J. Dunn: Our Share of Darkness

I crossed the lot, shoes sinking into damp soil, mind filled with visions of Chloe falling under a bus, Chloe in front of a firing squad, Chloe dangling over a cage of starving Dobermans. Old images, and not mine alone. Once Rhea and I had sat for an hour in the backyard, thinking up novel finales while the victim glared from the porch, certain that we were talking about her but damned if she’d pay any attention.

Kicking at the odd bush in my path, I reached the center of the field, marked by the shapeless remains of a fireplace. I sat on the cold brick. A house had stood there, burned down during the Big Fear. Somebody taking advantage of the disorder for a bit of personal vengeance, I suppose.

Thoughts of Chloe vanished. The Big Fear had probably been Dad’s finest moment. That bizarre, inexplicable week when panic had gripped the nation by the throat. Forty years of paranoia, demagoguery, and media manipulation come home to roost. Half the country convinced that some unidentified “they” was preparing to bring down the Apocalypse. Black, white, Jewish, Latino—didn’t matter; whatever you were, somebody somewhere somehow was out to get you.

They say that the net sentries had nothing to do with how it had all fizzled out. I’d like to hear a better explanation.

Certainly nobody else did anything constructive. The cops barricaded themselves in their stations. The National Guard deserted en masse. The White House responded with timid press releases that only kicked the uproar to a higher level.

I was four at the time, and didn’t really understand what was happening. Something—maybe the torching of this very house—had prompted me to slip downstairs late one night, to Dad’s computer room. The Playroom, Mom called it.

He sat unshaven, shirt open, keying away at his comp. “Hey, sport,” he said when he saw me. “Can’t sleep?”

I mumbled something, unwilling to admit I was afraid, finally asking if the rioters (as if I knew what a rioter was) were coming. He chuckled, set me on his lap, and pointed to the screen, telling me who he was in contact with, what they were doing. Diamond Dog in Frisco, Carrie Lee in Mobile, Karim V in Detroit—hundreds of them, connected by silicon and cable, throwing in their weight where the rest of society had broken. Organizing neighborhood patrols, knocking on doors to reassure people, pulling the more hysterical news anchors off the air, coaxing the cops out of their fortresses.

He must have realized that—smart kid that I was—I could sense a difference between the real world and the virtual. Lifting me up, he carried me out to the porch. “Quiet night,” he said as we descended the steps, and it was quiet, and dark—most of the power was down at that point. He took me to the street. At the curb he swung slowly around, the shifting of his feet the only thing that broke the stillness. “No rioters around here.”

His eyes lifted to the sky, the stars piercingly clear in the absence of man-made light. Throwing his head back, he pointed at them. “See that, Alex? That’s the biggest thing there is. Bigger than it looks. But I’ll tell you something: we know what it is. All of it. We can touch it, too. There are people out there right now.” He paused as I followed his gaze, as my world cracked wide and leapt outward, as I realized that he wasn’t talking about only the stars, but what lay beyond them, and what lay beyond that in turn.

“Someday, we’ll take hold of it all. And if we can do that, kiddo, we can handle anything. So don’t worry about rioters. They’re nothing much.”

We lingered a moment or two before going inside. At the door to the back room, he stiffened at the sight of the monitor, then set me down and darted toward it. A long sigh escaped him. “St. Louis is back on-line,” he whispered, then reached out to tickle me beneath the ribs. “We’re winning, kiddo!”

And I lay down in the easy chair in the corner, and fell asleep watching my father, and a thousand others, save the sum of things.

That’s what I should be thinking about now, I told the blurred stars overhead. Not how to outwit my neurotic little sister.

The cold was beginning to bite, so I headed back to the house. Monica was waiting for me, hair mussed, a wry look on her face. It took me only a second to grasp what it meant.

“Chloe called.”

Monica nodded wearily. I slumped against the wall.

“Hey,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “Want me to take care of it?”

I was sorely tempted. After we got married Monica had put Chloe in her place real quick in some way I’d never understood. One thing I could be sure of was that she wouldn’t dare show her face here.

I shook my head. “Not even you, babe.”

“Well, in that case, you’ll need your rest. You can be damn sure she’s sleeping easy. So come on up.”

My tired brain settled on something. “In a minute.”

“You’re not calling her back? ”

“No way.” I went to the study. “Search,” I told the system. It signaled ready. “Copy everything available on transcription, minus the crap.” The system knew what my definition of crap was.

I left the unit clicking and humming behind me. Monica was waiting when I reached the stairs.

There was no change the next day. I wasn’t surprised. There would only be one more change coming for him, ever.

I had a horror that it might happen when I wasn’t there. It wouldn’t matter to him; he’d said his good-byes. But it meant something to me.

I wondered if Chloe felt the same, or if he was only a husk to her, with the real Philip Markham hovering somewhere in the ozone, waiting to be retrieved.

Who gave a damn what Chloe thought? She barely grasped the logic of her own position. Kept throwing the “Turin hypothesis” at me, as if it had been named for the city, as if the Shroud had something to do with it. Which, in her mind, could well be the case. When I asked her what the hypothesis stated, she said, well, if it sounds like somebody, it is somebody. Thus promoting tape recorders to human status.

I’d never been impressed by Turing’s thinking. Who was asking the questions—Bertrand Russell or JoJo the Dog-faced Boy? And who was answering? Turing—and Moravec, and Minsky—had been clever but not deep. They hadn’t foreseen that the idea would be taken up by the vultures, eager to make a buck off of human misery. Recording a cartoon of the original personality, selling it as the soul, the essence. At twenty-five grand a pop.

But to Chloe it wasn’t a cybernetic Ouija board at all. No, it was science, it had to be true. Why, Daddy could be downloaded into a new body someday, good as this one, even better. Who was I to cheat him of that? She was going to do it. She’d be walking the Earth long after I was dust.

It had cost me not to laugh. The picture of Chloe as an immortal superwoman had its comic aspects.

I just couldn’t stop picking at it, couldn’t leave it alone. A shameful thought occurred to me when I looked back at Dad: why didn’t he just let go, save me this trouble? Why hang on?

Nothing remained aside from the waiting. Go on, old man. Go to your dear one, in the world beyond the world. There’s nothing left to do here.

I needed a break. Stepping out in the hall, I paused to stretch.

“Well, hello there.”

I turned to see two men approaching. At first I didn’t recognize them, then I remembered, they’d been with Chloe yesterday. I looked between them as they came forward, smiling at nothing. So these were the noble transcrib techs—though techs probably wasn’t the proper word. I’d spent my life around cybernetics people, and this pair didn’t fit the mold.

“Mr. Markham,” the taller one said. “Glad we ran into you.”