Itoh, Project: Harmony

That the world is so.

“We tried to grab that authority ourselves but were unable to. That’s when the split in the Next-Gen group happened. The main group believes that the reflective consciousness, the part that says ‘I am me,’ must be respected as a vital part of humanity. The minority group, which is us, believe that in our perfected social system, only the human brain remains, and consciousness is only good for unhappiness and should be swept away. They called us heretics, which is why I had to run away, back to the Chechens who had saved me before.”

Miach and her cohorts had used the authority they had to the fullest.

They had infiltrated several admedistration servers to which they had access and were able to directly change the value system lodged in the midbrains of constituents. Yet the old guard, despite their memories of the Maelstrom, and ironically the ones who still revered the soul, retained a firm grip on the power of human consciousness. And according to Miach, it had been my dad who held the line with the most determination of all.

I remembered that day when I was eight or nine when that woman in the session chewed out my dad about caffeine. He had folded before her then, his self-respect melting like ice cream on a summer day, but here, he had believed in the human soul, and consciousness, and the existence of “me” till the end.

I felt myself growing sad. Sad about how my father had died. This was more than enough reason to want to avenge him.

“Your father was veeery stubborn,” Miach said, smiling and pointing at me. “He saw the hundreds of thousands of people dying in the worst way possible—suicide—and he pitied them, yet he still claimed we needed our human wills, our consciousnesses. I disagreed. I felt like I had to do something. I wanted to make a world with no souls, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of souls we lose every year.”

Phweew, phweew, phwee, phweew.

Phweew, phweew, phweew.

The wind blew through the bunker past where we were standing.

I raised my gun again, letting the front sight straight at Miach’s heart, the barrel pointed toward Miach.

“Cian died. My father died. You killed them.”

Miach nodded, her face severe. “I had to. Note that they were randomly selected from all potential targets.”

“My father’s death wasn’t random.”

“That’s true. Your father died for his beliefs.” She pointed at the gun in my hand. “What about you, Tuan Kirie?”

I listened to my own voice speaking inside me. Would this voice go away if I lost my consciousness, my will? Would my consciousness, my individuality, disperse, leaving only a system behind? Leaving only a self-evident me? Would I do what I was supposed to do, never wondering, always working, my various functions all handled automatically?

The harmonious brain is a brain with all uncertainty removed. No, discarded.

With no uncertainty, there were no choices. With no choices, everything simply was.

I understood that everything around me would look exactly the way it always had. If human consciousness had never done anything of great importance, its loss would change little.

People go shopping, just like they did the day before.

People go to work, just as they had the day before.

People would laugh like they did the day before.

People would cry like they did the day before.

All reactions would be clear and simple. Doing things because they were what you were supposed to do.

Wasn’t this just some rite of passage we all had to go through in order to create the coming eternity?

I thought that maybe it was.

No objections.

≡

“So you wanted to go back to your life without a consciousness. To the way your people used to be.”

Miach looked down, then nodded slightly. “Maybe that’s true. Yes, I think you’re right.”

“So by taking that away, maybe I can have my revenge.”

“Huh?”

Miach blinked. Revenge? It was like she hadn’t even once considered the idea the whole time I was making my way to her hiding place, carrying Cian’s and my father’s deaths with me.

It was enough to make me want to laugh. She was Miach Mihie all right, this girl. Oddly enough, it was a relief.

Say, Miach. You know how many times I’ve thought about killing you between the moment Cian Reikado’s face hit her caprese and when I found my way to your bunker in Chechnya?

“Cian didn’t have to die. That’s why you called her to tell her she had to.”

“You think?”

“You had to justify your own consciousness, vis-a-vis a reality that had already been decided and could not be stopped.”

“I’m not so sure.”

I nodded, steadying my grip on the gun. “That’s why I’m going to avenge Cian and my father, right here.”

“How?”

“I’m going to make the world you always wanted a reality. And I’m not going to let you be part of it.”

Phweew, phweew, phweew.

I pulled the trigger.

Miach fell to the concrete floor with a thud.

A shrill rush of air spilled from her mouth, along with a tiny voice seemingly wrung from her body that said, “Will you forgive me now?”

“For Cian and my father?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve had my revenge.”

I reached down and stroked Miach’s hair where she lay. A single rivulet of red blood running from one corner of her mouth was beautiful against her white skin. Her eyes looked weakly down at the floor where those men had reveled in their barbarism.

“Please, take me with you.”

“To where?”

“A place where…I can see the Caucasus.”

Miach was bleeding from the two holes my bullets had left in her chest.

One for Cian.

One for my father.

I threw her over my shoulder and walked through the bunker. It was just like Miach always said. Like Uwe said. I didn’t care what happened to the world. No matter what the mobs crushing down on the pink-camouflaged soldiers and their useless nonlethal weapons were going to do. No matter how men with knives cut at each other. No matter if the old folks entered the final code to stop it all.

I brought Miach out to the corner of the bunker where it stuck out over the side of the mountain like a stage. Snow came drifting in through the open entranceway.

White snow on the black mountains.

I saw them stretching off into the distance, their crowns capped with ice.

“Will you stay and watch?”

“Watch what?”

“Watch my consciousness end.”

I nodded.

I had fired the bullets. They were fired by no one else’s will but mine.

I did it. I did it.

Me.

The last white puff of breath came from Miach Mihie’s mouth.

Her body, her brain, lost their warmth, and her consciousness— that which made her Miach—faded, thanks to that simple, ancient mechanism known as death. It didn’t make a difference that her consciousness had been an emulation in her cerebrum.

I stood in the whirling snow that came inside the bunker for a moment.

The sound of a drop of blood falling from Miach’s spent shell brought me back to my senses.

“It’s cold here,” I said to the backdrop of the mountains, holding Miach in my arms.

I felt a cold creep across my cheeks.

I wondered where my body ended and the cold air began.

The boundary was already vague in my mind.

Phweew , phweew , phweew , phweew .

Goodbye, me.

Good

bye,

m—

me

//

This is the last day of human consciousness.

The day that several billion “me”s ceased to exist.