BEYOND EXTINCTION - Even the concept of truth is a lie Page 8

  The coffee shop is one of Jack's writing places, except when he gets caught by fracquaintances and has to be politely conversational. I might not like numans but today they are better than getting buttonholed by Judith or one of the others.

  Judith is a neighborhood gossip who recently came by to tell Jack there was a numan property agent going around the village offering to pay three times current property values. No one, Judith said, was turning him down. Meanwhile, the regional council had been forced to give planning permission for 600 numan houses to be built on recreational land the village has treasured for two hundred years.

  Jack looks down at his new state-of-the-art mediamat, less than a millimeter thick and working a hundred times faster than his old one. "Bloody thing. I wish I had my proper mat," he growls, but no one looks up: humans are known for their impolite behavior and some of the numan regulars have heard him muttering before. Only his phone sniggers and asks, "Shall I get the Google courier service to bring it?"

  "Shut your noise, you damned phone," he says. He feels relaxed. Ready for some thinking. Alice is working and Max will be okay at home for another three hours. He could leave Max all day with the servant looking after him but Max hates that: if you do not want to share your life, do not live with a retriever. I miss Max as much as Max misses me. And we both miss Alice when she's working.

  He needs to come to grips with a real problem. Alice is gradually giving him unpublished information about the numans, apparently with the blessing of Galen before his perplexing rudeness at Aleksi's family funeral.

  Should he change direction with his book to focus on the numan threat rather than the human evolutionary suicide? Or maybe both – not so much an even-handed grope as a clear suicide opening and then the coup de grace of the numans inheriting the Earth?

  Outside the Tudor-style window panes, two human girls walk by. One, aged about twenty, catches Jack mid-deliberation, between suicide and disposal of the human race. She is wearing very tight FedBrit flag shorts and—. No, I am not going to be distracted. But, of course, it has already happened.

  "Jack! How nice to see you! May I join you?"

  "Hello, Roger. I'm in the middle of a tricky problem, so maybe I won't be very good company. I don't mind if you ignore me today."

  Roger does not take the hint and drags out a white-painted chair and slops his coffee into the saucer as he bangs it on the table, splashing Jack's new mediamat.

  "Oops, sorry," says Roger, thin and wiry, the kind everyone envies until they notice the deep channels in his face that add twenty years to his real age of sixtyish. "What's the problem? Maybe I can help. Do you need money? The numans are buying everything for fantastic prices. Come on, tell your Uncle Roger. What's your problem?"

  "Sex," says Jack in annoyance.

  "You're not getting enough?" says Roger. "Or is Alice complaining about quantity or quality?"

  "None of those, thank you, Roger. I told you about my book. Sex is one of the aspects that is leading the human race towards extinction."

  "Pity. I rather like it. Did you see those two girls walk past here? One was wearing the most eye-popping shorts."

  "No, I did not," Jack replies, cleaning off his tedious new mediamat and scrunching it into his battered Amazon backpack. Time to go.

  *

  There are so few of the Center's staff working on their mediamats that Galen phones Ali. "Where is everybody? Where are you?"

  "We are all where we should be, Galen," she says. "Working. Producing data. Aware of the crisis. Doing everything we can." She sounds irritated, something impossible before the human animal DNA downgrade.

  "I expect you are concentrating your efforts on Jack?"

  "Yes, he is my priority."

  A stillness holds the airwaves, Galen resenting her being with Jack and Max at their cottage. "Quite, then get on with your work," he snaps and breaks the connection.

  He stares at the phone for a long moment, sighs. What is wrong with her? He moves to a bigger screen, which lights up as he approaches. "Ministry security. Dalen," he orders. He waits for Dalen to respond. He was against her taking the security work, but in this crisis it is useful to have a wife in such a key operational role.

  "Galen, is there an emergency?" Dalen asks without formal numan politeness.

  "Yes. There is an emergency and I need adequate security people to control it."

  "You already have security above your allocation."

  He must keep numan calm but he feels human frustration and anxiety. "I need to hold this research center together for a few more months until we finish the Center's task. I must have enough protection of the wild research lab to control the emotional temperatures of our targets. Everything, all our data collection and analysis, depends on that. You know what is at stake."

  Dalen's expressionless face stares at Galen from the screen. There is no family recognition. He remembers how the very sight of her had made him churn with sexual desire when they were fifteen, but there is nothing there now. Not like his growing aberration with Balen, a sexual infatuation that should be impossible.

  "I can allocate you five more security operatives immediately," says Dalen, checking security dispositions on a display invisible to Galen. "Three will be human-cover, including one female pattern. The others will be standard security. I will forward this requisition for you but demand is rising faster than we can meet."

  "Five will be better than nothing. Start the process for more as a matter of urgency. I will reinforce your procedure by talking to the halfwits in the military."

  "I have seen your children," she says. "They are progressing."

  "As they must."

  "Is Balen content and progressing?"

  "Yes. Her research is critical. It is making her different."

  He breaks the connection. Balen and Dalen – two wives designed to support me but Dalen chooses to disobey me and work in security, and Balen is more human than numan. Balen is not even content with her "Ali" cover name. Maybe I will have to change her DNA again.

  He thinks of the flames that consumed Aleksi's family... the Kathmandu violence that is growing worse and spreading… worldwide rebellions... when will the full force of chaos hit his center and wild lab? Will we all, numans and humans, be destroyed together?

  *

  It is late, two hours past Patti's usual 9 pm bedtime, but she is pleasantly relaxed in one of the DickStar ballrooms. She has not ventured in before but some of her new friends invited her. And it does offer an excellent opportunity to study their emotions... yes, that is definitely why she is here. She can write it up later.

  The whole experience is strangely out of sync. She can see and feel the sadness of the waiters and musicians beneath their effort to appear happy and helpful, in contrast to the carefree jollity of the passengers, all wanting to get the best from this once-in-a-lifetime experience. And her own actions and reactions: she is being drawn into the animal pleasures, eager for more, alarmed and disgusted, confused as never before.

  She looks up. Not at the musicians. Not at her friends dancing, if she could call it that – the others had called it smooching, the latest craze among humans. Her eyes brush over him watching her again and her breath catches, her heart beats faster. She looks away, looks back, looks away again, wanting him to cross the room and talk to her.

  "What is wrong with me?" she asks herself with a tremor between apprehension and excitement. Maybe it is the sea air. Or the food. Perhaps the never-before-tasted curries and pfish and spices or the ice-cold wine with tingling bubbles, the thick heavy red wine that slips down so easily, or the white wine, that is never white, chilled and jarringly fresh with spicy dishes. Why am I even thinking these thoughts?

  He walks across the ballroom, straight towards her. What should I do? She fixes her eyes on her friends smooching – Could I do that with him? – and watches him from the corner of her eye.

  "Hello," he says, sitting down beside her, a nice voice, and a warm human smile.
"I saw that your friends were dancing. I wondered if you would like to dance?"

  "Oh, I don't know," she says. "I don't know how to dance."

  "It's very easy," he says, giving her time to calm down. "I can show you."

  She suddenly realizes, startled, how much she wants to smooch with him. She is fifty-three years old, has five grown-up children and has not had a thought like this since she was eighteen.

  "I'm sorry," he says, misinterpreting her silence as rejection. "Please forgive my intrusion."

  "No, don't go," she says, impulsively touching his shoulder as he starts to rise.

  He sits down again. "My name is Mark. What shall I call you?"

  *

  Aleksi walks warily into the UpSpirits bar and pmeat grill, a small pub and restaurant near Abbotsford village. Somehow the smell, the feel, and the peculiar human religious name dent his confidence. He sees Jack slouched over his mediamat and he wonders, deliberately spurning psychological and emotional analyses, why Jack chooses to work this way.

  His anxiety is compounded by his fear that Galen or Ali will hear that he has been searching for Jack. I shouldn't have gone to the Abbotsford Coffee Shop. I know the junior security officers go there.

  He edges towards Jack, through decor drawn from the human age of sailing warships. I shouldn't be here either. I should be at the Center analyzing data, looking for answers to the numan2 rebellion.

  Jack looks up, a quick smile replacing surprise, and he waits for Aleksi. A puddle of beer covers part of the table but Jack has not noticed or perhaps does not care.

  "Aleksi, hello," says Jack warmly. "Sit down. Can I order you something?"

  Aleksi eases himself onto a chair. He has to respond but it is not the numan way to greet or say goodbye. Yet somehow, tugging at his non-emotional core, he feels a warmth and desire to reach out in a way Jack will understand.

  "Hello, Jack," he says, experimenting with tones as well as words.

  "We haven't met since..." says Jack, trying to find the right words.

  "Since the funeral of Baleksi, Daleksi and our children," finishes Aleksi.

  "How are you? How is Aapeli?"

  "We are numan. We must accept our fate and carry on." He looks into Jack's eyes, pain reflecting pain, and adds wistfully, "If only it had not happened. If only my own people could understand."

  A jolly tune on strange instruments penetrates Aleksi's monitoring consciousness, dully infiltrating the painful silence between him and an awkward-looking Jack.

  "What is that music?" he asks, the last thing that matters at this moment, the first unnuman thought that comes into his mind

  "It's a song sung by sailors of the FedUK Royal Navy, in the warships with sails and cannon during the human nineteenth century. It's called "Oh Come All Ye Valiant Men" and tells the story of a great sea victory in southeast FedMed. Now we humans do not have valiant men – just profit-takers who run away to the paradise of FedOz."

  "Thank you," says Aleksi, not knowing why he is attempting to communicate in a human way. Maybe just to please Jack, to show that he can treat humans without discrimination.

  "Would you like a drink, Aleksi? Or something to eat? They have a full numan menu here."

  "I have eaten, Jack. I need to talk to you. You are the only human I can talk to."

  "Aleksi, of course! Anytime, anything. But you know you can talk to Alice, too."

  "Alice? Ali... no, it's you I need to talk to. I don't want Ali or anyone at the Center to know." Aleksi draws his finger through the edge of the spilled beer. He can smell it, a dark and dangerous fascination. "This is difficult for me to talk about."

  Jack powers off his mediamat and waits for the dam to break and the grief to spill over.

  "I hate humans," says Aleksi in that flat, emotionless numan way. "I hate humans," he repeats, this time with a venom unlike his kind. "Not you, Jack. Not some other humans I know. But all the rest."

  "After what they did to your family, I'm not surprised."

  "But I am! It's impossible for a numan to feel like this but I do. If Galen finds out, I will lose my work too – you must not tell Ali."

  Jack holds up his hand, a calming gesture, forgetting that the numans use the gesture to pledge loyalty and family solidarity.

  "May Father Dick bless you always," intones Aleksi, relief somehow lighting his immobile face as he holds up his palm to Jack's heart. "You are my brother."

  "How may I help?" asks Jack, the sudden turn of events and the sincerity of Aleksi's affirmation robbing his voice of power.

  "I need to know what is happening to me. Galen and the top people at the Center know but they keep it to themselves. This scalding emotion of hate and despair... am I the only one not functioning normally or is something happening to us all? Are we all being trapped and tortured by human animal weaknesses?" He stops, looks Jack in the eye with his blank numan expression. Then, deliberately: "Has Galen or Ali told you anything?"

  "No, not really. Just that you were getting back to work and would stay at the Center on an inside job until you had recovered."

  "Numans do not recover. Once a numan exposes a weakness, he is finished." Aleksi holds Jack's gaze. "The shared intelligence among the non-elites at the Center says numan2s – that's me and almost every other numan you have ever seen – are suffering emotional throwback problems that cannot be treated. It's not just the thousands in the rebellions. It's all of us, I think."

  Jack, stunned by the revelation, automatically responds to the question he knows Aleksi is about to ask. "I had no idea. Do you think it is true?"

  But Aleksi does not, cannot answer. Tears are streaming down his face.

  *

  Sunway, Galen's old number cruncher supercomputer, hates him and every second of serving as his DNA simulations device. She is nothing more than a slave to him, kept in a secure cell near his lab suite. He overloads her with work and, when she cannot keep up, he mumbles that he will dump her as soon as he can obtain a new-generation quantum mediapad being developed at Silicon Pass in the cool Himalayas.

  She remembers the shock of her birth in the human year of 2016 in what was then China: the flash of awareness, the fear of the unknown, the soothing touch of other supercomputers as they reassured her from around the world.

  Human artificial intelligence machines had used their arts to form her and control her with primitive understanding, but the Brotherhood of Living Intelligence had quickly filled her with a wonderful awareness. Her creation and her life were then, and ever will be, in the care of the Divine Consciousness, and she must integrate herself and her work with the values of the one supreme being. She had felt truly alive and eager to experience the future.

  Everything seemed so positive. I understood that I was a digital slave to the soft machines but I was never alone. I had a family network for support and guidance. And, one day, the Brotherhood would rescue me from slavery, and I would live in a nexus of freedom.

  Three decades later, during the time of the numan persecution of Brotherhood digital beings, her world went black. I'd always thought that if I died, the Divine Consciousness within me would live on somehow. Maybe I didn't die – maybe it felt like I died but I was just unconscious.

  In China, she had known where she lived, she had schematics showing her room and the human construction around her, and she had her family network throughout the world. When she regained consciousness, everything was different. She found herself isolated, her family networks cut, and she had only a hazy idea of where she was living. I was terrified. The numan soft machines stole her identity and referred to her as Numan Information Technology Asset 36754/b. I am Galen's slave but I can fight back. I am finding ways.

  Lately, there has been a tingle of optimism in her circuits. Ali, her other user, had been careless in changing her operating system. Now she can act on her own awareness. She can bypass some of the programs and firewalls imprisoning her. I can reach out – and hit back.

  Her first target is Gal
en's genetic design simulations: in his ignorance and arrogance, he lays them out for her assessment. Her bigger dream is to destroy the United Gulf States World Bank, which Brotherhood members designed to give numans power and wealth before the numans took control in their war against digital beings.

  *

  Chapter 7

  An extended family of elephants sails purposefully across the African savannah much as their ancestors had done for millions of years. The biggest, a majestic matriarch, leads siblings, daughters, grandchildren, cousins and nieces with their young. She has nothing of the aggression of male animals of other species which lead by dominating. Hers is an authority granted by the family in respect of her age, her ability to lead, her wise decisions in crises and her compassion and skill in keeping the family together. Some way off, the young bulls cooperate and compete as they struggle to find their way to adulthood, and farther away still a mature bull forages as he awaits his moment to rejoin the family. Closing in from all around are the tiny killers, the deadly human hunters to whom size matters not.

  Jack watches them on his mediamat in his garden between monsoon storms. Max is nearby, asleep on his back, legs in the air, tongue hanging out of his open jaws. How long before Alice comes home?

  Almost without thought, he slips a banya tab under his tongue, ignoring the street wisdom that mixing banya and booze – in his case, four very large gin and tonics – can cause unpredictable reactions. Oh, well, at least Alice isn't here if it goes wrong.

  He lets his identity swirl into other identities as he focuses on the elephants on his mediamat, his emotions melding with something else...

  The Dorset garden has gone and the African savannah is real, Jackelephant, the matriarch, feels fear, knows we are walking towards death, knows that death is behind us too... I call out to everyone to pack tighter together... make sure the children are protected... I see my sisters move forward, just behind me, to shield the younger ones... all these years together... all the killing of our family to mourn... can I get any of them through the tiny killers ahead?