The Soul Continuum (11 page)

“Good. Can I access them?”

Access is available only by means of the WOOM.

“You mean I actually have to live as one of these things to find out what I need to know?”

Correct.

I go cold at the thought. It has been a long time since I have experienced suffering of any kind—a very long time—but the poor wretch that has now been sent to storage was illustration enough of what I would have to endure. I don't know if I can go through with it, but even as I resist the idea, the subtle thrill of exploration tweaks the pleasure center of my brain, confirming I must. If I did live as one of these abominations, how could I be sure that I could glean anything from the experience? Was it capable of rational thought? Could something like that even live for very long?

“Control, what is the average lifespan of these lives?”

Of six hundred and twenty-three of them, the average lifespan is three days. One survived for two hundred and seventy-seven years.

I groan. Three days is not enough time to learn anything, especially as the subject was unlikely to have any semblance of understanding or rational thought. It's doubtful it even had any fully functioning senses. But two hundred and seventy-seven years? That is a long time to suffer. Nevertheless, the fact that one of them somehow managed to survive for so long when the others did not has to be significant. It seems I have little choice but to live out this poor soul's memory.

Reluctantly I ask, “In which sphere will I find this life?”

The Sub-human Sphere.

“The what? I have not heard of that before. Explain.”

The Sub-human Sphere was never intended for immersion. None of the subject files stored in the Sub-human Sphere have been designated as
Homo sapiens
or
Homo superior
.

Of course. The oldest question. What does it mean to be human? The debate had raged and abated, corrupted and blessed, appalled and fascinated every sentient mind throughout mankind's long and diverse history. Multitudes fluttered around that blurred line separating human from nonhuman. At what stage does a fetus become human? How damaged must a brain be to rule out self-awareness? And what about the interbreeding of different species? Some people even believed that AIs could be considered part of mankind's spectrum—an extension of the human ego—with sentience of their own. I am the last human, but who was the first? Intellect, morality, and reason progressed in unnoticeable incremental changes as evolution drove the primates on, but somewhere in the Soul Consortium algorithms, an unsympathetic decision was made to discriminate between ape and human. And similar decisions were made for all the other cases that challenged our comfortable notion that true boundaries exist.

The Sub-human Sphere must be the resting place for every rejected specimen, every genetic failure, every aborted
zygote, any unclassified entity with the capacity to remember
its own existence, but tantalizingly close to the philosophical
shape of man to raise doubt to a casual observer.

I begin to wonder if my own life will end up there.

I have lived so many lives that most of my own life is not, in fact, my own. Have I been diluted into the pool of civilization to such an extent that I no longer have a unique identity? Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I stare at the one remaining empty slot in the Soul Consortium Archives and try to imagine which sphere I will eventually be filed in. I do not know, and perhaps it is better that I do not. I have not even decided if I want to die yet.

Do you wish to visit the Sub-human Sphere?

“Hmm?” I break from my introspection and suddenly remember why I had taken that line of thinking. “Oh, the anomaly. Yes. Yes, I do want to go there. I think I have to live the life of the sub-human that lived the longest.”

It is not recomm—

“No! Don't try to talk me out of it. I'll yield without a second thought, and I can't afford that. I'm not sure why, but I believe I may find answers by living that life, however terrible it may be.”

It is not recomm—

“Quiet! And don't try that again. Set up the immersion. I have to go now before I change my mind.”

E
n
route to the new sphere, the Control Core provides
me with more disturbing facts about this mysterious strain of sub-humans. According to the summary data associated with their files, they were only stored in the sphere because of the human DNA that was blended with the unknown quantum structure. Originating near a place called Babylon amidst one of mankind's earliest civiliza
tions, they were hybrids spawned by a single human mother and fathered by something akin to the mummified husk I viewed earlier. Most were not equipped to survive, but one did.

I am about to become acquainted with Diabolis Evomere.

The fact that my subject is so named tells me he is far more than a surviving freak of nature. A name implies identity, of course, but the name is not Babylonian; it is Latin, etymologically of later origin. It is a mystery indeed, but one that I am not looking forward to solving. If the expression of agony and sadness I witnessed on the fossilized face of that unfortunate creature I saw earlier is any indication of what I am about to experience, I am not encouraged. Two hundred and seventy-seven years of torture. Is that what I should expect when I live his life?

I am left with the irony of impatience as I wait a mere ten minutes for the Control Core to configure the Sub-human
Sphere for my immersion. There was no WOOM installed. Why would there be if it was never intended for human visitation? I would be the first human to set foot inside it and the first and only person to walk the mindscape of a being whose thought processes would probably be completely alien to my own.

I stand outside the door, waiting, pacing, worrying. A part of me begs me to leave, to simply wait, because Qod is too powerful and wise to simply die in such a quick and insignificant way and to endure the pains of a creature who is not only genetically different from a human, but atomically different too, is foolhardy. But I have to go. I am compelled to do so, not just because of the sense of urgency that is steadily growing but because of the unpredictability, the sense of mystery, and the lure of the unknown. There is danger in that sphere, and I yearn to embrace it. I long to feel the reality of it, knowing that—although the life itself is mere memory—the risk of exploring it is not a simulation. Most of my life has been a journey of virtual reality, but this . . . this is
real
danger. I do not know what the long-term results of an immersion like this will be, and Qod is not here to dissuade me.

The door opens.

I am used to seeing the cool aquamarine colors of the Bliss Sphere, but this is very different. The sphere colors usually match the mood—sensory hints about the type of experience awaiting the user. In here the mood is foreboding. The light is subdued. Gray gloom with the faint golden luminescence of a million soul files lining the walls. It reminds me of an overcast sky swollen with storm clouds behind which a bright sun struggles to peek through. I stand in the doorway, torn. A new WOOM levitates at the sphere's center, waiting like a dark god to unfold its shroud, embrace me, then suffocate me within its greasy folds.

Subject X0.008130E+30: Select.

Subject X0.008130E+30: Subhuman. Possible incompatibility.

Subject X0.008130E+30: Aberration detected.

Subject X0.008130E+30: Override authorized—ID Salem Ben.

Subject X0.008130E+30: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

Instinctively I ready myself to ignore the standard warning
speech that accompanies immersion into a life memory, but Qod is not here, and it does not come. For some reason this worries me. It feels like the removal of a safety rail on the edge of a cliff that I always climb down anyway. As if I only now realize that there has always been someone there to catch me should I fall and that the precautionary chatter was more of a reassurance than a warning. I am in completely new territory. For the first time in millions of years, my palms are sweating.

A multitude of black, hair-thin fibers unfurl from the walls, reach for me, then scoop me up. The lips of the WOOM draw back and the mouth opens wide to taste me, preparing to swallow me into the life of Diabolis Evomere. I hold my breath and wait as darkness follows and the icy flow of nanofibers penetrate my brain. Only two hundred and seventy-seven years to endure . . .

Have I the eyes of Eternity?

Have I the wisdom to see?

Do the roads of time lay bare for me?

And will there torture be?

I
have transitioned. My world is new, and I have a mother. My eternal consciousness has duplicated many times over to merge with eggs inside her fertile womb. But I am not just a mind that inhabits an embryo: I am substance, form that has made use of the minutiae within the quantum components of this universe to forge particles uniquely different from the humble atom. My flesh is different, but the properties of the indigo light wielded beyond the wet and opaque purse that has nourished us for these last months have forced it to bond with the molecules of this, my new home. The struggling fetus with which I have spent many days melding suffers because of our blasphemous union. It does not yet have a fully developed brain to understand
pain, but I can feel it within our newly developed nervous system, and when its mind blossoms, it will dominate me; only one of us can govern the body. We must each take our turn.

United, my brood brothers wrestle within the pulpy folds of our mother, and now we are forced to rip through her womb and experience the hot Babylonian air. I am the last to silently spill out onto the sand-covered floor. All of the other newborns have been born blind, but I am fully sighted, and my newly formed eyes, fat and jellylike, take in the sight of my siblings as they squirm to seek refuge. Sculpted from the two fused materials of separate realms, we are blotchy, red babes, abominations of bloated heads and ropy, translucent limbs with scarcely the strength to drag our twisted bodies forward. We are out in the open now, exposed and vulnerable, but I have seen the discarded robes of my mother, near the entrance to the antechamber, and manage to slither beneath the hessian folds.

Survival. This is the only reality now. For others there are the illusions of lust, altruism, pleasure, and duty—mere constructs of the mind to serve the everlasting struggle to continue existing—but for me, in these critical moments after birth, survival is all that matters. It is more than the instinct of a newborn. I have knowledge passed to me by the indigo light that saturated my mother's infested brain before death took her, and more, far more than that. I know from where I have come, and I know who hunts me. He has named himself Keitus Vieta, though he does not know who he truly is. Oh, he has great knowledge, yes, and he understands much about his origins, but the madness of immortality and his obsession with the creation of perfect life warps his mind, and he knows little about his true purpose. Or mine.

From this hidden vantage point I can see everything. According to my mother's memory, this is supposed to be a sacred place, a place dedicated to the reverence of forgotten gods. It is one of the ancient temples on the outskirts of the city, abandoned now, which is why Vieta chose it to perform his dark acts. Tall pillars of sandstone chipped by age and storm, overlaid with flaking gold and ebony, support a dilapidated roof far above. Golden sconces provide barely enough light to illuminate the spacious chamber and its sacrificial altar. But Keitus Vieta has profaned all of this. He brought my mother here, swollen beyond capacity, to birth the unnatural offspring he has bred through her. She now lies dead in a pool of amniotic fluids, blood, and torn membranes. Twelve of us there were, born upon the altar, all our senses realized, trying to drag ourselves to safety beyond his reach.

If I can stay hidden, I will be the first-ever survivor.

Vieta watched my brothers struggle for a time as they spread out across the temple floor. He studied them as they crawled, and now, stooped as an old man, vicious eyes bulging out of pale and withered skin, Keitus Vieta creeps around the temple in his ragged sackcloth, surveying my dead kin. In his hand he holds his cane, the blue jewel nested at its tip, pulsing with anticipation of the recycled energies it will soon absorb. Now he stands over the only other surviving newborn as it slides through blood, dirty sand scratching its fragile skin. He speaks to it slowly and gently, but with sinister intent.

“My child, where will you go? What will you do? You must not live.”

The jewel in his cane beats out its indigo light like a comatose heartbeat, and Vieta steps slowly over the babe, his sandaled feet at either side of its body. Still its wet fingers claw the dirt to drag it on, gurgling and writhing toward the temple exit, desperate, and I can do nothing.

“You are not what I intended,” says Vieta. He looks upward
wistfully. “You are wrong. All of you are wrong, so I must improve my methods. There must be a new vessel. This Chaldean whore I purchased was not capable of birthing offspring that will evolve and perpetuate. I must have fresh children to fulfill my purposes. You are merely a residue. A mistake.”

He holds his wrinkled free hand over the newborn, his
fingers brittle talons, and the body stops moving. Vieta hisses
with satisfaction as the cane pulses with new light, but then he surveys the devastation in the temple, sighing deeply with what he thinks is grief. He lifts his cane, examines the light in the jewel with brief puzzlement, and I fear that he realizes one of us has evaded him, but he turns and walks slowly out through the arched temple door.