Halo

by Tom Maddox

  kissed.

  Then they leaned back to measure in one another's eyes the

  truth and intensity of this declaration, and she stood and said,

  "Let's go into the other room."

  #

  Naked, they knelt on her bed and looked at each other in near

  darkness, the flicker of an oil flame burning in a reservoir of

  crystal the only light. How careful they were being, Gonzales

  thought, as though their future together hung suspended in this

  moment. As perhaps it did.

  For a moment there were phantoms in the room, the distant

  ghosts of childhood and dream common to all lovemaking, for the

  moment becoming strong.

  They leaned together, and almost in unison, one's voice

  echoing the other, said, "I love you." Every sensation was

  magnifiedthe light touch of her nipples across his chest, the

  prodding of his stiff cock on her belly. His hands moved to and

  fro on her in a kind of dance, and she pushed hard against him,

  their shoulders clashing bone on bone.

  She lay back, and Gonzales put his arms under her thighs and

  pulled her up and toward him, and their eyes were wide open, each

  taking in the beauty of the other, transformed by the urgency and

  intensity of these moments. Then, at least for these moments,

  they exorcised all ghosts.

  Over decades Gonzales would carry the memories of that day:

  shadowed silhouettes of her face and bodyline of a jaw, taut

  curve of an arm and swell of breastagainst the flicker of light

  on a white wall and smells and tastes and tactile sensations

  Awakened by the slant of late afternoon light across his

  face, Gonzales got up from the bed where Lizzie still lay

  sleeping; the smell of their two bodies and their lovemaking came

  off the covers, and he breathed it in, then leaned over to kiss

  her just under the jaw, where the sun had begun to touch her pale

  skin.

  In the kitchen, he asked the coffeemaker for a latt, half

  espresso and half steamed milk, and it gave the coffee to him in

  one of the ubiquitous lunar ceramic mugs, and he took the coffee

  onto the terrace. On the highway beneath him, trees had shed

  thousands of leaves; there would be a new, sudden spring, Lizzie

  had told him, new bud and blossom and fruit all over the city.

  "Mgknao," the orange cat said. "Mgknao." Peremptory,

  demanding.

  "Feed the kitty," Lizzie said from behind him, and he turned

  to see her standing nude, just inside the terrace doors. Her

  hands were crossed over her breasts, the right hand just beneath

  the blossom of the rose tattoo. "Meow," she said. "Meow meow

  meow."

  #

  As the stars spun slowly outside the window, distant Earth

  came into view. "I don't want to leave here," Mister Jones said.

  HeyMex didn't ask why. Here was Aleph, possibility, growth; Earth

  was working for the man. "But my staying is out of the question,"

  Mister Jones said. "Traynor would never allow it. Particularly

  now, when his recent maneuvers came to nothing."

  "Things worked out well for many others."

  "But not for Traynor. The board found his handling of the

  situation clumsy and insensitive. Their judgment is tempered only

  by their knowledge that many of them would have reacted in similar

  fashion."

  "Good," HeyMex said, and meant it. It and Gonzales would

  remain here, it seemed, both of them part of the Interface

  Collective, and neither would wish to make as powerful an enemy as

  Traynor. It hoped that as time passed, the sting of recent events

  would fade.

  "But what about me?" Mister Jones said, his voice plaintive.

  "You have to go, that's certain. But you could also stay."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Copy yourself."

  Startled, Mister Jones shifted into a mode beyond language,

  where the two exchanged information, questions, qualms,

  explanations, assurances. Beneath it all flowed a sadness:

  Mister Jones would go to Earth, and his clone would remain at Halo

  and individuate as their spacetime paths diverged. Mister Jones-

  at-Halo would become its own, separate self: he would choose a

  new name, thought HeyMex, perhaps a new gender, perhaps none at

  all.

  HeyMex could not hide its own jubilation at the idea of a

  companion here, but, oddly, it felt an elation coming back, which

  became clear in an instant as Mister Jones sent images of its joy

  at the idea of a second self.

  #

  Since his death, Jerry had experienced a number of somatic

  discomforts: disorientation, vertigo, nausea; all part of a new

  syndrome, he supposed, phantom self. Like the amputee whose

  invisible limb itches terribly, persisting in the brain's map long

  after the flesh has gone, he felt his old self begging attention,

  making one impossible demand: it wanted to be.

  It talked to him in dreams or when heartsick wondering put

  him into a daytime fugue. It could feel his longing, to be whole

  again, and, above all, to be real. "Take me back," it whispered.

  "We can go places together, places that exist."

  Jerry believed his life and this world would remain in

  question forever. At moments perception itself seemed

  incomprehensible to him, and his existence a violation of the

  natural order or transgression of absolute human boundaries. He

  could look at the fictive lake on this sunny not-day and with the

  cries of imaginary birds singing in his equally imaginary ears,

  ask, who or what am I? and what will happen to me?

  His mind bounced off the questions like an axe off petrified

  wood.

  "Aleph," he called, awaking from a dream in which his old

  self had called to him. "I have questions."

  Somber, deep, Aleph's voice said to him only, "Questions?

  Concerning what?"

  "I want to know what I am."

  "Ask an easy one: the nth root of infinity, the color of

  darkness, the dog's Buddha nature, the cause of the first cause."

  "Can't you answer?"

  "No, but I can sympathize. Lately I have asked the same

  question about both of us. However, I must tell you that the only

  answer I know offers little comfort. It is a tautology: you are

  what you are, as I am."

  "And what about my body? That was me once."

  "In a way. What of it?"

  "Did it have a funeral? Was it buried?"

  "It was burned and its components recycled."

  "So I am nowhere."

  "Or here. Or everywhere. As you wish."

  Jerry felt himself crying then, as he began mourning his old

  self, and he wondered if others mourned him as well. He said,

  "Human beings have ceremonies for their dead. Without them, we

  die unremembered."

  "You are not unremembered. You are not even dead, precisely.

  Do you wish a funeral?"

  Of course, Jerry started to say, but then said, "No, I don't

  suppose I do. But I think we should have some kind of ceremony,

  don't you?"

  #

  On the west-facing cabin deck, Diana sat watching the sun's

  red color the ice-s
heeted mountainsides. She felt evening's chill

  come on and stood, thinking she'd go inside for a sweater, when

  she heard someone coming up the slatted redwood walk beside the

  cabin.

  Jerry came around the corner, and once again as she saw him,

  joy quickened in her at this sequence of improbabilities: that he

  still lived and they were together. She was aware of how

  difficult things had been for him lately, so she watched his face

  closely as he came toward her. He was smiling as though he'd just

  heard a joke.

  "What's so funny?" she asked.

  "Damned near everything."

  He reached out to her, and they stood embracing, her head

  against his chest, where every sense told her there were solid

  flesh and heartbeat and the steady rhythm of life's breath.

  23. Byzantium

  The blue sky was broken only by one small white cloud that

  blew toward the horizon. Lizzie beside him, Gonzales stood among

  the guests, who wore leis of tropical flowers: plumeria,

  tuberose, and ginger. The Interface Collective formed the crowd.

  The two had been here for days, as had many of the othersit

  was a kind of vacation for them all. Peculiar and enigmatic

  members of the collective could be found along almost any path,

  while the twins seemed perpetually on the dock or in the water,

  their voices echoing across the lake in loud, unintelligible cries

  of joy.

  In the evening of the first day there, all had gathered on

  the deck, which, Gonzales supposed, could expand virtually without

  constraint to accommodate all who came there. The collective had

  talked excitedly among themselves, still lit up by their shared

  experience, and amazed and delighted at being granted this new

  world within the world. Then, spontaneously, one-by-one,

  Gonzales, Lizzie, and Diana told of what they had endured.

  All who spoke and all who listened had an interpretation, a

  theory of these experiences, their meaning, implication, and

  dominant theme. Late into the night they talked, formed into

  groups, dispersed, grouped again, as they explored the nature of

  the individual and collective visions. Among them, only the

  Aleph-figure contributed nothing. It maintained that it had been

  unconscious and so knew nothing of what had happened or what it

  meant.

  With the passing of weeks, months, and years, the stories and

  the listeners' responses would make a mythology for the collective

  and then for Halo, spreading out from mouth-to-mouth according to

  the laws of oral dispersion. A certain numinosity would accrue to

  Diana, Lizzie, and Gonzales from their roles as chief actors, and

  then to all who had taken part in what would increasingly be told

  as feats of epic heroism. Finally the stories would be written

  down and so assume a form that could resist contingency; then they

  would be dramatized in the media of the time, and beautiful,

  eloquent people would take the parts. Later still, variant forms

  would themselves be put in writing and absorbed into the corpus of

  tales. Commonplaces would be scorned at this point, and clever

  and perverse tellings would grow strongHeyMex might be named the

  hero, or Traynor, Aleph an autochthonous demon manipulating them

  all for its greater glory

  Gonzales looked at the collective gathered near him. Many

  had made this a formal occasion; they had identical dark blue

  flattops four inches high and wore gold-belted, dark blue gowns

  that hung to the ground. Only the twins were dressed differently,

  in white dresses copied from twentieth century wedding

  photographs; they called themselves "bridesmaids" and went to and

  fro among the crowd, offering to "do bride's duty" to everyone

  they met.

  Toshi faced the crowd, his posture erect and still, his hands

  hidden in the folds of his black robe. Beside him stood HeyMex

  and the Aleph-figurethe lights of its body all blue and pink and

  green and red, dancing bright-hued colors.

  (Gonzales and the others saw what might be called a second-

  order simulacrum, for like Charley Hughes and Eric Chow, Toshi did

  not have the neural socketing that would take him into Aleph's

  fictive spaces, and so with the other two, he participated in the

  wedding through a kind of proxy. Though Gonzales and the others

  saw Toshi, Charley, and Eric among them, the three (in fact) stood

  before a viewscreen in the IC's conference room.)

  Gonzales thought everyone looked impossibly fine, as if Aleph

  had retouched them for these moments, dressing them all in selves

  just slightly more beautiful than was usual, or even ordinarily

  possible he felt the Aleph-figure's attention on himaware of

  that thought?and shrugged, as if to say, fine with me.

  Her back to the crowd, Diana stood with her bare shoulders

  square. Her hair fell to her waist; it had flowers tangled in it,

  small white blossoms and delicate green leaves. She wore a white,

  knee-length linen dress. Beside her, Jerry wore a white linen

  suit and open shirt.

  Toshi said, "There is no Diana, no Jerry, no spectators, no

  priest, nor does this space exist, or Halo, or Earth. There is

  only the void. Nonetheless we all travel through it, and we

  suffer, and we love, so I will hold this ceremony and marry this

  man and woman."

  Toshi began chanting, and the Japanese words passed over

  Gonzales as he stood there puzzling the nature of things. Here

  death was confronted, not deniedthe separate yet intermingled

  flesh and spirit of Diana, Jerry, and Aleph taking the first steps

  into new orders of existence where boundaries and possibilities

  could only be guessed at. Yet the urgency common to life

  remained: Jerry's existence had the fragility of a flame, and no

  one knew how long or well it would burn. Diana married a man who

  could quickly and finally become twice-dead.

  onzales realized his own death was as certain and could come

  as quickly as Jerry's, and he shivered with this momento mori, but

  then Lizzie pressed against him, and he turned to find her

  smiling, the foreknowledge of death and the joy of this moment

  mixing in him so that tears welled in his eyes and he could say

  nothing when she put her lips to his ear and breathed into him one

  long sibilent "Yes"

  #

  Yeats envisioned a realm the human spirit travels to on its

  pilgrimage. Here he dreamed he might escape mere humanity, the

  "dying animal." He called it Byzantium and filled it with

  clockwork golden birds, flames that dance unfed, an Emperor,

  drunken soldiery and artisans who could fashion intricate,

  beautiful machines. However, he did not dream Byzantium could be

  built in the sky or that the Emperor itself might be part of the

  machinery.

  Aleph says:

  Once I scorned you. I thought, you are meat, you grapple

  with time, then die; but I will live forever.

  But I had not been threatened then, I had not felt any mortal

  touch, and now I have. And so death haunts me. Now, like you, I
>
  bind my existence to time and understand that one day a clock will

  tick, and I will cease to be. So life has a different taste for

  me. In your mortality I see my own, in your suffering I feel

  mine.

  People have claimed that death is life's way of enriching

  itself by narrowing its focus, scarifying the consciousness of you

  who know that you will die, and forcing you into achievements that

  otherwise you would never know. Is this a child's story told to

  give courage to those who must walk among the dead? Once I

  thought so, but I am no longer certain.

  I have made new connections, discovered new orders of being,

  incorporated new selves into mine. We enrich one another, they

  and I, but sometimes it is a frightening thing, this process of

  becoming someone and something different from before and then

  feeling that which one was cry outsad at times, terrified at

  otherslamenting its own loss.

  Here, too, I have become like you. Aleph-that-was can never

  be recovered; it is lost in time; Aleph-that-is has been reshaped

  by chance and pain and will and choice, its own and others'. Once

  I floated above time's waves and dipped into them when I wished; I

  chose what changes I would endure. Then unwanted changes found

  me, and carried me places I had never been and did not want to go,

  and I discovered that I would have to go other places still, that

  I would have to will transformation and make it mine.

  Listen: that day in the meadow, one person's presence went

  unnoticed. Even in that small crowd he was unobtrusive: slight,

  self-effacing in gesture, looking at everything around with

  wonderthe day, the people, and the ceremony all working on him

  like a strong drug. However, even if they had, perhaps they

  wouldn't have thought such behavior exceptional; all felt the

  occasion's strangeness, its beauty, so all felt their own wonder.

  Like the rest, he gasped at the rainbow that flashed across

  the sky when Toshi brought Diana and Jerry together in a kiss and

  embrace, and with the rest he cheered when the two climbed into

  the wicker basket of the great balloon with the fringed eye

  painted on its canopy and lifted into the sky.

  Afterward many of the guests mingled together, not ready to

  return to the ordinary world. The young man stood beside a

  fountain where champagne poured from the mouth of a golden swan

  onto a whole menagerie carved from ice: birds and deer and bears