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Of Rakugo and Legacy
One of the trends I hate the most in modern storytelling is the focus on the moment and the total disregard of the past. No longer do the facts of an existing story matter for high and mighty artists looking to do their own thing. This trend shows up everywhere nowadays. Amazon’s Rings of Power, Disney’s mangling of Star Wars (particularly the old Extended Universe), every Star Trek movie and series since the end of Enterprise – the list goes on and on. Old stories are cast aside to ‘make room’ for new stories, as if the old was some kind of barrier to achievement. There is an outright hostility to legacy in the major American studios these days.
There’s a lot you can say in response to that in the abstract, commenting on the way SoCal is childless, and thus views legacy as aberrant, or on the fetishization of rebellion that has defined the arts for the last hundred years or so. These kinds of observations are fine for what they are. But I am a storyteller and I tend to respond to these kinds of attitudes by reflecting on stories that see legacy not as some kind of obstacle or enemy to be overcome but as an asset or even the heart of the story.
Akane-banashi is a manga written by Yuki Suenaga and illustrated by Takamasa Moue that focuses on the art of rakugo. This is a traditional performing art that is somewhere between 200 and 250 years old that enjoyed it’s greatest influence in the early 1900s. It consists of a single person sitting in a formal pose and telling a story to the audience. Character, situation and action are all conveyed through use of pantomime, changes in voice and the use of a paper fan and piece of cloth as props. The performer is known as a rakugoka.
Shinta Arakawa is the stage name of Tehru Osami, a man studying to be a rakugoka. He has invested thirteen years of his life into mastering skills and studying under his master, Shiguma Arakawa, as a member of the prestigious Arakawa School of Rakugo. His family struggles to make ends meet, his daughter gets into fights at school when bullies call him a deadbeat and his wife’s family has never quite approved of him. Yet his daughter admires him, his wife supports him and his house is full of the magic of rakugo.
So Shinta continues to perform to small audiences, hoping to get promoted to the rank of shin’uchi, a rakugo headliner. Then he can get bigger gigs and a larger share of the profits. All he has to do is impress the leading performers in the Arakawa school at one big performance. In particular, he has to impress the school’s leader, Issho Arakawa.
Except he doesn’t. When Shinta and six other Arakawa prospects are given the opportunity to perform for Issho Arakawa and receive acknowledgment as shin’uchi the result is shocking. Issho expels all seven of them without explanation. While there’s nothing preventing them from starting over from scratch with another rakugo master in another school, Tehru does not have that luxury. His family is depending on him and he can’t keep them waiting any longer.
So Tehru Osami sets aside his stage name and gets a job selling concrete. He does well, draws an impressive salary and never tells a story again. His family eats better, his neighbors respect him more and his house… well, the magic of rakugo vanishes from it. And Akane – his daughter – is mortified.
A few months later she comes to Shiguma’s door and demands to learn the art of rakugo from him, so she can prove that the performances her father gave were not worthless. Taking up her father’s calling she sets out to prove her own mettle and redeem Shinta Arakawa’s name.
In and of itself, Akane’s struggle and goal is compelling.
However, the Osami family legacy is only the tip of the iceberg in Akane-banashi. Rakugo is a traditional art form, something that has much stronger connotations in Japan than in the US. It can only be passed down from a master to an apprentice. The very concept of legacy is built into the way it propagates. As Akane learns more and more about the art form she discovers that everyone who performs it carries at least as much emotional connection to rakugo as she does.
Ironically her biggest target, Issho Arakawa, is no exception to this. As the antagonist of Akane-banashi, Issho is a fascinating enigma. Rakugo is generally considered a form of comedy yet Issho is almost never shown smiling when he’s not performing. In fact, on first glance he’s a bit of a grump, always grumbling and complaining. Then we realize that’s an illusion. Issho is actually focused on his art form with a frightening, laserlike intensity that allows for no failure or contradiction.
When Akane finds an opportunity to confront Issho in person and ask why her father was expelled from the Arakawa school we gain our first major insight into his character. He deflects the question by telling Akane he is in mourning. Rakugo is dying, you see. In the modern age, with the Internet and smart phones affording the average person a constant bombardment of entertainment, there’s little hunger for the simple yet profound entertainment rakugo provides. Only the most captivating rakugoka have any hope of retaining an audience in that environment. In short, Issho feels he must carry the legacy of rakugo itself on his shoulders.
As time goes on we find that Shiguma, the man who taught both Tehru and Akane the art of rakugo, also bears a legacy from his master. One he hoped to pass on, first to Tehru and then to Akane. And it is a legacy he and Issho fought over, for it turns out the two of them both learned their art from the same man.
As time goes on and the story of Akane-banashi builds on itself the legacies of each character and the legacy of rakugo itself join together like the pieces of a mosaic. We go from a story about a single character, trying to master a craft and right a wrong, to a vast web spanning generations, all tied together by a passion for performance. Here the old is no impediment to expression. It is the very foundation of it. Even Issho Arakawa, for all his dour moods and callous behavior, presents hard but realistic lessons that the up and coming talent must eventually grapple with.
It is this web of generational legacy that makes this simple story about traditional comedy tick. It transforms a tale about finding a career from a straight forward, if beautifully illustrated, coming of age story to a deep, rich and compelling emotional journey. It makes rakugo more interesting than blockbuster movies with multimillion dollar budgets. And it is why, if you have any interest in the performing arts or legacies, you should absolutely make the time to read Akane-banashi.
A Slow Thaw
I admit that the Cameron Winter mysteries fill me with an odd sense of delight.
To explain that I feel I have to backpedal a bit to when I first read Andrew Klavan’s The Great Good Thing, a memoir of how he came to love writing, literature and eventually Christ. For a person who is fond of all three of those things, Klavan’s memoirs were fascinating reading. However after reading The Great Good Thing and listening to a few of his podcasts I thought I would try one of his novels out and bought a book titled Werewolf Cop.
Perhaps I should add a disclaimer.
In his nonfiction prose and his podcasting Klavan is witty, wry and humorous, beginning most of his shows with a two or three minute satire segment and inviting his audience to laugh with him through the fall of the Republic. I was aware that Klavan’s fiction was focused on gritty tales of crime. However I think I can be forgiven if my expectations for a book titled Werewolf Cop were slightly colored by how Klavan speaks when addressing his audience directly.
Klavan’s stories are fascinated with the darkest parts of human nature. They are also wrapped up in the question of how we, as people, must fight back against that darkness. However, in order to properly ask that question he first has to take us deep into the worst parts of our nature to confront who we really are when all the lies we tell us about how nice and kind we are get stripped away. We must know the enemy before we can fight it.
On my first reading of Werewolf Cop I was surprised by how dark the novel was, how little the surface level ridiculousness of the title bled through into the narrative and how closely tied to the existing culture the overall plot was. It wasn’t a bad book, in concept, but it lacked something in the execution. The protagonist was an interesting character but his ability to grapple with the evil of his situation seemed almost… off kilter. The darkness of the situation felt like it should have had a much bigger impact on him, on his family and on his life than we really got from the story. The impact of such a thing felt like it should have extended much further.
All this brings me back to Cameron Winter.
By structuring the series as a slow unfolding of Cameron’s past in conjunction with a series of very depraved crimes Winter must unravel in the present Klavan accomplishes two things. He allows Cameron to grapple with the present from a position of semi-detachment. At the same time he justifies Cameron’s distant attitude by telling us about Cameron’s past and the many deep marks it has already left on him. Klavan weaves the past and present together with great expertise. Stories play out over two time periods with the events in each period expounding upon those in the other.
In my review of the previous book in the series, The House of Love and Death, I mentioned that I thought Cam was at a turning point. After reading A Woman Underground I feel both vindicated and surprised. It is, indeed, a turning point in Cameron’s life but not quite the one that I was expecting. At the end of Love and Death Cameron was on the cusp of forming a healthy relationship with a woman for the first time in a long time. However at the opening of A Woman Underground we learn he hasn’t contacted Gwendolyn Lord, the woman in question, for over five months. He isn’t quite ready to take that step yet.
Then, for the first time in the series, Klavan allows a character from Cameron’s past to enter his life in the present of their own volition. Charlotte, the girl who is the source of half of Cameron’s neurosis, makes a brief and fleeting effort to contact him and throws everything in his life out of whack. The result is a slow rolling disaster that forces Cameron to finally face and resolve a small part of the misfortune that has twisted him into such knots for most of his life.
As usual, Klavan ties his plots of hard-hearted and selfish men and women with threads of modern day events. This is done more to create a backdrop for the story than for any political commentary, which I appreciate. Fans of recurring characters like the Recruiter or Stan-Stan will not be disappointed either. However the most controversial element of this story will probably be Charlotte herself.
By exhuming, staking and burying a ghost of his past Cameron has made a definitive step forward in his character arc, fundamentally changing the dynamic between himself and the rest of the cast he works with. Charlotte, who’s shadow defined most of the character work in the first four books of the series, is going to be much less of an element going forward. Some readers, particularly those enamored of the predictable formula of television, may dislike that. I am optimistic that it signals we are going to go even deeper into the element that made the series appeal to me in the first place: Cameron’s past and how it shapes his present.
There is also a meta commentary in this story on the nature of story itself, something most authors can’t help but slip into their work at some point or another. Both Cameron and Margaret, his therapist, comment on the hand of a storyteller at work in Cam’s life. It’s the first hint of faith we see from the stubbornly agnostic protagonist and a bit of a tongue in cheek fun from Klavan himself. More than that, there is an interesting subplot early in the story that hinges on an author. The use of fiction to push an agenda and reframe a story is an interesting twist. Normally this would be the plot element where an author makes their apologia for playing god but Klavan chooses to refrain from this particular cliché. Instead, that kind of editorializing author is left to a rather ignoble fate.
As an author myself I can agree with that message but as a reader it did feel a little intrusive. Fortunately this is not enough of a major plot thread to create a negative impact on an otherwise excellent story. While others may come away with a different opinion I implore you not to let doubts about such a storyline keep you from enjoying a well told tale. As usual, I look forward to reviewing Klavan’s next work, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. Hopefully it will come soon.
Speaking of books, I am proud to announce the release of my first book! It compiles eight stories of high adventure in a West that never was. Follow Roy Harper as he makes a living as a magic wielding mercenary, making the West a better one bounty at a time. Get it here:
AI – Two Reasons for Optimism
There’s been a lot of hand wringing around the potential innovation and potential hazards of a thing called “AI.” There have been many debates about ethics and implications. The technology could force a significant shift in the way we look at intellectual work and intellectual property and I regret to inform you that any attempt to prevent it’s development will inevitably be worse for humanity than allowing it. (Don’t believe me? Look into why Roman technology stagnated.)
What I don’t want to do today is contribute to that debate. I am more interested in some things I’ve seen in AI that are actually signs for optimism about the way we will react to the technology. This is not to disregard the shortcomings and hazards AI may pose. But I am a creator first and foremost. We survive by making things that emphasize the good and beneficial aspects of our tools rather than by constantly dwelling on all the shortcomings. Hazards are things to be avoided and drawbacks things to be compensated for. The real question is what will we get if we avoid and compensate our way to a successful AI creative environment?
Well, the first thing is we will get a much more verbal society. Ever since Apple Computers introduced the first graphical user interface (technically inspired by Xerox, I believe, but still usually credited to Apple) electronics have been moving us towards a visual culture. Look at any smartphone screen and you can see the upshot of this. Lots of pictures, very few words. However the things we call AI are large language models (LLMs) developing algorithmic prediction based on a neural networking framework – a bunch of fancy terms meaning they read the Internet and form an idea of how the words connect to each other. That means in order to get an output from the LLM you must input words. You cannot press buttons with pictures on them. You cannot draw something.
You. Must. Use. Words.
This is very different from the way using electronics have been going for the last twenty to thirty years. Nothing has dealt more damage to the modern person’s verbal skills than how little they are needed to use modern tools. Don’t get me wrong, the visual communication employed in modern user interfaces is quite impressive. Given the international market for much of these products its also very practical. However it has also reduced the interest in and power of verbal communication in almost every aspect of society. An AI built on an LLM pushes the pendulum back in the other direction by forcing prospective users to interact with it verbally. For the writer and the storyteller that is a positive development.
Of course, AI requires a very idiosyncratic kind of verbal communication right now and that’s less than ideal but I will take what I can get.
That brings me to the next thing about AI that gives me cause for optimism and that is the need for framing. If you have used some kind of online form in the last five years or so you may have been asked to find all of the stop lights or buses in a picture before you can submit it. The primary purpose of this exercise is to prevent automated programs from flooding the form with submissions. The bots that fill out these forms cannot understand the pictures so they fail this simple test.
The secondary purpose of this exercise is to create AI that can understand the pictures.
One of the things no AI can do is frame an object. When the AI program looks at that picture all it sees is a bunch of pixels arranged in a grid. It has no way to tie specific groups of those pixels to a concept like a bus or a stoplight because buses and stoplights are arbitrary concepts invented by humans. The AI has to be taught the concept to understand it. The idea must be “framed” for the AI by human beings who already grasp it.
Human beings have a remarkable ability to learn new concepts and apply them to the world around them based on their pattern recognition skills. It is this ability to “frame” issues that gives rise to creativity, language and communication. Even if an AI can be taught the very broad, basic aspects of something like the law or medicine it still will not grasp the intricacies of a given situation in its specifics. Working out these intricacies and communicating them back to an AI is going to be a necessary skill going forward. This, in turn, will demand people develop situational awareness and communication skills, things which technology has so far driven people away from, rather than towards.
This emphasis will, once again, push people to develop verbal skills which our society has largely allowed to atrophy over the last thirty years or so. In this environment there will be plenty of opportunities for people with a strong command of language to thrive. Better yet, it may change cultural tastes. Visual art is all well and good, don’t get me wrong. I love to draw as much as I love to write. However there hasn’t been as much taste for verbal craftsmanship as there has for visual craftsmanship in my lifetime and if the rise of LLM AI pushes our culture towards verbal excellence again I think it would be a nice development.
I am not saying these things are guaranteed. Nor am I in any way implying that AI will not cause our culture considerable difficulties as it grows towards its full potential. The printing press and the Internet did those things as well. However I do see some reasons to embrace this shift in technology not just for its ability to boost dreary things like efficiency and productivity but also for its ability to push our culture towards aspects that have long been ignored by most people – the communication of ideas through verbal excellence. It is by no means guaranteed but one can hope.
The Empire of Southern California
Most artists are obsessed with their craft, thinking about it constantly and drawing strange connections between disparate points of data to arrive at new conclusions. I am no exception to this rule. A long term study of the art of storytelling has led me to an interesting conclusion – there is more to the strange distortions that have felt through American culture than just a loss of skill or a growth of a particular ideology.
In some ways this was not a huge revelation to me. While there are real signs that ideology has taken over vast swaths of the people who produce most of America’s modern stories, that cannot explain things on its own. Sure, overpowering ideology creates blinders that get in the way of storytelling. It hampers the development of key storytelling skills and distorts the sense of truth and beauty that all the best art relies on.
Ideology is a very limited thing. In and of itself it creates a framework for viewing the world and if that framework is detached from what makes a good story that’s an issue. But if the ideology has good grounding in truth then steeping in that ideology can actually be beneficial. Ideologically driven stories can also succeed if they are tempered by other contributions from people with less ideological commitment, or at least equally significant commitment to artistic merit. So long as the ideology has a grasp on the true and beautiful there is hope for good art to come from it. So I have always found the ideology excuse for modernity’s bad art insufficient to explain the situation. That’s not to say the ideology driving much of modernity’s stories is good, I don’t think it is, I just don’t feel that alone explains the issue. That leaves lack of skill as a possible reason for bad stories.
It is harder to pinpoint what exactly could cause an artistic community’s skill to slip away and thus harder to tell whether or not it has happened at all. Many once great creators like Ridley Scott or James Cameron have produced films that fall far short of their best efforts. Is that because they have aged, as we all must? Or is some other factor at work? It’s hard too tell in an objective, testable way. The creation of art is not a scientific process, nor are the intricacies of creating it as measured and precise as science demands. I have only my intuition and a handful of data points to work from.
However over the last few months I’ve started to wonder if there might be a third explanation I’ve overlooked. What if modern storytellers are just too insular?
Indulge me in a brief digression. One of the greatest English language authors to ever live was a Regency era British woman named Jane Austen. All six of her novels were about the lives of minor, upper class British women juggling their social standing, family obligation and personal ambitions. They are wonderful studies of character and human nature. Like all art they grasp very true ideas and present them to the audience in fascinating ways. They also come from a very specific historical and cultural context.
If a Jane Austen novel were presented to the people of the British Raj or West Indies who lived at the time they were published there is a good chance they would not find it engaging or entertaining. While the basic character archetypes of, say, Pride and Prejudice are universal to the human experience the situations those characters find themselves in are very specific. That very specificity would make the entertainment provided by the narrative harder to receive for those unfamiliar with British life. Even those living in a theoretically British culture. There is just no point of cultural connection between the far flung cultures of the Empire and the culture of Jane Austen.
The purpose of this rather lengthy analogy is to undergird my theory on why so much of modern storytelling (and art in general) fails to resonate with so many people. Most modern stories, particularly in America, are seen through the filter of a small group of people in Southern California. Yes, publishing houses are mostly headquartered in New York but few Americans read stories anymore so, for the purpose of a broad discussion, publishers are sadly irrelevant. The rest of America’s modern storytellers are in Hollywood and the gaming industry. Even if these industries are not headquartered in SoCal the people who write for them come out of schools thought and schools of education that are exclusively focused on the Hollywood frame of mind.
The reason SoCal is important here is that it has a very unusual culture compared to the rest of America. It is demographically diverse, urban, childless, full of people who have spent a large chunk of their lives in “higher education” and share an extremely permissive attitude to sex. This culture is foreign to the rest of the nation. Perhaps more foreign to the majority of other Americans than British Regency culture would have been to the Indian and Caribbean cultures they ruled over.
The people of SoCal create stories steeped in their own, insular values and seem shocked when the rest of the world find these stories inaccessible to them. They are much like the oft depicted, out of touch British visitor to some far flung Imperial holding who doesn’t understand why everyone looks different, speaks oddly and eats with their hands. I have come to this conclusion lately specifically based on events around the gaming industry. For the sake of being thorough, some examples:
The game Black Myth: Wukong was criticized for lacking “representation” for black and Latino characters even though the game is based on Chinese myth. This demonstrates that the resident of Imperial SoCal cannot conceive of any culture being represented that doesn’t have the ethnic make up of the world right outside their widow. The point of the game was to represent ancient China, not modern California, so the American storytellers were scandalized.
The game Dragon Age: The Veilguard features an entire storyline about a character’s pronouns. This is a bit of linguistic drudgery born of too much useless college education, the kind of thing so detached from reality only the ultra wealthy in the entertainment and tech sectors really pay attention to it. The audience found it tedious and stupid yet Imperial SoCal cannot understand why no one cares about it.
The game Dustborn features entire mechanics built around shaming and verbally abusing other people to defeat them in “combat” using the social standards of South California’s Empire. The results range from sad to unbearably cringe inducing. The game flopped horribly. Yet the creators insist the basic system is both interesting and narratively insightful.
Audiences do not connect with the stories or critiques above. They are based in a context we do not take part of and don’t really want to understand. Modern storytellers don’t seem to understand that because they are so deeply embedded in their own insular culture. Does it explain why they struggle to create anything that resonates with the rest of the world? It could.
How is the problem to be solved? That’s harder to say. But with the problem diagnosed we are one step closer to that goal. Til next time, friends.
The Silent Fire
The hospital loading dock was nearly identical to all the others Vince had visited in his life. He trotted up the ramp onto the loading platform, the gym bag over his shoulder bumping against his leg. When he reached the top he held out his hand to the man there. “Mr. Hartman? I’m Vince Porter, from First Missionary.”
“Call me Steve.” Steve Hartman shook Vince’s hand with a short, quick motion then smoothed down the front of a very rumpled dress shirt in a futile effort at looking presentable. He was a tall, wiry man and much better dressed that Vince would expect from a head janitor.
“Remi didn’t give me many details when she forwarded this commission to me,” Vince said. “What can you tell me about your problem? Does it show up here?”
Steve’s eyebrows jumped towards his vanished hairline. “Problem? Is that what you folks call ghosts now?”
“No. Typically we attribute the behavior of what the general public considers ghosts to demons or fair folk. Remi thinks demons are more likely or she wouldn’t have sent me.”
“Fair folk?” Steve raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
“They’re almost exclusively European so hopefully it won’t ever matter to you.” Vince scanned the loading dock. “Anyway, what’s the deal here?”
“Not here, it’s down in the basement,” Steve said. “All the incidents take place in the sub basement levels, usually in the machinery or sanitizing facilities. I’ll show you where in a minute but first we need to check in with the head nurse. He wanted to be a part of this.”
Vince followed the other man into the hospital proper. Given his role as a pastor he’d been to Northview General more than a few times over the years. However Steve led him through unfamiliar hallways into the facility’s administration wing. “Has the head nurse seen any of the phenomena caused by the ghost?”
“No, not that he’ll admit, but he collected some of the stories that led to us calling you in. And, to be totally fair, he also doesn’t want you here. So he probably feels like he had to flex on you in some way or another.”
“Doesn’t believe in ghosts or problems with religion?”
“Little of both.” Steve hesitated outside a door at the end of the hallway they’d been walking down. “I hope you won’t hold it against him.”
That struck Vince as odd. “You’re the head janitor, right?”
“Head of Maintenance.”
“Do you work with the head nurse on a regular basis?”
“He’s my little brother, helped me get this job.”
That went a long way to explaining Steve’s defensive comments. “Well, I told you on the phone that we need to try and work out who is being pursued or possessed by the demon in question. Was there a common person or place involved when the phenomenon takes place?”
“I don’t know.” Steve knocked on the door as he spoke. “Ryan hasn’t told me any of the details yet, says they’re confidential.”
“Ryan’s your brother?”
“That’s me,” said the man who opened the door. He was just a hair taller than his older brother but considerably larger than Steve. It wasn’t his build, either. Northview’s head nurse looked like he was a hearty eater and not in the healthy sense. “You’re the priest?”
“Vincent Porter, at your service,” he replied, offering Ryan Hartman a handshake. Through an effort of will he managed not to correct him on the term priest, which the Missionary Churches didn’t use. Something told Vince that Ryan wasn’t interested in the nuances of that particular point of doctrine. “Thank you for having me.”
Ryan scowled at Vince, then his brother. “Not sure what Steve expects you to do, especially given how vague the so-called issue is.” He waved the two of them into his office. “Steve told me you wanted to know about common places or people involved in the manifestations.”
“Yes. Without going too deep into the weeds, what’s important here is figuring out who the demon’s target is or was.” Vince sat down in one of the folding metal chairs facing Ryan’s battered partical wood desk. “If I don’t know the demon’s target there isn’t much I can do to get rid of it. They tend to manifest under particular conditions, at least at first, so that will help me narrow down what it’s objective is.”
Ryan made a phlegmy sound in the back of his throat as he took his own seat. “Very well. Based on the testimony there are three people that have been at the majority of the sightings. Myself, Steven and Mrs. Wright, who works nights in the morgue. None of us have been at all the reported incidents.”
“Can one demon afflict multiple people?” Steve asked.
“I’ve never heard of one presence possessing multiple people,” Vince said. “But they can have multiple people in their sights. Steve, you mentioned that most of the incidents take place in the mechanical spaces or near the sterilizer?”
“Yeah, stuff in the sub basements. The morgue is down there too, if you were wondering.”
“I was. Which one are the three of you most likely to use on a typical day?”
“I’m in most of those places every day,” Steve said. “But I don’t think Ryan or Kendra go into the machinery rooms at all.”
“Do you have a lot of use for the sterilizer, Steven?” Ryan asked, tone sounding more than a little patronizing.
“It may come as a shock to you but yes, I do. Not only do we have to run diagnostics on it once a month I’m also in charge of demonstrating it to prospective clients.”
“Clients?” Vince raised an eyebrow. “What, do you let patients boil their clothes there or something?”
Steve chuckled, the first expression of any emotion other than stress Vince had noticed all night. “Hardly. C’mon, it might be easier to just show you. We can pick up Kendra along the way.”
The morgue was in the basement, which was typical for hospitals in Vince’s experience. Northview’s was overseen by Kendra Hall, a laid back woman in her late twenties who’s bright pink turtleneck sweater contrasted with her mahogany skin in a very pleasing way. She studied Vince while fingering a simple cross necklace absentmindedly. Finally she asked him, “Do you think you can exorcize this thing on your own, Father?”
“I’m not your dad,” he replied with a smile, “just a shepherd. But like all who are in Christ I’m never alone so I’m not too worried about your problem. I’m told you’ve experienced some sign of the thing’s presence?”
“I think so,” she said, not looking to reassured by what he said. “Three weeks back I was preparing the latest batch of cadavers from the residency program for the sterilizer when I thought I heard someone crying. I’m not here during visiting hours so that kind of visitor is pretty rare. When I looked around I didn’t see anyone so I thought I imagined it, because this is the morgue and the patients I work with are past making sounds.”
“I take it you forgot all about it until Ryan asked about strange occurrences in the basement?”
“Nope. It wasn’t til the day after he sent the email out that I realized it might be something worth mentioning. The regional waste had just come in down the hall when I heard the sterilizer kick in. And I mean it kicked in right away. Usually it’s an hour or two before they get it up and running but that time it fired up maybe five minutes after they brought the waste down.”
“Okay, I think it’s time someone explained what the deal with this sterilizer is,” Vince said. “It doesn’t sound like something a demon would be interested in but I’m curious.”
“Step this way,” Ryan said. “It’s just down the hall. We’ve had a state of the art medical waste sterilizer and disposal unit for the last sixteen years and the hospital supplements its income by handling medical waste disposal for most of the county as well. We get two shipments a week.”
Vince wrinkled his nose. “Is that a lot?”
“No,” Steve said, loading them out into the hallway. “The hospital alone puts out almost twice that much over the same time period, which is why we can justify the time and energy costs.”
“Got it. So you heard the incinerator going?”
Kendra nodded, fishing a set of keys out of a jacket pocket. “The morgue creates a lot of its own waste and I usually try to get it into the sterilizer with the contract waste so they don’t have to fire it up again on another day of the week. But they were starting up so early that…” For the first time Kendra hesitated and Vince caught a glimpse of the strain she was under as her breathing hitched in her throat. “Anyway, I was going to ask them to wait for me to get things together but when I let myself in there… there wasn’t anyone else in the room and… the sterilizer was cold.”
Kendra slowed to a stop, her eyes locked on the double doors on the left hand side of the hallway. “Do any of you hear a baby crying?”
Ryan took the keys from her gently. “I’m sure it’s just your imagination, Kendra, just like last night.”
“All this happened last night?” Vince asked. “I thought you the had the most experience with this thing.”
“Kendra and I have seen or heard the entity every night for the last week,” Steve said. “She hears children crying, I hear machinery that isn’t there mixed in with crying children. But so far Ryan’s the only one to actually see it.”
Vince saw the way Ryan rolled his eyes. “I take it you wouldn’t agree with that assessment?”
“I’ve never heard any of the strange stuff they talk about,” Ryan retorted. “Do you hear children crying right now? Or machinery? Of course not, because this is an old building that plays tricks on your hearing and if you’re not ready for it you could mistake it for just about anything.”
“So why do they think you’ve seen the demon, Ryan?” Vince asked.
“Because last week some kid around the age of twelve got lost, wandered into the admin wing and asked if I could help him find his parents. When I got up and led him out into the staff break room he slipped away from me.” Ryan sorted as he unlocked the doors. “Steven is convinced this is a manifestation of his mental illness, I think that the manifestation is his insistence the child is a specter.”
“Come on,” Steve said. “You really think all this freaky stuff is in my head?”
“It’s a reasonable assumption,” Vince said, to the surprise of the other three. “What? Demonic influence, in the form of possession or oppression, is actually very rare. The theology of that is kind of convoluted but I’d be happy to give the curious a primer on it at another time.”
“None of you hear that crying?” Kendra asked.
“No,” Vince admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a force here that only wants you to hear it. That’s not uncommon in demonic oppression.”
“It’s just that the oppression itself is rare?”
“That’s right.” Vince unzipped his shoulder bag and pulled out his sword and a pump action t-shirt gun on a sling. “Go ahead and open the door, Ryan.”
The nurse studied his weapons skeptically but did as he was asked. Inside there was a room about ten feet square. Along one wall was a conveyor belt feeding into a roughly three foot by three foot doorway currently covered by a heavy steel shutter. There was a stack of crates along one wall with labels bearing the names of various medical businesses like Pinecrest Dental or Northview Family Planning. The sterilizer was off and no one was in the room. “You just got a shipment today?”
“Remi said you wanted to see the circumstances most likely to cause the being to manifest,” Steve said, approaching the conveyor and poking at the controls. “When I called her we heard things mostly on delivery days. This thing shouldn’t be on.”
“It’s not,” Ryan said.
Kendra made an uncomfortable sound and Vince carefully touched her on the shoulder. “Do you see anything?”
“No,” she whispered. “But someone’s singing to the children now. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“You’ve never seen anything here?” Vince asked, giving Ryan a skeptical look. “No phantom sounds, no apparitions, no strange sensations?”
“Sensations?”
“Physical feelings like touches or wetness that doesn’t have a physical source.”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “This is ridiculous, there is nothing here. Kids wander into restricted parts of the hospital all the time, they’re kids it’s practically what they exist for.”
“It was your idea to take local contracts,” Steve snarled, pulling the side of the conveyor belt housing off and studying the quiet mechanisms inside. “That makes this your fault.“
Kendra slid down next to the wall, her hands over her ears, and started to hum a strange, tuneless song with her eyes screwed shut. Vince sighed and slid down next to her, one hand on her shoulder, and softly said, “Kendra, I’m going to ask you a very serious question that you don’t have to answer. I just want you to know that it is important.” Her eyes fluttered then opened and focused on him, brimming with trepidation. Finally, after studying him for a long moment, she nodded. He took a deep breath and said, “What happened to your child?”
She licked her lips, a shudder running up and down her from her toes to her shoulders and back down again. Her eyes never left his. Finally she said, “I left him at the fire station. In one of those boxes they have, you know? Must have been two, three years ago and I…”
She trailed off and finally looked down at the floor. Vince took bother her hands and pulled her to her feet saying, “You’re a qualified nurse, right?”
“Yes?”
“Then I’d suggest finding a new job, ma’am. A nurse can find work just about anywhere in the city, much less the state, and I don’t think this one is good for you.”
Her eyes flicked to the sterilizer. “What about…?”
“If you don’t have anyone to pray with you I’d suggest trying to find someone. Services at First Missionary are at 9:30 on Sundays, if you don’t have anywhere else you go. But I don’t think there’s anything there that’s interested in you so if you put it behind you and fill the hole you’ll be okay.”
She studied him for a long moment, nodded and hurried away.
Ryan scowled. “What is that? She’s one of the most promising nurses we’ve had in the last five years! Do you know how hard it is to get a serious, intelligent nurse to stay in a tiny city in the middle of Wisconsin?”
“But even if she’s not being targeted by anything the job is clearly unhealthy for her, isn’t it?” Vince asked, slipping his sword back into his bag. He was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t need it.
Ryan made a frustrated sound and spun towards his brother. “What is wrong with you, anyway? You’ve wasted a huge amount of my time, cost me one of my most promising nurses and made me look foolish in front of management! Leave the damn machine alone. It’s off already.”
“But I hear it running, Ryan! The furnace is burning, the children are screaming, the pumps are pumping and I can hear it!”
“No you can’t.” Ryan grabbed his brother’s shoulder and dragged him upright. “We weren’t even conscious, you couldn’t hear it then and you can’t hear it now.”
Vince glanced at the crates then back at the brothers and slid his t-shirt gun back into his bag, too. “Got a question for you, Ryan.”
“No, I don’t attend church,” he spat, shoving his brother away and whirling to face Vince. “And I’m not interested in it, either.”
“Actually, I was wondering if the contract Steve mentioned was the one with Northview Family Planning?”
Ryan hesitated, looking uncertain. “Yes. Did he tell you about it?”
“No. How many brothers do you have?”
“Two,” Ryan said at the same moment as Steve said, “Five.”
Vince nodded. “Artificial insemination, I take it? And your mother wasn’t prepared to carry six children at once.”
“She couldn’t have provided for them anyway, not with our father,” Ryan spat. “Of course she had to terminate some of the pregnancies. What does it matter?”
“Steve.” Vince ignored Ryan and gently turned his brother around. “Steve, the pumps have stopped. They stopped a long time ago.”
“NO!” He jerked back but Vince wouldn’t let go. “I can still hear them! The children are still crying!”
“No, they’re not, Steve. The pumps have stopped and you can’t do anything for those three brothers anymore. You need to start paying attention to what’s around you. You’re not well.” Vince turned and jerked his chin towards the place Kendra had left. “And you’re starting to hurt people who get caught up in what’s happening around you.”
Steve shuddered and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s all right,” Vince said, patting him on the shoulder. “Head back to your office and I’ll meet you there. Remi and I will figure out who the best person to sort yourself out is.”
For a moment he wavered, thinking about it, then headed towards the door.
Which left Vince with Ryan.
“He wasn’t even conscious,” Ryan repeated.
“We don’t really know that,” Vince replied. “And either way, the trauma remains. To me it looks like you’re both haunted by your brothers, in different ways.”
Ryan stalked up to him, speaking in the barest whisper. “I’m not interested in your preaching. You’re going to tell me I’m the one possessed, aren’t you? I’m the one the demon is interested in because I don’t believe in it and that means I have the least resistance. But you should have tried that before you made it clear you knew there was no demon and my brother and Kendra were just hallucinating because of trauma in their histories.”
“You’re wrong in a huge number of ways,” Vince replied. “First, demons aren’t really interested in people, they’re just a means to an end so one wouldn’t really be interested or uninterested in you. Second, you lack resistance because you are the only thing in you. I’m not afraid of possession by a demon because I’m already possessed by a greater Spirit. Those who don’t belong to anyone are in the most danger. Third, I didn’t know for sure your brother and Kendra weren’t possessed until I got here. Fourth, you’re not possessed.”
Ryan snorted. “Of course not. I’ve never heard any of these phantom sounds or believed in your phantom god. You’ve wasted enough of my time tonight. If my brother wants to talk to you he can explain himself to management, I’m done with it.” He grabbed the housing of the conveyor belt and started replacing it on the sterilizer. “What a waste of everyone’s time. I told him there was no demon here.”
As he walked out of the room Vince glanced at the ‘family planning’ box one last time, shuddered and called over his shoulder, “I never said that.”
Happy Halloween, everyone, and thank you for reading!
This post was written as part of the Haunted Blog Crawl for 2024, a collection of spooky short stories by various talented writers! Be sure to check out the other two using these handy, dandy links!
Cabin Fever by Sarah Pierzchala: http://skirkpierzchala.substack.com/p/3ffa5df4-f834-4122-b4ad-7789e0d1ddb2
Where Dead Wolves Fly by Jacob Calta: https://365infantry.substack.com/p/where-dead-wolves-fly
Putting this event together was facilitated by Daniel P. Riley, who did not contribute a short story as he is in the process of launching his own spooky novel, Heir of the Dragon. Give it a look here: https://www.amazon.com/Heir-Dragon-Modern-Horrors-Book/dp/B0DFWGPL67
Again, thank you for reading. I’ll see you next week!
Art and Boundaries
One of the strangest platitudes bandied about in creative circles is the notion that art exists to push boundaries. Most people will say this, or some variant of it, and never once stop to think critically about it because they have heard it all their lives. That’s unfortunate because it’s a sentiment that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
The most common art form I have heard it about is comedy. Common wisdom is that the betrayal of expectations is a major part of what makes things funny forces the comic to constantly dabble in subjects considered taboo or morally repugnant, pushing the boundaries of society and forcing us to reexamine our cultural norms to see if they still hold true. They have to do this, we are told, because surprise is essential to comedy. How can we laugh if we already know the punchline of the joke?
My response to this is to ask a very simple question: Must we subvert expectations in order to tell a joke?
In general I believe the answer is no. There are plenty of very funny jokes, stories and pratfalls that have gotten me to laugh more than once. If some kind of manipulation of expectations is inherent to comedy then that should not be the case, as knowing the punchline to a joke makes it impossible for said punchline to take me by surprise. My expectations cannot be subverted. Yet i still laugh when watching Duck Soup.
There are many reasons we laugh at a joke. We can find the skill it is delivered with delightful, as we do when watching the physical comedy of Buster Keaton or Red Skelton. We can laugh at the absurdity of a situation, as we might when watching the pratfalls in Home Alone. There is an entire genre of comedy that finds humor in the awkwardness of life, embodied in shows like The Office. We can, indeed, laugh because a joke surprises us. However none of these things are funny because they push boundaries alone. As we would say in college, they are funny because they are true.
When we laugh at skillful physical comedy we laugh because we see something we would have thought impossible carried out in reality. Yet when props, special effects or even animation, as in Looney Toons, push things beyond what is real we still laugh because of the absurdity. The contrast with reality becomes the joke.
You can string together a series of non sequiturs and no one will laugh. Surprise is only funny if the twist has some kind of truth beneath it. The way the twist comes together is important, of course, and it is the skill with which the twist is created and delivered that is the difficult part of comedy. So it’s not surprising that this skill aspect of comedy gets so much emphasis.
Now we could say that a comedian pushes boundaries by pushing their skills. I don’t disagree with that idea. However I don’t honestly believe that anyone who says comedy is about pushing boundaries means that. They are referring to some nebulous idea about bringing new concepts into the cultural discussion. It’s a very psychological, Jordan Peterson-esque idea. That’s not surprising given the laugh-a-minute natures of psychology and Jordan Peterson.
Now the above, my friends, could be construed as a joke. Since it was not a great one I will take a moment and do that thing comics are not supposed to do and explain the joke. It functions by contrasting the very serious, deliberately unemotional affect of psychologists in general and Jordan Peterson in particular with the idea of laugh-a-minute comedy. The contrast is stark and surprising and thus funny, if not particularly so.
This joke is more than just a piece of humor. It also says something about our culture and how we look at the field of psychology, both in general and one psychologist in particular. It is this power, the ability to entertain while also commenting on and, via the observer effect, shaping the way our culture functions that makes comedy so powerful.
All artforms have this power to some extent. This function is what pushes boundaries on those occasions where art comes up against some kind of social boundary. It’s not surprising that this is what grabs people’s attention when talking about the power of art. However to confuse it with the purpose of art is to make a dangerous mistake. It is to make the assumption that the purpose of all things is power.
The purpose of art is to immortalize what is true and lasting, to put the audience in touch with an experience beyond the confines of their normal life in one way or another. That is why a story like A Christmas Carol remains almost universally beloved even though it permeates or culture to an equally universal extent. It doesn’t have to seek out boundaries to push. In many ways it is a boundary in itself, a standard for stories about how those set in their ways can change for the better. It can do this because it is art that fulfills it’s purpose, rather than seeking to exert its power. Whether you are a comic or otherwise, that is an idea worth keeping in mind.
The Sidereal Saga – Afterwords
Every time I finish a piece of fiction I feel like I’ve finished a new, bizarre struggle. Taking an abstract idea and putting a series of events and recognizable characters on top of it is difficult every time but trying to incorporate new ideas and lessons learned from previous work puts a new spin on it every time. When I sat down to write the Sidereal Saga I hoped to put together a short, fast moving story told in a series of vignettes that I could move in and out of freely.
What resulted was something quite different.
The Sidereal Saga is the longest single project I’ve written, so right away I fell short of a central goal. Furthermore, in the course of writing I discovered I had a harder time multitasking between it and other projects. Perhaps this was a side effect of the space opera genre. Up until this point I have never tried to write something with such a large cast of characters spread across so many venues with so many variables to keep track of. The complexities of the story made pivoting away from it much harder.
While that complication is intuitive, it did make structuring Lloyd’s story as a series of vignettes with other stories scattered through it much more difficult as I could not find the time to set aside for writing them. So I ultimately failed in that goal as well. When taken as a whole the lesson learned was a significant one – don’t bite of more than you can chew. I always knew space opera was a complicated and difficult genre. Seeking to write one while juggling other projects was a wildly optimistic goal and one which was clearly out of my reach.
With all that said, I feel I did fairly well in writing the story itself and that is always an important threshold to reach when working on any project. While I had some ideas for character beats and payoffs that did not quite come to pass as I had a solid outline that is only slightly different from what ultimately came together. (At some point I will do a post summarizing my outline and the resulting story. I’ve done this before but I think the result this time is passive p particularly interesting.) So I also feel like much of my prep work paid off well.
As per my usual structure, I will be taking some time to publish some essays on the state of writing, my own and others, before jumping into my next project. There will not be a many this time around, I think. Less to say that I haven’t already and I am very eager to get started on the next thing. There may also be a special Halloween story this year. We will see.
However, first and foremost there will be a short break. As is usual, now that I have finished a story I will take a week off. I am so grateful to ask those who tube in on a regular basis. You can’t imagine how encouraging it is to see another name sign up for updates of how many visits on Saturdays to read the new chapter. Thank you so much, and I will see you in two weeks!
The Sidereal Saga – Black Swan
57
CK-ONI-0057 settled into her seat, studying the man opposite her carefully. To the unfamiliar eye he doubtless looked much the same as he had eighty years ago when they first met. However she could see a kind of relaxed confidence in CK-MNI-0044 that he hadn’t possessed in those days. He smiled and said, “Hello, 186. Or what is your Circuit code these days?”
“57,” she replied. “They’ve moved me up to Circuit Keeper for N-211 down in the Core.”
“Of course they have,” 44 said with a warm smile. “How could they ignore your talent? Have you seen 87851 recently? He’s finishing his initiation next year working on M-300 in the sinister arm. They’re going to make him a Circuit Mender.”
“No,” she said, a brief surge of melancholy washing over her. “I can’t seem to get away from the core these days.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yes. I’m here.” Which meant it was time for business. 57 forced herself to push thoughts of their son aside and focus on the task at hand. “I-6, I would appreciate it if you would direct your attention here as well.”
“Certainly, Keeper 57. The reduction of my duties after OMNI’s decision to reject the Hutchinson proposal has left me with more available processing power than I have experienced in my operational life. While I have many secondary equations I would like to calculate they are not as pressing as your concerns.”
“Thank you, I-6.”
“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”
“Of course, I-6. As you-” she froze as the great intelligence’s request registered. “You what?”
“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”
For a long moment 57 just stare blankly at 44, unsure if he had somehow convinced the computer to help him play some kind of prank on her. If that was the case he didn’t give any sign of it. She had heard that, as one of the oldest computers in OMNI, I-6 was also one of the most peculiar machines the network had. Looked like there was truth to it. “May I ask why that is?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” 44 said. “OMNI wouldn’t have sent you half way across the galaxy just to chat about names. Isaac and I have both been removed from active duty. The only reason to bring another Circuit Keeper here is to assess whether or not we can safely be returned to our duties. It’s a waste of your talents but only Keepers can run diagnostics on Keepers. So, let’s do it by the book.”
How very like him. She absentmindedly ran her hands along the sheets of flexiplast she’d brought in with her. She’d reviewed their contents a dozen times. There had been more than enough time during the two day trip out from the core to Wireburn. “Very well, 44. You and I-6 – excuse me, Isaac – have advocate for actions that OMNI considers detrimental to the continued wellbeing of the human race. Specifically, you chose inaction at a time when the opportunity to capture a LARK AI was available to you. You maintained that course of action even though it led to a violent altercation between you and other human nodes in the Network. That had the side effect of damaging OMNI’s only warship in the system. You also advocated for the Hutchinson proposal, which directly contradicts standing OMNI operational protocols on the question of Earth. Do you disagree with this statement of facts?”
“It seems like a fair and accurate summary of the past week or so,” 44 said.
“My purpose was not to advocate for the Hutchinson proposal,” Isaac said. “Rather I found it impossible to assess the proposal with the information available and asked for the broader Network to assess the matter.”
“It’s an interesting distinction but one that functionally is little different, don’t you think?” 57 asked.
“If I had advocated for it the impact of my referring the proposal would have been quite different. The weight put behind the variables would change considerably.”
“Very well. You referred the proposal for further consideration.” Again she ran a thumb along the edge of her flexiplast. “Either way your behavior was contrary to standing protocol and you chose this behavior in stark contrast to the conclusions of the other nodes in the system, correct?”
“That is an accurate summary of events,” the machine admitted.
“Then I trust you can see the necessity of doing a full diagnostic routine on both of you to ensure you are still compatible with the Network as a whole?”
“It was a very foreseeable outcome,” 44 said. “In point of fact we have been considering the question ourselves since the Skybreak jumped out of the system.”
“I see. Have you arrived at any conclusions?”
“We have a hypothesis or two but nothing so concrete as to count as a conclusion,” 44 said. “It’s hard to say anything concrete about an AI as old as Isaac. However there are a few things I know for sure based on the decades I’ve served as its Keeper. It’s a very unusual machine, to be sure. The head engineer that worked on Isaac during its initial construction and programming adjustment seems mostly responsible for that. He not only gave Isaac a name, rather than just a matrix code, he talked to it.”
“Talking is the traditional method of interfacing with the great intelligences,” 57 noted. “However naming AI is not the way things are usually done.”
“I have noticed a tendency for humans in the Sleeping Circuits to treat things with names with a greater particularity than they do those without,” Isaac said. “For example, before Wireburn was issued a Radiant-class interceptor craft we had a much older freighter that was named the Singularity. In spite of the Singularity requiring twice the maintenance of the more robust Radiant-class ship’s the crew of the Singularity put some 30% more effort towards maintaining it properly.”
“I don’t follow your meaning, Isaac,” 57 said. “The crew had to put more time into maintaining a ship that required more maintenance, that’s not surprising.”
“You have misunderstood me. I meant that, even taking the differences in the maintenance schedules of the two ships into account the crew of the Singularity devoted more of their time to keeping their ship in optimal form and did so with greater enthusiasm. The Singularity experienced 22.4% less downtime than our current Radiant-class in spite of its greater age. The crew also spoke of it with greater fondness and thought of the ship when they were not onboard 12.7% more often. In short, the crew functioned better in both general and statistical terms.”
“That’s just one example among many,” 44 added. “We can show you dozens more if you like but they all point to one conclusion. When a human being names something that changes the way they relate to that thing and I don’t think Isaac is an exception to that rule.”
57 drummed her fingers for a moment. “So you think that, because Isaac’s primary engineer gave it a name to go by, that changed the way that engineer spoke to it and thus created the personality differences that prompted it to arrive at such unique conclusions when presented with the Hutchinson proposal? It seems like a bit of a stretch but it’s as good a conclusion as any. If it’s true, however, we’ll still have to keep you two as far from the rest of OMNI as possible until we can determine what the wide ranging impact of that might be. And we still don’t know if it’s true or not.”
“Your conclusion mirrors my own,” Isaac said. “Whatever the difference in my database that resulted in this conclusion diverging from my fellow nodes it was not significantly different from the network average. As you can see from the full report I was only 49.8% in favor of the Hutchinson proposal, not a full majority but close enough to trigger a full Network review due to the potential for errors in calculation. The next closest outcome in the network was from O-4112 at Farah in the sinister arm, which was 46.7% in favor. Isolating the operative variables that led to this will be difficult but would be very useful data for future analysis.”
44 adjusted his position in a manner 57 recognized as irritation, the slow shift of weight a common precursor to a lecture for their child. “Personally I feel that this course of action undermines the Network’s redundancy. The entire purpose of having each computer in the Network maintain a separate database is so that they can arrive at different conclusion from each other. If a machine is taken offline because it does just that we might as well standardize their data set.”
“The nature of the Evacuation Pact and the calculations that led to it’s creation is well established at this point, 44,” 57 said. “That’s not to say it couldn’t be overturned but it’s going to require a lot of ground work to be laid before the probability expresses itself. Without that groundwork in place it seems obvious that OMNI would be skeptical of conclusions that purpose altering or rescinding it.”
“I agree with this assessment,” Isaac said. From the sour look on 44’s face as he ran a thumb over his mustache 57 could tell he strongly disagreed with the great intelligence on that score.
A pang of nostalgia ran through her. Her old relationship with 44 was useful to OMNI as it provided them a large sample of preexisting data for the Network to extrapolate from. Still, she wished the Network had found someone else to send on this task. “Given that OMNI sees Isaac’s current state as a liability, what would you suggest as a diagnostic protocol?” 57 asked. “There is little precedent for analyzing such an old and esoteric element of AI programming. Are there even intelligences in OMNI that use names, outside of Isaac?”
“There is an adjunct node, although accessing it poses certain challenges,” Isaac said. “Kate Septimus, constructed as K-87, was a project initiated by my own chief engineer before he was transferred to my construction. He occasionally spoke of it as Kate and repeatedly told me all his projects were given human names. If I am allowed access to Kate we may be able to cross-reference our experiences with our chief engineer and learn more about my condition.”
For the first time since she’d taken her seat 57 was forced to actually look at her flexiplasts to try and remember a detail being discussed. The K-Series had the most complicated history of any existing AI series. Ironic, given that they were created specifically to manage historical archives. When the LARK- OMNI war began they were the only series to split their allegiance between the two networks, although only 12% of the K-Series remained with OMNI. However a brief scan of her documents revealed no direct mention of K-87 anywhere.
“Forgive me, Isaac,” 57 said. “I’m not familiar with that node.”
“There is no reason you should be, Keeper,” the machine replied. “Kate is not one of the K-Series nodes that remained with OMNI after the war. It choose to accept dormancy.”
Due to just how precious and unique the databases of the K-Series were the machines themselves had been left intact but cut off from their etheric power supply rather than being disassembled into their base parts like the L and Ar Series of computers. That didn’t solve the obvious issue with Isaac’s plan. “If Kate was a part of the LARK Network it’s not likely that it will agree to cooperate with us is it?”
“That would be the most human response,” 44 said. “But the great minds don’t think like humans, they think like machines. Information sharing is a part of how they solve problems. When a chance to share information on one of the most pressing issues of Pact law comes up things like old conflicts and grudges won’t get in their way. They will just talk the matter out.”
“Then I don’t see any reason not to try this, at least as a preliminary diagnostic method. If it doesn’t give any insight we can try something else. I’ll recommend it to the other local nodes and see what they think, then if they sign off on it we’ll put it to the larger Network. If all goes well we can head to Kate’s planet and reactivate it. What planet is Kate on? I’ll send a message ahead and have someone from the local University start the process of reactivating is etheric taps, save for the last step, to save us some time.”
“It won’t be quite that… straight forward,” 44 said.
“Why is that?” 57 asked.
“Because Kate was built on the planet we now call Yshron.”
“Isn’t that a planet outside the Pact? The one founded by a Circuit Mender who renounced his orders and the use of AI in its entirety?” She scowled. “Why would the Network allow him to settle on a planet with a dormant LARK AI in it?”
“Because the probability he or his followers would be interested in Kate even if they found it were less than 0.2%,” Isaac replied. “Yshron was also aware of Kate’s presence and took steps to conceal it from all but the highest castes in his order. The Zahn-caste, in particular, are charged with concealing Kate’s existence.”
“Wouldn’t that make the higher castes less willing to cooperate with us?”
“Potentially,” 44 said. “However it cannot hurt to open a line of dialog with them, especially when we have a point of contact here on hand. Tarn sel-Shran is a formidable member of one of their mercenary castes. While the Shran are several steps down from the Zahn I think, with the right diplomatic finesse, we could establish a line of contact to Kate in a month or so. If there are any other diagnostic lines the Network wishes to pursue, well… Isaac isn’t going anywhere.”
She nodded, understanding dawning on her. “I suppose that means you want to take the local Radiant-class and pay a visit to Yshron to open those negotiations? Isaac cannot go, after all, and the Zahn aren’t likely to speak to him if it could.”
“Affirmative,” Isaac replied. “Although given the nature of the inquiries and the amount of intersystem travel it will be undertaking I would not recommend referring to it by class and hull number. We will file a possible name along with our full proposal.”
57 found herself smiling faintly. “Of course you will. You’ve never been anything if not thorough, 44. Or should I call you Darius for the time being?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
It was a bit unsettling that she didn’t immediately know which one she preferred. To cover for that she asked, “What do you want to call the ship?”
44 smiled. “The Black Swan.”
881
The last notes of a light, playful song drifted off the small, raised platform under the temporary pressure dome. 881 picked her way through the wires and people milling behind the risers, a pang of regret running down her back as she surveyed the primitive setting. Most of the people here looked rumpled and tired. The temporary dome was one of thousands that dotted the largest prominences on Wireburn, bubbles of momentary shelter against the wrath of the planet.
While I-6 had been dormant for centuries the Sleeping Circuits had taken care to monitor the planet and the ferrovines that grew out of it to ensure the machine could reactivate without destroying them when its matrix expanded again. However no amount of pruning and guided growth could change the atmosphere. The great intelligence had dramatically altered the weather patterns when its arms extended and the magnetic charge in them hadn’t helped. Hundreds of ships in the process of taking off or landing were damaged. Eighty six pressure domes were damaged badly enough they were flooded with outside atmosphere and over a hundred more had cracked along their foundations, collapsing buildings and destroying roads and etheric beacons. There was no meaningful estimate of initial casualties.
“Miss Luck?” One of the volunteers that was keeping the temporary camp running waved to get her attention. 881 quickly moved over so they could speak comfortably. “Thank you for coming.”
She’d had a lot of training in hiding her true thoughts but, even with all of that, 881 struggled to hide her ambivalence at being thanked for anything under the current circumstances. “No, Mr. Cohen, thank you for taking on this challenge. Isaacs University is just providing the supplies. You’re doing the hard part in every conceivable metric. I’m amazed at what you’ve accomplished here – you even have live entertainment to help keep morale up!”
“Can’t take credit for that,” Cohen said with a shrug. “We had several jumpliners sent here after they were damaged last week and they had all kinds of useful people on board. We’re just lucky the agreed to pitch in. No one would blame them if they chose to sit down and recuperate for a week or three after nearly crashing like they did.”
He waved to a tall, fairly attractive woman with light brown hair who was descending from the makeshift stage dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse. She joined them a moment later. “Hello, Mr. Cohen! Did you hear our last set?”
“Afraid not, Sarah, but I’m sure it was wonderful as always. I wanted you to meet Lucy Luck.” Cohen presented the woman to 881 with a simple flourish. “She’s the Undersecretary to the Dean of History at Isaacs University and she’s here inspecting the Uni’s relief efforts to see how things are going.”
“I appreciate your willingness to volunteer your time here,” 881 added.
The woman raised here eyebrows. “Well where else would I go? I’m here, after all, I might as well do something to keep myself busy.”
“Mr. Cohen said you came on a jumpliner that was diverted here. You could have continued to your final destination. At the very least you couldn’t have been much worse off.”
“That’s true.” Sarah sighed. “Unfortunately my father and I were headed to this prominence in the first place and we don’t want to move on until we can locate my brother.”
881 nodded. “That’s perfectly natural, of course, and the camp isn’t a big one. I don’t believe any of the passengers were diverted to separate domes so he should turn up sooner or later.”
“Oh, my brother wasn’t on the jumpliner with us. He lives on planet.”
Which, of course, 881 had known already. Still, she feigned surprise and fished around in her clutch purse, saying, “That will be much more of a challenge, then.” She pulled out a card with her comm code and office address on it. “I’ll tell you what. You’ve done something very kind for the people of Wireburn, I’d like to respond in kind on their behalf. If you ever need any help locating your brother, let me know and I’ll do what I can. I can also keep an ear to the ground and I’ll pass anything I learn about him to Mr. Cohen so he can pass it to you. What’s your name?”
“Sarah, Sarah Carter,” the signer said. “My brother’s name is Lloyd.” She took 881’s card with a grateful smile and just like that another datapoint was fed into OMNI, another step taken to keep the galaxy predictable and sane.
The destruction wrought by I-6 didn’t sit well with the Circuit Breaker. However the alternative was far worse, filled with religious wars, gene weapons and the loss of entire galaxies to whatever shadows had caused the Evacuation. Such things were well outside her scope of vision. She was assigned to find Lloyd Carter and L-93 and that was exactly what she intended to do. So she offered Sarah Carter her best professional smile and said, “Thank you. I hope we’ll hear from you soon.”
To Be Continued…
The Sidereal Saga – Andromeda
Lloyd
“I don’t like it,” Lloyd muttered. The hostile ship had maintained a fixed distance of one and a half thousand kilometers from them for the last ten minutes and now it was beginning to drift aimlessly, as if the navigator had suddenly fallen asleep.
“It’s not a trap,” Elisha said. “Wouldn’t do them any good to go adrift when they’re so far away from us. Even if we were foolish enough to let our guard down we’re not likely to get much closer to them than we are now. If it was a trap they’d have included some way to lure us into it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Lloyd chewed on his lip as he studied the other ship’s icon on his dataveil. The Skybreak didn’t have the best sensors in the sector but they still clearly picked up the growing heat signature in the forward section of the ship’s superstructure. It could almost be mistaken for a weapon charging up. However, much like the possibility of a trap, that theory was at odds with the way the shop was drifting. “You don’t think they’re just adrift do you? We didn’t even do anything to them.”
“They may have done it to themselves. Stranger things have happened in street gangs and smuggler rings, kid,” the thieftaker replied. “Especially when several groups try to work together. That’s not going to change just because the groups are Universities and Yshron’s mercenaries.”
“I guess.” Lloyd watched as their distance from the Radiant- class ship began to increase for the first time since it had come in to view. “Seems a little optimistic to chalk it up to that all things considered.”
“We’ve earned a little optimism at this point don’t you think?”
“I was unaware that optimism was something that had to be earned,” L-93 chimed in. “However I agree that there is cause for it in this case. Based on the pattern of sightings coming in from across the planet and the amount of etheric power draining from the planetary core I believe I-6 is reentering a dormant state. OMNI may be breaking off pursuit in favor of concealing itself. At the very least the Radiant-class will experience greater difficulty in pursuing us.”
Lloyd grunted in dissatisfaction. “Well we’re out of the woods by the sound of things, Ms. Wen. Do you want us to keep the guns hot just in case?”
After a brief delay she replied, “No. Better to keep our reserves as full as we can for the foreseeable future. Lavvy thinks we’ll be jumped and gone by the time they can pull their ship far enough out of the gravity well to follow us.”
“On our way,” Elisha said.
For a long moment Lloyd hesitated with his hands hovering over the power switch, watching the pursuit ship through the turret’s dataveil. Then he heaved a sigh, shut down the plasma pumps and clambered out of the gun seat.
Athena
“Awful presumptuous of you to promise to take me back to daddy, don’t you think?” Athena turned her etheric transmitter over in her hands. “You think I want your company? Or to go back to him?”
Malaki sat with his hands folded under his chin, his attention focused on the far bulkhead. Although he made no motion to suggest he was paying attention he still answered the question without hesitation. “Let’s not kid ourselves. You may not care for my company, few do, but I’ve known enough daddy’s girls over the years to know one when I see one. You can’t pout him into submission if he’s not around.” He shook himself back to the present and started packing up the remains of the medkit. “Besides, I feel bad about dragging you here. To some extent anyone who likes their nose into University business is asking for some kind of mishap to befall them but you couldn’t have been ready for AI networks and the secrets of humanity’s ancient past.”
“We were interested in the past ourselves in case you missed it,” she replied.
“You were interested in technology from the past the Universities have banned. That’s a very different thing.”
“Daddy knows history quite well, you clearly realize that already.”
“He did, but it isn’t the kind of thing you go blabbing about to the people you care about,” he said, contemplating the soap carving he’d made earlier. “Doubly so if you don’t expect them to understand why you’re doing it. Adding to the lifespans of you and your brother on the of chance that you’ll live long enough to reconcile is a pretty hard thing to explain, don’t you think?”
“You seemed to figure it out without much trouble,” Athena snarled, a surge of anger driving her to spring up and hurl her transmitter down the ship’s corridor as hard as she could.
She instantly regretted the decision when it hit Elisha in the shoulder as he climbed up the stairs to their deck. He started slightly from the impact then grabbed his side and groaned. The cylindrical object bounced up off his shoulder, then the bulkhead, then it tumbled down into the stairway where she expected it to clatter down into the lower deck. Instead Lloyd came up after Elisha, holding the transmitter in one hand, looking quite surprised. “What’s going on up here? I thought we weren’t under attack any more.”
“Sorry! Lost my temper for a moment.” Athena huried over to retrieve the device then turned her attention to the thieftaker. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll live,” he said, gingerly straightening up, a grimace still on his face. “Are we sure everything up here is fine?”
“As it can be,” Malaki said. “Perhaps we should head to the bridge and see what things are like outside?” He held out a hand to Athena with one eyebrow raised.
For a moment she wavered, wondering if she was about to start down a path she couldn’t turn back from. Then she sighed and took his hand and let him lead her up to the bridge.
Elisha
They reached the bridge as the Skybreak made it’s first jump. For a moment there was the vertigo inducing sensation of the ship turning sidereal. Then normal space was gone from the windows and the sparse, empty vista of the etheric realm replaced it. The bright, pulsing core of Wireburn hung below them, much as it always had.
Save for the forest of gleaming wires that branched up and out of the planet like a bizarre lotus flower gently cradling the glowing core. For the first time Elisha felt like he really understood the scope of the problem he’d gotten tangled up in. He’d been a thieftaker for eight years. Education and employment had taken him across almost a quarter of the planet. His own etheric sense allowed him to travel more than most and meet all kinds of people and he had seen Wireburn from this perspective countless times before. Yet he hardly recognized the planet now.
In the short time the Skybreak was sidereal they saw the fronds of the lotus curling down back into the planet but Elisha could see the damage was already done. Wireburn was no longer the dependable foundation he’d always thought of it as. The appearance of normalcy was returning but it meant nothing. A jolt of adrenaline hit him as it suddenly occurred to him that the computer’s outer matrix was far too large and complicated to have unfolded out of the planet’s core without damaging the many ferrovines that supported Ashland or the other settlements that dotted the planet. Life on Wireburn might have just been wiped out just so I-6 could catch them.
There was a flicker of eternity outside the windows as the Skybreak jumped. Wireburn was gone. Elisha say down heavily, barely making it to the closest chair. Lavanya glanced at him with dark, sympathetic eyes. “First time leaving your home planet?”
“Yes.” He answered Lavanya in wooden fashion.
They hung in sidereal space for a moment more while she worked out something on the ship’s navigational computer. “Don’t worry too much. Planets aren’t in the habit of getting up and walking away. It will still be there when we get back.”
Elisha scoffed. “Lady, I’m not sure Wireburn as I knew it is there right now.”
Lin’yi frowned in thought. “We might be able to drop you off on another planet after a few jumps. You could catch a jumpship back.”
“No, it’s too late for that.” He sat back in his chair massaging his forehead. “Even if we weren’t dealing with something pulling the strings of the Universities – the Universities! – going back to a place where an enforcer found you once is just asking to get found again. There’s no way they won’t be picking me up and putting the squeeze on me to find you. I guess I’m stuck with you until you sort something out with that lot.”
The ship finished a second jump and turned terrestrial again. They found themselves on the outskirts of a sprawling asteroid belt with a dim sun gleaming in the far distance, scarcely brighter than the rest of the stars in the sky. Lavanya pushed away from her controls and spin her chair to face the rest of them. “Well, we’re here. There’s enough left in the coral for one jump at maximum range, two or three of they’re short. Given how far we are from the system’s sun it will take almost four days to refill the reserve but it’s never a bad idea to have the spare power on hand.”
“That leaves us enough time to give some thought about where we want to go next,” Lloyd said. “93? Any thoughts?”
“While I am gratified you are trying to assist me in carrying out my previous directives, I’m afraid there are limits to my ability to help you chart your course. I am primarily an engineering and architect AI. My database contains a great deal of information you are not privy to but I am not well equipped to assist you in making tactical or strategic decisions based on it at the best of times. With my greatly reduced processing power the likelihood that I will be able to provide meaningful assistance is less than seven percent.”
“Then we’ll have to work it out ourselves,” Malaki said. “Our end goal is to fulfill LARK’s final directive and restore humanity’s connection to our part and Earth, correct?”
“That is an accurate summary of my directive,” the computer replied. “But whether or not it is an undertaking all those present are invested in is an open question.”
“I have been trying to prove the Earth hypothesis for almost my entire career,” Malaki replied.
“And I think I already made my position perfectly clear,” Elisha added.
Lloyd shrugged. “It may sound odd to say but to me this sounds like another trailblazing job. A big one, sure, but an exciting one, too. I’m already in and I don’t see any reason to get out.”
The three of them had answered very quickly but Elisha could tell the women were far less certain of where their thoughts were. Finally Athena sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose I should go as well. Daddy’s put a lot of time, money and effort into his genetic projects and for a long time I thought it was his next stage in building the company. Now that I know it’s more… personal I’m not sure I’m ready to be a part of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best reason to make an enemy out of OMNI and the galaxy’s Universities,” Malaki said gently. “Keep thinking about it. I think we’ll still be sorting out plans for the next day or two.”
Lin’yi nodded. “BTL isn’t the largest trading company in the dexter arm but we can probably hide you away for a little while if you want to avoid notice. We can find time to drop you somewhere if you want.” She turned her attention back to the computer. “Tell me, 93, if you’re specialized in engineering and architecture do you think you would be more efficient than our existing production methods?”
“Not necessarily,” the machine replied. “My processes are designed towards large scale projects. Ship building is the smallest scale endeavor I could perform optimally. The primary task the L-Series was created for was the construction of other AI around planetary cores, although units with a construction code of 42 or above are also capable of stellarchitecture. However I could create smaller scale manufactories that are 433% more efficient than those I found referenced in BTL’s archives. I would be willing to construct such facilities in exchange for your assistance.”
“Sounds like a high risk, high reward kind of investment.” She folded her arms under her breasts with a satisfied smile. “I’ve been told I should try and expand my portfolio with more of those.”
“Might be a little higher risk than your executives had in mind,” Elisha murmured.
Lavanya cleared her throat. “Sorry to be a wet blanket but I have to ask. 93, is it even possible for you to extract yourself from the Skybreak at this point?”
“It is. In fact, given the amount of raw material in this asteroid belt, I could create a new matrix here in a matter of years, rather than decades. However the probability that I could do so without being discovered and recaptured is less than one millionth of one percent. The probability that I could build another ship equal to the Skybreak without being discovered is also less than one percent. Regardless, if you wish me to remove myself from the ship I will.”
For a long moment the pilot was quiet, running her hand gently along the console beside her. Her eyes drifting to one side, distant, as if watching some kind of half forgotten memory that drifted just out of sight of the rest of them. Finally she said, “The Skybreak is a special ship, 93.”
“Shall I begin removing my core from the reservoir, then?”
“No.” She gathered herself and sat up a bit straighter. “Just promise me you wont change it too much, okay?”
“Very well.”
“Excellent.” Malaki clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “Then all that’s left is to choose our next destination. It’s obvious that at some point we are going to have to get to Andromeda Proxima, the construction there could only be created by a civilization capable of building an AI in the heart of a gas giant. Unless I miss my guess that is either Earth’s system or the key to reaching it. However, OMNI will know we have to get there at some point. So we have to work out a plan to reach Andromeda Proxima and land on the Array there without getting caught. Am I right so far, 93?”
“As usual, Mr. Skorkowski, you are remarkably insightful given the information available to you. The only inaccuracy I see in your statement is naming the system Andromeda Proxima. The correct name is Andromeda Terminus. Renaming the system and galaxy seems to be another attempt by OMNI to obscure the past.”
Malaki went perfectly still. “Renaming the galaxy?”
“Correct. Your star charts list this as the Milky Way Galaxy, which is incorrect. The Milky Way Galaxy is humanity’s galaxy of origin and the location of Earth. When Earth was evacuated the colonists and machines that would eventually form the OMNI and LARK networks built a jump sphere and used it to jump here. To the Andromeda Galaxy.”
Nate Chen Publications 