Technobabel (10 page)

I recalled the smooth metal of the jack behind my ear and my fingers went to it, almost unconsciously. Papa Lo smiled again and brushed away some of his long, white hair to show a similar plug, rimmed in white porcelain and chrome, behind his own ear.

"Yes. With this," he said, touching the jack lightly with one finger, "we can connect ourselves directly to the computer and read its signals. The machine transmits the world of the Matrix into our minds and we can learn its paths and its secrets. There are many things to be learned in the world of light and many who want to protect those secrets. That is how our tribe prospers; by entering the world of light and bringing back knowledge that is of value to the people, like shamans and sorcerers gain knowledge when they travel into their spirit realms.

"You showed considerable talent in entering and working in the Matrix. You knew something of computers and learned quickly how to use what we have here and what I have to teach. I decided you were ready to attempt the Resonance. It is an experience, an initiation. It shows you the deep secrets of the Matrix, secrets even I am not privy to." He paused for a moment, his eyes wistful. "If only I were years younger ... but it is not my destiny to experience the Resonance, only to guide those who can.
Such as I guided you.
You are the oldest youth I have seen who had the potential for the Resonance, so I prepared you and brought you to experience the initiation. Now we need to see if you were successful. Tell me what you can remember of the time before we found you."

I don’t know how, but I know what he says is true. I think I can trust this strange old man. Even if I can’t, I have much to gain and nothing to lose, so I sit in his circle of hardware and tell him as much as I can remember, from the moment I first became aware in the alley to my escape from the Tamanous to finally collapsing from exhaustion where the other members of the tribe found me. I don’t mention the dream at first, but Papa Lo asks if I recall any dreams, so I tell him what I can and he gives a kind of satisfied nod.

"You have been fortunate beyond what most people will ever know," he said. "The Matrix has favored you and you have succeeded in the Resonance. You are more than any other mere traveler in the world of
light,
you are a follower of the way of the machine.
An initiate.
A technoshaman."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"I will show you soon," he says, "but first I need to check your condition and make sure you’re all right. The Resonance is a difficult experience and it sounds like you’ve had a harder time than most."

He lifts a slim cable ending in a chrome jack toward my temple. I grab his wrist and he looks at me with hard, dark eyes for a moment. "This is for your own good, my son. You must trust me."

I realize that if Papa Lo or any of his people wanted to kill me they would have done it already, or simply left me in the alley to die, so I take the cable from his hand and slot it into the jack behind my ear like I’ve done it a thousand times before. It slides home with a faint click that shudders through my being, and I feel a sense of completeness I haven’t since I was disconnected by the body-snatchers. I know I never feel
so
complete as when I’m jacked in, the connection between me and the machine fills my spirit and makes me feel whole again.

When Papa Lo powers the diagnostic deck, I can feel the trickle of power flowing along the cable and into my jack, pulses of light and energy dancing along the fibers like a kind of music filling my mind, like the rhythmic beat of a drum or a living heart. Listening to the steady beat of the electrons, I slip into a kind of trance and time does strange things as Papa Lo works the keys and command surfaces of the deck. He’s quiet and composed, carrying out his work like an artist who seeks to achieve a perfect and peaceful state of Zen as he works his art.

We sit there in silence I don’t know how long as the energy trickles through my system, probing and sifting like millions of invisible fingers. I can feel them all, probing into all parts of my mind, but I relax and don’t resist their gentle brush against my mind. I know they can do me no harm and I feel somewhere inside me that I could stop them if I really wanted to.

When Papa Lo powers down the deck, I start a bit, not realizing he is finished.

"Your hardware is online," he says with his serene smile. "The memory is wiped, but that has happened before. I thought there might be something in there to help you, but no. The hardware is still good, and the casing is a bit beat up," he says, gently touching my bruised arm, "but now we need to check the wetware. Follow me." He gets up and makes to leave.

"Where are we going?" I ask. The old man glances up at me over his shoulder,
then
begins slowly walking out of the room again. His voice carries back to me as he goes.

"We’re going to see if you can find your name," he replies, and I quickly move to follow. Papa Lo guides me out of the room and into the hall of what I now see is a deserted church, made over by the Netwalkers tribe into part of their home,
our
home, I suppose, if I am one of them. The place still has a quiet air of the sacred to it; not a place where people live day-to-day, but where serious and important spiritual matters are handled.

In the basement of the church there is a room I had not expected to see, but which strikes me with an overwhelming sense of
Déjà vu
as I step across the threshold. I know I have been here before.

The room fills most of the long basement space. The low-beamed ceiling makes it feel somewhat cramped and close. The walls are covered with hardware, displays, and complex paintings and drawings done on the gray concrete with brightly colored metallic paints and chalk. The drawings are circuit diagrams, flow charts, algorithms, and other images: great open vistas of metallic towers against a dark sky and planes of warped geometry that make you think you could put your hand through the wall like it was only an optical illusion. They bring the cold gray of the walls to life and seem to shimmer and move in the flicker and hum of the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling.

The floor of the room is a tangled mass of cables in a rainbow of colors, like a nest of snakes sleeping on top of one another. There are woven mats and pieces of equipment networked together, computers, displays, printers, small storage drives stacked up like musty books, and collections of things that blink and whir and hum with power. Seated on the floor like a praying monk is a boy, about twelve or thirteen years old. His eyes are rolled back, and the half-closed lids flutter in a strange kind of dream state. His hands are folded in his lap as in prayer and his lips move as he whispers something, maybe a mantra. The sound of it is familiar to me.

"This is our lodge," Papa Lo says to me quietly, and I start a bit at the sound of his voice. I almost forgot he was there.

"Our lodge?"
I say, not knowing why I speak so softly other than the strong feeling I have that this is a sacred place.

"It is our place to touch the power of the inner world and the spirits," he says. I look around the room and I know for certain this is like no lodge that I have ever seen or heard of before.

"Aren’t lodges supposed to be full of skins and furs, crystals and herbs, with a big smoldering fire pit in the center? You
know,
drek like that?" I say.

Papa Lo makes a low sound in his throat that I take as approval of my question. If he notices or is offended by the vulgarity, he makes no sign of it.

"It is good you can recall such things," he says. "No, this is a different kind of medicine lodge.
Quite unlike almost any other in the world.
While the shamans work their magic by calling on the Awakened spirits of the land, we are in touch with something different. We touch the magic of the modern age, the Digital Age. Instead of the ancient powers of the land, sea, and air, we commune with the spirit of the Machine, the intelligence of the Matrix."

"And who is ‘we’... the Netwalkers?"

"Not entirely. We are part of the tribe, but
we ..
.
you
are special. Like the shamans to their tribesmen, we are the intermediaries between them and the otherworld. It is for those of us with the knowledge and the ability to travel into that world and bring back the knowledge it contains for the good of all.

"We live outside of the so-called ‘civilized’ world, the world of the megacorporations and their wageslaves," Papa Lo says, and the disdain in his voice for that world is clear. "We live off the land like the tribes of old, only our environment is the city and not the re-grown forests or plains of the Native American Nations. We live in a different wilderness, but we know its secrets better than most.

"You set out into the wilderness to gain a vision as people have done since time began and I think you have found it, and it has changed you in the process. The vision is a rebirth that makes a new person of you, transforms you so you are a true walker between the worlds of the physical and the mental world of the Matrix, a technoshaman, like Taki here."

He gestures to the boy sitting on the floor. "He and two others are the only children of the tribe to experience the Resonance and make the breakthrough to the other state of existence I knew existed out there in the Matrix.
And now you.
You are the oldest student to be able to find the Resonance. I had given up hope of finding anyone older than a child with the Gift."

He beams at me in obvious pride and I feel a bit self-conscious about the whole thing. I know I should know this man who is supposed to be my teacher and mentor and feel happy he is proud of me. Why do I feel guilty about Papa Lo’s pride and the fact that I have succeeded in his goal for me?

"You keep talking about a transformation," I say, looking for an explanation of my feelings. "But, apart from not being able to remember what happened, I don’t feel transformed. How am I supposed to be different?"

Papa Lo makes his way over to one of the collections of computer hardware stacked high like a totem pole reaching for the ceiling and picks up a cable lead that he holds out to me.

"Why not find out for
yourself
?" he says.

I’m frightened by the prospect of jacking into an unknown machine, of trusting this man who says he is my teacher and friend, but part of me hungers for the jack he holds out to me like a worshipper for the touch of the sacrament.
Or an addict for a hit of a drug.
Either way, it is a desire I cannot refuse. I take the cable from his hand, sit down on the floor, and plug in the jack.

In an instant, the electron world of the Matrix opens up all around me, like a fractal flower opening up in my mind. I haven’t done anything other than slot the cable and I realize there’s nothing between me and the computer systems that make up the Matrix. No cyberdeck, no workstation, no terminal running the ASIST transformation algorithms to take the electronic ones and zeroes making up the worldwide information network and turn them into images and sensations the human brain can perceive and understand. There’s just me and the machine. Somehow, I’m doing it all myself, making sense of the flowing electrons in my head. There’s nothing but my mind and the Matrix, together like one.

This is the difference. Other people like Papa Lo can access the Matrix through a jack, but they need hardware and software to do it: a computer running the right programs to synchronize the complex operations of the human brain with the equally complex workings of the Matrix, to let them communicate and create the portal through which to enter the virtual world. I don’t need any hardware or software, just the jack to connect through and my wetware; my own brain.

I can hear the hum and heartbeat of the world-grid pulse through the electronic reality all around me and I understand what Papa Lo is talking about. I’m home and I know who I am, even if I can’t remember my life before I came to the tribe. I know who and what I am now and I know my purpose in life.

My name is Babel, and I am a technoshaman.

8

The
slumbering
giant
of
Renraku
Computer
Systems
has
awakened
hungry
.
In
the
last
year,
Renraku
has
shown
amazing
growth
and
innovation
in
the
production
of
computer
hardware
and
software
systems
.
Always
a
leader
in
computer
architecture,
Renraku
has
moved
into
the
software
and
hardware
fields
with
a
vengeance,
grabbing
up
market
share
with
their
cutting-edge
developments
in
optics,
program
algorithms,
adaptive
systems,
and
other
new
technologies
.
The
corporation’s
surge
of
success
has
clearly
proven
attractive
to
Renraku
CEO
Inazo
Aneki,
who
continues
to
turn
down
opportunities
for
retirement
to
remain
at
the
helm
of
the
corporation
.
The
seventy-year-old
Aneki
has
guided
Renraku
since
the
founding
of
the
corporation
some
thirty
years
ago
and
has
"
no
intention
of
stepping
down
until
Renraku
secures
its
position
as
the
leader
in
computer
and
Matrix
innovation
. "
The
corporation's
sudden
success
came
as
a
surprise
to
market
analysts,
who
were
predicting
troubled
waters
for
Renraku
due
to
the
corporations
heavy
investment
in
their
Artificial
Intelligence
Project
,
which
to
date
has
still
shown
no
results
.