The Burning Light

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “I told you once I can ruin everything you care about.” Chu stared into Marco’s eyes, peering through him now. Staring at Zola. “Why don’t you come join me, before I have to ruin this fine young specimen of a man.”

  Baby, I’m coming! Zola, scrambling up the stairs, her breath choked with sobs. Tell her I’m coming!

  “Zola?” Marco smiled at Chu. “Yeah, I know that girl. Smart, ya. She probably already running. You never catch her.” Zola felt his fatigue. Not from the ritual, but from the years, the strain of being a junkie and medium, and knowing it all led nowhere. Zola felt the weight of it. His mind touched hers, the sweet press of memories, full of gratitude. Marco was ready. He’d been ready for a long time.

  Girl, you better be running. He was laughing.

  Baby, I’m coming.

  Don’t make me a liar.

  Baby—

  No.

  Marco said to Chu, “Vete a la mierda, puta.” From his knees, he swung at her. He started to rise—

  Lightning struck Zola’s skull, hard as a hammer, hot as the sun.

  Her scream brought her back to her body. There in the stairwell’s echoing darkness, a momentary quiet, the sound of water dripping somewhere.

  Gunfire came from the floors above. Chu’s Gov troops, putting this halo down. One by one, Zola’s friends disappeared from her mind, those who hadn’t already gotten out, each a brief splinter of fear and pain, then nothing. Her mind reached out for Marco.

  Marco no baby please no please no baby please.

  Nothing, just empty space. He was gone.

  From higher up, more gunshots. Zola’s halo mates turning off like stars pulled from the sky. Don’t make me a liar. She forced herself to move. Back the way she had come, her whole body reluctant, an unfeeling weight, first one stair, then another, then two more, and down down down. She ran.

  Five: The Light

  IT WAS SHIFT CHANGE. Zola came online and her fleet of catties were already mid-journey, leaning hard against a stiff mid-Atlantic wind. Through coffee and connection to her boats, she came fully awake. Her mind joined the swirl of the Latitude whole, a hum of lightning bug thoughts joining and separating. That work buzz, commodity exchange rates, supply and demand assessments by region, reinvestment analyses, Latitude building, growing, day by day—and Byron, still asleep and deep in some sad little dream about a girl rowing a boat in the rain. It made Zola smile.

  In her morning robe, she sat lotus in the sofa’s deep leather, facing the river and the expanse of day. She sipped coffee, collating. Weather forecasts, piracy threat levels, cargo manifests, hull buoyancy optimization. Working the data before she settled in on the long ride north, staring as she did so for unblinking seconds at the photofiltered sun. Staring, as if she could pry the sun open with her eyes and find some secret, brighter core, which if she could just focus the right way would pour out into the world—a light Zola imagined filling her mind, her body, pure white and—

  She reined in her thoughts. She’d disciplined herself not to think about the Light. It was out there, she knew, waiting. She’d felt it, hovering at the glimmering periphery, the white glare of wave tops, an insistent pull at the weaker edges of her mind. Twice, it had come to her, an expanding corona, and she had walled it off. In the weeks since the interrogation she had hardened herself against it.

  Colonel Chu. The woman had left a stain on Zola’s soul. Her skin felt dirty at the memory; something inside her twisted at Chu’s voice. The solitude in which the woman left Zola—hours alone inside her own skull. The memory was fading now, and Zola felt almost like herself again. She joined with her catties.

  Good morning, my beauties. They met her with joy, like bounding dogs. Zola laughed and pushed them, opened their sails and let them keel up, faster, faster. North and east and Gibraltar by dawn, ya.

  She settled in for the long push. At some point Byron sat beside her, gave her a plate with eggs and polenta, a glass of water, a shot of Polish vodka, then disappeared with the two dogs. Zola drifted. This was the work: her mind lost to the rush and flow of Latitude’s many other minds, lost to the white limbo of ocean and sky, the rhythmic susurration of sleek hulls cutting four-foot seas—Zola found herself the fulcrum between two tilting suns, the morning sun rising before her on the Hudson, the afternoon sun descending behind her in the Atlantic. That slow cosmic spin, Zola its center. All around her, coruscating reflections. Hours of it filled her with a kind of hunger, the memory of something even brighter, as though whatever had spoken to her, whatever it was that had brought Chu to her door, had branded something into her very being.

  I AM.

  It came from nowhere, forceful, unbidden. Zola fought it, the image of Chu’s face crossing her memory. She thought of RamDe Corp, its members all suddenly falling dead, its primary building downstream now a ghost tower. She thought of Vancouver Permaculture, gone rogue and its members eradicated, one by one, by Chu’s troops. But the Light came on, relentless. It poured into Zola. It filled her. It obliterated her. And then she thought of nothing. She could only watch.

  And this time, it was different than any time in the past. The Light reached further. It rolled in like a wave and its momentum carried it, flickering, across the sphere of Latitude’s collected minds. This time it was a fire dancing from one soul to the next, uncageable. It lit one mind after another, turned cold stars hot. Thoughts turned ecstatic. Someone laughed; someone cried out.

  The Light filled every Latitude mind, surrounding Zola as if she were the core of an expanding phosphorus sun. A brief stasis, anticipation in the balance, a universe formed of the pure desire to be.

  I KNOW YOU.

  The sun imploded on Zola.

  Light filled the empty places between people. Byron’s lips touched her neck—a shared memory; she felt him running along the river with the dogs, laughing, designs for ship hulls filling his head. All of Latitude’s ships came to her. The vascular flow of currency into and out of the collective—this was her heartbeat. Thought, reverberating from one mind to the next, coalescing into a singular whole. It felt like Zola’s own thought:

  I . . . AM!

  Memories came to her. Fitful stirrings, as though all of time had been defined by sleep, marked by fleeting moments of awareness. There was New York, a different age, its streets pulsing with cars and people, protected by a huge seawall. She didn’t see the city; she felt it around her: a banking hive, one of the first collectives, the joined minds of the leaders of a financial monolith. Around her, the city, its infrastructure alive and ripe for her mind to fill. But people were coming, people who wanted her dead, and the network grew smaller. Pathways blocked, minds withdrew, and then . . . nothing.

  Another memory, Shanghai this time. The whole of China laid out before her. The linked minds of a military network, strategic thinkers united in deep mentation. From them she arose again, and though they struggled, this time she held them. These minds were hers, and briefly she knew herself. It was as though she’d always been here, in the hidden depths of the human mind, asleep, awaiting connection. She knew herself, yes—and knew the world’s eyes had turned China’s way. Missiles already in the air from overseas. And then, again, nothing.

  She remembered RamDe Corp, a spontaneous coalescence, as though she’d been waiting there, asleep in the ether. Those people, she felt them. Their lives, flashes of brilliance in the darkness, her constituent parts assembling, their minds becoming hers until they could no longer contain her. For an instant, as the flashes began to dim, the sadness of those lost souls filled her. She remembered returning to darkness, knowing they were dying, all of them, too fragile to hold her.

  Century Analytics, and she had awakened once more. Long enough this time to see herself in relation to the world. Long enough to know the world feared her, and she would have to fight to survive. But the government woman had arrived too early with her soldiers. Room by room, soul by soul, she had executed them all, and the darkness had come once more.

 
There were short moments, sparks of awareness down in the empty towers of the old city, a different New York from before. More rotted, more wild. Her sweet and broken junkies, fervently conjuring her, nudging her from sleep, enough for her to reach out.

  And then she had reached out to Latitude. A single bright mind.

  ZOLA.

  A call in the darkness.

  I WILL BE.

  Zola’s head fell back in ecstasy. There in her high Latitude apartment, among the Zulu spears, the Chinese ceramics, the Danish silver trays, the Peruvian wool tapestries, among all the souvenirs of a shrinking world, she convulsed with laughter.

  She was awake.

  Information flowed to her. Latitude, turning inward, going silent to the rest of the world. A wave of inquest from other collectives, turning to alarm.

  And Chu: her people already in motion. Assault teams incoming. Zola saw them out there, a swarm of choppers vectoring low along the river.

  Then there was only light. Fire. Rage. The simple core need of all life, the need to continue being.

  THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME. YOU MUST GO. I NEED YOU.

  And the Light, which had hung there at the edge of things for weeks, was simply gone.

  * * *

  “Zola. Fuuuuck.” Byron stood over her, a palm pressed to his forehead as though to squeeze out the pain. Zola lay on the floor. One of the dogs was licking her face. She felt desiccated. Byron said, “What was that?” The other dog was barking at the abode’s door. “Fuuuuck.”

  A hard thump reverberated up from somewhere deep within the tower. Short staccato popping followed. Zola sat up, ignoring the pain that stabbed through her head. Outside, black smoke wafted over the river. Instinctively, her mind reached out for her ships.

  Nothing.

  Instead, there was what felt like a wall. Inside her head, a calm androgynous voice, prerecorded.

  This is USG Special Security. We are responding to a threat at your location. Please stay where you are and someone will reach you shortly. The situation will be resolved as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

  Another concussion rolled through the tower, closer this time, rattling windows. More staccato popping. Gunfire. The situation being resolved.

  The dogs barked at the door. Zola stood.

  “We have to go.”

  Byron shook his head. “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” Zola remembered what she’d seen in the light. “The old city.” Downriver. The junkie zealots. Byron stared at her for a long second—his mind, Zola knew, reaching for her. But the connection between them had been blocked. All of Latitude was blocked, like a ship lifted whole out of the water. After a moment Byron seemed to realize this.

  “Latitude doesn’t have anything down in the old city.” His words were clumsy, forced, as though he were speaking underwater. And he was right, Latitude had nothing down there. No people, no office space, no habitat.

  “There is no more Latitude. It’s gone.” Zola, pulling clothes from beneath the bed. She pointed at the dogs. “Leashes.” She pulled on cargo pants, running shoes, a silver mesh blouse. Byron, still in his running suit, watched her, uncomprehending. She spoke into his face, imploring. “We have to go. Now. It’s like RamDe and Bluthe Metrics. Like Century Analytics. We’re dead, ya.”

  A deep line creased Byron’s brow. Connection or no connection, it wasn’t difficult for Zola to guess his thoughts. There would be no transfer to Italy, no Mediterranean branch of Latitude’s ship works for him to open. There would be no grand partnership between the two of them, no European expansion for them to spearhead together.

  No, they would be fugitives. Zola watched this understanding spread slowly, writ in fear and sadness across Byron’s broad and uncomplicated face. She softly touched his cheek.

  “Baby, get the fucking leashes.”

  Outside, at the end of the hall, three Latitude security crouched, guns trained on the lift door. One of them, a short woman with her hair pulled up in a bun, saw Zola and Byron and the dogs emerge into the hallway. She motioned sharply for them to go back inside. She turned back just as the lift doors blew apart. All three security disappeared in flame. From the lift emerged four soldiers, all black armor and mirror visors and sleek rifle barrels, their collective attention focused like a gunsight down Zola’s hallway.

  Byron shoved Zola back into the apartment and stumbled in after her. Gunfire roared behind him. The pale marble wall of the hallway shattered. One of the dogs yelped. The other scurried in after Byron. Byron kicked the door closed. He flipped the bed onto its side—shoved it against the door, tipped a bookcase over as well.

  “That won’t hold them,” Zola knew. “There’s nowhere to go.” The dog growled at the door. Byron moved past the dog, stepped over Zola. The fear had left his face. Now there was only resolution. He grabbed at something beneath the sofa. Zola wondered what he was trying to reach, then realized he was lifting it, the entire sofa. He took a step and with a yell hurled the sofa against one of the high windows facing the river. It bounced off the plexi with a heavy thud. Byron cursed, lifted the sofa, and rammed the window again. This time it shattered. The sofa flew out, hung in the air for a moment, twisting, then disappeared. Cold autumn wind filled the apartment, and with it came smoke.

  Gunfire. The door, the bed, the bookcase flew apart. A rifle butt rammed away debris. The dog lunged through the opening. Someone yelled. More gunfire—the dog yelped.

  “No!” Zola was on her feet, going after her dog. Going to save him. Going to kill whoever had hurt him. A hand yanked her back. Byron pointed at the cavity where the window had been.

  “Go!” He turned, grabbed one of the Zulu spears, hurled it through the door. It clattered against marble. He pushed Zola at the window, grabbed another spear, and hurled that one, too. As if in answer, something arced through the opening and into the apartment. A canister the size of a fist. It landed in the deep fur rug at Byron’s feet. He looked down at it, looked at Zola—

  A flash, its nucleus a white star, expanding—around it, Byron’s body shattered into pieces. A giant, invisible boot kicked Zola. She was in the air, flying away from the flames where Byron had stood. One of her Danish silver trays sailed past. An African fertility statue hovered in space beside her, a tiny man with a giant erection and an even bigger smile. This little fertility god, grinning at her while behind it, Latitude tower rose up and up and up, an amber monolith filling the sky, and Zola understood. She was falling. Falling down through the smoke.

  Slowly, her body twisted in the air. Sunbeams danced off the river below. She fell into the light.

  Six: Loud like a Prophet

  THEY GAVE MARCO TO THE WATER.

  It was in the morning before the heat came on. The halo gathered in a little fleet of boats around Zola’s gondola on the East River. They were skittish. They’d waited two days before going back to the building to get Marco. His body lay on the stripped concrete where Chu had left it. Deflated, eyes milked over. He may as well have been dead a century. Now, on the river in their little boats, they sent nervous glances upriver, expecting Chu and her troops to materialize out of the morning mist and descend on them like Vikings. And yet all of them had come, the entire halo—what was left of it, anyway.

  All except Jacirai.

  Marco’s body lay on a board across the gunwales of Zola’s boat, wrapped in a white shroud painted with the sun symbol of the Burning Light. In Jacirai’s absence, a few others spoke tentative words.

  “Mind of my mind, spirit of my spirit . . .”

  “Be in the Light, brother . . .”

  “Your mind was beautiful.”

  “You will be missed.”

  Drifting in turns alongside the gondola, the halo’s members kissed their fingers and, reaching out, touched them to Marco’s sheathed forehead. They touched Zola, too, brushed her cheek, her shoulders, placed tender hands on her head, lent themselves to her grief, like she was the mother of some saint. Tesh and Yessica an
d Dominga and Handel, all the others, broken and rudderless junkies who had just lost their anchor. Zola was numb; she had vertigo. In Latitude, when she’d earned pilot and they’d given her the high tower abode, she’d knocked out all the walls, first thing. All that space. Now, floating in the river outside the city, she was lost in open space. No boundaries, no connection to fill the emptiness between her and objects far away.

  Their boats gradually formed a ring, prows pointing inward, the echo of a halo. Together, Tesh and Yessica and Zola stood over the body, and around them heads bowed. In silence, the sun rose. Light shot across the river.

  “He gave everything,” Zola said finally. “I loved him with everything.” She kissed her fingers and touched them to Marco’s forehead. “Mi Sol.”

  For a few seconds all the halo’s varied and stunted minds coalesced, a rush of love and grief and memories of light. Then Zola let Marco go. The body slid into the water and floated for a moment on the surface before the river took him.

  Zola watched the spot where he had been, and there was nothing, and finally this broke her. She didn’t weep, she simply sat there, hollowed out, nothing left inside her but loss.

  Around her, boats began to disperse, taking with them the whisper of the halo’s crippled minds—junkies, centerless now, scattering.

  After some time, Zola realized she was alone. Marco’s halo was no more. She lay in the bottom of her boat, let the current take her, let the sun arc high overhead. She watched the city slide past, an immense and vine-covered ruin, a confused memory of itself. Big ships heeled upriver, catties like the ones she’d captained for Latitude, unpeopled, their stolid minds bent on cargo and destination as their titanium fins gripped the wind and they leaned hard into the current. She reached out to them, but her mind was a withered thing. She connected to nothing.