Stories for Chip (53 page)

Nisha transits from the Dying Man. She's in a trance, her eyelids partly closed, correlating his events with every other.

“Tell me, Nisha,” I say. “Who is this dying man?”

Nisha fumbles for words. To her, each word is contextually related to every other, and every one, and every when, everywhere. And they weave a labyrinthine fabric. What the words weave is an endless entropy of wants, desires, and will, a web of life that is so dense that the moment Nisha delves into words she becomes lost.

“He is…every man,” Nisha says at last. Then quite suddenly, her computation stops. Nisha opens her unseeing eyes.

“This is the last dying man,” she says. She begins to tremble.

Impossible! It means Nisha does not see any other future. We are at the end of probabilities. There are no more lives to index, no more possibilities. This world has but a moment left.

The dying man whispers. I hear a sound, but it's not a language I understand. His words are a language I should know, I may have known once, but he might as well be a dog, or a bird, or a cricket. And then he goes silent. All I hear is the breeze.

I hold his hand. I won't let him go this time. Not again. I won't lose another one. Not the last one.

I hear the dull roar of buildings collapsing. I think frantically. Where can we hide? This world is ending, and there is no more space-time left. We are so close to the end of the tunnel. We have missed something, somewhere. I can't think straight. The girders holding the buildings groan, metal gives in, and concrete slabs plunge into the advancing waters with a splash. The Arabian Sea is moving into the city. This is the beginning of the end.

The man's words.
Nisha would have indexed the man's words. They are important. They have to be.

“What did he say?” I turn around to ask Nisha, but all I see is the back of my head. Nauseated, I close my eyes tight. No! I will not let this trickery defeat me. I will not let this go. “Tell me, Nisha! What did the man say?”

Between sobs, Nisha says, and her voice is my own, “He said, ‘Who is present to the question,' is what he said.”

What? I asked him who I was. What in hell did his answer mean?

Who am I?—
Who is present to the question?

It made no sense.

I scream. In the emptiness of the street, my voice echoes. A street lamp flickers. Fades out. I grab the man's sandal and throw it at a trashcan. Water begins to rush in; it sweeps the trash can away. Debris—paper and trash from the street—swirls. The street lamp topples. We stand on the roof of the only building left erect in the roiling water. I embrace Nisha. If we are to die, we'll die together.

The Moon fades, the sky goes black, space-time undulates, and I meld into Nisha. I seem to have four arms and I can now see her index of the world, her life's work, the catalogue of every instance. Is she me? Or am I she? Have I always been two? Have we always been one? I sift through the index, awed by the possibilities of all the lives, their loves, their dreams, their hopes. I live them all, wear them like a garland of skulls.

The sea froths and ferments. I watch it rise—no longer afraid—as all creation is sucked into a vortex.

◊

In the depths of the invading waters, Nisha and I face the Destroyer. He is blue all over and reclines on a giant ten-headed serpent that rests on the bedrock. From his navel arises the vortex. He holds a Golden Egg in his palm, the very beginning of time. Nothing else remains. There is only the blue light of the Destroyer, the Golden Egg, and us. He is grinning, his mouth the upturned crescent of a moon.

Too many hands have slipped from mine; I will not let him destroy the Egg. I lunge at the Destroyer. The Egg falls from his hands as he swims away. It drifts to the sandy bed.

“Nisha, take the Egg!” I say and swim toward him, but he changes into a fish. I catch him by his tail, but he changes into a turtle. I try to crush his shell, but he changes into a boar. I hold him by its neck, but killing him is not the end. He will only change into something else.

The Destroyer laughs. Something's wrong.

I pick up the Egg. He has tricked us. The Egg has swallowed Nisha whole.

I plunge inside the Egg, taking the Destroyer with me.

◊

There are no worlds in here; there are no indexes. No light. No dark. Inside the Golden Egg, there's nothing. There is neither Nisha nor the Destroyer here. There's nothing except me.

I wriggle to break out, and as I do, coils of probability foam around me. I squirm, and bubbles of possibility begin to float around me. I can do this. And then in the burst of a thousand burning suns of Brahma's day, I strike the Golden Egg with all my arms, with all my force, and crack its shell.

In the blinding light of dawn, I know.

◊

I am Kali.
I
am the Destroyer. I killed the Golden Egg. I created the first death. I am the one who keeps the Index of every dying man, so I can build and rebuild the world. I am the one who waits till Brahma's last day for the Last Dying Man. I have won, I have lost, as I will again and again.

Geoff Ryman

Meu irmã

Can you read? Without help? I don't even know if you can!

I'm asking you to turn off all your connections now. That's right, to everything. Not even the cutest little app flittering around your head. JUST TURN OFF.

It will be like dying. Parts of your memory close down. It's horrible, like watching lights go out all over a city, only it's YOU. Or what you thought was you.

But please, Graça, just do it once. I know you love the AI and all zir little angels. But. Turn off?

Otherwise go ahead, let your AI read it for you. Zey will either screen out stuff or report it back or both. And what I'm going to tell you will join the system.

So:

WHY I DID IT

by Cristina Spinoza Vaz

Zey dream for us don't zey? I think zey edit our dreams so we won't get scared. Or maybe so that our brains don't well up from underneath to warn us about getting old or poor or sick…or about zem.

The first day, zey jerked us awake from deep inside our heads.
GET UP GET UP GET UP! There's a message. VERY IMPORTANT WAKE UP WAKE UP
.

From sleep to bolt upright and gasping for breath. I looked across at you still wrapped in your bed, but we're always latched together so I could feel your heart pounding.

It wasn't just a message; it was a whole ball of wax; and the wax was a solid state of being: panic. Followed by an avalanche of ship-sailing times, credit records, what to pack. And a sizzling, hot-foot sense that we had to get going right now. Zey shot us full of adrenaline: RUN! ESCAPE!

You said, “It's happening. We better get going. We've got just enough time to sail to Africa.” You giggled and flung open your bed. “Come on Cristina, it will be
fun!”

Outside in the dark from down below, the mobile chargers were calling
Oyez-treeee-cee-dah-djee!
I wanted to nestle down into my cocoon and imagine as I had done every morning since I was six that instead of selling power, the chargers were muezzin calling us to prayer and that I lived in a city with mosques. I heard the rumble of carts being pulled by their owners like horses.

Then kapow: another latch
. Ship sailing at 8.30 today due Lagos five days. You arrive day of launch. Seven hours to get Lagos to Tivland. We'll book trains for you. Your contact in Lagos is Emilda Diaw,
(photograph, a hello from her with the sound of her voice, a little bubble of how she feels to herself. Nice, like a bowl of soup. Bubble muddled with dental cavities for some reason)
. She'll meet you at the docks here
(flash image of Lagos docks, plus GPS, train times; impressions of train how cool and comfortable…and a lovely little timekeeper counting down to 8.30 departure of our boat. Right in our eyes)
.

And oh! On top of that another latch. This time an A-copy of our tickets burned into Security.

Security, which is supposed to mean something we can't lie about. Or change or control. We can't buy or sell anything without it. A part of our heads that will never be us, that officialdom can trust. It's there to help us, right?

Remember when Papa wanted to defraud someone? He'd never let them be. He'd latch hold of them with one message, then another at five-minute intervals. He'd latch them the bank reference. He'd latch them the name of the attorney, or the security conundrums. He never gave them time to think.

Graça, we were being railroaded.

You made packing into a game. “We are leaving behind the world!” you said. “Let's take nothing. Just our shorts. We can holo all the lovely dresses we like. What do we need, ah? We have each other.”

I wanted to pack all of Brasil.

I made a jewel of all of Brasil's music, and a jewel of all Brasil's books and history. I need to see my info in something. I blame those bloody nuns keeping us off AIr. I stood hopping up and down with nerves, watching the clock on the printer go around. Then I couldn't find my jewel piece to read them with. You said, “Silly. The AI will have all of that.” I wanted to take a little Brazilian flag and you chuckled at me. “Dunderhead, why do you want that?”

And I realized. You didn't just want to get out from under the Chinese. You wanted to escape Brasil.

◊

Remember the morning it snowed? Snowed in Belém do Para? I think we were 13. You ran round and round inside our great apartment, all the French doors open. You blew out frosty breath, your eyes sparkling. “It's beautiful!” you said.

“It's cold!” I said.

You made me climb down all those 24 floors out into the Praça and you got me throwing handfuls of snow to watch it fall again. Snow was laced like popcorn on the branches of the giant mango trees. As if
A Reina
, the Queen, had possessed not a person but the whole square. Then I saw one of the suneaters, naked, dead, staring, and you pulled me away, your face such a mix of sadness, concern—and happiness, still glowing in your cheeks. “They're beautiful alive,” you said to me. “But they do nothing.” Your face was also hard.

Your face was like that again on the morning we left—smiling, ceramic.

It's a hard world, this Brasil, this Earth. We know that in our bones. We know that from our father. I kept picking up and putting down my ballet pumps—oh that the new Earth should be deprived of ballet!

◊

The sun came out at 6.15 as always, and our beautiful stained glass doors cast pastel rectangles of light on the mahogany floors. I walked out onto the L-shaped balcony that ran all around our high-rise rooms and stared down at the row of old shops streaked black, at the opera-house replica of La Scala, at the art-nouveau synagogue blue and white like Wedgewood china. I was frantic and unmoving at the same time; those cattle-prods of information kept my mind jumping.

“I'm ready,” you said.

I'd packed nothing.

“O, Crisfushka, here let me help you.” You asked what next; I tried to answer; you folded slowly, neatly. The jewels, the player, a piece of Amazon bark, and a necklace that the dead had made from nuts and feathers. I snatched up a piece of Macumba lace (oh, those men dancing all in lace!) and bobbins to make more of it. And from the kitchen, a bottle of
cupuaçu
extract, to make ice cream. You laughed and clapped your hands. “Yes of course. We will even have cows there. We're carrying them inside us.”

I looked mournfully at all our book shelves. I wanted children on that new world to have seen books, so I grabbed hold of two slim volumes—a Clarice Lispector and
Dom Cassmuro
. Mr. Misery—that's me. You of course are Donatella. And finally that little Brasileiro flag.
Ordem e progresso
. “Perfect, darling! Now let's run!” you said. You thought we were choosing.

And then another latch: receipts for all that surgery. A full accounting of all expenses and a huge cartoon kiss in thanks.

◊

The moment you heard about the Voyage, you were eager to JUST DO IT. We joined the Co-op, got the secret codes, and concentrated on the fun like we were living in a game.

Funny little secret surgeons slipped into our high-rise with boxes that breathed dry ice and what looked like mobile dentist chairs. They retrovirused our genes. We went purple from Rhodopsin. I had a tickle in my ovaries. Then more security bubbles confirmed that we were now Rhodopsin, radiation-hardened, low oxygen breathing. And that our mitochondria were full of DNA for Holstein cattle. Don't get stung by any bees: the trigger for gene expression is an enzyme from bees.

“We'll become half-woman half-cow,” you said, making even that sound fun.

We let them do that.

◊

So we ran to the docks as if we were happy, hounded by information. Down the Avenida Presidente Vargas to the old colonial frontages, pinned to the sky and hiding Papa's casinos and hotels. This city that we owned.

We owned the old blue wooden tower that had once been the fish market where as children we'd seen tucunaré half the size of a man. We owned the old metal meat market (now a duty-free) and Old Ver-o-Paso gone black with rust like the bubbling pots of açai porridge or feijoada. We grabbed folds of feijoada to eat, running, dribbling. “We will arrive such a mess!”

I kept saying goodbye to everything. The old harbor—tiny, boxed in by the hill and tall buildings. Through that dug-out rectangle of water had flowed out rubber and cocoa, flowed in all those people, the colonials who died, the mestizos they fathered, the blacks for sale. I wanted to take a week to visit each shop, take eyeshots of every single street. I felt like I was being pulled away from all my memories. “'Goodbye!” you kept shouting over and over, like it was a joke.

As Docas Novas
. All those frigates lined up with their sails folded down like rows of quill pens. The decks blinged as if with diamonds, burning sunlight. The GPS put arrows in our heads to follow down the berths, and our ship seemed to flash on and off to guide us to it. Zey could have shown us clouds with wings or pink oceans, and we would have believed their interferences.