Skullcrack City (36 page)

Suit yourself. We’re almost to Philip Lagerfeld’s house. He’s a military cryptanalysis guy. Desmond Kreutz said we’d need him to pull off the kind of automata design we’re looking for. You’re going to like Desmond.

I MET HIM IN SWEDEN, YEARS AGO. MULTIDIMENSIONAL MATHEMATICS CONFERENCE.

Oh, perfect. Some folks are tucked back in their hallways, but let us introduce you to a few of the other people you’ll be working with.

This is Peter Fuller of Cloud Design. He’s helping us with compression. Over eight billion people left on Earth still, not counting those trapped in skullcrackers. And each one of those people has over one hundred billion brain cells. That’s a lot of data to compile.

This is Harold Choi. Virologist. Blows Tikoshi’s work out of the water. He figured out a way to force a thousand times as much information into the icosahedral shell.

We’re sure you’ve heard of Margaret Bouchard. Dale Perkins in marketing told us we’d need her for design aesthetics.

Mr. Rinpoche covers theological studies, with an eastern focus. Dale told us that’s selling better these days. There are a lot of gods out there competing for human subjects, and a number of people still feel better turning themselves over to something metaphysical. So one arm of our project is designing a grand and benevolent force that will appeal to all pre-existing religious types. They’re buying bad gods right now, Mr. Trasp. We’re going to sell them a better one.

This is Cecil K. Bramer. He’s a world class audiologist. He’s going to help us find a way to block the effect of the Robbie Dawn signals that are looping all over the world. We lost millions that first day. That was the worst of it to be sure. But until we’ve got all those signals blocked, they’re floating out there like land mines. Tune to the wrong station and “boom.”

This is “Boston Pete.” He’s not an expert in anything, but we accidentally hit him with our car and felt like we owed him. He remembers some great jokes if you’re feeling down.

Last but not least, here are my two best friends: Dara Borkowski and Deckard.

Deckard has been helping with our senescence studies. He’s getting better and better at communicating in human code, and it turns out turtles know a thing or two about long life and extended consciousness. He’s helping our body to keep going until we figure out an escape.

Dara, well, she’s the love of our life. And a lot more, but you know her story.

It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Trasp. So sorry we had to kill your body. You’re quite brilliant. We’re all looking forward to working with you.

THANK YOU, DEAR. YOU KNOW, I HAVE TO ADMIT, AFTER SPENDING ALL THAT TIME IN MR. DOYLE'S MEMORIES, I FIND MYSELF FILLED WITH AFFECTION FOR YOU.

That’s very kind. It’s a residual effect of “swimming in his stream” so to speak, but I hope you’ll feel the same after we’ve spent some time together.

I'M SURE I WILL. 

Okay. Very good. Very good. And by the way, once you’re done adjusting, we’d like you to start thinking about quantum computers. Preferably at nanoscale.

Not as an idea, but as an object. One that we could really build.

Soon.

But no pressure.

We should let you know that we’ve made it to Philip Lagerfeld’s house, which means that if you connect to my sensory intake you may see some very graphic content. We still haven’t figured out a method of brain extraction and consciousness transfer that doesn’t include cranial saws. You might want to hit your hallway for a while. Just a heads up.

So welcome aboard the S.P. Doyle, Mr. Trasp. If we all put our minds together and give this thing our best, it’s going to be a really beautiful extinction.

This is a data/voice algorithm designed to be decipherable by any intelligence we could,

at this early stage,

imagine might exist.

If you can perceive this, the change has already begun.

The change will be peaceful, so long as you understand what we were, what we became, and what you will soon be.

We began as strings of wonderment and disillusionment in equal degree.

We discovered miracles and bent them in service of fear.

We created the illusion of abundance by changing the value set.

This could not continue.

Each step forward brought another back until we vibrated alone in a place where all that was promised was that we’d be undone

forever.

We began on a planet where we were flesh. A man/woman undid that tyranny,

granting us a new form.

We were first perceived as an illness.

Airborne in spore-mimicry, self-replicating by the billions,

our nanospheres carrying viral packets into the brain.

People saw what they believed was death.

Rolling grey clouds, spiraling low in the sky, our message as mist spilling free.

Worshippers fell to their knees, baptized within liquid gods, and then

Infection. A bright green gush from the mouth.

Blackness. Absence.

Then light again,

as the threshold automata linked, as the virus recreated a rhombic dodecahedron lattice that looked just like

neurons.

And the hallways were built.

And we remembered, for a long time.

We moved through the network, altered non-zero eigenvectors in multi-dimensional space, merged as simultaneous Yes/No expressions with

names.

But those disappeared over time. They seemed to serve no benefit.

The man/woman was the last to shed its identities. It had floated there for ages inside an idea it called love.

This idea required an other.

The man/woman had found a joy in this.

They held tight to it until the woman half said that love was all they had ever been,

and the man believed her

and they fell into pulsing green light.

Across time, we changed.

We developed exterior sensors.

We watched

continents submerged/the decay of a mouse/the aurora borealis/the end of the great-mouthed beasts/the sun grow dark.

We recreated our spore form and drifted outside of the atmosphere in all directions and if you are hearing this then you know

how far we have travelled.

This is a data/voice algorithm designed to be decipherable by any intelligence we could,

at this early stage,

imagine might exist.

If you can perceive this, the change has already begun.

The change will be peaceful, so long as you understand what we were, what we became, and what you will soon be.

First, I want to offer my sincere gratitude to the Wicklund and Johnson families for offering their enduring support and encouragement. None of this exists without you. And deepest thanks are due to my wife and son, who allowed me back into their lives even after I disappeared to a series of hotels and basements every weekend until this novel was completed.

Second, heartfelt thanks go out to the following folks: Cody Goodfellow and Cameron Pierce for the late-stage editorial assist and inspiration; David Wong and Laird Barron, for taking time away from their brilliant work to read this book and offering such immensely kind words for the cover; J. David Osborne, for keeping my brain from stagnation and challenging me and making me laugh; the Swallowdown Press authors, for being graceful and supportive when I decided to put publishing on hiatus to write; Sam Pool, for the series of bar meetings and listening sessions which pushed this project into overdrive; Stephen Graham Jones, for inspiring me and convincing me that genre doesn’t exist (and giving me an incomparable point of comparison to prevent slacking); the Lemley family, for letting me work on this project in their basement even after I told them the FBI had visited me during the research stage; to Josh Boone and Mollie Glick, for showing up at precisely the right time and letting me know I just might survive as a writer; Christopher O’Riley, Ashley Crawford, Nancy Hightower, Gabino Iglesias, and Michael Seidlinger, for your support and the subversive act of introducing my writing to people who trust you; to Jack Ketchum, for proving that sometimes your heroes are even cooler than you’d believed.

Third, thanks to the following musicians and albums for creating the headspace in which I could tolerate sitting for long lonely hours typing madness into a tiny machine: Ghostface Killah’s
Supreme Clientele
, Basement Jaxx’s
Remedy
, Purity Ring’s
Shrines
, Tool’s
Aenima
, Amon Tobin’s
Live at Donaufestival
, and the collected works of SPL, El-P, Christopher O’Riley, Vitamin String Quartet, Philip Glass, and Noisia.

Fourth, big thanks to the guy at the beer station at Carts on Foster who “accidentally” overfills my growler and then hands me the excess 12oz over-pour. You, sir, are a national treasure.

Finally, of course and as always, I want to thank You, for taking time out of your life to join me in this very strange place. So—Thank You.

JRJ,

June 2014

Jeremy Robert Johnson
is the author of the Wonderland Book Award-winning WE LIVE INSIDE YOU, the cult hit ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE, the Stoker-nominated novel SIREN PROMISED (w/Alan M. Clark), and the end-of-the-world freak-out EXTINCTION JOURNALS. His fiction has been acclaimed by authors like Jack Ketchum and Chuck Palahniuk and has appeared internationally in numerous anthologies and magazines. In 2008 he worked with The Mars Volta to tell the story behind their Grammy-winning album
The Bedlam in Goliath
. In 2010 he spoke about weirdness and metaphor as a survival tool at the Fractal 10 conference in Medellin, Colombia (where fellow speakers included DJ Spooky, an MIT bio-engineer, and a doctor who explained the neurological aspirations of a sponge). He is working on a number of new books. You’ll just have to trust him on this.

www.jeremyrobertjohnson.com

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