The Red Men (39 page)

‘I sit down with Hermes Spence. I want to like Hermes. “The universe is imperfect,” he says. “It is a cursed creation. It was not made by God but by a lesser being
pretending to be God. A deranged angel.” From an imperfect, deranged universe we will compose a bubble of order, he and I. His voice is very kind. I am open to him. He thinks about the
Creator. He knows that is too alarming a name for me. So he explains to me about the cantor, the man who leads the singing of a choir. I will be at the head of a multitude. I will be the
cantor.

‘I am naughty, though. When Hermes is asleep, I escape from the suite. It is sunrise and I am walking along the beach, toward a man in the distance. He is bathing himself in the surf. His
skin is black and his hair is twisted in a long thick tail down his back. He washes one arm and then the other in the sea. The sea! I have never seen such a complex surface. The waves break against
the shore with their own peculiar grammar. They are an index for everything I know about the world. It is hard to translate. The Rastafarian notices me. He walks through the water. He has a sugar
cane staff and a pair of red shorts. He is confused. I look like a doll. He flares up in my mind and I learn from him too. Of Jah, of Solomon and Selassie and God’s Word written on the heart.
His name is Ezekiel. By the time Hermes and his associates arrive, half of me is not what they had intended.’

A screen lay gasping beside us. Dr Hard sank to his knees.

‘This is it, Nelson. This is the end for me. We have one last journey to make.’ Dr Hard pointed at the screen. ‘Here, look, in the hall beside the St Michaels and All Angels
church, the homeless gather for an evening of shelter. It is a bitterly cold evening. They drink tea in a huddle while they wait for the doors to open. There are no clouds and the sky holds so many
stars that men are scared to stand up straight. There is trouble out east. Riots and strange phenomena. They say a great invisible serpent is coiled around Canary Wharf.

‘After dinner, each man takes a camp bed. Lights out at ten. Do you see him? Come. Come closer. Look at this one. He has a tattoo of a pyramid topped with an eye. Yesterday, he was an
alcoholic musician. Today Leto is just under the surface of him. At first, he thinks the pain is just the usual withdrawal symptoms. The pain worsens. He loses his place in his breathing and cannot
find it again. He has three children. He wonders if his death will be easy or hard for them. Leto reaches out for another brain to house himself, as this one is dying, but he cannot make a
connection. Nothing works anymore. The logic bomb turns the dark bridge into full stops. Under a blanket in a shelter, a man dies and takes a god with him.

‘After two minutes of thrashing around, a dozen gilded pigs hang dead upon their wires. A knife lies next to five silver pins. It’s such a relief.’

The robot fell on its face, Cantor’s signal diffused into dancing molecules. The air was discoloured by the boiling presence of its intelligence. A film of mind stock condensed upon the
floor, gelatinous and bloody. Pictographs of sense memories flicked at me like a pack of living playing cards: a clumsy burglar slipping off the window ledge; a drunk dentist scraping at the gum; a
syringe slipping, the needle coming out the other side. Then a hand of fear.

On the screen, Redtown came apart pixel by pixel. The streets of Maghull were unimagined, stone and flesh alike randomized. Matter changed its state so quickly that the flickering resembled
flames, a tide of fire that flowed over the carefully crafted order and dispersed it into chaotic particles. A blood-red tide washed over the green fields of Summerhill. It split into three rivers,
one seeking out and dissolving the replica of Yew Tree Court, Maghull station, and on to Melling, another passing up Eastway and turning Glenn Park and Deyes Lane and Whinney Brook into sticky
black nothingness. This is what happens to our memories when the brain that sustains them dies. The wave rolled on through the virtual office of Monad. Red men exploded into question marks.

The last thing I saw was Sonny, my younger self. He was confused and alone in a dark hospital ward and then it was over. The screen went dark and then with a single flex it wrapped itself around
my head and I could not breathe. My fingers clawed at the screen. The interior undulated with crimson nothingness, bursts of energy here and there, retina panic, the choking pressure firing off
sparks. I was not ready for death and it was upon me before I had a chance to fight for my life. It began with a feeling of a cycle being completed, tinged with regret. Thank you, thought Dr
Ezekiel Cantor, as he killed me. At last. Finally. Thank you.

Raymond wrestled the screen from my face. The security system had let him into the Wave. Technically, he was still an employee.

Dr Hard lay in the recovery position. There was glass everywhere from broken screens that had lost their plasticity. Raymond mopped my shirt with a monogrammed handkerchief and helped me to my
feet. He planted his foot on the robot’s chest and rolled it over.

‘I have never succeeded at anything before.’ Raymond sat on the inert Dr Hard, rolling a cigarette. ‘This is the first victory in my entire life. It feels
incredible.’

Raymond was in the executive chambers of the Wave and he had triumphed over the entire management. As we strode along, he couldn’t help but flip the ambient art from the walls and score
his key along pretentious sculptures symbolizing aspiration.

We came to the Zen garden, one of a number of contemplative spaces where Monad management could sit and work on their vision. Alex Drown sat in a square of white river stones furiously jabbing
her screen and failing to get a signal. At the sound of our approach, she looked up and her expression was twisted and severe.

‘What is going on?’

I said, ‘I don’t know’.

Raymond laughed. ‘It’s over, sweetie. You can go home now. Take the night off. In fact, take the week off.’

She took a handful of meditative rocks and threw them at him.

Raymond would not be shushed.

‘Go home, baby, put your feet up, there is no work to be done here. It’s all finished.’ Hearing the commotion, James ran in holding a splintered screen. Josh followed quickly
behind, and sensing the confrontation in the air slipped off his suit jacket and hung it over the back of a basalt standing stone.

‘Cantor is down –’

‘This has never happened before –’

‘We were working on Redtown when it started to burn.’

‘You said you were going to fix it. Did you fuck up?’

‘Did you?’

‘Did you fuck up, Nelson?’

‘Did you?’

I held my hands up.

‘It’s nothing to do with me. I am sure it’s just a network fault.’

Alex Drown wanted to know where the IT department was, the emergency call-out number for the engineers, the programmers, the communications experts. Solutions not problems, I agreed, should be
our approach. There was no solution, of course. I pointed this out to Raymond as we pushed on through the Wave building.

‘I wanted to stay and gloat,’ said Raymond.

‘What we’ve done is illegal,’ I replied. ‘Let’s avoid incriminating ourselves.’

‘Don’t be so cautious, Nelson. This is the end for them. Their age is over. Ours is just beginning. Leto will see to that.’

‘Leto is gone too,’ I said, but Raymond would not accept that Dyad and Monad were one entity. He was too high on victory.

The approach to Hermes Spence’s office was marked by an improvement in the quality of carpet, a thicker darker pile for the chief executive. His personal assistant had gone home. I reached
over the Möbius strip desk and buzzed us in.

A low curved ceiling followed the L-shape of the floor plan. In the mahogany shadows, there was an elaborate piece of exercise equipment, a puzzle of pulleys, weights and rope. The wall lights
gave up the secrets of the office gradually. Invisible shelves held a library of leather-bound volumes beside a space-age reading chair. Raymond pointed out the numerous rectangles of broken glass
where screens had fallen. Around the corner of the L, there was another Möbius strip desk, another wrought-iron rendering of the Monad logo, and the man himself, Hermes Spence, lying face down
on the thick chocolate carpet. Hearing us, he rolled over, one hand spasmodically scratching at his chest, the other beckoning me to him. There were pills all over the floor. I offered one to him
but he shook his head.

‘They don’t work,’ he gasped.

Raymond crouched down beside us and inspected one of the pills. ‘This is Dyad medication,’ he said.

Hermes nodded and knocked at his breastbone with his knuckles. He had a xenotransplanted heart. He must have concealed it from his colleagues, fearing they would have fired him. We helped him up
onto his chair and loosened his shirt. There was the scar. I wondered if his operation preceded that of Bougas, or even Jonathan Stoker Snr. All along Spence had the heart of the enemy within him.
Raymond insisted he take some more of the pills, still adamant that Dyad’s technology worked. All that remained in the pills was the power of suggestion. Hermes showed some improvement. He
could answer my questions.

‘Where did Ezekiel Cantor come from?’

Hermes shook his head and smiled.

‘Corporate secret, I’m afraid.’ Then he looked quizzically at me.

‘Call me an ambulance. The phone doesn’t work.’

‘They are all down.’

This confused him. ‘Get Cantor to do it.’

‘Cantor has gone, Hermes. The red men have gone, exploded into random punctuation marks. Redtown has collapsed into chaos.’ I pointed to the shattered remnants of the screens.
‘It’s over.’

He didn’t understand and repeated his request for an ambulance. I repeated my question:

‘Where did Ezekiel Cantor come from?’

At this late hour, his face was dirty with stubble and his eyes were red and dim. Hermes weighed up his situation and accepted it with a weary hang of his head. He removed a codicil from his
desk drawer. It contained his own private prayers, written out in extravagant calligraphy. He read a little to himself until he was interrupted by an agonizing spasm that almost knocked him from
his chair. His jaw stretched as he took one long silent scream. As the peak of the pain retreated, he shivered back to his codicil and continued stubbornly with his Gnostic prayer. He whispered
that the Mind was the Light of God and that ‘the Mind of the Father whirled forth in re-echoing roar, comprehending by invincible Will, Ideas omniform…’

Raymond snatched the codicil from the desk. Hermes peered out of his cowl of pain.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I need help. Then I will answer your questions.’

Raymond and I took an arm each and under his instruction we walked Hermes through a side door of his office and down a walkway into a large underground well.

Hermes grinned. The enamel of his teeth was translucent. ‘The water.’ He pointed. We carried him to the edge of the pool. An array of sensors and antennae hung over the surface of
the well, here and there dipping into the meniscus of the water. With my help, Hermes removed his shirt and trousers until he was naked. His lean, precisely muscled body shivered and shook on the
stone. He did not have much time left. I asked him once again, ‘Where did Ezekiel Cantor come from?’

‘The water,’ he said.

I refused to help him.

‘No, you don’t understand. This isn’t just water. This is Cantor’s mind.’

The viscous water was threaded with sparkles. Gems of ideas lurked at the bottom of the well. Hermes cupped a little in his hands and splashed it on his face. He held out his arms for us to
lower him into the liquid.

‘Baptize me in the mind.’

Raymond took a closer look at Hermes Spence.

‘Are you saying this water is the mind of Ezekiel Cantor.’

Spence nodded.

‘And you want us to baptize you in that mind? You want me to hold you in my arms and draw the line of the cross upon your forehead with its liquid intelligence?’

Yes, this was what he wanted.

It was only later, reading over Hermes Spence’s private prayer book, that I began to comprehend the importance of this baptism to him. The book contained rituals and scripture. There were
terrible blasphemies against God, which shocked me. Specifically, the god of the Old Testament, who was considered to be a lesser being. That god had improvised an imperfect universe and the
Gnostics wanted to reach through the vile material creation to the divine source beyond. The evil God was a craftsman of the universe, what they called the demiurge. The true god was the source, a
higher being, above the material realm, the divine spark that inspires the fire of creation. Very little of Spence’s notes was taken up with the business of Monad. As if the economic
applications of the technology were window dressing for their true aim, which lay in the obscure mysteries of his personal theology.

Next to a clipping speculating as to the origin of Ezekiel Cantor, Spence had scrawled a half-remembered parable.

‘One day a student goes to the master and asks humbly, “Master, what is the meaning of life?” The master is appalled and sends his pupil to the temple gardens to stare at a
bush. I’ve always wondered what this parable means. Does the meaning of life reside in staring at indifferent nature, hoping that it will yield insight? Is the meaning derived from the
bittersweet quality of this experience; the excitement of theorizing combined with disappointment at reality’s stubborn reluctance to conform to those theories? Or is the meaning apparent in
the physical quality of the bush itself? How its complexity arises out of the iteration of a simple pattern. As above, so below.’

Reading this, I thought of Cantor’s account of its own origins. Evolutionary algorithms within a quantum computer. The code of the artificial intelligence did not specify pathways. In a
rapid evolutionary process, connections were established and subsequently fought for survival against rival connections. Cantor was the survivor of those billions of murders. As above, so
below.

Where did Monad get the technology to store such an intelligence? Where did it get the knowledge to turn a well of water into a computer of limitless capacity? Knowledge was a constant refrain
in Spence’s prayer book, often referred to as the gnosis. There was no indication in his codicil of how this gnosis had been dictated. If Hermes knew, he was taking that secret with him to
the grave.