Agents of the Demiurge (2 page)

“Last summer, that woman returned to pass
through our village. She had not aged a single day, though forty
years were passed. Escorting her was the White Traveler. He also
remained young. This woman went by the name of Elza. And she called
her man Hess.”

The old man raised his shoulders in an
awkward shrug. “We know so little about our world. Everyone knows
that the road south has people with darker skin than ours, but
until the White Traveler came, we never knew the road north would
reach lands where people have paler skin. Perhaps the stories of
the man are true. Perhaps the maker of the world exists. I do not
know, friends. But I do know that the White Traveler went on a very
long journey. And at its end, he did find the woman he sought.”

The old man sat for a drink of water and some
rest while the village went back to its gossip. Mezzin left the
remains of his meal to move closer to the old man. “Is every word
of your story true?”

“Dear friend, surely a man your age has heard
the story of the White Traveler! His path took him to all the
villages I know of.”

Mezzin licked his lips. “What did this man
say of the Creator?”

“
That
was the word he used for his
maker of the world! Creator.”

He placed a hand to his head to fight a
sudden vertigo. “Old man, did the White Traveler say if he worked
for the Creator? Did he say if his purpose was to watch you? Did he
use the word Observer?”

The old man's brow wrinkled. “No. He never
said any of those things.”

Mezzin picked at his meal until the women
came by to collect the banana leaves. As darkness descended, the
people moved to their homes. The old man approached him. “Are you
ready for sleep, friend?”

“This Hess and Elza went north when they left
here?”

“Yes. I walked with them to the edge of the
village when they left.”

Mezzin licked his lips. “This was one year
ago?”

“Last summer.”

Without another word, Mezzin walked towards
the north road, ignoring questions from the old man. There was no
time to waste lounging around this village. He had Observers to
find.

The new world
erupted into existence around Hess, a riot of sensory input
following the nothingness between Iterations. He stood in the
loading bay of an industrial warehouse, surrounded by the frozen
forms of people not yet animated. Bright light streamed in from the
open bay doors. To one side, stacks of palletized product waited
beside a computer terminal. The scent of exhaust filled the
air.

It presented a stark contrast to the world he
had left. Perpetually gray skies were replaced by sunshine. Cracked
mortar and rusting metal swapped with clean and new construction.
Permafrost traded for green grass visible through the doors. The
dying corpse of a world was gone, and a new one full of promise
stood ready for him to observe.

Memories flooded into Hess, hazy impressions
of a life within this world. A set of false recollections to match
the fake history of the newly born universe. Black-and-white
memories of snowball fights and prom dates and college courses and
business trips flowed into him, meticulous in detail but oddly flat
in tone so he could never mistake these memories for ones he had
actually lived.

The name of his identity was Jed Orlin and he
was the Director of Logistics for TFK Motors. He was one of the
dark-skinned upper class, unlike the pale working class men around
him posed about their tasks, created mid-motion. One man bent
forward at the waist, dust pan held for another to sweep up glass
fragments. Hess's new memories told him a forklift operator had
smashed a fluorescent light several minutes past.

Three men he recalled as slackers congregated
together, one of them with hands raised to emphasize whatever point
he was making. Several others were using pallet jacks to move heavy
steel components onto a waiting trailer. The truck driver stood
beside the woman at the computer workstation, complaining to her
that the bill of lading had not been e-filed prior to his
arrival.

Hess lived in a gated community, drove a
luxury car, and held season tickets to the symphony orchestra. He
had just escaped a relationship with a half-pale gold-digger and a
friend had set him up on a date with an attractive neighbor woman
that evening.

Every Iteration of the world began
in
media res
, only no one knew of the joke except him and eleven
other Observers. People never noticed a difference between their
present realities and their staged memories. They lacked the
capacity to identify any inconsistencies within themselves.

The world crashed into motion around him. One
moment there was the eerie silence of a world not yet alive and the
next people continued actions they only thought they had begun –
walking, talking, loading product, pushing a broom.

Hess pulled his smart phone out of his
pocket. This world had an internet, which meant finding Elza would
take a matter of days instead of decades or centuries. He fiddled
with the touch screen interface until he found an app to connect
him to public message boards.

The content of the messages he posted and
where he chose to post them were part of an elaborate, organic code
– the result of lifetimes of shared experiences. On a travel blog
he reviewed a restaurant from the nineteenth Iteration that they
had owned together. He placed a free advertisement on a classified
site, “man looking for woman with lazy eye, will pay up to one
tent.” On a message board for personal finance, Hess left an
anecdote about selling pig bladders for profit.

On a less technological world, he would
travel to the world's largest city and frequent its largest park
every morning. When things became truly primitive, he simply
covered as much ground as possible. But a world like this made
things simple. They would both scatter electronic breadcrumbs to
lead the other to their online presence, then establish contact and
decide where to locate themselves.

Dear Jed Orlin, Hess's identity, had achieved
financial independence at forty years of age, which gave him the
opportunity to move anywhere Elza desired. And he had precious
little in the way of family to wonder where he had gone. Very
convenient.

“Mr. Orlin? Do you still want to meet? The
architecture firm sent over the preliminary plans for the warehouse
expansion.” The speaker was Gwen Furman, with a job title his
identity could never remember, whose nebulous role included serving
as an efficiency expert. The misremembering bugged him. Hess never
forgot anything he consciously experienced, but the memories he
inherited at the start of a world were as fallible as anyone
else's, as if at the moment of creation he had been plugged into an
established role in place of the true actor.

Apparently, among the details Jed Orlin had
forgotten before Hess inherited his memories was a warehouse
expansion meeting. He frowned. He didn't remember
anything
about plans to expand the warehouse. “Sure,” he said. “We'll meet
in my office.”

While they relocated, Hess probed at his
memories, trying to determine if his identity regularly forgot
meetings. Every recollection presented evidence to the contrary.
Jed had been a master multitasker largely because he didn't miss
the little things.

Gwen sat after him, the movement causing a
religious pendant on her necklace to slip free of her shirt. Hess
stared. Emblazoned on the surface of the pendant was a raised fist
instead of the sacred eagle emblem he expected. Based on his
memories, it should have been a sacred eagle.

Is the Creator messing with me
, he
wondered. But that made no sense. Jerome had revealed to him last
Iteration that the Observers were pieces of the Creator. Why would
anyone turn against a part of himself? Of course, another piece of
the Creator was Erik, who wanted only the worst for Hess. Did their
desires balance out to a net zero? Did the Creator even care about
the rivalry among its components?

“Are you OK, Mr. Orlin?”

“Oh, sorry, Gwen. I just noticed your
pendant.”

She squinted at him. “What about it?”

“It just occurred to me that I don't know
much about it.”

Gwen sat up straighter, losing the submissive
slouch. Her eyes darted to the door. Lips lifted every so subtly
towards the suggestion of a sneer. Hess knew he had said something
wrong. Very wrong. If he wasn't mistaken, Gwen planned to sell him
out.

He soon learned that the Church had
contracted with TFK Motors to use its logistics network and
warehouse facilities – a fact that should be well known by the
Director of Logistics. Following their meeting, Gwen scampered off
and he brought up a facilities map on his monitor.

Fully a quarter of the warehouse was
dedicated to the Church's use. The inventory list looked better
suited to an arms dealer than a religious institution. Nine
millimeter handguns, five point seven millimeter rifles,
flashbangs, canisters of CS gas, tasers, body armor, and tons of
ammunition.

Hess switched back to the facilities map. The
section used by the Church had reinforced walls. An armory occupied
a quarter of his warehouse and he remembered nothing about it. Hess
sent a message to his assistant letting her know he was taking off
early, then snuck out to his car.

He kept one eye on his rear view mirror until
the campus of TFK Motors disappeared into the distance, then hit
the gas. His neighborhood sat atop a bluff overlooking the city,
which gave it a nice view but made commuting annoying as hell. Hess
drove the winding switchback at twice the speed limit, racing
around the tight bends that led up the gentler incline at the far
side of the bluff. His wheels screeched as he came around the final
corner and he pulled off the main road to enter his housing
plan.

The gate opened when it recognized the
electronic tag on his dashboard, then closed behind him. Rows of
townhouses stretched to either side of the road. Further on, the
houses became larger and sat on large lawns. Somewhere in the
center was a community center complete with rec room, gym, swimming
pool, and a convenience store dedicated to price gouging locals
unwilling to drive twenty minutes to the next grocery.

Hess blew past the community center in his
rush, eyes catching on the immense Church building sitting on a
site he distinctly recalled being soccer fields and horseshoe pits.
“Not funny, Creator,” he said. “Not funny at all.”

He parked on the curb in front of his
townhouse and ran inside. There were two suitcases in the back of
his bedroom closet. After locating them, Hess set about the task of
packing. Undergarments, pants, shirts, shoes, coat, tablet
computer, every bit of spare cash in the house, granola bars,
crackers, and a giant tin of almonds went inside.

A siren from immediately outside interrupted
any further packing. A quick glance out the window revealed two
SUV's with official Church detailing on the doors. The tension that
had built in him ever since he saw the fist on Gwen's pendant
faded. Hess studied the people getting out of the vehicles.
Paramilitary by dress. Civilian by posture. Only one of them
carried himself like he knew his way around a fight.

Hess seized a broom from the closet, set his
hands on the improvised weapon, and opened the door just before the
men got there. He stepped out and froze as if in shock, giving
himself a moment to fix everyone's position in his mind. Four men,
the confident one in front, followed by two weekend warriors eager
for some action, and a lone pale man bringing up the rear.
Housewives in all directions were poking their heads out of windows
and doors to see the excitement.

Witnesses. He would need to run as soon as
the goons were dead. Hess squeezed the broom handle hard, letting
every other muscle go slack so that when he struck it would be with
the speed of a viper.

“Jed!”

Everyone turned to look at the source of the
shout. A woman whom Hess recognized as his date for that evening
jogged down the street towards the scene. The moment of distraction
her arrival provided would have been the perfect time to erupt into
violence and destroy his adversaries.

Instead, Hess watched the woman lope towards
them at a pace faster than her curvaceous form looked built to
sustain. One of the men mumbled, “Girl's got bounce in all the
right places.”

Everyone waited until the woman arrived and
leaned against the house beside Hess, panting. The leader of the
Church men cleared his throat. “Jed Orlin, your name has been
submitted to the Church of Opposition as a suspicious person. We
are here to investigate you.”

Hess lowered the broom, lining up the head of
its shaft for his first strike, which would take the leader
directly in the throat. The woman's foot pressed down on the
broom's bristles, pinning it to the ground. She shot a fierce frown
at him.

“Really? I'll bet I know who reported me,” he
said. “Her name is Gwen Furman and she works for me at TFK Motors.
Earlier today, I gave her an informal reprimand that she didn't
appreciate. She told me I wouldn't have the opportunity to put my
complaint on her record.”

The lead man stared at him without blinking,
maintaining unflinching eye contact. “I can't reveal the identity
of the person who submitted your name. If we suspect someone of
making false reports, we will handle that ourselves. Right now, we
have to follow procedure and check you out. If you cooperate, this
won't take much of your time. If not, we will have to escalate our
investigation to the next level.”

The woman spoke up. “Investigator, Jed isn't
a suspicious person. He just told me last night about how being
successful at work was how he sought dignity. We were discussing
the Church and how neither of us were very active in the local
congregation. Jed and I thought we might start attending
together.”