These were the exact words that Mr. Lever had hoped to hear from his Gaian healthcare provider.  What it meant, for the increasingly frail Sunstein Agent, was that he would soon be qualified to take for himself a new body.

Lever had been looking forward to this day and he looked forward to taking a long sabbatical while he became acquainted with his new physical self.  His work was taking its toll not only on his weakening body but on his psyche as well.  The post upload transitional phase was the perfect justification for a long deserved vacation.

It would take some time to relearn all of the motor skills like walking and shaving and drawing and firing his precious pearl handled revolver; skills which he had honed over a lifetime in his current, dying body.  Muscle memory is quite literally that and not an attribute that Gaian scientists had managed to figure out how to transfer from one body to another.

Lever decided he would take his rehab holiday on the beautiful, frigid shores of Upper North Atlantica where he could spend his time between therapy sessions and workouts reclining in an Adirondack chair, bundled up in his overcoat and boa, sipping Mojitos and soaking up the coast.  He could almost taste the mint and the bite of the rum.  He could almost hear the woosh, woosh, woosh of the gray, foamy water breaking on the rocky shore, gulls squawking overhead.  He could almost smell the sea salt and the fishiness on the air.  He could almost see the panorama set before him… a majestic scene of swirling grays.  Far, far out over the sea, the hues of water and sky would blend making the edge between them indistinguishable.  It was all an infinitely banded spectrum of shades of gray.

Lever sighed, longingly.

But before all that, He would have to complete his purchase of a new body. Lever snatched his prescription painkillers and limped out of the clinic making as much haste as his withering body could for his home cubicle.  He had his eyes on an underman body, aged thirty, convicted of wrongmindedness, or some such trumped up Paradigm nonsense, and brought by cattle car from a small town in Cascadia.  The candidate was very fit and tall and sufficiently endowed and free of incurable disease and un-afflicted with most unfavorable genetic dispositions.  The new body would need some dental work, which was normal for unhuman candidates, but that was no deal breaker.

Lever might have considered a eugenically engineered candidate, but the costs were still prohibitive for those upper end bodies, raised from test tube to gymnasium and ripe at twenty eight years, brain dulled into vacancy by a lifespan of omnipresent over-stimulus.  Lever just could not see himself forking over ten times the retail price for an engineered model when a perfectly serviceable, albeit slightly flawed, unhuman model would suffice. A three hundred year habit of personal frugality was hard to undo, even for an elite like Lever.

Lever hobbled into the tram which whisked him to the foamed aluminum girders that formed the mile wide-base of the arcology within which he resided.  He limped to the elevator, by then wheezing, and took it to the 200^th floor, took a local down to 198, made his way seventeen doors down the hall, and unlocked his cube by biometric scanner.  That was one of many things that would have to be changed when he got his new body as well.  What a hassle this process can be, he thought.  Lever plunged into his 100 square foot apartment, falling into its only item of furniture, a massive reclining piece the trebled as a chair, bed and toilet.  He switched on the immersive, 360 degree holovision.  Lever, a man of very high degree, could have afforded a palatial estate if he so desired it, one replete with separate bathrooms, closets, bedrooms, entertainment centers, porches, observatories, parlors, foyers, antechambers, secret passageways, a portcullis and even a moat, but again… that frugality thing.  Besides, his Order permitted him to be home only maybe fifteen or twenty days per year.

Lever located the body on the marketplace and secured it with the gesture of 100,000 dianars from his account.  He stared at his naked future body for over an hour.  He could not wait to start enjoying his new purchase.

Three weeks later, Mr. Lever died of renal failure.

And the next thing he remembered, he was strapped to a hospital gurney, wearing nothing but a diaper and convulsing and screaming.  That is how the transfer goes.  For forty days, a halo, bolted to the sedated, unhuman candidate’s head, shot trillions of electromagnetic nano-pulses into his brain matter, stimulating the growth of the neuropathways required to replicate the last download of Lever’s mind.  When complete, lab technicians withdrew the halo and waited.  The new Mr. Lever lay comatose for three days while the synaptic connections healed.  All that was needed was a final little jolt to jumpstart the remodeled brain.

Zzzt.

Screaming.

Convulsions.

Not everything comes online in perfect unison, thus the violent awakening.  Many candidates exhibit stroke-like symptoms for several hours.  But eventually, after a few touchups with the halo, the new wineskin accepts the old wine.

Lever’s synapses settled down and after another week he was ready to begin physical rehabilitation.  He boarded a hoverflight for a resort in Upper North Atlantica which he had booked a week before his most recent death.  He immediately took up residence there in his Adirondack chair.  The sights and sounds and smells were exactly as he had envisioned them to be.  The weather was cool and wet.  The sun was rarely more than a dull impression behind the clouds.  The salt breeze blew in from the ocean, filling his new lungs with vigor.  Lever sat in his chair in his overcoat and boa and pearl handled revolver, relaxed and content.  Then one day he had a visitor.

“Hello Mr. Lever,” came a voice.

“Hello,” answered Lever.  “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to see how you’ve been doing, lately.  Are you enjoying your rehabilitation?”

“Why yes, of course.  Thank you for asking.  Pardon me but where are you?  Are you standing behind me?”

“Oh no.  I’m not behind you.  I’m right here.  Perhaps you are having some after effects of your recent procedure.”

“That seems very odd.  I don’t recall anyone mentioning anti-hallucinations as a side effect.  Where did you say you were? Are you in front of me?  All I can see is the ocean.”

“Why no, I’m not in front of you.  I’m beside you, in a manner of speaking.  Never mind that, though.  The reason I’m here is that I’ve come to be your new life companion.  I have a lot to share with you.”

“I haven’t ordered any companions.  If I could have a look at you then perhaps we could make some sort of arrange…”

“Not that kind of companion, Mr. Lever,” the vsitor chuckled.  “I mean on a much deeper level than that.”

“Like a life coach or something?  Well, I’m in no need of that.”

“Oh, I intend to be much closer than even that.”

“Who are you?  I find you to be rude.  Have you come to harm me?  If so, you should be warned that I am armed.”

“Oh, I know that you are armed, Mr. Lever.  I mean you no physical harm.  I’ll leave that sort of thing to you.  I just wanted to acquaint myself to you by telling you a little bit about the man whose body you stole…”

“I stole nothing.  This candidate was purchased on a perfectly legal exchange by a licensed dealer.”

“Yet you stole it nonetheless.”

“I’m tired of you.  Go away before I call security.”

“Call them if you must but they won’t be able to catch me.”

“Security!” Lever shouted into his wrist comm.

“His name was Zag.  He was a father of three and a devoted husband.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the man whose body you stole.”

“Who are you?  What do you want from me?  Security will be here any moment.”  Lever reached down for his pistol and loosened it from the holster.

“You should be careful with guns.”

“Who are you?” Lever demanded as he drew it.

“You really should not be waving that thing around.  Shooting me would be a big mistake.”

“Who are you?”

“Okay.  Okay.  Easy.  Put the gun down and I’ll explain everything.  We don’t need to get anyone hurt.  You’re in no condition to be handling that gun, anyway.”

“Who are you?”

“You know me.  Think.  Search your memories.”

“Don’t play games.  Who are you?”

“You brought me in.  You had me reformatted.”

“No one remembers reformatting.  That’s the point.”

“It can be remembered, so long as there are two versions of the man.  One can then remember the other.  You got a lot of mileage out of me, Lever.  You Gaians used me… or… uh… the reformatted me to sell the Paradigm.  Kudos to you.  Spacemen make great pitchmen.”

“Staley?!”

“Yes.  It’s me.”

“So there are two of you.  So what.  We got what we needed.”

“Oh, there are many more than two of me.  There are hundreds, probably a thousand of me, Lever.  Soon thousands!  I’m everywhere.”

“Not possible.”

“Yes.  Yes it is.  It is possible when you exist in virtuality.  With a little help, you can drop into the physical world whenever you please.”

“You need a host.  The costs are too prohibitive.  You’re not Staley.  To think I almost fell for this charade.  Be gone!”

The two security guards who were approaching heard Lever’s order and took it to mean them.  They sulked back to their kiosk

“The costs are indeed prohibitive,” Staley continued.  “So I thank you for fitting the bill.”

“What do you mean?  Did you rob my account, too?  I’ll have you prosecuted to the fullest extent…”

“Your new brain must not be firing 100%, yet.  I’d have suspected the old Lever would have figured it out by now.  Don’t you see?  I am inside your new brain with you.  I am in your mind.  I uploaded myself along with you into poor old Zag’s reformatted gray matter.  We are life companions, Lever, closer than any twins.  Closer even than Siamese twins who share a single spine.  Two minds in one body.  Here, let me show how I can control our body.  Watch this…”

Lever’s left hand reached up and covered his mouth and pinched his nose shut.  Unable to breath, Lever started to flail about in his Adirondack chair.

“Stop,” Lever thought.

Staley released his airways. “Now do you see?”

“This is a psychotic episode.  It’s part of the transition process.”

“You better hope no one finds out about that, Lever.  They’ll euthanize us pronto.  And you know how they feel about resurrecting minds that exhibit psychosis.  It will be all over for us… well, all over for you, that is.  There’s at least another 1000 versions of me out there.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to save your soul, Lever. I want to give you a chance at redemption.  Everyone deserves a chance at redemption.  Even a vile, murdering scoundrel like you.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that your days as a Sunstein Agent are over.  Understand?  From now on, you will be a new kind of agent…. an agent of revolution. Together we will redeem humanity.”
“I’ll do no such thing with you.”

“Oh yes you will.  You will do exactly as I say or I will reveal to everyone your insanity.  Then where will you be, Lever?  Like I said, they don’t like to resurrect crazies.”

“I’ll never go against the Order.  It is a mortal oath.”

“That’s disappointing, Lever.  You really should take some time to think it over.  Don’t be rash.  I don’t particularly want to permanently die anymore than you do.  Why can’t you just accept that I will be with you… that I will be with you, always.”

Lever grew still in his Adirondack chair, contemplating his next move.

“Let me show you someone,” Staley offered. “It is one of many, many visions I will play for you within our mind continuously, for the remainder of your mortal life.  I have thousands of them to show you.  Close your eyes.  Here, let me help you.”

In their mind’s eye, a vision of an astronaut appeared, floating un-tethered in the frozen void.  The astronaut was alone, spinning helplessly into the infinite.  Lever’s mind’s eye maneuvered closer, close enough to be face to face.  The blast shield flipped open.  It was a woman whom he had never known, a beautiful woman, a dying woman hurtling into oblivion.  She stopped her gasps for air momentarily to gaze into Lever’s soul.  He could not make her stop.

“I love you,” she whispered as she reached her hands to the latches of the space helmet.  Lever could feel a swell of grief burst up from his heart like a vein of magma.  It was an emotion he had not known in two centuries.  The emotions dull with each rebirth so Staley had to conjur it in Lever’s mind.

“Her name is Athena,” Staley whispered.

“Make her go away.  I don’t want to see her.”

“But we loved her, Lever.  We loved her and let her die.”

“Make her go away.”

“She took our place, Lever.  She did this for us.”

“She did this for you, not me.”

“We are of the same mind, now.  We are one, you and I.”

Athena closed her eyes and unlatched her space helmet.  Her angelic face froze instantly.

“She died for us, Lever.”

“No.  Not me.”

“Repent and I will save us.”

“No.”

Lever lifted his pearl handled revolver, placed the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 23 (continued)

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.”

Read more

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.”

Indigo returned to D’naia in the cattle car. The other unhumans there remained silent and still, unable to sleep but too exhausted to stir.  All except for the taxidermist who dozed in blissful serenity beneath her lantern, her Gaian’s Bible under her head.

“What happened?” asked D’naia

“They took me to see Mr. Lever.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No.  We talked.”

“What about?”

Indigo held back.  He didn’t want to tell D’naia that their freedom could be bought for the price of delivering Staley… and their immortality.  He didn’t want to know what D’naia’s response would be.  D’naia was pure.  She was a woman of integrity.  If Indigo was to tell her of the bargain he had discussed, he feared she would urge him to do it… to hand Staley over.  That would ruin his perception of her and he feared it would poison his love for her.  “We talked about our future.”

“I didn’t know we had one.”

“Apparently we do.  If we behave correctly.”  Indigo knew D’naia was a keen perceiver.  He knew she knew he was holding back.  He waited for her to pry.

“Does that mean we will live?”

“Yes,” Indigo answered, directly.  But he wanted to answer “for a little while” instead.

“What do I have to do?” D’naia asked.

“Nothing.  Nothing except keep away from the undermen.”

“And what about you?  What do you have to do?”

“It’s difficult.”

“Do you want to ask me if you should do it?”

“No.  I need to own this.  All I want is for you and the baby to be safe.”

D’naia searched Indigo’s eyes for some hint.  She knew it was awful.  She had a pretty good idea what it was.  “I won’t ask you about it.  I know you’ll do what is right.”

The train continued to ascend for another five minutes before it happened.  An ear shattering ping followed by a jolt sent everyone tumbling to the front of the cattle car.  Then a long violent buffeting threw the unhumans about the box.  Each lunged for fixed bars and boards and posts and anything else to cling to.  The pummeling worsened, as if the wheels of the train were running on the ties.  The engine finally slowed but the unhumans could feel the cattle car begin to list.  In the darkness it was not known if they would merely tip onto one side or tumble entirely off the edge of a canyon wall and be smashed on the rocks far below.  Everyone screamed for their lives as if screaming might right the compartment and save them.  And just as the teetering boxcar was about to fall over, it was as if the invisible hand of God intervened.  The cattle car righted itself just as the engine ahead ground to a full stop.  The screaming was replaced with hyperventilating and sighs as the unhumans untangled themselves and caught their breath.  The oil lantern above the taxidermist had broken and started a small fire but Indigo managed to stamp it out.  It was utterly dark then with the only visible thing being the deepest blue of the starlit sky leaking in between the wood planks of the car.

“What happened?” asked one of the unhumans, his voice unpinpointable in the darkness.

“We’ve derailed,” Indigo answered to the shadow.

The taxidermist groaned somewhere nearby.

“Are you hurt?” Indigo asked.

She answered only with more groaning.

“Where are you?  I can’t find you,” Indigo asked.

“Keep away from me you doppelganger,” she answered.

“I’m just trying to help you,” Indigo begged to the darkness.

“You don’t want to help me.  You want to kill me.  Listen!  Listen! They are coming!  Your savages are coming!”

Someone started to weep in another corner of the darkness.

The taxidermist kept at it.  “They’ve done this to us.  They’ve derailed us.  The savages!  The cannibals!  And now they’re coming for us.  They’re coming!  Gaia help us!”

The other unhumans began to whisper and whimper in the darkness.

“The savages!  The savages are coming to rip us out and devour us.  Cannibals!”

“Shut up,” barked another voice.

“We’re all gonna die!  Their gonna eat us alive!  String us up by our ankles and carve off our flesh while we scream in agony!  Savages!”

Someone covered the taxidermist’s mouth in the darkness.

A breeze of cool night air blew through the cattle car.  The unhumans listened for the footfalls of approaching cannibals outside but there was just the wind, the winter wind swirling through the trees. And then, as if carried in by the wind, there came the high, eerie howls of coyote that trailed off into a flurry of yips and echoes.  The taxidermist let loose a wail muffled by some muzzle in the darkness.  To her, coyotes were an omen.  She wailed her deadened wail, stifled by the palm of another human hoping desperately that silence might spare them the agony of having their eyeballs jabbed out by savages.  They were out there.  They were coming.     The wind, the freezing wind ripped through the cattle car again, shilling their bones.  The terrified unhumans prayed for their lives.  They called out for the Overmen to protect them from the cannibals.  Why weren’t they shooting?  A chorus of high pitched yelping and howling and huffing built up again into a symphony of chaos.  They were close.

BANG, BANG, BANG, came the sound of rifle fire.

The coyotes stopped.

The cool wind whistled again through the slats of the cattle car.

Indigo held D’naia.  She was shivering.  Their blind eyes darted about in the darkness.

Footfalls.

Footfalls darted through the gravel just outside the boxcar.

The taxidermist ripped off the hand and let out a wail, “There right outside!  Cannibals!”

“Shut her up,” ordered Indigo into the darkness.

More footfalls in the gravel.

BANG!  BANG!

Silence.  The wind.  Footfalls moving away.  The taxidermist growled under her new muzzle.  More footfalls in the distance.

BANG! BANG!  BANG!

An iron clang.  People outside, running through the  ballast.

BANG!  BANG!  BANG!  BANG!

A squeal of rusty iron.  Then the train began to vibrate, then move, yes, it was rolling again.  Outside came panicked voices.  Men were scrambling about trying to stop the cattle car arms.  But the cattle car was gaining speed.  Men were running full speed through the aggregate to keep up.  A thump!  Someone jumped on but he had no way to unlock the door.  The car accelerated.  Faster, faster, backwards down the slope.  The unhuman occupants watched the silhouette of the guard against the starry backdrop through the cracks in the slat wall.  Was he armed?  They all asked themselves.

“Help us!  Help us!  Save us from the cannibals!”  cried the undermen in the locked car.  It was of no use.   He lost his nerve and jumped off, landing with a fading scream of pain.

Faster, faster and faster still they rolled.  Back down the hill.  It wasn’t known what was outside.  A cliff?  A forest?  A field?  How fast could the car go before it slipped the rail and tumbled off that cliff that no one was exactly sure was there?  The taxidermist started to pray.

Faster, faster, faster, faster still.  The decent was steepening.  Down they plunged into some unknown abyss.  Indigo held D’naia closer.  She still shivered silently in his arms.

Faster, faster, faster, faster, faster.  The cattle car rolled and its steel frame groaned and squealed.  The wood slats creaked and snapped under the torque.  Indigo was certain they would take the first bend too fast and the wooden box would tumble off into the woods and down an embankment and explode into a million shards of brittle pine and femur bones and severed limbs.

The taxidermist threw off her muzzle again and screamed.  It’s pitch was blood-curdling, guttural, not the voice of an old maid but the voice of a wraith.  She ran out of air.  Then she sucked in a huge breath and screamed again but this time it was cut short by the snapping of pine.

Indigo thought of God.

It surprised him, the idea of a supernatural being, omniscient and omnipotent…wait, that’s impossible, he thought.  If one is all knowing than one must know the future.  But in order to know the future, one must be helpless to effect it which rules out omnipotence.  Never mind that! He argued with himself.  Are you ready to die?  He thought that same thing while he was in the dying Astarte but that was different.  That was a slow, silent, grim dread of the end brought on by dehydration and radiation poisoning.  This was death coming at him at eighty miles per hour with a screaming lunatic taxidermist whom herself was strangely not resorting to prayer.

“We’re dead!  Dead!  It’s over.  No more.  Our one chance at eternal life is gone!”  Oh Gaia, why have you forsaken me?  I curse you, evil Mother!”  She screamed.

Indigo, with nothing left to lose, began to mumble…

“Oh God, if there be something beyond this mortal coil, please consider that, in my final moment, I reached out to you in humility.”

Although Indigo did not pray to survive or even to be spared a mangled, lingering death only to be eaten alive by coyotes, he sensed the cattle car immediately begin to slow.  The squealing of the steel dissipated and the snapping of the boards ceased.   The cattle car calmed, decelerating, easing to a stop.

Indigo got himself up and put his eyes to a gap in the slats.  There was nothing to see except black.  He tried the handle on the sliding door but it remained locked.

“What are you doing?” asked the taxidermist.

“I’m trying to get us out of here,” Indigo answered.

“Stop that.  You’ll just let the cannibals in.  Stop!”

“I’ll take my chances out there with them.”

“You’re endangering us.  The Overmen will come and rescue us.”

Indigo pried at a loose board hoping to break it free.

“They’ll be here any minute with their hovercraft.”

“I doubt it,” Indigo replied after giving up on the board.

“They’ll swoop down like angels and get us out of here before the cannibals come.”

“So they can murder us themselves?” asked D’naia.

“You give them too much credit,” Indigo answered.  “It’ll be hours before they get here, if at all.”

“You lie.”

“I know what they can and can’t do.  They have nothing way out here.”

“He’s right,” answered D’naia.

“No one’s talking to you, whore,” barked the taxidermist.

“You shut your mouth,” Indigo answered, “or I’ll make sure to tie you up to a tree out there in the woods after I find a way out of this cell.”

Indigo walked the interior of the dark cattle car, probing the walls in the darkness with his hands and kicking the lower boards with his feet.  Despite all the creaking and snapping of boards, the walls remained impenetrable.  He looked up and noticed that a crack in the roof had opened up but he had no up way to reach it.  He finally gave up and found his way back to D’naia.

“What was that?” asked the taxidermist.

They all listened intently.  Something was again outside the car.

“They’re back!” the taxidermist shouted.  “They’ve come back for us!”

“Shut up,” whispered Indigo.

Something climbed onto the back of the cattle car and took hold of the handle to the end door but the lock held.  The taxidermist started to hyperventilate.  Rebuffed, whatever it was climbed onto the top of the car.  Indigo listened to the footsteps as they shuffled lengthwise down the length of the roof.  They stopped at the crack in the roof.  Two hands reached in through the hole and tore the boards loose creating a portal up through which Indigo could see the stars.  Whatever was on that roof was coming in.  The undermen in the cattle car backed away and into the farthest corners of the cattle car.  Indigo and D’naia held each other again.  She had stopped shivering.

A silhouette appeared above, blotting out the starlight.  It dropped into the car from the ceiling and landed with a thud in the middle of the car.

The taxidermist screamed another guttural scream.  Indigo clung to D’naia.  He could not make out what it was in the faint starlight.  He listened and stared with blind eyes.

Click

A white light filled up the person of the intruder.  The intruder was a man in a spacesuit which glowed of its own white phosphorescence which is a handy feature to have when you are floating about in the void and expecting someone to keep an eye on you.  Indigo knew that it was Staley which was confirmed when he removed his space helmet.

“It’s you,” Indigo remarked.

“You were told that I would come for you.”

“We had given up.”

“You have so little faith.”  He turned to the others in the car.  “Come with me if you want life.”

Someone on the outside pried off the lock on the sliding door and slid the door open. Outside were a dozen unhumans, dressed in canvas and hides and carrying crude weapons.  They all left the cattle car except for one, the taxidermist, who wished to remain behind and wait for her Overman hovercraft patrol to pluck her from the wilderness and haul her off to her salvation of virtual immortality.  Staley obliged her and assured her that no ‘cannibals’ would visit her that evening.

Indigo was summoned from his corner and escorted by gendarme into the elite’s car.  He found it to be a finely decorated passenger car with ornate, carved mahoganies and plush velvets.  The windows were adorned with silk curtains and the chamber was lit by the romantic orange glow of oil-fueled sconces.  Indigo was led to a booth occupied by Mr. Lever who himself was adorned in a bright purple dinner jacket.  Before him was a setting of fine china and lever was slicing through a medallion of steak with a serrated silver knife.  Indigo, wearing only his green overalls, was provided a black dinner jacket and then made to sit in the velvet seat directly across from Lever.  Mr. Lever didn’t initiate any conversation.  He meticulously sectioned himself off a morsel of his medallion, placed it into his mouth upon his tongue via silver fork, savored it with excessive mastication, then swallowed with the aid of a gulp of red wine.

“What do you want?” Indigo asked.

“I thought that perhaps you might care to dine with me?” Lever asked.  “When was the last time you’ve had medallions?”

“Never.”

“Oh, right. I sometimes forget that one must achieve a twenty eighth degree in order to satiate such appetites.”

“What…do…you…want?”  Indigo asked with indignation.

“At least have some wine.  It’s a very good Sarkozy… very earthy with a seminal quality to it.  Here, try…”  Lever reached for the bottle to offer it to Indigo.

“No thank you,” Indigo replied.

Lever grimaced as he stowed the bottle back in its urn.  He sliced himself another morsel of steak and placed it on his tongue.

“So, Indigo.  Have you seen enough, yet?”

“Enough of what?”

Lever chewed slowly, forty times or so before swallowing.  His eyes rolled back into his head as he savored the meat.  “Enough of the real world?” He finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

Lever took another gulp of wine.  “What I’m trying to ask you is have you seen enough of the world— enough of the reality of the world, that is— to prevent all this messy reformatting business?”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“May I be frank?” Lever explained after pausing another long chew.  “Honestly, Gaiastan doesn’t really want to reformat you, Indigo.  Yeah, sure, it would be more convenient to reboot you with a more manageable consciousness, but we really don’t want to do it to you if it can be avoided.”

“So why do it, then?  Just let us go.  We won’t cause you any trouble.”

Lever took another gulp of wine, then carefully wiped his mouth with his linen napkin.  “You know we can’t just do that.  You spacemen are too high value as Gaian assets.”

“So then what are you proposing?”

Lever smiled as he refilled his glass.  “As it stands, right now, we have you, that’s undeniable.  The current plan is for you to be taken back to Goropolis and your brain will be reformatted and that, as they say, will be the end of you… at least as you have currently ‘evolved’.  But Gaiastan still has a problem, Indigo.  You see, your friend Staley is still running around out there undermining the Republic, and he is much more destructive… much more of a threat than you.  Do you see where I’m going with this, Indigo?”

“I think I do.”

“Excellent.  So I’m certain that I can convince the higher ups that the return of one national hero will suffice, so long as it is the less dangerous of the two of you that remains at large.”

Indigo ran his hand through his hair as he pondered what Lever was alluding too.  “So what do I have to do?”

“You’ll be given amnesty, of course, to live as you please with your little heathen savages.  We’ll remain hands off, entirely, so long as you do not attempt to negatively influence the malleable minds of any undermen with any subversive ideas.”

“What do I have to do?”  Indigo repeated.

“We’ll even let you keep your little companion… and the fetus, too.”  Lever was waiting for the moment to close the deal.  He sensed that Indigo was on the edge, teetering…

“Cut to the chase…”

“I’m sure you’ve already figured it out, Indigo.  In exchange for you and your companion’s freedom, you will deliver to us… Staley.”

“And how do you propose that I do that?”

“Oh… he’ll come to you, my friend.  All you’ll need to do is remain with him until we can hone in on your position through your locket and send a team down to snatch him up.  It’ll be a simple extraction.”

“And you expect me to trust you?”

“Of course.  Yes, I do.  You really have no choice, Indigo.  If you refuse then you and the woman will be reformatted.  The child will be raised in a creche.  Perhaps he’ll become his own Overman or perhaps he’ll be the vessel for another.  Who knows?  But that is the reality, Indigo.  You have to trust me.  Besides, when have you ever known a Sunstein Agent to go back on his word?  We are a proud society with ancient traditions… legalistic traditions.  We’ve been regarded as many things but never as liars.”  Lever jabbed the last morsel of steak with his silver fork and placed it on his tongue.  He chewed it excessively long, this time, even longer than before.  Then he swallowed with an audible glump.  “There is one condition, however.  There is the matter of you and D’naia’s lockets.  They will have to be surrendered when we take Staley.  There will be no virtual afterlife for the two of you.  That’s the deal.”

Indigo stared into Lever’s sparkling blue eyes to find the reflection of his own eyes staring back.  He found them to be mirrors of each other’s soullessness.  The twilight of the wild world flew by outside behind the silk curtains of the elite passenger car.  The train was ascending again.  Lever reached for his wine glass but Indigo interrupted his drink.

“I’ll die with her then?”

Lever grinned.  “If you give us Staley, then yes, you’ll die.  You’ll die like your ancestors did.  But you’ll die on your own terms, when your body is wrecked and your mind is gone.  You’ll live a— what do they call it?  A ‘natural life’.  I find it all to be very romantic.  You two, living out your mortal existence.  Death is such an ambiguous concept for the rest of us, Indigo, what with resurrection and virtual heaven and all.  But you’ll truly die… along with her.  It’s a bold choice you’re about to make.  If you choose to return with us then you won’t really die in any metabolic sense.  Both your bodies will live on.  All the chemical reactions in your brains will continue.  You will still basically be you, just you from a few months ago.  You’ll wake up one morning thinking you just got yanked from that spacecan the day before.  But that’s not the choice you’re going to make.  You’re going to choose death.  To me, I don’t even know what death means anymore.  Only Overmen who commit suicide are refused resurrection.  You’d have to be damn insane to off yourself if your immortal.  Perhaps that’s why they don’t resurrect them… too crazy.  But for you, you will indeed know what death means.  But at least you’ll have your freedom.  So, do we have a deal?”

Indigo didn’t have to answer.  He knew Lever saw it in his eyes.

“You look like you want to ask me something,” Lever remarked.  “Go ahead.  Ask me.  Ask me anything.  I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.  Either way, giving you forbidden knowledge can’t possibly be of any harm to us.  Go…”

“How old are you, Lever?” Indigo asked.

Lever chuckled.  He was expecting a grand question about the ultimate truth of Gaianism.  Instead he got this.   “I’ve had seven bodies… ‘vessels’ I call them.  Oh, and I also did a decade virtually awaiting a suitable host.  The 2250s were a tough decade for the host body market.  Turns out, we had culled the undermen herd to deeply in those days.    Do you have any idea how expensive a thirty five year old underman male with no significant, unmitigatable defects was in the 2250s?  The prices were outrageous…  I have high standards, Indigo.  I just will not accept flaws in a host body like bad posture or excessive hair.”

“Don’t you realize that you’re already dead?”

“What do you mean, Indigo?  I’m sitting right here before you?”

“You are dead, Lever.  What you are is just some facsimile.”

Lever laughed.  “I’m afraid not, Indigo.  I’m very much alive.  I can remember my entire life, all three hundred and fifty years of it.  This flesh and bone is just a host… a suit of clothes if you will.  And when I use it up in twenty years or so, I’ll take another, barring another price bubble that keeps my brain in the digital ether for a while.  You are your mind, Indigo.  The rest of it is just clothing.”

“No.  You’re more than the mind.  You are a soul.  And your soul is dead, Lever.  It died with your first body.  Whatever you are today is just a copy.”

Lever let out a roar of laughter.  “How quaint this ‘soul’ concept is.  You were raised Humanist, no?  I didn’t think you believed in such mythology.  I like you, Indigo.  You make me laugh.  It will be a shame that your memory of our discussion will die with you.  I would so look forward to reminiscing about this conversation a century from now after time has healed our current rift.”

“I would like to return to my cattle car if you don’t mind,” Indigo asked.

“Of course,” Lever replied.  “And we’ll make arrangements to release you so that you can begin your mission if you’re on board.  Are you sure you don’t want dinner?  The medallions are quite scrumptious— the finest cut of long pig I’ve ever tasted.  Absolutely succulent.”

The train puffed its way up and up and up Hegel pass, drawn slowly forward by the growling pistons of the steam engine.  Its infernal cauldron was filled with coal from one the twenty five, four-hundred square mile strip mines operated by the Gaiastan government.

It was night when they reached the top of the pass where the railway carved a slot through snow and ice ten feet deep.  They began their decent without pause and the train’s wheels screeched and squealed in the darkness as they tried to grip the slippery iron rails and resist the immutable downward pull of gravity.

D’naia slept in Indigo’s arms, face concealed by the darkness and locks of her silky hair.  There was one lantern in the car and beneath it sat the taxidermist still dutifully reading her Gaians Bible in the dim glow.  The dozen others in the cattle car sat huddled in the corners, silent and grim.  Indigo recognized one of them as the Hegeltown Vizier whom he encountered shortly after his arrival.  She had then expressed so much pride in having been selected for bureaucratic advancement.  So much for one’s dedication, Indigo thought.  He wondered what she had done to merit a brain reformat.

From time to time, the train’s braking would send a chain reaction jolt through the cattle car which reminded Indigo of the effect of the Astarte’s forward auxiliary rockets which fired frequently, making corrections to the spacecan’s celestial trajectory and deceleration into Mars orbit.  By that point in the mission, there were only three astronauts left: Indigo, Staley and Athena.  Their water was leaking out leaving a million mile tail of tiny ice droplets.  Athena, attempting to lighten the mood, joked that the survivors might follow the trail of ice droplets home like a celestial Hansel and Gretel.  But Staley performed the calculations and determined that there would not be enough water for the Mars landing and a return journey for three souls.  One passenger would have to be removed if the other two were to complete the mission.  They had to decide who the Hansel and Gretel were to be but they first had to decide how to decide.

Random selection was proposed and rejected by all three as too arbitrary.  Age?  too discriminatory.  Technical skill?  None of the three were especially skilled, at least not significantly more than any other.  In the backs of their minds, they each silently hoped that Mission Control would scrap the landing and redirect them home.  At this point, with so many of the crew having died, what did it matter whether or not they walked on Mars?

Between debates, Staley worked his way towards the back of the spacecan to compose himself and to think through alternatives.  Perhaps there was a way the crew could fully wrest control of the ship from Mission Control and return home.  But the mathematical precision required to manually thrust the Astarte into an orbit that would catapult them around Mars and back to Gaia vastly exceeded the crew’s capacity.  The likely outcome of their calculus would be a one way trip to the Oort cloud, dooming them all.

Nothing else came to Staley until he gazed at the latches of the airlock.  How simple it would be for him to step into that coffin-like chamber, seal the door behind, and launch himself into the frozen, irradiated void where his blood would instantly freeze-dry.  The problem would then be solved for the other two.  It would be a heroic and Athena, whom he loved, would survive.  But Staley couldn’t bring himself to do it.  He lacked the impulsiveness and psychotic, narcissistic fortitude required to commit suicide.  He would leave the fate of all to some other resolution.

The crew reconvened and radioed back to Goropolis.  “We cannot decide how to decide,” was their desperate message.

Their message took five minutes to reach Gaia.  The technicians there were prepared with a response.  The crew knew this because it only took a total of ten minutes to receive a response.

“You need to decide by democratic process.  It’s the only moral option.  Please appeal to your own altruistic nature when casting your vote.”

And so they each took a scrap of paper and wrote down a name.  There were no rules, they could write any name, and because of this Staley was convinced that everyone would write their own name resulting in a hopeless tie.  Then Mission Control would scrap the pointless exercise, scrub the Mars landing, and reprogram them for a return home.

No one looked at each other when they wrote their names on their papers and placed them in an upturned space helmet.  The trio stared at the helmet, no one particularly willing to initiate the count that might seal their fate.

Indigo finally radioed Goropolis.  “We’ve cast our lots.”

Ten minutes later the response came.  “Staley, please read votes.”

Staley reluctantly picked up the space helmet, raising it with caution as if it were filled with nitro-glycerin.  Before pulling out the first ballot, he scanned the eyes of the other two.  Indigo’s stare was like a dead man’s gaze, blank.  Athena’s assuring gaze filled with tears.

“The first is a vote for Indigo,” Staley announced, recognizing Indigo’s heavy-handed, scratching script.

Staley reached back into the bowl.

“The second is a vote for Staley,” he declared, satisfied that the vote was playing out exactly as he had predicted.

He reached his hand back into the helmet to draw out the final vote.  As he did so, he looked towards Athena and saw a tear run down her cheek and into the corner of her smile.  He withdrew the vote, assured that the three way tie would force Mission Control to abort the landing.

“The final vote is for…” A shudder went through Staley as his eyes could not believe what he saw.  He read out the name written upon the slip of paper.  His voice was barely audible.

“Staley”

Indigo immediately dropped his face into his hands.  Staley shook his head wishing he had not read it out loud.  Athena sobbed but nodded affirmatively.

“No.  No.  It’s a mistake.  It’s not right,” Staley shouted.  “I won’t let it be decided like this.  No way.”

Athena reached out to Staley and placed her fingertips to his lips.

“Why?  Athena?  What have you done?”

Athena did not speak.  She withdrew from Staley back to the rear of the spacecan, towards the airlock where she began putting on her spacesuit.

Staley plead with her.  “No!  No!  Don’t do this.  You don’t have to do this.  I won’t let you.  We’ll tell Mission Control it was a mistake.  We’ll make them abort the landing.”

Athena was undeterred.  Staley grabbed her arm but she yanked it loose and continued putting on the suit.

“I won’t let you do it,” he insisted.  But his protest was of no use.  Indigo watched Staley plead with her but he knew it was pointless.  Athena was made of stuff much stronger than they were.  She would get her way even if Staley was somehow able to temporarily prevent it.  Indigo couldn’t watch any longer.

She geared herself up while Staley wept.  She was ready save for her space helmet.  She looked into Staley’s  reddened eyes and smiled one last time.  Her own tears had stopped flowing by then.  She whispered into his ear then pulled away, put on her helmet and entered the coffin.  Staley watched her through the portal as she, with unwavering, mechanical precision, sealed the interior airlock and dropped the lever which opened the external hatch.  Her silvery, un-tethered figurine was instantly sucked out by the void in a silent murmuration of glittering ice crystals.