Dark Horizons

by Jay Caselberg; Eric Del Carlo

  Lloyd and I sat behind and to the left, stone as statues, observing the scene before us in a kind of trance. I could tell this was too much even for the elder doctor, notwithstanding his invested interest. We had entered unknown territory.

  The array of alien instruments hovered and whirled about Glix’s body like oversized insects, trailing fiber optic wiring and going about their various tasks, little lights blinking. The small Stephen Hawking-voiced robot assisted, handling bigger tasks such as moving the equipment. The many computer screens displayed everything from Glix’s vital signs to images of the inside of his brain and his brainwave activity. On the central display stormed a hive of alien nanomachines, A.I driven, which together coalesced into the humanoid face of a robot-person with clear gray eyes. The AM overseer monitoring the session via cyberspace looked on dispassionately from the future. The eyes were queerly alive, with a piercing intelligence.

  Glix said, “It’s all quite simple, really—how this works. Human beings, being matter-based, cannot readily withstand severe fluctuations in time, nor gravity. Hell we have trouble if our job schedule changes. But this is not true of human consciousness. Consciousness is inherently connected to every atom in the universe, at all points in time, past, present and future. This is due to what Teilhard de Chardin called the Omega Point, which is the point at infinity toward which all existence streams, and where everything eventually converges into a unity. Just because this event is in the future doesn’t make it untrue for the present, because time is infinite, and infinity is a lemniscate, folding endlessly backward upon itself.”

  The machines buzzed and whined about the room, cocooning Glix’s lower body in a mesh of nanowire and conveying data back and forth between computer consoles. Meanwhile, the robot administered an injection of local anesthetic using a crystalline syringe before plunging something like a scalpel into the side of his head, catching the spurt of blood in a large steel tray.

  “Jesus Christ!” Lloyd exclaimed.

  I slammed my fist on the arm of the chair. “That’s it. I’m out of here.”

  Before I could stand, Glix said, “Hold it, gentlemen. There’s no need to overreact. Utilize your rational thinking mind, please. My entire organism has just been nanoized. The AMs are in charge of everything I experience and feel, so don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Just watch and listen. This’ll be over soon.”

  The medical instruments swarmed about Glix’s head, feeding a wire the size of a fishing line into the incision the robot had just made. On the computer screen, the real-time image scan of Glix’s brain made a beeping sound. I watched in horrified awe as the wire was shown hooking up to the micro lab implant in his head. Suddenly afterward, the central computer screen showing the AM overseer began to flash.

  “As I was saying,” Glix said. “A physical organism can’t travel through time, but human consciousness can. What I eventually determined by reading the AM Gospel diagrams, what the AMs were trying to tell me all along, was that, since consciousness is interconnected with the universe, it can thus be transported through cyberspace to any point in time, where it’ll be more or less in the same constitution it was in while attached to its physical organism—only it’ll be attached then to the Internet. But what if the physical organism could be image-scanned at the cellular level using light-sheet microscopy and nanotechnology, and that data transported across cyberspace along with the organism’s consciousness. Both could then be fitted back together at a future point in time using the proper technology. The human being shall be made to time travel and this is the technical secret of the AM Gospel. And I will be the first to undergo this.”

  The screen showing the overseer began to flash more dramatically, and the other displays appeared to transmit data at a higher rate. Holding the bloody steel tray, the robot went back to the wall and powered down, but not before making several more incisions in Glix’s body.

  A hum of electricity leapt into the room as the medical instruments finalized whatever it was they were doing. The smell of blood and technology turned my stomach. I felt I would be sick. I glanced at Lloyd, whose eyes bulged ahead in stunned anticipation. I realized I couldn’t think straight, let alone speak. My mind had been zombified by the event. All I could do was be here, all I could do was bear witness. Everything else fell away.

  “Sounds like we’re about ready, boys.” Glix said. “Isn’t this exciting? Thanks again for being here. I guess I’ll see you in the future. That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!”

  The A.I. instruments whined around Glix’s body, fitting themselves into the several tiny incisions the robot had made. Suddenly the readings and colors on the computer screens kicked into overdrive as several uploading percentage bars appeared.

  Glix closed his eyes. It was over in less than two minutes—the percentage bars reaching one hundred. The lab went very silent as the storm of former activity ceased.

  Slowly, I made myself get up from the chair.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Lloyd hissed.

  But I ignored him. I was transfixed by Glix’s perfectly still body, brutally pin-cushioned with alien instruments and high-tech wires. He had been mummified in technology.

  I approached the recliner on wobbly legs and stood staring at the central screen where the AM overseer peered out in all his future-tech glory. Clear gray eyes regarded me not with hatred or fear or intrigue, but merely looked, as though I were a math equation presented for discussion. For a moment I thought I glimpsed Glix’s former expression in those eyes. Then the screen went black and the display lights clicked off.

  I jumped as Lloyd appeared at my side. “Son of a bitch did it,” he said, looking down at the former residence of Glix’s consciousness. I followed his gaze, simultaneously sickened and fascinated by the sight before us.

  “You think it worked?” I said.

  “Look at him. It must’ve worked. The computers confirm it.” He indicated the 100% bars on the other computer displays.

  “But what if they’re lying,” I said. Immediately I wanted that to be true—no, needed it to be. For my sanity, for the world to continue to make sense.

  “What if nothing actually happened,” I added.

  “Then how do you explain–”

  I reached a hand out to touch.

  “I wouldn’t–”

  But before I could make contact, the body of the entity formally known as the enigmatic scientist Glix was transfigured before my eyes. His organism went into chemical breakdown, resulting in oxidation and culminating in a grayish mass of vegetable goo, which soaked through the wires and leather and pooled into a large puddle at the base of the chair.

  Gagging, I yanked my hand away.

  Lloyd lit a cigarette with his Zippo as we stood outside by the Toyota, not far from the cabin. The placidity of the surrounding woodlands felt like another planet, a stark contrast to the technological world we had just inhabited.

  “I needed that,” Lloyd said, exhaling smoke. “Christ, what a rush!”

  I felt like I’d trailed my nerves exciting the lab and was only now reeling them back into my body. “I don’t know what I think,” I said.

  Lloyd nodded. “Well, at least we know it works. We know that MS G-333 is for real, that we’ll get what we want out of it.”

  My blood boiled. “Is that what you want? Are you crazy? That was awful back there.”

  “Collisions are always uncomfortable. That was an initial meeting of two worlds.”

  I suddenly remembered the last image I had seen when exiting the cabin, that backward-turning swastika. “The truth about that flag,” I said, “is that it’s not some prohibition against evil. It’s the opposite, a magical sign, a sigil representing the true intentions of the ascended machines.”

  Lloyd stared at me, perhaps wondering whether to agree. “It’ll get easier from here on out,” he replied. “As long as the group–”

  I stepped right into his face. “Fuck your group, Doc.�
�

  I had never said that to him before.

  He recoiled but feigned his usual disaffectedness. But I noticed something different in his eyes, a new glimmer that belied his inner emotions. I suddenly knew he was mad, and scared. He knew I wanted nothing else to do with him.

  “Get in the truck, Eric.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He flamed. “Do as you’re told, Eric, what’s the matter with you? Why do you always act like a child?”

  I smiled, breaking eye contact, and stared out at the mountainous forest peaks. They were beautiful.

  “We’re done, Lloyd,” I said. “This is over.”

  “Get in the truck,” he repeated.

  I did as he asked.

  He smoked alone for a moment, gazing back toward the cabin. Then he extinguished his cigarette and got behind the wheel, saying nothing. The journey back into the city was one of the loneliest experiences of my life.

  DEMON ON HIS SHOULDER

  ERIC DEL CARLO

  WHEN TRAVELERS STARTED RETURNING from the Out with Melds, terrestrial law faced an untidy dilemma. Melds were, definitionally, dangerous. They were an aid to survival in the Out. Humans who’d left Earth to face danger had done so for noble reasons: exploration, diplomacy, research.

  Did they have the right to keep their cellularly bonded Melds once they returned to Earth?

  Out culture was a highly divergent venue. Even in the span of a few decades, a great many customs had become entrenched. Not every one of these habits could be given full legal consideration. Some cultural practices bordered on pranks. But Melding was a meaningful undertaking, close to a holy rite. Once one was Melded, it was unthinkable, by Out standards, to divest oneself of this crucial addition. Easier to lop off a sound limb, went the argument.

  And arguments aplenty there were. Out personnel were revered as war heroes. Society wished to make their returns as comfortable as possible. But Melds weren’t necessary on a wholly pacified Earth. They only posed their own security threat: so the counterargument shaped itself.

  The issue seized the global imagination as nothing had in a generation. The case was bluntly thrust before the World Supreme Court. Earth awaited a ruling, its contentiousness already ensured.

  Melds, said the eventual decision, were to be considered componential to the human body. Removal of the cooperative alien member, itself a fairly simple procedure, could not be made compulsory. Returning Outers got to keep their Melds.

  But the ruling opened a door.

  Anybody on Earth could now get a Meld. A new imported market sprang up. One didn’t have to travel to the Out anymore. One didn’t have to do anything but schedule the medical appointment.

  Officer Philippe Chalmet gazed up at the twin spires of pale brick which stood above the quaint common. The two narrow towers contributed to the architectural flair of the area. Old Town. Every metropolis had to have an Old Town. In New Orleans it was the French Quarter, in San Francisco the Noe Valley Preserve. Save up all the old buildings in one corner of the city, restore them to within an inch of their lives, and convince people it’s a righteous act of cultural continuity. When, really, all you had was a pointless clutch of antediluvian shacks.

  But looking up at those brick towers was better than seeing the carnage spread beneath. The bodies …

  Philippe Chalmet was vaguely aware he was reverting to an archaic model of policeman, one who was irritable, cynical, and disconsolate. It’d certainly not always been like this for him. Twenty years of service only cemented his belief in the fundamental decency of humanity. But all that’d been erased by this past year. The Melds had changed the game. He hadn’t even thought of police work as a game before that. His vocation was a serious undertaking, worthy, an opportunity to right the few wrongs that still occurred in this world. Mostly, his job allowed him to amplify the sense of global well-being humankind earned for itself.

  Better, though, to make a game of it now, Philippe thought with a growingly familiar bitterness. You could laugh at a game’s outcome, even if the stakes were enormously high.

  “Well, Detective. You want to pronounce important words?”

  Detective. It was itself a throwback term. He turned to Officer Addie Ehawee, and saw reflected in her features the same gruffness of spirit he felt overtaking himself. The new way of this job would change their faces, he felt sure. Both he and his longtime assistant would grow old and ugly, and it would happen too fast.

  “See if you can work the word ‘massacre’ into the report somehow,” he said.

  “I was leaning toward `indiscriminate wholesale slaughter,’ but that prose is a tad purple, what?”

  Caustic repartee, a part of the new game. “Is there a head count yet?”

  “C’mon, Detective, give us a chance to find all the heads–”

  Philippe had set her up for that one. Of a sudden, however, he wasn’t in the mood for the ghoulish badinage. The cobblestoned promenade was heaped with bodies and body parts. If he had to guess, he’d say twenty-five people were no longer living persons because of what happened in Old Town tonight. And what’d happened was manifest. Philippe Chalmet was becoming, among other things, an expert on these bloodbaths.

  “It’s two,” he said. Police personnel surrounded the scene. “A Meld versus Meld.”

  “That’s what the initial sweep suggests,” Addie Ehawee said, adopting the same somber tone he’d switched to. She almost certainly hated what she was turning into as well. “What do you think? An Outer versus an Earth Meld?”

  It was too much butchery for a single Meld. One Meld in contest against another, however, resulted in a great deal of collateral damage. Melds fought each other with a vast ferocity. They were like gyroscopic razor-machines spinning at unbelievable speed. Bystanders only got temporarily in the way.

  Philippe’d let Addie’s question hang in the air a moment. Finally he said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Outer Meld. Earth Meld. It only matters that they were let loose because the human components felt motivated to utilize them.”

  “Sure. That rat butt thing, though …”

  “It means if I had a rat’s ass, I would go ahead and keep it rather than go to the meager trouble of giving it away. That is how little I care.” Just like that he had fallen back into the insulating routine of gallows banter.

  Addie took her cues from him, like a good subordinate, but as she spoke, Philippe was already looking away again, up at the two steeples of pale brick.

  In a sense it was true: he was monumentally sick of the individual identities and biographies of these maniacs who roamed a helpless Earth. And yet, the inevitable curiosity ate at him. Who had started this bloodshed? And why?

  Initially, Jonny Nadd’d been on the fence about the big issue which consumed so much media attention. He considered both sides of the argument, disappointing coworkers and acquaintances who wanted to be quarrelsome.

  Then he saw a news feature on a xenozoologist who demonstrated the dynamic capabilities of her Meld at a test range. After that, Jonny fixated on a single idea: he wanted a Meld for himself.

  So he followed the Supreme Court’s deliberations intently. And was overjoyed with their ruling. As much as he wanted a Meld, he’d been unable to imagine a scenario which took him to the dangerous and unpredictable Out. Now, however, he could have his Meld here on Earth.

  As he stirred in the medical chair, his first thought poking through the dissipating mist of the anesthesia was that it’d been too quick. He still retained a time sense, despite the short term of unconsciousness. The procedure must not have worked.

  But movement caught the corner of his eye, or perhaps he just sensed something–

  “There you are, Mr. Nadd,” said the same medical technician who’d been in the sterile gray room a few moments ago. She was a hands-on type, who wanted to find his pulse with her fingertips and shine a light directly on his pupils, rather than simply scan him. But J
onny was still turning away, to the right, to the right. Anxiety and anticipation welled up in him.

  When he saw it, he jerked against the restraints he’d forgotten about. The Meld sat on his shoulder. It was right where it belonged. Its mercurial surface rippled, the motions mesmerizing.

  Jonny grinned hugely.

  The med-tech had her fingers on him, prodding him, testing reflexes. The clinic’d opened its doors just two weeks ago, expressly to handle the componentization of Melds. Therefore, this doctor, who did not look like someone who had been Out, couldn’t be any kind of old hand at this. It was funny how you could tell an Outer. Still, she was efficient, had explained the procedure beforehand, and now followed with a epilogue assuring him that all had gone as expected. He was Melded.

  He could barely contain his enthusiasm as he left the clinic. The alien life, imported here to Earth, made tiny flapping movements on his shoulder. It seemed to weigh nothing, but he was fantastically aware of it. It was roughly half the size of his head.

  When he reached the curb, a fit elderly man glanced up as he passed. Eyes widened just perceptibly, and the man’s step hitched before he went on along the sidewalk. Jonny Nadd was careful not to grin after him. On his shoulder the liquid-like surface of his Meld stirred, curious anatomical suggestions emerging on the ball’s flesh, then submerging. As if it too were somehow hiding a triumphal grin.

  He’d secured a week off from work at the bio assembly plant, although he knew ahead of time that the Melding procedure required virtually no recovery. That proved true. He walked out of the clinic in full control of his body and faculties.

  If anything, he felt better than he could remember feeling in some while. It wasn’t that his life was bad or even passingly unpleasant. His childhood and upbringing and education had been up to the standards one could expect on Earth. Life was good here. It was why so many people stayed. And what made the Outers so exceptional.