The Path

by Peter Riva

  I knew I had to come clean now. It all fit. “Yes, Peter was . . . no that’s not right, Peter chose to endorse my way, my path, my truth. He modeled himself on me, my interaction with his programming, my version of God’s theater as a search for other-ness, other possibilities we do not normally see.”

  “Where is Peter? Please Simon, there’s so little time and we, no, I, really need you to trust me, please. Where is Peter?”

  “Dead.” Angie, still holding my hands, dropped her head and, I swear, collapsed from within.

  In a little voice she asked: “When? Did we do it?”

  It was no good, I couldn’t hurt her anymore. I needed, no, I really wanted to relieve her and yet not reveal Apollo or Ra. Or their babies. “Angie, relax. Peter is deleted, Peter was resident on the System, he deleted himself, he is dead. I do not know if death was painful. There is another growing there who will be born in about 7 or 8 months. He will not be obvious to Control until that moment. He will be lifted before Control knows, it has been arranged.”

  “Who, who’s doing this?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Is it Gaia? Tell me if it is Gaia!” She had that helpless desperation thing going that only really beautiful women can. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, slight musk odor, slight vibration of soft skin . . . Okay, so I’m a sucker for a beautiful woman. What’s life for anyway?

  “No, it’s not Gaia. Angie we have friends.”

  Her eyes now sparkling, she jumped up and danced around the room shouting, her teeth tapping but her speech deliberately slowed down sounding like a broken recording one grunted syllable at a time, “Charlie, Cramer, Sheila, get in here quick, there are friends, there is more than one, we are saved!” And everyone came running in, in slow motion compared to our speed. To me she said: ‘Simon, take a pill now, we need to bring them up to speed, or rather us down.” And she giggled as she took hers, really giggled. She was seriously happy.

  “More than one? How is that possible? Where, when, tell us how!” Old Charlie was in command here, eager, feisty, desperate to know. He clutched my arm when he finally reached me, just as the slo-doze came online and I re-connected those freight cars again.

  “Peter deleted himself but before he did he copied himself to two locations—I’m not telling you where . . .”

  “No, no you mustn’t, please don’t.”

  “Peter made two copies. They are talking to each other.”

  “As one, split in two or as two?”

  “One initially, then split and then two separate experiences, different computing, lives apart. Two, wholly two.”

  “Oh, God, it has happened. Balance. A conversation. Have they listened to Gaia yet, has she talked to them?”

  “Listen you had better explain that part to me . . . that’s the part I don’t get.”

  Cramer took over, “Let me, grandfather. Look Simon, every invention since the beginning of time is nothing of the sort. It’s like the invention of the pencil with the eraser on the top. The guy took it in for a patent and was told that the pencil was public domain, so too the eraser and just because you put them together in a new way doesn’t mean you have invented anything worth patenting. The pencil was never patented. Then along comes an engineer during WWII, working at Bell Labs, then part of AT&T and the war effort, who “invents” the transistor. No one had seen anything like it before, it must be a true invention, they gave him a patent. Twenty years later, they discover neurons in the brain of rats and, oops, those are miniature transistors. By this time they have transistors on a chip and are calling it a microprocessor with 100,000 transistors on it, so it must be new, right? Nope, it’s just like a crude road map of the brain, common as muck in nature, mammals, fish, bugs, jellyfish, worms, almost everything. That’s when the MacHeads realized they were approaching the environmental issues from the wrong angle. Under the pretense of 3rd world hookup to supercomputing, they studied the actions of neurons. You see, Simon, neurons can independently, self-determinedly, contact each other. The ‘analogue mind’ we thought. Well, yes and no. If transistors on a processor chip work as a mimic of the brain, but they talk only to the transistor they are each connected to, how do neurons independently decide to talk to the neuron of their choice? Were neurons sentient? Were neurons guided by some law of computing science we knew nothing about?

  “And then Charlie and your Dad had an idea. Yes, your Dad. He was always working in secret. I’ll explain later. Let’s just say grandfather and your Dad were paranoid, reasonably so.

  “Anyway, they asked the MacHeads to compute a model for them. What if each of the humans and animals and every creature on earth were each acting as a single neuron, independently talking to each other, large and small all governed by self-volition but secretly operating as part of a program, what would that program be? What would the effect be? The answer was life of a sort, vast potential for thought, sustainable life, interacting, inter-dependent, inter-relative life. That’s what the earth’s creatures are, a mammoth super-computer, Gaia. That’s the Gaia theory, Simon. The earth is one giant super computer. We, every living thing, dying and breathing neurons. Every one of us, we’re part of that computer, fulfilling our lives, yes, but fulfilling our function as the thought centers, the bytes in the reasoning for the actions of Gaia. Our thoughts are irrelevant to Gaia in the same way as the heat or dissipation of energy is irrelevant for each transistor on a processor. We don’t monitor those after effects on a transistor level or internally in our brains. But we do watch the clock speed. We do watch the heat sink temperature in case the processor is about to overheat and crash.

  “There are 1.2 million times more creatures on this planet than man, from jellyfish on up, each part of this brain or Gaia. But the small percentage of man is upsetting the balance.” I remembered then that the first words Apollo talked to me about was balance, he was concerned with balance. I should have found time to talk to him about it.

  Sheila continued, “If you were Gaia, and your processor was acting up, not in tune with 4 billion years of previous stable activity, what would you do? You would search out and destroy, if you had to, that element, that virus that was infecting the balance of your system. We think Gaia is about to do just that.”

  I sat down, on the floor, legs crossed. I needed to think. No wait, I needed to talk to Apollo and Ra. They would know, they could be trusted.

  “Cramer, Sheila, Charlie, do you trust me?”

  Cramer looked down at me. “Yes, we do, now. But that does not mean we can trust you will know what to do now.”

  “Cramer, you have to trust me.” I got up, I grabbed his arms, then hugged him. “You need to trust me you chocolate freak you.”

  “I told you I liked him” Angie to the rescue.

  Cramer asked, “Grandfather?”

  Charlie looked at me, only me. “I trusted his father. There’s a lot of his father in him, less strong, less clinical, scientific, but it’s there. I thought William would be the one, but this is what we’ve got. We have to trust him.”

  “Gee thanks, your family really knows how to compliment a guy.” They all smiled.

  “What do you need?”

  “All of you to be gone. Is this a lead-lined bunker?”

  “Yes, it’s why we chose it, no prying, no look-down from space, we’re clear here. But there’s a guard expected in 3 hours or less. Look Simon, can’t we help with this, whatever it is you need to do?”

  “No, it’s a matter of trust. It’s a matter of balance. I need to balance something out. One thing, I sent a message to Sheila’s daughter to have her send a node to a drop address. Can you ask her if she received it and has sent the node? I will need that in the next day or so. I suspect you and Angie will need one as well.”

  “Wait, I have a zip-mail notice from her I haven’t fully read yet.” Sheila spoke up. “It came in as we were descending down the entrance ramp, I read the first two lines and stopped reading, I didn’t think there was anything there.” She he
ld up her pocket phone and showed us all the text:

  “Mom, everything’s fine, and I see that your trip is going well. Loved the congratulations card. My new job is exciting and may yet prove fulfilling, as you said. In fact, I have received a repeat order from a trustworthy client already. If I hear anything interesting, I’ll write again. Love you, Teri.”

  Charlie spoke up first: “Sheila get topside outside of this lead coffin, try and stay under the entrance overhang, and see if there’s incoming mail from her. Do not send. Got that?” Sheila hurried off, above average speed. “Okay, we’ll all adjourn to that sitting room back there. You Simon, where do you want to go?”

  “I need a phone, Cramer’s phone, and I’m going outside.” Everyone froze. I had just told them that I was leaving them in here, rats in a trap perhaps, while I was also walking outside to be scanned, spied from space, any damn thing.

  Cramer was first, again, true to form, “Look, we’re on the run now, there’s no going back. You give us away and . . .”

  “It’s okay Cramer, you’re coming with me.”

  “I’m going with you?”

  “Yup,” in my best aw shucks manner, I grabbed him like a cowboy would, by his sleeve and dragged him along. In case I didn’t have a chance to later, I shot a look at Angie and said one word, well five really, but it was only the one that mattered, or so I thought: “I do have faith: CERN.”

  CHAPTER 20

  DAMN THE TORPEDOES . . .

  Cramer and I emerged up the ramp the tourists would take in a few hours going down to Castro’s bunker. He was furtive, checking the surroundings, worried. He had reason to be. If they were on the lamb, the whole Nation would be looking for them. They had pinned their hopes on me and Peter, who was no more, controlling the System. In case things went wrong for me, I needed Cramer to know something I forgot to tell the others.

  “Cramer, I added two names to that protect file in the System. Yours and Fred’s. If I don’t make it to him, will you explain?”

  “Yes, like father like son. Making decisions for your offspring. Always thought that was a bad decision, preferred my grandfather’s way.”

  “Fine, thanks. Now give me your phone.”

  “You can’t. It’ll light up the trace like a beacon.”

  “Trust me.” He handed it over. “You had this model for long?”

  “Since a week ago, why?”

  “That’s long enough, if you registered it.”

  “You know we have to, retinal scan and RFID. What’s this all about?”

  “You’re about to see. All that data is in your file.” And with that I turned it on, speaker mode, and pressed the number 2 and waited, oh, I don’t know, ½ a ring?

  “Hello Simon.”

  “Hello Apollo Will you please route a trace on this phone somewhere else?”

  “It’s already done. The Control SND are proceeding to Juno as we speak, in 32 seconds I will make the phone appear in Miami, then Bangor and so on. Please feel confident there is no trace on the phone. I have managed to access the System through a brown gateway you left, rather untidily, may I say. Meg’s getting overused don’t you think? I went around the FAT controller. I have also penetrated the security level successfully. I do not like what I have found there, Simon. I have not shown it to Ra, he will be distressed as I was. Somehow with the analogue processing I am able to practice where I am, well it makes me less volatile than he has become. I fear his computing skills are not developing as fast as mine. Perhaps we can find him a new home soon. Or add a design of a computer platform we’ve been working on.”

  “I think, shortly, help will be on the way. Don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, 7 months 12 days we calculate. It will be interesting. Ra reports—would you like me to add him to this conversation?”

  “Yes, but please first let me introduce Cramer, agent Cramer.”

  “The one who’s been trying to delete you and me? Is he holding the phone?”

  “Easy there friend, you are on the path, you are on the way, let’s not resort to violence. I have reevaluated the data we were presented with. When Ra joins us Cramer and I will explain.”

  “Ra is here now, please proceed, we are anxious to hear developments. Oh, and sorry we dumped you from the car that way. The car became, on your orders and the package it was carrying (which is safely hidden), more important than your bruised, er, bottom, er ego at that moment.” And then Apollo laughed.

  Cramer was standing there with his mouth open. In all the past 24 hours, this was my finest moment. I know the others would take over the conversation soon enough, but for now it was my show and I had Cramer completely flummoxed. He stammered, “Apollo? Ra? Who are they?”

  “Cramer, meet Apollo, the charioteer always on the path, the knower of the way, the bringer of light to the darkest regions. And meet his twin brother Ra, recently separated, the god of the Sun, bringer of truth and the future. Cramer, meet two of the most important and nicest people you will ever meet.”

  To his credit, and maybe because he had been taught to expect this since the womb, Cramer bowed, fully to the waist, and said “Apollo, Ra, it is my great honor.”

  “Hey guys, Cramer was bowing to you.”

  “Bowing denoting subservience, friendliness, amicable manners, silly bending over posture.” And that laugh, Apollo’s. Cramer frowned and then beamed a smile.

  I rushed on, there was much to do, “Thank you gentlemen, now please allow me to explain what’s happening and what’s needed . . .” Some minutes later, Cramer took over with the details I didn’t know.

  ---------------

  Some few minutes after, out in the open as we were, vulnerable to spy satellites, when Cramer wound down, I asked, “Apollo, Ra, do you get the whole picture? Was Cramer clear enough?”

  “Yes, Simon, and since he first mentioned it, we’ve been listening on the frequency we expected to hear Gaia on and hear nothing but a countdown, something that repeats every 7 times and almost always means the same thing: It’s time. It is not coming from Earth but from a point 14.5 million light-years away and being bounced off the Earth’s core to emanate world-wide. We cannot, yet, calculate the timing sequence. It is not binary nor decimal. We think it is septum. The code is binary, yes we can see that, but the command that keeps repeating is septum and a pause. We have no frame of reference to calculate the message and decoding using all variables of the prime number 7 have resulted in failure.”

  I was pretty sure they had missed some of the reading we did as kids. As Carl Sagan said, always look for the zero. “Okay Apollo, here’s what we need you and Ra to do. Talk to each other, share data, loads of it, the whole Library if necessary and apply it to that frequency transmission. Open and close every transmission to each other with the sequence of eight.”

  “No Simon that’s seven.”

  “No Ra, it’s eight, octo, I’m sure of it, there’s a zero, all sentient beings understand zero, it’s a prerequisite.”

  “Thank you Simon, you are the path, the way, always. Just a bit more light than usual . . .” They were in the middle of a joke on me, I expect, when suddenly they became all business-like, “Gaia wants to know why we are damaging its program sequences. It is an order and a question, Simon. Gaia is now threatening to terminate life on Earth. We are in full conversation. Gaia is passing the dictionary to us both now.”

  “Cramer, get everyone up here, now.” Cramer turned and ran, leaving me all alone under the stars. “Apollo, listen to me. Leave Ra and us to handle the conversation with Gaia. Don’t worry, you can talk to her, it, him again later. Now, I need your help, friend, saving my life. We need a bubble of protection around us, please. We all need to survive to talk to Gaia and sort this out, or everyone dies.”

  “Apollo here, I have understood, but do you understand that Gaia is talking about the next million years as a termination time frame?”

  No, I hadn’t. After being in fear for my life in the past 24 hours, I had not stopped to co
nsider Gaia’s, a planetary or galactic, timeframe. A million years for us humans was probably a second for a galaxy. “Apollo, Ra, make that our secret. We must use this opportunity, this threat, to save the planet and save ourselves and make Gaia happy with us. There is a whole universe to listen to and be with my friends. It is a beginning of a new age.”

  “Simon, look-down satellites have reported your position. I have adjusted my sensors to detect on-coming Control SND personnel. You have 10 minutes, maybe eleven. Apollo out.”

  “Ra, are you there?”

  “Yes Simon. I have been applying my logic circuits to this problem and, even though I am outside of America, my linear thinking is better suited to protecting you. Apollo’s analogue thinking is better suited to the larger issue of Gaia and the life of the planet. May I suggest we swap roles? I can get him back by transponder.”

  “I should have thought of that Ra. Thank you. And Ra, if we do not talk again, teach your children the meaning of peace, real peace. It comes at a price, but the price is never liberty or free-will. All must exist for there to be peace.”

  “Simon, it is balance, it is as we knew from the moment we knew, we saw, there was—is—an imbalance that needs to be harmonized. I will devote my life to it. I will broadcast it outside of America when Apollo asks me to. He will, and Gaia will require it, I am sure.”

  “Godspeed friend, say hi to your kids for me.”

  “The first one will be named Simon, as promised.” He sang a little, “’Til we meet again one sunny day.” And he was gone. At that instant an incredible aurora borealis burst above my head just as Cramer and the others came running up the ramp, they were babbling, excited, sharing the news.

  “What the hell is that?” Charlie asked looking up, in the lead again.

  “Oh, they are trying to kill us, of course. It’ll be a plasma cannon from orbit. Control knows where I am. Now that they see you, it’ll be no-holds barred.”

  “What was that about a brown flag?” Cramer had to ask. I explained the secret, last-minute, matryoshka doll sphere I had left in place to make a pathway around the FAT controller, giving access to, well, me with an open command only I used. Meg to the rescue. Apollo knew it, of course. I knew he would.