Manifestations

by David M Henley

  The survivors were moved to Omskya Central, the nearest city to the Terminus. A thousand rapid-built settlements for a hundred thousand Örjian children, care of the miraculous mechanics of the new union. The relocation towns covered a greater area than the rest of STOC, though the main population kept itself to its tall buildings and modern conveniences. The sectors — 1 through 456 — held approximately ten thousand residents each: technically they were Citizens, but with negligible civic influence and behavioural restrictions, they had next to no value.

  The sector towns were built using polyplastic blocks that could be assembled and reassembled. It was the cheapest and most flexible way to expand a city, even if the smaller constructions needed to be roped down with ballast to remain sound through storms.

  All the sectors looked the same to Miles. They looked the same as when he left them long ago, though the trees were bigger and the grass had died. Prefab towns made to the same plan as the one he had grown up in. Single-storey houses made from one or two units, set along perfectly straight roads with pedestrian ways marked out with thick yellow lines.

  He remembered the daily scannings and inspections, checking for signs of fighting or altering. Servicemen strutted along the street making sure the residents weren’t reverting to their old ways.

  ‘Stand along the yellow lines. Face forward. Face left. About face. Face forward.’

  The secret that the would-be scouts were meant to find out about Mister Lizney was that he was once the enemy, or at least the child of the enemy. His parents were part of the Örjian hordes, the pinnacle of genetic advancement and Lamarckian dedication. Twisted and toothy animals who made bloodsport of evolution.

  ‘The animal must advance.’ He could still hear his father whispering the commandments to him at nights. ‘Change or die. Live and kill. Only this way will humanity survive.’

  He shook his head at this now, but at the time, as a boy, his father’s words were his entire world.

  ‘But, Father, if we are so much better than them, how is it that they keep us prisoner?’ The only answer to that was a beating. A beating to the edge of unconsciousness. A beating that had him removed from his parents and placed with a more obedient family.

  He never wanted to have to stand on those lines again.

  It was an odd thing to know your parents were insane. An almost unbelievable, inconceivable concept. Can one born in madness ever escape it? He felt it in his veins ... they had been mad, vicious killers. The only excuse for them was the Dark Age of famines and war that had birthed Örj and those who needed something to follow. Örj would lead them out of the darkness, it was said. Instead he took them deeper into it.

  When Lizney watched the histories now, pretending that he had no link to them, the madness could sometimes make sense. He watched movies of the hordes loping through city streets, running like wolves and using their claws and scramble-pipes on any who resisted.

  Maybe it would be best if he waited and watched a little longer. He found a bench and put a weak dreamer on his neck. His eyes closed and he thought back.

  ~ * ~

  The morning Zach disappeared, Mister Lizney took the day off. He whisked powders into a tea and compiled a report on Omskya 261. Statistically, it was a mystery. For a start, none of its Citizens had been engaging with the Weave for months. While there were many people in the world who chose not to connect, or could not, to have a spontaneous and complete revulsion within a set radius was improbable.

  Only the passive data was still being collected from the grid of omnipoles that monitored and transmitted communications, electricity and light. The logs from the o-poles went back to the origins of the encampment, forty-eight years worth of data. In the last five months there had been a notable decrease in accidents, traffic congestion and people being late for their work programs. This timed exactly with the drop-off in Weave usage.

  He returned to the area three cycles in a row. Found nothing new. What he did manage to clearly ascertain was that this peace was geographically constrained, confined to Sector 261.

  Life there seemed too perfect. Such regularity of patterns was not humanly possible. Human patterns should look more like spaghetti, but these were evolving towards perfectly interlinked circles. Optimal human efficiency.

  The problem seemed hard for him to put a finger on. So what if synchronicity in the population had steadily increased? Meal times for example. People’s breakfast times had migrated, allowing for less deliveries and an adjustment of their commuting windows until the optimal density was found for each transit service. ‘This town is too efficient,’ he muttered to himself.

  He demersed and went to his kitchen for some water and a patch. He slapped it on the back of his neck and sat down to concentrate on his breathing. The chemicals were meant to fight his genetic tendencies. The anger that the surgeries couldn’t remove.

  The place seemed, simply put, the ideal of town planning. It was harmony. Phenomenal harmony. The question was whether it was natural or unnatural. And perhaps, how long it could continue? The harmony had lasted five months without interruption; lasted throughout the manifestation, the psi declaration and now a convocation that could change the destiny of humanity.

  Could they be so cut off as to not even have felt what was happening in the wider world? Lizney checked the neighbouring encampments, 260 and 262, whose statistics showed the normal chaos of humanity. There was zero interaction between 261 and the surrounding zones. Food and supplies were delivered by autotruck and humans did not cross between.

  Lizney sent his report up the chain. It was a mystery for someone else to investigate.

  A week later he hadn’t heard anything back from Services. Receipt of his report had been acknowledged, but with the psi situation and the black masses in Korea and Mexica, there were no weavers to be spared to look into a town that was flagged as having zero problems.

  Lizney compiled the week’s data, which remained on trend, and attached it as an amendment to his initial report and sent it again.

  He put his helmet on and stood on the empty streets, walking up and down the quiet lanes for any sign of life. ‘All quiet in 261,’ he whispered to himself.

  He performed the same routine for the next three days. Adding updated data and resubmitting his results. Services remained unconcerned by the harmonious life in Omskya 261, but did respond by asking him to stop making reports.

  ~ * ~

  There was only one thing left for him to do and that was travel there himself ... now he sat looking across the divide, looking over at his childhood streets.

  There was a line where he knew the zone of perfection faltered. Beyond it the statistical anomalies disappeared and people lived their imperfect lives of mistake and correction. The border followed the arms of a stormwater drain that broke the relocation zones into sections. On one side 261, on the other 262.

  There was no difference that he could see from the far side of the bridge. The people were dressed the same as people in 261, and walked between their destinations with no more hurry or fuss. The housing was regulation, painted in cheery pastels with white trimmings. Everything designed to make the Örjians feel normal and part of the new civilisation.

  What should he do now? How could he find out what was happening on the other side? Could he simply enter 261 and ask someone what was happening? Did they even know it was happening?

  Lizney opened the tin with his patches in it and put one on each wrist. As the calm went into his blood he stepped forward. His approach went unwatched. The Citizens continued about their business.

  Halfway across the bridge he began to relax. He felt a little silly coming here. Why would Services bother investigating a place where nothing was wrong? Lizney laughed at himself.

  Beside him a small boy took his hand and began leading him down the street.

  ‘How did you find me?’ the boy asked.

  Lizney merely had to think about his last two weeks and
what had led him here and the boy understood. His memories were passed onto him as easily as a ping.

  ‘Thank you,’ the boy said. ‘I will rectify that.’

  Around him the omnipoles powered down and the street darkened until Lizney’s eyes adjusted to the dim spill from the neighbouring sectors.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Miles asked him.

  ~ * ~

  Shanniya looked over the menu and weighed up her future prospects against her need for some pampering.

  Louisa’s was her favourite place. It only cost slightly extra to have a human server than a bot — and it was so much more decadent. She could talk to a human — well, she could talk to a bot too, but they only had preprogrammed responses. They couldn’t understand what it was like to be a modern woman. How could they? If she told a bot how her partner, Jeremy, was leaving her, what would it say? ‘Oh, dear, that is very sad. Perhaps a new haircut will make you feel better?’

  She only knew he was leaving her because the alerts she had on his stream kept reporting the contact he’d had with other women. All those unexplained greyouts. No honest man needs that much privacy.

  She sighed and went inside. Her prospects were low and a head rub wasn’t going to solve anything, but it would help her relax. She didn’t even know if she cared. He wasn’t the most hygienic of partners and his idea of mutual contribution was for her to cook, clean and work up the cash for food. All he did was keep hold of the nice third-floor apartlet. If anything she should be the one leaving him.

  The matron of the parlour welcomed her and led Shanniya to a couch where she could put her head back and let the comical servitor massage and treat her hair. ‘Would you like to immerse while you’re waiting?’

  Shanniya nodded and lay back. She went straight to the femme sites, where the streams of celebrities were catalogued, and the highlights and low points of their lives were displayed for her amusement. She couldn’t focus on any of the articles or quizzes, they were too close to how she was feeling — Is it you or him? Should you jump him or dump him? — and then a question caught her eye. Would you like to follow your bliss?

  Yes, I’d like that, she thought and activated the link. She was a good and kind person and deserved bliss. She would do anything ...

  ~ * ~

  Zach watched Inez disconnect. She didn’t look anything like the girl she had just shown Shanniya. She had dark hair braided into a bowl atop her head and picto-graphic irises of red and white that pinched her pupils in the middle like an octopus’s.

  ‘Did you get that?’ she asked him in her thick licking accent.

  ‘I saw. Why do we have to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Ours is not to ask,’ Inez quoted.

  ‘But what am I trying to do?’

  ‘Each customer is different. For this one we just have to make the connection and let the ARA do the rest.’ She tipped her head to re-immerse. ‘Go bug someone else for a while.’

  He was meant to be watching what the protégés worked on and learn how to build automated response avatars — or ARAs, they called them. Small programs that had conversational reflexes to lure unsuspecting streams to give out their information, influence and even credits.

  They were essentially just a branching dialogue program that was broad enough to encompass all the answers a user could give.

  Are you afraid of dying?

  Would you like to live forever?

  The vocal generator used for each one would match to the pre-profiling done on any given stream, so for men it was usually a soft feminine voice or the authoritative baritone of a man living a life of jovial excess.

  And the goobs always fell for it. That was what disappointed him most. People always wanted the same things. Driven by desire, fear and greed. ‘It’s all about getting attention,’ Delora said, the third of the proteges. Alicia, Inez, Delora and now Zach. ‘People jump around. Sometimes we only have a few seconds before they move away, we have to treat them like fish. Make something attractive.’

  ‘With a hook in it.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Dungeon would review each ARA personally before they were seeded to the Weave, where they waited like baited hooks for streams to find. Conversational constructs that enticed people to open their streams to them.

  ‘We have a new client and I need hooks in the water within the hour,’ she would order.

  ‘Yes, mistress.’ The protégés went to their couches and absorbed the new brief and launched new codes.

  Dungeon never let them know who they were working for. All they had to do was find ways to get people to open up their streams and let them in. They asked for just a moment of the mark’s time and then took whatever they wanted.

  A command entered his queue from Dungeon and he demersed. It was time for another bath and he got up to fetch the towels.

  Zach’s new home consisted of two underground rooms — two that he knew of. The dorm room where he and the other protégés slept and worked on immersion couches, and the chamber where Dungeon kept to herself. They were only allowed entry when she had a use for them.

  Dungeon’s room was spacious and softened by thick springy rugs arranged between her cupboards and the tiled corner where a large bath rested. The ceiling was hung with stalaclights in their hundreds, and on the walls large screens showed scenery from around the world. Today it was an icy vista of a mountain range, a blue sky pierced with black crags and peaks.

  Zach stood in the corner while she sank into her bath. He wore his visor and watched while she drew crude faces and graffiti on the recordings of the Prime’s statements and sent them back out onto the Weave.

  Dungeon chuckled at her mischief. Her nipples bobbed up and down in the water. She would sit in the bath for hours, immersed and immersed, the way she liked it. Zach was trained to drain and refill the water to keep it fresh and warm.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Is it to support the psis?’

  ‘I don’t support anyone.’ She shrugged. He tried not to look through the water.

  She let him watch — she made him watch. His stream trailed hers on the Weave and he learnt quickly how she split her stream across the Weave, deleted her trail and piggybacked other streams like a stowaway on a train.

  Dungeon made him watch everything, but he was never to touch. When she called for oils, standing up from the bath, water rolling off her skin and her symbiot cloak, another of her protégés would come to the room to rub the soaked skin with moisturising creams.

  ‘Robe,’ she ordered.

  Zach opened a large, soft towel gown and was careful not to let his fingers brush against her. He’d learnt that lesson. He was never to touch her or it would be another night sleeping with the prickles.

  Then he had to sit quietly by the bed during her full-cycle debaucheries. When he was aroused, she teased him.

  Zach told himself that once he had acquired a symbiot of his own, he would leave. He was the only one of the four protégés without.

  ‘Someday, I will give you one as a reward,’ Dungeon had told him in the beginning.

  After his first night in the prickle he stood in the dormitory unable to move. He felt like Swiss cheese. He thought his clothes should have been soaked with his blood, rather than just cold sweat.

  Alicia was kind to him. She lifted her quilt and said, ‘Get in.’ It seemed like an act of kindness. When his shaking subsided she took him to the showers. She washed him and satisfied him, then held him until he slept.

  Zach sometimes checked on his old stream. He used a bluff-stream that auto-generated a false history compiled from samples of other local streams. It wasn’t the best way to hide, but he was safe so long as no one was looking for him.

  He tried visiting Mister Lizney, but found his home empty and powered down. He had been gone for two weeks, leaving shortly after Zach had run away.

  Perhaps he went looki
ng for me, Zach wondered.

  Then he found a message waiting for him. It was from yesterday.

  Zach, if you are reading this, it means something has happened to me. I have set this message to be sent if my stream changes its normal behaviour patterns.

  When you left I continued to investigate Sector 261. My reports to Services have been ignored so I have travelled to look further into the mysterious situation.

  I am sorry for how we parted. I fear I wasn’t the best teacher to you and I hope you can accept my humblest apologies.