Ouijatech

By Benjamin Burress

The Board is set. The Spirits are listening. Pose your questions. Be careful what you ask.

Twenty years after the discovery of intelligent signals emanating from the dark energy spectrum of the universe, the world copes with the implication that they originate from the souls of the dead. Science, religion, and society seek to understand the relationship humans appear to share with "ouijans."

As the technology that made the discovery is developed to enable further investigation, communication, and even partnerships with these denizens of the immaterial dark universe, their true nature remains elusive.

While exploring their relationships with ouijans to understand what these beings mean to their own lives, a group of people, spread across the globe and beyond, are drawn into a deeper mystery. A spirit-tech transmediation business owner, his employee, and son. A researcher lecturing on ouija science. A prioress of a post-Revealing religious order. A software engineer at the world's largest ouijatech corporation. The crew of a spacecraft exploring a distant planet. A graduate student pursuing her personal investigation with borrowed—or stolen—technology. The scientist who discovered ouijans.

These individuals come together—or are brought together—to solve a riddle: What does the proliferation of the dark energy technology mean to the existence of ouijans themselves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Burress
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215291368

Benjamin Burress

My working life has always centered around science and education, but writing fiction--mostly science fiction and fantasy--has been an accompaniment throughout; another mode of expressing thoughts and feelings about the world and universe. As a Peace Corps Volunteer I taught physics and math in Cameroon. I worked for ten years at research observatories, first NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, and then at Lowell Observatory. Since 1999 I have been a staff astronomer and content researcher at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.

Book preview

2063

Jaxxon moved along the smooth gravel path in a quick step, almost falling into a skip every few paces. Casting his gaze wide, he scanned the lightly wooded meadow on either side, searching for the professor.

A chill breeze tousled the crowns of the tallest oaks and sycamores, sending leafy whispers through the canopy of the University of Edinburgh gardens. Jaxxon’s wavy yellow hair shined in the midmorning sunlight, defiantly holding its coif against the wind as he searched.

Professor Vaughn was somewhere in the square, he had been told by one of her cadre of grad students. If she was not strolling the paths, the grad said, check out the labyrinth, where the professor often went for relaxation. After her night’s historical achievement of piercing the veil to the dark energy universe, she would be meditating on her discovery.

Spotting the hedge that marked the perimeter of the eighty-year-old garden labyrinth, Jaxxon turned north, stepping off the path and making his way across the lawn. Rounding the shoulder-high evergreen hedge to the north side of the circle, he passed through the singular opening and surveyed the maze within.

A spiraling sweep of tawny pebble pathways lined with narrow gray cobblestones sprawled across a fifteen-meter circle, enclosed within a mossy perimeter walkway furnished with four counterposed stone benches. Seated on the southwestern bench was the professor.

Professor Vaughn sat hunched slightly forward, facing the center of the labyrinth. Her eyes cast toward her feet and her arms folded across her chest, all that she needed to become a living embodiment of the Thinker was to rest her chin on a fist. Bright silver hair spilled from under a red wool cap, flowing over her right shoulder against a thick black sweater.

Jaxxon paused at the labyrinth entrance, judging whether he should disturb her now, or defer a meeting to regular office hours. She was clearly deep in thought, probably ruminating on her scientific accomplishment of the evening before, and how it would reshape fields of science from galactic astrophysics to cosmology to universal genesis. Would Jaxxon’s unannounced appearance, hounding her for a recount of her lab experiment, be unwelcome, even rebuffed?

Standing for a moment on the decision to intrude or turn back, he sighed, his excitement and curiosity overpowering the consideration. When something great occurs and one is near at hand, one does not simply walk away out of politeness. Right?

Drawing a long breath, he stepped to his right, diverting his course along the perimeter path to avoid entering the maze. There was no superstition involved in choosing the circuitous route, only a long-standing University tradition of completing the labyrinth path once stepped upon.

The professor did not look up as he rounded the circle. She did not seem to notice his approach. When he was three meters from the bench, Jaxxon stopped, again debating if the moment was right to disturb her. Was she so deep in thought as to be unaware of his presence, even though he had made a point to drag his last few steps along the path? Then he noticed the bud of a microaud in her left ear. She was listening to something. She was not talking, only listening, it seemed.

Deciding that the moment was not right to intrude, Jaxxon turned back in the direction of the hedge portal. He considered walking straight across the labyrinth to hasten his retreat, lowering the chance of being noticed and sparing the embarrassment for the aborted encounter.

You want to speak with me? the professor asked.

Too late. He had been spotted.

Looking back, Jaxxon smiled, sheepishly, and nodded his head.

Sorry to disturb you, he said, but, I heard the news, and, well—it’s exciting. I—I’m curious how it went.

A corner of the professor’s mouth turned upward in a half smile. It is exciting, she said, her smile broadening. The test went well. First light for the instrument has been achieved—or should I say, first dark? After all, it isn’t light we detected. We did the all-up yesterday evening.

Jaxxon nodded, reflecting the professor’s smile. For a moment, the two looked at each other with a glint of satisfaction in their eyes, sharing an appreciation for what had taken place the night before, the first detection of cosmic dark energy fluvial signal ever. The professor turned her face more squarely to the man.

You’re Blum, she said, from my Introductory Cosmology class.

Yes, he nodded. Jaxxon.

Vaughn studied the man’s youthful face for a moment. So, the chapter on dark energy fluvia theory has sparked some interest in you—at least, I’ll assume that, given your curiosity about my lab experiment.

Jaxxon nodded again. I’ve been spellbound since you introduced the subject, and the hypothetical about cosmic fluvial tomography being a possible means of peering inside the quantum structure of the universe.

The professor’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if she were trying to see beyond Jaxxon’s face, directly into his brain.

Forgive me for not knowing this, but what are you studying, Blum?

Psychology, he said simply, drawing a raised eyebrow from the woman.

Psychology, she repeated, distantly.

Well, yes, he said, shrugging. But I’m questioning if I should change course. Go from the study of one unseen thing—human thought and emotion—to another: cosmic dark energy phenomena. He finished the sentence with a light chuckle.

The professor angled her face higher, as if sizing up the man standing before her.

Well, now we’ve had a peek, she said. It’s no longer completely unseen—or unheard. She tapped the microaud in her ear. The transnuclear interferometer is now a technical reality. We fired it up and recorded ten minutes of continuum signal before the matrix alignment degraded. We’ll have to find a more stable containment domain for the heavy nuclei—diamond, maybe.

What did you see—or, hear? Jaxxon asked with a breathless hush.

The question evoked a cautious stare from the professor, as if she were holding an answer for him, but judging it might not be the answer he expected. Now, she shifted her sitting position, scooting away from the center of the bench and offering the vacated end to Jaxxon with a wave of her hand.

Sit down. But take care what questions you ask.

Jaxxon’s brow tightened. He was not sure how to interpret her cautionary tone. He took the offered end of the bench, angling his body toward the professor. What did it sound like? he asked.

Another silent moment.

It sounded as I decided it would sound, as far as the tonal coding is concerned. Ten minutes of humming, warbling, and chirping across nine octaves. The professor eyed Jaxxon as if she were proctoring an exam to a student. Jaxxon did not flinch.

That, she said, her sharp glare blunting around the edge, "was my expectation for the audio transform of the continuum emission—and it sounded more wonderful than I imagined it would. I might have mapped a suite of symphonic instruments instead of simple tones to give the moment greater dramatic effect, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was just as glorious. The previously hypothetical dark energy fluvial signal can now be detected and measured, giving us unprecedented insight to the underlying nature of our universe. Huzzah."

The quick smile she added to the triumphant flourish surprised Jaxxon, for in all the weeks of attending her lectures he had not seen her face display such unguarded delight. The peak of elation was short-lived, and the professor’s expression retreated to its usual containment—though not, Jaxxon was grateful, the acute crispness of a moment before.

Fantastic, said Jaxxon. Historical, he added, like when the first X-ray photograph showed the bones of a human hand within.

No, not like that, said the professor, her often subtle Scottish accent rising above the surface of her speech. In that case, human bones had been seen before—just not while still encased in flesh, not while the subject was still alive. What we got a peek of last night may be more like the blood—the blood of existence. Yes, blood, I like that. We jabbed the universe and took a blood sample, and now we can analyze the very DNA of existence—in theory, at least. We have a lot more work ahead, but….

Jaxxon waited a moment for the professor to say more. When she did not, he prompted, But, what, Dr. Vaughn?

The professor fixed Jaxxon’s eyes with her own, holding his attention guardedly. You’re a psych student, you say?

Jaxxon nodded.

Can I get your opinion on something—your perspective?

Jaxxon nodded again, more slowly this time. Certainly, professor.

I’d like to share an aud with you—a portion of the signal capture from last night’s test. She tapped the microaud in her ear, then pulled out a small lavender micmouse, giving its touch interface a few quick swipes and holding it up to Jaxxon.

Jaxxon looked at the offering, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his own blue micmouse and held it up, lightly tapping it to the professor’s. A couple of swipes to the interface raised a chorus of overlapping tones that filled the air between them—chirps, whistles, and trills, accompanied by deep hums, thrums, and repeating throbs.

That’s the continuum, said Dr. Vaughn. Most of the ten-minute capture sounds like that, more or less. Now, listen, she almost whispered, leaning slightly closer to Jaxxon. Intrigued, Jaxxon concentrated on the aud, wondering if the professor was testing his hearing acuity. He leaned slightly closer to his bench mate, as if this would improve his chances of detecting any subtle change in sound.

There was nothing subtle about what Jaxxon heard next.

A new sound rose out of the background chorus, cresting the surface of inaudibility suddenly, like a dolphin breaking a wave from the depths below and surging into view. A hum of low frequency tones formed the base of the sound, and riding on top, as if on the dolphin’s back, sang a rich and complex choir of notes, almost musical in quality. The volume swelled quickly, reached a peak of loudness, then shifted to lower pitches and fell once more beneath the surface of the background noise.

I can tell by the size of your eyes this intrigues you, said Dr. Vaughn.

Jaxxon stared with round eyes, not at his micmouse, not at the woman seated next to him, but somewhere in the evergreen hedge beyond.

Continuum? Jaxxon almost whispered, and with little conviction.

Dr. Vaughn shook her head slowly, a wry smile riding her lips. And not a cosmic event, she said. It was not far off, the source of that signal. And it was in motion.

Jaxxon’s thumb swiped his micmouse interface and the anomalous sound repeated.

Three seconds, he said. That’s all I heard.

Me as well.

Could some piece of technology account for it? Jaxxon probed. Like, a vehicle passing nearby?

I think not, said the woman, a lock of her silvery hair caught momentarily in a gust of wind. Engines should not disturb the fluvia in a way that would produce a signal like that—theoretically that is. Not even nuke-powered ones. If we ever manage to detect those signals, it should sound very different, and not as powerful.

Jaxxon flicked his micmouse again, replaying the aud, then placing it in a repeat loop. On each pass through the sound clip, the muscles in his face tightened a bit more as he listened with greater intent. By the tenth repeat his eyes were closed and his forehead deeply furrowed. Dr. Vaughn studied Jaxxon’s face closely as they both listened to the looping aud.

I’ve been listening to it for hours, she said, turning her face toward the labyrinth’s folded pathway, and running analysis on the lab wizard. I can’t get a bearing on direction, but based on the amplitude curve the source was moving in a straight line. And if it was any farther away than a hundred meters, it was moving fast.

Jaxxon continued to listen to his micmouse, eyes closed.

"What would you make of it, psych student?" Dr. Vaughn said, with subtle emphasis on her last two words.

Jaxxon’s eyes opened then and turned to the woman. A swipe of his thumb paused the aud and the air between them fell silent. Jaxxon’s face looked slightly paler than a moment before.

There’s a quality to the patterns, he said, slowly, not completely unlike the sonified synaptic discharge chatter from a brain. I listened to a lot of that last quad, in my neuropsychology class. But this is—different.

Jaxxon’s assessment earned a single nod from the professor.

Dr. Vaughn, are you suggesting…. Jaxxon’s voice trailed off.

The woman turned her head to the side, but kept her eyes trained on Jaxxon’s face.

I want to hear your thoughts, Blum. Young mind, fresh perspective, different angle—all that. May earn you extra credit in Intro-Cos. Her eyebrows raised a notch. What, she asked, are we listening to?

Jaxxon sat up straighter, turning away from Dr. Vaughn and squaring his shoulders to the center of the labyrinth. He turned his head that way as well. He appeared uncomfortable—either from the hard stone bench or the subject he was being asked to opine on.

"Maybe—maybe it was a vehicle. A wing, or a hurliblade, or maybe the Edinburgh mag-rail, inducing noise somewhere in your instrumentation. If not in the detector itself, then perhaps in the support electronics?"

The professor shook her head briefly. Ruled out by internal diagnostics. The signal came through the atom matrix, same as the continuum.

But— Jaxxon hedged, his head swaying side to side with uncertainty, if it’s not a technological source or instrumental noise, and the signal came through the dark energy fluvia—and it sounds like….

The professor’s eyes flared. Now you know what kept me up all night.

That—that’s an extraordinary hypothesis.

What, that we’re listening to a signal originating in the dark energy spectrum that seems to be modulated by some form of—intelligence? Her Scottish accent had returned. Mad, they’d call me if I hoisted that one up for peer review. At least, until I build another transnuclear interferometer and make further observations. Then—we’ll see…. Her last words came in a near whisper.

Flashing a bracing grin at Jaxxon, Dr. Vaughn stood abruptly. She turned toward the seated man and raised her right palm to him.

Thank you for sharing your perspective, Blum, she said. Stop by my lab sometime, if you find yourself dwelling too heavily on questions you can’t find answers to. That’s what labs are for, after all.

Without another word or glance, Dr. Vaughn turned on booted heal and strode away, straight across the maze toward the exit, disregarding the labyrinth’s circuitous curves and decades of tradition.

Jaxxon sat stalk straight as he watched her go, trying to make sense of the host of questions she had left him with, piled up in his brain like a load of slippery, flopping fish. He had sought a simple recount of her breakthrough achievement. Now, her warning about being careful what questions he asked made clear sense.

After several minutes, Jaxxon stood, straightened his jacket, and began walking the perimeter path back toward the north end of the hedge. When he reached the maze entrance, he stopped, glancing at the well-ordered chaos of curves defining the labyrinth path. He needed time to think, he decided, to sort out the questions that followed him now like a gang of phantoms. Later, perhaps, he would visit the professor’s lab to gather more information, but now he wanted to clear his head.

Jaxxon turned to his right, placing one foot squarely inside the maze entrance.

Now you’ve done it, he said to himself in a whisper. No stepping off this path until you reach the center.

Chapter 1

2083

The board is set.

Giancarlo uttered the phrase with ritual smoothness.

A round table separated the middle-aged man and his younger client. A wide flat disk comprised most of the tabletop, filled with a colorful spread of geometric shapes and concentric circles glowing brightly against the room’s somber décor. A border of burnished black poplar, the only remnant of the original table surface, framed the luminous face. Patterns of vines and leaves carved into the table’s edge gleamed with a polished luster, the recesses shadowed by aged varnish.

Giancarlo found the table in an antique shop and restored it by hand. The meter-wide circular face came from the same shop. In its former life it had been the interface for a touch-art toy—vintage technology, but well suited to Giancarlo’s purpose. He balked at cutting the tabletop’s fine wood to form the inset for the face but was satisfied to create an object of unique beauty, and a functional piece of work equipment as well.

Standard ouijaboard layouts were rectangular or square, so reformatting the board’s theme to fit the face’s circular field made Giancarlo’s parlor table a singular work of art. His sole employee, Zuri, called it the Magic Eight-Ball, after a fortune-telling toy popular a century before. 

Giancarlo researched historical séance and fortune-telling parlors, finding many examples of chambers ornately decorated with dark-colored curtains or wall hangings, lit by lamps or candles, and almost always featuring a central circular table. Some of the tables were large, to accommodate séance sessions with multiple guests, while others were more intimate in size, for one-on-one Tarot reads or crystal-scrying services. 

Giancarlo’s client, a young man with blond hair and green eyes, sat attentively, his stare fixed on the luminous board, his pale face standing out against the subdued backdrop of the Whisper Chamber. 

Giancarlo said nothing for a moment, allowing his client’s expectation to grow naturally. The man remained silent, forming a question in his mind as he had been instructed, but awaiting a prompt from his Whisperer. 

Giancarlo glanced to the center of the board. Barely any motion stirred the ten mood blocks: twinned pairs of green squares, red triangles, blue circles, yellow pentagons, and violet five-pointed stars. The outer band of the board face was deep blue, typical for the beginning of most sessions. 

When Giancarlo judged the moment was right, he said softly, What is your question?

The young man’s eyes flared slightly, as if he had been awakened from a sleepy thought. He drew in a breath, swallowed, and said, in French, I don’t have a specific question, right now. I simply want to hear a word from my mother. Anything at all.

Giancarlo shifted from standard English to French, in keeping with his client’s mood. He waited his routine three-heartbeat pause before speaking again. 

We can try that, M. Neeser he said, but it helps to pose a focused question. The more personal, the better.

The young Lausannean was a walk-in customer to Giancarlo’s parlor and had not prepared himself with the orientation guide on Sussurri’s Vine leaf, other than a quick scanning of the welcome mat and the disclaimers he had to thumb off. Giancarlo had to orient M. Neeser on the fly. 

Giancarlo split his attention between the board and his client. The coherence-confidence band was still deep blue, so he gave more attention to the human indicator: M. Neeser’s face. 

The man’s eyes and brow channeled a look of worry, or sadness—a mixture of the two, Giancarlo estimated. His mother had died recently, explaining the sadness. The worry, Giancarlo guessed, had something to do with a loose end left by her passing. Perhaps M. Neeser had come to Sussurri to hear a word from mother, or to say a posthumous goodbye. He might also be after information that only mama could provide. 

It was all guesswork, but Giancarlo had been in the business long enough to get a read on his customers’s intentions before they divulged many details. Simply walking in the doors of Sussurri suggested the client sought contact with someone—or in a few cases, some thing. Giancarlo shivered, recalling two or three of his more worrisome clients whose goals for communicating with the voices of the dark spectrum bordered on creepy, at best.

M. Neeser nodded then. 

What I would like to ask my mother, M. Di Mercurio, is, well, what is it like, beyond—after death? What does she feel? What—happens? His eyes remained fixed on the central sector of the board, where the colorful mood blocks remained in their rest state. 

Ah, thought Giancarlo, that loose end. 

He almost smiled, but was too seasoned a Whisperer to let his inner thoughts show. 

What happens after death, what it is like in the beyond, was by far the most frequent question asked by Sussurri’s customers. Since the discovery of Intelligent Dark Energy Signal twenty years before, and the evidential link between IDES and some state of consciousness of people who have died, this had been a number one question in society at large. It was also a question that never earned a satisfactory answer from the departed. Understanding any response, message, or signal coming through a ouijaboard—or any ouijatech device for that matter—relied so heavily on subjective interpretation that any translation had to be considered with its coherence-confidence rating, the mathematical grain of salt. 

State your mother’s full name at the time of her death, said Giancarlo, still in French, and your full name and relationship to her. If you like, you may also say something personal about your mother, something that few, or even just you, know.

M. Neeser replied at once, which told Giancarlo he knew something about the nature of ouijaboard function. The welcome board was set, and now it was time to send a message into the dark spectrum. 

She was Noelia Luisa von Allmen. I am her first son—only son—Linus Rafael Neeser. I was at her bedside when she passed, and brought her flowers—her favorite, bellflower.

M. Neeser raised his face from the board to his Whisperer. Is that enough? he asked with his eyes. 

Giancarlo nodded, noting that the information had been captured, encoded, and lined up in the board’s send queue. A string of colorful geomes, miniature versions of the palm-sized mood blocks of the central sector, assembled along its perimeter. The small shapes were outlined in yellow, indicating moderate phrase confidence. Composed from a well-vetted knowledgebase of translation domains, outgoing messages usually rated yellow, only scoring lower when a phrase was too complex, or the human grammar poorly constructed.

Cesca, Sussurri’s wiz interface AID, was adept at nuancing outgoing messages. The translator giz by itself was not bad, considering it was originally a low-cost commercial module. Zuri had enhanced the translator with her own giz coding, but Cesca had developed much experience over the years. 

Giancarlo reached out with his right hand and swept his fingertips across the send bar. The string of geomes flashed once and faded, leaving the field black. Message sent. 

In the basement below, the modest tidbit array of Sussurri’s planchette would be transmitting the message by transnuclear interferometric resonance, though Giancarlo understood little of the science behind it. What was important to him, and to Sussurri, was that the ouijatech did work, and could yield results—sometimes. 

Sometimes. Giancarlo sighed softly. Sometimes—if any departed spirit was listening and cared to talk back. Cooperation by those mysterious entities was the largest variable in Giancarlo’s business model. 

Sussurri offers no guarantee, stated the clause in the disclaimers, that communication will be achieved during any given session, or that any communication established will be with the individual the client seeks to contact.

M. Neeser agreed to the terms of service with a quick thumbing of the acknowledgement leaf, and may have even read them, so Giancarlo only had to worry whether his customer went away pleased or dissatisfied. And, Giancarlo reminded himself, a certain percentage of sessions that do not achieve two-way conversation looks good on the Vine reviews. Customers were more confident in the authenticity of a company like Sussurri if the success rate mirrored the real-world challenge of communicating with the dead. 

Not the dead, Giancarlo also reminded himself, the departed. Customers never like to think of their expired loved ones as dead, especially if they want to speak with them. 

M. Neeser’s eyes lingered hopefully on the mood blocks, but he remained silent. Anxious though he might be to hear from mama, if he knew anything about ouijasusurro mediumship, or even purely scientific IDES research, he would know that responses were seldom immediate. 

Giancarlo’s attention shifted between M. Neeser and the deep blue confidence band. Deep blue meant zero confidence for IDES detection, the baseline for background continuum noise that was always present. With the message sent, the planchette would be in reception mode, open to all signals from the dark energy spectrum.

Giancarlo wondered if Zuri could see anything more on the analytic board in the tech room. Her readouts would show any small statistical shifts in coherence, proximity, and background fluctuations that the confidence band could only report by color changes, which were often subtle. An analytic display would be useful in the Whisper Chamber, but Giancarlo did not want the distraction. He preferred to focus on the customer: their mood, their expressions; the human element of the process. He found that restricting himself to the ouijaboard’s qualitative output helped him stay in tune with his questing client. 

For the same reason, Giancarlo refused to use an earpip or auditory implant to hear messages from the tech room, or Cesca. A voice buzzing in his ear from outside a session would be an annoying distraction—and, if an inspector were to intercept the signal, it could put a stain on Sussurri’s reputation. 

Giancarlo’s left eyebrow raised a notch. Did he detect a slight color shift at the board’s perimeter? Might it be a slightly lighter shade of blue? He looked to the mood blocks. The twin red squares had shifted slightly away from the center of the board, and one of them had shrunk minutely. At the same time, one of the pair of green triangles enlarged and moved closer to the center, followed shortly by its partner. The size changes were small, but noticeable in comparison to each block’s reference twin. Mood block geomes came in pairs for this reason, with the lead changing size, shade, or position first, and its partner lagging. 

M. Neeser noticed the changes as well. 

What is she saying? he whispered, his excitement plain. 

Someone has taken notice of the call, said Giancarlo, speaking in the parlance for customers. Some one, not some thing. In the scientific world of IDES research, ouijans were typically referred to not as human, but something else. Some things else. 

As a professional ouijasusurro, Giancarlo’s job was to humanize any messages from ouijans. He did not refer to them as ouijans while in session, since this might imply they were merely individuals of another species, denizens of the dark energy universe, whatever that really meant. 

Spirits of the departed, souls of those who have passed beyond, ancestral psyches who have shed their material forms. These were the terms in Sussurri’s phrase leaf, chosen to connect its customers with their loved ones who no longer walk the Earth.

Is it mother? M. Neeser’s eyes were wide.

Three heartbeats….

It is too soon to tell, Giancarlo said softly. Clues to identity can only come out in conversation.

What should I say? Or do I wait for her—or, them—to talk?

Now that we have someone’s attention, said Giancarlo, you can say something, ask a question, or wait to see if the spirit is interested enough to come closer, or to communicate. 

M. Neeser straightened in his chair, some of the sadness in his eyes replaced by eager curiosity. 

Well, he said, if we don’t know who it is, maybe I should ask that—who is it? 

Giancarlo nodded once, prompting M. Neeser to ask his question. 

Who is there? he said, Is that you, mother?

A sequence of colorful geomes tumbled into the send queue, flashed, and disappeared on a swipe by Giancarlo. With his eye on the confidence band, Giancarlo gave a sigh of satisfaction. Yes, the ring was warming up, rising to light blue with a tinge of green. In the central sector the reactive triangle grew a bit larger, and a lighter shade of green. The twin blue circles drew closer to the center of the board, the lead swelling to twice the size of its partner. 

There is a positive response to your question, said the Whisperer. That is not the same as a yes, but the spirit seems to be interested in your message. 

How can we tell if it’s mother? M. Neeser’s voice quavered—with a mixture of excitement and a small measure of panic. 

Panic was not an uncommon reaction for someone coming into close, verifiable proximity to a ghost. It was a new human reaction to the presence of the hypernatural, a primal fight or flight response that people never experienced in the times before the discovery of IDES. 

In the séance parlors of the nineteenth century there could be apprehension, anxiety, even fear for alleged encounters with spirits, even though many of those sessions had been conducted by fraudulent mediums. And though there were plenty of people then who believed in the supernatural, still that belief could not be pinned within the sphere of known things, like sun and Earth and stars. 

People did not react with panic when there came a tapping under the séance table, or when a medium entered a trance or a frenzy of autowriting, or even when a luminous apparition appeared in the darkened chamber for all around the table to see. Misgiving, fright, even dread perhaps. But true panic is a different thing, reserved for immediate perils of the real world. 

In a world where ouijan phantoms are made real by the instruments of science, merely sitting in a room with a ouijatech ghost detector reporting an immediate and present spirit was a new facet of human experience. In the parlor of Sussurri the only manifestations of the hypernatural came through the visual elements on the ouijaboard, or a voice translation by the AID, Cesca, if the client desired. The visible specters and audible emanations of pre-IDES séance chambers were almost certainly faked, for as far as science could determine, ouijans had no ability to make themselves heard, seen, or felt to the physical senses.

Identifying the spirit, said Giancarlo, pausing several beats past three, is not a simple matter of asking for their name. If your conversation goes well, clues may emerge that fit together. Ask your questions without being concerned with who you are talking to. What is important, and encouraging, is that there is a spirit who seems to be receptive.

M. Neeser nodded quickly, reminded of the rules of the game, rules that he already knew but impulsively wanted to skip to get to a quick answer.

What— he said tentatively, as if testing the temperature of a swimming pool with a toe. Then he changed his footing and said, Why are you here?

A better question, thought Giancarlo. Maybe M. Neeser was getting the hang of it. 

Giancarlo swept the new line of geomes off the board and on to the planchette downstairs. The two men waited. 

A moment later came a shift in the mood blocks. The reactive triangle grew larger, and a lighter shade of green, while the square shrank further and turned a deeper hue. The circle expanded and became turquoise. The pentagon pair reacted for the first time, the lead shrinking to a quarter size and turning deep gold. Their positions shifted as well, the triangle and circle moving together to the center of the field and the square and pentagon sliding to the perimeter, at zero and one hundred degrees, respectively. Their lagging partners held their original states for a few seconds, then re-twinned with their leads. The confidence band shined deep green. Giancarlo scratched at his salt-and-pepper sideburn as he made his direct translation. 

Have heard your name and come to see.

M. Neeser shivered visibly, shaking his shoulders as if to shrug off a chill. He glanced from the board to his Whisperer’s face with a puzzled look. Giancarlo knew what the look asked: how had he made that translation from the behavior of the mood block geomes? 

It’s a skill, Giancarlo explained. He shifted in his chair to work out a kink in his back. There are several possible translations I could give you, but that’s the one I feel most confident about. That’s how these conversations go. It’s not a viaud call, after all. It’s ouijasusurro. Giancarlo smiled warmly. 

M. Neeser nodded slowly and returned his attention to the board. His eyes turned to the sector outside the central field near his left hand, which was filled with thirty or so small ivory-colored circles, more than half of which bore a unique black symbol. 

What of those? he asked. Don’t those spell out words?

They can, after a fashion. Giancarlo was prepared to answer this question from the start. Clients always asked about the ouijabet. But only if the spirit is literate.

My mother was quite literate of course, said M. Neeser, with an air of mild indignation. 

Naturally, said Giancarlo, unfazed. "In French, in Swiss, in English—and any other languages she may have known. But that’s not the same. Spirits don’t speak those languages—any human languages. To communicate symbolically, a spirit must be trained in the ouijabet, like any human child must know their letters to spell out words. That takes time—months, or years."

M. Neeser sighed, his momentary defensiveness trailing off. 

The confidence band faded from rich green back to bluer tones. Giancarlo bit his lip. 

Another question? he prompted. Quickly, he wanted to urge. The spirit was already losing interest. Whatever had attracted their attention had not kept it. They were moving away. This was not the spirit of Noelia Luisa von Allmen, Giancarlo’s gut told him. Not that a personal identification could ever be made with any confidence, but if this were the ouijan that issued from her death, he expected they would tarry a bit longer.

What interest do you have in me? asked M. Neeser. Another decent question. Find out about the spirit by asking what it finds interesting about you. Giancarlo sent the message, hopeful that it would forestall the spirit’s departure. 

The mood blocks shifted again. The reactive square enlarged and moved toward the center of the field, chasing the green triangle toward the sideline. Likewise, the circle moved away from the center, deflating and turning deeper blue, at the same time beginning to wobble slightly in a circular motion. The pentagon grew in place and turned a rosier shade of gold, threatening to become orange. 

Giancarlo glanced at M. Neeser’s face. Anyone with passing familiarity with standard geome symbology should sense the turn the conversation had taken. 

No interest in you, is one translation Giancarlo could offer, and that would end the session. Thought you were someone else would be a stretch, but still a valid interpretation within broader phantasmolinguistic guidelines. 

The session may already have ended. The mood blocks might vanish at any moment and the confidence band return to its deep blue zero state. The board was still active, though, and Giancarlo opted for a less decisive read.

Go there, he said in his best Whisperer voice, see yourself. Wander with me. Giancarlo threw in the last phrase knowing it was a highly debatable interpretation. 

M. Neeser’s mouth formed a tight o, and he squinted. Giancarlo could interpret these indicators as well. 

Two rooms away, at the end of Sussurri’s main inner hallway, Zuri gave a sigh. The board’s analytic readouts, spread before her across the worktable’s three wizfaces, were all in agreement with what her boss had probably concluded. The ouijan that showed momentary interest was moving away. The session was ending.

Wander with me? she said, shaking her head, her lofty bale of charcoal hair following the motion with a brief delay, like a reactive-reference geome pair. Cesca, she said, what’s your top choice on translations for that last receive?

A woman’s voice, deep and somewhat gravelly, issued from the small room’s four walls, speaking in English. 

Giancarlo’s first phrase ranks eight on my neutral column, and second on the positive. But ‘wander with me’ doesn’t work.

Yeah. Zuri nodded. He wants to send M. Neeser away with some incentive. She sighed again. Well, he was a walk-in. Now he can walk out, but with the idea that a soul is tagging along—and he can imagine it’s his mother’s if he wants.

I estimate only a two percent chance, rounded up, that the ouijan identifies with M. Neeser in any personal way, said Cesca, flashing the number in the AID pane on the left wizface. 

Does that two percent assume the spirit wants to talk to him? asked Zuri. What if they were estranged, or something?

If there was any friction in the relationship, the ouijan should either show persistent interest in Linus—though probably antagonistic—or they would not have shown up at all. This one showed initial positive interest—curiosity—then a quick turn in the other direction. They may have expected to meet someone else, or simply found Linus uninteresting.

Zuri made a mental note of Cesca’s analysis. She was always interested in improving her own Whispering skills and lean less on Cesca’s translations. With a flick of her eyeball Zuri summoned her personal translation giz and ran the last receive from her boss’s session through it. The giz returned its top three neutral interpretations. 

I have somewhere else to be.

Try again later, when I’m not around.

You’re boring. Bye!

Zuri smiled. Her boss’s readings were usually plainer than hers, and often more open-ended. Zuri’s personal translator giz modified incoming messages to round out the calculated phrases, to make them read less like terse disclaimers from a product label. But, she acknowledged, the filter’s embellishments were not always customer-friendly. Giancarlo routinely related only the bare-skin concepts, letting any embellishments take place in the mind of his client.

The send-queue on the right face showed that a new phrase had been translated, and a moment later the geomes disappeared. M. Neeser had asked another question. Something about a place, Zuri could tell. She was not allowed to see or hear what was going on in the Whisper Chamber, per Sussurri’s client privacy rules, but could apply her own reading skills and gizza, or tap a translation from Cesca. Zuri was growing more skilled by the week, especially with all the practice running remote sessions. 

I think he’s asking where he’s being told to go, and what he’s supposed to see. Those are the core messages from the last receive.

Zuri saw the logic in her boss’s choice of phrase, Wander with me. Compared to the more plausible translations on the list, this one made only a minor modification to Go there, see yourself. Follow me there, see yourself.

Still, the raw interpretation on the neutral side—which Zuri summarized as see ya!—gave no instructions at all, so in a way Giancarlo made an interpretation on an interpretation. Too much of that, Zuri knew, and the conversation would collapse. 

The mood-blocks rearranged themselves, and Zuri raised her eyebrows. Her deep brown skin glowed richly in the wizfaces’s warm emanation, her eyes reflecting the geomes as bright, multicolor specs. 

Maybe Giancarlo’s favorable interpretation was more on the mark. The ouijan is still around.

She processed the mood block geomes in her mind, letting her readings sway to more positive outcomes. 

I get, ‘You are wanted there, home.’ Zuri gnawed at her lip thoughtfully. Cesca?

I’m up to four percent, the AID’s airy voice thrummed. I could push that as high as ten if I ignore the error margins.

Zuri leaned back in her chair, glancing at the circular gem in the ring on her right index finger. The small disk was deep blue, and only the pale snowflakes of her standby pattern drifted across its surface, drawing and undrawing themselves like ice crystalizing and melting away. The ring’s tiny tidbit array was short ranged, much shorter than the planchette’s. The ouijan interacting with M. Neeser was somewhere within fifty meters of the basement, according to the divergence reading from the planchette. The simple ouijat on Zuri’s finger might have picked up something without the modifications Zuri made to its gizcode, but she opted to restrict its range in favor of reporting only higher confidence contacts. 

When Zuri looked to the wizfaces again, she found the receive sector empty and black. 

Session’s over, she said. She stood and stretched her legs briefly, then headed for the door and passed into the hallway beyond. The corridor bypassed the Whisper Chamber and led directly to Sussurri’s front reception, where she seated herself at the circular welcome desk and waited for her boss and his client to appear.

Chapter 2

Jaxxon stood alone on the viaudorium’s wide circular stage, the prime focus for a thousand expectant faces filling the gallery all around. A hundred times that many across the world attended through the viaud stream.

How many of you characterize yourself as a scientist? Jaxxon’s words issued from auds in the back of each seat in the gallery. The air-delay from more distant seats produced a soft echo that chased the tail of each word, creating a whispery effect.

Most arms raised, accompanied by a murmur of vocal responses.

How many of you, Jaxxon continued after making a mental tally of hands, think you will live forever?

Some of the raised hands wavered uncertainly, and most fell from view. A few new hands rose from the ranks, joining the stragglers from the first poll. This batch was smaller and slower to report. A minority of hands were held resolutely high, but most fluttered in the lower confidence band.

Jaxxon took three casual steps to the left, made an unhurried pivot on his heel, then strolled back to center stage, nodding his head all the while.

So, he said, striking a casual pose, hands in pants pockets, what brought you here today? Jaxxon paused to let the response evolve, listening to the low mussitation of the audience as respondents weighed in vocally. He glanced to the back of the viaudorium dome, where the facility wiz had posted the top three common answers. He ignored the second and third on the list.

Oh, I see, he chuckled. "You want to live forever."

A murmur of laughter blew through the gallery, then quickly settled out.

No surprise there, Jaxxon said, smiling, and thank you for your honesty. Who wouldn’t want to—provided it’s the right kind of living forever?

Another round of laughter swelled and ebbed.

Seriously, said Jaxxon, tempering his smile with a firm setting of his jaw, for those of you who read my latest pub—and for my vanity I will assume that’s everyone—you know how much time I’ve spent researching this question. Do we exist on after the death of our bodies? If so, in what form do we persist? And, frankly, what’s it like over there?

Jaxxon flipped his head upward, raising his brow