Chaacetime: The Origins: A Hard SF Metaphysical and visionary fiction (The Space Cycle - A Metaphysical & Hard Science Fiction Saga)

by A. I. Zlato

  He gently opened the manuscript, and a smell of dust and parchment embalmed the atmosphere. Sitting in front of the reading table, focused, the world vanished from his senses, deleted by this paper, yellowed over time. After years of studying ancient documents, he felt the same joy every time, which did not prevent him from applying a disciplined approach to his work, borne out of his experience. He would first inspect the front page, to find out the title, author and date. Then, he would go through the pages, to establish a preliminary approach. He would note all his observations in a file, starting with the physical characteristics of the document. Finally, he would study it in detail, page after page, which would take several weeks of intense work. He would finish by scanning all the pages, so that future studies could occur without people touching the fragile manuscript.

  Out of his briefcase, he took his notepad, whose torn pages and cover indicated the intensive use he was making of the pad. He carefully sharpened his pencil, as he alone was still doing it, in the era of the Machine and advanced technology. Thus equipped, he focused on the document.

  The first page indicated the name of its author, an individual named Thomas Anderson. Below was mentioned The Equilibrium is Everyone’s Dream, which was probably the book’s title. The latter was entirely handwritten, using black ink. Right below, were, marked in pencil, and barely visible, the three concentric circles. This symbol lay just below the other three engraved in the leather cover, as to emphasize its importance. Although the symbol on the cover was thoroughly designed, perfectly circular and well centred, the drawing on the first page was handmade. Imperfections in the symbol contrasted with the beautiful calligraphic writing found throughout the book. A cryptic sentence, written at the bottom of each picture, completed the broader picture.

  Follow a path exactly to the end, leads precisely nowhere. Paul felt that this sentence conveyed deep wisdom, a message whose full meaning eluded him, for now. The words were echoing the title, The Equilibrium Is Everyone’s Dream. The positioning of both sentences … something eluded him. Paul started taking notes, and circled this sentence several times, in order to find it easily later.

  He had identified the author and the title, and he needed now to date the manuscript. Finding no date on the first page, he carefully turned the pages. The first time stamp he found indicated 31-10-2149. He had already seen dates indicated this way. This enabled researchers to locate documents from one to the other, but gave no indication on their age, because he had never found a document with a date written in accordance to both the standard used by the Elders and the standard currently used.

  Moreover, he did not know when they had started counting, if Year Zero had existed or whether it was only a mythical time starting point. When had they begun their world? What significance did that beginning have? ... Differ the beginning, Edgard said…

  Paul remembered the months of work he had devoted to deciphering these dates. It had taken him some time to understand that only the last number was important, and that the first two were based on a cycle, the meaning of which was unknown. The first number ranged from 1 to 31, and the second, from 1 to 12, with no apparent relationship between the two. Today, the Machine counted time, by cycle and by year within each cycle. The Elders must have drawn their inspiration from their own dating system in order to formulate the current one, but he had been unable to establish a correlation. The manuscript displayed in front of him had been writing in the time border 2149, which placed it in the most recent documents, and thus closer to the creation of the Spaces, including the E.S. This would be an exciting study.

  He logged into his workspace, and created a new folder in the History department’s database. By doing so, he would be making the product of his work accessible to many, thus expanding the whole lab’s knowledge base. He would save in there the translated document. Although residents in the City used a language similar to the Elders’, time had rendered many phrases incomprehensible. Some of them were even untranslatable, making the translation exercise long and tedious, but altogether necessary. The translation job completed, Paul would index keywords to facilitate future research.

  He then inputted the manuscript’s reference, its date and discovery site, along with the picture taken on the site. That picture featured the document, prominently, like a precious object, in a box, opened for a special occasion. The case was made with rosewood, one metre long, fifty centimetres wide and thirty centimetres high. The golden frame of this hardware heightened the characteristic red colour of the wood. Once the lid was open, the manuscript seemed lost inside. The case was much bigger than the manuscript, and Paul wondered what else could have been in the case … objects, other documents, which had disappeared forever. The wealth of the decoration, the quality of the wood, indicated that the manuscript was of importance, and that its author had wanted to preserve it … perhaps to convey a key message. Paul could not wait to study it, to unearth all its secrets.

  He described its characteristics: twenty centimetres tall, fifteen wide, binding partially conserved, burgundy leather cover, two hundred and fifty pages, of which two hundred and forty-four featured handwritten content, in black ink, with some sentences pencil-marked, added to the original text. He logged all this information in his folder, before going back to study the manuscript. Before starting the translation, he wanted to browse through pages, to soak up the document’s ambiance.

  He founded great interest immediately in Thomas, an Elder who used to write, on a daily basis, his feelings in a diary. The manuscript was actually his notebook, which explained the handwriting. Thomas described in there … the Earliest Space, before it became a Space, this dying world, which he wanted to leave. He talked about unknown things, which Paul could not associate with anything contemporary … subway … town …

  Edgard was right … this diary had a wealth of information, which Paul could barely understand. He straightened up, and saw the food plate that Vlad had put beside him. As usual, when he was immersed in work, he did not notice the comings and goings of his assistant.

  Despite his chronic mood swings, he nonetheless would display acts of courtesy like bringing food. Paul could even say that he did not die of hunger thanks to Vlad at work, and Edgard at home. He gleefully devoured the sandwich, taking care not to drop crumbs on the manuscript. He took advantage of his break to stretch his legs, and walk in the corridor. The corridors were full of people going home, as it was the time when normal people would end their workday. It was unthinkable for Paul to leave already; he could not even wait until tomorrow to continue studying the manuscript. Anyway, what would he do during those long hours of idleness at home?

  Back at the reading table, he returned to the first page. Any road followed precisely to its end, leads precisely nowhere. That was the first sentence. Both cryptic and clear, it echoed in his mind … thanks to Edgard. Paul recognised the mental imprint of the Kandron. Pursue a goal … without worrying about the rest … only focus on the objective … led to a dead-end … Did he have to avoid the impasse? What would be the consequences?...Was it a different way of expressing the first rule of Space H., Don’t do tomorrow what you did yesterday? Why would there be a connection? Edgard … the message … the correlations …

  His thoughts poured out haphazardly. Last night’s dream came back in force. The City in distress … the children’s message … their warning … death … And Edgard’s voice … the beginning … differ the beginning … not following the road until the end … taking another path … The Equilibrium is everyone’s dream … The majority…

  We need an entity that is beyond us, to protect us from our past mistakes.

  Where do our mistakes come from?

  From our human condition.

  So let’s create a nonhuman intelligence.

  Thus came the Machine into existence.

  The Legend of the Elders, the History of the Machine

  Chapter 18

  : Space H. (1st Encirclement)

  Iris o
nly lived with the expectation of future trips to the Unique Forest. She would go to class every day, counting the minutes that distanced her from the end of the day. In the evening, she went home, and argued with her parents. She listened to her dad, talking about components he had repaired or replaced in the Machine, while criticising their quality partially. All these electronic circuits that, one day, she should be producing. Hearing him speak, she felt like he was telling her indirectly what a stupid kid he thought she was. That did not matter, anyway. No longer, really... She had dreamed of the moment when, her studies over, she would leave her parents’ apartment, in order to leave them alone and no longer hear them.

  Now, she did not expect that moment with as much impatience, because the only thing that mattered was her forays outside the City. She continued to argue with them, out of habit, and because they did not stop pushing her to her emotional limits. They wanted her to absolutely comply with the Machine, that she became like them. Her mother was like her father, perhaps even worse. She was totally devoted to her job. When she had an ongoing investigation, nothing else existed for her, not even her daughter.

  She would come home late, refusing to talk about her day, because the Machine forbade it. The Tower, again and again. She had tried desperately to make her opinion heard, but in vain. They lived in a cage and did not want to see its bars. As to Iris, she now foresaw a door, which opened a little more every day, keeping ajar a window onto a universe different from theirs.

  She continued, at least in appearance, to comply with the rules of the City, her parents’ injunctions, and, through them, the instructions of this amalgamation of electronics. In fact, she lived only with the expectation of embarking one day on her other life, that secret existence.

  Every day, she grew stronger and weaned herself off the Machine. Yesterday, she had managed to get closer to the Unique Forest; she had touched the trunk of a tree … before being struck down, with pain. Each time, made a few more steps, a few strides towards true freedom, a place where her chip would only be an aggregate of dead circuits. In the classroom, as her professor was explaining the operation of a microprocessor, she would dream of this moment, when she felt on her fingers the roughness of the bark.

  She had managed to endure nearly thirty minutes without the Machine, before the pain became too strong. But it was worth it. That tree meant more than a large plant; it was a symbol of victory.

  She coped with another day of school courses, without paying any attention, staring instead and endlessly at the clock. Classes followed one another, all boring. She spent time seeing minutes, even seconds, pass by; time felt like eternity. She had no friend among her classmates.

  Those youngsters were so happy with their lot; that was distressing. In a sense, she felt sorry for them. The boy, who usually sat close to her, Liam, was the epitome of her classmates. Always smiling widely, he always rushed to answer teachers’ questions and lit up when one of them complimented him. Disgusting. He looked at her, with his round eyes, and spoke to her about the curriculum, homework, his insipid life. She pretended to listen, would answer back, hoping he would tire. She was not interested at all in this young man. Liam did not seem to understand the contempt she had, and every day, he would resume his routine. He was even talking to her when the bell rang, heralding that classes were over. She jumped out of her chair without looking at him, and rushed out of the building.

  She no longer waited at the building’s entrance, waiting for all students to leave, and expecting Fighter to come get her. No, now she went straight to the band’s meeting place, the rail station. There, she would see him, always punctual, and they would wait for the rest of the group. He did not feel obliged, like Liam and the other boys in her class, to make conversation. His mere presence was enough. She stood beside him, eager to take off, while scanning the horizon, waiting to see Eric, Aimie and Kahila.

  She had learned, over the days, to know the other members of the posse. Trusting her, they all had told her their personal story.

  Eric was a tall, thin and shy boy, with a lock of brown hair crossing his face. He regularly threw the lock back, exposing briefly his completely black eyes. He lived in an apartment in the Sixth Circle, along with his brothers and sisters. He had met Fighter while attending Biology School, Department of Genetics. Eric was destined to a lab job. While talking to him, Iris then discovered professions of which she was unaware. Biology was the study of living beings and had several branches, including genetics. The goal was to improve species of animals and plants, so that they best met human needs. He explained that every living being had a kind of internal hard drive in each cell, which could be changed to affect a particular characteristic. Being a lab researcher meant doing experiments in order to create modified organisms. Iris understood broadly, but the details eluded her. However, she perfectly grasped the reasons for the deep hatred he harboured against the Machine. Well sheltered in the Upper Circles, she had never imagined life in the Lower Circles. He chronicled his miserable life. People who worked in those Lower Circles earned ridiculous wages that were barely enough to survive.

  Their poor-quality chips did not allow them to access freely the Machine’s data, especially the news media. They had to pay for those services, by contributing a large part off their already meagre salary. Solidarity was a virtue in those Circles, so when one person logged onto the Machine’s database, he or she would relay all relevant information to the rest, so they did not have to pay.

  However, as he had never experienced something else, Eric felt comfortable in his life, feeling no resentment. Until last year. His younger brother was one of the first children to have committed suicide. At that time, it was not a matter of mass suicides yet, and there had been no investigation. His mother had tried to get answers, refusing to believe that her child has ended his own life, like that, for no reason. She then queried the Machine incessantly, depleting her entire salary. The Machine finally answered, explaining to her that the death of her son was statistically acceptable, and that there was no anomaly.

  Eric’s mom could not stand the way the Machine referred to her child as a mere number in a database. Gradually, she became mentally deranged. She would spend hours in her small kitchen, unable to go to work, crying most of the time, in silence. Indifferent to the outside world, she was not interested even in Eric, who, nonetheless, was well alive. He had seen, helpless, his mother sink into depression. Unable to stand by, idly, he then skipped an entire day of class to go to the Tower.

  He was desperate to get help. He had hoped that the Machine would listen to him, and would help him, if he talked to It directly, without the intermediaries required in his Circle. After all, It was responsible for the Equilibrium; It watched over humans. He thought he could take the rail to reach the Machine, unaware that his status of lower-circle resident would be a problem. He needed a permit, which took him several hours to get. Determined, he succeeded in getting the coveted visa, and recorded his destination at the rail station.

  Hopping off the rail, in the First Circle, he was overwhelmed by the crowd. Very impressed, he had somehow found his way to a Tower he could not see initially. He then entered, intimidated, the great hall, which was teeming with busy people. He then wanted to connect to a terminal, but did not have enough money to pay for the communication. He begged the Machine, explained his problem, but It did not want to respond back. He begged It for help. In vain. The terminal remained silent. When he went back home, disappointed and sad, he found his mom, lying on the floor, a syringe in the arm. She had injected a lethal dose of sleeping pills, prescribed by her doctor, into her veins.

  When her physician came to confirm the death, he had not wanted to acknowledge responsibility, repeating that he had followed, to the letter, protocols defined by the Machine. Eric’s brother was dead; It had not wanted to help. Now his mother is deceased. He was as angry as sad. Initially diffused, his anger gradually morphed into something channelled, thanks to his thoughts. He had seen life in t
he First Circle, beautiful buildings, and rich clothes.

  He had become aware of the misery in which the Lower Circles were maintained, the exorbitant prices that were charged for small services, and especially the Machine’s cold attitude. For the latter, these people were nothing but statistics. For It, the deaths of an eleven-year-old boy and his mother were negligible data, which did not deserve Its attention. A broken family, that was not important. Not knowing what else to do, he went back to school. All his friends told him to accept his condition, to grieve, to continue living. He simply could not. He then befriended Fighter, and began to challenge authority. Together, they had set their school on fire, snatched terminals, and caused other similar damage.

  He had felt relieved, for a while, but that was not enough. Eric then suggested they leave the City. They both thought their joint rage would help wean them off the Machine’s control. Their feelings did not diminish in any way the pain, but they game them courage to persist. Now, they went every day into the Unique Forest, enjoying a universe that was outside the Machine’s damned oversight.

  Fighter, meanwhile, has other reasons for hating the artificial-intelligence device. For him, it was not a dull hatred, barely contained rage, as for Eric. His rejection of the status quo was the product of a long reflection, which he credited to a discussion he had with a Servant. Iris had never met one, and even wondered if the concept was not pure myth, a fable that people kept repeating. Servants supposedly lived in Circle Zero — whatever that meant — and had devoted their lives to the four elements. Water, fire, earth and air — purported to represent the world as a whole, according to Fighter.

  He also said that he had met one Servant, who told him about connections, Time, absolute Equilibrium, and Death. After the conversation, he hated the Machine. Iris did not doubt his words, but she felt he was hiding part of his story, that what the Servant had chronicled was not the only source of Fighter’s anger. Otherwise, why would he have helped Eric in setting the school on fire? Only deep rage could have driven him to do that.