The Illusory Prophet

by Susan Kaye Quinn

“No,” I say. “I can’t reach Leopold right now for whatever reason.” This bothers me—a lot. And I don’t like the implication. That maybe I can’t reach Leopold because he has no soul. There’s no song that’s him, playing on past his death, and all I can find when I reach for the ex-Buddhist-monk that Leopold once was, when he was human and for sure had a soul, is a fanciful recreation of the Dalai Lama. At least I know the Dalai was human, and yet, I’m not finding him, either. Why not? Has too much time passed? Do the souls pass away like the echo of a song that fades over time?

  I’m drifting again. Cyrus and Tristan are waiting for me to say something. “We’ll just have to do this without him.” I rise up from the Dalai’s mat.

  “We’re ready when you are,” Tristan says.

  “Let’s go.” I brush the grass from my pants and march out of the tent.

  Walking into Lenora’s apartment at the edge of Seattle is disorienting.

  I’m flashing back in time to all those sessions with her as my patron, guiding my art, while I secretly lusted after her. Or probably not so secretly, as I now realize, with the benefit of many lifetimes worth of perspective and a clearer idea of how much the ascenders can perceive—namely, everything. Plus, my love for Kamali blares an epic contrast of emotion with that boyish lusting for the feminine perfection that Lenora seemed to represent.

  Her beautiful bodyform is still the same… but I’m not.

  She flits ahead of me to her transmission room to check out the uplink and make sure it’s still operational. Her pristine home is filled with Resistance militia and jivs.

  Miriam keeps pace with me, her new ascender-augment leg shiny next to the dull-and-battered jiv one. “This place is like an open box,” she complains. “It’s a security nightmare.”

  I smirk. “You should see the all-glass art studio.”

  She glares at me, which just threatens to make me laugh more, but I tame it. She gives some kind of hand signal to two of her jivs, and they take up stations by the door to Lenora’s transmission room as we step through.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I say to Miriam, and it’s the truth.

  “Between your people and mine, we have enough to see them coming.” She grimaces when she sees the small size of the transmission room. “But we won’t be able to stop them. Maybe not even slow them down.”

  “Understood.”

  She peers over Lenora’s shoulder, watching as she manipulates the holo controls for the transmission chair. Miriam’s squint is suspicious as if she expects Lenora to betray us.

  “You okay here?” she asks me.

  I want to say I’m not okay anywhere, but now’s not the time for that. “Yeah.”

  She gives me a nod. “I’ll check once more with the perimeter watch, then I’ll be back.”

  I nod my agreement, and she takes off at ascender speed, slipping out the door just as Tristan strides in. Cyrus trails behind him despite my strenuous insistence that he didn’t need to come. At least, he’s suited up in black body armor like the rest and heavily armed.

  “You ready, Eli?” Tristan asks. He’s got a short wave comm he’s using to communicate with Grayson. He’s stationed by the front door of the apartment, nominally in charge of the operations on the Resistance side, while Miriam commands the jiv contingent. It’s a joint operation, and it’s working surprisingly well.

  As it should—all of humanity should be together on this. And with any luck, the ascender world as well.

  I nod. “As soon as the chair is ready, I’m in it.”

  Tristan whispers something into his comm. Cyrus checks his weapon and takes a position near the door. Several more Resistance militia file into the room, and Tristan directs them to their spots.

  As far as we know, our cloaked transports outside haven’t yet been detected. But as soon as I connect to Orion and open my mouth, the clock will start ticking. Augustus’s sentries are still scouring the mountains outside Seattle for the fleeing Resistance cells. It will take no time for them to redirect their firepower here. Which means my speech has to be short—or the combined warriors of the Resistance and the Makers will have to hold the apartment while I finish.

  I’m going for short.

  As Miriam says, if they come for us, all of our arsenal might not even slow them down.

  Lenora’s apartment is far from the ideal place to stage this operation. I wish we’d had another ascender willing to cross over and help the Resistance, letting us uplink somewhere easier to protect or more difficult to find, buying us precious seconds… but apparently, Augustus is gaining followers by the microsecond.

  Marcus’s absence is being felt more strongly with every passing moment.

  The blue holo grid of the transmission chair springs to life.

  “Almost ready for you,” Lenora says, still configuring something in the holo controls.

  Miriam flies back in at ascender speed on her half-Maker/half-ascender-tech legs. Several more jivs hustle in after her. The room is packed now with militia and jivs—equal numbers of each, probably a dozen, including Miriam, Tristan, and Cyrus. They’ve all got their weapons out, their faces bathed in blue light from the holo grid. A sickening feeling twists my stomach, the déjà vu rolling hard through it from when we did this the first time—only then we were deep in New Portland, uplinking from another ascender’s apartment. And I was a reluctant propagandist for the Resistance. This time, this is all my idea. One that might get us killed for the trouble.

  I ease up to the seat, waiting for Lenora’s go-ahead before I slide in. “Remind me why we didn’t use your apartment when we did this the last time.”

  Lenora doesn’t look up from the holo screen she’s manipulating. “Because no matter how much we shielded the uplink, Augustus would have come looking here first.”

  “Like he will now,” I say, tension coiling in my stomach.

  She drops the holo screen. “Like he will now.” The grid around the chair pulses, once, twice, and then glows at a steady rate, brighter than before. “It’s not too late to re-think this, Eli.”

  I give her a grim smile. “It’s far too late.”

  Miriam gives me a lift of her chin. “Go time, Eli.”

  I glance to Tristan. “We’re ready,” he confirms.

  I step through the holo grid and take a seat. The camera should be straight ahead, so I stare into it and imagine a world of ascenders all simultaneously receiving an alert for a broadband transmission. The zipping lights of their essences within Orion will make note of that alert with some infinitesimally small part of their cognition.

  That part is about to grow.

  But I’m also speaking to the human world—Lenora should have configured the chair for broadcast to screens and handhelds throughout the legacy cities of the world. Those screens regularly tune in for human-centric, bot-produced entertainment, as well as the Olympics I competed in and won… and lost… and fled.

  They all know my face already—they’re about to learn who I really am.

  A prophet? In a real sense, yes.

  I’m about to herald a change in the world as they know it.

  “My name is Elijah Brighton,” I start, speaking directly into the camera, “and I’m speaking to you on behalf of the Human Resistance Movement as well as the many Makers who were slaughtered today by an ascender named Augustus.”

  If nothing else, I got that much out.

  I launch into the rest. “You may have heard stories about me. Incredible stories. Unbelievable stories. About people I’ve brought back from the dead, healed of their wounds, and returned to the land of the living. I’m here to tell you, they are all true. There’s a world beyond the existence you can see. I’ve been there, many times. I’ve brought back my second, Kamali LeClair, when Augustus killed her with a blast of electrical energy. I resurrected my friend, Cyrus Kowalski, after he was gunned down by one of Augustus’s sentries. I saved several Makers, including their leader, Miriam Levine, after Augustus firebombed the Makers’ city�
��a society filled with thousands of families, innocent humans, young and old. Augustus is an ascender who’s willing to commit atrocities, to slaughter whole cities, just because he fears me. He fears what I am and what I can do, but I’m here to tell you that I am not something for you to fear. I am not a threat to your world, whether you’re an ascender, a legacy human, or any sentient being scrabbling out a living wherever ascenders decide to allow you to live. I am not a threat, but Augustus is. He is disposing of humans as if they are no more sentient than a house bot. But you are better—you have souls that live beyond this plane of reality. I see them. I touch them. And I’ve brought them back from beyond death. This knowledge of a higher plane of existence is exactly what Augustus is trying to stamp out with his firebombs and light-weapons and sentries. He doesn’t want you to know the incredibly precious thing that you are.”

  I pause because I’m speaking so fast, so filled with urgency, that I’ve forgotten to breathe. The jivs and militia around me are all bathed in blue light and tense with anticipation.

  I gulp in air and continue. “It’s not just humans who should fear Augustus. Any ascender who thinks he might be your ticket to salvation, know this—he has already broken your most sacred laws. He has already attempted to build an artificial Mind to reach beyond what you can see with your cybernetic eyes and your endless, ascendant lives. And now he’s gone a step further, tampering with his own cognition, expanding it and making it stronger than anything you’ve ever seen. He’s already powerful; he already thinks he’s above your laws; now he has resurrected into a bodyform that might be capable of breaking all the barriers. And if not this bodyform, then the next. Or the next after that. He won’t stop until he brings a Second Singularity raining down on your heads. And you can’t count on him taking you with him because, believe me, he doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t value any life other than his own.”

  Screams spill from outside the room. The sound jerks through my body and sets my heart racing. Everyone in the room reshuffles their positions, shouting and scrambling to ready themselves.

  My time is up.

  “Fellow humans, the ascenders treat you like you’re no more than pets,” I say, my voice hiking up with the panic. “But you have a soul that lives beyond this world. Reject the cage the ascenders have built. Join me in the fight for freedom for all souls on our planet.”

  Weapons discharge. The screams are laced with electric gunfire.

  My heart is ready to beat out of my chest.

  “Ascenders.” I’m shouting now to be heard over the noise, rushing to get to the end before the end reaches me. “Stop the monster in your midst before he becomes even more powerful. Before he kills every last human—every soul—on the planet in an attempt to stop me, the one human who can breach the veil that’s still pulled over his eyes. He won’t stop unless you stop him. Do it before it’s too—”

  The blue grid around me vanishes. The power has gone out. Tristan yells and fires through the doorway and down the hall. I hear them coming—mechanized death stomping through Lenora’s apartment. Smoke wafts past the doorway punctuated by streaks of light. Cyrus stands between me and the door, gun ready. Miriam and the other jivs form another brigade between him and the door. Lenora yanks me from the chair, throwing me to the ground and crouching over me like a wild animal protecting her young—it’s the same defensive pose as that day in the Resistance camp when the Makers attacked.

  But this is no human assault team.

  A blur of silver skin parts the crowd of human bodies—augments, jivs, and unenhanced alike—sending them lurching backward. Hypatia arrives in front of Lenora and drives an electric stake through her bodyform, the impact of which flings Lenora off me and across the room. She slams against the wall and falls to the floor, going limp. Hypatia grabs the front of my shirt and hauls me off the floor, holding me in the air with my feet dangling. A phalanx of sentries floods the room, each seizing a human by the neck and forcing them to the floor. I gasp as each and every one goes down, even Miriam, fighting bitterly with her augmented legs. But she quickly goes limp, just like Lenora.

  Hypatia sets me on my feet, still holding onto my clothes.

  I do not understand why I’m not dead like the rest.

  The sentries rise, one by one, leaving the inert human bodies on the floor and retracting some kind of electrical device they used to kill them. A wordless grief swamps me. Then a tall, broad-shouldered ascender steps over the bodies littering the hallway outside the transmission room and through the doorway.

  Augustus.

  Augustus strides toward me, a stomach-curdling smile on his face.

  “Elijah Brighton,” he says, voice deep and booming. “Hypatia was right. Killing you myself will be much more pleasurable than the cold dispatch of a sentry.”

  He casually steps over the body of my best friend Cyrus, splayed out on the floor.

  I want to tell him off, but I spent all my words in the chair, spilling them out for the world, and now I only have fear and hatred clogging my throat, robbing me of one final crack about how he’s everything I loathe in the world.

  Hypatia releases me as Augustus reaches us.

  He smirks and places a hand flat on my chest. “I think electrocution will be the best way to martyr you. No bloody carcass for the mourners. Just like I killed your second—which I plan to do again, by the way, as soon as I—” A flash of surprise crosses his face, then… he drops to the floor.

  I have to lurch back to avoid the heavy thud of his bodyform next to my boots.

  I just stare. What?

  “Eli, your message was very helpful.”

  I drag my gaze up to meet Hypatia’s cool stare. “What?” I can barely get the word out. My brain is shorted out. “Did you just…” I look back and forth between the two of them—Augustus on the floor next to the holo chair, Hypatia standing next to me, apparently utterly unconcerned. She did something to him.

  “I no longer need Augustus.” The glittering silver that seems to run constantly across her skin skitters by, drawing my dazed attention.

  I blink and focus on her dispassionate face. “You killed him.” My mind is still boggling. “Why?”

  “I haven’t killed him,” she says coolly. “Merely pocketed him, so to speak.”

  “I… I don’t understand.” I step back—just because Augustus is out of commission doesn’t mean Hypatia won’t finish me off. Then again, I’m defenseless against her, if she wants me dead.

  “I built his bodyform,” she says, her voice flat. I can’t tell if she’s still a threat or not. “It was a simple matter to install a trigger for auto-storage. I wouldn’t have resurrected him at all, but I needed him to get to you, Eli.”

  “Me?” Oh no.

  She inclines her head slightly toward me. “Augustus wanted you destroyed, but he always was ruled by his emotional side. His overweening ambition. You were correct about that in your address. But he was a powerful ascender, one of the few who could mobilize the resources to quickly find you. And I need your help.”

  “My… help.” My brain is spinning again. I flick a look at the bodies of my friends littering the floor, then straighten, squaring my shoulders. “This isn’t how you get it.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re not dead.” At my frown, she gestures to Cyrus’s body on the floor. “Feel free to check for yourself.”

  My heart leaps to my throat. I hurry to Cyrus’s side and drop down, searching his neck for a pulse. Before I even find the reassuring beat of his heart, I can see his chest rise and fall.

  I squint at Hypatia. “You just knocked them out?”

  “Not all of them,” she says, her voice still cool. “There are some unfortunate casualties in the hall. I countermanded Augustus’s instructions to the sentries to leave no survivors, but some losses could not be helped.”

  I straighten up from Cyrus’s knocked-out form. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I knew having your friends still alive would provide m
otivation for you.”

  The coolness of her voice sends dread rushing back through me. “If you kill them, I’ll just bring them back.” I’m bluffing—sort of. I’m not sure if I could bring all of them back at once, and if they were still in Hypatia’s grip, what would stop her from killing them again? And again. I swallow—I’m not even sure how much time I have in that whole process. I couldn’t find Leopold—was that because ascenders have no souls? Or does the song of their lives fade when enough time passes? Is there a limit to what I can do? It’s not like I’ve tested it extensively. And now’s not the time to gamble.

  “I have no doubt you could resurrect them,” she says. “But hopefully, it won’t come to that. Given your speech, which I’ll say I did not expect, I think we have a common purpose.”

  I narrow my eyes. I doubt that very much. “You’ve been Augustus’s partner in all of this. The Mind. The experiments with the Cleansed. Why the sudden turn?”

  Hypatia throws a disdainful look at Augustus’s fallen bodyform at her feet. “Augustus was stirring a religious war among the ascenders with his efforts to bring the Second Singularity. He was hampered by his own ambition, and his fear of being overtaken. By you. By the Makers.” The silver shine skitters across her skin again. “I don’t see this as a limited resource problem. The Second Singularity is something we can accomplish together—with the right leadership. No blood need be spilled, as you’ve said in your speech. No ascender minds torn apart, as unfortunately has already happened to Marcus.”

  My stomach tightens again. I don’t know if I believe any of this. “You’ve destroyed his mind.”

  “Not precisely. But he is in a scattered state—Augustus was very thorough in pulling out the information contained in Marcus’s cognition. Which is tragic for Marcus, but it was clarifying for me, now that I have access to all of his memories. Including the ones about you. Your role in this is central, Eli. You can be a true savior for your people, the unascended humans. You can become the template for their own ascendance, the thing they’ve been waiting for. But we need a similar leader on the ascender side, and for that, I need your help.”