Wise Demon

By Robert Pritchard

The only way Domenech Fera can save his life is to abduct a child supergenius and find a man who disappeared a decade ago while speaking to the last surviving Artificial Intelligence. What was discussed at that meeting, why were all the other A.I.s destroyed in a plague, and why did Fera's partner betray him? The answers lie somewhere in the sprawling megalopolis of Mexico City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Pritchard
• Release date: Apr 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476120416

Robert Pritchard

A train is racing out of control. There’s a switch that can divert the train between two different tracks. Tied up on the first track are five people: ordinary, boring people. You don’t know most of them, except one is your former high school principal. On the other track is a luscious blonde with bazooms out to here. Her tight red sweater is ripped a little, exposing a long line of milky white cleavage; her black leather skirt is riding up over her hips. Shit. I forgot where I was going with this. Anyway it turns out you were the one who tied them all up and are driving the train. That’s what reading Robert Pritchard’s work is like. Early signs were inauspicious. At the hour of his birth a serpent and a raven fought under a blood-red moon, and later both were made into burritos. His childhood was difficult. He lacked the capacity for abstract thought; also he kept writing the number 5 backwards. Yet somewhere, deep within his soul, was a voice that said, “Pepsi: Generation Next!” Now, even as you read this, he lights a cigarillo and sinks into a green leather armchair in the library of his mansion. He sips a gin and tonic. Spring comes. People marry and die. Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie. And, in the fullness of time, another Robert Pritchard is born.

Book preview

WISE DEMON

A novel

by

Robert Pritchard

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Wise Demon

Copyright © 2012 by Robert Pritchard

Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Chapter 1

Viator

Two figures, one tall and one short, stood silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the western sky.

Is this Harald Ozeck? the tall one said.

When his smaller companion didn’t answer, the tall one’s head turned downward with what I imagined was a querying expression, though all I could make out were their outlines.

The second figure, the size of a child, did not reply. He remained fixed in place.

Then he turned away to face the sunset. At length, a response: Yes, it’s him. The voice, little above a whisper, was also that of a child.

The low flame under glass that stood near my left elbow retook the room as the broad wood door swung shut and blocked out the dying sun.

I laid my cane across the armrests of the chair.

I tried not to let my gaze fall on the antique typewriter atop the narrow writing desk before me.

The man and the boy moved to either side of the salon. The man, draped in a pale duster of stiff canvas duck, was criss-crossed with leather. He wore a brace of long knives at his hips and a nasty piece of cargo slung at his side. He approached and knelt beside my chair.

You are Harald Ozeck, he said.

I reviewed my options, then answered: I am.

Then we’ve come a long way to speak with you, he said.

At the mention of we I looked at the boy, standing several paces to my right.

In a sweater and corduroy trousers, mouse-brown hair several weeks past the time it should have been cut, he was an anonymous child of perhaps ten years.

But when his eyes focused on me, they were made of metal, in a slab of granite.

Then the gray irises flicked away and he again appeared as a thoroughly forgettable child.

I turned my attention back to the man at my left.

My name is Dómenech Fera, he told me. This is Adrian Gibson, gesturing at the boy. We’ve come to talk about the past, and the future.

I sighed. Those are two subjects I have long since learned to forget.

#

Naturally, they wanted to know about Emil Ciók.

Ciók was the great genius of the old century. His research finally put the science of psychology on a solid paradigmatic footing. His theory of personetics tied together various strands of thought, realigned old bodies of knowledge, exploded some myths and reaffirmed others. But for him this discovery was not an end but a means. That’s why he kept the tool secret until after he’d used it, and had disappeared. And in the end, even the cataclysm he unleashed was only another tool.

The man called Fera bent to examine the typewriter in front of me.

I sat rigidly, my eyes on him as he examined the black metal worn down to silver by decades of touch.

This is of the first generation, yes? he said. Twentieth century? Before all that business. . .

It was a complicated mechanism. Above the keyboard the cogs and levers were exposed. My memory passed over the functions of a few of those pieces of curved steel, but I didn’t trust my eyes not to expose more than was already seen, if I looked.

Between roughly 1988 and 2088 typewriters were all but extinct, I said. This one dates to before 1988, yes. I still didn’t dare look at the machine itself. My eyes remained locked on Fera’s.

Between roughly 1988 and precisely 2088, you should have said. Fera looked at me sideways. But how apropos that you should bring the conversation around to that which we came here to discuss. He glanced at the boy, who was motionless.

I thought by their questions I might learn who they were and what their aims were.

What do you seek? I said.

Fera stepped back from me. Orange light from the jalousie fell across his canvas-covered shoulders.

Adrian and I were surprised, and not surprised, to find you still living in the Val de Mexíca after all this time, he said. One might have first suspected any other part of the world than this, the scene of your crime. Yet it made a kind of sense. You could not have accomplished such an act without assistance from, let us say, underground groups, and afterwards those groups might well go on protecting you. And the power of these groups would be nowhere greater than on their own ground. We now know this to be the case, having passed through their dungeons en route to your house. And the V.M. is not just a city—it is an entire world. One might hide here indefinitely, and as one aged, become more and more invisible.

Is there a question in there? I said.

There are many, Fera said. Every sentence is a question. For some of them I already know the answers. The underground group that aided youyes, I see why they did so. Why your crime could have taken place nowhere save the Mexíca valleythat too is clear. But now we come to the questions that are unanswered.

I raised an eyebrow.

We know you are the only surviving member of the team that penetrated the vault on the military base in the eastern mountains ten years ago, Fera said.

My gaze fell from his face. I made an effort to relax my grip on the polished wood of the cane that lay across my lap.

And what was our crime, exactly?

Fera laughed shortly. Trespassing, I suppose. Certainly not theft. Of course, inside that vault is information that could lead to wealth and power beyond our imagining, but you made no move for it, did you?

No, I whispered.

Did you even know why you were there that day?

Ciók told a different story to each of us. I cursed myself for not better learning the science of forgetting. I was the only one who knew that fact, but even to me he didn’t reveal which story was true. If any were.

Why do you think he did it? Fera said. You were the last to see him alive.

I don’t know. My teeth clenched.

Fera circled like a matador.

I looked over at the boy, Adrian, but he didn't move.

At length he began again, quieter. That vault is, and was, the most tightly guarded installation in the Sur. As much as I would like to know how a small team, working independently of any government, managed to pierce the veil, I would like even more to know this: What did they learn when they got inside?

I’ll answer your questions, I said, to the best of my ability, but you too must agree to answer truthfully any question I put to you, before hearing it.

I will, he said, and there was complete honesty on his face.

I silently accepted his promise and continued: But I cannot answer that question, because I don’t know. Ciók was a solitary, and though I was the closest he had to a confidant, there was much he kept from me. All I can tell you is when we were inside the compound, he insisted on entering the vault alone. I was to wait in the antechamber.

Fera was still for a moment, then said, Describe the scene.

The Nova Imglaçu compound is built below the peak of El Mirador in the range that includes the twin volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. At the time of the compound’s construction it was only chaparral but it's now the Alto Ixayoc suburb of Texcoco. The vault burrows into the side of the mountain. The entrance to the antechamber is large, to accommodate the groups of people that the architects anticipated would come there, but who were pre-empted by events of which we all know.

And the vault doors?

Smaller, but harder than steel, or so they seemed.

Yes, as precaution against attack, Gibson said. In those days, the sapient devices were esteemed as weapons.

Among other functions, yes.

Continue your account, Sr. Ozeck.

The boy, Adrian Gibson, had stood throughout this conversation, but now he came toward me and took a seat on the edge of a mocha leather armchair.

We came through fire to enter the antechamber. When Ciók and Ithe rest of our team having perished in the strugglefinally stood inside the metal hallway, it was as though we had entered heaven, and not merely entered, but battered down the gates and stormed the keep. We sealed the outer blast doors, buying us enough time to accomplish our mission. The khalkanthropic machine inside the vault opened its doors to us.

And yet you did not go in! Fera said.

I slumped back in my seat. Ciók wouldn’t let me, I said, deflated. I know it’s difficult to believe now, but he persuaded me to remain outside.

But you must have seen something when the doors opened, Fera said.

Noit was darkness. One would walk forward into the darkness and allow the doors to close behind. Then the machine would generate images, a slice of the illusory world it inhabited.

Gibson nodded. A paracosm.

Fera frowned, then: Do you feel sorry for them?

For the khalkanthrópica?

Not for the simple onesI know they varied greatly in facultybut perhaps for the intelligent ones. It was a whole world that was destroyed, you know, a world we know next to nothing about.

I did a quick calculation: Yes, you would have been at about the right age. About ten years old when the khalkanthrópica went away. About the same age as Adrian is now. I nodded in the boy’s direction. You’ll be the very last of those who remember the old times.

I thought to rise. My hand moved to push the wheeled escritoire away from my chair. Almost touching the wood, my hand recalled why I mustn’t do that, and recoiled.

Gibson spoke up: But what happened after Ciók went into the vault?

I remained standing outside, in a chamber that then seemed very large and empty. I chuckled. It is certainly odd that I shouldn't have gone in.

Why, then? Gibson said.

At the time, I felt I had a compelling reason, I said, but now that you ask, I can’t think of it.

Ciók asked you to?

I nodded.

What did he say?

Only that he be allowed to go first. He. . . he convinced me.

How?

My forehead knitted. I don’t know. I can’t remember. And I couldn't.

Fera studied me for a moment, then said: Continue, then.

I waited in the antechamber for perhaps twenty minutes. Finally, when I thought we were pushing the window of escape, I bid the doors to open and entered the vault myself.

Fera leaned forward. And Ciók? he said. He was. . . ?

He was gone.

Gone?

The vault was empty, I said. From that day to this I never saw Emil Ciók again.

The stillness of Fera and Gibson dissolved into nervous activity.

There must have been a secret exit, a bolt-hole, Fera said. Adrian?

The boy was looking at me closely, hunting for clues perhaps.

You’re sure there were no other doors into the vault? Or that he was not somewhere concealed within and you overlooked him? You said it was all darkness inside, Fera asked.

No. When I went in, the darkness was gone. Carbide lamps illuminated every crevice of the room, which was bare, without furniture or niche, and with walls of solid stone blocks. And I searched for hidden doors! It was my first thought.

And the machine that reposed there? Fera said. It said nothing?

I knew it would not as soon as I saw the interior of the vault illuminated. That was its way of showing me it had deserted the place. That it had no wish to speak to me. It showed me bare stone in place of the illusions it showed Ciók, the illusions that reveal its mind.

But did it not have a control panel, a diagnostics board for its apparatus? Which could have concealed a passageway?

No, I sighed. The stone walls were unbroken. The carrier wave projects through. Granite is as glass to the neutrino beam.

Then Adrian spoke up, addressing me: Sr. Ozeck, can I use your toilet?

Behind the statue, I said, pointing, before turning my attention back to Fera.

Let's begin from the beginning, Sr. Ozeck, he said, pacing from my armchair to the bookcase. I know that we’re asking you to recall details of an event of ten years ago more precisely than you’re accustomed.

But why do you want to know these things?

I'll tell you. I was in the Concordat Armed Forces stationed in California. I accepted reassignment to the American liaison base in the V.M., Reyes Estraños. But since I arrived I've suspected I was meant to be an unwitting test subject for a new drug the Concordat is developing: a drug that is a weapon. This drug has its origins, Adrian and I believe, here in the Val de Mexíca ten years ago. We suspect its primary form was invented by none other than Emil Ciók. He first used it to penetrate the vault at Nova Imglaçu. You know of what I speak.

The thektic pharmakon.

There’s no way for me to know if I’ve received it, Fera continued. If it successfully alters my selfhood, it alters that which could remember the prior self.

And what is the boy’s purpose in this?

He, too, is employed by the Concordat. He worked on the thektic project at the V.M. liaison base. He is a savant.

I nodded.

Now he is my best hope toward finding out what has been done to me. He knows more than anyone alive about the drugthat is, unless Emil Ciók still lives.

And your search for Ciók led you to me.

You are the last link to him.

But I know nothing about his whereabouts, or even if he’s still alive, I protested. I’ve told you everything I know.

Yes, that when you entered the vault, a vault with only one door, into which he had entered only moments before, you found it empty.

He said it like he didn't believe me.

I swear it is the truth.

Adrian’s voice interrupted us: Maybe it is. He tossed a wireless pod to Fera and walked around him to stand in the middle of the room, near the door.

It’s not possible, Fera growled.

Fera went to the sofa and sank into it. He fiddled with Adrian's blued steel wireless pod and tossed it from hand to hand absent-mindedly.

Begin from the beginning, he said, almost to himself. Ten years ago, you and Ciók broke into one of the most closely guarded facilities in the western hemisphere, the home of the last of the khalkanthrópica. You did it using the secret weapon Ciók invented, the thektic drug. Then, just when you achieved your aim, Ciók vanishes from the face of the earth. You live out the next decade in seclusion in this quiet neighborhood, just down the street from Los Venados Park. But what was your aim in the first place?

We stared at each other. Fera was first to break eye contact. His gaze went to his hands, to the wireless pod he held. His hands, searching for something to do, opened the shell.

What did Ciók learn in that room? he murmured. What could he have learned only at that one spot on all the earth? What could only the last of the khalkanthrópica have told him?

He looked over the wireless’s small square of mechanical pixels. I saw something there catch his eye. He looked closer. His thumb played over the toggles.

Then his eyes widened.

He looked up at Adrian, questioning with his eyes.

I could see Adrian already knew what Fera had seen on the wireless’s display. His face was cold and hard again, the metal eyes in a slab of granite.

Sorry, Niko, the boy said. But he wasn't sorry.

Fera stammered: Why?

Before Adrian could answer, my curiosity overcame me. What happened? I blurted. Tell me!

Fera turned toward me, shock written all over his face. Adrian’s called the government.

Troops will be here within seconds, Niko, Adrian said. You can’t escape.

Fera surged to his feet, faster than I’d thought him capable. We’ll see about that, he barked.

Then I heard a tumult from the street outside the townhouse. Half a dozen vehicles, dozens of men running, shouting, pounding up the steps to my door. The army had arrived.

Fera turned to me. Is there another way out of here?

The speed of it dumfounded me. As the first blows of a battering ram resounded against the black wood of my front door, Fera again knelt next to my chair.

Is there another way out of here? he repeated.

A narrow line appeared on the door, widened. The wood splintered under the concussion of the ram.

Stunned, I looked down. And there was the ancient typewriter on the writing table in front of me, just as it had always been.

Chapter 2

Noötect

Later, when Fera and I had time, waiting, in the safe house, I told him the complete story of the breaking into Nova Imglaçu. It began when I was living in Colónia Ízumal ten years before I met Fera. Farmen AkG had just transferred me from my native Beirut to work in the pathology division of their North American subsidiary.

They called us the 'death merchants.' That was our kind of joke. Our division was kept separate from the main laboratory in Wyoming Urbis because ours produced the mirror image of traditional medicine. We focused not on curing, but on causing. This field, though becoming more accepted, still bore a stigma. Hence the high security surrounding the Ízumal laboratories.

Fifty years ago the development of augmentative medicine opened up the military as a customer. Armies always had an interest in keeping their soldiers healthy, but now they had the option of expanding their abilities as well. Then came drugs to attack the enemy soldier's cherta and noötecture. That was where I fit in, in the semi-clandestine field of machypharmacology (‘battle drugs’), the newest branch of the military-industrial complex.

At that time Ciók was a man just entering middle age, with an aura of youth and energy about him. He was of European heritage, with the accent of one raised outside the old homelands. Since I was also a citizen of one of the new Europes, our shared cultural background assisted friendship.

I was new at the subsidiary Immokal-Mexíca and just meeting people. This was my first time in Mexico save a brief tour of the historical capital and the Immokal campus when the mother company Farmen was encouraging me to accept the transfer. The company made the transition painless, providing me with an apartment and unlimited use of their restaurant. Still, the cultural dislocation and the fact that I spoke little Spanish made it a lonely period.

Ciók and I spoke several more times over the next few weeks, and gradually became accustomed to sitting together at meals. It emerged he had an interest in squash, as did I, and we began to play once or twice a week. It was during one of those matches, in the white echo chamber between the pock of the ball, that he first hinted at his plan.

He asked if I knew anything about the Sophodaemon.

I didn’t, of course. Nobody knew very much, and curiosity wasn’t encouraged.

Later, we relaxed with a drink after work.

What do we know about the time before the Exoleia? He lifted a few splinters of dry ice with flexible silver tongs and dropped them into his drink.

Well. I sipped from own glass. I can only assume you mean what we know with respect to the intelligent machines. We know they assisted human civilization with many tasks. We know they were creating their own civilization.

He inserted the steel mesh to keep the ice at the bottom of the insulated glass and gave the container an experimental swirl. White smoke climbed over its lip.

Okay, he said. That much is common knowledge. But what about the Exoleia itself. What caused it, for instance?

The thanatofera, of course.

And you know that no one really knows what that means. The Death-bringer. A name masquerading as an explanation. Another name was the khalkovirus: the virus of brass. In reality, virus is a word from biology that doesn’t apply to azoics. The khalkovirion is perhaps similar to a natural virion in that it is a destructive, parasitically replicating, semi-living, nano-scale organism, but that's as far as it goes. An analogy, is all.

Night fell on the other side of the building and the peaks to the west pushed their shadows across the valley floor.

So what’s really happening then, Emil? I said, watching the mounting darkness. Why can engineers no longer duplicate the mechanisms of that era? Unlike an ordinary disease, the thanatofera had not perished with the extinction of their host. Mysteriously, they survived, though no one knew in what substrate. All they knew is that whenever anybody tried to build another sapient engine from the old blueprints, it soon died.

He shrugged, though I didn't believe this