Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

And with that, the beast stretched her neck much further than it had reached before, and she bit the old man. It was a deep and mortal wound, sudden and sure. The man staggered back, clutching at it, knowing from the great gush that it couldn’t be held.

With a single claw, the beast parted the fetching rope bound around her wrists, then sliced the knots holding her hind legs.

“I run from you, and you chase me,” the beast said. She stood on her great paws. “You call me uncatchable, but the truth is contrary. The day comes when all men catch me. All men.”

The old man from the village fell back in a pool of his own blood. His life was draining away, soaking the moss.

“Just wait,” the beast said, her voice no longer shrill. “Just wait, I tell them, but it makes you hurry all the more.”

This was a story I wrote and published online for a short while, but the link broke in a website update and I never fixed it, so it was pretty much lost. It wasn’t until we started putting together this collection, and this book’s editor, John Joseph Adams, kept asking me if I was sure that was everything, that I found it through the back end of my website. I read it years after having written it, and it was all new to me. I had a vague recollection of having written it, but that was it. This is a terrifying feeling.

It’s the feeling of seeing an old photograph and a flood of memories of that entire day, an entire period of your life, rushing back into consciousness. Where were these memories before? How did a single key unlock so much? Would those memories have been lost forever without that small reminder? The illusion of permanence and memory are too convincing.

The worst is waking up in the morning remembering that you had a great idea the night before, but this is all you can remember: the idea of the idea. It’s the scrap of writing on an ancient Greek scroll extolling the wisdom, genius, and virtue of some writer whose works have been lost to time. Perhaps it’s better not knowing. If we’re going to lose these parts of ourselves, the only salvation is to lose the memory of having had them. Or is it?

When I was younger, I wrote about death a lot. This happened as I was losing my religion and my belief in eternal life. “The Black Beast” is about loss of life, but in its discovery on an old server, and the panic of how much else may have been lost with no memories to even inspire a search, it can also be a story about losing something else: our sense of selves.

Tragic is a story about a mother losing a child and spending the rest of her life searching for him. Even worse is a mother waking up one day with no child and no cause to even begin the search. Because the child is still out there. What we lose is still missing.

Dear Enlightened Being,

My name is Olodumare, son of Olorun, the divine creator and source of all energy. If you know the ways of the cosmos, you know that my father became no more once the act of creation was complete. He left me to bring light to the world. And yet darkness spreads across the land.

Shadows are falling everywhere, and it is because I am being held in the pit of the Earth. Only you can release me. My father was a twin, and his brother Eshu holds me against my will. The devil Eshu subsists on the dark that lurks in all our hearts. I regretfully admit that I have lent him some of my own. Only the brightness can keep him at bay. It is in you. You must let it out to let me out. If you do, all the treasures of the cosmos will be brought to the Earth once more. All the treasures will be brought to you.

There is some cost to you, yes. And much trust. But I promise to repay you many times over. Please, before it is too late and the darkness is everywhere.

My ayanmo—my fate—is in your hands,

Olodumare

The words spread like fidgeting ants across dry parchment. One moment they were not there; the next moment, an incredible story of gods that no sane mortal would believe. The parchment trembles in the hands of enraged Eshu. Fire leaks from the dark devil’s veins, and the parchment is engulfed in flickering, dancing orange flames. Allowing the letter to fall, it is ash before it reaches Eshu’s cloven feet.

“Kill him,” Eshu says.

Badu, the dark lord’s right hand, bows in apology. Eshu had a long habit of cleaving his right hand and growing one anew. Badu had only been on the job a thousand years. He was just getting to know his way around the aiye called Earth. “Sire, we’ve been over this. If you kill him, he will be born again elsewhere, and it will take us many moons to find him once more.”

“But killing him feels good,” Eshu says. His knuckles crackle as he makes a fist, the sound of logs in a hot fire. The two lords stand facing the cube of obsidian in which noble Olodumare, the damned bringer of light, sits entombed.

“Yes, m’lord. I know how it feels. But death will set him free.”

Eshu exhales tendrils of smoke from his nostrils. “He will be free anyway. My bastard nephew always finds a way. This light, it slips through the slimmest of cracks. And my minions never cease to fail me.”

Badu waits to be smote to oblivion. Every muscle and tendon tenses in anticipation. Badu spends much of his time waiting to be smote. One day, he knows he will be right.

“We have him now, m’lord,” he says. “These messages he sends will not get far, and the people of this aiye do not know the power in their hearts.”

Badu has thought many centuries on this. The cell of obsidian, with its thousand and one facets, is itself like a black heart in the center of the aiye. Inside that solid case of stone sits Olodumare, a god of pure light. Olodumare in his cage is very much like the speck of hope that lies in men’s hearts. The way the world was going, there was no way it was getting out.

Eshu turns and spits a wad of flame in Badu’s direction. “Light leaks like water through the tightest of fists,” he growls. “Darkness reigns a generation, perhaps, and then goodness takes most of what we fight for. There must be an end to this cycle, to hope, to—”

“Sire—”

Eshu silences Badu with a claw. A leaf of parchment flutters through the air, summoned out of nothingness by Olodumare, the son of the divine creator, imprisoned in black obsidian. Words like ants crawl across the parchment, a plea to anyone who might listen. Eshu turns the note to ash. Across the great cavern, more fluttering notes can be seen, moving like lazy moths. They too burst into flame. So many…

“I have killed the boy more times than I can count,” Eshu says, as he watches the summoned notes succumb to his dark magic. “But he is born anew. I have put him in stone again and again, but one of you will get too close and hear his words and be in thrall like fools, freeing him. And now these missives, fluttering like insects across the aiye called Earth. They will release him. Some will get infected with the light. So I might as well kill him. Enjoy these years like days before he comes of age and realizes what he is again—”

“Sire, if I may—”

Eshu turns, his hand lifted as if to smite. He hesitates when he sees Badu holding one of the notes between his black claws.

“I have an idea,” Badu says. “One that might keep the lightness hidden away for good.”

In Kogi state there is a river long cursed. Fish from this river remain raw, however long you cook them. If you are injured by the bones of these fish, the wound will never heal. Badu grew up along the banks of this river in Kogi state. In his throat there is a cut from a fish he caught as a child. It fills him with pain every time he swallows. It will do so until the end of time.