The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  Pandavas was right. Lyköan knew he was only reacting out of fear. While the idea of metaphysical control of reality by some malignant spiritual force was something straight Out of the Silent Planet, thus far Pandavas had been able to deliver completely convincing proofs for everything he claimed.

  “Let’s try a different tack, shall we?” Pandavas said, walking to the center of the room, eclipsing Lyköan’s view of Whitehall.

  “You do understand don’t you, Lyköan, that even if we exterminate every human life in this plane of existence, in truth, not a single, solitary soul will be extinguished, because they already also exist in a multitude of other realities? All we are attempting to do here is briefly short-circuit the Artifact’s control ― interrupt its reign of pain and terror. Certain specific consciousnesses may end, but the universal procession of being will not. The power of the Artifact, substantial as it is, cannot affect that. The river of birth, death, and rebirth will not end. And what we’re proposing isn’t evil – not at all. We’re only providing the necessary and natural shock the great sweep of existence periodically requires.”

  “Nothing more than an existential high colonic ― is that it?” Lyköan spat back. “Shit. If that’s true ― just release your plague. Why are you so damned interested in convincing me it’s all for the greater good?” There were only about four feet separating the two men. Lyköan considered closing the gap.

  “Why do you suppose that is, Lyköan?” Pandavas asked.

  “For the life of me, I don’t know. So I’ll ask again, why bother with me?”

  “Because, in order to manifest itself in the physical world, the great slumbering Overmind ― the universal collective unconscious ― God in your cosmogony ― Lord Shiva in our earlier example ― has need of a certain type of vessel – a tabula rasa. Unfortunately, that vessel’s current owner ― more appropriately: current resident ― still has a few misgivings about performing the Lord’s work.” A pained, but churlish smile crept across Pandavas’s face.

  “Right, free will ― that was your earlier argument, wasn’t it?” Lyköan replied. “So this is what becomes of the empty husk left in the vat. Shiva’s vessel? Sounds charming. Wacky as all get out, but clear enough now that you’ve explained that final detail. So what becomes of that other Lyköan’s, uh ― essence is the word you seem to like ― when I drop in and take over in that other world?”

  “As you’ve already experienced, existence is extremely malleable, within certain broad limits. That other Egan Lyköan is already you. It’s enough to know that human consciousness as we experience it is something of a sophisticated parlor trick ― a completely convincing illusion ― almost every human who ever existed has been taken in from birth ― conceived and executed by the Artifact itself. The very basis of its control. But until Parousia arrives it’s the only context in which our intention ― free will ― ever gets a chance to operate.”

  Wait a minute! That hot dog vendor Sun Shi had said something similar – especially about the presence of intention in the illusion.

  “But will I retain my identity ― my sense of self? If not, there’s no sense in making the trip.”

  “I’m afraid that’s a theological question,” Pandavas answered, “a ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ sort of thing. I’d be lying if I told you I was certain of the answer.”

  “I thought you had all the answers?”

  Pandavas ignored the remark. “We do know that an implanted consciousness supersedes any preexistent consciousness, but it’s possible that, over time, some type of symbiosis might arise. Since we have no experience – no history – with the long-term effects of transmigration, I’d be deceiving you if I guaranteed anything of the sort. Every second spent in any single reality is already fraught with far greater uncertainties than that. You need to weigh the risks against everything that might be gained by taking them.”

  Lyköan carried this supposition to its logical conclusion. Pandavas had suggested earlier that refusing his offer was tantamount to attempting to thwart the very intention of the universe ― spitting in God’s eye. Lucifer had supposedly done no less ― with much the same thing at stake ― and infinitesimally less chance of success. But damn, he still considered refusing, just to be a spanner in the works ― even though it would be so much sweeter to accept the argument, take the second chance, and accept the alternative.

  “You know what finally convinced me that Dr. Pandavas was barking up the right tree, lad?” Whitehall said, filling the awkward silence. “The arguments I found most compelling ― why this reality is ripe for something?” Pandavas stepped aside, allowing Whitehall to make eye contact again.

  “Consider the skyrocketing incidence of worldwide sociopathic aberrations, the mushrooming increase in diagnosed mental disorders ― especially of the homicidal and suicidal variety, the huge jump in global chemical dependency and sexually predatory behavior, and particularly the recent explosion in theology-based terrorism. You can’t overturn an idle rock these days without exposing some diabolical, even lethal, corporate or governmental graft. And we can’t overlook the proliferation of new diseases: viral, like HIV; bacterial, like XRSA; or prion-triggered like Creutzfeldt-Jacobs.

  “By no means an exhaustive list, you understand, only the tip of an enormous iceberg ― misery and insanity of every description and occurring at an ever-accelerating pace ― even without including the depredations of war. I omit warfare only because it’s been mankind’s favorite pastime from the beginning, so it would be unfair to add it to the list. But everything else? Things as commonplace and irrational as random naked aggression ― road rage, highway shootings and shootouts, drug, sex, and gambling addictions, criminal obsessive-compulsive disorders, dysfunctional…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the point,” Lyköan interrupted.

  “And that is only the effects human beings are having on each other. The human race is literally destroying life on this planet. Pandavas has informed me that a thousand years ago plant and animal extinctions were occurring at a natural background rate of maybe one to five a year. Today, that number has ballooned to nearly twenty-five ― a day! You know what that means? It’s called mass extinction.

  “Whole ecosystems are vanishing, simply to support the ever-increasing number of hungry human mouths. The planet has reached a tipping point...

  “Do you know what is usually the first casualty of an ecosystem collapse?”

  “No, but I bet you’re about to tell me,” Lyköan said. Having listened to the Whitehall’s diatribe, he had become far more concerned with the maniacal fire in the man’s eyes.

  “The apex animal,” Whitehall said. “Do you know which species sits at the very pinnacle of every ecosystem on this planet?”

  “You and me?” Lyköan suggested.

  “Precisely. And that is why the planet is doomed, Lyköan, with or without our intervention. Any simpleton can see it’s the foreshadowing of an age-ending event. I am not entirely convinced it’s this Artifact desperately tightening its stranglehold on humanity or losing its grip altogether, but I do know that when the flood strikes it is preferable to be aboard the ark than take your chances in the deluge.”

  “But you, Lyköan, you need not remain trapped by this particular track of hours,” Pandavas finished for Whitehall. “You have a choice. You can choose to help us ― and obtain your soul’s desire in the process ― or you can die here anonymously while we proceed with our plan ― and let me assure you, we shall. Your refusal may cause a short delay in our effort ― I’ll be perfectly honest with you ― but understand, if necessary, we can always find or construct another equally acceptable vessel.”

  Lyköan turned to Whitehall for a final barrage. “I really thought you were a better man than this, Whitehall. Too civilized to throw in with a mass murderer.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Lyköan, but civilization has ceased to be an object worthy of retention. Doctor Pandavas is completely convincing on that point. Thoug
h as yet unaware of it, existence is perched upon a self-realizing cascade and I intend to do everything in my power to help it along.”

  “My own theology is pretty weak,” Lyköan returned with faux conviction, “but I find it incredibly hard to believe ― no matter what controls existence ― that you’re going to be able to pull this off, even with the purest of intentions. I keep thinking something’s sure to trip you up ― a person, a government, a leak, some mistake or miscalculation along the way ― plain chance. Even if you’re right and this Artifact actually exists, its power and intellect are way beyond any human being’s ― present company included,” he shot a glance at Pandavas. “Do you really believe it’s possible to outsmart something that, by your own admission, controls our reality?”

  Pandavas looked at Lyköan incredulously. “Who said anything about outsmarting it? All we have to do is expose it. The rest is up to Shiva. But we’ve already covered this ground ― I’m not going to repeat myself. You have until tomorrow morning to make a decision. Whatever you decide, we need to move on ― with or without your help.”

  Signaling one of the two plumbers standing outside the locked door, he added, “You’ve already been given more than enough time to consider your options.” The door opened into the room and Whitehall exited. Briefly silhouetted in the doorway, Pandavas turned back to face Lyköan one last time. “The original two exits haven’t changed, my friend,” he said with finality and was gone.

  Plumber number two closed the door. His magnified face filled the tiny window for an instant before vanishing, leaving Lyköan alone. Pandavas had alluded to tomorrow morning. Lyköan wondered how many hours remained of today.

  * * *

  “We may need a few more fingers to tie this knot,” Sun Shi said clearly into Nora’s ear. Smoke-filled and dark, the Black Boar was bustling with dinner-hour activity. More than a dozen local patrons sat at the bar and around half a dozen small tables filled with glasses of mostly amber liquid and plates of beef and potatoes. The Boar, Haldon Heath’s only public house, served as its unofficial community center daily from this hour until well after midnight. Nora and her companion sat somberly at a small corner table, obviously the two people most out of place in the otherwise boisterously convivial room.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Nora asked.

  “As long as the original device hasn’t been destroyed, yes,” Sun Shi assured her through the double-bud’s earpiece.

  The search protocol he was walking her through was designed to locate Egan’s yíb by identifying its stealth program’s unique signature. Bathed in the pale blue radiance of an identical yíb’s flickering screen, she completed the last few keystrokes as Sun Shi instructed. Ning Zhòngní had brought the device with him from Salisbury, where it had been delivered earlier that afternoon, and now sat across the ancient wooden table, trying to appear more comfortable than he was. With any luck, once the command sequence was initiated through the Innovac LAN back at Cairncrest, Nora would get a chance to learn where Egan’s yíb, and maybe even Egan himself, were being held.

  What she could do with that information was still in doubt. As Master Sun had just admitted over the phone, any rescue attempt would require access to the restricted Innovac labs ― and at least one accomplice. Presently, she had neither.

  When the screen acknowledged acceptance of the final command, she closed the attention-drawing device and allowed her eyes to again grow accustomed to the soft ambient light in this not-so-private corner of the pub. Nora slowly shook her head, thinking back to her conversation with Kosoy earlier that day. While Marty had listened patiently as Nora enumerated the details of the Innovac conspiracy, until she provided him with hard evidence, he refused to assign anyone at CDC to investigate.

  She had saved his career only days before and already he’d returned to full CYA mode. When a reputation and paycheck were involved, she should have expected it. An outlandish conspiracy theory brought out that kind of response in people, even people who owed you. Until she provided more than mere accusations, he had explained apologetically, even if he was personally convinced that the world was actually coming to an end, which he admitted he wasn’t, there was no sense in trying to move her request up the HHS chain of command or going to bat for her by contacting another arm of the government. But maybe now, with this replacement yíb, she could get Marty something that would compel him to take that risk.

  Rurally-accented conversations wafted in the smoky pub. On the verge of a world-threatening pandemic, this outpost of civilization was oblivious. So calm and unconcerned, she thought, peering into the affable darkness, totally oblivious about how close we are to annihilation.

  As if reading her thoughts, Master Sun brought her back from this self-absorption with, “People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”

  “Absolutely amazing, Master Sun. I can see why Egan found you so captivating. How do you do it?”

  “No magician shares his secrets,” the abbot answered calmly. “For now just keep in mind that the next deluge is not the worst we have to fear.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  This Shelvy and Shallow Shore

  Then the thing happened – which has happened to more persons than to me, when principle and personal interest find themselves in opposition to each other and a choice has to be made – I let principle go and went over to the other side.

  The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan : A Claimant’s Story

  Sitting naked on the edge of the coffin-like tank, legs dangling in the frigid, oily liquid, Lyköan stared between his knees, barely recognizing the reflection of his own dazed face. Five lab-coated technicians were busily attaching a forest of filament-thin wires to his goose-bumped flesh. A few minutes earlier, needle-tipped lines of coiled IV tubing had been inserted into blood vessels at the backs of his knees, the insides of his elbows and both sides of his neck. The spaghetti tangle of electrical and fluid lines ran to a blinking bank of whirring machines and electronics playing a techno symphony along one entire wall of the emersion chamber. Even in the abstract, Lyköan barely understood their purpose. All he knew was that their hypnotic rhythm and the chill of the infusing fluid was about to usher him into exile far away from here. The sooner it happened and the farther it took him, the better.

  The barrel of a figurative gun had been placed to his head and he had flinched. Once he had, any pretension to volition had evaporated. It had been so simple ― no more than giving in to the inevitable. Simple, yes, but by no means easy. Life’s most difficult decisions never are. He hadn’t chosen to participate in this nightmare. It had enveloped him, leaving viable options in woefully short supply. No doubt about it, wherever he wound up would be an improvement.

  He had been beaten. From this point forward, whether his fugitive existence ran long or short, proved a success or failure, at least it would not carry the baggage of this particular fucked-up world. In the end, the instincts and intuition he had depended upon for so long had proven unreliable, incapable of providing a way out and he had begrudgingly abandoned them. The most important choice in his entire life, therefore, had been made by what had passed for self-interest. When the decision had been demanded, it had seemed less foolhardy to choose life over death. While there might be exceptions to such a decision, this certainly wasn’t one of them.

  He watched the expression on the face reflected in the pool snigger with understanding. Once the revolver’s cocked hammer struck, mere minutes from now, all these self-indulgent recriminations would become history. However uncertain he might be about making it, the decision had been made. Even if he wanted to, there was no time left to paint his way out of this present corner.

  He had wasted all of the previous night’s precious hours plodding step by illogical step through a poorly-conceived escape plan that finally had to be discarded as utterly unworkable. In his imaginings, the plan always began with the same r
ash act. He would overpower whichever plumber escorted him on his next bathroom break, grab the man’s access card, and race for the stairway exit door.

  Beyond that point, however, the plan invariably unraveled into a series of unanswerable questions. Could he elude or overpower the second plumber? Would the access card open that particular door or was each card keyed to only certain locks? Some locks might be biometrically enabled, requiring thumbprint, iris, retinal scan or voice recognition confirmations, maybe all four simultaneously. Let that go. Assuming he succeeded in opening the door, should he head up or down the stairs? How would he find his way out when he had no idea exactly where he was being held? With surveillance cameras positioned everywhere, wouldn’t he be located and trapped or the purloined access card disabled, maybe before he could even secure his bearings?

  And the hurdles to a clean getaway didn’t end there. Which direction should he run? What obstacles stood in his way? A single mistake in this completely unfamiliar environment meant recapture and, as Pandavas had promised, death. Just another “deceased” in the long list of such entries in Innovac’s Atypical Genome file. Even if he did somehow miraculously manage to escape into the open air, how could one man on foot, with dozens of people after him, possibly cross miles of open country undetected? And where would he run?

  It might conceivably work as Hollywood screenplay material, but here in the real world, this one anyway, the plan depended entirely on pure dumb luck – way too much of it. It was as irrational an idea as that earlier urge to crash through the narrow cell door window had been. Were martyrdom impulses some side effect of the nano-scriptors? Thankfully, neither that earlier urge nor this crazy escape idea had proven irresistible.