We’re getting close to the end and I wanted to take a moment and thank you for reading my un-polished drafts and offering your edits and advice!
Chapter 23
One week passed since Staley’s troop liberated D’naia and Indigo and the willing others from that cattle car. They traveled about thirty miles in the winterland during that time, which tested the limits of D’naia’s condition They set up camps in the remains of ancient buildings and abandoned motorway tunnels. These countless hideouts were well-known oases to the unhuman nomads.
The withering fossil remains of the ancient empire captivated Indigo. He wished he could comprehend the ancient signage, tediously spelled out in a long-forgotten phonetic writing style. Neocunieform, the writing technique of Gaiastan, was so much more efficient, he thought. One government approved symbol for each government approved word was so much more efficient than the sprawling scrawl of the pre-Paradigm era.
The taxidermist, who was left behind, eventually succumbed to the elements. Neither the wolves nor the Overmen found her to be worth the trouble. She hid in the shadows of her cattle car, clutching her Gaians Bible and her immortality locket which glowed with each refresh of her consciousness until hypothermia finally stopped her heart.
The nomads, led by Staley, settled in at twilight within the remains of a stone lodge, eternally guarded by a cement statue of some female goddess of antiquity perched atop the cliffs high above.
“Is that Diana? Did the ancients worship her, too?” D’naia asked, referring to the towering idol whose eroded face was emblazoned orange with the last rays of the descended sun.
Indigo shrugged his shoulders. Nothing was ever taught of the ancient religions other than the only thing they got ‘right’ was that each was constructed around the doctrine of human sacrifice.
In the evening, the troop was joined by others, swelling their numbers to over fifty. Indigo was curious about the coincidental gathering and it was then that Staley informed him that the lodge was a rendezvous, of sorts.
“What are they coming for?” Indigo asked.
“They’ve come to see me, I imagine.”
“To see the spaceman? Do they come because you’re a prophet or just a just an oddity?”
“A little of both, I suppose. But I think mainly they come for a big show.”
There were too many of them gathering, Indigo fretted. One or five or even ten unhumans, coalescing in the wilderness, was of no concern to the unmanned, atmospheric probes that patrolled the skies. But fifty unhumans might be cause for Gaiastan to send in a hovercraft filled with Enforcers who could easily penetrate their flint-tipped perimeter defenses, round them all up, and haul them off to some rendering plant in the east. Even worse, perhaps Gaiastan might just dispense with a messy manned operation altogether and launch a rocket down on their litle gatheriong, vaporizing them all in an instant. It made Indigo nervous, even more so as he felt his locket which was perhaps being pinged with locator pulses by the overhead probes at that very instant.
“Don’t worry,” Staley advised, as if he could read Indigo’s mind. “They know we come here. They eavesdrop on our little conclave to find out what we’re up to. This place is of much more use to them intact than obliterated.”
“So why do you come here, then?”
“Because,” Staley whispered, “They think we’re too stupid to know that they’re listening. The gatherings here are a terrific means of infecting them with disinformation. Shhh.”
Staley reached into his satchel and produced a strip of dried meat. He cut off two pieces and handed one to D’naia and the other to Indigo. They chewed away at the leathery meat, warmed by the campfire whose smoke vented upwards through a hole in the roof. While they dined, a number of unhumans approached Staley from out of the shadows to offer him their gratitude and to shake his hand.
“Peace be with you,” they would conclude before slipping away behind the fire and back into the shadows.
“Why do they say that?” D’naia asked.
“It’s their way of wishing me a safe journey,” Staley answered in conversational volume.
“Where are you going?” Indigo asked.
Staley smiled at Indigo. “It’s not really where I am going to so much as it is where I am returning from.”
“And where is that?”
“I’m returning home from the Astarte.”
Indigo didn’t know exactly what Staley meant but sensed something bold.
“Do you know who Joe Hannan really was?” Staley asked, changing the subject.”He said he was a Gaian… that they revealed too much too soon… and that he left the Order.”
“That’s correct.” Staley’s voice reverted back into a low whisper. “He knew everything. He knew how virtual immortality works. He knew how to enter it… how to control and manipulate it. He taught me a great deal in the short time I knew him. Do you know that there are locket interfaces everywhere… old ones, forgotten access points.”
“Is Joe Hannan alive, then? Does he live on in virtuality?”
“I don’t believe so. I don’t know. I don’t think he wanted any part of it. But he showed me many of those access points and how to use them. Almost anyone here can take you to one.”
“So we can upload ourselves?”
“If that’s what you want. But I have another request to make.”
“What is it?”
“Indigo, you are my only friend alive in this world. You are like my brother and I need you to do something for me. It is a task that will help me to complete my mission. And it will enable me to repay my debt… my debt to you, my debt to my people, and my debt to her.”
“Athena?” D’naia asked.
“Yes. Athena.” Staley drifted back, momentarily, to the space can. It took all of his power of free won’t to return. “It will save my people, too… these people here. It’s going to change everything.”
“I’ll do anything for you, Staley,” Indigo declared. “What is it?”
“Here. Take my locket.” Staley removed it from his chest and handed it to Indigo. It’s glow faded as it was withdrawn from Staley’s brain and kinetic energy. “Take this. It is my mind. And I trust only you with it. Have one of my people lead you to a portal so that you can upload my consciousness there. This task, which I entrust to you will enable me to fulfill my mission. Will you do this for me my brother?”
“I will. But why me? Why don’t you do it?”
“Because the Sunstein Agent is coming for me.”
“Then whya re we waiting around here? We should go, now. We can slip out into the wilderness. We can become like guerillas and fight them.”
“You can’t beat them that way, Indigo. Not now, anyway. Bows and slings are no match for hovercraft. They’d annihilate us. No. We have to beat them another way. We have to infiltrate their thoughts, their minds… bit by bit. Person by person. We have to slowly, methodically, persistently, relentlessly undermine their paradigm. This is how they did it, Indigo. It took them seven thousand years but it’s how they did it. They corralled humanity into a single religion. A single science. A single philosophy. A single politic. A single hierarchy of power. They manifested the human hive mind over several millennia.
And now, we will do the same to them, only in reverse. We will undue the hive mind… word by word, thought by thought, deed by deed, man by man. We’ll undue them from the inside like an infestation. At first tiny and undetectable, a single parasitic mite, then several dozen, then metastasizing until the infestation scatters all the worker bees and obliterates the entire hive. This will be one of the first steps.”
“So why let the Sunstein Agent take you? They’ll just reformat your brain and use you like a weapon.”
“My body is of no use in any battle against them. And it will be of no use to them without my mind. They’ll try to reprogram my brain so that my body will serve their ends but the undermen are smart. They can tell a zombie when they see one.”
“But you’ll be dead.”
“No. I’ll be alive and alive inside of their hive mind.”
“It won’t be you. It will only be a copy.”
“It will be me. A perfect, virtual copy starting from this moment. We are all copies of ourselves, Indigo, copies reproduced every instant, each new version slightly different. You are never who your were the instant before. Who you are at this moment is merely someone who remembers being you. My next version, if you can complete the upload, may not be organic but it will be me. And I’ll be resurrected a million times more powerful, free of all the constraints of the body.” Staley stood up and dusted himself off. He reached down and pulled Indigo up onto his feet. “It’s time to complete the mission.” He embraced Indigo and kissed him on the cheek. A thunder roared in the heavens above. It was the terrible rumble of a Gaian hovercraft lowering itself down upon the lodge by its retrojets. “You are my brother, Indigo, and I forgive you. I forgive you for bringing the Sunstein Agents to me. I know they tracked you here by your locket. But I know you had no choice. I wanted them to come. I’m just sorry that it had to be you. It is just how it had to be. Please forgive me for doing this to you. You are my brother and I love you. Now go. Take D’naia and escape into the wilderness. Stay with my people. Complete the upload. I will bargain with Mr. Lever for your souls.”
Staley turned Indigo around and shoved him towards the door. D’naia followed closely behind and they disappeared.
The hovercraft fired its energy weapons at the roof of the lodge blasting a hole into it and sending beams and concrete and dust down into the lodge floor below. The dust and turbulence extinguished the campfire and Staley used the cover to slip out of the lodge and into the darkness.
He climbed the steep path that lead up the cliff, upwards to the base of the giant idol. He was spotted by unhumans who then took up the path behind him, following Staley up the path, scrambling up over boulders and fallen trees and roots.
The Enforcers jumped from the hovercraft, their thirty foot fall slowed by their pulse wave generators. Unhumans who resisted was pulverized, exploded into a mist of blood and bone chips and jellied flesh by the Enforcer’s energy weapons affixed to their helmets at the temples. The Enforcers gave no chase to anyone fleeing. They were only in pursuit of Staley.
Up, up they climbed, Staley’s space suit covered in soot and dirt, his followers behind with their flint weapons and animal hide cloaks, and behind them the Enforcers, themselves cloaked in their light-bending, invisible suits, energy weapons armed, floating just above the ground on pulsating waves of inaudible sound. The Enforcers caught the lagging pilgrims from behind, shoving them to the ground as they passed them by. Those pokey unhumans dusted themselves off and carried on, undaunted and un-fearing. A whistling noise pierced the cold dark air and another human being was atomized.
Staley took to the rock face. He jammed his fingers into the cracks and pulled himself up onto it. Hand over hand, foot over foot he climbed up the sheer wall. Down below him it was dark. He couldn’t see the hovercraft through the trees. He scaled onwards, upwards. A slip and a fall down into the darkness would be certainly fatal, he thought. He heard the screeching of the Enforcer’s energy weapons not far behind and below. He knew that people were dying. He had warned his followers not to resist but he knew many wouldn’t heed his warning.
Another hand hold. Another pull up. His lungs burned. His heart pounded. A shove up with his legs and he was finally at the top. He grabbed hold of a root and pulled himself over the ledge. He caught his breath at the base of the ancient idol. It grew quiet.
He stood up in the stillness. High in the west hung Orion, the hunter, his right shoulder Betelgeuse a mere dying ember. He breathed deeply. The air was bitingly cold. He felt its chill as he drew the winter air deep down into his lungs.
Another unhuman made it up over the ledge. Then another and another. They gathered in around Staley as if to defend him from the Enforcers who were near.
“We won’t let them take you,” one declared.
“Do not resist them. Resistence is futile. This is my destiny. Do not interfere,” Staley ordered.
“Your destiny is with us!” Came another voice from behind them.
They turned their heads towards the voice but it was too dark to see. The unhumans began to murmer. Staley sensed their fear of the invisible Enforcers. The unhumans were quite willing to die there but not willing to be wasted as if in a slaughterhouse.
“Show yourselves!” Staley commanded.
The hovercraft lights illuminated the mountain top. The colossal deity, weathered by the centuries, stood silently gazing south with the crowd assembled at her feet. The Enforcers, floating on waves of sound, switched off their cloaking devices. A hundred of them appeared, encircling the tiny band of Paleolithic pilgrims.
From behind the base of the idol stepped forward the one whom Staley had most expected to see. It was Mr. Lever, bundled up in his oxblood overcoat and fedora with ear muffs. He so disliked the cold weather. His pistol was drawn but his hand trembled in the cold.
“Your destiny is with us, Mr. Staley,” Lever announced.
The unhumans drew in even closer around Staley, brandishing their flint-tipped spears.
“I will go with you,” Staley responded, “but only under three conditions.”
“You are in no position to make conditions,” Mr. Lever responded.
“You will agree to my conditions or I will throw myself over that ledge. You can’t reformat a dead man.” Staley then pressed down the spears of his followers. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t harm you if they want me alive. Lower your spears. Don’t you know that he who lives by the spear shall die by the energy blaster?”
His followers reluctantly lowered their stone aged weapons.
“What are your conditions, then, Mr. Staley? Please hurry, it’s dreadfully cold out here.”
“My conditions are this, first, you will let my people go, unharmed. Tell your Enforcers to kill not a single one of them from this moment on. You have nothing to fear by them. They’ll scatter as soon as you take me.”
“I suppose we can abide by that. What else?”
“You will let Indigo and D’naia go free. You will not track them down, ever.”
Lever laughed. “Terrific! That’s already been arranged. What else?”
“You will let them keep their lockets.”
Lever sighed. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he answered, nodding his head. “I’m afraid they’ve forfeited their immortality. I just can’t do that. How about I…”
Staley wasted not one more moment. He pushed his way through the ring of unhumans and started to coil for a giant leap into the void. Lever immediately sensed Staley wasn’t bluffing.
“Wait!”
Staley stopped just inches from the ledge, with his feet sliding towards the abyss and knocking a handful worth of gravel over the edge.
“Okay. Okay,” Lever plead. “That’s not a major issue for us. I suppose we can accept that as well. Just come back. Come back to us.”
“How do you know he’ll keep his word?” questioned an unhuman.
“Because he’s a Sunstein Agent. They do not tell lies,” Staley answered. “It’s against their religion.”
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