—6—
When she’d been a girl in the Falling Leaves, Teresa had been enthralled with delving through COM databases, considering the stored thoughts of humanity. But now, in her day-to-day job in front of the COM gateway, the tasks were pure drudgery.
The computer/organic matrix was the circulatory system that ran through society, a worldwide database of monitoring routines, financial accounts, personnel records, statistics, and information libraries. But someone had to sift through all that data, make assessments, offer interpretations.
“Information and knowledge are two different things,” Soft Stone had often told her. In the monastery library, the Splinters had imposed a regimen that for every hour spent exploring COM, students must spend another hour contemplating and digesting the new facts they had learned.
Now, though, in her drab work environment in front of a milky-white touch screen, Teresa felt like a tired bee in a hive. A few drooping flowers valiantly tried to cheer her, an arrangement Eduard had given her a week ago. She splayed her hands on the induction-pressure input pads that took impulses from her fingers and turned them into commands. The translucent interface shifted to mother-of-pearl, then opened into a complex data/subject map.
She wished Soft Stone could be there with her, looking over her shoulder. The old monk had been named because she could be as soft as butter, or hard as granite. “Is your mind ready, little swan?” she would say. “Ready for more knowledge?”
“I wish you would help me find some answers, instead of more questions.” Teresa had always been searching, asking, wondering.
Soft Stone chuckled. “You’re assuming I have answers to give you.”
“Can COM give me the answers to why I’m here? What does it all mean? What should I do with my life?”
With its thinking power equivalent to billions of minds, with eyes that could watch over even the smallest sparrow, the Splinters saw the computer/organic matrix as a manifestation of God come to Earth—a neural network peopled by the numerous souls who entered and never came back because it was too tempting to stay there. Even Soft Stone looked at it with awe.
“Of course, little swan. Inside here you can find Heaven.”
But there was no Heaven in her daily job. Teresa had spent the past two months working for a survey group as an information sifter who dug through daily records of pedestrian traffic patterns and hovercar movements, trying to ferret out nuances of the way people traveled through the city. An advertising firm needed the information to determine where to best place formscreen billboards and public-service information displays.
Not quite the grand questions that fascinated Teresa.…
After the day the Beetles had taken Daragon away, Soft Stone withdrew to her quarters and did not emerge. Under the pretext of searching for advice and guidance, Teresa rapped on the old monk’s door frame, then drew the curtain aside and entered unbidden. Two candles lit the room, shedding warm light.
Soft Stone was hunched over her cot. “I did not ask to be interrupted.”
“I’ll meditate with you, then.” Teresa hunkered down beside her, waited a few painfully long moments, then finally ventured, “I’ve been trying to think of what name I should use when I take my own Splinter vows.”
Soft Stone’s voice held a tone of rebuke. “We fervently hope our trainees will not stay with us. Only our failures remain here, those of us who could not fulfill our life’s work outside. Your goal is to make this life as kind as possible for as many people as you can. And you can’t do that from within these walls.”
Teresa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you’re not a failure.”
“I never achieved my potential. I lived outside for years, experimenting, hopscotching. Call it the brashness of youth, the pain of foolish love, but I fled back here, and I’ve felt like a coward ever since. My only success comes from knowing that the students I teach will go out and do greater deeds than I ever managed. I have failed in so many things.”
She looked down at Teresa, her clear blue eyes moist. “I don’t want you to take my way out. You are a new soul, a special child. Many important things are in store for you. Find your answers elsewhere, Teresa Swan.”
“But where?” she asked. “Where will I find other people who need to know? I want to join a community, be a part of it. I’ll never belong the way I do here, with my friends.”
“We rarely have that choice, do we?” Hot tears came to Soft Stone’s eyes, as if a wound had been reopened. “For Daragon … it is too late. I sacrificed one of my own swans to the Bureau. Whatever will he do with them?”
Teresa heard the dismay in the woman’s voice. “Probably the best he can, don’t you think? Daragon always tried very hard.”
“They’ll make him one of their own.” The monk’s once clear blue eyes now looked cloudy and old. “He was our ransom, and we … sold him. I couldn’t think of any other way to save the monastery.”
Teresa touched the monk’s wrist, below her ID patch. “What do you mean?”
“The BTL wanted to oust us so they could have a headquarters on the mainland. Chocolate tried everything, but we were going to be evicted. Eminent domain, a ‘greater societal need.’ The Splinters had no way to challenge them.” She looked Teresa directly in the eye. “Until I discovered what Daragon could do—and how much the BTL was likely to want it. So they made a deal with us. We now have our title, free and clear. Daragon was worth more to them than the Falling Leaves.”
One of the candles flickered, as if a ghost had just walked by.
“The Beetles see COM as a sweatshop of souls, rather than a congregation of blessed lives, as we do.” Soft Stone shook her head. Gray bristles had begun to poke out of her smooth scalp.
Teresa shifted her position. “I think it would be terrible never to swap with anyone, to experience only your own life and nobody else’s. I’m so sorry for Daragon.”
“Not just that, little swan. His soul is anchored, unable to separate from his body. What if that means he is unable to move on in the Wheel of Life? Did I fail him?” Soft Stone’s body surrendered to wracking sobs.
Teresa had no answer for her.
Two days later a pale and stoic Soft Stone went to see Administrator Chocolate. The community of other presences inside COM beckoned to her. She had searched her mind and soul and come to a decision.
“I can hear their whispers behind the glimmering phosphors on the interactive screens.” Soft Stone repeated her well-rehearsed words, as if they were a poem. “I can see snatches of nirvana within the vast thinking sea. I want to be part of it, join those myriad others. I will drink the wine of knowledge, bathe in the milk of unending community.”
Behind his desk, Chocolate drummed his pudgy fingers on a desktop. “I cannot refuse your request, though it saddens me deeply.”
“We should view this as a time of celebration, Chocolate. You of all people must treat it that way. You must believe in what COM offers to us all.”
The administrator remained flustered. “But, is your work here done?”
“It will never be done. But I am done with the doing.” She turned to leave the office and said with finality, “I intend to upload myself tomorrow at noon.”
The following day they all gathered in the library/database room, Splinter monks as well as their charges of all ages. Some sniffled and looked sad, a few whispered, others blinked with wonder and anticipation. Teresa didn’t know what to feel. After the recent loss of Daragon, too many things were changing. Soon, Soft Stone was going to vanish, willingly uploading her soul into the vast computer matrix that was COM.
Since humans could swap from body to body at will, and because COM was organic and multi-layered, it was possible through hardware and uplink cables to hopscotch into the network itself. Soft Stone would transfer her consciousness into the labyrinth of data, leaving her body behind, empty and lifeless.
Incense burned, pine needles and cloves—Soft Stone’s favorite mixture. Candles sparkled next to the glowing data terminals, adding a warm light like starshine. Teresa tugged at Garth’s arm, pulling him and Eduard forward so they could stand at the front of the crowd. Tears brimmed in her eyes.
Soft Stone emerged from the rear of the library, passing between her favorite paintings and sculptures. A hush fell on the gathered crowd. Barefoot, the lean woman walked with grace and confidence, shoulders square, chin high. Her sky-blue robes were adorned with brass bangles that tinkled as she moved. Her newly shaved scalp glistened as if she had waxed it.
She walked toward the main interlinks in the center of the library. She reached out to brush the hands of her students in a benediction. The old monk paused in front of Teresa, Garth, and Eduard, and suddenly her expression crumpled. “It’s not dying. It is living on a higher level. A much higher level.” She reached out to enfold the three friends in a deep hug. “I’ll try to watch over you. Remember, COM has eyes everywhere, and I will be part of COM.”
She kissed Chocolate on both cheeks, and the beatific smile on the administrator’s chubby face flickered for just an instant. Then he backed away, leaving her alone with the computer network.
Soft Stone reached out with calloused hands to touch the inputs. All other monitors in the library chamber flared to life. Three-dimensional interactive portals painted an artificial sky with fluffy white clouds on the ceiling of the library. The monk closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.
Living lights swirled like comets along the walls. Chimes sounded in the virtual distance, a resonance that hummed in Teresa’s bones. She wondered how much was real, how much miraculous … and how much was staged.
Soft Stone’s trembling fingers tapped the edges of the milky screens. Then the scenes changed, crackling images replaced by a different construct. The library was transformed into a great vault, an immense cathedral far larger than the monastery building, with stained-glass windows and a thousand different passages. Her mind could spend eternity in here, wandering among all knowledge, all recorded history.
As Soft Stone’s brow wrinkled with concentration, she mentally connected herself to COM and prepared to upload her soul. Surrounded by the illusion, the others in the room held their breath. The behind-the-mind music was like crystal; the light was like gemstones.
Glowing images appeared in the air, luminous beings that swirled like angels come to greet her. She raised her hands, then her eyes. The escort presences engulfed her like a safe cocoon, and a shadow of Soft Stone floated with them, younger and stronger. The spirits vanished into the unexplored stained-glass passageways, and the old monk left her body behind forever.
Then the images faded, and the library came into focus again. Soft Stone’s body slumped to the library floor, an empty husk.
Teresa stood in the candle-lit room, feeling cold and alone even with her friends Garth and Eduard beside her. Chocolate knelt next to Soft Stone’s body, cradling her bald head in his hands.
Garth was awed by the beauty of it. “Someday I’ll make something that beautiful, something that moving as we just saw.”
Teresa wept, never expecting to see Soft Stone again.…
Now, grown up and on her own, Teresa’s thoughts wandered through the droning monotony of her work day. This wasn’t what Soft Stone had wanted Teresa to do with her life, with her philosophical inquisitiveness. She felt lost and discouraged, wasting her time on this pointless job.
Then the data matrices displayed on her screen blurred and went out of focus … and Teresa thought she saw an image, the ghost of a human form. A woman’s bald head, blunt features, and clear blue eyes stared straight out of the information matrix. At her.
Soft Stone!
Startled, Teresa sat straight, but stopped herself from calling a coworker over. She leaned closer to the barrier of the screen, her heart pounding. Her throat went dry. “Hello?”
From behind the milky wall of the network, the bald woman’s image smiled at her—then flickered and vanished, like a fish going back underwater, to be replaced by swirling data again.
Teresa saw nothing, no shadow of the apparition. What did it mean? Lumps of numbers floated before her, shifting patterns that held no significance.
Like this useless job, an irrelevant rearrangement and secondary interpretation of information. It was a waste of her time, a waste of her life and abilities. Soft Stone must be so disappointed in her.
Angry at herself, Teresa dumped the numbers and spent the rest of her workday searching along her own paths, finding the works of great philosophers, studying thought-provoking passages. This was what she wanted to do.
Ignoring the assignment her employers had given her, she found new postulates, random expressions posted by more recent thinkers who considered themselves great sages. Sometimes the concepts were moving and timeless; some postings were mere drivel, error-filled rantings that the would-be philosophers hadn’t even bothered to proofread.
Engrossed in the search for meaning, Teresa occupied herself for hours. It was just like what she had enjoyed so much in the Falling Leaves library.…
Unfortunately, her employers did not appreciate her new passion, and Teresa didn’t manage to keep that particular job very long.