—Decker "Sandman" commenting on Spheris’ statement in the
People
to
People
interview
In
the
beginning
God
created
the
heavens
and
the
earth
.
And
the
earth
was
without
form
and
void;
and
darkness
was
upon
the
face
of
the
deep
.
And
the
spirit
of
God
moved
upon
the
face
of
the
waters
.
And
God
said,
"
Let
there
be
light
,
"
and
there
was
light
.
—Genesis 1:1
Think
back
.
What
is
the
first
thing
you
remember?
My life begins in an alley—a dark, hidden place in shadows of the city. I awaken there like being born: weak, blind, and helpless, new to the world and all of its strange sounds, smells, and experiences.
And alone, but not for very long.
The first thing I become aware of is the darkness and the noise. I cannot see, but I can feel and smell and hear.
I can feel the ground beneath me. It is hard and cool. The roughness of it is not unpleasant—like someone scratching your back—and I lie there for I don’t know how long, just enjoying the sensation of being supported by the ground, feeling
its
cool and strong embrace. I can feel the air stir around me, a gentle breeze brushing across the bare skin of my face and hands and ruffling my hair. The breeze brings smells and sounds to me as I lie there.
I smell the harsh smell of the city: a smell of burning. Burning fuel, burning trash, burning wood, and people burning with hope, despair, misery, and joy make up the smell, mixed in with the slow decaying scent of the city as metal, mortar, and stone slowly crumble to rust and dust, ground down beneath the force of the elements. I smell my own sweat, cooling on my skin.
I hear the distant sounds of the city, the constant rumble of noise that most city-dwellers ignore almost completely in their daily lives. I hear the voices of cars, from the bass rumble of diesel engines to the high whine of electric motors powering small commuter cars. From time to time a horn blares out its distant cry of anger or warning. The voices of the city whisper and speak to me, and I know there is danger.
Then I hear another voice, much closer, which is speaking to someone else.
"There he is," the voice says and I know he is talking about me.
Then another voice, deep and gravelly.
"Just like Crawley said he would be. I’ll give him that,
Weizack, that
freak may be weird, but his information is right on the money."
Weizack laughs, more like a humorless bark. "You should
talk,
chummer. You ain’t winning
no
beauty prizes yourself."
Weizack’s partner growls, a low, throaty sound. "Watch it, chummer. I may look like something outta somebody’s nightmare, but at least I ain’t no fragging ghoul. Let’s just do this job and get the frag out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
A rough hand grabs my jaw, and I feel a jolt of fear and surprise shoot through my nerves. I want to push away the hand touching me and filling my nostrils with the stench of overripe sweat and the smell of decay, but my body refuses to obey me. My muscles remain limp and I lie like a dead fish on the cool, hard ground as the hands turn my head to the side and blunt fingers brush against the side of my neck.
"So unplug him. What’s the big deal?"
The fingertips brush my neck again. I hear a faint metallic click and feel an immediate and yawning sense of loss open up within me. He has taken something from me.
Something very important, my connection to something larger and greater than I am.
I am truly alone now, and helpless against these strangers. I try to move, or even open my eyes, but I can’t. It feels like my brain is detached from the rest of my body.
Like I have forgotten how to use it somehow.
The part of me that is awake and aware floats somewhere, detached, unable to make the connection to make a move or a sound.
"Fragging chipheads," the deep voice grumbles. "Why they wanna burn out their brains beats the drek outta me. Feedin’ stuff straight into your brain is totally fragged up. All of that techno-trash, just for the sake of gettin’ high."
"You ever try slottin’
sims
, Riley?" Weizack asks his partner.
"No way.
Those things’ll frag you up for good. Not even the beetles, just the soft-core drek. My cousin was a sim-chipper, and all he did was spend the whole day sitting around slotting chips and living in a fraggin’ fantasy world.
Couldn’t hold down a job or nothin’.
Finally cooked his brain slotting something he shouldn’t of.
Cheap Hong Kong trash.
You wanna get
trashed,
I say do it the old fashioned way—with a bottle or something. These brain-burners frag you up but good."
"What about all of this stuff?" Weizack says, his voice coming from close by and above where I lie. He must be standing near my head, looking down at me.
"Leave it," the one called Riley says.
"Said you don’t wanna mess with this drek.
It’s bad biz."
"Why not?
As long as we’re here ..."
"No." Riley’s tone flat and cold. "Bad enough we’re comin’ here for him, but I ain’t messin’ with some of the weird-ass mojo that goes down around here. Beetles are bad enough, but this place gets used for some real magic. Once we’re done with him we’re out of it, but if we mess with this place we could end up cursed or worse."
"You really believe in that hoodoo curse drek?" Weizack asked.
"Take another look at my face, drekhead, and tell me there’s no truth to curses. Ever since the magic came back, it’s been nothing but trouble for the whole world." Riley’s voice was heavy with bitterness. "It mighta made some of the elves and their wannabes happy, but it’s just another way to slot over the rest of us. Proof that
mother nature
is a slitch with a sense of humor. Now shut the frag up and give me a hand here. We need to move this guy before somebody finds us here."
A strong pair of hands grips my ankles and, a moment later, another pair slides under my shoulders and grips me under the armpits. They lift me off the ground like a limp rag, all of my muscles still stubbornly refusing to respond to my mind’s demands to move. Just a little movement, a twitch or a blink, to show these two I’m awake and aware. That’s all it would take. But I can’t seem to figure out how to do it.
I feel vaguely sick and dizzy as I’m carried a short distance, swaying gently between my two porters. They set me down again on a surface that is slick and soft over the hardness of the ground.
"All set?" Weizack asks, and for a moment I think he’s talking to me. Riley grunts in response and Weizack says, "O.K., let’s get going. Crawley doesn’t like to be kept waiting."
"Frag him," Riley says. "I don’t take drek from any fraggin’ ghoul."
I hear the sound of a zipper and feel the slick vinyl-coated cloth close around me like an embrace. The zipper passes up over my head and I’m completely sealed in ... oh no. They don’t think I’m unconscious. They think I’m dead! But I’m not!
I feel panic grip my heart like a cold hand as my mind frantically screams at my body to obey. I just need to move, to make a sound, something to tell these men I’m really alive, that they’ve got the wrong guy. Dammit, move! I feel my breathing begin to quicken and I hope the sound will penetrate the heavy vinyl, but there is no response from outside it.
Two pairs of hands lift me off the ground and swing me like a sack a couple of times before releasing me. There is a moment of cold, stark terror as I fly through the air with no sense of balance and no idea where I will fall. Then I drop onto something firm but yielding, and roll just a bit before coming to rest on my side.
There is a clunk of metal on metal and the retreating footsteps of the two men.
Then the sound of doors opening and muffled talk from somewhere ahead of me.
That’s when I realize I’m lying on top of a stack of bodies, all of them wrapped up for delivery just like me. But delivery to where? And are they dead or like me, trying desperately to gather the strength to cry out, to yell "I’m alive!" in hopes someone will hear them?
The thought hits me: is
this what
death is like? Maybe I really am dead and just don’t know it. Maybe when you die all you really do is become a helpless prisoner in your slowly decaying body, aware of the world around you but unable to move or communicate in any way. Maybe your mind hangs around until your body rots away in the ground or you get the quick and merciful release of cremation. The thought of this paralysis as the afterlife nearly makes me scream and collapse in terror, but another thought bubbles up into my mind from somewhere. I know I’m not dead. I just
know
it somewhere deep down inside. I know I’ve been dead before and this isn’t what it was like. I’m alive, reborn, and I have to figure out how I’m going to stay that way. Be a shame to start my new life only to end up dead again.
An engine rumbles to life and we start to drive. The meat-wagon slowly pulls away from the place of my awakening and heads out into the city.
The
initiatory
experiences
of
shamans
the
world
over
are
remarkably
similar,
which
we
can
now
account
for
in
the
universal
nature
of
magic
itself
.
The
proto-shaman
falls
into
a
trance
or
profoundly
deathlike
state,
often
as
a
result
of
an
illness
.
While
in
this
state,
the
candidate’s
spirit
leaves
the
body
behind
and
travels
or
is
taken
into
the
other
world
.
In
this
spirit
world,
the
candidate’s
spirit-self
encounters
and
speaks
with
the
various
spirits
dwelling
there,
learning
certain
secret
words,
names,
and
songs
.
The
candidate’s
spirit
form
is
then
torn
apart
or
devoured
by
the
spirits,
reduced
to
nothing
more
than
a
skeleton
.
The
spirits
introduce
something
new
to
the
shaman’s
skeletal
form,
something
symbolic
of
the
shaman’s
awakened
magical
talent,
like
a
magic
stone
or
bone
.
The
spirit-body
is
then
reconstructed
better
than
ever
before
.
This
death/rebirth
experience
awakens
the
shaman’s
magical
potential
and
the
candidate
returns
to
the
physical
world
with
an
awareness
of
the
spirits
and
the
power
of
the
spirit
world
.
This
traditional
form
of
shamanic
initiation
continues
even
into
our
modern
magical
age
.
—from the lecture "Shamanic Traditions in the Twenty-first Century," by Nobel Prize winning shaman Dr. Akiko Kano, Cal-Tech, 2044
I lie on top of a pile of corpses for I don’t know how long. Time seems to drag without destination or origin. We sway and weave through the traffic like a funeral barge slowly making its way downriver to the sea. I try to let the gentle movements soothe me instead of making me sick to my stomach while I concentrate on trying to find a way out of this situation. The smell inside the meat-wagon is awful. The hot, organic smell of death mixed with the sharp bite of chemical cleansers and overlaid with the strange smell and taste of the rubbery vinyl of the body-bag surrounding me like the cocoon of some kind of strange insect. A thought passes through my head about how body-bags are not exactly designed with comfort in mind, and I have to force down a bout of hysterical laughter at the idea.