The Soul Consortium (8 page)

“I am pleased to tell you that whatever the aberration was in Orson Roth’s life, it has had no lasting effect on your physiology or mental stability. Your current confusion will pass as it always does.”

“Let me go!”

“No. Your serotonin levels are still unbalanced.”

Zachary Cox screams through my mind, and I scream along with him as scores of eyeless people with twisted faces bustle forward—Graham Adams pointing, Lisa Barclay accusing, Troy Davenport sobbing, Kriefan Mack pleading. Each one reaching for me with clawed fingers, pushing their rivals aside, desperate to tear me apart. How could I do what I did to them? But that isn’t me. Is it? Was it? I’m Salem Ben, not Orson Roth. I am not a murderer.

But I loved prying into their dying moments, adored the rush of it when I tasted their deaths.
I
felt that. I felt it just as much as Orson Roth.
I
wanted that. Didn’t I?

“Well? Did you?”

“
No!
I mean … what?”

“Did you find what you were looking for? Did you find out what was beyond death? Did he?”

“No, I was just …
He
was just a maniac.”

“Well, of course. Roth’s file did originally belong in the Maniac Sphere. I tried to warn you. Sharing in someone’s insanity and actions is not—”

“I had reasons for doing what I did. Those people cheated Fate … they … she needed … Oh, Qod.” Instinct tells me to cover my face with my hands, but the shackles refuse me the luxury. A mingling of agoraphobic and claustrophobic conflict wars in me as I am forced to stare out from my confinement and into the space of the vast Aberration Sphere.

“You still need a few minutes. Try to relax.”

“I’m fine. No thanks to you. Why didn’t you tell me Roth was a madman?”

“You knew he was a murderer. I thought it best not to tell you he was something far worse even than that. You seemed quite taken with the idea of endangering yourself when you learned of the aberrations, and telling you that Orson Roth was filed alongside people like Encore Makar the Necro-Lord or Caligula would only have sharpened your lust. How would you feel now, having awoken from Roth’s life, knowing you chose such an extreme?”

“I wouldn’t have become Roth if you’d told me.” I turned my gaze from the emerald glare of the curved walls to my feet.

Silence reigns for several seconds.

“Salem.” My name is drawn out as a long, bored sigh. “I have access to every recorded moment in the history of every cycle of the universe. I exist between the electrons that spin through each atom of your mind and, for that matter, every electron burning in the most distant stars of the most remote galaxy. I can beat you at chess, Barnam’s Hoops, and Quantum Stripes with the slowest neurons of my processing subsystems. I am your Alpha and I am your Omega and I’ve been taking care of you for billions of years. I
know
you. Why do you bother lying to me?”

“It isn’t you I’m lying to.”

My admission silences her. She knows it anyway but seems to think the banter will protect me, as if I can be distracted from my trauma and the knowledge that I’m coming to an end. By that I don’t mean death, not the physical kind anyway. The death of reason. The death of identity. My body will go on and on, but who lives within this flesh? Am I losing perspective to such a degree that I’m prepared to become a monster to find my answer? And perhaps it is even worse. Was it really the answer I was interested in, or was it the fascination of becoming a killer? This is why Qod warned me about being Orson Roth. Not because of who
he
was but because my choice might force me to face who I have become.

The hiss of hydraulic locks snaps me from my musings, and my hands and feet are freed. Cables lower me gently to the floor, and I’m grateful for the warm breeze against my face, as though somehow I had been aware of the stale atmosphere gradually building inside the WOOM through all the years of my immersion.

“Would you like to go to the Observation Sphere?” Qod asks. “Not much has changed in forty-six years, but I know how it helps you think.”

All I do is nod when the cables slide away. The metallic floor sticks to my feet as I head for the exit of the Aberration Sphere, and at last I’m me again, but I will never be able to forget the murders I committed inside that man’s life. Even without my enhanced synapses, those bloody memories will leave a permanent stain. Zachary Cox’s glassy gaze imprinting on my brain, Orson Roth’s syringe in my hand, the stench of formaldehyde burning my sinuses.

I stop, and my heart skips a beat. I can’t leave, not yet. I came into this new sphere for a reason, and Orson Roth had no answers for me. All around in every alcove, a tiny light glitters—each one a soul containing some sort of aberration. But what are these aberrations? I have my suspicions, and I have a lead, but the thought of where that investigation may take me brings a shudder of trepidation.

“Qod?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to locate another soul for me. His name is Keitus Vieta.”

F
orty-six years is nothing. A lifetime ago before I became Orson Roth, I witnessed the birth of the universe.

It’s still happening now, unfolding just as it did before. Every last particle combining with its neighbor in exactly the same predictable way, obeying the same physical laws with the same uncompromising rigidity, forming gaseous clouds that will ultimately bear their own children. Galaxies will explode with the first fresh stars, and the cooling matter in between will one day condense into planets and moons. A precious fraction of those will support life, and the miracle of humanity will be born all over again. Every life will be lived exactly as it was before, the same predetermined existence racing toward its glorious destiny.

I could watch it all, observing from a distance as vast as the universe itself, as I have before, relishing its beauty and reveling in the mystery of sentience that spawned from a soulless mote. Yes, I could be drifting in the Observation Sphere now, watching the distant images of creation, but I’m not.

Cowled in somber robes to match my mood, I am in the Calibration Sphere, watching the turning walls, musing over the dead: so much life whittled down to a library of tiny blinking lights. Throughout the millennia, unseen control mechanisms pluck souls from every sphere and check the data, calibrating it and, if necessary, recategorizing. No doubt this is where Qod discovered the aberrations—irreconcilable inconsistency in the data causing her to create the Aberration Sphere. An irrational part of me wonders if they know something is different now they’ve been transferred here.

Should I be like everyone else? A memory?

I could end my life in a heartbeat.

I want to leave. Want to rest my head against a cool pillow in a warm bed with a smile on my lips as soft dreams take me from this world to the next, knowing I have tasted every sweet thing this universe has to offer. I am content in the knowledge that I have done the latter, but what
of
the next world? Is there one? The same question plagues me still, and I cannot leave as the others did. Not until I have the answer. Orson Roth didn’t know. Perhaps one of my other choices will, but before I venture into another life, one enigma remains.

“You’ve been silent a long time, Qod.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Busy? How can you be busy? You could have looked through the entire index ten times over in this amount of time.”

“Two hundred and seventy-three times to be exact.”

“Why? Wasn’t once enough?”

“I have been checking and rechecking since you made your request. Keitus Vieta’s soul is nowhere to be found.”

I look up at the domed ceiling, and even though I know Qod has no face, I entertain the fantasy that I might catch her off guard and steal a glimpse of her baffled expression. There is no hint of confusion in her voice, but I know her. This has puzzled even her. “What do you mean you can’t find him? I saw him, spoke with him.”

“There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files.”

“Impossible.” I stride away from the center of the sphere, watching as one of the tiny lights is sucked inside the wall ready to be distributed back into the sphere from which it was plucked. “Everyone who’s ever existed has a file created after they’ve died. I’m the last man—” A shock runs through me, and I stop to glance around the sphere, hoping not to find evidence of a second empty slot. “Could he … could he still be alive?”

“No. Only one slot remains, and that one is reserved for you. Keitus Vieta cannot exist.”

“But he does. I met him. Orson Roth met him.” I resume my pacing. “Can you at least run a search algorithm through the other souls for someone matching his description?”

“The Codex protocols don’t allow me to pry into the lives of these souls. I am only permitted access to the summary description of each life, which, I’m sorry to say, is precious little revelation.”

“Then search for him again. His soul is in there. It has to be.”

“There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files,” Qod insists.

“Stop saying that. His life
has
to be somewhere amongst all these spheres.”

“Then Keitus Vieta must not have been his real name,” she says.

For a moment I relent, seeing the sense in her suggestion. “That makes sense. A fake identity would mean Orson would have had a difficult time trying to find him or betray him to the authorities if he turned against him. But there was something about Vieta, something … I don’t believe he was lying about his name.”

“But it is the simplest explanation.”

“Yes, but assuming that it
is
his real name, could there be another reason for his absence from the Consortium files? Could his file have been erased?”

“No. I would know if that happened.”

“Then what? You’re almost omniscient. Don’t you have an answer?”

She says nothing, and as I tap my fingers thoughtfully against my lips, I can almost hear her thinking the same thing
—There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files.

“What if … what if Vieta
has
no soul?” I ask.

“The soul is a metaphysical concept originally cultivated by those who had no understanding of the true human condition. If Keitus Vieta was a real person who walked, talked, and thought, he had what could be crudely identified as a soul … and you know that.”

“At least I’m coming up with some theories. This must have something to do with the aberrations. You said the aberrations weren’t caused by data corruption, but if you can’t find a record of this man, perhaps you were wrong.”

“I am never wrong.”

A single memory flashes through my mind: one sentence scrawled by the hand of a man who lost his mind when investigating Keitus Vieta.
HEISNOWHERE.
Yes, I met Vieta, but I also remember how Orson Roth felt—the irreconcilable impression that this man should not exist. There was something about him that was wrong, completely wrong.

“We need more information to understand what’s happening. I’m going back to the Aberration Sphere. Cross-reference all the aberrations with my previous request for people who have had an unusual connection with death.”

“How would you like them sorted?”

“Same as before—I want the lives that have been affected most greatly by the aberrations. And this time, tell me which sphere they were from originally.”

I
am amongst the aberrations again, standing at the entrance to the sphere, staring at the WOOM suspended at its center. The thought of making another mistake like Orson Roth unnerves me, but I have to go again, if only to set some distance from those ugly memories.

“Have you made your choice?” Qod says.

“I have. Select subject 2.11317E+29, Dominique Mancini.”

“The medium? Any particular reason?”

“You said she belonged in one of the mundane spheres before you moved her to the aberrations, yes?”

“Correct.”

“So that must be because she was not recognized to have had any sort of … supernatural talent before the aberrations came.”

“Not necessarily. Through the ages millions of people have claimed some connection to a spiritual plane, but not one of them has ever had any genuine ability. Some were frauds; some were deluded; all were wrong. Mediums have been investigated by the Soul Consortium before.”

“But did any of them investigate Dominique Mancini?”

“Processing … yes, she has been experienced on three hundred and twenty-nine occasions, each time by a different person. No repeats.”

I feel a tickle of excitement. “Did any of them discuss her talents as a medium or psychic?”

“No.”

“I knew it. She’s hardly been viewed at all. Nobody recommended her, and nobody considered her worthy of reexamination. Before the aberrations came she was just an ordinary person—no supernatural ability whatsoever. Somehow these aberrations have given Dominique Mancini the ability to speak to the dead. What if she really could do it? What if we can find out what happens after death through her? She may have the answer I need.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes, unless of course there’s something important you’re not telling me.”

“No, but she lived in the first era of mankind, prein-dustrial, sixteenth-century Lombardy. It was considered a peaceful time but hardly civilized in comparison to our standards.”

“You’re telling me that after I lived as Orson Roth?

I doubt the most depraved streets of that place could compare to what I saw in
his
mind. No, I want to be her. Send me in. She could have the answers I need, and I can’t afford to ignore the possibility.”

Subject 2.11317E+29: Select.

Subject 2.11317E+29: Aberration detected.

Subject 2.11317E+29: Override authorized—ID Salem Ben.

Subject 2.11317E+29: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

A brief silence precedes the predictable lecture.

“Very well … Protocol compels me to warn you that once you have been immersed you will not be able to withdraw until the moment of Dominique Mancini’s death. Protocol also compels me to dictate …”