The Soul Continuum (7 page)

“No,” I say. “Salomi. My name is Salomi Deya. Who are you?”

Pain causes her to flinch again, and there is a moment of confusion in her eyes before she answers, “Oluvia . . . Wade. I am Queen Oluvia Wade.”

I shake my head and shrug. “Don't know you. Where am I? I was at home. Well, it was Saliel actually, and then I was—”

“Listen to me,” she says. “You are not who you think
you are, and I have very little time to explain. The virus is . . .”
She flinches again and cries out.

“You're sick?”

“Yes. I am dying, and I need you to do exactly as I say before we run out of time. When this body expires, there cannot be another.”

“Is it those cables? Shall I pull them out?”

“No. I did this. Needed to connect to the Control Core . . . Needed to . . .”

“Can I get you out of there?”

“No time. I need you to listen to me.”

“I'm listening.”

“Good.” She seems to relax a little as she controls her breathing. Oluvia studies me. “You truly do not know who you are?”

“Of course I do. I'm Salomi . . .” I look at my hands, my feet, hear the deep tone of my voice again. “I'm Salomi Deya . . . aren't I?”

Oluvia's eyes lose focus for a moment, as if she is trying to remember something. “Your name, your real name, is Salem Ben. The person you believe you are died many billions of years ago. This place is called the Soul Consortium. It is a place that holds the memories of every human being who ever lived, and you, Salem, are the last human. You are living the memory of Salomi Deya, but I had to risk bringing you out prematurely, before I die. I could not invoke the neural flush that returns your mind back to who you truly are. Your brain configuration still matches Salomi's, but your body is Salem Ben's.

“When you woke, I had to bring you to me, and the only way to do that was to contrive your death. You fell, and the Control Core would have detected the need to repair your body. The most efficient way for it to do that was to kill you so that a new body could be generated for you here in the genoplant. Your consciousness, as it stands, was transferred into Salem's new body. The same is true for me. This body is only a few days old.”

I stare at her. I think I understand what she says, and
the evidence of my body persuades me to trust her, but I am stunned into silence. If it were not for my condition, I am sure
that panic and fear would send me into shock.

“I am going to tell you more,” she continues. “Things that you will find hard to understand, but you must accept what I say. So much depends on your complicity. Will you do as I ask?”

It takes a few moments to find my voice. “That depends on what you ask me to do.”

A tear rolls down her cheek as she grimaces. “Please!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Here.” She reaches toward me with a trembling hand. There is something in her palm. A small green strip that looks like a data wafer. “It is an algorithmic implant. Peel off the backing, place it anywhere on your skin, and it will secrete a nanocode program into your bloodstream. Once inside, it will protect a small region of your brain where your higher reasoning will be given instructions on how to proceed. You will be given a mission that must remain secret, even to you. A quest for answers.”

“Why? Answers to what? I don't understand.”

The woman squirms inside her nest of cables to wrestle
her pain into submission. “Soon you must go back, and when you do, you will forget everything that happened here. The answers you must look for are connected to an individual named Keitus Vieta. He is an aberration, a rogue entity, and
his presence in this place—in this universe—is an anomaly.”

“Keitus Vieta? I have seen him. He was the statue where the Absorption Tower should have been.”

“Yes, that was my doing. It is why I have connected
myself to the Control Core. I had to instill in you the danger he poses. I reconfigured part of your brain while you were living Salomi's life to prepare you before waking you. A little piece of Salem Ben was in your subconscious. Did you feel like two people were living inside you?”

“I did, yes.” I smile in spite of myself. “I was very frightened,
but I can't remember what that feels like now.”

“But you remember the importance of that feeling?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why you must trust me and wear that patch. We have to learn more about him. We must understand him, and I must rely on you to find out the truth.”

“You said I had to go back. You mean me? Salomi?”

“Yes. The life must be completed so that Salem can return. When Salomi dies, and the memory of her life is complete, the neural flush will be triggered so that Salem's mind can be returned to its former state. He . . . you will retain the memory you experienced inside the WOOM, but this conversation will be gone.”

I look at the little green patch between my fingers. “And what does this do again?”

“It will not hurt you. It will just tell you what you need to do when you wake up as Salem.”

“What if I don't want to wake up as Salem?”

She observes me, shocked, as if this was an unconsidered
option. “You must.”

“Why?”

Oluvia holds my gaze, but I can see distance in her eyes, as if holding on is becoming harder. “Because . . . that is who you truly are.”

“Is it? Right now I am Salomi Deya. I have been for almost
twelve years, and I will be dead soon.”

“Not in this body.”

“But if I go back . . .”

She nods. “When you go back, you will see the rest of Salomi's life.”

“And if I stay here?”

“You might live a little longer, but your brain configuration
is not built for Salem's body. I don't know what will happen.”

I look at the patch again, and then back at Oluvia. Her breathing is shallow now, and her eyes are rolling back.

“Can I look around first?”

She does not answer. Instead, her arms and legs go rigid and her mouth twists into spasm. She stares at me one last time, and as she slips away, I see more tears in her eyes. I recognize a look there. Like my mother's, as if she loves me.

“Oluvia?”

“Yes?” she whispers.

“What will happen to me when I go back?”

She stiffens one last time, convulses, then sinks down into the cables. A soft sigh passes her lips.

“Oluvia?”

She lies still. Her eyes are blank, her mouth slack.

A
soft whirring of motors emanates from the booth next to Oluvia's corpse, and flashes of bright light pop and fizz within. I take a step back, stumbling slightly because I expect my legs to be shorter, and gasp when another body slides out of the booth, wet with new life. It is Oluvia again, but this time there is no spirit in her eyes, as if the machine forgot to put a mind inside her head.

“Oluvia?”

She says nothing in return. She simply lies there, breathing
steadily, twitching occasionally, staring.

I turn, look again at my surroundings and see a slim door behind me. It slides upward, allowing me to exit when I walk toward it, and I step through into a wide, featureless corridor that extends in a curved arc to my left. I continue through, walking slowly as I try to adjust to these foreign legs, and eventually reach another door, which also opens when I approach it. I have the impression I am walking the circumference of a gigantic sphere.

More corridors. More doors. Endless walking. No people.

It is a lonely place, and I wonder how the man who inhabited this body could have endured such a lonely existence. Who is this Salem Ben? And who was that woman, Queen Oluvia Wade, who brought him here? His partner?

Eventually there is a new door set into the side of the corridor rather than at the end, and hoping for a change to this monotony, I walk through. A tingle of pleasure plays along my spine as my eyes adjust to brighter light, like sunshine, and the new area is made clear. The room beyond—if I could call it that—is more wondrous than I could have hoped. It is a vast spherical space that greets me, but unlike the previous areas I have seen, this one carries with it a sense of grandeur and awe, as if I have stumbled upon the throne room of a galactic palace. A single gangway spans the sphere's width, keeping me from falling into the deep drop below, and it leads to a raised disc-shaped plateau at its center, which must be a thousand meters away and almost certainly designed as a viewing point.

The walls are windows upon a night sky, split by a multitude of towering arches, and I marvel at the view. It is an all-consuming void, its depth defined only by the occasional scattering of fuzzy, pale blue light: distant electrical clouds drifting lazily into spiral-shaped clusters.

“What is this place?” I murmur.

I jump when the cold metallic voice I heard earlier answers my question.

You are in the Observation Sphere.

I look all around me, just to see if there is actually a mouth attached to the voice, but I see nothing and nobody. “Who are you?” I ask.

I am no one. I am the Control Core.

“Oh, you don't sound like no one. You sound like a someone. Don't you have a proper name? Where are you?”

I do not have a proper name. I am nowhere.

“Oh, I see.” But I don't. “So what am I observing?”

Heat death. Quantum foam. The epoch between the first and second cycles of the universe.

“Between? So how long will it be until the second cycle begins? Can I see it? What will it look like?”

Yes. Four thousand five hundred twenty-seven million years, eighty-eight days, and eleven seconds. Not until the time of Heat Death has elapsed.
The voice pauses before answering my fourth question.
It looks like the first cycle.

“And what did the first cycle look like?”

It looks like the second cycle.

“Hmm. What can I do while I wait?”

Anything you choose.

“What would Salem Ben do?”

Salem Ben lives the lives of souls stored within the Soul Consortium Archives. He is currently living the life of Salomi Deya and experiencing a temporary interruption to the process. It is not recommended.

“Oh. That would be me. Here now, I suppose. I've never been called an interruption before.”

The voice does not respond.

“Can I live someone else's life?”

Salem Ben must return to the WOOM to complete the last two days of Salomi Deya's life before choosing another subject for insertion.

“Two days? That's all I have left if I go back?”

Yes.

“And then I won't be me anymore?”

You are Salem Ben. You will be Salem Ben.

“But I'm not Salem Ben.”

You are Salem Ben.

I stare around me at the vast emptiness beyond the window and consider what it would be like to live in this body for . . .

“How long will I live if I stay like this?”

Unknown. Salem Ben has an indefinite lifespan.

“Are you saying I will live forever like this with nobody else to talk to but you?”

Salem Ben will live as long as he chooses to.

I nod to nobody but myself. It isn't that I would be unhappy—I know that I am not capable of feeling that—but I want to be back with my mother and father and friends, back on Saliel. I want to tell them what the future looks like, except that I'm fairly sure it doesn't work like that. I would just be going back to the memory of a long-dead person and continuing where I left off, but will it feel real? I think it felt real before. My mother's hug felt real. The happiness felt real.

But I don't want to die.

If I were anyone else, I imagine I would be incredibly sad at the dilemma before me. What should I choose? A life ahead of abject boredom with nothing else to do but exist, or the final two days of a person who, in reality, has been dead for billions of years?

“Isn't there anything interesting to do around here?”

You may visit the Recreation Sphere.

“What's in the Recreation Sphere? Is it fun?”

The Recreation Sphere is a facility designed to provide entertainment. It can be . . . fun, if the subject desires.

“I'm not sure it would be very good if there is nobody else to share it with. Did Salem Ben use it?”

Salem Ben lives the lives of souls stored within the Soul Consortium Archives. He is currently living the life of Salomi Deya and experiencing a temporary interruption to the process. It is not recommended.

“You already said that.”

Correct.

I think I have a long time to think about what I want to do, but then I remember Oluvia Wade. “Who is Queen Oluvia Wade?” I ask.

Queen Oluvia Wade was best known for her role as President of the Seventh Golden Reign and the creator of the Soul Consortium.

“I've no idea what any of the Golden Reigns are, but I know this place is the Soul Consortium. Did you know she just died about a half hour ago and that there are two of her now? Well, one is dead and one looks like a vegetable. I have no idea what is going on. I'm starting to think this is all a dream, except I don't usually have them. At least, not until recently, anyway. Was she a nice woman? Can I trust her?”

I do not understand “nice.” However, Queen Oluvia Wade was known to some as the Queen of Death. To others she was known as the savior of the known universe. I do not know if you are capable of trusting her.

“What about you? Can I trust you?”

I do not know if you are capable of trusting me.