The First

by Scott Nicholson

  "Is it always this busy?" Su asked.

  "We're the top-producing outpost in the region. Bonuses all around. Soon I can afford a vacation. Another couple of years and I can retire."

  Su nodded, trying to share the common exuberance. But in truth, she was concerned. Another piece to the puzzle. An abundance of mineral wealth, yet this Nexus was ranked by the Areopagus as a minor outpost, barely sustaining a profit.

  "You coming out?" Lealonnie asked.

  "No. Metallurgists are assigned to the lab."

  "Well, you're a newcomer, after all. You'll get your chance."

  Su said good-bye to her friend and left the room. She walked down the clear cylinder of the hall, pretending to gaze at the deep star-speckled beauty of the permanent night sky. But she was actually looking at the cameras that were spaced along the corridor roof, cameras aimed along every inhabited area of the Nexus so that not a square inch was hidden. Her mission was to find out what human eye was behind those cold black eyes of the camera.

  If that eye was even human, that is. Some computers had seized power during the Third Dark Age, when the viruses of the network wars had disrupted communications and fractured the central authority. The Areopagus was still reassembling the pieces of that intergalactic disaster.

  She entered the dome that housed her lab. The hydraulic doors closed behind her with a mushy groan. In spite of the wealth of this Nexus, much of the equipment was in need of repair. Yet another incongruity, another shred of the puzzle to slide into her mental case file.

  Su donned her apron, gloves, and mask and entered the open area of the lab. Workers tumbled ore and weighed stone, loading conveyor belts that carried the ore into the carbon reducing furnaces under the asteroid's surface. Su had been assigned to hydrometallurgy, beside the electrolytic refinery. She prepared a solution of potassium cyanide to be used for gold separation.

  She was suddenly seized at both elbows, and swiveled head to look into the hard eyes of two guards. They had found her out in less than three days.

  "Name?"

  "Susan-dot-Monday-dot-Orion," Su replied.

  "Security clearance?"

  "Why don't you just scan my card?"

  "Your card has passed through our system. Very precise Areopagan falsification. So I prefer to hear it from you. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to introductions."

  She saw no point in lying. At least not yet. "Su November, Level Seven, Areopagus Intrascope."

  "That carries no weight here. Your Areopagus is not as universally loved as you might have been programmed to believe." Her interrogator was dressed like an engineer, with pockets and loops sewn across his coveralls, small tools and wires snaking from the cloth. His thin, craggy face looked tired, but his eyes were bright with a fierce intelligence.

  "I insist that you deliver me to your superiors."

  "You are in no position to make demands, Agent November. And I am the superior."

  Su looked past the man to the walls of the cramped laboratory. Videoscreens littered the room, hanging from cables like mechanical spiders, spilling from the corners in a rubbish of glass and chrome. Tiny, uneven rows of lights blinked in disarray: reds, ambers, and greens, the colors of earth's stoplights. Switches and controls stubbled the chaotic geometry that surrounded her, especially the control console that separated her from her captor.

  "And what's your name?" she asked. "Or does your tradition only extend in one direction?"

  "Do you not read your reports? Or does the Areopagus prefer to keep its agents in the dark?"

  "You answer my question with a question."

  He checked a monitor, then turned his hard gaze back on her. "Like your government, I, too, search for knowledge."

  Su didn't like where this conversation was heading. Her opponent was megalomaniacal, heretical, rebellious, prone to philosophy. Everything the Areopagus sought to repress.

  "My government is your government as well, Mister..."

  He curled his lips into a sneer. "Call me Dorian. And I shall call you Su. No need for formalities. You and I have nothing to hide."

  "The Areopagus believes you do have something to hide. That's why I'm here."

  "You're not a very secretive agent, Su." Dorian leaned back, his chair squeaking. Apparently oil and silicon were in short supply on Nexus Nineteen. All the doors, lifts, and moving parts were sluggish and corroded. What was all that gold buying? Certainly not Dorian's luxury.

  "You seem to know about me already, Dorian." She spat his name. "Maybe you have your own agents."

  Dorian laughed, flashing sharp, yellowed teeth. "No, I'm just an engineer. A tinkerer, inventor, programmer."

  "And tyrant?" Su asked evenly.

  Dorian sat up, eyes flashing anger.

  Su continued. "The Areopagus doesn't brook renegade outposts. And it doesn't look kindly on those that don't pay tribute."

  Dorian slammed his fist down onto the console, heedless of harming the fragile instrumentation. "I told you, I am the authority here, not the Areopagus. And, my lovely slant-eyed spy, I'm only enduring your continued company for my own amusement. And when I tire of you-"

  Su sat with her hands at her side. She had not been allowed to carry weapons. Her Intrascope Director had assured her the mission was solely an economic investigation. But armed personnel had escorted her to this office. She wasn't yet ready to try her ju jitsu skills against their electromagnetic scramblers.

  Dorian's face relaxed. "I serve the people here. I act in their best interests. They are happy."

  "But the place is falling apart. And all that gold-"

  "That gold sustains the people. Not physically, but spiritually."

  "I see no religion among your natives."

  Dorian spread his arms magnanimously, to indicate the room. "This is all they need. Their utopia, their Nirvana, their heaven. Whatever your name for it."

  Rows of circuitry, memory banks, lights and wires. Cold screens and numbers. She was going to die anyway, she may as well ask her questions. At least she could close one last case, even if she couldn't get her information back to Intrascope.

  "I see nothing but computers," she said. "What's so glorious about that?"

  "During your last Dark Age, I had the chance to continue my work outside the prying eyes of the Areopagus. And my experiments were successful. Biomicrocircuitry. BMC, to cast yet another acronym onto the stellar winds." Dorian's face creased into an uneven smile.

  "BMC development was banned after those disasters-"

  "Which is why I needed my secrecy. And still need it."

  "But these are real people on this Nexus."

  "Yes, they are people. But they are my people. See these bit-streams?" Dorian waved a thin hand toward a videoscreen. Data scrolled by in a blur. "That's your friend, Lealonnie Red."

  Impossible. BMC, the merging of artificial intelligence with organic life forms, had been theorized and then attempted. Early trials had resulted in horrible mutations, half-creatures that had turned on their creators with random tooth and uncontrollable claw. The failures had led to an intergalactic moratorium on further experimentation. Could this sallow technocrat succeed where the Areopagus's finest minds had failed?

  "Ah, I see in your face that you don't believe me, Su. Look to your left, on Camera Four, Nutrition Dome."

  On the screen was a small female, nude and sweating under the fluorescent arc lamps. The woman worked her way through the lush gardens, harvesting apricots and plums, now and then gazing into the artificial light as if looking for clouds.

  Dorian pulled open a panel and the bony tips of his fingers rattled across a keyboard. The woman on the screen twitched like a living marionette whose strings had been juiced with electricity. She tossed her basket in the air and stood under the purple and red-gold rain of fruit. Then she crouched on all fours and disappeared into the foliage.

  "She is now programmed to think she is a gorilla. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, she is a primate. Until I change
the parameters." Dorian clacked the keys. "Now she can continue her work, harvesting nutrition for my world."

  "You're mad," Su said. "And cruel."

  "No. She is perfectly content. She has no memory of being a primate. In an hour, she might be a technician. Tonight, perhaps an entertainer. Of course, I only program the main parameters. The computers randomly fill in the details. See your friend Lealonnie Red?" He pointed to another screen. "Not her bit-streams, but the human image you think you know."

  A field camera showed the team of geologists probing a mineral vein. The mineral was nothing but metamorphic rock, space cinder.

  "She thinks she sees gold. The whole crew does. So all are happy and industrious," Dorian said. "But there is no gold."

  "But I've seen the gold, in the lab." Her mind turned down a dark path. "No. Impossible."

  "You have slept. It was simple for me to come at night and inject you with BMC. Neuro-radio transmitters connect you to the system. And I've extracted you as well. BMC works both ways."

  "Extracted me?" She felt dizzy, apart from herself. Or perhaps that was only the whim of Dorian's program. She fought to recall what she had learned about BMC from Intrascope. But, like all matters that the Areopagus swept under the rug, her knowledge of it was vague.

  "Tit for tat. You become mine, and I give you yourself, free to swim forever in the streams of memory," Dorian said. He pointed to the far side of the room, to a bank of hard drives. "In there lives Lealonnie Red, the fruit picker, the guards who brought you here, everyone on the Nexus. And now, you, as well. Visitors are rare here. New blood is always welcome."

  "You're nothing but a murderer."

  Dorian looked pained. "I don't destroy. I deliver. Imagine living all your possible lives, eternally. Of course, one day the universe will collapse under its own gravity, but still, you will have the memory of having lived forever. And what are we but the sum of our memories?"

  Su looked around desperately. Screens jittered, lives fluxed in soulless silicon. She looked at Dorian's crazed eyes. He was lost in his own glory, watching his world from his technological castle, king of all he surveyed. Now was her chance.

  She slowly snaked her hand into her apron pocket and pulled out the vial of potassium cyanide. When she had it secure in her fingers, she lunged over the console and grabbed Dorian by the collar. She rammed her fist into his mouth, shattering the vial against his teeth. He sputtered as he tried to struggle free, but Su was on him, pinning him to the chair as the cyanide drained down his throat.

  Su held him until he stopped writhing and his face clenched in a rigor of agony. Then she ran to the door and ducked into the hallway. She had to assume that BMC was a reality, and that people here obeyed Dorian's directives. The guards were presumably already programmed to detain her. Or kill her.

  Or was Dorian's mind actually the main system? Could he not have somehow connected himself to the programs and memory chips and bit-streams so that he could operate the system from within? It was all so confusing. But the Areopagus could sort out the details and analyze the computers, or evaporate the entire asteroid if necessary. Her mission was to file her report.

  She crept down a hallway toward the jetport dome. But when she came to the place where she thought she had first landed on the Nexus, she found nothing but an abandoned hangar. She had carefully stored the Nexus's layout in her mind. But she had slept-

  She turned back through another hall, running down the crystalline tube. She glanced at the cameras overhead. Might Dorian be watching, even now, even dead, scanning the pixels and deciphering her location? She felt as if she were running in a dream, where the impossible was likely.

  If she had been converted with BMC, then she might not be able to trust her own mind. Would Dorian allow her to keep her will, thus putting himself at danger? If she started doubting herself, all was lost. She looked through the ceiling of the tube. The stars above and around her were real, had to be real.

  But where were the people? If she were living in Dorian's illusion, running through the corridors of his programs, she would be seeing the other captives. She was almost relieved to see a guard step from behind a gridwork, pointing his weapon at her.

  She dived and rolled, scissoring the guard at the knees and sending his electromagnetic scrambler into the air. Or had the scrambler swept her, inverting the path of her protons and destabilizing her atoms? Was she now existing solely as one of Dorian's bit-streams? No longer dust, only energy?

  No, she was Su November, opening the hangar door as she settled into the cockpit of the space jet. She was Su November, firing the controls and piloting the jet toward the dark milky sky and freedom. She was Su November, leaving the pale fading domes of Nexus Nineteen in the distance. She was Su November, Spirit Spy, standing before the Intrascope Director and delivering her report.

  She was Su November. Dorian labeled the program and entered it into storage. He hunched forward in his chair and breathed the recycled air that circulated over his machines. His fingers manipulated the data mechanically, and he felt no pleasure. The exhilaration of creation and possession had dwindled over time.

  He treasured his memories of the giddy first days, the discovery of biomicrotechnology's secrets, the harnessing of its potential. So many lives had been converted to bytes, the infinite lives that filled this room and roped across the screens and charged through the memory banks. He had enjoyed reanimating flesh as a series of pulses. He had strip-mined brains of their randomness and idle thought and given them imaginary purpose.

  But after all these centuries, the joy had softened, the keen-edged thrill of wielding power had grown blunt. He knew he would soon be bored and would have to entice another victim across the galaxy. Another Areopagan to interact with him and give him life through the victim's reactions. But he was weary of always knowing the true outcome.

  Perhaps it was time to extract himself and enter his own programs. Then he could experience the bliss that he had bestowed upon so many others. He could join a billion battles of wits with Su November and the other Spirit Spies that had been sent his way. But Dorian was afraid, also. Afraid that, if he became like them, he would lose himself, his souls, his memories.

  And what was any god but the sum of its memories?

  ###

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Scott Nicholson has written seven novels, including They Hunger, The Skull Ring, and The Red Church. He is currently adapting The Red Church as a graphic novel. Other electronic works include Burial to Follow, Ashes, and Flowers. Nicholson lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where he writes for a newspaper, plays guitar, raises an organic garden, and works as a freelance fiction editor. His Web site www.hauntedcomputer.com offers writing tips, free fiction, and survival tips. He loves to hear from readers at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try.

  Learn about more Haunted Computer Books at http://hauntedcomputerbooks.blogspot.com

  BONUS MATERIAL

  THE RED CHURCH: A novel by Scott Nicholson

  Copyright 2002 by Scott Nicholson

  For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

  Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, "Free me." People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall's return.

  The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachia
n community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

  "Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The world never ends the way you believe it will, Ronnie Day thought.

  There were the tried-and-true favorites, like nuclear holocaust and doomsday asteroid collisions and killer viruses and Preacher Staymore's all-time classic, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But the end really wasn't such a huge, organized affair after all. The end was right up close and personal, different for each person, a kick in the rear and a joy-buzzer handshake from the Reaper himself.

  But that was the Big End. First you had to twist your way though a thousand turning points and die a little each time. One of life's lessons, learned as the by-product of thirteen years as the son of Linda and David Day and one semester sitting in class with Melanie Ward. Tough noogies, wasn't it?

  Ronnie walked quickly, staring straight ahead. Another day in the idiot factory at good old Barkersville Elementary was over. Had all evening to look forward to, and a good long walk between him and home. Nothing but his feet and the smell of damp leaves, fresh grass, and the wet mud of the riverbanks. A nice plate of spring sunshine high overhead.

  And he could start slowing down in a minute, delaying his arrival into the hell that home had been lately, because soon he would be around the curve and past the thing on the hill to his right, the thing he didn't want to think about, the thing he couldn't help thinking about, because he had to walk past it twice a day.

  Why couldn't he be like the other kids? Their parents picked them up in shiny new Mazdas and Nissans and took them to the mall in Barkersville and dropped them off at soccer practice and then drove them right to the front door of their houses. So all they had to do was step in and stuff their faces with microwave dinners and go to their rooms and waste their brains on TV or Nintendo all night. They didn’t have to be scared.