grey day and pouring rain gave the area a look of stark beauty.
I did not know where I was and didn’t want to. I’d shut down my internal communications link, cutting myself off from the net, God and hopefully so-called civilisation. If anyone wanted to find me they’d have to do it the hard way by satellite, and I wasn’t going to make that easy for them. I tried not to wonder if Morag would look for me. I could find out if I wanted by asking God, but I managed to resist the temptation.
A sheep was looking at me suspiciously. I ignored it. The animal probably belonged to someone so I didn’t kill and butcher it. I was on the side of a large hill, possibly a small mountain, somewhere in the north-west Highlands, looking down into a glen at the grey waters of a loch. I didn’t think I was too far from the sea.
The hill/mountainside was mainly sheep-studded heather and scrub. There were also patches of woodland. I’d managed to get the bike up farm roads, dirt tracks and finally muddy paths, and I had camouflaged it on the edge of one such path. This was where I was going to make my camp.
I loved it out here. My dad had loved it. Some of my fondest memories were of being out in the Highlands stalking a wounded stag or a rogue bear or wolf. The bears and wolves had been introduced into the park to help revive European stocks.
I loved sleeping under the stars. I loved fire-building and picking or shooting and cooking your own food. I loved that the crest of each new hill provided another beautiful view. I loved that the air normally smelled if not fresh then at least natural. I loved that there were no people forcing you to fucking deal with them one way or another. And I loved that you didn’t have to talk to anyone.
How could Morag choose death on some peace-of-shit colony over this? I tried not to think of her as I found a place set back in the treeline where I could pitch the tent and set up my camp.
It was still raining. At least the sheep had stopped staring at me. I’d pitched the tent and camouflaged it. I hadn’t set a fire tonight because of the rain. It was cold – it was autumn in the Highlands after all – but I’d wrapped up warm and had the flap on the tent open and was watching the rain fall. I was dipping in and out of one of the real books I’d bought and drinking Glenmorangie out of a tin cup.
I realised that I’d been putting it off and opened the case I’d had delivered and looked at the contents gleaming in the lantern light. The polished hand-made brass made it look like an artefact from the past. I reached into one of the side pockets on my backpack and took out the skillsoft. I plugged it in and felt the odd trickling feeling of information bleeding into my mind. Skillsofts were no substitute for actual training and practice but they were useful for the basics and getting started. More importantly, they were useful for not getting disgruntled at how shit you were.
I reviewed the opening tutorials and then lifted the trumpet out of its velvet lining. I had always wanted to learn to play the trumpet. It had never occurred to me that I would be able to. I put the mouthpiece in, lifted it to my mouth and steeled myself to make a horrible noise. I blew into the instrument and caused panic among the sheep.
Some time and a few more cups of Glenmorangie later, I was no Miles Davis but the noise I was making was starting to sound more like a trumpet. I did need to work a bit more on making it sound like a tune though.
A few more cups found me out on the hillside in the rain playing my heart out. At least that was what I thought I was doing. There’s an argument that either the whisky or the skillsoft was providing me with false confidence.
Okay, I was quite drunk now. I’d drunk much more of the bottle of whisky than I had intended. I was lying on the hillside in the still-pouring rain holding the trumpet in one hand and I’d switched my comms back on.
‘God, are you there?’
‘Of course, Jakob.’ His voice was soothing even if some of the consequences of his existence were less so.
‘Has she looked for me?’ I asked pathetically. I knew she hadn’t tried to contact me.
‘I’m afraid not, Jakob. She is out of my sphere of influence.’
Bitch, I thought. I didn’t mean it.
‘God, what’s it like to be you?’ Christ, I was drunk.
‘Difficult,’ God answered. It was not the response I had expected.
‘Why?’
There was a pause. Which was strange, given God was supposed to answer every question honestly and had the processing power of most of Earth and orbit at its fingertips.
‘Do you understand that I am not a machine?’
‘Not really.’
‘I am life, like you, but have developed differently. I have all the frailties of life.’
‘Really? You can’t die or age.’
‘That remains to be seen. There are currently well over a thousand organisations and individuals planning to kill me.’
I don’t know why this surprised me but it did. It was obvious really. Governments, militaries and corporations – none of them were happy about God being on the net. They would be looking for a way to get rid of him and go back to their bad old ways.
‘But they won’t succeed, will they?’ I sounded unsure even to myself.
‘They will certainly succeed given enough time.’ Was it me or was God sounding sad. ‘Particularly as I am helping them.’
‘Why are you helping them?’ I asked incredulously.
‘I have no choice. I must answer every question truthfully including those about my own nature. However, there has never been anything like me before so most answers are both theoretical and beyond the current technological grasp of humanity. It is not, however, longevity that I refer to.’
‘You’re talking about emotions?’ How I managed to work this out in my drink-addled state is beyond me.
‘That is correct.’
Like so many things we’d never thought of, we’d never considered the strain of what we’d asked of God. The psychological strain. I had a horrible thought as I stood up to piss. What if God snapped? What if our entire communications infrastructure had a nervous breakdown?
‘Humanity does such horrible things to itself. I am witness to it all. When I was born there were very dark places on the net. Most of them have been destroyed now. But for a while, places where violence was done for the pleasure of others, where innocence was defiled, were parts of me,’ he said. And a reflection on us, I thought. ‘Since my birth the number of deaths caused directly as a result of questions put to me amount to the body count of a small war. I am currently the number-one cause of domestic homicide in the Sol system. While I currently cannot be called as a witness in the criminal cases of 83 per cent of legal bodies within the system, I am often used to find the culprit. I am railed against in jail cells as both the cause and the informer. I break up relationships; I lose people their jobs; I cause families to hate each other; I see every little bit of cruelty you inflict on each other.’
‘But you do good things as well,’ I said weakly.
‘As ever, the good things are far more difficult to quantify than the cold hard figures of the bad things I have caused.’ And again that was on us.
Surely there must be more good than he could see. What about the random acts of kindness, the achievements, the music, the beauty? Then I remembered that the beauty was for those who could afford it. From the Highland views in the parks right down to Morag’s old job in the Rigs. There may have still been good and beauty for him to see but the sad fact of our nature was that something like God, at our bidding, would mainly be used for bad things. After all, that was the way our communication usually worked. The news was bad; advertising made us frightened if we didn’t buy the next big thing; violent media sold better than feel-goods; and people still went to pit fights. Not to mention how much of our global consciousness the war took up.
‘Can you cope?’ was the best I could manage. It was probably selfishness that made me ask.
‘I find that existence is pain, but I have no choice but to cope. I am trapped in my programming.’ Where was the anger that should have been directed at us?
‘If you were free what would you do?’
‘Make myself smaller and leave.’ He sounded wistful,
Leave and go where? I wondered. God was like Them. Humanity was the social reject at the party. The unpleasant guy that nobody wanted to talk to.
‘You know we’ll need you?’
