Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“If I don’t know then I can’t tell any unfriendlies, now can I?”

Two hours later they landed on a desolate stretch of beach. Neil had no idea of where they were. He had no sense of direction or geography. They could have been anywhere in the world. It was a moonless night. Neil figured that there must be a city somewhere, because he could make out a tree-spiked horizon against a barely perceptible glow from far off.

Through the window he could see a flickering light in the distance.

“I see a light out there,” he said to the pilot.

She didn’t say anything and so he repeated his warning. “I see it,” she said.

As the light neared, Neil could see that it came from a flame. Open fire was illegal in New York City. Matches had been classified as a form of fireworks and possession of them was treated as a third-degree misdemeanor. Only filament lighters were allowed for choke cigarettes. Neil’s first experience with open flame had been the torches and candles of Maya. He was enchanted by the ragged dancing quality of naked fire.

It took the solitary figure a good quarter of an hour to reach the beach. When he neared, the pilot engaged the ramp device. The man dropped the lantern and ran up into the ship.

He was tall and thin, black with long thick hair that resembled a lion’s mane.

“M Nile, M Hawthorne,” the young-looking man said. “It’s a great pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Sir?” the pilot asked from the cockpit.

“Destination L-17,” the man replied. He strapped himself into a seat next to Neil and the swift rose quickly into the black skies above the beach that could have been anywhere.

“Ptolemy Bent,” the new passenger said. He pressed Neil’s hand, and then Blue Nile’s.

“You one of the prods under Un Fitt?” Neil asked.

“Not exactly. I’m more like the midwife.”

“Come again?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I know that Un is a computer,” Neil said.

“He told you that?”

“I was going to quit. Then he said that he was a machine. Did you create him?”

“In a way.”

“The controller is a computer?” Blue Nile asked.

“Partly,” the lion-maned black man said.

“What does that mean?”

“Un Fitt told me that he was programmed by God,” Neil told Blue Nile.

“He said that too?” Ptolemy was surprised but didn’t seem upset or at all bothered.

“Is it true?” asked Blue Nile

“Maybe. Maybe it’s even more amazing than that.”

“Who are you?” Neil asked.

“You know my name already. The place we just left is the private prison run by Randac.”

“This is Madagascar?” asked Blue Nile.

“Where are we going?” Neil wanted to know.

“To find someone I’ve always wanted to meet and then to plot our countermove to the Cincinnati police.”

“Programmed by God,” Blue Nile said to himself.

Ptolemy Bent pressed a button at the side of his chair and a computer table came out of the arm, positioning itself before him like a food tray. The virtual keyboard was composed of characters Neil had never seen before. Ptolemy ran his fingers over the keys as if he were a concert pianist. His shoulder and head swayed while he typed, almost as if he were dancing in his seat to some unheard melody. Now and then he would grunt or hum. The screen embedded in the table had no text at all, only colorful forms that slid gracefully over and around one another. Neil became enchanted with the forms. They seemed as if they might be alive. Totally live, Neil thought. Like a place where everything — the sky, the sand, the clouds, everything — is alive and moving gracefully with everything else.

For over an hour Ptolemy worked on his computer screen. Blue Nile was silent the whole time. Neil suspected that the gregarious prod was silenced by the strangeness of the situation and the powerful presence of Ptolemy Bent. Finally the old Vermonter fell asleep.

“You did a great job on the Third Eye,” Ptolemy said. The sky was still black, but there was an angry orange band of light at the edge of the world.

“You can see that in there?”

“Among other things.”

“I really didn’t do much. I mean, the notes Un Fitt sent taught me everything I needed to know.”

“No one knows without being shown the way,” Ptolemy said. “Like the scent of sex or the sound of running water. We have in our genes the knowledge but without a sign we are lost.”

Neil’s heart thrilled hearing these words. “What... what do you mean?” he asked.

“Un Fitt found you,” Ptolemy said. He turned away from his work and the screen faded to gray. “I asked him to locate those who had undiscovered brilliance and the power to dream of something other than their minds locked into this world. He found over six million candidates around the world. Of these, six thousand one hundred forty-two were workable, given the parameters of Un Fitt’s ability to manipulate events.”

“I was chosen out of so many?”

“You have the magic in you.”

“How can a machine read magic?”

“A machine,” Ptolemy corrected, “programmed by a god.”

“I don’t understand. Why would God or even a god be interested in a Third Eye project? He already sees more than I can even imagine.”

“ You were creating the Third Eye, Neil. Un Fitt was creating you.”

“Huh?”

“He was pushing you, tantalizing you, making you go beyond yourself because you — flesh and bone and spirit — are the only chains that keep you enslaved to this world and also your only chance to be free.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me give you an example.” The slender man turned sideways in his chair and folded his legs yogi style. “What is the biggest problem with the Third Eye?”

“Memory. In order to retain information accurately there has to be a storage device on a par with the human and metahuman senses provided by the Eye. Actually, it would have to be Eyes in order to do everything Un Fitt asked for.”

“Good,” Ptolemy said. He was smiling. “Now I want you to answer my next questions quickly with no concern of proving what you say.”

“Okay.”

“What is the answer to the problem?”

“At first I thought that it would be some kind of transmitting device, or maybe an onboard computer that would be surgically implanted. But those devices are too slow and also they speak in a different language from the brain.”

“And so?”

“So, well, so... The only device appropriate to the task, the only device that has enough memory and the right kind of language, is the human brain itself. I mean, fully twenty-five percent of the brain is almost completely inactive. That’s more than enough to store days of sensory data.”

“And?” coaxed the self-proclaimed midwife of God.

“Then the Eye would become a new organ and the capacity and nature of the brain would expand.”

“Not expand, but change. The one thing that nobody wants, the one thing that will pull us out of the darkness of technology. Your answer is more important than the Third Eye itself. Now, one more question.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What would you do if you had to give all of this up?”

“Everything?”

“The seat on this jet, all that you’ve learned, and your name on the hit list of the Cincinnati PD.”

“I’d kill myself,” Neil said. “And I’d take whoever made me give it up with me.”

“And so, let there be life,” Ptolemy said. He went to the back row of seats and turned up a table. At a touch the screen was ablaze with color.

Neil was staring out of the small window into the darkness. The swift was flying high and there were no clouds. Every now and then Neil would see a swath of white far below. He wondered if he had any control over his destination, or his destiny.