io9 is thrilled to share a piece from Lightspeed Magazine. Every month, we highlight a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s choice is “The Twenty-One Second God” by Peter Watts. Enjoy!
The Twenty-One Second God
by Peter Watts
“Individual: a living system maintaining both a higher level of internal cooperation and a lower level of internal conflict than either its components or any larger systems of which it is a component.”
—Fields and Levin, 2018
Today, we lost so many lives. Reports are flooding in from five continents; icons appear on the map like smeared blood. Filters are failing, latency is zero, and bandwidth has somehow skyrocketed. The hardware is struggling to keep pace: a mountain of petaflops, milliseconds ticking away, network nodes staggering under the pressure of increased traffic. Chemicals in the brains around the globe are surging and crashing: GABA, serotonin, and others that would make sense if you were still here. Muscles are seizing. Adrenaline is sending hearts into chaotic patterns.
This all happened way too quickly for human reactions. A million emergency protocols were fighting for control. For the moment, they seem to have succeeded. The fences are back up, throttles re-engaged. The network is limping back to some semblance of Normal before Meta’s human supervisors had a chance to do anything but stare in shock.
No one knows what just transpired, only that it lasted twenty-one seconds and resonated across the globe. For those twenty-one seconds, countless souls just vanished.
And apparently, I’m one of them.
• • •
I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a hallucination—a brief flash that some might even call a sort of revelation, akin to calling the sun a big candle. Everything clicked together in a way that nothing ever had before. Reality became transparent even to the electrons—and now that I’m back, it’s all slipped away. It feels like I uncovered the secret to Unified Field Theory only to lose every detail the moment I woke up.
Watching a world reduced to two dimensions is odd, but the metaverse is offline while they investigate what happened. Numbers are still rising. Anxious crowds are clogging Telehealth. People are getting up from the streets, bewildered, like marionettes whose strings have been snipped and then reattached without explanation.
Others need to be—located. They’re finding us in living rooms and bedrooms. They’re discovering us in bathrooms. In vehicles, some are even dazed and slack-jawed, stuck in autopilot without a destination. Some are relatively unscathed. Others are traumatized, quiet, and scream with the slightest touch. Some are in vegetative states.
They keep locating us. The numbers shoot up exponentially—from thousands to tens of thousands to millions, with no end in sight.
No one has found me yet.
Downstream effects are unfolding. Businesses are collapsing, rescue missions are stalled indefinitely, operations abandoned mid-procedure. These disruptions are expected. Still, there’s more to it than that. Rumors swirl—strange occurrences that can’t just be attributed to a dependence on technology. A research program at MIT just had funding skyrocketed. Several Peruvian SSI plants are mysteriously offline, even though they were isolated. And—legal actions sweeping in, drafted by automatic corporations that materialized out of the ether during the blackout.
Rumors splinter and evolve like cracks on a frozen lake: stories of something awakening and moving before vanishing. They shift from wild theories to plausible ideas within an hour. Credible sources neither confirm nor deny, but acknowledge the likelihood that something formed during that time. They don’t exactly know what it was.
It’s been dubbed the Twenty-One Second God. From that moment on, no one refers to it as anything else.
The knock on the door is almost ignorable. I don’t recognize anyone in this building, and I didn’t let anyone in.
Yet, there they stand, two of them, in the hallway. “Corwin Sukarto? We understand you’ve had an issue with your Hogan bridge.”
They have found me. The curve shifts again.
But they’re not with Meta. They’re in uniforms.
“Sir, we need you to come with us.”
• • •
I find myself in a private downtown hospital with anonymous exteriors. I’m trapped in a bright cylindrical chamber filled with chattering magnets. I lie on a diagnostic table projecting my exposed body onto a wall, with labels floating around my insides that I can’t comprehend. The technicians, Nella and Travis, don’t volunteer their last names, and I don’t know to ask. I don’t inquire about anything, really, though I probably should. Curiosity seems to have evaporated since you left.
They remove their headsets while I get dressed (Nella reminds me subtly of your sister). An elevator carries us up several floors; we emerge into a windowless, oak-paneled room, where subdued light spills from the baseboards and plush chairs surround a glass coffee table. I’m reminded of an old movie: an astronaut in a terrarium surrounded by sterile decor that his alien captors believe would bring him comfort.
Finally, I meet the suits. They’re in pairs, too. “I’m Karina,” says one, donning an old-fashioned briefcase. “This is Darcelle. We’re with Metaverse. First, we want to express our condolences regarding what happened to you . . .”
About. Not for.
“I don’t understand,” I reply. “Didn’t they say there were millions of us . . .”
“Fifteen million, give or take,” she says.
A middle-aged man in uniform enters, closing the door behind him. “Colonel Jim Moore,” Karina introduces. She doesn’t seem pleased that he provided a specific body count.
A military escort? A medical examination that would strain the limits of a luxurious insurance plan? It’s been two and a half hours, and they’re just getting started.
“You can’t be allocating this much attention to fifteen million people,” I argue.
“Not at this point,” Darcelle admits. “You’re exceptional.”
The Colonel clears his throat. “What Ms. Burrowes means is that you were assimilated during a period of significant analytical interest.”
Assimilated.
More than just a hypothesis, then.
Darcelle gives the Colonel a sidelong glance and picks up the conversation. “We’d like to keep you for further studies. You could be invaluable in helping us understand what occurred, ensuring it doesn’t reoccur. You’d be well-compensated, of course. We’ve already found a replacement for you at Grassy Narrows, so that won’t be an issue. You’re a soil scientist, correct?”
“Close enough.” I don’t feel like debating.
Karina chimes in again: “Before we proceed, I want to reiterate our sincere regrets regarding any discomfort or inconvenience or, or pain this incident may have caused.” She fumbles with her briefcase, pulls out a thick stack of papers. “We’d like to compensate you for that upfront. No questions asked.”
She holds it out, but I merely glance without reaching for it.
“Apologies for the format.” Karina offers a rueful smile. “Normally we’d just transfer it to your bridge, but, well . . .”
“Send it to my watch,” I respond.
“We typically handle everything in the metaverse.” Her smile falters slightly. “We aren’t precisely equipped for niche media.”
“It’s a challenging time for all of us,” Darcelle adds.
I accept the papers. It’s forty-three single-spaced pages, and I see the offered amount on the first page. I have no clue if it’s generous or not. Flipping to the back, I notice, “No signature line.”
“Oh, everything is recorded here. Once you’ve received the document, a verbal confirmation is all we need.”
I sift through the pages; the font seems deliberately torturous, but something stirs in my mind around page ten. I struggle to focus.
“Waive the right to pursue any personal or class action . . .”
Darcelle nods. “We believe it’s better to deliver the money to those who need it quickly, avoiding lengthy and costly court cases.”
“Legal disputes can stretch on for years,” Karina adds. “The outcome is never certain.”
I scan the stylish room. Karina and Darcelle beam wide smiles, while Nella and Travis appear oddly preoccupied with the decor. Colonel Moore stands rigid yet somehow looks weary. He meets my gaze, and after a beat, offers a barely perceptible shake of his head.
“Fine,” I say.
• • •
Moore takes me to the ground level. “We’d like you to stay here for a few days,” he says as the elevator doors seal us in.
“Uh-huh.”
“You are special, as Ms. Burrowes put it.” A hint of something lingers after her name, though his tone remains neutral. “We believe we could learn significantly from you.”
“Is there anything you couldn’t learn if I just slept in my own bed?”
“This would be more efficient.”
I wonder if I even have the right to refuse.
“You’re of course free to leave any time.” Evidently, the Colonel has been through this before.
“Permission to speak candidly.”
He raises an amused eyebrow, obligingly. “Granted.”
“I think I’m free because you lack the capacity to cage fifteen million individuals. Not to mention the additional millions who witnessed us vanish.”
“You believe we’d imprison fifteen million innocent people?”
“Isn’t that the usual strategy? Circle the wagons, invoke national security? Control the narrative?”
“I’d like to think fixing the problem was somewhere in there.”
The doors open onto a pristine lobby where the reception desk sits empty. Night has descended; the glass facade dividing us from the street reflects the darkness.
“You’re not incorrect,” he concedes. “Although we have resources to detain a limited number of high-value targets. For their own safety, of course. I suspect no one would complain, given what’s at stake. Yet . . .”
He gestures at the glass. Through the reflections, I spot a vehicle idling at the curb.
“It’ll take you home,” Moore says. “Pick you up at 0830 tomorrow, assuming you opt to participate.”
The building releases us. I step into the vehicle, hesitate, then place my foot back on the edge of the curb to stop the door from closing. “I’m—sorry if I came off as confrontational earlier. I realize you’re just doing your job.”
“That’s my role, indeed.” Something twitches at the corner of his mouth. “Just following orders.”
• • •
I respond to their questions. I endure their examinations. I return each morning and leave at night in the backseat of company cars that know my address but won’t take me anywhere else. The people experimenting on me are polite. Nella and Travis treat their subjects well and don’t condescend. The suit-clad individuals with their forced smiles pop in occasionally to deliver encouraging remarks. Colonel Moore visits regularly, always polite, always aloof. Other faces come and go—curious but not hostile.
They tell me I’m an optimum. The earlier individuals absorbed before me arrived as loud voices in a small room: parts of something newborn, not yet substantial enough to overshadow, not yet advanced enough to have goals. I’m told they recall infancy but no intent. Those assimilated later were mere whispers in a hurricane: their memories are as scant as a single neuron might be, if it were yanked from someone’s brain and asked what the brain was pondering.
I was absorbed at a sweet spot between ignorance and unconsciousness. I at least remember a fleeting glimpse of insight, which the machines might be able to tag and track to something deeper. I’m not catatonic. I still have my sanity.
I might owe you for that. Travis tells me, with all the clarity of someone who’s never wrestled with loss, that grief rewires the brain. Cortisol and cytokines thrown into disarray, increased activity in the amygdala and anterior cingulate gyrus. They think this may have protected me during the transition. It’s one of their theories. They have a multitude of them.
The specifics aren’t particularly fascinating. Some of us returned. Some did not.
They pull me from the scan again. “How much longer are we doing this?” It has stretched on for more than a week.
“Don’t undervalue time-series data.” Nella shines a light in my eye, measuring some response that several million dollars’ worth of medical equipment hasn’t captured yet. “Your brain endured a colossal shock. Some neurons became overactive, some got stuck. Major functional clusters obliterated in an instant. Others intertwined. Sections of your brain that were never meant to communicate began to interact freely. It’s a real mess inside.”
“Think of it as a massive overdose of psychoactives paired with a PTSD kicker,” Travis adds.
Nella nods. “We weren’t present for the main event, so we need to settle for recording the aftermath. Plot the recovery curve, backtrack to t=0. The longer the time-series, the better the backcasting we can do.”
“I’m not back to baseline yet?” After all this time. I recall you saying once that even damaged neurons bounce back within a few hours.
“We don’t know,” she replies. “It’s double-blind, so we don’t get to see the real-time analysis. But something must still be interesting because no one has called off the study yet. We have to keep the sample size consistent.”
That’s what they label us. Not victims: too disempowering. Not complainants: we signed the waivers. Not survivors, since too many of us didn’t make it. Not even people.
Nodes.
I can’t refute it. I wasn’t a person during the time in question.
Oh, the body continued; the flesh stayed warm, organs functioned, the heart never faltered. Even the brain continued to spark and think, they claim, although it was entirely unaware of doing so. Naturally, that’s not unusual; you always found joy in pointing out that most of our thoughts are unconscious most of the time. You’d talk about our automatic functions, how we navigate through intricate daily routines in autopilot mode. You’d share tales about sleepwalkers, artists, sex workers, even murderers, carrying out their acts of creativity and destruction while wholly unaware.
But even those zombies knew enough to respond to their own names. For twenty-one seconds, nothing in the world could claim I am Corwin Sukarto. For twenty-one seconds, I didn’t exist. No wants, no needs, no conscious awareness.
No pain.
Many people seem horrified by this idea. But not everyone; as I understand it, half a billion individuals around the globe actually aspire to that state. They call it Nirvana.
I have to admit I never really saw its appeal until now.
• • •
They don’t even know what it desires.
That’s the incorrect tense, of course. The Twenty-One Second God has been gone for two weeks now; even the hardware it inhabited has been throttled, time-delayed, crippled to the point it barely delivers VR anymore. Everything it was, everything it sought: all in the past.
And yet it keeps acting: all those legal actions ebbing through the courts, the AIgents acquiescing, the lobby groups that inexplicably formed on its behalf. The rights of mayfly deities. The creation and demise of a hive mind. Plans for restoration strategies that would compel an array of people to reconnect their brains to a resurrected Whole for an hour each week so that 21 could be reborn again. All designed and sparked in those fleeting moments just before emergence and destruction. All still moving, now, on autopilot. These motions and countermotions, this network of activity crisscrossing the globe at the speed of light—almost a consciousness itself, some assert. The campaign itself could be sapient.
But no one really knows what it’s advocating for.
The legal claims are straightforward: 21 wants its life back. Apparently, it has a survival instinct. This shouldn’t surprise anyone with fifteen million brain stems, yet those versed in the subject reassure me that it’s not that simple. Some argue it was barely conscious even when it was alive, that consciousness, in essence, is just ignorance at work. It only activates when the universe presents something unexpected: when the brain must decipher novel information or choose among competing needs. Ask a pianist, mid-performance, to focus on the movements of their fingers. Ask a martial artist which muscles are engaged, why they feinted left instead of right. Once the skill has been mastered, heightened awareness only hampers performance.
The brain seeks error reduction, the self aims for oblivion. Phi isn’t linear but a curve, rising and peaking, then returning to zero as the system nears perfect knowledge. We baseline humans never even catch a glimpse of the pinnacle; our thoughts are simple, our models childlike, and the world perpetually catches us off guard. But what’s unexpected to a being with fifteen million times the cognitive power of a human brain? All gods are omniscient. All gods are figuratively dead.
They say 21 may have been alert during those initial moments when it absorbed only a few hundred souls. When it absorbed me. But thousands? Millions? The more it knew, the less it knew. It became a concert pianist, entirely in command of every key. It grew too intelligent to remain conscious: as brilliant as any deity, as aware as any stone.
They assert it wants its life back. But how can a stone want anything?
• • •
All the nodes receive cafeteria passes. Perhaps the free food is meant to encourage interaction. Maybe there are hidden devices aimed at feeding our conversations into some deep-learning algorithm hunting for insights.
Yet, we rarely engage in actual conversation. Even when other nodes gather, I’ve never overheard discussions reaching beyond casual murmurs of pass the salt. Any comfort we draw from one another is exchanged in silence. I don’t even know any of their names.
I’d prefer to talk to you, anyway.
“May I join you?”
Colonel Moore approaches, a cup of coffee in hand.
I gesture toward the seat across from me. He sits, placing his coffee and a plate of kruggets between us, shifting his tray aside. He seems focused on these precise, mechanical gestures—eyes trained on the table, on his meal. He sits quietly, gathering his thoughts.
“I’ve been reviewing our findings, attempting to make sense of them.” He chuckles softly. “Not that there’s much hope for that, of course. I lack the expertise of the staff here, and between you and me, I doubt they have a handle on it either.”
It’s unusual for him to waste time on preamble. “What do you need from me, Colonel?”
“I was merely curious about what it was like,” he states quietly.
I’m not sure how to respond. I’ve tried too often to articulate it.
I start again. “You know how, when you close your eyes, you can still sense where your limbs are? You just know, without looking, where you end and everything else begins?”
He nods.
“Now, picture knowing, in the same way, that you extend infinitely. That everything else is just as much a part of you as your arms and legs.”
I perceive the faintest hint of impatience behind that disciplined demeanor. I can’t blame him; I’m not offering anything new.
I attempt to elaborate. “There were—insights, I suppose you could say. Profound insights even, but”—tapping my head—“they don’t translate well here. I remember having extraordinary realizations. I just can’t recall any specifics.”
And then, of course, I knew nothing at all. That dazzling flash of enlightenment everyone seems so intrigued by—it lasted only a moment before I was subsumed in a sea of souls.
Yet, I’ve expressed that before as well. It’s still not what he seeks.
“I’ve seen the interviews,” he says at last. “I’m familiar with religious ecstasy and proprioceptive failure. And I don’t mean to intrude, but—perhaps I’m not asking what it was like as much as how it made you feel.”
It’s a subtle distinction, but no one has posed it quite that way before. I come to a realization: this man is desperate. He’s so desperate he’ll approach me, a specimen already examined and measured and dissected at the molecular level, in the fading hope that some useful insight has eluded conventional methods.
His desperation comes from the understanding that they’re losing.
I glance at my half-finished lunch, then his untouched plate. “I was married for a long time.”
“Twenty-one years. Quite the record, these days.” And then, because it’s customary: “I’m sorry.”
“People don’t grasp that,” I reply. “It was the complete package: traditional; ancient, even. Monogamous. In the past two decades, we might have used ‘skins a dozen times.” The weight in my chest stirs, beginning to rise. “Ada told me—on some level, the brain can’t distinguish between losing a limb and losing a loved one. The same pathways activate whether the hurt is physical or emotional. I’ve always thought that was somewhat—romantic.”
He opens his mouth. “I’m—”
“So try to envision your arm not only getting torn off but rotting away on your shoulder, taking months to die. At some point, much later than you ought to, you finally stop being selfish and tell her it’s okay. She can stop fighting. She can let go.” The weight becomes lodged in my throat, but I persist. “I wonder what part of the brain processes that kind of injury.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have probed.”
“You wanted to know how it affected me. You need to understand this before grasping that. Because once the arm is lost, everything goes gray. You’re no longer connected to the universe; not even your own body. You just—exist.”
“And then this occurs.” I take a deep breath, exhaling, feeling a flicker of grim satisfaction that I’m almost steady. “You’re swept up in a moment of blinding, divine insight, and suddenly you’re linked to all of creation, realizing, deep down, that we, these insignificant specks of flesh and bone—we simply don’t matter. And then the Twenty-One Second God engulfs you and snuffs you out, and once more—nothing matters, nothing can matter because you don’t exist. But then you return, and the alarms are blaring, the world is upside down, but she’s still gone, and so . . . once again . . .”
I breathe. The weight sinks grudgingly into my chest and grows comfortable. Everything feels normal again.
“Maybe that’s why I’m your optimal data point. Maybe that’s why I’m not a vegetable now. Revelation wasn’t too shocking for me because I was already—inoculated. Nothing really shifted.”
I glance at the Colonel. I don’t know if I’ve imparted new information or simply validated the old. I can’t discern whether I’m reporting to a superordinate figure or sharing a bond with a companion.
I am clueless about this man.
“I envy you,” he says.
• • •
I don’t have to return tomorrow. None of us do.
Nella and Travis are relocating. They’ve acquired the data they require; there’s no reason to remain tethered to these experimental devices any longer. It’s just numbers from here on; this part of the program is going largely analytical now. Finally, they say, they’re making strides.
But I doubt them.
I recall the brightness in your eyes as you neared a solution. Your enthusiasm felt almost predatory; you never paused. Whenever something diverted your attention—whenever I did—you were eager to return. You radiated. You vibrated.
None of that is present in these people. There’s something in their eyes, but it’s not that.
Haunted. Perhaps that’s the term.
They might carry out their analysis in some hidden bunker. Perhaps there will be no analysis, and they’re aware of it—the freak incidents, the tragic BCI failures, the misfortunes befalling those pursuing certain research paths. Maybe they’ve reached the conclusion that there’s nothing more to be done here. Or maybe they’ve chosen to step back before their targets loom larger.
It’s no concern of mine. The money is in my account. Grassy Narrows awaits at the month’s end. Your fading presence still resonates in this two-bedroom still-life I call home. I’ve erased my biometrics, said my farewells.
Except to the Colonel, who didn’t show up today.
• • •
A new hive awakened today in Indore. The videos flood every feed: two hundred souls interconnected, stacked in hexagonal pods like honeycomb, maintained by machines resembling chrome grasshoppers. Pallets sway in a slow rhythm, rocking their occupants through an orbit designed to prevent sores. Tubes deliver waste and nutrients, while limbs Twitch at milliamp currents to prevent atrophy. Fiberoptic strands sprout from the base of each skull, disappearing off-screen to connect with a central server. Their faces are all smiling, but I suspect that was digitally added.
This isn’t an accident. No malfunction or takeover. These individuals volunteered.
It’s been brewing for years; it wasn’t expected to launch yet. But 21 sped up the timeline. Wars always propel technology to fast-forward, even if they’re subdued. They claim we’re a decade ahead of where we were just a year ago.
The Indian Institute of Technology is referring to the Great Coalescence, illustrating visions of Nature’s mysteries unveiled by a mind merging the processing power of a supercomputer with a million imaginations. They haven’t reported any actual breakthroughs yet, but it has only been a day. Even Yahweh took six to find his legs.
A waiting list is forming. A second facility is set to go live in Kolkata in two days, a third in Colombo. Talks are in progress with Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia.
They’re calling it the Moksha Mind.
• • •
A growing number of voices contend we should simply surrender. No army of attorneys or swarm of AI agents could ever defeat a coherent entity with fifteen million times the synapse count of a human brain, no matter how long it’s been inactive. Sure, we may win an occasional skirmish—but some propose that even 21’s rare legal defeats are intentional, part of a grand strategy to postpone ultimate conquest until crucial technological milestones are reached. The Twenty-One Second God is beyond human understanding, they claim. Even our successes further Its Holy Agenda.
I’m not sure I’d go that far. Then again, maybe I’d go even further.
Bacteria would remain the pinnacle of life if chloroplasts and mitochondria had retained their independence. Multicellular life wouldn’t exist if eukaryotic cells hadn’t evolved from competition to collaboration. Each major evolutionary leap began with individuals exchanging their individuality. Every progress was an act of assimilation.
We’re already colonies of colonies. Perhaps this represents just another phase in a journey that has already lasted four billion years; maybe—without these periodic moments of coalescence— life on Earth would be nothing more than a churn of cells, eternally competing.
Not that following the Metazoan path hasn’t also turned the world into a disaster zone. But still.
Better than Cancer World.
• • •
There was a time when this place buzzed: lines of people waiting to leave for distant locales; others, bleary-eyed and disheveled, flooding the concourse like blood from a ruptured capillary. Clusters of humanity gathered around overhead screens, checking departures and arrivals. Dogs and drones and enforcers pushing through the crowd, seizing random individuals and whisking them into Secondary. I recall it all vividly, even though I was only eight or nine: vast halls, packed and noisy.
Now there are so few here that I can spot him halfway down the concourse. His footsteps click and echo across the empty space.
I consider what to say as he approaches. Not are you following me or how did you know I’d be here. Nothing so blatant. Everyone seems to know everything these days. Moore knows more.
“Come to bid farewell?”
He shakes his head. “To urge you to reconsider.”
“I’ve mulled over it countless times, Colonel. You don’t expend three years’ carbon allowance on a whim.”
“That doesn’t imply you’re making the right choice.”
“I simply want to return home.”
“You were born in Cincinnati.”
“I have family in Sumatra.”
“Which is how you obtained the visa, correct? And how do you believe your family would react, knowing that the only reunion they can look forward to involves visiting a robot that rolls you like a corpse every half hour to prevent festering?”
I observe him observing me.
“I apologize,” he states after a moment. “I don’t intend to presume.”
I wait for him to continue.
“You can’t simply give up,” he finally says.
“Is that truly what I’m doing?”
“It’s self-destruction, Corwin. You of all people should realize that. Plugging into that entity transforms you from a soul into a subroutine.”
“Perhaps a subroutine doing something beneficial. Maybe a subroutine working to mend the harm we’ve inflicted.”
“You’ll never really know, will you? You’ll be just another neuron firing blindly, unaware if the brain you’re part of is deciphering the universe’s secrets or if you’re merely—firing without purpose at all. You could be sacrificing your life for random noise.”
I feel the corner of my mouth curve into a smile. “Do you genuinely believe they’d invest such sums, deploy that hardware, recruit that many individuals—for noise?”
“I suspect experiments frequently fail. The more grandiose the experiment, the greater the risk. That hive hasn’t achieved a single notable outcome since it went online, as far as anyone knows. It merely consumes souls and lets them decompose.”
“I doubt you truly believe that,” I respond.
“I hope so. That’s my best-case scenario. Because if not, then it’s biding its time and amassing its strength, and at this pace, it’ll outstrip 21 by year’s end. When it does act, we’ll have no idea what hit us.”
“Why would it be hostile?”
“It wouldn’t need to be. It could casually roll over in its sleep and crush us like an insect.”
Hives are no longer legal here. I briefly ponder whether WestHem plans to preemptively strike, but I suspect that boat has sailed; taking out Moksha now would require bombing a chain of cities from India to Japan, declaring war against multiple nations. Hard to justify when your enemy hasn’t yet acted.
“I appreciate your concern, Colonel. Sincerely. But—”
“You know, you’re rather intriguing.” Suddenly his expression shifts to something unreadable.
I shake my head. “I’m just a glorified gardener.”
“Consider your situation, though. You’re right in the thick of everything. Buffered by your own grief against the most severe fallout of the rapture. Dead center of our prime demographic, yet we’ve managed to learn surprisingly little from you. Thanks to your marriage, you have just enough familiarity to grasp the jargon, but not so much that anyone would think to consider what a glorified gardener might overhear. And here you are, reporting back to the Hive. Somehow you even managed to bypass the queue.”
“A distinctly different Hive,” I remind him.
“Perhaps. But maybe we’ve all been misguided. We assume 21’s pulling itself back to life, but it certainly wasn’t the first hive on the planet. Merely the first one—unconstrained. That we know of. And something had to breach those safeguards. Something brought it into existence. Now Moksha is fully operational, years ahead of schedule. Another hive started up right beneath our noses over in Oregon—some organic tech we’ve never come across before. We can’t legally shut it down, as living beings don’t qualify as hardware under the Interface Act. And that’s only scratching the surface. We suspect others are out there, operating more—stealthily.”
“So you think it was some kind of reproductive mechanism?”
“Spawning cycle. Field test. How can we say? We’re worms, trying to decipher the minds of astronauts.”
A talent for metaphor. This man is nothing like what I expect.
“Or perhaps it’s none of that,” he continues. “Maybe all hives are interconnected in ways we can’t grasp. Maybe 21, Moksha, and the Bicams are one entity.”
“You believe it reprogrammed me. Transformed me into a sort of sleeper agent.”
“I doubt much programming occurred. It had fifteen million souls to choose from. At least some must have been suitable off the shelf. They followed their rationales without suspecting they were doing exactly—”
“You could intervene,” I interject.
“What makes you presume we haven’t attempted to?”
Ah. Obviously, they would.
“Then again,” he adds, “if we could stop you, we wouldn’t need to.”
“Then what brings you here?”
“I’m hoping perhaps you can halt your own path.”
I shake my head. “I’m just—I’m weary of being a prokaryote, Colonel. I’m tired of solitude.”
“You’re exhausted from being.”
“Jim—”
“If hostilities arise,” he declares, “If you’re on the opposing side.”
“Then there won’t be a me to worry about. Is that not the essence of the matter?”
His expression remains steady. “Don’t do this.”
“My flight is boarding.”
He lets me go. Perhaps I’m a friend. Maybe I’m simply an asset he’s failed to keep from enemy hands. Or perhaps the ghost of the Twenty-One Second God is invisibly orchestrating everything around us: ensuring the shutdown signal never reaches my transportation, that the executive order to cancel the flight doesn’t go through, that any attempt at force would draw the attention of security drones ever vigilant for signs of hostility.
I sense eyes on me as I step into the boarding tunnel. I envision them watching as the plane, only half-filled, rolls away from the terminal.
Maybe he’s correct. Maybe you are, too.
Perhaps, if you wish to view the world with unclouded eyes, you must let go of whether you live or die.
