Manhattan in Reverse

fight when they surrounded it had taken out three Protectorate members and created a firestorm in the town’s college campus; but they’d eventually driven it into a force-field cage which could contain its Higher energy functions. They loaded it into a big regrav capsule and ferried it over to the arcology as the flames from the art block building roared up into the night sky behind them.

‘I would have just left,’ the angel said in its pleasant melodic voice as the capsule negotiated its way through the rent in the wall of the seventy-fifth floor. ‘There was no need for all this.’

‘That depends whose viewpoint you’re taking,’ Paul snapped back. He was still shaken and infuriated by the deaths; they’d left the bodies behind in the flames and now he was worried the heat might damage his colleagues’ memorycells. Once they were re-lifed in replacement clone bodies they could well lose several hours of memories since they last backed up in their secure stores.

‘The obvious one, of course,’ the angel said.

‘That’s it for you, isn’t it? Game over. Shake hands. All go home.’

The angel’s pale mouth smiled. ‘It’s the civilized thing to do. Don’t you approve of that?’

‘Ask my three colleagues that you slaughtered back there. They might have an opinion on just how civilized you are.’

‘As I recall, you fired first.’

‘Would you have come quietly?’

‘So that you could perform your barbarisms on me? No.’

‘Just tell us what we need to know. Have you contaminated any of us?’

‘Contaminated! How I curse your corruptors. You could have lived a rich rewarding life, instead they have condemned you to this poverty of existence.’

‘Screw you, pal. You Highers want to condemn us to your non-existence. We retain the right to choose our destiny. We demand the right.’

‘Two hundred billion people can’t all be wrong. The Central Commonwealth worlds have all embraced biononics, why do you think it is called Higher civilization?’

Paul gave the angel an evil grin. ‘Self-delusion? More likely: desperate self-justification.’

‘Why do you resist using biononics?’ the angel asked, its beautiful face frowning disparagingly. ‘You of all people must be aware of the benefits they bring to a human body. Immortality without your crude rejuvenation treatments; a society which isn’t based around industrial economics and its backward ideologies, new vistas, inspiring challenges.’

‘Challenges? You just sit and vegetate all day long. That and plot our downfall. What have you got to look forward to? Really? Tell me. The only thing that awaits a Higher is downloading into Earth’s giant brain library. Why bother waiting? You know that’s where you’re all heading. Just migrate there and plug yourself into that big virtual reality in the sky, go right ahead and play mental golf for the rest of eternity. I know the numbers downloading themselves are increasing; more and more of you are realizing just how pointless your lives are. We’re not designed for godhood, basic human essence cannot be tampered with. We need real challenges to satisfy ourselves with, we need to have our hearts broken, we need to watch our children grow up, we need to look over the horizon for new wonders, we need to build and create. Higher civilization has none of that.’

‘The Central Commonwealth is our race’s greatest creation. To misquote an ancient lyric: Do you think we don’t love our children, too?’

‘I’m sure you do. But not enough to give them a choice. To be born Higher is to stay Higher, they can’t escape.’

‘They could, they just don’t want to. Yet tens of millions of ordinary Advancer humans convert to Higher every year. Does that tell you anything?’

‘Yes. It’s simply the last step in their adventure. They’ve lived first, they know there are different ways to exist. Only then do they go in for your defeatist digital dreaming; they’ve decided that they want to die then anyway, so what have they got to lose?’

‘Is that what you’ll do, Paul? Give in and download your memories into Earth’s repository?’

‘When I’m finally tired of life, then I might just. But don’t expect it for another millennium or ten; it’s a big galaxy.’

‘I am always saddened by how ignorant your views are.’

‘Is that: my type, by any chance?’

‘Yes, Paul. Your type indeed, all you reactionary Advancers. Advanced genes have shown you how far you can extend human evolution and abilities; you’ve extended your lifespan, you’re virtually immune to disease, you’re naturally integrated with the unisphere, and a lot more besides; all those abilities have brought you half way towards us, yet still you refuse to make the final step. Why?’

‘Reactionary my arse. Biononics are not part of us, they are not derived from the genome and cannot be added to it, they are machines. They infect the cells of your body, that is why you have to be born with them to be truly Higher, they have to multiply in tandem with an embryo’s natural growth. Only then can they be incorporated by every cell. It’s impossible for every cell to be corrupted in an adult. That’s the difference, the crucial one. They are alien, imposed.’

‘Listen to yourself: Infect. Corrupt. Impose. Alien. How small your mind is, how closed.’

‘I am what I am. I like what I am. You will not take that away from me, nor my children. I have that right to defend myself. If what you are doing is an act of kindness and charity, then why did you arrive here the way you did? Why not be open about it? Every person on this planet can travel to the Central Commonwealth should they wish. Why are you here to spread your culture by deceit?’

‘The lies and prejudice you sustain leave us no choice. You’re condemning generations unborn to suffering they do not deserve. We can save them from you.’

Paul tilted his head to one side, and gave the angel a superior grin. ‘Listen to yourself,’ he said with soft mockery. ‘And the best thing is, I know that you’re in a minority among Highers. You disgust the majority as much as you do me.’

‘And yet they do not stop us.’

‘The price of true democracy. Now, are you going to tell me what I need to know?’

‘You know I cannot do that.’

‘Then this is going to get very unpleasant. For you.’

‘That’s something your conscience will have to carry.’

‘I know. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had to break one of you. And I don’t suppose you’ll be the last.’ Paul manoeuvred the cage into place at the centre of the hastily prepared interrogation room. Equipment modules began to clamp themselves across the outside of the restraining force fields. Eventually there was no sign of the angel beneath the dull metal segments. Paul gave Ziggy a weary glance. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

It took nine days to defeat the angel’s biononics. Nine days of negative energy spikes pounding away at the force field which its biononics produced. Nine days draining out its power reserves. Nine days denying it food, water, and oxygen. Nine days smothered inside a sarcophagus of machinery designed to wreck its body and all the Higher functions it was capable of generating. Nine days to send invasive filaments into its brain, preserving the neurones while its ordinary body cells were burned and destroyed one layer at a time. Nine days to kill it.

Eventually, the inert head was removed from the charred remains and artificially sustained on the cusp of life. The filaments linked Paul’s thoughts to the angel’s undead neurones, allowing him to access memories as if the angel were now a subsidiary brain, nothing more than a recalcitrant storage system grafted on to his own grey matter. Burrowing through the stranger’s thoughts was difficult, and not even modern biochemicals could sustain the neurones indefinitely. Decay gave them a very short timescale to work in. There was no neat index. Human sensory experiences were very different to electronic files, their triggers were unique, hard to guess. But Paul persevered, extracting the missing days since its arrival in confused fragments. Piecing together what had happened.

The angel had reached Kuhmo the day after it landed, renting a modest apartment on the arcology’s fifteenth floor. It merged easily into the lives of the town’s adolescents, signing on at the college, joining several clubs. For two days it studied potential targets.

Ziggy takes less than an hour to confirm the presence of biononics in every cell of the tiny foetus.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Paul grunts.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ Ziggy says. ‘It means what we did was right.’