was torn down. He perceived the sounds of hurrying footsteps above him. Soon the general and some police officers descended the staircase leading to the basement. The general shrieked and looked at him questioningly seeing the corpses. The police officers quickly scouted the room.

  “What happened?” the general asked from Nameless Andrew.

  “They got killed,” he said sarcastically.

  “They were pretty much alive when I left them,” she said angrily.

  “Are you trying to say something?”

  The general looked at him distrustfully.

  “What?” he asked in amazement.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Is this an inquisition?”

  “Actually we would like to know that as well,” one of the police officers said.

  “Through the shattered window,” Nameless Andrew answered. “I came in, found them dead. Haven’t touched anything except that thing on the desk.”

  “That thing seems to be the murder weapon. It probably has your fingerprints all over it. I think you’d better find yourself an awfully good lawyer, my chap,” the police officer said.

  “Is this a set-up? Are you trying to frame me?” he asked the general. She didn’t respond, so he continued, “so they were alive when you left them?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He was starting to lose his temper. This was the general he knew way too well, to whom he was simply a stranger. He was about to say something insulting, when the hideous character followed by other police officers came down to the basement.

  “We found this man tied outside, and hidden in a bush.”

  “He’s okay, a bodyguard,” the general exclaimed.

  So he was okay, but he, Nameless Andrew wasn’t, Nameless Andrew thought sourly. Miss sect leader came through once again.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the hideous character said. “I was knocked down from behind as I was investigating the garden. I must have lain unconscious for quite some time. And then... It’s him, damn it,” the hideous character pointed at him. “It must have been him.”

  Nameless Andrew realized it was about time he left the premises, before the lynching, that is. He pushed the police officers forming a ring around him in their respective directions, kicked the hideous character below the belly, and ran.

  ****

  “You’ve got me into a very precarious situation,” the scientist said. “I can’t imagine how you managed to be such an idiot. You set a new record even for your standard. You walked right into the trap. You made yourself into the perfect scapegoat. Now tell me, what should I do? Extradite you?”

  The scientist was understandably in a morose mood. Nameless Andrew felt as a child, rebuked and at the mercy of grownups.

  “If I hand you over, you will at best rot in prison for the rest of your life for a crime you did not commit. This would be contrary to my moral beliefs. On the other hand, if I don’t extradite you I provide the vice, who is on the verge of becoming the new baron with
the perfect pretext to reject the compromise. He would do so anyway, but with the excuse, he doesn’t run into the trouble of making up one himself. Which may have proved to be very difficult, perhaps impossible because other contesters to the throne could have used it against him. Thus to become the baron he would have had to bargain. But thanks to you he’s now free to declare the compromise as dead. And where does that place me? All I have achieved goes down the drain. I wish... I wish I never employed you.” The scientist clapped his hands together. “So now it’s back to the drawing board. Start everything all over again...”

  The scientist continued nagging, repeating the same things over and over again, accentuating his terrible plight. If Nameless Andrew were unaware of the perfect machine and other scientist created scientific Utopias perhaps, he would have felt ashamed or down-stricken. But he knew very much about the abilities and power the scientist possessed, the red button was as real as the sharks lurking in the lagoon where the artificial cliffs had been torn down. Nameless Andrew couldn’t understand why he was pretending to be something else than he was, namely the perfect machine. And assuming the correctness of his statements, the perfect machine feared nothing, respected nothing and definitely didn’t nag. Somehow, Nameless Andrew thought, the scientist couldn’t entirely control his own creation, it got out of hand and came alive by itself. His employer pulled in one direction, the rest of the machine in another, in fact each lifeform in its respective direction. The result was a stalemate. Of course, it was tremendously difficult to govern so many views the perfect machine represented, Nameless Andrew thought. In order to implement anything each decision had to get a majority vote. No wonder the scientist kept repeating himself, the machine couldn’t agree on whether to extradite him or not. Until the deadlock was resolved, he had to say something, even if it was unscientifically dull.