JOSEPH TRAVERS MACKINNON
GUY FAUX BOOKS
“O God, I could be bound in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
“So that at the world's Omega, as at its Alpha, lies the Impersonal.”
Teilhard de Chardin
“Thus one can state that not only is the soul (mirror of an indestructible universe) indestructible, but so is the animal itself, even though its mechanism often perishes in part, and casts off or puts on its organic coverings.”
Gottfried Leibniz
Copyright ©2014 by Guy Faux Book Company Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the express permission in writing of the author.
eISBN 13: 978-0-9881640-4-8
ISBN 13: 978-0-9881640-3-1
Cover & book design by Guy Faux Books D-Zine.
A Guy Faux Book.
DEDICATION
To Mom and Dad,
Thank you for all of the opportunities, support, and wisdom you’ve provided me with along the way.
And Sam,
You are the Trinity to my Neo (minus all the death and mayhem).
Chapter 1: ARIADNE’S DREAD
BESIDE THE BONE SAW, the orangutan breathes shallowly, forfeiting the shadows drawn into its wired belly. Its mouth contorts through irreconcilable expressions, and resets to an abeyant gape, as if all of its muscles have come unsewn.
Dr. Paul Sheffield administers Clonazepam and a custom paralytic intravenously. Stubborn like his predecessors, Kim fights the inevitable, tugging violently at the restraints. Dr. Sheffield holds Kim’s head still so he cannot rip himself open on the cranial grips. The cuffs clink as Kim stills and his sinews stiffen.
Kim is no longer a threat to himself, insofar as he is no longer able to physically react to his increasingly-perplexing mental state. He’s both a spectator and an agent in the non-consensual hallucination Paul’s designed; a shade blurred to a blip in an all-consuming static of information and sensation.
Paul has successfully cut Kim’s mental tether. This will most certainly kill him.
Now wading into the undiscovered country, the orangutan will be blessed with untold knowledge and understanding, and his mind, ballooned and powerful, will become too large to bring back indoors; too expensive, anyway.
Paul holds Kim’s hand purposefully for a pulse. Heart-rate is down, right on schedule. The sense of déjà vu hits Paul, as does the second-hand mortal panic. Every other subject has died at this stage, where the mind, mediated through and by the exo-cortex simultaneously synchs with both its off-board memory server (i.e. a memex) and the projected CLOUD environment wherein the avatar is actualized.
The CLOUD is cyberspace reimagined, that is to say it’s constantly imagined by the minds occupying it. It is a hybrid, unhobbled by linear visual and aural focus. It is tasted, heard, seen, felt, and metaphysically witnessed, forwards and backwards through incarnated ideas. That’s the gist, anyway.
Paul fears what it’ll mean if this works—what it will mean if this ape’s survival entreats others to join him. After all, discovery and extinction often go hand-in-hand.
Bah. Let the ethicists and lawyers worry. Today Sheffield plays god. Today I cast our mute likeness into chaos.
The spiderlike probe above Kim’s exposed brain blinks yellow.
“Alright! That‘a boy!” Paul murmurs through a gritted smile. He checks the ape’s PET scan for activity. It’s off the charts.
Somewhere there’s applause. Paul turns to match the sound to action: a broad-shouldered geriatric metes out fleshy encouragement beneath the red of the EXIT sign. His wheezes overtake his clapping. “Good show, Doctor,” exclaims Niles Winchester III, an Armani-clad, Frankenstein monster—stitched together with surgical plastic and cultured tissue.
Paul gulps, sending spit to drown the butterflies in his stomach. “Mr. Winchester! Had I known in advance that you wanted to monitor this case, I’d have found you better real estate.”
“Nonsense!” He swats away Paul’s suggestion. “Keep up the good work.” Observing a moment of silence, Winchester winces over a smile. “I was surprised by the ambition you exhibited yesterday...”
Yesterday? Paul can’t remember much. He’d been in one of his moods.
“Baby steps, I suppose,” Paul replies.
“That’s quite a large baby, Doctor. I admire your focus despite the Board’s skepticism and all of the caltrops they’ve set for you. They simply can’t comprehend the vastness and promise of this project. We’re changing the world here…changing what it means to be human. These are exciting days!”
“Certainly…” Winchester’s presence is off-putting, like someone watching you while you take a leak. “Would you like to look-on somewhere nearer the stage? Help me change what it means to be an ape?”
“Unfortunately, I have to run. I am determined to source inhabitants for your new world.”
“Well, it’s hardly ready and the Board made it especially clear that we can’t go ahead with human trials for at least another four years…”
Winchester’s eyelids flutter, beating away Paul’s prospective negation. “I had a novel idea.”
Vexed by Winchester’s obvious aversion, Paul makes an effort to look interested, now micromanaging Kim’s scripts on the medical tablet. “Oh?”
“An idea to put this project on the map. Ahead of the Cordoba peace talks, we’ll get Mahir Khomeini and President Jacoby into this brave new world of yours.” Winchester coughs, and wets his lips for another parade of ambition. “Like your friend, goaded into service, you’ll see to it that they instantaneously download and experience each other’s memories, psyches, and souls. All incommensurability will be thwarted. The Holy Wars will come to an end in the region, and Outland will have both publicly proven itself indispensable…” He looks to his hands, “And your noosphere ready for mainstream consumption. Peace, first, and then Los Angeles!”
“Sir, with all due respect…”
Winchester grips the railing, his century-old knuckles discolouring the meat gnarled about them. His eyebrows shuffle impatiently. “Yes?”
“There are a million variables. A hundred things can go wrong just synchronizing a basic mind with its exo-cortex.” Paul looks at Kim’s corpulent mass, barely moving. “The difficulty is only compounded adding a second person into the mix. Ego death is the least of our concerns right now, but it’s a likely first-hiccup.”
“Where has this doubt come from, all of a sudden? You seemed so sure when we last spoke.”
“I suppose I was a little off…”
“Well, buck up.” Winchester slams his hand against the railing. Re-collecting himself, he lowers his voice. “Dr. Sheffield, I have every confidence in your ability to…surprise and succeed. Besides, I have an idea of how this,” he indicates Kim with a shaking point, “will turn out.” The criticism seems to have had an exhausting effect on the tycoon. Wheezing more heavily, Winchester takes a draw from his inhaler, and smiles. “Good night, Doctor. Tell Rachel and the girls I said hello.” He torpedoes out the side door on a rush of cool air.
BESIDE THE OPERATING TABLE, Dr. Paul Sheffield hammers away at his medical tablet, checking the monitors for surprises. Paul adjusts the broadcast frequency in an effort to synchronize the ape’s exo-cortex with the prototypic CLOUD tutorial.
“Easy, buddy. Just breathe,” Paul reminds his hyper-tense patient.
Like the nonlinear flow of aural, visual, and simulated-haptic (SIMHAP) sensations that Kim’s currently exposed to, Paul’s concern is virtual. Utilitarian ethic and curiosity purpose this cal
m mask of sincerity.
“No, not now!” Paul murmurs to himself.
In all of the excitement, only heightened by the boss’s visit, Paul’s lost his grip. His hands begin to tremble in the pallid circle of light shone by his medical monitor. An itch bids him scratch and he obeys. He tears off his glasses and scratches at the little cracks in his mask, at invisible trans-orbital veins rupturing his façade with anxiety and fear. His fingers find an aberration along his scalp above the hairline—stitches. When did I get stitches? He inspects his finger, and notices a blotch of blood.
“No-no-no-no!” He palms his accordioned forehead and directs muddled thoughts with his free hand. “Not here…not now!” He teeters on one foot, closing his eyes—already sandwiched between squished features. “God-damn-it!”
The rhythm of Kim’s heartbeat fills the gaps in Paul’s freak-out.
“Damn!”
The green-and-pastel tiles beneath his feet seem to melt away, one by one, darkening into an unreflective tar. Paul cannot tell himself apart from his surroundings or relocate the familiar monologic of a single, interior voice.
A COM-Disc tolls out, releasing the darkness’ grip on Paul’s mind and body. The little drone judders over, propelled by its concealed rotor and the promise of dialogue. Paul’s eyes open, and focus on the source of the commotion.
In a monotone prompt, the drone targets Paul with a speaker, simultaneously firing out a hologram. “Playback message for: Dr. Sheffield, Paul. Would you like to see the message played back? Answer: yes or no.”
Paul shakes his head. “Just give me two minutes, Korrel.”
“Message postponed for one-hundred-and-twenty seconds.” The COM whirrs to a higher altitude, and begins orbiting the stage.
Resuming his calm, Paul rummages through his pockets, procuring a white-plastic SIK bottle: anti-psychotic unifiers tailored to address schizophrenic episodes. He pops the top and polishes off three green-and-yellow triangular pills. He stares into the blackness past Kim, waiting for his sanity to catch up with him.
Ahead of the remedy comes a euphoric sensation. Paul, though vexed and tired, manages a rounded grin, letting the SIK bring him up within normal parameters.
A grinding-screech sounds above on the Observation Deck. Paul quickly hides the pill bottle. He abandons his suave posture over the de-localized ape to press greasy wires of his hair back into place.
Oni, a dark-haired, Japanese neurologist from the University of British Columbia, appears on the balcony: a whole note on a bar line. With her hair tied back, her face looks even narrower than usual, resolving with a neat little chin manipulated by a peach slice of a bottom lip.
She looks down at Paul, reverently. Paul’s paranoia mutates her look of professional interest into one of hideous omniscience. The minute curvatures at the corners of her mouth hook into her cheeks, the colour of cherry blossoms, as well as into Paul. He’s caught. She’s no fool; quite the opposite, in fact. She definitely knows the dimensions of my private insanity.
“Kim seems stable. One-to-one loop is consistent,” she informs the mad scientist below in Japanese.
Paul, having completely neglected the fact that Oni took her dinner upstairs—that she must have seen everything—mulls over what depravity she may have witnessed during his episode.
“Oni, how are we mortals looking from up on Olympus?” he quips in Japanese, striving to gauge her reaction to his unconscious conduct with an innocuous query.
“Very impressive, Doctor. We are proud of your ambition, and we accept your sacrifice.” Oni laughs. “We’ll have to check on Prometheus to make sure there wasn’t something more besides light in his fennel stock.”
Oni had downloaded and memorized Bulfinch’s Mythology to keep up with Paul’s extraneous naming conventions. She likely has a better understanding of the depravity and fate of the gods than I’ve grasped over forty years of obsession and recital, not that she’d show-off.
Paul nods, ushering in a clinical disposition, noting his assistant’s unaffected, professional tone. “I wish! No luck where cheats are concerned.” He checks Kim’s heart monitor. “Start the timer. Six minutes until broadcast.”
Oni smiles coyly. She rolls straight off the railing, and disappears into the Observation Deck’s rear analysis room where the insipid light of computer screens envelops her.
Paul shakes his head. If only they knew that the one authorized to draw and test the depths of the World’s Mind could not find solace, boundary, or reason in his own. Pleased that his mind is not open on the stage for analysis, he deludes himself: maybe she doesn’t know, either. Grinning, delighted his body has not given him away, he deletes the video-surveillance evidence of his episode with a swipe on his tablet.
“Korrel, play-back message.”
Korrel swaps-out its monotone for a recording, loud with ambient conversations and music: “‘Paul?” Rachel’s flickering presence fills the hologram. Brown hair, bright eyes, and a shirt-run ragged by a pair of messy munchkins. Copper pots and pans dipping in and out of the third dimension with Rachel’s sporadic rocking back and forth place her in the kitchen. “‘I tried your Monocle and your Vox, but you didn’t answer…You know you’re the only one still pinging satellites? Anyway, Pythia’s fever has worsened and the MediPen’s still misdiagnosing her with the weirdest cognitive disabilities. Last time it was Autism, now it’s a congenital birth defect. Paul…I think I’m going to take her to the clinic first thing tomorrow morning. Pedro said he’d see us, no appointment required.’”
That was real swell of him.
“‘Hopefully it’s nothing. Maybe you can take a look if Pedro proves incapable…There’s food in the freezer if you’re still hungry when you get home, and if you’re interested, the hatch is full of ration bars. Printer is jammed, though, so you’ll have to find coffee on your way home. Oh! I almost forgot: there’s a dot-gram sitting here from Outland; two invitations to the Summer Ball. Tell Shouta you’re going with me. Three’s a crowd.’” Crying off-screen catches her attention. “‘Listen, I have to run. Love you.’ Say yes if you would like to hear the message played again.”
“No, thank you, Korrel. Re-assign to OD and assist Oni with the synch.”
“Yes, Dr. Sheffield.” The speaker retracts into its slot on the COM, and the projected interface minimizes.
Paul leans forward, and wipes flop sweat from his eyes. “Kim, you’re doing great!”
His reddish-brown gamble offers a muted groan.
“Good, good,” Paul reiterates. He places his tablet on Kim’s chest, and raises his hands out, as if in benediction. “That’s it.”
The yellow light on the eight-armed, suspended mobile turns orange, and pulses. A black drive on the gurney beside the table beeps, and a stream of disordered data floods Paul’s monitors.
“All systems synchronized!” screams Oni from the tech forest above.
Paul slaps his armrest. “Okay, Kim. Here’s one for you.”
He triggers a command via the ape’s implant. Kim shudders. The input sends the bandwidth graphs mapped across Oni’s readouts into the red. Data-blocks crest in waves of code in tandem with Kim’s convulsions.
Cued by the ape’s successful mental circuit, Paul dials a series of commands on his tablet, lending shape to the hybrid cyberspace. With a pronounced tap, he initiates the commands and joins Kim at his side.
“You’re eligible for an Education One certificate after this, Kim.” He flips a switch on the driver. A green light flashes on. Paul types furiously into the in-feed:
—HELLO KIM. YOU ARE SAFE. THIS IS YOUR FRIEND, DR. SHEFFIELD. I AM HERE WITH ONI. DO YOU KNOW WHERE WE ARE?
The cursor blinks in the darkness, alone. “God damn it. You better not be off looking for your male member.”
Kim jerks back and forth, and then relaxes.
Oni runs to the balcony. “The synch-loop’s been interrupted.”
“How?”
“A small power surge. Narrowed the broadc
ast for half-a-second. Without a linkage, we’re looking at brain death.”
“Blast!” Paul compulsively massages the short black bristles on his chin.
“What should we do? I can try resetting him,” Oni suggests, frenzied—having reverted back to Japanese.
“I’m thinking.”
Kim’s mouth widens, revealing purple gums and a skeletal smile.
“Don’t you dare!” Paul yells.
Kim flat-lines. The computer terminals blink a motley of colours like rogue Christmas lights, while Kim’s respirator chimes a morbid carol.
“Dr. Sheffield, we’re ten seconds into the four-minute countdown. If not stabilized—“
ONE MINUTE LEFT. Paul rolls over to his desk, and grabs a hypodermic needle from a box marked DLCLZ. “Alright, buddy,” he says, apologetically, with a handful of euthanasiac promise. He turns Kim’s arm over, and runs his fingers up to its seat of veins, slowly cooling. Paul holds the syringe steady, and yells up to Oni: “I’m calling it. Series five, number fifteen. Mental death at—”
“Stop! Don’t kill him. Doctor! Take a look at his PET scan.”
Absolution beeps behind the slab. Paul’s medical tablet clicks emphatically: it’s a response from the dislocated ape. Paul turns to the sound, and reads genesis:
—I AM KIM.
Stamped with a foolish smile, Paul discards the syringe, and leans over the cuffed orangutan. He types a scrawl into the holographic query box leveled over the ape’s chest, and then backspaces to simplify it:
—HELLO KIM. IT IS NICE TO MEET YOU. I AM DR. SHEFFIELD.
—KIM CANNOT SEE DR. SHEFFIELD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH KIM?
“Yes!” Paul bellows, throwing a triumphant fist into the air.
Not only has the synchronization conveyed Kim’s mind into the CLOUD, but it has successfully impressed upon him an encyclopaedia’s-worth of information.
—NOTHING IS WRONG WITH KIM.
Paul turns on the intercom, filling the rafters with his excitement: “Holy shit! Oni, are you seeing this?”
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