Unsong

by Scott Alexander

  Even her face was something terrible. I couldn’t place her ethnicity at all. Her face looked like it came from one of those weird nightjar birds whose eyes are in the wrong place and don’t look even look like real eyes.

  I nodded. She made a motion to the guards. One of them took my gag out.

  “Mr. Smith-Teller,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re in this situation, but as you can tell from my presence here we do have to take this very seriously, and I have to ask you a few questions. The Keller-Stern Act of 1988 states that anyone who discovers a Divine Name of potential military value is legally obligated to turn it over to the Untied States government in exchange for fair monetary compensation. Most people aren’t aware of the Act, and we have no interest in punishing them for refusing to follow a law they never heard of. But now you know. So, Mr. Teller-Smith, and please tell me the truth, do you know any Names that might be covered under the law?”

  I felt like she would know if I lied. Her nightjar eyes stared into my soul. If I lied to Malia Ngo, something terrible would happen to me.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know any such Name.”

  And it was God’s own truth. Because I had forgotten the Name. Because I was a moron. I could have told her more, but she terrified me, and the truth – that I’d known the Vital Name and forgotten it – would be neither believable nor welcome. And part of me was desperately hoping that if I said nothing, she would go away, the wrongness would end, and I would just be in a perfectly normal government black site and everything would be fine.

  “Did you speak a Name that allowed you to find the location of the Moon?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “How did you learn that Name?”

  Every fiber of my body tensed at her oppressive closeness. It was a fair question. I had no way out this time. Either tell her what had happened, or lie like a rug and see exactly what those nightjar eyes could do.

  I ran through a host of scenarios. I tell the Director-General that I knew the Name and forgot it. She doesn’t believe me and tries to torture it out of me. She doesn’t believe me and tries to torture the Name out of Ana. She does believe me and tries to dissect my brain to get it. She goes to an error correction specialist, fixes the Name, and takes over the world, and I’m still alive to see it.

  I am definitely not a hero. I’ve been in one fight, but only because I was drunk, and I ended up with two black eyes. The only thing I’ve ever been good at is studying things and comparing them and trying to understand them.

  But the sages of old weren’t your typical heroes either, and they were constantly breaking out of prison by one miracle or another. Rabbi Meir convinced a Roman prison guard to free his friend by reassuring him that if anyone tried to punish his disobedience, he could say “God of Meir, help me!” and God would keep him from harm; when his commander tried to hang him for his role in the escape, the guard cried “God of Meir, help me!”, the rope broke, and he managed to run away to safety. When a whole Roman legion arrived to arrest the great translator Onkelos, he preached to them in Latin about the symbolism of the mezuzah, and the whole legion converted to Judaism on the spot. And when the Romans arrested Rabbi Eleazar ben Perata on five charges, God helped him craft a plausible alibi for each; when the plausible alibis didn’t work, the prophet Elijah appeared at the end of the trial, lifted up the prosecutor, and threw him out of the courtroom so hard that he landed five hundred miles away. I think I mentioned that the Talmud is kind of crazy.

  So miraculously breaking out of prison is the sort of thing kabbalists are expected to be able to do, and I daydream a lot, and a long time ago I had come up with a fantasy about the sort of thing I would do if I were ever trapped in a prison, and this was by far the stupidest thing I had ever done, but something was terribly wrong and I needed to get out of here.

  “I had a prophetic dream,” I said.

  I knew the moment I said it that Malia Ngo didn’t believe me. I could see it in those nightjar eyes. And so I panicked. I gave up an advantage, threw out a morsel I was sure Ngo wanted.

  “The dream told me how to use a computer program to discover new Names.”

  There. If I was right, and she’d reseached the Moon-Finding Name specifically to catch people using Llull, I’d just told her something she already knew was true, redeemed myself. Maybe she still thought I was lying. But at least she knew it was an interesting lie. One that paralleled the truth. Maybe she’d want to hear me out.

  “Tell me more,” Ngo ordered.

  I made as if to object. “It was a really, really strange dream.” I said. “Full of bizarre imagery. It was only this weird sixth sense that helped me understand any of it at all. If I told you, it would just sound like random noise.”

  And I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this, but caught between the horror of lying to Ngo and the horror of telling her the truth somehow I was going along with it, even though I knew very shortly this would be something to add to my ‘I am an idiot’ file right next to speaking the Moon-Finding Name aloud.

  “Tell me the dream,” Ngo repeated.

  I looked awkward and abashed, and it had nothing to do with acting. “It was…all these weird images in succession. This is going to sound so stupid. I don’t even know why I remember them so clearly.”

  Ngo didn’t even say anything. Just stared at me with those eyes, as if to tell me I wasn’t getting off the hook.

  “It all started with…with…it started with a dog having sex with a tree.”

  Ngo blinked, but said nothing.

  “And Zeus saw this, and he made a river, to drown the dog as punishment. And Shamu – you know, the killer whale – swam down the river, nibbling on somebody’s skull.”

  Ngo was still listening. She looked confused, but not suspicious.

  “It was the skull of a vampire, who had died reciting a poem about a lantern,” I told the Director General.

  I know as much about klipot as any man alive. I was the one who broke NEHEMOTH, I was the one who taught the Singers’ cryptographers half the things they knew, I could see possibilities that everyone else would have thought insane. I was going to do this. I was making it happen.

  “Sauron had knighted him once by speaking a secret Name,” I said, “but it didn’t save him. It was the dog who killed him, by lancing him through the heart with a thumbtack.”

  For something to be a klipah, four things are necessary.

  That the speaker know the Name he is trying to conceal.

  That there be a one-to-one correspondence between the klipah being uttered and the letters of the Name being concealed, one which the speaker understands at the deepest level.

  That the correspondence not be ad hoc – you can’t turn “Hello how are you” into the Tetragrammaton by declaring on the spot that “Hello” equals yud, “How” equals hay, and so on. There has to be at least an intention or possibility of consistency, rather than a deliberate mapping on to a preexisting pattern.

  And that the signal be separated from the noise; that the parts which represent letters are fixed in advance and not separated by other parts representing other letters.

  I had invented my mnemonic system to help remember Names through weird stories. It was hard to remember that the first three letters in the Vanishing Name were dalet-samech-tav. But it was easy to remember a dog having sex with a tree.

  Given an appreciation of my mnemonic system, a story about a dog having sex with a tree and Zeus making a river was equivalent on a phonetic level to dalet samech tav zayin mem resh. The first six letters of the Vanishing Name.

  “Neptune went to inspect the river in his capacity as god of water, and got mad, and started terrorizing it with a rake. Kim Jong-un flew overhead in a lantern.”

  Ngo was starting to look very dubious now. I didn’t have much time.

  “Moses recited a poem about tacos.”

  [Aaron] came a voice from deep in my head. [I’ve come to save you. Are you there?]

  [Ana?]
A horror. Ana Thurmond was in this place. [Ana, I can take care of myself…maybe…Ana, get out!]

  But to Malia Ngo, I said only: “Neptune.”

  DASAT-ZAM-RUSH-SHAN-SEVER-LAS-KYON-DAL-ATHEN-TRY-KOPHU-LI-MAR-TAN!

  Don’t use the Vanishing Name, I had said during choir practice, unless you are in a situation where it is absolutely vital to your well-being and continued survival that you be accosted by a different band of hooligans than the ones who are currently accosting you. Right now, being accosted by a different band of hooligans was my heart’s fondest and most desperate desire.

  As Director-General Malia Ngo and two UNSONG guards strained to understand my made-up dream imagery, I completed the Name and vanished from right in front of their faces.

  Chapter 15: O Where Shall I Hide My Face?

  You saved your shillings and your last six pence

  Cause in God’s Name they built a barbed wire fence

  Be glad you sail for a better day

  But don’t forget there’ll be Hell to pay

  Rebels are we

  Though heavy our hearts shall always be

  Ah, no ball or chain no prison shall keep

  We’re the rebels of the sacred heart

  — Rebels Of The Sacred Heart

  May 11-12, 2017

  Ione, California

  We Bay Arians (Ana and I had debated multiple demonyms, including Bay Arean and Bay Aryan, before deciding we were more heretical than warlike, and definitely not the master race) tend to to think of the Central Valley as a nightmarish stretch of endless farms inhabited by people who, while not exactly dead, could hardly be called living. So far nothing Ana had seen in the two hour taxi ride to Ione had changed her mind.

  Now here was the town itself, in all its glory. There wasn’t anything that looked like a secret detention facility, although she supposed that was what made it a secret detention facility. But it was already dark, and she didn’t fancy looking. She also didn’t fancy waiting until morning; she wasn’t really an expert in infilitrating secret facilities, but night seemed like potentially the best time, even if you could turn invisible.

  What was the saying? If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed?

  No, not that one. The other one.

  “In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, Party can always find you!”

  Ana spoke the Bulletproof Name.

  It was a calculated choice. New enough that the theonomics were still guarding it closely, but old enough that it had leaked to a few singer groups and the UNSONG sentinels were listening for it. Chosen to lure the dragon from its den.

  Then she spoke the Spectral Name and became invisible.

  Sure enough, a white van showed up at the gas station where the cab had dropped her off, and some men in black uniforms got out and started looking around. The process of infiltrating them was harder than Ana expected; she couldn’t just open the door of the van and walk in; there was still someone inside and he might notice the doors opening of their own accord. And if the van was full, she was worried someone would try to sit in her lap on the way back to headquarters. And starting any other Names would break her invisibility, so…

  She watched in disgust as the men, having finished their search of the premises, got back in their van and drove off. This was harder than it was in stories.

  So she rematerialized, spent some of her remaining money on some chocolate frosted donuts from the gas station, and decided to think of a better plan.

  In America, Mohammed goes to mountain. In Soviet Russia, mountain comes to you. Or whatever.

  She walked vaguely southward. When she felt like it was vaguely southward enough, she spoke the Ascending Name, then the Spectral Name again. Sure enough, back came her friends in the white van. More fruitless ground-combing. Back in the van again. But this time, she was higher than the hills and could see for miles.

  A little south of town, the van turned west onto a little country road, went down a couple of miles, and then drove right into a hillside. Bingo.

  Ana Thurmond started walking on air.

  By the time she reached the hillside it was into the wee hours of the morning, and she was tired, and she wished she’d eaten more donuts when she had the chance. Such the regrets of a heroine. She wondered if the Comet King ever rode into battle wishing he’d eaten more donuts beforehand.

  An armored car drove up. The entryway opened to accept it. Ana Thurmond slipped in unseen, and something was terribly wrong.

  It was heavy and oppressive, like a heartbeat slightly out of rhythm, but also not like that at all. She couldn’t tell if it was auditory, or tactile, or olfactory. It was just this sense like there was a black hole just out of view, sucking in everything good about the universe. For lack of any better form of navigation, she followed the wrongness.

  [Aaron?] she thought as she wandered through the corridors. [I’ve come to save you. Are you there?]

  [Ana!] I thought back at her. [Ana, I can take care of myself…maybe…Ana, get out!]

  And then she felt my mental trace suddenly vanish from her mind.

  A door marked with the UNSONG seal swung open, and a very short woman in a purple dress and pearl necklace stepped out with a very grim look on her face.

  Holy euphemism, thought Ana, that’s Director-General Malia Ngo.

  Malia looked her Ana straight in the eye and asked: “Who are you and why are you invisible?”

  Something was horribly wrong, and Malia Ngo was that something. Ana ran.

  “Lock down everything!” the Director-General shouted.

  This would have been a good time for Ana to use the Vanishing Name, except that starting it would break whatever was left of her invisibility, and whatever advantage she had came from nobody but Ngo being able to see her. So she just ran.

  Several officers – soldiers – let’s stick with goons – congregated around the Director, only to uncongregate and fan out, confused. Ngo grabbed a gun from one of them, and shot at Ana. The woman missed by a mile, and the unexpected recoil knocked her to her feet. No soldier, she.

  A guard sat by the entryway, clearly doing his best to watch out for invisible people sneaking towards him. Ana punched him in the face, then hit the lever his presence was lampshading. The exit door swung open and she ran forth into the night.

  Malia followed, directing a platoon of guards, pointing out the general direction they should run. They shot at her and missed wildly. Ngo, a quick learner after her firearm mishap, used the Fulminant Name. It missed too, but only barely, singing some of her hair.

  Ana jumped off the road, ran into a pile of brush. Her slight advantage was that the Director-General couldn’t really run through scrub in that dress, and was about twenty years older than she. The Fulminant Name was short range, and she was increasing the distance between herself and Ms. Ngo with every step. She ran through bushes, through a creek – anything she thought would deter the lady whose terrible pounding was still on the fringes of her consciousness.

  “Who are you?” Ngo shouted at her, from afar.

  Obviously Ana didn’t say anything back.

  “I won’t hurt you! I know you won’t believe me, but we’re on the same side. This is important, I swear! Please, I just want to talk!”

  Right. She believed that one.

  Just before she got out of range, Ngo went silent, started saying the Fulminant Name again. Ana braced herself – it was anybody’s guess whether the Director-General could hit from this distance, and though the Name was rarely fatal, it would certainly knock her out long enough to be captured. She ran as fast as she could, trying to get a couple extra meters before –

  Then a gust of wind flew all around her, knocked Malia off her feet. The Tempestuous Name. But how?

  She kept running, ran until the Director-General and her horrible base had receded into the brightening horizon.

  II.

  The back of a pickup truck took her as far as Sacram
ento, and a train took her to Oakland. In Oakland she broke her invisibility, got a hotel room and lay in bed without talking or moving or really thinking for a few hours.

  Then she woke up, took a shower, and bought herself a nice breakfast with the last of the hotel till money. She was a little surprised to see that Sarah was no longer in her bag when she woke, but only a little. Let the conspirators play their games. She was done.

  If she hadn’t already been a fugitive, she was one now. Director-General Malia Ngo herself had seen her; if she didn’t already know who she was she would soon figure it out. And someone else, someone who could seize Sarah from underneath UNSONG’s nose, was manipulating her in a way she didn’t much like. Ithaca wasn’t safe, her parents’ house wasn’t safe, nowhere in the Untied States or the global community was safe for her. But there were other options.

  She started walking west. She walked past the hills, walked past old houses, walked past the lake and the Emeryville Mall, walked past the harbor. She reached the Bay Bridge, went invisible, walked right past the warning signs, past the barricades and the guard towers.

  In front of her, a few towers peeked out of the billowing fog. The eye in the Transamerica Pyramid fixed its gaze on her for an instant, its emotions – if it had them – as inscrutable as ever.

  She was finished with the lands of men.

  She was going to San Francisco.

  * * *

  [Author’s note 2 has been posted. I will be having a series of meetups in the Bay Area for readers of my other blog Slate Star Codex; Unsong readers are welcome to attend and we may have a dramatic reading of upcoming Interlude Zayin if there is enough interest. Current planned dates and times are:

  — 2 PM on Sunday April 17 at the CFAR office, 2030 Addison, 7th floor, Berkeley

  — 7 PM on Monday April 18 at the Friedmans’ house, 3806 Williams Rd, San Jose

  — Afternoon of Tuesday April 19 at the Googleplex, time and exact location tbd

  — Evening of Tuesday April 19 at Stanford, time and exact location tbd

  Further information will be posted on my other blog and with next week’s chapter]