The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  Sweat burned in the sores he had worn into shoulder blades and hips by his effort, still pressed hard into the thin gurney mattress. The lights continued to come on and go off at odd intervals, sometimes accompanied by the arrival of the same female attendant, supplying tube-fed nutrients, a replacement catheter bag or bedpan. At other times, the lights had no observable association with anything, only an irregular punctuation to the intermittent silence or the occasional whir of unseen machinery.

  Making matters worse, Pandavas had recently taken to leaving his hidden microphone chamber and visiting Lyköan personally, turning this sterile white room, no doubt secreted away somewhere in the bowels of Innovac’s vast subterranean complex, into a truly dismal little purgatory.

  The Lord of Light had come to his bedside for another session only minutes ago, smiling as he stood over Lyköan’s head. Lyköan had been honest enough to allow that the wind had been taken from his sails. As a result, the conversational exchange had changed, drifting imperceptibly from confrontational argument into a realm approaching cordiality. Almost. There was still no question about who was in charge.

  “Back to your electronic device,” Pandavas was asking pleasantly. “Isn’t there some enticement we might offer that will avoid our having to resort to the messy stuff?”

  How ’bout a get-out-of-hell-free card? Lyköan almost replied, then thought better of it. Shit, the locked yíb might be the only reason he was still alive. But ‘the messy stuff’ certainly didn’t sound very appealing. Wasn’t this already messy enough?

  Trying to buy a moment’s reprieve before finding out firsthand what that threat actually entailed, he asked, “By any chance, was it your people who boosted my Ōkii back in Bangkok?”

  “Of course not,” Pandavas laughed. “At that point we were the innocents. You were on our payroll and for all we knew, performing admirably. Even if we had wanted the device, we would never have risked killing you to get it.”

  “Then who else is there?”

  “The Thai Ministry of Health, perhaps. A rogue element in the Thai military or nak leeng freelancers maybe? We considered them all as possibilities, but the truth is, we never uncovered any evidence any of them were involved. Might have even been el Jaish-e-Muhammad. Who knows? They may have gotten wind of the Ministry of Health’s plans to let the next viral outbreak run unchecked through the Muslim south. If so, they may have come looking for proof in your tablet’s data files.”

  “Sounds like everyone’s onto you,” Lyköan chuckled. “If it’s true, where you gonna run?”

  “On to us only to the limit of the Thai government’s involvement, which you’ve learned, isn’t at all the true scope of our design. But the possibility that el Jaish may actually be nipping at our heels has added a degree of urgency to our plans ― motivated us to increase security and accelerate our timetable.”

  “Why pick on the Muslims anyway?”

  “We needed a target for the contagion. The Thai government had problems of their own that lent themselves perfectly to our purpose. We aren’t picking on anyone.”

  “Couldn’t you have just tested these things in the lab?”

  “Wouldn’t do at all. Never the same stream of variables. Take the totally unexpected outbreak at the CDC. Hypothecated Modeling never predicted that outcome.

  “Listen, I haven’t time to take you on my entire life’s journey, Lyköan – explain every detail of how I arrived at this particular moment, with my unique set of prejudices. It’s interesting that you bring it up, however, for you see, there was a time, immediately after the 1971 Gabbar-Jaisalmir massacre, which I escaped as an seven-year-old orphan, where I did harbor a genuine hatred towards Islam. The murder of my entire family at their hands was not inconsequential. They were my people after all and I grieved for them long and bitterly. More than a million Hindus were slain in that violence. I had every right to nurture that hatred. You may not believe me, but I eventually outgrew it. There are more important things in life ― in the tread of world events ― than revenge. No, our purpose is not based on any personal animosity.”

  Not particular anymore? You’ll kill anybody? Lyköan bit his tongue again. He was a little rusty on the history of the Indian subcontinent’s divisional wars, so these revelations were unfamiliar to him. The account sounded authentic, but it explained little ― even seemed to muddy the waters somewhat. Maybe acting a wee bit more sympathetic, though, could be worked more to his advantage.

  “Hey, this is really interesting stuff you’re telling me, but I’m not in good enough shape here to give it full consideration. I’m really hurting ― stiff and sore as hell ― there’s no feeling at all in my hands. I know ― that’s probably the idea ― but just let me sit up and I promise to be a less disinterested pupil ― honest.”

  “Certainly, the minute you agree to open your little virtual burglary tool.”

  “Sure, sure, cut me loose and I’ll let you have a peek. Just let me get back on my feet ― I promise ― no funny business.”

  Lyköan had already decided that the yíb contained nothing that would really help Pandavas or hurt anyone else ― except perhaps expose his two forays into Innovac’s databases. There was a better-than-even chance Pandavas already knew about those anyway. But it possessed no reference to Nora or Whitehall or any other sensitive information ― just business files and the stealth program itself. While it had value, exchanging yíb access for a longer tether seemed worth the risk. He didn’t have a better idea.

  And the more he thought about it the better it looked. Sun Shi was nowhere identified in any of the code. It was encrypted well enough to give the Innovac computer geeks a good run for their money. The syntax alone might take months to unravel. Unless they were capable of identifying programmers simply by style alone, even if they managed to crack the encryption engine, they wouldn’t know more about the author than they knew right now. Maybe he was rationalizing, but sheer stiff upper lip stubbornness was getting him nowhere.

  “Is it a deal?” he asked hopefully.

  “Fair enough,” Pandavas agreed, stepping out into the hallway and conferring in low tones with someone Lyköan could not see.

  “Any trouble and you’ll be waking up flat on your back again,” Pandavas threatened coolly, as two burly attendants in coveralls entered the room with the bedside nurse.

  “Trouble? Not me,” Lyköan answered. And for the moment, he meant it.

  * * *

  “How many perfect specimens you planning to save from annihilation, invite into this Utopia of yours?” Lyköan was pacing between the walls of his cell, thinking out loud again, rubbing his stiff, swollen wrists where the blood had pooled. Except for the pain, they still felt like they belonged to someone else.

  “Very few,” Pandavas answered soberly. Catching the somber tone, Lyköan felt briefly content. that he actually might be disrupting Pandavas’s well-oiled plan.

  “It’s more a matter of identifying viable candidates than the impact of your recent hijinx, Lyköan ― if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Do you read minds too? “What are your selection criteria? Some kind of lottery?”

  “Actually it is something of a lottery. You could call it the accident-of-birth lottery. You, for instance. You’re luck was cast by the long line of hearty and varied ancestors who preceded you. Which explains why Innovac sought you out originally. You are quite a unique specimen.”

  “Strong like ox, smart like fox?”

  “Not too far off.”

  “It wasn’t my phenomenal business prowess then?”

  “Hardly.”

  “So I’m one of the elect? I didn’t even know I was in the running.”

  “The sequencing of our original nano-assemblers required a basic starting point at an elevated level.”

  “Isn’t all this just doublespeak ― a euphemism for eugenics?”

  “In a sense. But consider the results.”

  “That’s what I was doing.”

 
“Doesn’t it stir your questioning imagination ― just a little?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh but it will. Here’s something that may stimulate your curiosity. For some years now Innovac has been running demographic survey scans, searching for optimal individual genome segments, utilizing worldwide blood drives. Blood banks were happy to provide us with samples from tens of millions of donors, which we analyzed against a matrix of desirable traits. All we had to do was claim it was for viral research and Innovac’s reputation did the rest. Your genome, by the way, is simply exquisite.”

  “Remind me never to give blood again. But for the ‘winners’ this was more of a reverse lottery, wasn’t it? All the earlier guinea pigs ended up dead, if I’m not mistaken. Look where it landed me.”

  Lyköan had dropped any pretence of hiding his two forays into the Innovac labyrinth. The yíb was an open book. But giving it up had gained him only enough freedom to pace his cell.

  “We didn’t set out to kill anyone. In pursuit of the interests of science, however, casualties are not uncommon. Someone with a more open mind might consider your current circumstances extremely fortunate. In any case, your unique DNA was optimal for our work. It required far less alteration at the molecular level to produce exactly what we needed. In fact, we used much of it intact, a template by which to craft ourselves.”

  “Which explains the creepy similarities in all you people.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But how were you able to pull it off? Hide all the mistakes you made early on ― all the subjects who were dying?”

  “Apparently random incidents spread across the whole wide world. How could anyone link them ― if they weren’t looking? And why would they look?”

  Why are you telling me all this? Possible reasons were few and not very encouraging, all variations on the two exits Pandavas had already mentioned.

  “You said something earlier, when I first came out of the fog ― something about how, if this alteration caused other undesirable side-effects, like ― just for the sake of argument now ― insanity? ― that I would soon be learning all about it firsthand. What’d you mean by that?”

  Instead of answering the question, Pandavas posed one of his own. “Ever contemplate the nature of the universe, Lyköan?”

  “All the time,” Lyköan answered sardonically. “But I don’t lose sleep over it. And it’s sort of hard right now ― thinking about anything metaphysical ― being the prisoner of a messianic lunatic and all.”

  Pandavas’s lip curled into a borderline smile. “Remember earlier when we were talking about you winning the genetic sweepstakes? It was something we learned quite early in our research.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “That the so called ‘garbage’ in DNA – the seemingly useless hundreds of millions of gross pairings of adenine and the rest ― that seem to serve absolutely no genetic purpose? When we exposed them to certain Fibonacci and fractal progressions and retrogressions ― well, it became obvious that we were uncovering nothing less than the notations of the designer ― startlingly obvious and nothing that we would ever have anticipated – the maker’s virtual palimpsest. The complete treatise of existence. Are you familiar with the Anthropic Coincidences?”

  “Some kind of argument for the existence of God, isn’t it?” Let Pandavas blather.

  “More of an argument for the existence of the universe. Simply put ― perhaps too simply ― the coincidences start with the formation of the atomic structure of matter ― where even the most infinitesimal variance in the weight or size of the nuclear proton, neutron or electron and one of two results occur ― either hydrogen never forms at all or the universe that results consists only of hydrogen ― no other element can exist. That in turn would make the nuclear triple alpha formation of helium impossible ― leaving the universe bereft of stars. It takes yet another coincidentally exquisite collision, requiring infinite precision, to create carbon ― and onward down the periodic table. Without carbon there can be no biologic life as we know it. No carbon equals no life equals no man to question the inherent riddles of the coincidences.

  “Awareness of this faultless progression of unlikely occurrences can shake even the most hardened atheist’s belief in a universe built solely upon random chance. The relationship of proton to neutron to electron is known as ‘symmetry’ and it’s this mathematical hierarchical structure that, since its discovery, has pointed physicists towards new knowledge and understanding ― in effect tells them where to look.

  “All of a sudden, in ‘deep time’ as the physicists say, far down that progressive chain of elegant permutations, DNA suddenly appears. It’s there in the sequence of events, but how? And even more telling and compelling ― why?”

  Pandavas was waxing poetic. Or simply running out of oxygen?

  “Most obviously and naturally, by the time DNA appears ― and more so as it evolves forward in time ― it will contain the complete history of all terrestrial biology. Something like a computer hard drive, the entire record of anthropic existence is integrated in the narrative. But even more than that ― pursuing the sequences further ― we find them expressing pure algorithms that point the biophysicist towards the answers to all the ultimate and previously unfathomable questions: the nature of life, the future of evolution ― why, it makes completely unnecessary the biologist’s painstaking cladistic analysis in its entirety.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “I’m sure you’re absorbing enough to make the desired impression,” Pandavas insisted.

  “Oh it’s making an impression alright,” Lyköan replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Avatar and the Artifact

  Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.

  Julius Marx : The House that Shadows Built

  There was obviously more than one possible explanation for what was happening here, but every one of them had begun circling the locus of mental instability the same way buzzards circle above a rotting carcass. One possibility? A familiar cinematic device, the comatose shooting victim clinging to life somewhere in the Bumrungrad Hospital ICU, experiencing a classic REM dream sequence.

  Dreams feel real and rational, Lyköan was thinking. But sensation, pain in particular – that’s something that rarely enters the dream-world. Disoriented – no doubt about it – but it hurts like hell. So this – this nightmare – even with all its dream-like qualities, it’s undoubtedly real. Meaning I’m wide awake and the prisoner of a madman. Or maybe it’s me who’s fallen off the deep end – gone stark raving... Madmen feel pain too...

  What Pandavas was saying sounded a helluva lot crazier than what Lyköan was thinking. Freedom to pace this room hadn’t changed that. Journalists, when wishing to describe a lunatic without actually using the term, will often write, ‘He delivered a long rambling statement’. It described Pandavas perfectly. What was he spouting off about now?

  “The ancient Romans were quite aware that the Earth was a sphere. Did you know that, Lyköan? Sculptures executed as early as the first century depict archetypal Rome in victory, with a vanquishing foot upon the globe. When and how did conventional wisdom lose touch with that knowledge? Do you think it was just another casualty of the Dark Ages?”

  “I dunno,” Lyköan answered calmly, assuming Pandavas was not posing the question rhetorically. Anyone’s mental health can be debated, but if you wish to deal rationally with a potential lunatic, it's generally best to pretend to be sane yourself.

  “The answer is an emphatic ‘no’,” Pandavas said, answering his own question. “It was the result of other forces – pernicious and pervasive currents in the stream of history.”

  “That’s pretty vague, isn’t it?” Draw him out. Let him talk.

  “The forces involved are not ― by their very nature ― given
to precise description.”

  “Jesus, Doctor, call them something. Maybe then I’ll understand what you’re driving at.”

  “It’s a difficult concept ― and requires a great deal of open-mindedness. I question whether you’re ready to accept the proof.”

  “Try me, I may surprise you.”

  “As you wish. Let’s call this arrangement of forces the Artifact.”

  “Great. We’ve got a name. What makes this Artifact so interesting?”

  “Think back to our earlier discussion ― the variability of potential futures. You can accept that much of my argument, yes?"

  Lyköan had to agree that he did.

  We might use Plato’s prisoners in the cave metaphor. If the shadows cast by their campfire is their only view of the world, the Artifact ― in metaphysical parlance a Demiurge ― is the fire, the face of hysteria that lies hidden behind the opaque veil that creates the full extent of our perceptual reality. It is this Demiurge that deflects human understanding, projecting only cave shadows, distortions and fabrications that conceal the truth.”

  “A Demiurge is it? And what are you, its high priest?”

  “Not at all. In fact, far from it, for we intend to draw away the veil and reveal the truth this Artifact has kept hidden.”

  “Sounds Gnostic. The hidden truth to which only you hold the key. By no means an original concept, you know. What makes you believe this Artifact actually exists?”

  “Innumerable experiments we’ve conducted show it to be as real as any protein expression, as true as, say, the force of gravity.”

  “And the purpose of this Artifact?” Don’t lunatics always believe their lunacies?

  “To prevent the Urgrund, the Overmind ― God, if you will ― from knowing itself.”

  “Why? What would be the purpose?” Lyköan asked, genuinely incredulous. Christ, this is really too much! No doubt about it, Pandavas was delusional. Rolling his eyes as he circled the room, Lyköan passed the locked door’s tiny window and caught a glimpse of the two guards standing outside.