S. Swann - Prophets

“Am I that bad?”

“Give it a rest—please.”

The Triad awaited his father’s body at the entrance; the three oldest people on Salmagundi, shaved bald so their forehead tattoos were more visible. Where most people had four or five glyphs marking each pilgrimage to the Hall of Minds, these three had dozens. Flynn only had one, and he could not imagine what now lived behind these Elders’ eyes. Their faces were expressionless, and they gazed out at the procession in a way that didn’t seem quite human.

His father bore six glyphs on his brow. Six ancestors. Six residents of the Hall of Minds.

The Triad led his father’s body and the procession into the central rotunda. The space was vast and echoing, occupying half the aboveground volume of the building. It easily held the thousand-plus people of the procession.

The Triad led Flynn’s father to the center of the rotunda, where a circular dais supported a pair of square obelisks about twice the height of a man. One member of the Triad stood in front of each pillar, while the sled floated to rest between them. The last member, a woman by her voice, stood at the head of the contragrav sled and spoke.

“We are here to commit Augustus David Jorgenson to posterity. We are ready to cast his shell aside and commit him to the archive, where this unique individual will enrich our lives in perpetuity.”

“God, how I hate the way they say ‘unique’ . . .”

“They do end up looking alike, don’t they?”

“Yeah, Gram. They do.”

The reception after Augustus Jorgenson’s funeral was held at the Jorgenson estate, another place that Flynn had avoided for over a decade. It was probably the largest house in Ashley, and one of the oldest. Fitting, perhaps, for one of the chief founding families of Salmagundi.

Also a sign of the importance of Flynn’s father, there were at least twelve people there to eulogize him before the wake proper. Of course, each eulogy had little to do with Augustus David Jorgenson himself. Flynn had to listen to all of them, out of respect for his father, or who his father had once been.

The series of speakers talked about the people Augustus David Jorgenson had chosen to make part of his own mind, the people he had ritually downloaded. They spoke briefly of them, and of the people they had downloaded, and those they had downloaded . . .

Long passages became little more than a mélange of names and dates without any context. A muddy narrative that became as bland and meaningless as most of the people around him.

It was never supposed to be like this. Gram had explained to him the founding of Salmagundi. How once they were a hundred light-years from the crumbling Confederacy, and free of the laws against the heretical technologies, the founders had decided to record their minds not to build a culture, but to preserve a knowledge base in a population that was just on the edge of sustainability. With a human mind archived, they would never again want for a sanitary engineer, an astrophysicist, a neurosurgeon, a hydroponics expert—

Over the course of 150 years, it had become something other than necessity. It had become a combination of ancestor worship and a promise of immortality. Flynn wondered if many people knew how much a fraud it all was.

He wondered how many cared.

After the endless eulogy ending with the—to Flynn, ironic—toast to the Founders, he drifted through the wake like a ghost. The crowd and the conversations obligingly parted around him. No one seemed to be eager to engage Augustus’ only son in conversation. The lone tattoo on his brow was a beacon of his oddball status even to those who didn’t know him personally.

That was fine by Flynn. He walked up to the buffet, removed a small meat-filled roll, and retreated to the empty solarium. He sat on a wrought-iron chair and looked up through the tinted glass at the small golden ball of Salmagundi’s sun.

There were no plants here anymore, not like when he was a child, when his father was his own age. Then, this room was filled with flowers. Teased and tended by his father, when Augustus was still his dad. He had a love of the natural world, and the endless abundance of the planet Salmagundi with its two-year-long seasons. A love that Flynn had inherited.

A love that died with Augustus’ fourth trip to the Hall of Minds.

Flynn had been barely old enough to understand the change that accompanied his father’s fourth glyph. When he had come back from his turn at the solstice festival, he was colder. More like the ancient automatons of the Triad. His voice lost passion, and inflection, and affection.

And he had let his flowers die.

The seasons turned again and the following equinox came with the associated festivals. Like the solstices, the equinoxes marked the time when pilgrims came from all corners of Salmagundi to visit the Hall of Minds. During the festival, the population of Ashley doubled, crowding with a press of people coming to select a new tattoo for their brow, and a new ancestor to merge into their own mind.

It also marked the time when those who had reached their fifteenth year since the prior festival were expected to select their first ancestor and become an adult. By then Flynn had been almost seventeen, the oldest child there to come of age, and the first selected to walk into the Hall of Minds. He hadn’t the authority—or the courage—to refuse. All he had been able to do was choose which ancestor he would come to host.

“Here you are.”

Flynn turned and saw his mother standing in the doorway, facing him. He wished he had taken a glass of scotch. “Hello, Mother.”

“You’re ignoring our guests. That isn’t polite.”

“God forbid we’re rude, chicky.”

“Gram, that’s my mother.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I needed some time to myself—”

“Flynn, you’re by yourself all the time. You live out in the wilderness. Can you please be social?”

“They don’t want to talk to me. You know that. I make them uncomfortable.”

“Uh-huh, sonny, the feeling’s mutual, and you know it.”

“You can change that—”

“Don’t start—”

“Come back, be a part of society. Isn’t there someone—”

“Stop it!”

“You’re rejecting the lives of everyone who came before us, their knowledge, their expertise, your father—”

Flynn stood up. “My father died eighteen years ago!”

His mother took a step back. Flynn could hear a few gasps back in the reception area. He didn’t care any longer.

“Son—”

“Where was the memorial when the Triad jacked him into the Hall and diluted his soul to the point of nonexistence? What about you? Did you mourn him the morning when he couldn’t remember what was him and what was a decade-old recording?”

“Please lower your voice.”

“Why? Everybody here knows what I think. Hell, everyone here is the same fucking person. The same tepid average of everyone the consensus made important.” Flynn pushed past his mother and faced the crowd, who was now all staring at him. “Here’s a little game, folks. That same shocked expression you’re all wearing, is that you, or someone you downloaded?”

He slammed the door on the way out.

Flynn had walked the winding path into the overgrown estate gardens for about fifteen minutes before the female voice in his head spoke up. “You sure know how to make an exit.”

“Do you enjoy dwelling on the obvious, Gram?”

“Well, you made me feel a little unwelcome back there.”

Flynn turned a corner and faced a secluded patio hidden by yellow-green foliage. A stone bench was nestled, almost buried, in a nest of vines, facing a long-silent fountain. On the bench sat a young woman about 150 centimeters tall, with almond-shaped green eyes and straight black hair cut in an asymmetrical diagonal. She wore the same black leather jacket, pants, and boots she always wore. She looked up at him and said, “And you know I don’t like it when you call me Gram. It makes me feel old.”