7
“Before religion imploded on itself, our connection to God was seen as a gift to be manipulated by the highest bidder.” Baron’s uncle, like Baron, enjoys educating me, “whoever promises the best afterlife with the least discomfort in the “now.””
Once again, I underestimate Baron’s connections to everyone on the upper list. He has taken me to the Orum, a group that splintered off from the Eternals and now in constant movement, their nomadic locations carry with them a connection to the afterlife in something called “soul dipping,” but I am not here for a history lesson, I’m here to see if Barons Uncle, Terrin, will know where Wasta might be. I have to find him before his father does.
“After science allowed us to believe what we already know,” Terrin continues, “a race to control passage into the source of consciousness began, why marvel at the beauty of eternity when we can try to control it.” Terrin laughs with Baron, who is sitting beside me on an impromptu couch of boxes and pillows.
“Was that a joke?” I ask politely, trying to hide my frustration with being on the outside of their shared reality.
“No, no,” Terrin says while adjusting himself on his dirty white lawn chair, “it’s just that, everyone’s passage response to a unique signature, it’s like a fingerprint hidden in our DNA that surfaces during the death process, everyone has their own key, it cannot be duplicated.”
Terrin pauses and leans forward. The light flickers off the stone walls of the tunnel we are in. I can briefly see how much Baron looks like his uncle. His red curly hair his white skin marked with an excess of freckles. They are both dressed in loose casual clothing, made to look like very little thought was put into the decision of what to wear, but I know, no one, even Terrin picks their own clothing, they are dressed by staff. Every piece is made from the finest material designed for their specific shape and needs.
“Ok,” I add, “then what is the point in any of this, I mean, if no one can get in without their own key, why try to duplicate consciousness, what’s the point?”
“Aww,” Terrin leans back again in his chair, “they are not trying to duplicate, they are stealing, that way they remove the key sequence from the human body and have a passage into our afterlife.”
Terrin waits for a moment to let that sink in.
“Like what they did with Wasta.” I whisper to myself.
“Yes,” Terrin says, continuing my thought, “the Eternals are not above experimenting on their own kind.” He stands up and puts his hand on the stone wall, leaning. “They have made Wasta a moving target, now that the Indium have caught the scent.”
“You know where Wasta is?” I ask.
“Yes, he is in stasis, his bio signature had to be muted to hide him from the Indium. Our goal is to try and figure out how to return the bit of consciousness taken from him, or his key will not exist when he dies, and he will not pass on.”
“What does that mean for him?”
“Nothing good, I would assume…limbo…maybe.” Terrin squats on his lawn chair. “Will you help us.” Terrin finally releases the request he has been holding on to.
“Yes,” I answer, I am already on the Eternals radar, maybe the Indium, I can’t turn back.
8
“I have to talk to you.” Sharia’s message had an urgency confirmed by its style of delivery. A hand delivered human touch only counter-cube. It is a communication cube designed to only respond and be touched by humans who haven’t had any tech enhancement. Once the message is delivered it disintegrates into a powder, “like that movie” Albert once said, but I don’t know what movie he was referring to.
“Where did you get this again?” Sharia’s demeanor has changed from our casual meeting at the coffee shop.
“A patient.” I answer while looking around, taking in the space Sharia works in. Work drones are buzzing outside of her transparent office, some in flight and some hovering just above the floor.
“Does anyone know you have it?” Sharia breaks my trance.
“Yes,” I reply more casual than I expected, “all the wrong ones.”
“Follow me.” She says walking through her busy lab, drones and humans ignoring us like busy worker bees. We enter an elevator with foot thick doors and a shiny chrome interior.
“Aren’t we staying in your lab?” I ask as Sharia starts a series of identification rituals to deliver the elevator to its location.
“That’s my office lab,” she answers, “we’re going to my main lab.”
The doors close and we start to move, at least I think we’re moving, the ride is smooth and silent.
“The main lab is twenty stories beneath the surface,” Sharie tells me, “It is free of any outside interference.”
With that being said, the doors open, and we enter a platform that stands above a world of busy moving parts. Drones that move quickly around humans who populate most of the activity. I am staring down, four floors up from the main floor that stretches further than I can see, exposing entrances at the side led by elevated walkways. Each entrance suggests a much deeper purpose for each floor.
We are lowered onto the main floor; I follow Sharia to an entrance door at the side of the first floor. Everyone is looking at me like I am underdressed at a fancy party. The workers wear uniforms that suggest a specific duty. “Are they bio units?” I whisper to Sharia.
“No, they are all one hundred percent human, no one with body tech can work here and the drones are basic units. The less complicated the better.” Sharia waves at the door in front of us.
“This isn’t a security firm, is it.” I ask.
“No.” Sharia answers me with a tone that suggests everything around me is not the main event.
“Put this on.” She hands me a clamp bracelet; it clicks when I snap it together on my wrist. “What’s this for?”
“It mutes your energy signature.”
We walk through the entrance in front of us, into darkness.
“Don’t move, you are safe.” Sharia whispers.
Sharia saying, “you are safe”, makes me feel anything but.
“Rina, initiate contact.” Sharia calls out to the darkness.
Those where the last words I heard before experiencing an expansion within my being that seemed to mimic what I can only say was a near death experience, and more. After the tunnel, the dead relatives, the life review, there was more. It pulled me beyond the stories of near death and moved into the full death experience. There was no point of reference, nothing was me, thoughts felt like trying to move against the tide. Just pure being, then it felt like it was dissolving, while moving backward. I can feel my body again, in the now.
“What was that?” I asked Sharia who is now holding my hand and guiding me to a sitting area in a lit room.
“Synthetic consciousness.”
“But I thought…”
“Yes, yes.” She says while helping me to sit on a white leather couch. “Eternalists aren’t completely nuts, and Indium definitely exists.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before you initiated contact?” I am still feeling only partially here, like this is the dream.
“If I told you, your preconceived notions of the hereafter would interfere with the process, synthetic consciousness can only work uninterrupted.”
“Ok.” I need a moment, maybe two.
“When you brought me the memory sequence from your patient, I found something very interesting hidden deep inside the code.” Sharia lets go of my hand and looks directly at me, “at first I thought it was just a central signal, like a heartbeat, keeping it alive, but when we took a deeper dive, it was clear what the sequence was doing.”
“What.” My head is clear now.
“It was stealing his consciousness and storing it.”
Terrin was right, they were trying to steal the key. “Can we remove the consciousness and put it back?”
“We’re still trying to figure out how they removed it, but if we get more information on how and who took it out, we might be able to reverse the process.” Sharia leans back into the couch.
“I can help you with that.” I steady myself, still feeling other worldly.
“Good,” Sharia answers, “if we can’t figure this out, the fate of our afterlife goes to the highest bidder.”
A chill just went up my spine. Death was always the final frontier, now it’s just another battlefield for the stupidity of the human race.
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