Грег Иган - Distress

I recalled a scene from one of the Muteba Kazadi biographies I’d skimmed: when asked in reproving tones by а ВВС journalist why he’d declined an invitation to take part in a traditional Lunda fertility ceremony, he’d politely suggested that she go home and berate a few cabinet ministers for failing to celebrate the solstice at Stonehenge. Ten years later, there were half a dozen MPs who seemed to have taken the suggestion at face value. No cabinet ministers, though. So far.

I paused to watch the MR theatre troupe, ready to play spot-the-mutilated-classic. After a few baffling lines of garbled biotech-speak—unplaceable, but weirdly familiar—hairs stood up on the back of my neck. They’d seized on the news of Landers and his viruses, and were acting out their own hastily scripted version of the story. What’s more, most of their descriptions of Landers' modified personal biochemistry came straight out of the narration to Junk DNA ; SeeNet’s news editors must have mined the discarded segment of the documentary for some instant technical background when they put together their final release.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by any of this—but the speed with which events thousands of kilometers away had been recycled as an instant parable was unsettling enough; hearing my own words echoed back at me as part of the feedback loop verged on the surreal.

An actor playing one of the FBI agents sent to gather Landers' computer files turned to the audience (all three of us) and proclaimed, "This knowledge could destroy us all! We must avert our gaze!" His companion replied mournfully, "Yes—but this is only one man’s folly! The same sacred mysteries are spelled out in ten million other machines! Until every one of those files is erased… none of us will ever sleep safely!"

My head throbbed and my throat tightened. I couldn’t deny that in the dead of night, confused and in pain, I’d shared this sentiment entirely.

And now?

I walked on. I had no time to waste on Landers, or MR; keeping up with Violet Mosala was already proving near enough to impossible. The whole documentary kept being transmuted into something new before my eyes—and however gloriously unworldly her arcane physics, Mosala was entangled in so many political complications that I was beginning to lose count.

Had Sarah Knight known about Mosala’s plans to emigrate to Stateless? If she had, it would have made the project a thousand times more attractive to her than any deal with the Anthrocosmologists. Would she have kept a selling point like that from SeeNet, though? Maybe, if she’d wanted to take it to another network—but in that case, why wasn’t she here, shouldering me aside, making Violet Mosala: Technoliberated? Or maybe Mosala had sworn her to secrecy and she’d honored that promise, even though it had meant losing the job?

It was driving me insane: even in her absence, Sarah seemed to be one step ahead of me all the way. At the very least, I should have asked her to collaborate; it would have been worth splitting my fee with her, and giving her a co-director’s credit, just to find out what she knew.

A bright red graphic flashed up over my visual field, a small circle at the center of a larger one with cross-hairs. I froze, confused. As I shifted my gaze, the target clung to a face in the crowd. It was a person in a clown suit, handing out MR literature.

Akili Kuwaie?

Witnessthought it was.

The clown wore a mask of active make-up, currently a checkerboard of green and white. From this distance, ve might have been any gender, including asex; ve was about the right build and height—and vis features weren’t dissimilar, so far as I could tell with squares painted all over them. It wasn’t impossible—but I wasn’t convinced.

I approached. The clown called out, "Get your Daily Archetype ! Get the truth about the dangers of frankenscience!" The accent, even if I couldn’t place it geographically, was unmistakable—and this hawker’s cry sounded every bit as ironic as Kuwale’s observations about Janet Walsh.

I walked up to the clown; ve regarded me impassively. I said, "How much?"

"The truth costs nothing… but a dollar would help the cause."

"Which cause is that? MR or AC?"

Ve said quietly, "We all have our roles to play. I’m pretending to be MR. You’re pretending to be a journalist."

That stung. I said, "Fair enough. I admit I still don’t know half as much as Sarah Knight… but I’m getting there. And I’d get there faster with your help."

Kuwale regarded me with undisguised mistrust. The checkerboard on vis face suddenly melted into blue-and-red diamonds—a disorienting sight, though vis fixed stare throughout the transition only made vis contempt shine through all the more clearly.

Ve said, "Why don’t you just take a pamphlet and fuck off?" Ve held one out to me. "Read it and eat it."

"I’ve swallowed enough bad news today. And the Keystone—"

Ve grinned sardonically. "Ah, Amanda Conroy summons you to her hearthside, and you think you know it all."

"If I thought I knew it all, why would I be pleading with you to tell me what I’ve missed?"

Ve hesitated. I said, "On Sunday night, you asked me to keep my eyes open. Tell me why, and tell me what I’m looking for—and I’ll do it. I don’t want to see Mosala hurt, any more than you do. But I need to know exactly what’s going on."

Kuwale thought it over, still suspicious, but clearly tempted. Short of Mosalas colleagues, or Karin De Groot—all highly unlikely to cooperate—I was probably the closest ve could ever hope to get to vis idol.

Ve mused, "If you were working for the other side, why would you pretend to be so incompetent?"

I took the insult in my stride. "I’m not even sure that I know who the other side is."

Kuwale caved in. "Meet me outside this building in half an hour." Ve took my hand and wrote an address on my palm; it wasn’t the house where I’d met Conroy. In half an hour, I was supposed to be filming Mosala at yet another lecture—but the documentary would survive with a few less reaction shots to choose from, and Mosala would probably be relieved to be left in peace for a change.

Kuwale thrust a rolled-up pamphlet into my open hand before I turned away. I almost discarded it, but then I changed my mind. Ned Landers was on the cover, bolts protruding from the side of his neck, while an Escher-rip-off effect had him reaching out of the portrait and painting it himself. The headline read: THE MYTH OF A SELF-MADE MAN—which was, at least, wittier than anything the murdochs would come up with. When I flicked through the article within, though… there was no talk of monitoring or restricting access to human genome data, no discussion of US and Chinese resistance to international inspections of sites with DNA synthesis equipment, no practical suggestions whatsoever for preventing another Chapel Hill. Beyond a call for all human DNA maps to be "erased and undiscovered"—about as useful as imploring the people of the world to forget the true shape of the planet—there was nothing but cult-speak: the danger of meddling with quintessential mysteries, the "human need" for an ineffable secret to life, the techno-rape of the collective soul.

If Mystical Renaissance really wanted to speak for all humanity, define the fit and proper boundaries of knowledge, and dictate—or censor—the deepest truths of the universe… they were going to have to do better than this.

I closed my eyes, and laughed with relief and gratitude. Now that it had passed, I could admit it: For a while, I’d almost believed that they might have claimed me. I’d almost imagined that I might have ended up crawling into their recruitment tent on my hands and knees, head bowed with appropriate humility (at last), proclaiming: "I was blind, but now I see! I was psychically numbed, but now I’m attuned! I was all Yang and no Yin—left-brained, linear, and hierarchical—but now I’m ready to embrace the Alchemical Balance between the Rational and the Mystical! Only say the word… and I will be Healed!"