Greater and Lesser Lights
Albert sat back in the plastic deck chair and tried to take in the full dome of stars from the roof of his company’s headquarters, where the tradition had been for workers to retreat for a drink and relaxation at the end of a work day. Albert’s work days were longer than most, and he always seemed to come up after everyone else had gone home (or had gone back to work). He enjoyed the brief retreat from the buzz of the factory- (and the valley) -floor. These days he was struggling with new feelings of loneliness – emptiness – whenever he left behind the busywork that filled the maze of rooms and hallways below. He didn’t fully understand his own feelings in this regard. The Director was at one point as famous as any tech mogul, and more loved because what his company produced was profoundly more meaningful, until it meant nothing. In simple terms, any prestige or privilege associated with starting a successful tech company had faded long before the lights in the valley blinked out. But while some things had faded, others had become more clear. For example, after the streets went dark, the skies above exploded in light and color, a sight not seen in California since before the Gold Rush. In a similar way, at the waning of Albert’s worldwide fame, his own personal story would come more clearly into focus, at least to himself.
And his fame had truly reached around the world. At Medalion, Albert could claim descendants that numbered as the stars in the sky: the world-famous Encoded Serum, AKA The Intelligent Swarm, AKA the Medical Battalion that gave the company its name – trillions of tiny microscopic machines that were responsible for eliminating most of the world’s diseases within a few years, until there was only one disease left.
Another day, another dollar, he used to say for cheap laughs, when there were still dollars and when work still felt like the worst thing about the day. He kept saying it out of habit, but laughs were no longer to be had for cheap. Just before coming up to the roof at the end of this workday, Albert had wrapped up a briefing with the group leaders, who filled him in on the news of the day. He listened passively as some engineers and a couple soldiers reported on the day’s events: Subject 1 had gone missing ... well not missing exactly, they explained ... just, sort of, hidden from sight, under her bed, as it turned out. This had happened shortly after the system threw an alert, one which may have been overlooked because it was caused by the misuse of a fork; and anyway, as the soldier explained to the Director, the technician who was at the main board the previous night had passed out just before the event unfolded. (‘That guy isn’t doing well’, Abi had noted without emotion.) The tech’s loss of consciousness triggered another alarm, but no one noticed in the flurry of activity that followed.
By the time the light had come on in her room, the hallway was already full of people, there to observe her interactions with a panel that had been causing problems. The engineers saw the empty room when the lights came up and panicked. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers reported, ‘The shrink, er ... the psychologist, entered the room, somehow found the girl under the bed and crawled under there with her without the knowledge of the rest of the team.’ The Director listened patiently as they explained how, in the chaos of the moment, nobody had had the presence of mind to find her in the system, until ‘Jeri decided to stop running around,’ and returned to the board. But, ‘In the heat of the moment made the unfortunate decision to trip the electric fence by putting Eva into musculoskeletal lockdown,’ which, an engineer unnecessarily explained to the Director, was bad because it had not happened before and was never really meant to happen while the subject was awake.
At the end of this particular day several people were left to wrestle with some pretty significant questions. Eva had to wonder what makes plastic forks resist their masters? ... And what is it that causes hospital beds to seem alert and weirdly voyeuristic? And, last but not least, how did she end up paralyzed on a cold and sterile floor next to a therapist? That therapist was left to consider that her new patient might be on the verge of a psychotic break, though when she voiced her concern, one of the doctors surprised her by coldly pointing out that delusional ideation was a known side effect of her hypnotics and dismissively suggesting they would modify the dosage – she wasn’t surprised at the assessment, but at the apparent lack of concern for Eva’s well being. The psychologist had to accept things as they were, for the time being, though she resolved to ask for an audience with the girl’s care team when things settled down. Finally, the surviving members of Medalion’s leadership were consumed with many interrelated concerns after several challenging days ... the Machine’s idiosyncratic control over seemingly insignificant details contrasted with what looked like careless abandon in other areas; the operators’ uneven and messy management of the system/subject interface; and the unplanned and unfortunate introduction of the girl to the frameworks of control that would soon be managing every aspect of her life.
The Director, who better than anyone could have addressed each of these things, decided abruptly to call it a day. He calmly thanked everyone for their good work, stood to leave the room, and made a mental note to put an appointment with Subject 1 on the next day’s agenda.
Albert walked to the edge of the roof to take in the view. There were a couple structure fires burning, though fewer than he’d come to expect; a rainstorm in the morning had cleared the air and contained most of the blazes. A few buildings were illuminated with lamp-light, and the sky was thick with brilliant stars. Under the glowing dome of the sky he looked at the smaller dome of darkness a mile to the east, where the city center used to be. All of it, City Hall, library, cultural center, had burned like a lesser Alexandria as a result of a recent meaningless revolutionary act. Over the scar that represented the missing city a small hemisphere of stars appeared to be missing too but they had not gone out. They were simply obscured behind the massive opaque dome that covered the location where Albert was building the city of the future.
Medalion could not claim the only active building project in town. Just across the highway that passed along the west side of the campus, an artifact was rising above the house tops. While much of the world outside the walls was giving way to entropy, this thing, while chaotic, was growing and organizing into something more recognizable: a giant figure, built of scrap wood and steel, parts stripped from cars and buildings. It was gloriously unencumbered by zoning laws, neighborhood association covenants, conditions, and restrictions, or any limitation of resource. The figure was gargantuan, taller than everything around it, rising in the midst of emptying blocks, a skeleton of abandoned culture covered in scavenged drapery – domestic intimacies like sheets and clothing, flags and banners of all kinds, and something that looked like a deflated hot-air balloon. All of this billowed behind the creature in a wind from the west. One skeletal hand on a lifted arm, palm open to the western glow, saluted the end of day. What would it take for this golem to wake and come to the aid of its creators against the assault of time? Watching it slowly come together over recent months, the Director was fascinated, mostly; perplexed often. Tonight he was moved to see the maker rising on a cherry-picker under flood lights to delicately drape the shoulders of the figure with care and reverence, attending to the details like a servant dressing royalty for an audience with a visitor of higher rank.
It was quiet. He turned to a bank of radios under a covered space on the southwest edge of the roof next to several old barbecues – reminders of better Fridays – and played with the dial on a receiver. Most of the important hardware was buried deep in the building, being essential for communication with teams around the world. But there was a bunch of old shortwave equipment up here, tapped into the massive antenna array that completely covered the football field of the local junior college – another reminder of better Fridays.
The system was able to pick up signals from almost anywhere on the planet, space weather permitting. From a line of speakers under the overhang came a whine of Lo-Fi, hi-reverb Indian soundtrack that comforted him as he imagined a lonely transmitter ... somewhere ... broadcasting still. If he just wanted to listen to good music, he could have had his choice of high-quality tracks off any of a hundred devices scattered around the complex. But what he wanted on nights like this was not fidelity, but imminence. A radio signal became a reassurance, a sign, like a triangulation off mountain peaks to get a wanderer un-lost. A broadcast meant more than just that someone was still out there; it meant that he was still here.
He spun the tuner through the surprisingly active bands ... ‘What this World needs is Yahweh, Yeshua, Messiah!,’ came the drawling exhortation from a long-gone evangelist on 12,160 kHz; gentle piano music on 6,185 kHz; looping updates from Medalion’s satellite locations around the world; some Morse code; and a soothing voice on an AM repeater calmly encouraging listeners to remain sheltered and patient, that the government would soon be unmasked as the Great Beast, the “global emergency” would be revealed as a hoax, and everyone who hadn’t succumbed to the mind-control campaign would rise to take back the cities and all their spoils (‘Stay awake and survive!’ he urged, with a punctuating cough). And always there was the strangely moving antique music of the subcontinent, from a time when Mumbai had not yet become Bollywood.
A few months before, he was surprised to hear a still-functioning numbers station. These relics of the cold war sent streams of digits out to hidden recipients, who alone could make sense of their encoded instructions. Albert listened to the scratchy voice and wondered how many years had passed since this signal first carried its hidden missionary meaning out into the world. Was it decades old, or had it been triggered by recent events? And he wondered: had the code been able to achieve its purpose? Was the sender ever able to make the receiver fulfill their function?
The Director settled on a broadcast. He wandered back to the circle of chairs, sat down, and sipped from a pretty good approximation of a Belgian Ale while listening to a sad mariachi; he thought he might even be getting a little buzz off the creamy brew, but he avoided thinking too hard about that. He looked out over the valley and felt gratitude for small things.
Brigid found him there and made clear her interest in holding a cold one of her own. Once she realized that she could have literally any beer she wanted, she skipped over being surprised and set about rebuking him for his choice. ‘Belgian beers are for monks and Americans. If you want to party with the Irish, you’ll have to pull something a bit more interesting.’
‘Guinness?’
‘Eh. What can you show me in a red ale?’
‘Wow, I remember drinking those in high school. They were popular for a while around here, then I don’t know what happened.’ While he tapped out something on a screen, she mumbled, ‘Oh, to be briefly popular in America. We were like those who dream.’
‘I’ll just need a little something from you first ....’ He stood up and walked away quickly. When he returned he had a glass of water. He held it out to her, and in response to her blank stare, he indicated that she was meant to wave her hand over it, which she did with a roll of her eyes. He hurried off, and when he returned, he carried a pint of what she recognized to be a gently chilled Smithwick’s.
‘Uhm, wow, very nice. And how did I do that, Albert?’
‘Ha ha. Apart from the sheer power of your ...,’ here he waived his own hand in her direction, ‘... it just so happens that someone, somewhere in the world, is drinking one of these right now. And so we know everything we need to know in order to make our own. We know what they’re drinking because we can “see it.” We know what it’s made of because we can “taste it.” And this person happens to be on the network in one of the cities left in the world where there are functional cell towers, and where we happen to have a satellite shop. That’s pretty much it. You’re lucky at least one person had a craving, or a drinking problem, which, would make some sense under the circumstances, honestly, no judgment. Anyhow, we are fortunate ... because this information is getting hard to come by. Even if we wanted to recreate all the beers of the world, right now we probably couldn’t do it.’
She held the bottle as though she wasn’t sure about a second sip: a sudden, justifiable fear of computer-generated backwash had come over her. ‘What kind of weird gastro-surveillance state were we going to have in 5 years if we survived this?’ He laughed. She could have used a laugh, but couldn’t help pushing on him. ‘Albert, really, what were you doing?’
‘Well. Maybe we never would have gotten away with it. I didn’t have to answer for it, because the question of privacy just stopped being relevant. But, sure, in five years, all the politicians we saved from heart disease, liver disease, whatever, would be horrified to learn we’d built a library of their biometrics, diet, and ... other circumstantial data. They would have broken us up, taken control of the public-health division, and I would have become a political talking point.’
He leaned back in his chair and looked up, speaking quietly with an exhale. ‘The stars aligned for us, for sure. But I could also see the signs, even before history turned against us.’
She was squinting at him. ‘Well, may I say I am honestly curious?’ She was drinking again. ‘I’m up here on the roof with a magic beer at the end of the world, and I’m still not sure I understand what business we’re in, like right now. I know that I’m here to work with Eva, and I guess I thought most everyone else was too. But there is a lot of attention being paid to things I can’t see. What exactly is the system doing, Albert, when you’re not spying on people’s meals through their mouths? I can’t even ....’ Against her better judgement, she was fascinated, and was about to launch into another flurry of questions, when he raised his hand in surrender.
‘Would you mind if we didn’t talk about the system for a bit?’
After a period of silence, he pointed out a streak of color in the Milky Way, and they chose to give full expression to the simple feelings of awe they felt at the vastness of space stretching into infinity above their heads.
Finally, he said, ‘You know, the sky is so beautiful. It feels like we’re closer to it, closer to .... I just ... honestly it sometimes moves me to tears. I don’t think I’ve ever shed a tear over anything or anyone I share this planet with. But somehow I feel so ... close ... when I’m looking at things a trillion miles away. I don’t know.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘What do you make of it all?’
‘Well. It’s pretty, I mean. I like stars, though generally I get nervous about all the space in between ‘em. We can see more of them now, and that’s good, I guess. More pretty, for as long as the show lasts.’
‘Yeah, that’s the thing. I can’t find anyone who knows anything about this, and you’re right, we have this beautiful view of the stars, now that all the lights are out ... but I can’t stop seeing all these dark patches, like ... maybe there are fewer of them? Anyway looks that way to me. And, also – ok, warning now – I wonder if it’s a sign.’
‘Huh?’
‘A third of the stars gone dark? Like, a sign of the end? Which ... you know.’
‘Yeahhh, Albert. I am more inclined to hope that a third of the stars are obscured by the spaceships that have come to bring greetings from benevolent civilizations of far galaxies and, maybe, to deliver some healing technology that could actually save us.’ He winced. ‘... Er, sorry, Albert.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have much energy for end-times dramas.’ She smiled, rolling her head to the side to face him. ‘But then ... I keep seeing Jesus in my dreams.’
‘Wait. What? Really?’
‘Well, actually I don’t ... really see him. I mean I do see him ... or I saw him once; it was hard to see, bad eyesight and all, worse in dreams where I am not allowed my glasses apparently. But I knew it was him. Jesus. And then he was right in front of me and, ah, ah ...’ she laughed, ‘All I know for sure is I ... could smell him.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘You smelled Jesus.’
‘Well, since I’ve got your attention. Actually, I smelled his breath. Because, see,’ she held her open hand up to the right side of her face, ‘he was close.’
‘Well. Saint Brigid.’
She squirmed, laughing uncomfortably. ‘Alright, that’s enough!’
‘Sorry, ok, sorry!’ He paused. ‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘What does Jesus’ breath smell like? I mean, I already get weird about other people’s bodies, so this could push me over the edge, but I am all in for this.’
‘Nope!’ she was laughing and slowly shaking her head.
He made it clear he was going to wait, so she relented.
‘Well, it was ... strong. Like spices on hot iron. Camphor. Bay. I don’t know! Burnt cinnamon? I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Did he say anything?’
She was quiet, and he chose to respect the silence.
With a shake of her head, she finally spoke. ‘Albert I don’t know. It feels like something, so .... It’s just a dream, I know! But I am struggling to know what ... what else ...! It seems every other good thing has faded away, or lost its flavor, so what else do I have?’
She became so still, he wondered if she would ever speak again. When she did, her face was drawn. ‘I feel like I’m being turned inside out, that any fire I had inside of me is gone ... because I’m completely open and exposed in every direction to the sky, and all my insides are drifting apart.’ She gave a cold laugh. ‘I’ve been thinking ... maybe once I was self-centered, but, honestly, I can’t recall.
‘And, if I’m inside out, where is my center now?’
