The younger man nodded. “Mr. Pickering? Can you confirm this?”
The ancient man tapped on his buttons and stared at a sickly glowing screen. “I’ve got a Captain Billington down, throat cut, called in half an hour ago.” He blinked. “Kid, you better lay low. They got a good description of you.”
The kid nodded. “Sure.”
The younger man studied the kid as the older man behind him passed the badge forward. “All right. This isn’t a game, you know, right? This isn’t some snuff thief gang you run with for a few weeks, make some skag. This is serious.” He thrust a crooked finger at the kid. “You just killed a System Cop. The whole goddamn world is against you now. We’re all you got.”
The kid’s face hardened and he lifted his chin. “I know what the fuck I’m doing. I can’t stand this world. I hate the fucking System.”
The younger man studied the kid for a moment longer, then nodded. “All right. A few ground rules. First ground rule is, keep your fucking mouth shut. I don’t care who you think you are, you don’t get drunk and brag, you don’t let hints slip, you don’t let anything fucking slip. We don’t exist. None of us ever met. I don’t know who you are.” The man’s face hardened in turn, and suddenly didn’t seem so young anymore. “But I do, don’t I? So fuck us, you get fucked in return, right?”
The kid nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The younger man studied the kid for a moment and then nodded. “All right. Go on back out. We’ll be in touch. “They watched the kid exit the office. The long-haired man walked slowly back to the desk.
“Youngest one yet,” Pick growled. “According to this, he’s fucking sixteen.”
“I’d already killed three men when I was sixteen, Pick,” Cates replied, reclaiming his spot on the desk. “Doesn’t take age to be able to fight for something.”
“Another one,” Belling said quietly from behind him, eyes on the security screens. A middle-aged black woman, wearing a patch over one eye and sporting a metallic claw for a left hand, was giving the German a loud lecture, which the rippling mass of artificial muscle took stoically.
Cates stared up at the screen, the same nonsmile playing over his features. They’d been straggling in ever since they sent the word out and backed it up with furious action: two major robberies, six dead cops-each of them an evil bastard, mourned by no one-and press releases for each. The fucking cops-they were good, the best, but they’d never been up against a member of the Dъnmharъ and Avery Cates. Not simultaneously. And they’d never been up against an entire goddamn city either. And the Crushers were too fucking greedy to pass up the protection money and give up Pickering’s.
He watched the German put the woman through the usual security and felt a familiar buzzing excitement inside. He thought grimly, It’s begun.
Avery Cates will return in The Digital Plague.
APPENDIX
EXTRACTS FROM THE MULQER CODEX, ANNOTATED
Joint Council File #445EE7
Reviewed by: T. Greene, Joint Council Undersecretary
Background: The Mulqer Codex[1] is the main text of the Electric Church. It was written by the Church’s founder, Dennis Squalor, who remains its chief officer and public face. It is freely available to the public in a variety of paper and electronic formats, and is often quoted by Church members (known colloquially as “Monks”). Although the text is highly personal, loosely organized, and somewhat incoherent, the large number of Church members-all of whom converted-always cite its influence on their decision to join the Church.
The entire Codex is approximately 115,000 words long. It is not reproduced in toto here; much of the Codex is arguably meaningless, large tracts of repeated phrases, apparently dictated, and much of it is inscrutable.
Insects, all of you,[2] and me,[3] all of us insects, scuttling about for a brief atomic flash and then gone. Insects, eating your way upward, supported by the compressed corpses of your ancestors until you fill and burst and collapse down and are in turn compressed, slowly the level rises, your descendants ascending toward the summit, the goal, the exit. Eventually a generation will emerge, free.[4] This is the plan of the universe. We are raised in increments, slowly, through our collective achievements, the spaces between our existences compressed or expanded depending on the requirements of God.
And have no doubt that there is a plan. God created man with reason for a reason-we are all born with a purpose, both a macro purpose-the destiny of mankind in toto-and a micro purpose, individual to each man.[5] The latter is a private communication between each individual and God-any man who listens will hear his purpose easily enough, whether it be to build pyramids or found churches or serve his fellow men somehow. The macro purpose is the purpose of all mankind, collectively, the purpose we all share. It is none other than our purpose as a race. God did not make this into a mystery, there is nothing mysterious about this purpose. It is part of our genetic code, part of the instinctive instructions mankind has followed since they first raised their gaze from the ground and thought. We are here to aspire to godhood.[6]
God does not want subjects. God does not wish dominion over us. He wishes peers.[7]
This is why we have always sought to wrest the mysteries of the cosmos from the air, to seize control over the forces we perceive or theorize. This is why we have marched steadily upward, manipulating greater and still greater forces. This is why we have investigated the laws of the physical universe, seeking to understand and then control the world around us: God created us to learn, to eventually equal him.[8]
We stand on the cusp.
What is sin? Traditionally we are told sin is crimes against our fellow men, crimes against God. Lust, anger, sloth. These are not sins in and of themselves, what makes them sins is how they distract our attention and energy away from the real work God has outlined for us. Killing a man is not a sin if it is done in the name of our great task.[9] Resting a day when you do not have to is a sin because it takes your contribution away from the great task. How many sins are you thus guilty of? All your sins are simply time stolen from the great task that God has given us. It would take you years, centuries, to make up for even one simple sin against God’s design. You do not have centuries. Yet.
Time is your curse. Lack of time. Everything requires time, and you have so little. This is the fundamental question: How can you be saved when you have no time? How can you possibly combat your sins in the time allotted you?
Consider the technological advances of the human race in recent centuries. We are a race designed to plumb the mysteries of the multiverse. It is God’s plan that we do so, that we investigate and harness the forces of nature. We are meant to find salvation through our progress. But computers cannot output salvation. And we cannot teleport salvation into this room. We cannot splice salvation into our genes. Salvation must be attained.[10]
Time. Time is the obstacle. You will not live long enough. Even during your time, you are distracted: You must work. You must rest. You must eat. As high as we have risen, there is much to do, and only now are we experiencing the singularity that will allow us to truly devote ourselves to the true work of the race. We stand upon the pyramid of our ancestors, finally close enough to the goal to perceive it correctly, to make out its faint outlines and sense its immense proportions. Time is what is required. More time than the normal laws of our universe allow us, but this has always been our purpose, to master the forces around us, bend them to our will like the gods we will someday become.
1
The title does not have any apparent meaning, and no explanation has ever been publicly offered by the Church.
2
Squalor consistently refers to humans who have not joined the Electric Church as “insects.” The image resurfaces throughout the work, although it is interesting that Squalor also refers to himself in this manner, usually in the same sentence.
3
Squalor remains an unknown quantity. Prior to Unification he was a student of some promise, earning advanced degrees in biology and computer science. After the turmoil of Unification, he disappeared from public records for a decade, emerging only after having gone through his own process of cyborg conversion-in short, becoming a Monk-and founding the Church.
4
There is a sense of contempt for biology throughout the
5
Throughout the
6
The Electric Church was granted Recognition as a legal religion, protected under standing order 778, eight years ago.
7
Throughout the
8
Here is the fundamental concept of the Electric Church: The idea that mankind’s eventual salvation is possible only through our mastery of technological and scientific knowledge. Specifically, the Church preaches that only through centuries, even epochs of meditation and study can salvation be attained-the necessary lifespan being supplied by the cyborg bodies Squalor has designed and built, as well as the process he has devised for transferring a human brain into one.
9
This is a disturbing passage to many, and is often quoted by those who claim the Church has engaged in violence against innocent citizens who do not voluntarily join or listen to preaching. It should be noted that there is not a single documented complaint against the Church filed by a reliable citizen of standing, and that all complaints from less reliable citizens have been retracted over time.
10
This text is often quoted at length by Monks when preaching to an individual. It has appeared in several transcripts of SSF surveillance of Electric Church assets.