Rook

by JC Andrijeski

  Then I start to see them, moving among the blurred human lights.

  They are everywhere.

  Chiseled outlines like the man beside me are present in nearly one in five collections of humans. Some walk in their own clusters, five or six or even ten of them together, speaking to one another animatedly, the faint outline of business suits and blue jeans, T-shirts and name brand coats visible around their lit forms.

  Just as often, I see them alone, or with groups of blob-like humans.

  I see seers attached to humans by the geometrical shapes that rise above their heads. It’s not hard to see that the communication isn’t equal; instead, it’s more like ventriloquist and wooden dummy. In some places, two or three seers control the humans in an entire building.

  A kind of horror takes over as I see more and more seers controlling humans in this way.

  So many, I say. How did they all get past the Sweeps? Past SCARB?

  He senses my fear.

  His light grows cautious.

  SCARB isn’t interested in controlling all seers, he explains. Only those who are not owned. SCARB is also not officially aware of the Rooks, who are quite good at infiltrating human hierarchies, including SCARB itself. Many of the seers you see now are owned. Many are also Rooks, albeit low-levels ones for the most part, non-infiltrators. It is in the interests of both human and seer governments to keep this reality from civilians.

  Wait, I send. You’re saying human governments—

  Yes, he says, emitting a shrug. Does this surprise you? Although, as I said, even they do not know the extent of it. Some know this situation isn’t tenable. There is a sort of ‘cold war’ happening between the seers and the humans on many levels...

  I don’t answer him.

  Shrugging. he adds, There are more seers here than you see now, Allie. A trained infiltrator can eliminate their frequency from regular perception in the Barrier, mainly through blending with the lights that make up their environment.

  Another thought trickles in, one that has already occurred to me.

  They cannot see us, Allie, he confirms in answer to my unspoken question. At least not in a regular scan. I am shielding us. There are ways to track anyone, of course...

  I stare down, trying to count them.

  It is impossible.

  Seers have only three real options, he tells me. We can live with traditional, religious seers in seclusion, and according to their holy precepts. It is not a bad life, but it is not for all seers, just as it would not be for all humans. The second option is to be owned...to sell our sight to humans. It provides some freedoms, providing one is skilled and has an employer who is fair. But it is risky...a kind of voluntary slavery.

  He adds, The third option is to join the Rooks...or ‘the Org,’ as they call themselves. They are an underground network of seers with an anti-human agenda.

  Which are you? I say, unthinking.

  He pauses, letting me know that the question is, indeed, rude.

  Presently, I am all but the third, he says then.

  I watch a cluster of seers toy with a crowd of humans, changing their emotions back and forth like ocean currents. I feel their laughter as we pass.

  They are no more dangerous than humans, he says, a little defensively. There are mature elements, and less mature. Kind, and less kind. Thinking, he shrugs. Some are bitter about being enslaved, of course...

  I stare at him. No more dangerous than humans?

  Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration.

  You think? I burst out. What are you all doing here?

  Surprise and anger flare his light.

  What do you mean what are we doing here? We live here! Same as you!

  I refocus on the seer lights, fighting back more words.

  Those lights come in more colors than my mind has names for, their textures ranging from smooth as milk to jagged electric sparks. I notice they differ far more from one another than the lights of humans do, which all seem to occupy the same rough spectrum of gray.

  Moreover, the seers are chameleons, changing their skin from contact with one another and threads of light through which they pass.

  I feel my companion’s light change subtly and...

  We pop out somewhere else.

  I find myself staring at the glowing hands of a Betty Boop clock on the wall near the ceiling and it hits me that I am in the diner where I used to work. I watch blob-like human forms move through a catacomb of vinyl booths. Unlike before, I know a few of these blobs. When I concentrate a little harder, I recognize Sasquatch the cook, Cory behind the bar.

  I try to determine if any of the light blobs are Cass––

  To learn a place or thing from another’s light...this is called imprinting, he tells me. I took this one from you.

  I look down. My light-feet are standing in a man’s plate of ham and eggs. He eats through my ankles, but I feel his light fingers and tongue and jerk away, repulsed. My companion grabs my light arm before I can float across the room.

  I am what is called an infiltrator, he says. A seer trained to find things behind the Barrier. It is a trade, one that is learned, often at a young age.

  A spy? I venture.

  He doesn’t like this, I can tell.

  Still, he shrugs it off.

  A human equivalent might be espionage, he sends diplomatically. It is how my human employer sees it, certainly. For Rook infiltrators, the designation of espionage is more accurate. They do not follow Code and operate under a quasi-military structure, as you see reflected in the spatial representation of their network of seers.

  At my bewilderment, he adds,

  ...the Pyramid.

  I am back to looking around the diner.

  I don’t understand, I say. How are we here?

  Resonance, he sends. It is what we seers do. We resonate with things. Everything has a vibration. Every person, every place, every event. You can see a past event if you can recall its imprint, or if you resonate strongly enough with someone who was present. The future is more difficult. His light body emits a shrug. ...For obvious reasons. Even in the present, imprints change. People change, although usually not enough to fool an experienced tracker.

  His light sparks, hardening and softening in waves.

  There are exceptions, he adds. These things are very complicated in terms of functionality, Alyson, but the principle is simple. Resonance means things that have the same vibration are drawn to one another. Everything in the Barrier operates thus.

  But what is this? I ask, waving a light hand over the diner. Are we on Earth?

  Yes, he sends at once. ...And no. Reacting to my exasperation, he adds, It is a level of the Barrier. The Barrier is not material. ‘Where’ has a different meaning here. It is closer to ‘what.’ But we are close to the ‘what’ of Earth. Here, its ‘where’ is less important.

  When I want to argue, he cuts me off.

  ...Simply grasp the basics for now. Your consciousness must learn to split in order to grasp it fully, Esteemed Bridge. All seers must learn to be in two places at once...to hold two views of reality at once. It is normal for us.

  Without waiting for my reaction, he sends out a flicker of warning.

  One other thing, he says, hovering over a family dining on hamburgers. And this is important, Allie. While it is true that the Barrier is where we seers have the most power, it is also the place we are most vulnerable. When you operate outside of the Barrier, you are invisible, Allie. Powerless, like a human...but untraceable. Inside the Barrier, you can be attacked.

  I don’t know what this means, but fear ripples my light.

  I look around, half expecting to get smacked out of nowhere.

  I feel more than hear Revik sigh. I can tell I’m taxing whatever levels of patience he possesses. He turns his attention to the blurred human lights, and for an instant, I see through his eyes, an eagle’s view of all humans, everywhere.

  It strikes me that really there aren’t so many seers, after all.<
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  We have been around for much longer than humans generally believe, he says. In our mythology, humans are the third race. The first is Elaerian...the second Sarhacienne, or Sark, which is us. The third is human. Each race is said to destroy itself at a certain point in its evolutionary cycle, as a means of moving to the next level. Elaerian, the first race, no longer exist outside of the Barrier.

  His light turns wistful before he focuses it back on me.

  Sarhacienne means “Second” in the seer tongue, he adds. What humans believe to be their earliest civilizations were mainly remnants of ours. Egypt. Mesopotamia. Even parts of the Americas and Europe. It is said we did not have sight before the Second Displacement.

  He gazes out over the sea of humans.

  We did not notice at first when humans began to appear among the animals, he says.

  I am trying to follow his words, but am lost in the images he sends me. I see white stone cities rising and crumbling to dust, chanting seers in caves high in the mountains, the strange, water-like Elaerian with giant glowing eyes and beautiful laughing faces.

  We believe a third Displacement is coming, he sends, glancing at me.

  Red starbursts color my light veins, changing them to a deeper scarlet. The diner starts to shimmer like smoke, then fade...

  ...When fingers abruptly clasp my light wrist.

  He enfolds my body with his, and in no time at all, he is all I feel. The diner reemerges, the blobs of human light, the plastic cat crouching by the old fashioned cash register on the counter.

  Even after it all comes back, he doesn’t let go of me.

  What happened? he asks.

  You’re kidding, right? How would I know?

  He is upset though, which startles me. He continues to hold me tightly in his light arms. You must be calm when you are in the Barrier, Esteemed Bridge! Calm! Emotions change your frequency!

  I’m sorry, I say, more out of confusion than knowing why I’m apologizing.

  Do not be sorry...do as I say!

  His fear still sparks through my light. I send calm to him, warmth. I do it instinctively, without really thinking about how or why...and I can tell it startles him, but it affects him, too, enough that he opens, letting me in. After a few seconds more, I feel him beginning to calm.

  His light grows more and more still, until it is nearly serene.

  Dangerous how? I ask him then.

  He sighs, but still doesn’t pull away from me.

  The Rooks are looking for you, he says. They would send many seers after us. More than I could handle.

  So they really want me dead? These Rooks?

  He hesitates. Yes. He pauses. ...Or with them.

  With them? I think about this, remembering Terian’s words. And that would be bad?

  We should not talk about this here, Allie.

  I look around the diner, then ask anyway. So what is a Rook exactly? Just a renegade seer? One of the terrorists the news is always talking about?

  He looks at me, his light once more a pale blue.

  They are the enemy, he sends simply.

  6

  TERIAN

  THE CORPSE OF a man who died in his early twenties lay with artistic precision on a stainless steel table.

  Clear tubes protruded from his throat, from veins in his arms, legs, his stomach. He was additionally fitted with several color-coded sets of electrodes that dotted patches of his bare skin, a computerized headband and the more conventional saline I.V. The organic-looking headband with its soft, skin-like texture blinked rhythmically, the only light not coming from one of the four monitors that dominated the walls of the bone-white room.

  A technician adjusted settings on a rolling console beside the steel table, utilizing a standard interface and keyboard that projected data and findings to one of those thin screens that covered a portion of the organic-coated wall. Fluid coursing through the clear tubes disappeared into the same wall, changing color subtly soon after each adjustment the technician made. Temple electrodes on the corpse’s head flashed a dark blue once the fluid stabilized, signaling that another piece of the organic end of the transfer had been completed.

  Fogged pupils stared blindly at the ceiling, irises and whites the same milky gray. As the tubes carried the genetic virus to their host, the eyes changed to an opaque yellow, the color of daffodils...or strong urine, the technician thought.

  Over time, that yellow began to brighten.

  The skin looked different as well, not flushing with life exactly, not yet, but somehow less...dead. That much took twelve hours.

  It would have taken longer, but the body had been prepped well in advance.

  Day one came and went. The technician’s boss came to the room, several hours past the first signs of change. An older woman, she checked the readouts on the monitor, made more and infinitely more subtle adjustments before nodding a stiff approval to the junior tech, who watched her every move in undisguised tension.

  “Now,” the woman doctor said. She had the barest hint of a German accent. “Now, we wait.”

  TERIAN LAY ENTIRELY still.

  His new body’s only hint at motion lived in an elusive attempt to focus his eyes.

  New eyes...to him at least...they looked out from the foreign planes of an unfamiliar face. His face, although he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, yet. Terian gazed up at a flat, dead ceiling, wishing he’d thought to have them enhance the view. Bone-colored, white with just the barest depth of yellow, the dull shimmers of the organics weren’t enough to distract him.

  He would have them put a fifth monitor there, for next time.

  The basics of his probable situation filtered into his awareness.

  A period of adjustment always awaited him on the other side; he should be used to it by now, but the very nature of the change made familiarity with its workings impossible, at least in those first, virginal moments. To ease his confusion, Terian had imparted a program into the transfer process itself that reminded him of the fact of his death and rebirth, even before bringing him fully awake. The disorientation would not desist entirely until that process was complete, however—which, despite its temporal insignificance, took no small amount of time to Terian’s subjective mind.

  He hated the quiet.

  He disliked the emptiness that lay between states of active consciousness. While every death remained unique from the one before, all instances shared certain similarities in physical sensation and mundane forms of psychological stress.

  In the beginning, silence always met him.

  Therefore, whatever the desirability of said state, the most intelligent course of action lay in accepting this fact with some attempt at grace...even introspection.

  Philosophical musings should accompany death, he thought, no matter how temporary. Death, like life, should not be viewed as being without consequence. This mental ritual contained a vestigial superstition and yet, Terian liked the idea of being appreciative of his own ample gifts, particularly those of his mind and character.

  Gradually, memory began its stealthy return, too.

  Pieces of his past filtered through Terian’s consciousness like leaves falling in cold wind. Some stuck, eliminating gaps.

  Technically, all of his memories had been connected to this new body since the raw technique of transfer, but with every body came a new set of nonphysical structures, a combination of Terian’s mind and the mind of whomever’s body he now wore. Gaps remained while his aleimi relearned pathways to access the material world.

  More time passed.

  He applied pressure to the process of his rebirth, trying to access his previous body’s final moments. This early remembering took work, mainly in the form of separating his own, multi-life memories from those of the body he now wore...which of course carried only one mortal life’s worth. Well, really, not even that.

  Terian liked his bodies young.

  When they finally surfaced, the images and sensations came with no warning, a movie that b
egan and ended without prompt or fanfare. A shadow rose from the dark; Terian heard the sound of another’s stressed breathing. The touch of wet fingers flattened his forehead, grinding his head into soaked ground littered with pebbles and sharp leaves. He saw a dull flash of jagged metal, felt a shocking splash of warmth on his neck and face.

  Dehgoies Revik. Of course.

  If he could have, Terian would have chuckled. His friend was perhaps not so changed after all. Perhaps there was still a lot of the old Revi’ in him, even now.

  Terian should have brought more than one body.

  As he thought it, a shadow fell over him, blocking the white, pock-marked ceiling.

  “Sir?” a voice said. “It is too soon. You must rest.”

  Fatigue encumbered him, a stress borne of birthing, of straining back to life...even as drugs aided his return to a blissfully dreamless sleep.

  DOES HE REMEMBER? a familiar voice said over him.

  Terian cannot open his eyes.

  He floats over himself, watching as they speak within his mind like it were a conference room on one of Galaith’s many private planes. Terian hovers there, listens.

  He remembers his death, she comments.

  It was Dehgoies, was it not?

  Her thoughts turn affirmative. The images we’ve pulled indicate that is probable. Would you like to see?

  The other’s light indicates yes.

  She plays the memories, as one plays a film excerpt, or a video from television.

  Ah. The voice sighs as its owner watches, but the emotion behind it feels complex, a flavor of pride mixed with regret. His words remain all business. Are you checking for anomalies each time our Terian returns to a new body? Each and every time, Xarethe...no exceptions?