Undr
by James David Audlin
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by James David Audlin
Cover photo by Marijke Taffein
Cover design by the author
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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The title is taken from a story with the same name by Jorge Luis Borges; in no other way is this novel related to the work of the master. This novel is based on a dream dreamed the night of 1-2 October 1989, and was written 1 June 1991 - 6 August 1992.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coïncidental.
PRELUDE
Mikel Smith
At the cliff's edge I saw a procession of torches flowing down the deep valley beneath me. Though the people who thrust them high against the night were hidden both by darkness and the miasma of the flames, I knew they must be there to carry the torches, descending slowly, like a glacier of lava, down from the glassy heights on my right hand, down toward the sea. These moving lights in the gloom beneath my feet reflected on the brooding surface of the onyx sky, creating constellations I did not recognize. And I heard the people chanting, joined together in a song that surged spasmodically from a deep groan to wails of pity or perhaps of pain, echoing off the cliffs between which they descended.
Something within me wanted so to join them, though I knew fulfillment of the wish would only lead to despair. But the bile of bitter desire kept mounting up in me, threatening to explode out of me like the urge to vomit.
Unexpectedly, shaking with cold sweat, my body lurched into action, thrusting and scraping through the bushes, with their thorns dragging at me like broken nails, to the edge. Looking over, seeing the people far down, directly below me, oblivious to my agonized observations, I found myself now close to being overcome with the irrational determination to jump.
But I found there was a way down, a rough-and-tumble slope where apparently a section of the cliff had given way, or perhaps a stream once had blindly fallen down to the cold valley below. I wrung purchase from the broken rocks, slipping on their cold faces, unsteady on my bare feet, gasping at the air for breath. Several times on that perilous descent I wondered at my nerve if not my sanity.
At the bottom, unmindful of my now disheveled condition I turned to face the procession of torch-bearing people. Someone thrust one into my hand, and I raised it up, adding my own light to this human river of effulgent devotion.
“Where are we going?” I asked the man beside me, the same one who had handed me the flame.
For a long while I thought there would be no answer. Then, without turning his face to look at me, he spoke. “We are going to enter the seas of Undr. Do you come with us to worship and serve the Lady of the Awakening?”
I heard my voice answer him, “Yes.” But the eddies and currents in this river of humanity sundered him from me, and I could not be sure he had heard my reply before vanishing into the flowing torrent of faces.
Unable to see anything but torches all around me, and having to place my trust in those before me for guidance, I followed the flames to their unknown destination. The wordless chanting rose from my companions to the invisible heavens, going again and again through its round. I found to my own surprise that one of the voices now joined with the others was mine.
As we processed down the valley I looked at the faces of my companions. Women and men, old and young, all naked, with all the variations of humanity represented among them. Their expressions, too, ran the whole range of feeling, singing the chant with anger, hope, fear, adoration, or ennui. What did they see in my own face?
The walkers ahead of me came to a halt. Ahead of us, a mere outline in the murky surroundings, was a prow of rock. On it stood a woman, flanked by two torches in sconces. I was too far from her to see her features clearly. She raised her hands and the chanting ceased. Then her fingers, like eyelids, closed down over her upraised palms, and she spoke to us.
“Children of Reality, hear me. You have been brought here to give back your reality, and to enter Undr. You have lived your allotted time among the Real. And now you go to join the ranks of the Unreal. Those who remain among the Real will think you have died. All they will have to ease their pain of loss will be the memories they will have of you. But you will be no more, and they will feed on cherished delusions before they, too, walk the path you are now walking.
“But do not mourn your fate. You are the fortunate ones. You have tasted existence. You have known what it is to be alive. The number of Unreal beings is far, far greater than the few who ever, like you, come into carnate form. And now you go back into the oblivion of Unreality, never again to laugh, or mourn, or hope, or fear. They who remain behind will dream of you, and think of you, and then their brief moments on the stage of existence will also come to an end, and they will stand here as now do you, and then leave reality behind and pass into Undr.
“Now. Now come forward and, as you pass, give to the Tetagoar that within you that makes you real. Let the spark of existence that burns now within you fly back to its source, so some day others too may have their moment of existence. Come forward to me now... come...”
And they began to walk again, one at a time, toward the woman. As each one passed her she lifted up her hands, palms open again, in what appeared to me to be a kind of blessing. Then they passed out of sight beyond her into a narrow defile. Somewhere in that yet deeper darkness into which they walked the light of their torches ceased to reach my eyes, and I could see them no more.
Fewer and fewer were ahead of me. I began to fear and to wonder what the purpose was of this ritual of which I had become a part. But then it was my turn, and I found myself moving forward toward the Lady. Like the others, I crossed the intervening space and stood momentarily before her. I expected the hands to rise, vouchsafing me her silent blessing.
But to me, as she had to none of the others, she spoke. “You. You have not died. How is it that you have come here?”
Her question confused me. “What do you mean? I came down this valley with the others.”
“But before that. You have not made this journey with them. You cannot have. How is it that you are here?” I looked up at her, and saw how beautiful she was for the first time. But those exquisite features were interrupted by hesitation and bewilderment. Her hands rose and hovered on either side of my head. “You are dreaming! You are dreaming!” Her hands remained near me, as if looking into my spirit. “But you are not a Dreamer – how can this be?”
Her fingers fluttered like a butterfly, as if they were whispering among each other, unsure what to do.
At last she spoke again, but still hesitantly. “Come with me. I wish to show you the Tetagoar.”
Something about that word, a name it seemed, inspired me with feelings of foreboding. But silently I followed her past the outcropping on which she had stood and into a defile swathed in shadows even deeper. I sensed weighty walls of rock leaning toward each other overhead, but could not see them in the gloom.
A fine mist of sweat from the piles of rock above settled on my skin. I was afraid to accept her leadership, but even more afraid to be alone now in this place.
We came to stone stairs, slick with condensation. With no time to consider the alternatives, I began to descend in the wake of the woman. The stairs varied in width; sometimes there was hardly room for my heel to come down, and sometimes I had to take several forward steps, feeling with my toes for the edge. Several times only my hands on the walls of rock that hemmed me in saved me from a dangerous fall. But even these were unreliable. Every now and then the cliffs squeezed in on us, giving us only a narrow passage, and at other times they flew apart, leaving me nothing against which to brace myself should I slip.
I found myself increasingly unable to keep up with the woman. The stairs did not descend in a straight line, but twisted and curved down through this crooked defile. She must by now be far ahead of me; at least I hoped she was still there. It was only concentration on not losing my footing that prevented the panic hiding in my intestines from lurching out at me. When sometimes I stopped, and the echo of my own footsteps died away, I could hear faintly the sound of dripping from the walls, but not of the woman’s own descent.
After what seemed an eternity I reached the bottom. Before me, silhouetted by the light of an ashen moon, was the woman, on the final stair. I joined her, our bodies touching on the narrow stone slab. Just before our feet lapped black waters, extending out as far as I could see, the waters of an endlessly troubled sea. “The Tetagoar,” she explained. “This is the Tetagoar.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Through you, through you, Mikel Smith, the Unreals will enter your world of reality. Too long have we been shut out.”
“I don’t understand. What is the Tetagoar? What are you talking about?”
“We wish to be real, Mikel Smith. Why should the borders of reality be finite? Why cannot all things both possible and impossible be real as well? We have long wished for reality to be ours as well. Just as the dreams of you real people are made of unreality, we dream of reality. And, through you, we shall achieve our dream. You, you are our Tetagoar.”
IN THOSE DAYS
Mikel Smith
Tell us a story, Mikel Smith.
“I don’t know any stories.”
You have heard stories all your life, on the Nets.
“But I can’t tell them. I don’t have the words.”
We can give you the words. Just open your mind to us, and we will find the stories in your memory and shape them into words.
“I am afraid of you.”
Do not be afraid. We will not harm you. We wish only to know your stories.
“What stories?”
The stories of what happened to you. Tell us how it all happened. We mean you no harm. Just open your mind to us now. Open your mind.
# # #
In those days we were all afraid, all the time. We went to sleep with fear, we woke up with fear. I think sometimes that we were so used to fear that, if it had been taken away, say, if we could have been transported to some world where there was no fear, we would have wasted away for starvation. Like an addict, we needed the poison our systems had not simply learned to tolerate, but had learned to crave. Without it we would have felt helpless, and would have struggled to drown ourselves back in that familiar fear again like a beached fish.
In those days there were two words that governed the whole pattern of our lives. The Scarlet and the Blink. These were the two Nets, and everyone, except the Nasties, of course, was a part of one Net or the other. It was through whichever Net we belonged to that we received the necessities of life: food, air, water, and entertainment. I was associated with the Blink.
Ruling the Blink was a triumvirate we called the Three. The Three were our masters, our parents, our benign protectors. It was not that they told us so, not that they drummed it into us every time we were on line, but that we knew it to be true. We made it true with our belief. We never saw them as despotic oligarchs because we would have been far too afraid to think of them as such. We thought of them rather as the ones who protected us from the Scarlet.
About the Scarlet we, those of us on the Blink, knew nothing, except that the Three insisted they were our enemies. I never knew, for instance, who their rulers were, like ours were the Three. Knowing nothing, we easily feared the Scarlet, for our minds boiled underneath their surfaces with imagination’s creations, the harvest of the seed planted by the Three’s teachings.
In those days I was a 2-RTA Sec-Mec officer. You probably don’t know what that means. Well, back then we had a vast number of complicated interlocking surveillance and operative organizations, which we called oporgs for short. They were all nominally part of the same vast system, but some promoted the wishes of the Three, and others the wishes of whoever ruled the Scarlet. Each oporg would work to thwart the wishes of the other Net, and ensure that allied oporgs were carrying out the orders given by its own Net. The Security Mechanics, or Sec-Mecs, for whom I was a mid-level eye, mostly watched the Numbers, a Scarlet oporg, and the Secret K’s, one of our own oporgs, to make sure they stayed correct. I am sure there were groups who watched us, but, if I ever knew which ones of the hundreds of oporgs, operative organizations, had the task, I have since forgotten.
My primary assigned duty was to watch the Nasties, to make sure that they stayed at each other’s throats, not joining together in a coalition that could cause us real damage, and that they kept the Undr machines in working order. It was typical to give eyes like me, with relatively less experience, this kind of job, to prepare them for the more difficult and important work of watching the Numbers and the Secret K’s.
It was one afternoon. I took a break to relieve myself in the men’s room at the very bottom of Tower Natron. That is, of course, to say I was deep in Nasty territory. I was inexperienced, and showed my contempt for them by daring them to plug me while I stood facing the urinal. It was really atypical of my genode to take foolish risks like this, but, as you will hear, I had a penchant for going against type. Still, despite such lack of sense, I survived to tell you this story.
The men’s room was hardly that any more. The entrance door had long ago been torn away. The metal partitions that once had defined the two stalls for the sit-down toilets had apparently been torn away by the Nasties. The walls were entirely hidden behind years of filth and graffiti. One toilet was completely missing, leaving a tendril of exposed pipe in the linoleum, as I recall, and the other had half of its bowl cracked away. There was, of course, no water. Either the Nasties had tapped into the main for their own needs, or Aqua had turned it off to conserve it for the people living in the Tower up over my head.
So the place smelled, as you can imagine. It smelled of years of human waste from many bodies, representing the by-products of a large assortment of cuisines, in various stages of putrefaction. Besides the immediate unpleasantness of the foul stench, there was the shock of such lack of responsibility. Human waste was precious; not a bit of recyclable nutrients is to be squandered in a world now devoid of natural foodstuffs.
There was one small pleasure to be found in this unpleasant place, and that was the air vent up above. It exhaled the sweet perfume of clean, pure air. Somehow, in unavoidable contrast to the foul smells, this little breeze of processed air smelled even sweeter.
Nobody went Outside in those days, of course, except with a portapack, and even then it was uncommon. The world had been rotted by war and pollution, by exhaustion of its wildlife, and by the proliferation of mutant microbes, so the only clean air was manufactured. The Uppers, of course, had plenty of this clean air. The Lowers had tolerable enough, clean but foul-smelling, and the Nasties barely got enough to survive. They got it, because they were needed to keep the machinery in Undr operating efficiently, but every now and then some politico or other introduced a bill to cut off their air and suffocate them out of existence.
Anyway, it was a rare and secret pleasure in my life to go to this men’s room. Whenever I was in Undr and had to pee, I always went there. Even if I was some distance away, I would still walk all the way just to do it there, instead of doing it wherever I was, like the Nasties themselves, just for the sake of the glorious satisfaction of relieving myself with my face turned up, eyes closed, drinking in the cool cataract of sweet air.
The day in question had been its usual tough one. First, Twidge had been more persistent than usual, begging me to pud her in exchange for some buzz. As always I tried patiently to explain to her that, as she should know perfectly well, Sec-Mecs don’t pud, and, even if I did, it wouldn’t be with her, as she was too immature. And I reminded her that buzz was illegal, and a Sec-Mec was hardly going to give buzz to a Nasty. She kept looking at me mournfully with her eyes both too old and too young, mouthing her desperate entreaties. At last I just walked off, ignoring her, continuing my rounds.
Then I had caught three young Nasties squeaking nosh from one of the turbos. I would probably have just ignored them, because they weren’t really doing anything unusual. But they gave me mouth and went into fight mode, and I pulled my snuffer.
“¡Yah, esclavo! ¡Hedes de nosh y network!” one shouted. I said nothing in reply, not because I was that imperturbable, but because anything worth saying was beyond my abilities in Spaniol. I would have wanted to say if they just squeaked their nosh and didn’t break the turbo I had no quarrel with them. But Nasties have never been known for their diplomatic skills. They saw me as the enemy, the intruder into their territory, and, I suppose, from their point of view, they had every right to hate and fear me.
Crouched like animals, they made no move as yet, but continued to taunt me; the words were slangs I didn’t know, but the general sense was clear enough. In the back of my mind I was reviewing the fact that it was quite unusual to see two N’s teaming together, and considerably rare to see more than that, as I was now. I watched them intently. Nasties were always unpredictable, and I had to remain calm. I flipped back the safety on my snuffer with my thumb, trying to do it without their picking up the action.
But clearly they noticed, or had anticipated my move. They instantly separated and approached me on three sides, one swinging her chain, the other two waving long knives and broken bottlenecks, and grinning nastily. I plugged one of the pair quickly, to lower the odds. He slipped down to the floor of the fac without a sound.
The other two N’s tried to rush me. The one with the chain swung it at me. I ducked away, fortunately, because my first impulse, to duck down, would have brought my head right into the swinging arc. I could feel more than see the knife wielder rushing me from behind.
I snapped a shot at the one with the chain next because she had the longer reach. She too fell. The last one, the one with the knife, bolted. I waited, looking around carefully, but in the fac there was only the sound of the turbos, ceaselessly recycling the waste into nosh and sending the latter through the Towers.
It was now that I went to the men’s room, three levels down and two wards across, my senses as always on alert. The stairways were the most dangerous, as always. They were long vertical tubes, with flights of stairs boxing in an open central shaft that extended the whole thousand-plus levels of Natron. Anyone, at any time, could reach over and plug me with numchuks, snuffer, or anything.
But I encountered no one. Once I heard the sound of a fight, but it seemed to be coming from the level above. As always I took my snuffer out and came carefully around the edge of the men’s room doorway, just in case anyone was in there. But, as it almost always was, it was empty. I took my pud out and relaxed. In moments the hot stream of urine flowed into the discolored drain. I sighed. I turned my face up to the wonderful cool downpouring torrent of fresh atmosphere, letting it smooth the clammy furrows of my brow.
A sound brought my eyes open, my senses to full alert. My groin muscles semiconsciously squeezed tight, shutting off the flow of urine, and my hand went to my holster. The sound had come, I realized within a moment, not from behind me, not from the open doorway or the corridor beyond, but from the air vent.
From my vantage I could see nothing beyond the grillwork but darkness. I put one boot up onto the lip of the urinal and lifted myself up to it. My nose pressed to the cold aluminum, and I peered through, still seeing nothing. But the grillwork felt oddly loose. My weight pressing against the wall, I pulled at it with one hand. It came away easily, exposing the empty air shaft.
There was no one in sight. But there was something, something light-colored in the shadows deep inside. I reached in and touched it. It was, my fingers told me, several sheets of paper. I took them out, glanced at them, saw a small crabbed handwriting covering each page on both sides. Realizing my vulnerability like this, leaning into a wall while balanced on one toe on the lip of a urinal, I replaced the grillwork, got back down, and stuffed the papers in my pocket.
KEEP THE DREAMS FLYING
Alina Nemitz
Tell us a story, Alina Nemitz.
“Who the hell are you, and why should I tell you a story?”
You are afraid of us?
“No, I am not afraid of anything. Well, except for being utterly alone.”
Then tell us your story.
“I am paid to tell stories. It is my job to keep the dreams flying.”
We will give you what you most wish. Tell us your story.
“How would you know what I most wish?”
You just said. You are most afraid of being alone. We will give to you to answer your need against the silence within.
“How can you know what I need?”
It will be revealed in your story. Tell us.
# # #
Cursing silently because the caff was too hot, I managed to keep my outward composure, never dropping the sweet smile, which I aimed like a lethal weapon at my guest. Clad in an original Selemni, I oozed stylish femininity while watching him carefully. But Barkas Todd appeared to have his full attention on putting two fizzes into his own caff, and not on me.
Although I could not detect any sign that he was watching me too, I had no doubt that he was. We were both very good at things like that; we had to be, or neither one would have survived this long. Nominally members of the same team, fellow servants of the Blink, he, Barkas Todd, and I, Alina Nemitz, would each be watching the other for the least slip, the smallest mistake, so the one could claw past the other and surge higher on the ladder. The Blink, if it had had a personality, would have encouraged this, for it would have wanted its best people to be rapacious, smart, and resourceful.
And we had to be among the best, for that is what we were: beautiful and successful people without, seething with schemes and alert to the weaknesses of others within.
“So, Barkas.” I put down the caff with my elegant fingers and looked at him, timing my words carefully for the moment when his attention was on reaching for the cup on the tesseract in front of him. “Have you any news?”
His fingers did not quiver at all, as they stretched out and spread a bit to grasp the caff cup. By this small token at least Todd scored a point, in that his body did not betray any of the inward fear or shame he might feel. Though I knew he had every reason to be screaming with such feelings within, for he had failed miserably.
As the cup slowly approached his thin lips, and no reply issued therefrom, I persisted in my languid Glesh tones that betrayed nothing of my Lower origins, a child prosty whom Glendinning himself had taken a fancy to and adopted shortly before his death. “Have you apprehended him?”
Todd sipped at the caff, which was still bubbling slightly. Clearly he was taking his time.
“And have you perchance found anyone to replace him?”
“No to both questions, my dear Alina.” We had been lovers at one time, but, while I chose not to express my resentment, still I felt Todd had no right to speak to me in that manner any longer. Any unnecessary association with him was now detrimental to my continued rise, and I had every desire to continue to rise at the unprecedented rate that had thus far marked my career.
“Then how are we going to keep the dreams flying? Can you tell me that?”
“We have some stored software that hasn’t been used yet. It’s a few years old, but it ought to satisfy people until we can get him back.”
“That will hardly do, Barkas, and you know it. People are quite discriminating. And they don’t want to have anything that was stored away because it wasn’t good enough. They want something that is new, that is theirs. He is our best Dreamer. Most of the Worlds are the product of his imagination. Dreamers as powerful as he are not found every day. We can’t replace him! If we don’t get him back we are going to lose ratings points to the other Net. And every point lost is a major disaster.”
“Yes, Alina, I know that. I know it very well. Listen, we have deployed nine detachments from two corps already, four from the Anexits and five from the Secret K’s. He’s going to be found. It’s my career on the line; I’m making every effort.”
I nodded. His career certainly was on the line. They had already said within my hearing that his days were numbered. He had made too many mistakes lately. This was the latest and the most devastating. And I could tell from what he was telling me that he hadn’t even found out it was one of the Scarlet oporgs, probably the Numbers, that had gotten the Dreamer. This mistake was the inexcusable one.
“See that you do,” I replied without any apparent hesitation. Technically we were equal in position, and I had no right to speak to him that way. But he was shamed and took it without objection. I stood. “I’ll see you later, Barkas,” I added, completely sure that I would never see him again.
I was unable to resist turning my back to him, not even offering him my hand. That was probably unnecessarily cruel, but I felt there was no reason to give him any further respect. He would be gone soon.
My mind turned away from him too. I was utterly unaware of his departure, a departure delayed by his looking at me one more time, his erstwhile amante, as he had dared only once to call me in the Spaniol slang of my origins. I can easily imagine how he stood, his hand on the door handle, watching my body as he would do when we had been lovers, tall, slender, and exquisitely feminine, my body as dark as any Lower prosty, as it moved with a fluidity of continual subconscious sexual promise.
I sat back at my desk and punched a series of buttons on my vid. “Priority Level One,” I said to the air. There was an imperceptible shimmering around me. Todd, who had been partially deaf as a child, could read lips. Even through the detail-obscuring field that now closed me in he could certainly see and interpret mine. I neither knew nor cared. “Mark Barkas Todd for numbing. He is now a detriment to the Blink.”
I sat back in my airchair, sighing and forcing myself to relax. I looked up, wondering if I had done that more for the Blink or more because of the shame I felt about my origins. Absently I studied the forcedoor to my office, but there were no answers to be found on the smooth energy surface. Todd had already closed it after slipping through it.
WELCOME TO THE BLINK
Mikel Smith
What happened then? Did you read the manuscript immediately?
“No, I went back home first.”
Tell us about your home, your life.
“There is not much to tell.”
Tell us anyway. We are interested in your story.
“I am not very good at telling stories.”
You are doing wonderfully well. Please continue. Relax. Just let your mind be open, and we will find the story inside and shape it into pretty words.
“Okay.”
# # #
When I got off duty I went directly back to my apartment. The tube returned me to Tower Latmos reasonably quickly, though it seemed to me the rushour was even slower than usual today. All around me were the same faces. Not necessarily the same people as filled the tube car other days, but certainly the same genodes as always, with the same expressions of empty tiredness, or actually the expression of no feelings whatsoever, neither anger nor depression nor exhaustion nor desire to be home. We just sat in our seats, with nothing to stare at but the walls of the car and the seat in front of us, neither speaking nor even smiling at each other.
I got off when the synth announced “Latmos 2”, which was closest to my one-room apartment. With perhaps a dozen others, only one or two of whom were of my genode, fellow Sec-Mecs, I exited the car and got in the lift. My floor was 2-46. When the door opened onto it I and one of the other Sec-Mecs got off. He went left, I went right, without our acknowledging each other. Socialization was frowned upon. At my door I palmed the lock and entered.
Before me was everything I could call my own. A bed, a chair, a table, a commode, a small pantry, and the terminal. Four walls. No window. This was certainly not luxurious, but it was a great deal better than most people had in those days.
Every day when I got off work I would always eat some plain nosh, which was all I could afford most of the time, then get on the Net. Today I had a burning desire to be different. I wanted, more than anything, to read the mysterious manuscript that was still in my pocket. But I knew enough from my Sec-Mec work to be sure that if I didn’t go on line as was both customary and required, my absence would be noted. It would be assumed that either I was sick or had run. And it could be investigated. Not wanting any kind of trouble, I logged on.
At the prompt, “NAME>”, I typed in MIKEL.SMITH. Then, at the “USERID>” prompt, I gave my randomly assigned access word, TETAGOAR. There were a few seconds of delay before the Net cleared me for access, then the screen showed the TOP menu, with its usual plethora of adverts.
_________________________________________________________________
Welcome, Mikel Smith, to The Blink!
Present Credit Balance: + 682 C
You have 3 E-Mail waiting.
SALE this week on CONQUEST III, the newest e-game, all the rage of the in-people! Regularly 300 C per hour, only 250 C per hour for the first 20 hours if you sign up by Saturday! Choose Option 5 and type CONQUEST for more information.
REMINDER: LoveCity is yours for the asking and 2000 C initiation fee! No more dull evenings! Let CompuSex spice them up! Choose Option 3 and type LOVE for more information.
LAST CHANCE on the LOTTERY! 500 C per chance and, remember, if you win, you’re on your way to the Worlds! Choose Option 5 and type LOTTERY for more information.
Choose one of the following:
1 Itemized Credit Standing
2 Read E-Mail
3 Enter Chatroom Areas
4 Enter Library Areas
5 Enter Shopping Areas
6 Enter NewsGrid
_________________________________________________________________
E-games bored me. These included games of skill and games of chance, on several superficially differing versions of an electronic game screen. CompuSex I had tried off and on, but it quickly got tiresome; there were only so many ways that the simple act of pudding someone can be described, and sex was not something my genode had. I still would play sometimes, but I didn’t feel like it tonight. And, while the thought of entering the Worlds, the electronic heavens in which the Highest Uppers spent most of their time, appealed immensely, I knew my chances of winning were minuscule among the millions who would be buying chances, and my credit balance was not particularly high right now. The news was something I usually indulged myself in, but not tonight.
I punched the 2 on my keyboard and let the three electronic letters pass before my eyes. As I had suspected, they were just more bills. One was for my apartment, one for food, and one for that time I had played in the Dragons tournament last month. I absently authorized each of them for payment with a Y for “yes”, and logged off by typing BYE at the next prompt. The Net trailed off with a string of meaningless high-bit characters. I’d only been on for less than a minute, which would only result in a few credits’ charge on my account, saving me some badly needed funds.
But at least I would now have forestalled any concerns that might have arisen for my not being on line. With my palm I flicked off the terminal, and the promises of dream-fulfillment that lurked within its contingent reality turned into random electrons in the air around me.
Deliberately prolonging anticipation of what I was looking forward to doing, I got a bowl and spoon from the pantry. With the bowl under the spigot I pushed the button, and hot nosh gushed out. Somewhere at the other end of the pipe behind my spigot were turbos identical to the ones where I had had the encounter with the three N’s today.
Absently I spooned the nosh into my mouth, but only in order to satisfy the need for sustenance my body had been signalling. Taste is only rudimentarily developed in my genode, so the bland flavor of the nosh two times a day is not objectionable to us. It has everything needed to keep us healthy and fit, and I guess that’s all that matters.
I chewed and swallowed automatically, reliving that encounter with the Nasties in my memory. It was part of my training always to consider how I might better handle situations in the future. I probably should have gotten the chain carrier first, I decided upon review, so I would not have enemies on both sides, but only one.
It was rather a difficult thing, keeping a balance with the Nasties. The difficulties of maintaining the relationship were of such importance that they were a part of my permanently imprinted info. The Nasties wanted to survive, to live, just like any of us. They scammed nosh from the turbos, true, but they also kept those turbos running. They knew that, if they didn’t, there would not only be no food for the Uppers and Lowers, but none for themselves as well. Maintenance of the turbos had long ago ceased to be info known in the Towers; only the N’s had the skills of keeping them going.
And they knew enough to keep in their place and not to make any trouble, lest there be reprisals. So they kept to their world, the Undr world of the bottom levels, the world of facs and turbos and corridors, and we kept to ours. Except that we watched them, or at least junior grade Sec-Mecs like me watched them, to make sure they kept their part of this uneasy bargain. They didn’t like our patrolling them, so we had to be careful in what was, after all, their territory, but we knew it was necessary.
These N’s I had surprised today squeaking nosh, other than their being three of them together, had been typical. That’s how they got their sustenance. I often mused on what it must be like to be a Nasty. Would you enjoy your life? Would there be any social interaction? Would you wish you lived up above in the Towers? Most of all, what most I had trouble imagining, how could you live without the Nets?
But to every one of my questions I could find no answer. Shaking my head to clear it, I took out my hidden cache of buzz from inside an old earthenware pitcher. I peeled off one hit and placed the transdermal patch on the sensitive skin behind one ear. In moments I felt the spreading glow fill my body. Unlike drugs of past centuries, buzz worked directly on our nervous system. Its effects were immediate and powerful.
Buzz, so they said, gave people dreams that were as good in their own way as the Worlds. They said it had to be illegal because there were no safeguards built in, as when people entered the Worlds, so it was dangerous. Probably it was more that the Nets didn’t want such unregulated competition.
I had no way of knowing. I was a Lower, and had no access to the Worlds. All I had was buzz, buzz I’d taken from Nasties I’d maimed or killed in the line of duty. I considered it my just recompense for the thanklessness and danger of my work. Buzz did give me dreams, but it also cleared my mind. And right now my headache was, thankfully, fading.
The room around me was also fading from my conscious awareness, and my mind saw that the sheaf of papers I had found inside the vent was now in my hands. The papers were glowing with anticipation to be read. I began to read.
UNDR
The Dreamer
Mikel Smith, tell us now what you read.
“I don’t remember it very well.”
Open your mind. We will find it exactly as you read it.
“I don’t understand.”
That is no matter. This manuscript is also a story, and we wish to know that story too.
# # #
There’s nothing else to do while I hide here, so I might as well write. All these paper boxes of paper and all these pens, relics of a bygone era before computers and Nets. So I might as well write. I’ve seen pictures, old flat photographs, of secretaries, writing or typing. Here I am, like one of those people of a bygone era. If I only had their funny clothes, it’d be like I’d travelled backward in time.
I am sitting here on one box, with two more stacked in front of me to make a desk. Mostly I am thinking of my wife. Wondering what she is doing right now. Worrying that she might not be all right. I have seen it happen so many times before, when they have arrested one of my neighbors. They are probably snapping her, trying to get her to tell them where I am. Oh, well. Maybe I flatter myself, and I’m not as godholy important as all that. Anyway, there is nothing I can do, so why natter about it?
It seems I have the rest of my life on my hands here. I am probably safe – nobody seems to go here, neither the Uppers nor the Lowers nor the Nasties. The dust is incredible. There is a nosh turbo not far away I can squeak easily enough, so I’m not concerned about food. I guess it’s boredom that worries me most. That, and falling asleep. I am worried that if I fall asleep I will dream about the Unreals again, and they will find me here.
Yes, at all costs, sleep I must avoid. So, to stay awake, and to keep from getting too bored, I am going to write my story. Who knows if anyone is ever going to read this, but what does that matter? I will hide it somewhere, in a location safe enough that hopefully it will not be discovered quickly but still will be some day.
Anyway. My story. Where to start? I am a Dreamer for the Blink. Or maybe I should say I was a Dreamer. Because I’ve run. A no show at work. Like so many, I have run. I probably would have run anyway, sooner or later, but the Numbers came to get me. So what I had planned to do eventually became a now thing.
I lived with my wife in Tower Metz, no great deal, just a small apartment that ran us 1200 C a month. Our monitor didn’t even have access to the Worlds, like you’d think it would, since my dreaming created much of them. No, we just had a Lower access, with words appearing letter by letter on the screen, just like any Lower. We didn’t even get pictures and sounds, like most Uppers, let alone what the Highest Uppers had: access to the Worlds.
I guess we had pretty much gotten used to raids. One or another of the oporgs every now and then would bash through an apartment door without any warning and take someone away. Such a person would never be heard from again. We’d hear the rumors, as everyone did, that these people were snapped and snapped until they were dead. I don’t know. I ran. Maybe my wife knows by now, if she is still alive.
We all know there are certain Crimes Against The State, but only the State has the list, only the State knows what they are. Sometimes we wonder what they might be. We compare notes, trying to see if there is any common factor, something we can point to and say, Ah, that is why they are arresting us. But there is nothing. We ask ourselves: Is disposing of your trash on Tuesday a crime? Is scratching your left ear in public? Perhaps if we say the word “nevertheless” we have broken some law.
I remember someone telling me a story, maybe or maybe not true, of a man who was growing flowers for his wife in a windowbox. Some security officer came in, looked at the flowers, took scissors from his utility belt, and snipped their stems. When asked why he had done this, the eye replied, “These are Scarlet roses.” But they hadn’t been grown as a sign of treason, but as a gift of love for his wife. They had only happened to be red.
The problem is, we just don’t know. We just don’t know.
So one night I am awakened from my sleep by loud banging on the door. It is a raid. My apartment has no windows, of course, only the two tiny rooms. Nowhere to run. The pounding on the door continues. My wife is awake. She is looking at me. I look back, even though still in the webs of my dreams. We both know they have come for me, not for her.
My wife shouts in her native Spaniol for them to wait a minute, and gets her massive body out of the bed. I reach up to remove the electrodes from my skull, get out of bed too, and quickly dress. There seems to be no choice but to give up meekly. I know what will happen – I see long scenes of interrogation while they snap my body and soul again and again, periods of isolation, administering of drugs, application of “mind purification” techniques, and so on. I have no way of knowing what really they might be going to do to me since never has anyone come back from such a raid as this to relate the truth. And now, it seems, I too am about to enter the unknown, to find out what happens to those who are arrested.
But –
What if ...
What if I had a trap door in the floor of my apartment? And, beneath it, a tiny cubicle between the conduits, which I had hollowed out as part of my desultory plans for eventually running?
Well, just perhaps. Perhaps I did have one, and perhaps I hid in it, and perhaps my good wife stood above it, putting her heavy body on top of it, pointing straight down at it when the police asked her where I had gone, saying in her imperfect command of Glesh, “He is Undr.”
In Glesh the word “Undr” refers to those lower regions where the Nasties live, where the machines that make our air and food are. For us professional Dreamers, it has a specialized meaning as well; when we say we are “going Undr”, we mean we are entering into sleep, to go make entertaining dreams for the Worlds inside the Nets. But, of course, it can just mean simply “below”. It is in the last, the most basic and literal sense, that my wife means the word, but they take her statement in a more figurative way. And, if all this is the case, then any of their lie-detecting equipment that they might be aiming at her will register only truth in her words.
“He has run? He has gone Undr?” The voices are of the genode that was developed to make the Numbers. They are – I riffle through the dust of my memory as I lie beneath the floorboards – they are one of the oporgs associated with the Scarlet, are they not? Not that it matters. I dream my dreams for the Blink, I say to myself. The Scarlet must have sent the Numbers to stop my dreaming for the Blink, I suppose; perhaps to use me for their own Net.
But to their repeated questions my good wife just keeps stomping her foot on the floor directly over my chest, dislodging clouds of dust and insulation that threaten to make me sneeze, and saying again and again, “Undr! Undr! ¿No comprendeis? ¡El haya ido Bajo! He no here; hos gon Undr!”
They tempt her with all sorts of things, to try to get her to give them more detailed information. They offer her tasty foods and work-saving appliances and tantalizing pleasures. They offer her everything short of entrance into the Worlds, which is something of which even they cannot partake. But she remains as immovable in her answer as in her massive bulk over my hiding place. She just repeats the word “Undr!”, not knowing how she can be more specific, and the Numbers grow frustrated because they cannot get out of her the answer they want.
Thinking she is stupid, or that she simply does not know, they give up at last. I know from years of marriage that it is not at all that she is stupid, but that her will is as massively steady as her body. But they do not have this knowledge gained from marriage to her. I hear the sounds of them instructing her to come with them to sign some papers. I lie unmoving, silently praising my wife for her steadfastness, yet worrying that they will use some of their techniques on her to see if she is hiding any information. But there is nothing I can do for her any longer.
“Well, Undr it is,” I think to myself.
When there have been several minutes of utter silence in the apartment above me I lift up the floor again and crawl out, quickly, while even my wife will not see me, to protect her from the dangerous knowledge of where I might have gone, I leave.
There is doubtlessly no time in which I may find any precious belongings or mementoes to take with me, or even in which to take a last lingering look at the place where I have lived all of my adult life. There are no emotional attachments to this apartment; it is only in the afterimages retained momentarily by my mind that I gaze once again at the plain walls and sparse belongings and wonder what I have done, and whether I will ever see my home again.
The only thing I consider taking is a vid cube taken shortly after our marriage. But even that I leave behind.
Not a soul is in the corridor outside. This time of day, people will be plugged in to their terminals, playing Vidarcade or Conquest. I get on the lift and take it to the very bottom of the shaft, with nothing to do but read the posted advertisement for the newest “Choose your own Adventure” film. The ride is well over one hundred levels. On the way people occasionally get on and off, but none of them seems to take any particular notice of me. The last twenty floors or so I am completely alone, and the lift achieves its peak speed, not needing to stop.
At last the lift comes to a halt and the door snicks open. The corridor before me is not entirely unlike the one I have left behind and probably forever. The walls are the same ochre yellow. The lighting is the usual fluorescence that lacks any hue and seems to drain color out of every object it touches. But here the air is still, as if it has congealed in its place, having no bodies pass through it to stir it up, no lungs to let it interchange with life. Somewhere not that far away I hear the rumbling of facs.
There seems to be an infinity of choices and yet none. For I may go anywhere but home or work, but, unable to go to either, I have nowhere to go. Unable to think of any reason to favor one direction over another, I strike out at random.
In no time at all I am thoroughly lost. The corridor I have taken leads to another, and another, and another. The halls branch continually, with side passages shooting off at odd angles. There does not appear to be any regularity, any pattern, to this honeycomb of hallways.
The general appearance of all these hallways is the same, but after a while I detect variations. The lines painted into the walls at about shoulder height, which at first I overlooked in the insufficient light, are sometimes red, sometimes green, or blue, or yellow, and so on. It occurs to me that these are some kind of system for tracing one’s way through this region; perhaps they are meant to guide workers along one of the support systems, like those processing air, water, or nosh, or perhaps communications.
Every time I reach the intersection of more than two such halls, I find a sunken chamber, surrounded by a gallery, in which a fac is humming. One I go by is recycling nosh from waste. The huge pipes coming down stink of excrement, entering the fac in the middle. The assemblies ringed around these intakes are evidently filters and nutrators, reconstituting the waste into food again.
I look around, and see no sign of anyone. Approaching the fac, the smell of nosh inspiring pangs of hunger in my belly, even over the other odor of the raw materials from which it is made, I determine to make an attempt at squeaking a meal. Amidst the tubing that rings the perimeter of the fac I find a plastic hose hanging down, obviously not a part of the machinery. It seems evident that Nasties have inserted this hose to ease their access to the nosh inside. I push a blue button and nosh comes out. I eat.
Thus sustained, I continue my random explorations. Near the fac I find this little place. It must have been storage for an office at one time. Nobody seems to have been in here for years and years. I will have to find some way of securing it, so Nasties don’t try to snuff me in my sleep. But here I can abide, as long as I don’t dream. So I sit here, writing hardly without stopping. As long as I write I can’t sleep. But right now my hand hurts. I think I will take a break and hide what I’ve written so far somewhere, so nobody will find it. Then come back here and write some more.
A PERFECT EVENING
Alina Nemitz
Tell us more of your story, Alina.
“Why the hell should I tell you a damned thing?”
We just wish to know your story, nothing else.
“I hate you.”
Open your mind. Open it.
“Don’t force yourself on me. Stay away! I will tell it, but don’t enter my mind! Give me some privacy!”
You’ve already told us some. Didn’t it make you feel better to talk to us? Make you feel less lonely? Come, Alina, tell us more. It’s just words, just a story. In the story is hidden that which you most desire.
“Damn it, here’s your story then! Take it!”
# # #
A perfect evening, and nothing was going to ruin it. I forcibly thrust from my mind all consideration of my encounter with Barkas Todd, and the greater concern of finding that Dreamer. My skimmer took me home automatically while I closed my eyes and did three rounds of Deep.
“Kal-tas-a-nariyan-i-manu-padhma-sum-i-gong ...” The vocables poured from my lips, the chant which had been assigned to me by the Deep Comp after a careful study of my psyche. To me, a professional person with no study of psychometry, the chant was nothing but random sounds. But, I had to admit, it worked. Maybe it was just that I believed in it, like believing in a placebo or a god, but it did work. “Imanitu-chote-la-ira-u-ne-la-shon-ti-na ...” The sounds continued to fill the cabin of my skimmer, and my body slowly grew peaceful again. I forced the knots in my muscles to relax, using the biofeedback techniques that had been drummed into me by my instructor, Narayan.
When the whole round of the chant had been completed, and I felt eased again, I allowed myself the treat of looking out the window. Below me the Towers speared upward, row upon row, each one filled with thousands of Lowers living their pointless ugly lives. On the horizon I could see Overneath, the Uppers’ neighborhood of Manors, among which my own was not the least imposing.
Passing overhead in this way at the end of work, I used to think back to my childhood in Tower Akad, with a feeling of satisfaction that I had risen out of such a futile existence. More recently I had sometimes felt pangs of shame for those earlier thoughts, because my rise would never have happened had it not been for Glendinning, and my greatest fear was of my origins getting out. Just as, from up here in the night sky, I had no idea which of the shining needles of humanity below was Akad, so too I hoped the secret of my beginnings would remain lost until and if I chose to reveal it.