Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 14 (3 page)
Read Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 14 Online
Authors: Jes
They endure the razor-sharp wind for several hours, their legs just about to give in, when Mathilde spots a grayish opening in the side of the mountain. She grips Bertrand's shoulder, pointing.
They enter the yawning cave, taking off their fur-lined hoods, finding themselves before a perfectly circular tunnel with no end in sight. The dim light from the entrance fades after several steps, and they rely on hearing, on the echoes of the clanking of their boots, for guidance through the twists and turns. The ground begins to vibrate. A low hum, almost imperceptible. It builds up into a buzz which becomes a roar. With the sound of stone grinding against stone, the bear says, “What do you two want?”
“Hello, Dasein,” says Bertrand, addressing the depth of the cave. “We need to talk.”
That grinding sound again, this time carrying no speech. A groan of frustration.
Bertrand and Mathilde wait in the middle of the mountain tunnel, expecting just about anything, even a strong wind to blow them out of the cave, but nothing happens, there's only silence.
Warm breath on their faces. “Hello,” he says.
Startled, they squint to make him out in the darkness but can't. Only his breathing, deep and slow, can be heard.
“Good morning, Dazzy,” says Mathilde. “It's a tad uncomfortable in the dark, you know I'm not used to it.”
A gruff chuckle. “Of course,” he says, and his silver fur sparkles with light coming from the deep end of the cave. The shape of a great bear standing on his hind legs resolves before them. Dasein yawns. “Now, what is it you two knuckleheads deemed important enough to wake me?”
Bertrand raises his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Bureaucrats are in orbit,” he says. “Quarantining us. Asking about our City’s early history.”
The bear grimaces, as if straining to recall something. “Bureaucrats?” He scratches his back, slowly, and just as he remembers he stops, his eyes widening. “They're here?” Enthusiasm in his voice. “They came?”
Bertrand and Mathilde exchange a brief glance. “You were
expecting them
?”
“I called for them,” says the bear. “Beamed out a Copy of myself. She must've finally come to their attention.” He laughs.
Mathilde looks at him, mouth agape. “Why the
hell
would you do that?”
Dasein drops to all four, turns the other way, starts walking toward the light. “Because we desperately need their help, that's why,” he says, suddenly very serious and quite awake.
The two of them follow after him.
“Wait, wait,” says Bertrand, quickening his pace to keep up with the bear. “You are responsible for a memetic hazard. The bureaucrats claim people have been killing themselves. You gotta explain yourself, Dasein.”
The bear stops for a moment. “Killing themselves?”
“Apparently.”
A frown on the furry face. He mumbles something under his breath.
“You have to talk to your fellow citizens about these things, you have responsibilities, you are one of the oldest—”
Dasein's roar echoes in the cave, escapes out the entrance, and Bertrand imagines avalanches caused by it. “You don't get to tell
me
about responsibilities here,” he says. “You have no idea the deep shit we're all into. You'd be thanking me by now.”
“Tell us,” says Mathilde, her hand squeezing Bertrand's elbow so he doesn't say anything to anger the bear any further. “What trouble are we into? Why have they cut us off from everyone else?”
But Dasein turns back toward the dimming light of the cave's end, disappears into darkness. It isn't long before a bundle of thoughts explodes their way:
<>
<
<
, the power of creation at his fingertips, he decides to make friends. The City’s conception software as he's written it is capable of birthing only variations of himself, so as he gives the command the software takes chunks of his own neural mapping and personality, permutates them, generating a dozen new citizens. Among them, a bear, licking the sun's glimmer off his silver fur.>>
~
Bertrand tries to wrap his mind around the concept, to no avail.
“We're all patchwork,” says Dasein. “Parts of the City creator's mind, rearranged. Giving the illusion of diversity.”
Once they experienced the thoughts he sent, they followed him down the tunnel into a wide room, pressing him for more answers.
“How long have you known?” Bertrand sits on an ottoman made of stone, elbows on knees.
“Some time now.”
Mathilde taps her foot on the flagstone floor. She hisses, “You’re full of shit.”
“Believe whatever you want.”
“If this is all true why didn’t you tell us before? Why broadcast our shitty story to the whole universe?”
Dasein's shoulders constrict – a bear shrug. “It took me years to locate the culprit for all those horrible emotions torturing me, incurable with the most extravagant orgasmic pleasures. When I finally did, when I dug deep and revisited our history, recovered these old fragments buried in me, I put two and two together and realized we were all doomed. We are all variants of the same, after all. Left to fester in our solipsism, at a certain point we become less social, more and more depressed. We are
degenerates
made from an incestuous thought-pool. So truth be told, my dear half-sister Mathilde, I didn't feel like sharing my pain with another perversion. I wanted to talk to real human beings.”
“How come
we
don’t remember anything?”
“Who knows how this circus operates?” Dasein shakes his head. “I’m first-gen. Maybe that’s why things have seeped into me that probably shouldn’t have.”
“Where is he now?” says Bertrand, finding his mouth strangely dry.
“I don't know.” Dasein stands up before a reflective surface on the wall, and his fur paints itself in black and white, a drawing of a tuxedo. “Could be anywhere. Doesn't matter. You and her and me, everyone, we're all
him
, anyhow.”
Bertrand and Mathilde look at each other, then quickly look away.
“Did you know that in all our existence as a City, no one, not a single soul, has journeyed out of its confines?” The bear raises a paw. “We’ve all inherited that self-important bastard’s navel-gazing attitude. A million Cities orbiting a million stars and no one has felt the urge to travel.”
Mathilde crosses her arms. “Until you very wisely decided to take a fun little stroll and spread some death around. Where are you headed now? On another one of your fucking picnics?”
The bear scratches his neck where a bow-tie just painted itself on his fur. “I had no idea it would have such a profound effect,” he says, turning to face her. “I just wanted someone’s attention.” He turns back to his mirror. “Now that I have it, I’m going to speak to the bureaucrats about this whole mess.”
He steps through it.
~
Ten thousand faces go through a whole range of emotions as Dasein's booming voice spreads across the gigantic amphitheater. Bertrand stands close to the dais, casting quick glances at the crowd behind him, trying to locate Mathilde.
“We have two options,” says Dasein, his voice shaking the poplar trees at the fringes of the amphitheater. “The bureaucrats could intervene, injecting a massive amount of fresh thought-matter into our stale pool. We'll revamp the City's conception mechanisms to take it into account, revamp ourselves to take it into account, and only then will we be allowed to communicate with other Cities again.” He pauses, looking at the throng to emphasize his choice. “Or, we could continue this charade and become hermetically sealed, with no hope of traveling outside our cesspit.”
A wave of noise spreads among the citizens while they link up, synchronizing for questions. The most-voted question is broadcast to all: <
Dasein sighs like wind blowing down from a mountain-top. “You must realize we've endured years and years of corruption because of the original creator.” His stern gaze sweeps the crowd as if searching for the culprit. “Undoing it won’t be easy.”
<
“A complete cleansing from the memetic plague,” says Dasein. “Since it's been firmly established into our identities, it might take a long time, and some might be changed beyond recognition, but that's the point, and it is the
right thing to do
. We must free ourselves.” His paws banging on the stage.
<
“Yes.”
<
Dasein takes a few steps closer to the stage’s edge. “One hundred percent. The bureaucrats are never wrong.”
No further questions. In the turquoise sky a flock of birds passes, flecking the citizens with brief, fleeting shadows.
“We need a two-thirds majority for the referendum to pass. What is it you want: freedom, or to wallow in misery for eternity?”
Bertrand watches as the citizens vanish one by one, retreating into their personal spaces to think.
~
“Go away.”
He leans on the portal to her space, raps on it gently again. “Please, I want to talk to you.”
“I don't.”
The data graveyard looms all around Bertrand, making him uncomfortable. Through her portal, the faint sound of scissors at work.
“Why weren't you at Dasein's speech?” He presses his ear against the cold wood.
Snip
. The muffled sound of a branch falling to the ground. “Because it's all fake. A setup.”
“What is?”
“This City. The referendum. Everything.”
“But now the bureaucrats can help.”
Mathilde cackles. “Ha.”
“You don't think they can?”
Snip
. Another branch falls.
Ghostly shapes of old data begin to rear their ugly heads in the distance. Bertrand closes his eyes. “Come on, Mathilde. We could really use your help with the campaign.”
The sound of glass breaking. After a moment she says, “Nothing will help you. We are a failed narcissistic experiment, but we are narcissistic nonetheless. Nobody will agree to identity changes. Your plan is doomed.”
“Please...”
“Go away,” she says, and sound no longer passes through the portal.
~
Preliminary polls show that support for collaboration with the bureaucrats is waning, quickly. Twenty minutes after Dasein's speech a third of the citizens support his plan, another twenty minutes later, a mere quarter.
Bertrand and Dasein flick thought opinions broadcast to the City’s public forums.
<
<
Some posts make it seem as if the mere knowledge of the City's history has hastened the arrival of the memetic plague, and people who were normally jovial and optimistic now find themselves in slumps of depression and hopelessness.
<
Even citizens usually in favor of challenging the status quo appear to be against the Injection, doubting the execution, and the actual worth of the idea.
<
In their shared HQ-space, staring at the green-on-blue poll pie-charts and the dwindling percentages, Bertrand brings up Mathilde's
narcissism
argument to Dasein.
The bear shakes his head, sentencing the charts and numbers and opinion posts to the data-graveyards with a motion of the hand. “Give our citizens time,” he says. “They'll come around, just give them time.”
~
Three hours before the voting. Children laughing, playing in the orchard on a freshly mowed lawn in the last light of day. Bertrand wonders which parts of the original creator’s neural structure he now shares with them.