The Soul Continuum (32 page)

Not the most pleasant of lives one would choose to experience through the WOOM. Yet this alone was no reason to reject living one of their lives.

“Yes, I'm serious,” I tell Qod. “What's the issue?”

“There are several issues. I'm going to assume you already know that
Homo unitas
are about as much fun as Castorian
monks and twice as bad-tempered, but more critically, they are completely incompatible with your genus. The cerebral manipulation caused by their link to the Unitas Communion is so radical that it cannot be translated and mapped onto a normal human brain. As soon as you come back to your own life, you won't be able to recall anything of the life you just experienced.”

“That can't be right,” I tell her. “They might be very different from us, but they were still considered to be a type of human. Don't the Soul Archives cover all humans?”

“They do, yes, but some were difficult to categorize. Take your friend Diabolis Evomere for example. The difference between what makes one human and one nonhuman is not always easily quantifiable. That's why we have the Sub-human Sphere, as you recently found out.”

The excitement welling in me is almost disturbing. “So all
Homo unitas
are in the Sub-human Sphere?”

“Yes, but as I said, even if you were to live—”

“Check them,” I tell her. “See if there are any unusual instances.”

“Salem, your heart rate is elevated and there is a significant imbalance of hormones. That algorithm may be impairing
your judgment.”

“Or heightening it.”

“I am just making you aware; that's all.”

“You've obviously already considered the implications of what's happening to me,” I say. “If you were concerned, I think you would be stopping me. And surely Oluvia wanted me to have a degree of autonomy; otherwise she could have written the algorithm to control me completely. She wants to guide me. She wants to show me the way rather than force me down the path.”

Again, Qod is silent.

“So are there any?” I ask.

“Unusual instances of
Homo unitas
in the Sub-human Sphere?”

“Yes.”

“It seems your instincts are correct. There is one, yes, but that life was lived over seventy-six thousand years before
the Great AI came into being. It was early days for the Unitas
Communion, so you would learn nothing about where the Great AI went when they vanished.”

“It doesn't matter. This is right. I know it. Brief me with the archive summary on my way. I'm living that life.”

Q
od has almost no information about my forthcoming host. She called herself Silicant 5. I have yet to find out why. Qod tells me this individual managed to disconnect herself from the Unitas Communion, so technically, she became something other than
Homo unitas
and therefore is compatible with me. Her file is small, which in itself is mysterious. The Codex summary indicates that Silicant 5 lived for several million years, yet the file accounts for only eight years. Add to that the fact that she was
a passenger on board the legendary
Socrates
, and Silicant 5 becomes an irresistible proposition, even without the influence
of the algorithm.

Of course, through the annals of time, there were many intergalactic cruise liners with the name
Socrates
, but the mystery of this ship's fate changed the association of that
title from one of philosophy to one of unexplainable mystery. The very mention of
Socrates
became a joke, a scapegoat to describe a line of science that was beyond explanation.
The Socratic problem used to be a mystery associated with a man. Now it is a cruiser. Nobody knows what happened to it, not even the lone survivor whose identity was later protected, and even scholars of the Codex could not explain it.

As I stand inside the brooding Sub-human Sphere, surrounded by its gloomy grays and pale, stormy light, I should feel afraid, but I can barely contain my excitement. I may actually be able to solve the mystery of what happened to the
Socrates
, and I cannot help but wonder how much of a part Silicant 5 played in it.

“You're sure this will work, Qod?”

“Yes. Silicant 5 is different from the rest of her kind, at least for about eight years of her life. It seems she became compatible with
Homo sapiens
during that time, so that portion of her life has been filed, and you should be able to retain the experience when you wake up again.”

“Good. Then let's get to it.”

“You're sure?”

“Completely. Why? Is there a risk?”

“Of course there is. Nobody ever used the Sub-human Sphere. It was a place to store anomalies, and one can never know what will happen.”

“But it's only eight years, Qod. That's nothing.”

“You should know better than to equate importance with time.”

She's right. I am acutely aware of that lately. I am only trying to reassure myself, trying to justify my reasons for doing this. Even as the skin of the black and sticky WOOM hovering at the center of the sphere quivers in anticipation
of receiving me, I am held fast between two powerful forces: the irresistible urge of the algorithm and the fear of the unknown.

Subject X3.741149E+22: Select.

Subject X3.741149E+22: Sub-human.

Subject X3.741149E+22: Temporal incongruity detected.

Subject X3.741149E+22: Override authorized—ID Salem Ben.

Subject X3.741149E+22: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

“Interesting,” Qod says.

“What?” Even as the spidery fronds reach out from the
walls to take hold of me, it takes only a single unexpected
word from her to color me fearful. “What's the matter? What does it mean by temporal incongruity?”

“Oh, nothing,” she says almost casually. “It's just that I would usually have to warn you about entering a new life at this point. You know, tell you how you cannot get out until the moment of the subject's death.”

“So?” I am never usually still in conversation by the time the umbilicals are inserting me into the WOOM.

“I'm not sure what to warn you about on this occasion.”

The WOOM lips part and something like saliva drools around the edges of the resulting orifice as I am fed into it.

“What do you mean? Is it something to do with the temporal incongruity? What is that?”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. It seems that Silicant
5 didn't die.”

I am not able to ask how this will affect my experience or even if I will actually wake up without a perceived death to trigger my exit. Cold nanofibers slip through my skull as the clamps fix my wrists and ankles in place. Darkness swallows me.

“Farewell, Salem,” Qod says. “See you in eight years . . . I hope.”

Like one that through the void does drift in squeamish fear,

And having heard once, moves on but inclines no longer her ear,

Because she knows a dreadful beast creeps behind her, so near.

0
01101-000110-101000-011111-010100-101010-013425-34645743459-88871-348-77812398-9292-34919-10010437-57-45-7273-7364-736478566291-0209-3847-698243897-462-359-0243-75893-47920894-089-23567-456927-8408237-87567378-4673-848-4578-4777-66566 46433 87483 7593845 02 8 93 075847 584 593 487 598 49 7007TL TH89 7YH D3A7H D3A7H D3A7H LI7E AND D3A7H 000 LI7E AL15 AL15E 1 am A71VE 1 LI7E AL1VE ALIVE ALIVE ALIVE PR1MARY B10L0G1CAL FUnCT1ON5 ENGAG3D S1MULAT3D N3RV0US 5Y5TEM ENGAG3D C1RCULAT0RY SY5TeM ENGAGeD CER38ERAL FUNCT10NS EnGaGeD CognITive ReaS0nING engaged. Diagnostic
subsystems executed. Catharsis gland engaged at 12 percent.

Orientation . . .

Chronology: Year 225,731 UT. This will be my day 1.

Life initiation reset to year 0.

Location: Phoradian Gulf. Unable to triangulate.

Destination: Uncharted galaxy, Senerius Exis H1.

Approximately eight standard years remaining.

Vehicular assessment: Galactic Liner CL565-Z1
Socrates
.

Population: 20 million.

Departmental location: Passenger view strip four.

Environmental Analysis: compare and contrast . . .

Oxygen: 78 percent.

Nitrogen: 21 percent.

Trace: 1 percent.

Vessel location: Cylindrical passenger shaft.

Length: Fifty thousand meters.

Circumference: Two thousand meters.

Shell: Quadruple hull layering. Vacuum-sealed cavities.

Bio-adaptive circuitry.

Prismatic radiation shielding.

Auditory analysis: Recognize
Homo sapiens
.

Colloquial designation: Lower class. Ancient Terran preference.

“You going to do something or what? They'll be knocking the living guts out of each other by now. Nobody likes to have their babies messed with.”

Source: Recognize human unit.

Name designation: Lennon Cartinian III.

Sex: Male.

Self-recognition:
Homo unitas
.

Name designation: Silicant 5.

Sex: Female.

“Hey! I'm talking to you, bitch. We had a deal. You told me to tell you when there was . . . what did you call it? An emotional outbreak? You said you'd give me double what I wanted this time. Well, I'd say this counts as a pretty serious fucking emotional outbreak, right? So you'd better get your silicon ass in there before it's all over.”

Pause orientation. Engage
Homo sapiens
paradigm . . .

I can see. Before, it was numbers. It was different. Very different, but I can no longer understand how it once was. I could feel. But that too was numbers. Is this what it means to experience sensation as unhindered
Homo sapiens
? The space above and below me is vast. It is no longer just a volume to be measured. It is a breathtaking cylindrical chasm, a vast white tube striped alternately along its length with rows of cushioned seats and stretches of axipolymer windows as wide as shuttle landing strips. Through the multilayered glass, the fiery brilliance of our guiding star and source of energy, Celetrix, pours daylight over the multitudes infesting the aisles. The humans in the distance look so small they seem like bacteria squirming beneath a heat lamp, but soon it will be night to them, and their movement will slow, affording me the opportunity to observe them as they sleep.

Day and night are a carefully orchestrated routine on the
Socrates
. It is our side-on orbit around Celetrix combined with the relatively slow rotation of the cylinder that provides the illusion: seventeen hours of red-giant radiation through one window strip, then seventeen hours hidden behind the seating aisles before it rises in the next window strip to dawn another “day.” It seems gentle and peaceful, but the reality is that the liner is corkscrewing around the artificially accelerated star, falling forward into a superexpanded quantum tunnel at ten times the speed of light.

But night, when it comes, is the superior illusion. The tiny white smudges in the dark are not stars; they are distant galaxies, for we are hurtling through the Mammon Phoradian Gulf, the immense void that separates the home galaxy from our unexplored target galaxy.

All of this should be beautiful to me, but in the last hour since I severed my connection to the Unitas Communion, I feel the enormity of our journey, not the illusion, and this raw perspective is alarming. I feel panic. I feel too much. Confusing. Like rain splashing in a million puddles. I cannot count the rings. I cannot count the smells, the colors, the words in my head, the sound waves, the air molecules, the feelings, the—

“Hey! You dead? I said I'm talking to you!”

Focus. I should adjust slowly. That was too much too soon. I must dampen the mental bridge between perception and imagination and learn to restrict my attention to narrower parameters.

Reduce catharsis gland parameters by 7 percent.

Emotional feedback now within acceptable limits.

The man blocking the window in front of me is ugly. Irregular-shaped face, straggly black hair, sunken brown eyes, left eye 0.07
percent larger than the right. Oily interface socket plugged into the neck just above the collarbone. Unshaven, red skin blemishes, sweating. Body chemistry suggests substance abuse. Overweight by 12.87 kilograms. Gray jumpsuit uniform with red-striped sleeves suggests officer designa
tion. Unwashed. Replicated DNA markers suggest chronological age in excess of nine thousand six hundred standard years—

“You freak! Stop looking at me like that. Just fucking get up, will you?”

His dirty hands squeeze my shoulders. He shakes me violently. It will take me seven hours and twenty seconds to calibrate my memory and adjust fully to my new
Homo sapiens
state using gradual incremental adjustments. I am still disengaged from the Unitas Communion, but even at this reduced level I can feel that disgusting piece of meat inside my silicon cranium registering hatred for this male. For all humans. But I remember this one now. I know him very well.

“Remove your hands from me. I find the tactile sensation of human flesh repugnant. You know this.”

He complies, but his facial expression does not appear to be in collaboration.

“You're disgusted by me?” His top lip curls upward to reveal yellowed teeth as he looks me up and down. “Just fucking look at you. I can see your insides. You freaks never heard of clothes? And why does your kind think eyelids are such a bad idea? You look like . . . well, you look like a psycho or something.”

He is referring to my transparent membrane comparable to skin. Though my physical form is designed to stay true to human shape, some refer to the appearance of
Homo unitas
as skinless cadavers. The imitation muscle tissue, arteries, and cartilage are all clearly visible, though they too are semiopaque, revealing the cybernetic framework beneath, where bone should be. Only the brain and sexual organs are natural, preserved so that my species can cling to a pathetic remnant of humanity and continue the farce of sexual reproduction.