by Brian Craig
“So you got her copy back,” said the Kid. “And Homer Hegarty turned his in. But you know that there are two more.”
“That’s right,” admitted Carl. “Who was the other copy for, as a matter of interest?”
“Haycraft’s people. I figured that if GenTech wanted to stop him delivering it, it was worth doing it for him—whoever they might be. Do you know who he was working for?”
“Who’s Haycraft?” asked Carl disingenuously.
“Alias Blay,” said the Kid, tiredly.
The Kid sat down. He kept his pistol trained on Carl’s midriff, but the barrel was dipping carelessly. Carl realized that the Kid must be dead beat—he was obviously exhausted, and probably very confused. For a moment, Carl saw his enemy in a new light: as a teenager who was way out of his depth, caught up by fate in something he couldn’t begin to comprehend. Carl felt suddenly sure that the one and only reason why the Kid had captured him instead of simply blowing him away was because he was at the end of his tether, and needed somebody to talk to.
“Where are the discs, Kid?” he asked, in as gentle a tone as he could manage.
“In a safe place,” the Kid replied. “Maybe too safe. Still, once I’m dead, you never know who might find them, do you?”
“That might not be such a good situation,” said Carl tentatively. “My bosses aren’t going to stop looking until they find it. They’re bound to talk to all your friends about it.”
“I don’t have any friends,” said the Kid flatly.
“That’s not true,” said Carl softly. “Charlie Atlas and Ace the Ace tried to take us out to get us off your tail—and it wasn’t just that Pasco had killed Cyril and made him look cheap. There’s not much left of the Atlas Boys now, or the Low Numbers, but Ace the Ace is still alive. The old lady is safe enough once we get the discs back—but if we don’t, anyone who might be able to give us a lead on their whereabouts is likely to be tested to destruction. Better to tell me where the other two copies are.”
“None of them know where I stashed it,” said the Kid.
“That won’t keep them alive,” Carl insisted. “As long as there’s a chance of getting a lead, they’ll have to keep trying.”
“So it’s true,” said the Kid, half to himself. “It is more important than a mere matter of life and death. The whole threatened-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it bit.”
“Our strict instructions are to take you alive if we can,” Carl went on, thinking that he might just have a chance of pulling the situation out of the fire. “That needn’t be painful, if you tell us where you stashed the discs.”
The Kid laughed shortly. Carl couldn’t blame him for not believing it.
“What option have you got, Kid?” he asked, wishing that his heartbeat would calm down a little. “Nothing short of a miracle can save you.”
“I’ve got Pasco,” the Kid pointed out, “And I’ve got you. How much are you worth, do you think? Could I trade you in as hostages for a chance to run?”
It was lunatic optimism and the Kid had to know it, but in Carl’s estimation no hope was too feeble to be fed while his life was on the line.
“Maybe,” he said. “Is that what you have planned—using us as hostages to buy yourself a copter when our back-up gets here?”
“It wouldn’t work,” said the Kid dispiritedly. “Better to run now, or stand and shoot it out.”
“Run,” advised Carl. “No point in going out in a hail of bullets for the sake of giving Homer Hegarty a two-minute story. What did he ever do for you?”
“Not much,” admitted the Kid, with a wry smile. “My instinct says that I should ice the pair of you, but there wouldn’t be any point, would there?”
“Like you say,” said Carl, uneasily aware of the tackiness of his duplicity. “I’m only doing my job. I’ve nothing personal against you—nothing at all.”
“The only thing is,” said the Kid, “I can’t get to my bike while the tunnel’s full of poisonous smoke, can I?”
“Use Pasco’s mask,” said Carl, wishing with all his heart that this stupid pantomime would stop. Soon, he thought, he would be willing Kid Zero to pull the trigger, just to get it over with.
Pasco, still unconscious, let loose a hollow groan.
“Bad dreams,” commented the Kid.
“Yeah,” said Carl dully. “He likes to play the horrorshows.”
“I’d play them myself,” said the Kid, “if I didn’t have to live in one.”
There was another sound then, which began as a throaty thrum but which grew very rapidly into a high-pitched whine. It sounded like some kind of an engine, but what it might be Carl didn’t have a clue. To judge by the way the Kid looked up in feverish alarm, neither did he.
As the Kid came swiftly to his feet, Carl saw that something was zooming along the ridge of the hill, low and fast. It looked like a model airplane, but he knew that it had to be something far more sinister than that. In fact, he had a sudden irrational suspicion that this might the the miracle which he had told the Kid he needed.
He heard the Kid say: “What the–?” before the explosion cut him off in mid-sentence.
There was just a brief interval after the explosion, when the one idea which possessed Carl’s mind was an overwhelming urge to dive after the mask which he’d told the Kid to put on. He knew that if only he’d been able to keep his own on, he’d have been okay—because what flooded out of the little guided missile as its tiny warhead exploded was some kind of narcotic gas, which was very, very powerful….
Part Three: Kid Zero in Wonderland
1
You’re walking in that Garden of Eden which once—very briefly, from the viewpoint of Ecological Time—was North America.
Here again is the trackless forest which decked the mountain-slopes for hundreds of thousands of years before men came out of Asia, across that unfortunate land-bridge which the swelling of the oceans belatedly drowned with the Bering Straits.
Here again is the great plain which was the land of the bison for hundreds of thousands of years before the first repeating rifles became the instruments of their slaughter.
Here again are the life-filled rivers which were the bloodstream of the continent for hundreds of thousands of years before the first cities were built upon their banks, in order to fatten them with the wastes and excrements of civilization.
Once, very briefly, these slopes were denuded of trees, when the timber was stripped away to feed the world’s hunger for paper: paper on which to write lies; paper in which to wrap the holy objects of worshipful trade.
Once, very briefly, these great plains became deserts, when the soil was murdered by slow and tortuous degrees: first exhausted by the intensive cultivation of monocultured crops; then sustained for a while by exotic medication; finally abandoned to rot into red dust and yellow ash and blanched bone.
Once, very briefly, these rivers were fountains of poison, when factories had been raised beside them to destroy them by lethal injection, in the name of cleanliness; for whatever men could not tolerate about themselves they washed away and gave to the earth, so that it might be spoiled while they were saved.
But in the end, men could not be saved, and the earth could not be spoiled; the empire of men came rapidly to its inevitable decline and fall, and the scars which it left upon the face of the earth soon faded and were gone.
You don’t know how much time has passed, but you know that it would be futile to ask. A great deal of time, in terms of human minutes and hours and histories; only the briefest of intervals, in terms of the evolution of species and the languorous changing of Gaea’s great seasons. Ice Ages have come and gone; the glaciers have scoured clean the continent which once was turned into that running sore which men called the United States of America; normality is restored.
If men survive at all they live as hunter-gatherers upon the plains and in the forests; they do not plant crops and they do not herd cattle. Perhaps, if men do survive, those twin sicknesses o
f civilization—agriculture and animal husbandry—will come again to plague them and sow the seeds of fiery destruction; but if they do, the course of theepidemic will again be brief. The sins of men extend from one generation to another, but not forever; their heritage spoils five hundred lifetimes, each one worse than the last, but in the end men are called to account for those sins, which are cancelled out by a Day of Judgement, and Eden is restored.
You’re walking now in the forest, naked and unafraid. You have no purpose save to be there, and to be a part of Eden.
You’re not hungry and you’re not thirsty, nor can you hunger or thirst while the forest has fruit and the streams run pure.
It’s not the excitement of the hunt that you crave while you walk here now, but the peace of solitude: that calmness of mind which is the reflection of the forest’s great and quiet being in your own small and patient mind.
Although the sun is hidden by the forest canopy you don’t feel cold, because your skin hasn’t lost its adaptability of comfort by virtue of having been swathed in clothing. Just as your sight is keen, because you have not been born into a lightless world, so also your body is strong, because circumstance has prevented the cultivation of that special innocence, tenderness and vulnerability which is the legacy of civilization. You’re a whole man, not a cripple made by swaddling and coddling.
There is no trace in your heart of envy or avarice or sloth or wrath or pride or gluttony or lust. In a world without inequality, envy is impossible; in a world without property, avarice is impossible; in a world without labour, sloth is impossible; in a world without frustration, wrath is impossible; in a world without status, pride is impossible; in a world without anxiety, gluttony is impossible; in a world without marriage, lust is impossible. In Eden, there is no inequality; no property; no labour; no frustration; no status; no anxiety; and no marriage. If there are men here, they are free of sin; they have not eaten from that deadly tree of technical knowledge which would urge them to plant and to keep, to cultivate and to own, to build and to destroy.
(But are there men here at all, if you must always think in terms of ifs? And if there are not, who are you? Who are you?)
You don’t know who you are; in Eden there are no names. You were conceived and birthed, but you have no mother; your creation was initiated in a human womb, but you have no father. In your turn, you too will be a creator, but you will know no sons or daughters. You will love—most certainly you will love—but your love will not be bound and confined, restricted by rule or bond of obligation. You will love as freely as you live.
(But who will you most certainly love, if you don’t even know whether there are men here at all? How were you spawned and birthed, if there are none here like yourself? Or are you not a man at all? Are you an echo or a ghost? Are you an angel or a god? Are you only a dreamer?)
You’re trying to remember—and you find, to your astonishment, that it hurts.
It hurts when you catch your finger on a thorn; it hurts when you trip and bruise your knee; it hurts when you run too hard and too far; it hurts when you stare into the sun…but this is not that kind of hurt. Maybe memory too is a kind of disease, a kind of sin. Maybe, if there arc men here, they have no memories….
As well suppose that the men of Eden have feathers and wings, or that their womenfolk have eyes in their nipples, or that they are giants as tall and strong as ancient trees.
(But why not? Why not? Why should men not be what they desire to be? Why teach the man when you might teach the superman? Why create out of virgin clay such a shabby, brutal, paradoxical being as a man, when you might make a glorious embodiment of beauty, grace and reason?
Why?)
To the burden of trying to remember is added the extra burden of trying to think. Dissent is easy, thought is hard; renunciation is the cheapest form of virtue; to wish the world away is the easiest way of coping with it; to make a myth of the womb is to deny the legacy of birth; every Golden Age is blind and stupid….
(Why are the proverbs of Hell lurking beneath the surface of the vision of Eden? What is this poison which pollutes my dream?
My dream?)
You’ve done it now. You’ve said a forbidden word, and it will all be taken away from you. You’ve lost it all, and it serves you right. You’ve broken it, and it can’t be mended. You had your chance.
You had your chance, but you said a forbidden word. (Or thought it. What difference does it make?)
The forbidden word was “my”, because “my” implies “me” and “me” implies “I” and “I” implies “am”, all of which are forbidden.
You’ve murdered the world.
You’ve murdered Eden.
Are you proud of yourself?
Two pairs of hands helped the Kid out of the sensurround booth. He was completely disoriented, and for a moment or two he couldn’t bring his vision into focus. He was lost in a maze of returning sensations, whose chaotic jumble would not be resolved.
Hearing came back before sight, and he heard the man speaking before he saw him.
“It is strange,” said the voice, “that even when one gives a man a chance to be a god, he remains stubborn in his resolve to be a man. The dream will not take hold—it simply is not allowed to displace reality. I wish I knew whether to consider this a hopeful sign or not; it is not what we expected. Perhaps the simulation of experience is still not good enough; perhaps it has not quite reached that threshold of essential plausibility which will allow the brain to adapt to it wholeheartedly.”
Sight came back, and Kid Zero saw the face of the man who was speaking to him. He was a small man, old but graceful in the manner of his aging, Oriental in the cast of his features. He was dressed in a fashion which seemed to the Kid to be both exotic and antiquated, like something out of an old samurai movie.
When the Kid had taken in the sight of the man he turned to look at what was behind him. He ignored the two girls who had helped him out of it.
“A horrorshow booth,” he said hoarsely. “I was in a horrorshow booth.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” admitted the small man. “That is how we have marketed the most primitive versions of the sensurround—as devices of entertainment. They seem so innocent in such a guise, do they not? All the more innocent, of course, because they pretend to be terrifying. There is nothing which make us feel more secure, more unthreatened, than something which reduces fear itself to a cheap and manageable thrill. That is why children love toys made in the image of carnivorous beasts or instruments of mass destruction. If a man makes something which can truly change the world—which might alter the whole nature of human life—he must first make a toy of it, or else he will be destroyed by those whose world he tries to change. Metals were first worked in order to make jewellery, paper was first used to make lanterns, gunpowder to make fireworks…we do not even know their inventors’ names, which is an infallible sign of the fact that they lived happy and undistinguished lives. There is nothing quite as lethal as fame, Zero-san, as you have recently discovered. It is my most devout hope that I will never be famous.”
“Who are you?” asked the Kid helplessly, while he looked around for clues as to where they might be. The room had no windows; it looked like a storeroom. There were no beds, tables chairs, desks, TV sets or computer consoles; there were only horrorshow booths—four of them.
“My name is Sasumu Yokoi, Zero-san,” the old man answered, with a slight bow. “I am one of many labourers whose task it is to carry forward the development of devices such as the one in which you were confined. I must apologize for my little…experiment. Curiosity is a congenital disease of all scientists, and we have only recently begun to explore he true potential of this technology. Almost all of our subjects go consciously into their dreams—I could not resist the opportunity to record the experiences of one who could not know where he was.”
The Kid felt weak at the knees, but there was nowhere to sit down. “Curiosity?” he queried, almost absent-minded
ly. “Record? You can record my dreams?”
“Not exactly,” Yokoi replied. “But this is a more advanced model of the sensurround than any you might encounter in an American amusement arcade. The cruder models are built only for one-way transmission, introducing information into the brain via the sensorium. This one can carry information either way; it is built for feedback, so that you may—with elaborate assistance from the machine’s own intelligence—create and orchestrate your own illusion. It is most interesting to see what people do when they have that opportunity. Our people in America had to place you in the booth anyhow, in order to smuggle you out of the country, and the opportunity was too good to miss. I must apologize again.”
The Kid shivered, though it wasn’t cold inside the room. His weakness didn’t seem to be abating—if anything, he was feeling worse.
“You were eavesdropping on my dream?” he said, squinting with the effort of maintaining his concentration. “A dream I was creating for myself?” One of the two girls who had helped him out of the booth had moved back to his side, and now she reached out to steady him. Yokoi signalled to her with his hand, and she began to lead the Kid towards the door. Yokoi kept pace with them, answering the question while they walked.
“You must not misunderstand,” he said. “The machine cannot read minds—it cannot tell us what a man is dreaming while he is asleep. While you remained unconscious, the machine was impotent. But what you experienced just now was not a dream or a daydream. It was a sensurround simulation, like a horrorshow tape, but it was a malleable experience, over which you had a certain power of control. There is nothing supernatural about the way such control is exercised—it is astonishing how rapidly the brain learns, without any conscious intervention at all, how to emit the signals which intervene with the machine’s programming. It is almost as if the ability has always been latent in the human brain, dormantly awaiting the day when the sensurround would be invented. It is very remarkable, Zero-san, very remarkable indeed. But even so, all that we could put on tape—all that we could share of your waking dream—was a sequence of sounds and pictures. Your private thoughts remain inviolate.”
