Enter the Clockworld

by Jared Mandani

  In the meantime, my eyes were scanning his smoldering office, no matter how the smoky air stung them and how many tears trickled down my cheeks as I spoke.

  The worn-out man in the suit burst out laughing all of a sudden. “You are so naïve, Ben,” he said. “And this makes you dangerous. They use you, the Chinese. They use people like you against us, against our interests, against our people. You work for the forces of chaos, Benjamin, whoever you are.”

  He pointed the gun at my head then, his hand steady, no longer trembling.

  “You think I believe you really don’t want me to kill myself? Alright. I WILL KILL YOU INSTEAD, YOU LITTLE — ”

  Then I laughed.

  And he pulled the trigger.

  ***

  The American autocab was yellow, not black, and the yellow under the car’s belly was much denser, its roof bleached by the sun. The sun was everywhere in New England, its amounts incredible, the sunlight as vast as the open air. Citizens of the US/C seemed to have little problems with housing and vacant land, even though dusty and barren, was in great supply.

  The cab left the highway for a beaten dirt path, basically a trail of scattered stones and crushed metal cans. Roads in America were in poor condition but still extant; converted motor vehicles everywhere. Ben even saw a huge eighteen-wheeler truck once, its entire combustion system replaced by a shameful microfusion cell hidden somewhere out of sight. Americans were still enjoying freedom of sorts, a freedom of movement around their continent at least.

  The yellow cab turned again, next to a pole holding up an old holographic sign: “PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND”, and another notice, this one metallic: “You’re entering a preserve of the Church of the new Faith and Awakening. A GUN FREE ZONE”.

  And they still had real guns; not everywhere, but in big cities, they did. Ben, who grew up in a world of ultimate safety and maximum comfort, found this thrilling and disturbing at the same time, pretty much as he found the revolution back home: a trip from one war zone to another.

  He didn’t want to fly all the way here, as the flight meant twenty hours in Kowalski’s quad copter, an immobile white sea of clouds below and rotors buzzing overhead. Ben was exhausted and felt lost from all the jetlag, as if he kept riding shotgun through his life.

  But there was one thing he had to find in here. And Ben had no choice.

  An immense brown wasteland was all around him now, the American wasteland, even though this was New England and he expected to see some cultivated greenery, at least.

  Up to now, Ben only saw pseudoplastic trees back at the airport.

  His entire body hurt. After two weeks in Web-induced catatonia, crucified on the overturned pool table with its retractable sonolight on a swivel, Ben didn’t feel all too rested. Tranh and Nguyen put him on a glucose drip, exercised his limbs and kept Ben’s lips and eyes wet; yet he still felt exhausted now that the ban was over, after being sucked into the reality bubble of James Reaper’s office and then shot in the head.

  “So how did our Mr. Reaper fail to escape, I wonder?” Kowalski asked him then.

  “It’s funny,” Ben told him, “but I think it was his humanity that failed him. He spent these two weeks in hell, cooking alive and blaming me for leaving him trapped like this. Then, when I suddenly appeared before him, he told me of a gun, and I was terrified, because, you know. The man put it to his temple already. He only had to pull the trigger, and he’d be gone, respawned somewhere in New Paris among the ruins, with me trapped in his personal hell forever.”

  “But he didn’t do it,” Kowalski said.

  “He was sure it was what we wanted,” Ben told him then. “He was sure it would erase him. So he shot me instead… and saved me by doing so. And so I still have Mr. Reaper in my breast pocket.”

  “What will you do with him now?”

  Ben brought the memory stick to Providence, New England, US/C. Here, on the outskirts of an old ghost town, there was a Church preserve. As Ben’s hovercab approached the striped mechanical arm of its outpost, he saw a man waiting for him there, a plump and bespectacled figure dressed like a ranch hand.

  It was Spark.

  “How did you know?” he asked as Ben got out of the cab and slapped its roof to confirm the payment and dismiss it.

  “Know what, that you’re with Faith?” Ben asked. “I would never tell, but Mr. Kowalski told me once there are many people of Faith among the scientists even. So why not?”

  “Not that,” Spark said, wiping his spectacles with a dusty bandanna on his neck. “How did you know where to look?”

  “Ah,” Ben said. “This part is interesting. I did figure out you were a spy for the Ethereals. I mean, you were dressed same as him, used the same brand of magic. Galvanics. It didn’t make sense at first, an Ethereal who’s not digitized, but then I thought, why not?”

  “I’m not really — ” Spark began.

  “I know, I know,” Ben said. “Not a member of their secret club, more like their trusted person. Who is in fact a triple agent, working for the Church and Academia as well. But now I do know Faith is the side you really belong to. I just don’t know why. I mean, you’re an electrician, a physicist. Why Faith? And if you hate DCs, why help the Ethereals?”

  “Because we share the ultimate goal,” Spark replied, his eyebrows up. He smiled at Ben. “Faith says what they say. We mustn’t be ruled by a computer god. Not ever. We cannot afford this. Humans must always be on top of the game. Not computers playing humans. Not computers playing god, that’s for sure.”

  “You hated them, and still you had to serve them,” Ben said. “I can see now how angry you must have been. And then you got your hands on the Baron himself, an Ethereal kidnapped by Asian hackers.”

  “It was a good opportunity,” Spark said. “But we lost him. Don’t ask me how, or to whom. I’m as clueless as you. I have no idea where the Baron is now, or where your girl is, for that matter. I never met any of them. I hold no grudge against digitized human beings, and even though I don’t like them, it doesn’t show.”

  “But you still work for the Ethereals,” Ben said.

  “I told you this may change,” Spark answered. “If you’re here why you think you are here, this all may change, and we real people may still have a chance in this world.”

  “The only world that matters,” Ben said with a crooked smile.

  They walked on, and the wind flapped their clothes around, whipping up the clouds of brown dust and sand that stung their faces.

  Ben reached for his breast pocket. “You will have an immense advantage now,” he said. “You will have one of their leaders.”

  “Not immense,” Spark replied. “But it may give the Church some independence, it may.”

  Ben pulled out the little black memory stick and handed it to Spark.

  “This is my part of the deal,” he told the man. ”Now let’s see how you people of Faith handle yours.”

  An old hovering pickup collected them from the side of the road, a grey monstrosity huffing and puffing as it lifted itself off the ground. Its autopilot asked them the destination, and took off.

  “You know they will never let go of you now, don’t you?” Spark asked him.

  “If they even know who I am.” Ben smirked. “Mr. Reaper used the Church as the cover for this entire deal. He thought he was perfect in orchestrating the whole thing. I was a key figure, but I was also oblivious, disinterested. I think he didn’t want to kill my father. He wanted to kill me. He just failed. And then I found Academia, and it was harder and harder for him to admit he was failing to handle me like he should have.”

  “So he offered you another deal,” Spark suggested.

  “Yes,” Ben said. “But he told me no one of his Ethereal friends would know, and I believe him. I think he doesn’t really have many friends among the Ethereals.”

  “Oh, they’re a paranoid bunch,” Spark agreed. “Believe it or not, some of them remember the twentiet
h century, and they’re mentally stuck in it. They want to make it back to our world so bad, and rebuild it in a twentieth century way, with a conflict of superpowers, East versus West, Cold War, spy games. And this is why I say places like Clockworld are perfect for them, for it’s exactly the world where they belong. A world of ridiculous fights and overblown intrigue, where they can be the new gods. They don’t see it of course. They don’t want to accept what they are, a bunch of digitally simulated buffoons, museum relics of an era long gone.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Ben asked him then.

  Spark nodded and echoed: “Aren’t we all.”

  There was an old gas station on their way, a futuristic mushroom in the middle of nowhere, with an old corporate logo blinking above it.

  “So, how did you know where to look?” Spark asked him. “How did you find us?”

  “This digital god you don’t want, the three-year-old child personality ruling over the entire world of dreams,” Ben said. “I think it told me through Mr. Reaper.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you know how the Web rewards you for quoting stuff? For erudition?” Ben asked.

  “I know this pretty well, but — ”

  “When James Reaper was talking to me there, inside that pyramid,” Ben said. “I couldn’t help but feel it was all a cypher, something I needed to solve. Idiot gods, dark messengers. Then he said ‘batrachian’; I had no idea what it was, so I had to look it up later. And then it clicked. It had to be here, right? Providence. He basically told me where you hid him.”

  “It was Reaper who wanted your father kept here, Ben,” Spark answered. “So he merely blabbed the secret to you in metaphors. These digitized dummies sometimes act this way, lead you through the narrative tailored to suit your story best.”

  “Educating me in the process,” Ben said. “I think I finally get what the Web really is.”

  “The moment it feels so,” Spark told him, “consider that what happened is you went nuts, kiddo. Not a single human being knows what the Web really is, not at this point. The Dreamweb is a self-learning system; it evolves and grows like an avalanche.”

  As their truck crept through the broken land towards a little desolate gas station, Ben already could see a small figure crouched next to a motorbike, and another bike parked a bit further.

  With about thirty feet of distance remaining, Ben said: “Stop over here! That’s enough! Stop!”

  Spark touched the old pickup’s manual override panel and the hovercar stopped with a shudder, its doors hissing and then unlatching in unison.

  Ben climbed out the pickup and hurried up towards the figure crouching next to a motorbike. He wanted to call out but wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Ben ran up close instead, and stopped behind the man’s back.

  “D — Dad?” he called quietly.

  The man barely looked at him.

  “Hey, Ben, my boy,” he said, poking inside the Triumph he was detailing. “I wonder what kind of a lazy cretin worked on this baby. It’s not proper mechanics, not engineering, it’s living in a moment. And then, when someone takes this machine out, and travels some five hundred miles on it, and there’s dust like this everywhere, see where it takes you then.”

  “Does it run at all?” Ben asked him. His father looked much younger and livelier than usual, yet it was him, the old Harry, the Chopper King.

  “Oh, it runs fine, I already gave this baby a spin,” he said, patting the Triumph’s leather seat. “I can bring her back into action in, say… seven and a half minutes. Want to bet?”

  Ben tried to pretend he didn’t notice the fact the Triumph was running on microfusion now, and the real Harry would never ride anything converted to microfusion, not in his life.

  Also, the real Harry’s hands would have lines on them. This was a bit harder to ignore, but Ben made an effort.

  “We can go home now, Dad,” he said. “I’m here to bring you to the airport, and then a friend of mine will take us home.”

  The old Harry looked around, seemingly lost for the first time. “Home?” he asked. “Am I not supposed to stay here, in heaven? Where you can visit me?”

  Ben stalled. He didn’t expect this. Anything but this. It didn’t feel fair. But then, what did he know about the procedure? He didn’t even have money for it. It was Mr. Reaper who paid, both for his father’s digitization and for this android body, also a copy of his father’s form. James Reaper told Ben it was his official excuse for what happened.

  “This is not heaven, Dad,” Ben told him. “Bad people stole you and brought you here. The same people who torched our workshop, remember? You asked me to make them pay, and so I did. I didn’t hold my end of the deal with them. And still, I found where they kept you, then came here to pick you up. We can go now.”

  His father’s eyes were staring back at him, an old man’s eyes, no longer sure if they understood how the world around worked, or what it even meant anymore.

  “Not heaven?” he asked. “You mean, I died, and this… isn’t me?”

  “This is you, Dad,” Ben told him. “It’s all a matter of belief, you see. I believe it’s as close to you as it gets. I’m glad you’re with me. Doesn’t that make you alive again?”

  His father looked around and fixed the collar of his checkered cowboy shirt.

  “Well,” he said. “The afterlife isn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. At least you get to see America, huh?”

  Ben laughed at this, and they hugged, his father’s body feeling natural enough for Ben not to care it was a thing.

  Everything is a thing in the end, Ben thought, watching the old Harry bring the Triumph back into running order. We all are machines, deep inside. Bone and meat, or clockwork, or automold flesh, it’s all but different manifestations of the same human mind, pieces of humanity.

  They darted across immense dusty plains like two dust comets, his father on the Triumph of course, while Ben could try the Harley in its natural habitat. He had to admit his motorcycle was made for this exactly, and the balance of mass, the suspension, everything felt beautiful — even the fake purr of the new engine, something meant to replace the actual bike engine noise.

  They saw the airport masts at sunset, and reached their pad when it was already getting dark.

  As Ben dismounted, his father smiled at him.

  Ben shrugged, and then smiled back.

  “It’s just life is a very strange thing, I guess,” he said.

  “Whatever it is,” his father replied, “it’s the only life we’re gonna have. And you know, son. It’s not what you are. It’s what remains after you.”

  Kowalski waved to them from his quad copter, the arrival of two bikes long expected. He opened the cargo bay for them, and Ben felt much more relaxed when they managed to park both the Harley and the Triumph inside.

  As they were rising, the remnants of day sunk behind them, retracting and fading as the quad copter struggled with the air. The machine dropped back and forth, then up and down, like a dragonfly, probing the aerial front, looking for a stable column of friendly wind to cling to. Then the copter’s computers found the desired air column and latched to it firmly. From then on, Ben already knew, it was more or less smooth sailing, the copter gliding them all the way towards the destination, kicking its rotors and turbines on-off in salvos grasping for the best cruising speed it could maintain.

  From now on, all Ben had to do was sit and stare through the bubble of pseudoglass overhead and somewhat underneath, stare at the distant ocean rolling its complex fractal wave fronts below, a thing as vast, ancient, and unaware of humanity as it was a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years ago.

  Ben knew one day the ocean would have to go. Wastelands would have to go. Humans would be everywhere. No other way out, except for mass extermination. Americans still had land because they knew engineering well. They just built a roof on top of their skyscrapers, then built new skyscrapers on top of that roof, and encirc
led this sandwich with concrete walls to make a bunker. In the Old World, this art was unknown. In the Old World, even now, people pushed back the great waters and expanded the land by means of drainage and reclamation.

  Ben didn’t notice how he fell asleep. He remembered he was looking at the pale artificial face of his father, the eyes closed in android mock-sleep, and the druidic outline of Francis Kowalski, reading a book with the help of a little light extended from the dashboard… And the next moment, Ben was alone.

  He climbed down from the wooden bunk bed, surprised how weird everything felt. He looked out of a big round window, the floor underneath him swaying uncomfortably.

  Ben saw white clouds underneath and a starry sky above. I’m on an airship, he remembered. By every criteria he was still on an airship, but what was he doing here? And what did the airship mean? Was it going to La Republique?

  He felt the machine descending all of a sudden, and then Ben was opening the heavy hatch. The ground below was white and dusty, pretty much like the surface of the Moon. Ben dropped a heavy armful of a rope ladder down the hatch and watched it unfurl, then dance, then settle in one place, as far as the airship’s buoyancy allowed.

  Then he climbed down the ladder and jumped into the soft white dust, landing on all fours. He looked up just in time to see the airship depart — a dark looming hulk against the stars, not French by any means, a flying machine of some other origin.

  “Where am I?” Ben asked.

  “THERE IS NO WHERE,” a children’s choir whispered in his ear. “THIS IS PROVIDENCE.”

  Then Ben recognized the old gas station, with two motorbikes parked next to it, and a tractor wheel dug into the ground exactly where he remembered it would be found.

  “Providence?” he asked. “You mean I came back? I thought I was supposed to go on.”

  “Maybe you left something behind, then?” a pleasant voice asked. Ben spun around.

  “A talking dog,” he said.

  “A coyote,” the creature replied, walking out of the shadows onto the starlit stretch of highway. “Come on, Benjamin, are you kidding me? Can’t you tell a dog from a coyote?”