The Celestial Instructi0n

by Grady Ward

  “His advisors scoured the land for a suitable woman. They found the exquisite Husna who truly was the most beautiful in the seven lands. Indeed her entire life was occupied with seeking and displaying her beauty, which was breath-taking and glorious.”

  “Husna and her mother agreed that Husna was to become the Sultan’s wife; a conclusion such as this had been coveted by Husna’s family since the day she was born.”

  “In celebration of the betrothal, the Sultan sent Husna a nightingale to sing teru, teru, teru, teru each day to remind her of her betrothed and the beauty around her. But Husna, while she enjoyed the thought of being wife of a Sultan, did not care for spending time away from her life of acquiring charm and attraction. She did not like the teru, teru, teru, teru reminding her of the reality of caring for the bird or eventually the Sultan himself and affairs of state.”

  “In truth, it was the idea of being a Sultan’s wife which attracted Husna and her family, but not the Sultan himself who she deemed too old and war-scarred to be a suitable lover. She began to resent the bird’s piercing song and had its cage moved to first to one room then to another until she could no longer hear it.”

  “A month passed, the wedding grew near, and it was announced that the Sultan was to traveling to unite with his bride. Husna prepared herself with all the best cosmetics and fragrances, the softest silks and the most cunning woven cottons. She employed the latest means of softening her skin and keeping her aesthetic body supple and pleasing in every sense. Finally, she remembered the nightingale.

  “Brought before her, the uncared for bird was dead. Husna was beside herself. She brought ewers of warm scented water for the bird to soak in, hoping that she could revitalize the Sultan’s gift if she just could replace the nourishment which she had neglected. She brought plates of insects and small creatures cooked in olive oil by her own kitchen master that she hoped the bird would begin to feast upon and recover its health and song. But of course nothing broke the silence.”

  “When the Sultan arrived with his retinue he warmly greeted Husna and her family. To Husna’s and her mother and aunt’s pleasure he greedily took in her looks and wondrous beauty. With a reputation for inquiring about the well-being of even the humblest of his subjects, he then asked about Husna’s nightingale, which he loved for its bittersweet song, reminding him that there was more than violence and brutality in the world.”

  “Dead. Poisoned,” Husana lied, “here is its poor body” She presented the bird still greasy and wet and ruffled from Husna’s frantic attempts to revive it.

  The Sultan saw the emaciated remains, the pooling rainbows on the water, and the tufts of unpreened feathers, torn and neglected. He took the bird into his own hand to warm its remains. He closed his fingers and thought for a moment. No one spoke until he broke the silence.

  “Husna, my betrothed. When you become my wife, you shall be kept with your fragrances and oils for a month—sealed into your apartment alone, without food or water or companionship outside your own reflection. Perhaps you will learn to sing teru, teru, teru, teru to replace this poor one.”

  “Or you may leave to seek out the beauty in others to replace what you have taken away from the world.”

  Husna had the sense of not further denying her neglect. She admitted all. The Sultan knelt on one knee to kiss her thigh, but did not relent. She considered and, while she treasured the idea of being the Sultan’s wife, she preferred to live, even if unmarried and humiliated. And so Husna and the Sultan parted.

  The Sultan returned to his palace with the corpse of the bird to bury in his garden and Husna was shunned from her home.

  Here the story stops because even long accounts can never tell the entire tale: it was said that the Sultan died alone, revered by all, never finding true love; but that Husna, old and withered and full of remorse and the sense of a world larger than herself, died ministering to lepers, the most reviled and feared of the sick.” Then my father would always say, “What do you think that means?”

  “As a girl I thought this story had to do with arbitrary patriarchal power—asshole men, or stereotyped woman’s vanity or even how stupid it was to marry.

  Now I think it means that you cannot wait until the end to remain humanely connected to one another, regardless of the power of the distraction. You cannot just neglect each other and trust that we can make up for the starvation until some hypothetical future. We need to nurture differing aspects of ourselves and each other every day, for even a great power is irrelevant, becomes alien, if it becomes twisted and skewed from its human source, as, for example, the Games Machine.”

  The Games Machine, as I understand it, has no morality. It is in every sense an alien life form with utter disregard for human or any other life. Let’s put this crudely: I believe that you cannot understand an alien until you have fucked them. The Games Machine has no aspect that cares to be fucked. And so, it is not a moral being and so—unsuitable. Xtance mocked herself. “If you were to try to master the intricacies of this position,” she fluttered her eyes in an exaggerated manner, “you would have shriveled far past uselessness before making any progress into its mysteries.”

  Xtance looked up at the lattice of tiles on the wall. For every instance of the word ‘I’ in what I have used, you may substitute ‘we.’ And the things whereof I cannot speak, I must remain silent.”

  She smiled. “You realize that if asked in a year or two what my father’s story means, I may have a completely different answer. He is pretty sick now and I hope that he will hear my next interpretation, if he can tell me the story once more.”

  With that, she grew quiet. She acted as though a great weight had risen from her. She relaxed. “I know a place to rest and to watch this morality theater play out. One who calls himself Jimmy Hoffa, an expert in stable symbol automata. Jimmy realized that he had become a brokerage excubitor some years ago. He would have gone to college, but as he explains, while writing the application entrance essay he started out in the usual way, but concluded that he would be better off self-educating. It has worked out for Jimmy.”

  Xtance noticed Joex’s flagging attention—he was blinking in an exaggerated way just to keep his eyes open—and trailed off the explanation, “the brokerage realized that his trades, although with virtually no capital behind them, had a consistent return over the years of more than thirty percent. “They simply mirrored them with vastly more money, and concealed them under a welter of hedges, integrated counter-parties offsets and leveraged swaps. He would make thousand dollars in a year, while they would make a hundred million. Statistically regressed with other seemingly prescient small investors, or “excubitors,” it made ordinary front-running as primitive as knocking over a lemonade stand: the brokerage realized that an individual’s intuition dwarfed the significance of his actual wealth. Kindersher wisdom is still wisdom.” Xtance drifted off into silence, watching Joex. “Yeah, Jimmy Hoffa is the man.”

  Joex was just exhausted and he could hardly feel his legs. He wanted to piss but was too tired even to try to find a toilet. He understood fragments of Xtance’s conversation. “Sounds as if the brokers were falling for the Gambler’s Fallacy. The little guy might not have any special insight at all. He might have been just lucky.” He would tell her about the Games interview later. First, sleep.

  “But the Statistician’s Fallacy cancels the Gambler’s Fallacy. That is, the mistake of assuming the underlying game is a fair,” Xtance murmured, as to herself.

  She did say one last thing as walked up to Mass Ave and then out River Street, as if she suddenly had realized it. “Some day, the Cataract. But for now, the motley itinerant enterprise of the shadow lab is our Games Machine.”

  Chapter 51

  First Celestial Michael Voide was speaking to Cassandra Jones through an encrypted link. “You tell me that you have spoken to this student Margaret Mahoney and that, leading the exodus of this techie commune, was hurt while being questioned. But that misses the point: when did Joex B
aroco die?”

  “We don’t how he left. We are ransacking the building looking for hidden exits, perhaps a disguise. Obviously, he had help. Ms Mahoney said that one they call a ‘prophet’ named Xtance was with Baroco when he left. She says that Baroco guessed his role, the link with Riu. His knowledge is close enough to be a problem. His memory has some context now. He is linking spies with Riu. “Robert Marks” with switches, spies, and the Internet. Though, I doubt even with the knowledge that he or anyone around him can do anything of substance. Are you going to alert the Chinamen that they need to execute?”

  The First Celestial was picking at a fingernail. It was bleeding. He was insane with anger. “A lot of people are disappearing, but not the one I asked you to disappear for me. These malformed mighty geeks could be a threat. I will tell the Chinese nothing. Let them figure it out. That reminds me that— Jim Rauchmann. Jim, Jim, Jim. Isn’t it better to vanish in ignorance, with a calm mind and peaceful body?” The First Celestial tore another strip off his bleeding nail, well into the quick. He breathed in with the pain.

  “Yes, First Celestial,” said Security Throne Jones.

  “Return to your parich when you are through. Strike that. Come directly to me. I have another calling for you, Throne.”

  “Yes, First Celestial.”

  “Now, let me talk to your driver. I am sure he would welcome some spiritual counseling directly from the First Choir.”

  Cassandra did not need to be a soothsayer to divine the purpose of the counseling. Her urge to obey without question and her urge to survive fought without quarter within her; externally, but she was as icy calm as a Games interviewee not wishing to receive further chastisement.

  “Driver, the first Celestial would like to interview you personally. The driver turned and held out his muscular arm for her phone. He also had a calm and untroubled face.

  Meanwhile, the absolute master of the Church of the Crux began tearing at another nail.

  Chapter 52 Beijing 12:30 AM, thirty minutes before the event

  The battering ram smashed through the flimsy aluminum door and the first squad of Snow Leopards, armed to the highest tactical level, cleared the office of the pink warehouse. A second squad, arm on shoulder, took down the inner door in less than two seconds. Their flash bangs made the entire building shake as if an early New Year’s celebration at Tiananmen Square. They turned over the body of Commander Ji with their boots, but otherwise ignored him. All sectors cleared, the powerful lights of the soldier’s assault weapons played over the room darkened after the power cut minutes before the breach. As the shouting of the soldiers and ringing of the grenades died out, the members of the special unit could hear the technicians lying face down weeping, begging to please not to shoot. They were lying prone on the door with their arms and fingers outstretched toward the center of the room and the dead machines as if they were starfish trying to engulf a meal.

  As he did not wear any kind of distinguishing insignia, it took several minutes to find Colonel Hu, slumped at a workstation. The rosewood handle of a simple fly-whisk was projecting from his right eye.

  Chapter 53 Boston 11:30 AM, thirty minutes before the event

  Xtance was tugging on a pigtail as she finished the call on her mobile. Joex was on a worn sofa sleeping as if passed-out. In a tiny kitchen partially concealed by a beaded curtain, missing a good number of beads was Jimmy Hoffa. Jimmy looked to be in his early thirties wearing random clothing what appeared to be from an athletic lost and found box. When someone would make fun of his dress, he would tell the, seriously, that it was the “official uniform for the great treasure hunt that is regression analysis.” His room was over a recently closed pizza takeout stand, but did have his own private entrance, if you counted a climb up a junction box and conduit laced with a couple of prusik loops to his bedroom window either private or an entrance.

  “What do you think, Jimmy? What does your fabulous intuition tell you about our legacy trojan?”

  “Fuck you Xtance, Jimmy said over his shoulder, cooking something with vegetables in a hot fry pan, “my fabulous intuition tells me you want a double dollop of hot sauce. But, as it turned out, I agree with you. There is too much corroboration and not enough plausible alternatives. Unless he is—motioning at Joex—a whacked out killer of course.”

  “The prophets are of the opinion that the trojan is of such severity and universality that it independently constitutes an emergency, no matter what the state of our new friend. We have a patch with as much testing as we can give it, and we are releasing it now. I do not know if we can effectively scatter it in effectively zero time. We are trying to include unorthodox means of dispersal, but working with black and grey hats is always random. There is this Ouest Sam guy, well, whatever. It will soon be over one way or another. If you have an email to send or a phone call to make, you should think about doing it soon.” Xtance flipped an orange fur pelt around her neck as if a bolo taking down a bird. “On the other hand, if the patch works, exactly nothing will happen.”

  At that instant, Security Throne Cassandra Jones, her height making it an easy swing from the flashing outside the building to the window, broke through the glass with her boots, clearing out the shards one-handed in the top of the frame with the short muzzle of the Glock. Through the window, she was in; long black leather gloves leathers creaking. Instantly she was through the open door into the living room. She smelled cooking, saw Baroco on the sofa, and a woman slowly turning to face her with something in her hand aimed at her. Cassandra visualized the fat forty-five caliber rounds as she fired two into the Xtance’s center of mass.

  Chapter 54 Freetown 4:30 PM, thirty minutes before the event

  Throughout most of the day, Sam had slept under cardboard near the harbor that smelled of colorful fish and echoed the cries of mongers and fishermen. Whether Sam was tired or just winding down because of lack of food, or just replaying what had happened to him the previous twenty hours was hard to say, but before sunset he stirred, got up, and pissed through his rags onto the masonry wall that his cardboard bed abutted. He had the charged smartphone rolled up in the waistband of his rags. To Sam it was a light-saber, a magic wand, a ring of power, a calabash of wisdom. He must use it a few more minutes today, as soon as possible.

  Not have to waste time at breakfast or toilet, Sam was loping back to the Grand Plaza and the old communications building which he could see as he approached the rise at the upper end of the street. Indistinguishable from hundreds of other men and boys wandering, barking, hawking, trucking, arguing, gambling, eating from a plantain leaf, sleeping, or just watching everyone else, it was an easy jog to his hiding place of the evening before. In less than ten minutes he was peering at the Communications building through the rocket hole at the Plaza. He took out the phone and turned it on. He was able to get two bars this time despite the warmth and humidity of the day and the usual crowd doing commerce on the streets as they found it.

  His fingers chattered over the tiny keyboard of the smartphone, his untrimmed fingernails clacking on the plastic bezel. It was hard to see in the tropical afternoon light and Sam was glad that the low Plaza wall shaded the phone as well as himself.

  He read his messages. Two in particular were from someone named Lex from Cambridge, USA. The second had an attachment, which asked Sam to use whatever means immediately to distribute as widely as possible through as many servers as possible. “Lex” did not offer new money, but the two things that caused Sam to pause was the attachment seemed to be a huge patch for his and Jim Roger’s protocol stack trojan, and that Lex had referred to him as “Sam,” not as “Ouest.” A true name. Sam had a face now on the Internet, a black face absorbing generations of hot African sun.

  Sam scanned the code but it was unusually sophisticated. Hand coded. Maybe the guy was from Cambridge. He could see that the patch worked by actually exploiting the fault and executing something which likely would kill itself while blocking the path behind it. The tricky thing was to prev
ent side effects from causing as much or more damage than a presumed future malicious code instruction. This vulnerability was so wide across the world that virtually every switch whether in an ISP or commercial switching center had the core protocol stack and the susceptibility. It would take a while to figure out what the patch did.

  Sam opened the second message a few seconds after the first. It just said “Please hurry” in a dozen different languages and a handful of scripts.

  Sam leaned back against the jutting rebar and considered the code. He could see several of the half-dozen procedures that made up the bulk of the patch. After pinpointing the end of the final procedure, he smiled glistening white on black and started rapidly to code using hexadecimal on the miniature keyboard, despite his thirst he was sweating under the fading African sun. In a few minutes, he finished adding his own procedure at the end of the code, which he finished with #AND HELLO FROM FREETOWN. Finally, he added a special command header and launched it into the botnet control feed he administered. The power of symbols hailed with the Ram’s horn and burned into memory: within seconds, hundreds of thousands of machines around the world would repeat the Shadow Lab incantation, the warding off evil, and Sam’s Anansi codicil.

  Chapter 55 New York, minutes before noon

  Ten minutes before noon, the traffic lights failed in Manhattan below 90th, both primary pumping stations shut down at the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in California, and, perhaps less importantly, a few million people suddenly couldn’t reach Google or Facebook. More seriously, the instrumentation failed at forty-seven hospitals that used the same model of Internet-aware equipment. Almost a quarter of calls throughout the United States dropped. Lovers cut off from lovers, ordering systems went offline, gas distribution networks failed as meters offered spurious readings; management instructions were left incomplete, police data terminals became unresponsive. There was a cascade failure of power stations that stretched all the way from Georgia to Virginia. There was an inexplicable failure of the aircraft tug for Air Force One. By noon, the shudder in the network had passed as if a wave of nausea. The power stations remained off-line, but restarting according to their grey protocol. Luckily, most of the grid seemed unaffected by what would publically be called the Great Glitch. While there was a short steep dip in the equities markets, the major stock exchanges canceled all trades over a short period just before noon. The ratings agencies had nothing to say except, “little market significance, just a temporary failure that will be investigated and corrected.”