But Thomas Aiken Is Dead - Part I (5 page)

Atia, Orange Tier -

Atia:

Gone, I know.

Saahl:

Who told you?

Atia:

Nobody. This is how the merge behaves.

Saahl:

“Merge.” You speak as though it has a will of its own.

Atia:

Does it not? It contains the selfsenses of all those who have given themselves to it. There is nothing
but
a will of its own. That will is stronger than those who remain denizens. In time it will grow so large that few will be able to resist, much less want to. Do you see now why Tsun Uri was so concerned with stopping it in its tracks?

Saahl:

You speak in the past tense of him.

Atia:

He often talked of joining the merge and attempting to stop it from the inside. I assume by now he has tried and been unsuccessful.

Saahl:

You are correct.

Atia:

Then you have my condolences.

Saahl:

Thank you.

Atia:

How long have I been asleep in incarceration?

Saahl:

A quarter au.

Atia:

That’s enough time for the merge to have eaten almost half of the Cadence, surely?

Saahl:

More. Do you understand now why your crime is so important?

Atia:

No.

Saahl:

You will. There are certain questions I have been ordered to ask, and that I will now have to order you to answer. They may not be pleasant but your release is contingent on truthful responses.

The Breacher:

I will be monitoring.

Atia:

I’m sure you will.

Saahl:

Please describe the culture among the historik scholars at the research enclave.

Atia:

Amenable. Many became close friends. Most of us believed something had gone horribly awry with the Cadence, and I don’t just mean the merge. Their original interest in ningen culture stemmed from the same conviction as mine.

Saahl:

Which is?

Atia:

That we have lost something vital.

Saahl:

Something Thomas Aiken had?

Atia:

Something all ningens had. A certain lack of options. A necessary confrontation with harsh realities. Death, grief, anxiety, ignorance, and inevitability.

Saahl:

You are more than able to experience these things yourself.

Atia:

Optionally. It’s completely different.

Saahl:

What then? You would force every denizen to one day die?

Atia:

I would impose certain restrictions on them perhaps.

Saahl:

I had no idea you were such a fascist. It’s ironic. They talk about about you like a ningen saint, you know.

Atia:

Who?

Saahl:

You aren’t aware of your following on the tiers? You have become a demi-god of sorts. They think ningen eksist a kind of divine state we should all return to now. Another quarter au and I expect they’ll be building shrines to you.

Atia:

If there are any tiers left by then.

Saahl:

If there are any tiers left, yes.

Fran,

Forgive me for writing to you again. When you return I will give you these letters, deliver them personally. Somehow the thought of it keeps me sane. I have gone slightly manic of late. The living room is now a makeshift detective’s office. One wall is devoted to noticeboards detailing your last instances of contact with friends and family. Another is covered in Salah’s life history, or what I can gather of it. Don’t think me invasive. He’s a stranger to me, and there’s every possibility that a stranger may have kidnapped my daughter. I meant to make the third wall a sort of strategy mindmap area to plan out future action. Instead, I covered it with pictures of you that I found in the attic. I stare at them when I hit a dead end - frozen moments, you graduating or riding your first bike - and will you to come home so hard that I think I might explode.

Salah’s mother is British. She's meek and nervous on the phone. She agrees to come over and talk this through. I am forced to confront several months of domestic neglect. Unwashed plates, clothes strewn, a living room in total disarray. By the time she appears at the front door the house is almost acceptable. I make us tea and ask her about the journey and tactfully avoid why she is here until we’re both holding steaming mugs of chai and there is a natural pause in the conversation.

‘Has Salah ever disappeared before?’ I say.

She shakes her head.

‘Can you think of where he might have gone?’

‘No.’

‘Forgive me, did he have any dealings with criminals or unsavoury characters that might have forced him and Fran into hiding?’

‘He was an
architect
,’ she says in disbelief.

‘I’m sorry. This is a very strange time. It must be for you too.’

She nods glumly, sips at her tea.

There is a sting in me that I can’t scratch away or numb. Some paternal area of my brain was activated at your birth and cannot be shut off until I am shut off. Your body is somewhere in the world, whether it’s breathing or not. It occupies space, has skin and extension. You are somewhere beyond my murky bay window and I haven’t a clue where.

‘Do you have any idea at all where they might have gone?’

Salah’s mother begins to cry a little and shakes her head. I offer her some tissues. She declines.

‘He was always… so well-to-do.’

How little this woman knows. You would not have chosen a straightforward man. At the very least he will be insidiously smart. You had a way of finding those qualities latent in men and kindling them.

‘Have you spoken to his work colleagues?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did they sense any change in him before the disappearance?’

‘No. They said he was excited, that he was thinking of proposing.’

What would you have said, I wonder. Yes, I suppose. But you’d come around soon enough. I don’t think you’d wear marriage well. I remember Salah’s diary.

‘Do you know what “The Recieving” might mean?’

Salah’s mother cocks her head thoughtfully, rummages around in her handbag, and produces a small blue volume called The Book of Ix.

‘What’s this?’

‘Something Salah gave me once. Occult nonsense. There’s a bit in it about receiving, I think.’

I thumb through the contents.
Unification as a natural law. Technology: A modern philosopher’s stone?
etc.
And then:
The Ritual of Receiving.
I skim a few pages. Something about treating death like a disease and trying to cure it. A lot of sentences end with
As decreed by Tersh Orlov
at the end. A kind of amen, I suppose.

‘Can’t say I understand a word of it.’

‘Neither me,’ says Salah’s mother.

‘Salah was into this?’

‘I don’t know. He talked about it quite a bit. After a while I tried to bring it up but he didn’t want to talk about it all of a sudden.’

‘Odd.’

‘Sounds like a cult doesn’t it?’ she says.

‘Maybe. Did he seem that way inclined?’

‘What, cults?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No, he was too smart for that.’

Nothing much to say then. We swap pleasantries but it’s soon obvious enough that the most we have in common is missing our children. When she’s gone I sit and drink and look out of the window for a while and think about phoning your mother. I don’t know what I would say. She wouldn’t talk to me anyway.

June 7. I like to think that day is still out in some corner of time, running in the background like a computer program. Kidney stones. I hadn’t been in agony before. Funny, you can say the word,
agony,
but it tells you no more of the experience than a map of Paris tells you of the smell of the Seine. I am thrashing about on a hospital bed in London, so far gone I have forgotten to care about not appearing demented. I cry out sometimes, make bargains in my head with any deity that may be listening.
Please, I will reform each and every one of my ways. I will be a model of penitence. Only, take this pain away.
Enter your mother, garbed in an apron, a watch hanging from her breast pocket.

‘Oh dear,’ she says, looking me over like I’m last week’s spoiled mutton.

‘Oh dear?’

‘You
do
look a state.’

I force myself into a slouch, ready to holler all manner of vile assertions about her sexual history when I catch her face. Sublime. That is the only word I have been able to find which even comes close. I believe most men have found the feeling, hands together, head bowed, at an altar. Your mother was an altar of sorts.

‘You’re not looking so wonderful yourself,’ I managed and she allowed herself a wry smile. It was on that fertile bed of black humour that we built a life together some time later, burrowing under each other’s skin. You would not exist had it not been for kidney stones and nursing schedules. Strange, no?

Stranger how love has its own life-cycle. Like climbing a ladder in fog, with the reach for each rung you just have to trust the next one will be there. And one day it isn’t and you’ve reached the top already. Only the fog is still all about you, thicker even. Your mother and I were going to grow old together. It’s not like me to hold sentiments like that but it was how I felt; how she felt too, if her words were to be believed. We thrived on that wonderful feeling that came after impassioned nights in bed, when the room is in total darkness and the only sound is that of each other's breathing. All of time collapses into a single infinite moment, a moment with a face. I remember those nights, all of them. I remember talking until the sun came up. I remember an absolute certainty that my life had a kind of substance to it, a solid floor that had been missing without my ever knowing it. And I remember the waning too, for both of us.

There are the transformations. No more letters. No more late nights. Just the quiet unjudging walls of the house watching you go about your lives and age in separate rooms, nodding occasionally like two passing doctors on the hospital late shift.

It isn’t like a death. I can’t put a precise date or time on it. You recede back into your shells, two reclusive snails. And every mention of some other man at work is a coded confession of affection placed elsewhere, an admission of infidelity. Nothing has visibly changed. Your hearts are both where you left them. But all that poetic nonsense is gone and you are yourselves again, like two ugly teenagers after a rave when the lights come up. You still remember those first months, visit them often in your mind. But they may as well be somebody else’s days now for all the difference they make. Stop balking at me like that. Stop walling yourself off. Love me how you used to. A Mexican finger trap. More and more fucked the harder you pull.

That was vulgar. Sorry. Besides, you’re old enough to know these things now anyway. I want to believe that you won’t grow bitter like that towards another person. I want to believe you’ll do it all properly. More than that though, I want to believe that you're still alive and well. Come home. That's the most I ask.

Yours,

Papa.

Internment Transcription – Ersatz-Ningen Denizen – Blue Tier
Present Subjects: The Interlokutor (Cadence Official), Ersatz-Ningen Subject (Perpetrator)