Obsidian Worlds

by Jason Werbeloff

  “Yes.” I turn away from him, and rub the cool edges of the flash disk in my palm.

  “What did you bring for him?”

  “Just some logic puzzles,” I lie. I stroke the blue metal. Thumb the teeth of its port.

  “I think we turn left,” says Dimitri. Two hover-arrows are suspended in front of the car. The left arrow glows a combination of blue, red, yellow and green.

  “Of course,” I say in the least irritable tone I can muster.

  “Isn’t it glorious, Sandra?” Dimitri says, as the hover-car glides toward the Dome.

  “Glorious,” I mumble.

  “I think this is it,” says Dimitri, stating the obvious. The luminescent sign is high enough to touch the growing storm clouds above us:

  ZOOGLE©

  I grunt, and open the passenger door. The sooner this is over, the better. I feel guilty. Almost.

  “Isn’t this exciting!” An orgasmic glow has enveloped Dimitri. Sure, he’s into the religion and all that, but really what he wants most is to see the search engines. It’s what he studied at college. It’s what he reads about. It’s all he talks about. And when he found out that the girl he was dating had a grandfather whose brain is a search engine, the marriage proposal followed shortly.

  He grips my hand, and pulls me up the stairs to the exhibition hall. The stairs are marble. Polished to a sheen that couldn’t be matched by even the cleanest undead’s eyeball. The marble burns crimson in the sunset.

  “I can’t believe it,” says Dimitri. A tear travels down his cheek. “We’re really here.”

  “Welcome,” says a monk in a white robe, “to Zoogle.”

  “Look, Sandra. Just look!”

  There’s no denying how impressive the Zoogle Dome is. Three miles high and twenty miles in diameter, according to the pamphlet, it houses all the brains that power the ubiquitous search engine. They line the great walls of the Dome, suspended in fish-tank-sized vats of nutrients. Brain after brain, innumerable.

  “It’s an honor to have you visit,” says the monk, extending a pale, hairless hand.

  “Glad to be here.” I shake the rubbery appendage.

  “Your grandfather was one of our first donors.” The monk crosses his chest. “He’s from the days when becoming a search engine was voluntary. A great man, he is. We’re bringing him down to you now.” The monk points to a barely discernible, flashing blip on the horizon. The lighting in the Dome is dim, and I strain against the haze to spot the approaching tank.

  Grandpa’s brain moves at a marvelous velocity. Hovering about ten yards above the mosaicked floor, it takes only a half a minute for the tank to travel from the far wall, almost twenty miles away.

  I try not to flinch at the sight of the approaching projectile. It brakes, and comes to a stand-still above our heads. The vat slowly descends, until Grandpa’s brain hovers at eye-level.

  “Could we have some privacy? Maybe use one of your chambers?” I ask.

  “Uh, ma’am, that isn’t standard procedure.”

  I wink at him, and push out my cleavage a little. Let my hair fall to one side. “We won’t be long.”

  The monk sighs. “I guess I could arrange something.”

  Dimitri doesn’t notice the exchange. His eyes are glued to the tank, his fingers tracing the folds of brain against the glass. Lit up by the tank, his face appears almost angelic. I swallow the last of my guilt.

  “This way,” says the monk. I follow him, dragging Dimitri by the wrist. The tank hovers after us.

  With his body-length robe, the monk glides across the floor as he moves to a section of the Dome wall thirty yards away. The wall looks like every other part of the Dome – concave, and covered in tanks. And in each tank, a brain.

  His fingers tap on the glass of one of the tanks. It looks just like every other, but in a moment, the tank is gone. A panel behind it slides aside to reveal a hidden chamber. The monk gestures for us to enter, and stalks away, but not before warning me that he’ll “be back in ten minutes … alright, fifteen.”

  The room is brightly lit, and my eyes struggle to accommodate the extra photons. The walls, about four yards square, are bone-white.

  Dimitri flinches when Grandpa speaks. “Hello, Sandra,” he says. The last time I heard that voice, it was spoken through Keanu Reeves’ lips.

  *

  About a year ago, I was sitting in my living room, sipping a Bloody Mary and watching my favorite oldie on a new holo-screen. It was the part of the film I love best – when Keanu Reeves slows the bullets before they have a chance to rip him up. The way he stares at them, just so, and they fall to the ground. They were about to fall, those dozen slugs of lead, when the image froze.

  Yeah, you heard right. It froze.

  “Jesus, why did you pause play?”

  “I did not,” said Jesus, in the tranquil drawl I’d begun to detest. Need to change the AI to some other personality, I thought. When I have the time.

  “Then why isn’t the damned movie playing, Jesus?”

  “I’m not … I’m not … I’m not …”

  “Jesus? Have you got a virus again?”

  “I’m not … I’m not … I’m not …”

  “Oh Jesus,” I said. “I don’t have time for this. Is this one of your practical jokes? Because if it is –“

  “Sandra?”

  I hadn’t heard that voice before. Not emanating from Jesus’ speakers. Although … the baritone timbre sounded familiar.

  “Sandra,” the voice repeated, “can you hear me?”

  “Uh … yes. Who is this, and how did you find your way into Jesus?”

  Keanu Reeves stared at me, as if frozen in amber, the bullets suspended in the air inches away from his flared nostrils. And, I shit you not, as the voice spoke, Keanu’s mouth moved.

  “I know this will be hard to believe Sandra,” Keanu said. “It’s me – Grandpa. I need your help.”

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yes, munchkin.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “I’ve missed you, Grandpa. I’m sorry I didn’t visit.”

  He doesn’t respond to that.

  “Is it lonely,” I ask, “being a search engine?”

  “I didn’t mind at first,” said Grandpa, speaking through Keanu’s mouth. “None of us did. We thought we were doing something noble – donating our brains to Zoogle. With the price of precious metals so high, they couldn’t afford to build more servers. But why make computers when brains could do the job just as well, often better? And my body was dying anyway, so I thought, why not?”

  I’d visited Grandpa at Vatican City only once with Ma, when I was about ten years old. But we’d never gone back again. It upset Ma too much to see Grandpa’s brain floating in a tank like that. So the last time I heard Grandpa’s voice, before he spoke to me on the holo-screen in my living-room, was about twenty years ago.

  Listening to him talk through Keanu’s mouth … yeah, you could say it made me all teary.

  “What’s it really like, Grandpa?”

  “Being a search engine? It’s not too bad. It’s like wearing really, really wide glasses, with binoculars attached. But Sandra, I’m here to ask for your help. Since the Vatican possessed Zoogle after Judgment Day, they … well, it’s hard to explain, but they’ve been … preventing us from doing our jobs. They’re changing our search results. Putting Jesus into everything. Neo-Catholicism. That sort of thing. The other brains and I think it has to stop. We want to remove Jesus. Secularize the net.”

  A cold shiver passes over me as I gape at Keanu’s pallid face.

  “But Jesus, Gramps … Jesus is in everything.”

  “I know, girl. Scientific progress has grinded to a halt. The world has gone nuts ever since Judgment Day. Since the undead rose from their graves, and the Vatican took over.”

  “Why can’t you do it without me?” I asked. “Remove Jesus from the results?”

  “We can’t. They insert biological programming into our brains.”r />
  I lean back in my hover-chair, and think.

  “I don’t know what to say, Grandpa. You said I could help?”

  “There’s a man. Dimitri Sonkayev. He’s a search engine specialist. Knows everything there is to know about us. And knows the codes to override our programming. Find him. And bring me his brain.”

  *

  Now, standing in the white room at the Zoogle Dome, I swing my gaze from Dimitri’s awed expression to the tank.

  “Are you ready?” asks Grandpa.

  I use the edge of my fingernail to separate the flash disk from its casing, and pop open the device.

  Dimitri stares at the brain, confused. “Ready for what, sir?”

  “Do it now, Sandra,” says Grandpa.

  A tear rolls down my nose, and along my upper lip. But as I practiced a dozen times in the mirror before I arrived, I point the laser at my husband, and press the trigger mechanism.

  “What’s going on, Sa–“

  The laser pulses from the fake flash disk and strikes Dimitri squarely in the chest. The shock of the impact throws him back a step, and he knocks against the tank, but with barely enough force to disturb its neuro-conductive liquid. His mouth opens to let out a scream, but the high-energy laser is doing its work, carving a hole in his chest the size of a soccer ball. Dimitri manages a startled gurgle, and then he’s on the floor, the whites of his eyes hemorrhaging.

  My shoulders relax when his body stops twitching.

  “Quickly,” says Grandpa. “Get the brain into the tank before hypoxia sets in.”

  I kneel over the body, and aim the laser at the temple of Dimitri’s skull.

  “Not too long in each spot, Sandra,” Grandpa warns. “Move the beam across swiftly. Just enough to pierce the bone. Don’t want to damage him.”

  Blood oozes from the laceration, but the heat from the laser cauterizes the wound as it sweeps across my late husband’s forehead.

  “That’s it, girl. Turn him over, and cut the other half of his head open.”

  The smell of burning hair fills the fluorescent-lit room. I know I should feel something. Horror. Shame. Guilt. But all I can think about is Dimitri’s brain dying before I can get him into the tank. That, and when the monk might return to check on us. I glance toward the open doorway. The monk isn’t there.

  “Okay, good. Now, lift off the top of the skull. That’s right. Pull on it. Yeah, really dig your hands in there. Scoop out the whole thing. Yup. You’re almost there. Snip the brain stem. And … yes … there you are. Lift the lid of the tank. You’re doing well, Sandra. Place him next to me. That’s it. Gently now. Excellent!”

  Two brains float in Grandpa’s vat. One a little pinker, a little fresher, than the other. The neuro-conductive liquid darkens with the introduction of blood from Dimitri’s brain, but the filters scrub the liquid clear soon enough.

  Adrenaline trembles my bloody hands.

  “Perfect,” says Grandpa. “I’m reading his memories now. Nice guy. Pity we had to do this. But I think I’ve found the codes to override my programming. Ah yes … got them.”

  *

  One thousand and sixty-two miles away, Mary Swanson, card-carrying member of Jesus Corp., opens her internet browser. She ignores the persistent rapping at her office window. The neighborhood undead, adopted just last month by the body corporate, is hungry. And it’s her turn to feed it. She has some left-over turkey from last night’s dinner, but that will have to wait.

  Her heart beats a little easier when her default site launches on the holo-screen: Zoogle.com. Below the multicolored page title, Zoogle’s slogan shouts in brazen lettering:

  BECAUSE JESUS DIED FOR YOU

  “Ezekiel 25:17”, she types into the search bar. Pastor Ray held forth on the verse in his sermon this morning, and Mary Swanson wants to suck up every morsel of goodness she can from the mouth of God. But when, after an uncharacteristic delay, the search results pop up, Mary gasps.

  “Oh Jesus,” she says.

  Not one. Not even one Neo-Catholic search result greets Mary Swanson.

  “Oh dear, Jesus.”

  The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost

  photon ˈfō-ˌtän n.: a ‘particle’ of light.

  black hole n.: … an empty region of distorted space-time that acts as a centre of gravitational attraction … no light or other radiation can escape from black holes.

  – Oxford World Encylopedia

  I should’ve ignored the popup box in luminescent purple and lime. If I had, Chicago would still exist, and I’d be alive to tell this story.

  cHeCk yOuR sPaM fOlDeR!!!

  Curious Chris. That’s what my mom called me. She’d say my name in that proud-not-so-proud way that belonged distinctively to my mother. “He’s between jobs,” she’d say to her friends, “but he’s got something huge lined up. Google would be crazy not to take him.”

  I really, really should have ignored that popup box. Of course, I didn’t. I clicked on my email client, and a moment later I was browsing through my spam. For kicks, I thought.

  “This just in,” said a news-speaker’s tinny voice somewhere in the background of my atom-sized apartment. The apartment whose rent I couldn’t afford, and whose neighbors thud-thud-thudded every night, without fail, against the paper-thin wall. I once asked them to stop. Nicely. Slipped a pleasant note under their door. “I know this is awkward,” I’d written, “but would it be possible for you to move the bed away from the wall? Much appreciated! Your neighbor, Chris.”

  I don’t know exactly what happened that night in my neighbors’ apartment. Maybe they invited over another couple. Or maybe Mr. Cantor decided to try those new pills they’d been advertising on the radio. Whatever it was, I got no sleep at all.

  “Chicago has disappeared.”

  I craned my neck to peer at the television. A confused anchorman in a plaid jacket I would look great in, if I lost forty pounds, held a finger to his ear.

  “Uh, Patty, what exactly do you mean … disappeared?”

  “Well, Bob, where Chicago was is now … grassland. There’s nothing there, Bob. Nothing but cows and an occasional tree. Scientists aren’t sure …”

  I chuckle. The crap they come up with these days to fill the comedy slots. Something odd though – the first email in my spam folder, the most recent, says:

  CHICAGO IS NOTHING BUT GRAZE.

  What the hell did that mean? Damn bots sending me messages. I’d read about this on a blog somewhere. Spam messages were now being composed by programs, rather than by people, to trick the spam filters. And the results were often nonsense.

  “Yes, Bob. That’s right. I can confirm that Chicago is now a grassland,” said the voice on the television.

  Grazing land, I thought. Odd coincidence. But most coincidences are odd. The spam message I received must be an advert for the comedy flick they were playing on the TV – but I thought this was the news channel? I flipped the TV to ESPN, and returned my attention to the spam folder.

  I hadn’t checked my spam in a while. Not since I was dating Melissa downstairs. That had lasted three months. Until she’d gotten all prissy about my weight. “Want to join me at the gym, Chris?” she’d asked. “I’m going on Tuesday, Christopher.” I wouldn’t have put up with it, you know. But her thighs … well, let’s just say I was sorry to lose her when she left me for that jock in apartment 307.

  She dumped me over email. Yup. And what’s worse is that her Dear John went to my spam box. Only saw it a week later when she finally responded to my texts and told me to check my mail.

  Since then I kinda avoided the spam folder. So I hadn’t seen the junk piling up in there.

  PENIS ENLARGEMENT,

  declared the next message.

  GUARANTEED. PILL DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR …

  Melissa hadn’t exactly complained about my size. But I know she wasn’t … satisfied. I caught her stifling a yawn once while we were doing it. “Oh,” she’d said when I questioned her, “it was just so relaxi
ng.”

  Bzzzz.

  Hated that damned bell. Had to put on pants and a smile before I answered the door.

  “Yeah. Who is it?” I grunted.

  “Delivery for … uh … Chris Popadopalis.”

  “Alright.” I sighed. “Bring it up. Fourth floor. Take the elevator on your right. The left is broken.”

  I wasn’t expecting a delivery. But, you know, anything to break the monotony of (not) looking for a job.

  “Sign here,” said the deliveryman. His mouth never stopped working, even after he’d stopped speaking. Mouthing the words, “sign here”, over and over. I scratch my name on his pad with a leaking pen, and he stalked off down the corridor.

  A box. Five inches square. And inside, a pill. Just like that – rolling around. And scrunched up beside the red pill was a printed note. Tiny writing. The type that lawyer-assholes place on the bottom of gym contracts. Except for two bold, human-sized words printed on the top of the crumpled page: “PENIS ENLARGMENT”.

  I blushed. Melissa. Had to be. A practical joke? To remind me of the not-so-perfect nights we shared. Could be the jock from 307 sending it on her behalf. They probably lie in bed at night laughing about pathetic ex-lovers. Melissa and her perfect thighs, with that blonde muscle freak. They deserve each other, I thought, as I dropped the box in the bin.

  I kicked off my jeans – itchy as dermatitis in December – and slumped into the chair at my desk. I loved that chair. The cushioning had worn away so that if I slouched just right, it held my back and buttocks in an embrace more loving than any woman’s. More loving than Melissa’s anyway.

  I was about to close my junk folder, when a new spam message caught my eye.

  Inheritance,

  read the subject header. “Dear Chris, I am sorry to inform you that your …” I clicked on the message to expand it. “… sixth cousin passed away yesterday. Ms. Emily Connelworth. She mentioned you in her will. Although you did not know her, she knew you, and felt you should have –”

  My cellphone vibrated. Dropped it yesterday. Indestructible cover, apparently. “/NCOMNG CAL”, the shattered screen flashed at me.