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Now, onwards to the next part of ‘The Coming of Enki’!
For those that missed them, here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V. I’ve made the previous five parts free to read as a thank you to new subscribers. Please give the post a ‘like’ and share widely if you enjoy it.
The Coming of Enki
VIII
There is no scope for direct conflict on the Net and anyone that views a conjoining as such is destined to lose. When I smash through the final barrier into Eridu and see him waiting, I am pleased. From what I know of their Primus, his is an interesting mind. Not completely rigid with dogma. There are a few seeds of doubt. That is good. Only the dim-witted embrace certainties. The truly enlightened are content to live and struggle with the ambivalences inherent in life. He will understand my pursuit of the Movement is a choice born of logic, not unquestioning loyalty, and perhaps I will understand something of his devotion to the anarchist cause. Our encounter will, at least, not be dull.
A conjoining is not sex, nor seduction nor coercion. It is all three. The intermingling of, for want of a better word, souls that takes place can be… disturbing. No participant escapes without sharing something of themselves with the other, whether it be a nugget of information, an emotion or a treasured memory. Perhaps an amalgam of such things. The victor, however, gains from the loser all experiences and knowledge of value. The stakes are therefore high.
Our presences on the Net are ethereal shifting shadows, barely visible but readily perceived through whatever sense it is that predominates here – our inner eye. We rush at each other at the speed of information and then I am in him, he in me. Like matter and anti-matter we disappear momentarily in a flash of energy.
Our consciousnesses merge in places, feeling for compatibilities that we can later use as toe holds to reach the hidden nooks of the other’s psyche. By turns teasing and threatening, we search for weaknesses to exploit, strengths to avoid. The rest of our inner-selves prepares to fend off the other’s attack. Like the immune system, our minds seek to mark the invader, weaken him then engulf him completely. There is little time for thought. A conjoining is a raw contest of character and what preparation can be done must take place beforehand. There are certain meditative practices, acts of self-deprivation and tests of willpower that improve the odds of victory. None guarantee it. Those in the Movement, with its arcane arts of mental deception and discipline, often triumph in a conjoining and as our minds collide, I immediately know they have sent their best. I also know I am better. Fear begins to ooze from him, thick and black.
I begin to unfurl his mind like a scroll, pinning it back inch-by-inch to read each letter until every last word is mine. When it is done, I know his name, I know his mind and I see his doubts.
“Selim Gunn,” I say to him, “You have lost this day and so, because you have lost, the Movement has lost for ever more.”
“Aye, Adversary,” he answered, “and you have given up little. But the little you have given me is not nothing. Maybe it is enough to stop you.”
I feel for the first time some unease. What did he glean during our joining? I shrug.
“I am already looting your Eridu. The identities of all your clerics will be known to me soon. Everything the Funds need to frustrate your virus and end you all for good is within my grasp. You cannot change that.”
“No I cannot. But you still can. I hope from what I know now you will.”
I laugh. “That is a forlorn hope indeed, Selim Gunn. Tell me,” I say, changing the subject, “I am curious. I sensed within you a sliver of doubt before we met. During the conjoining, I saw that some small part of you yet fears the coming of Enki.”
“That has now changed because of what I learned from you.”
Again I feel a tremor of uncertainty. I ask him again. “The Funds have brought peace and prosperity. If you undo Vāc as you wish, what can you offer afterwards but chaos?”
“We have let technology build walls between us. I ask one thing. Hold on to what you know for an hour. Do not use it to stop the Movement yet. Think before you act, I beg you.”
He speaks calmly, reasonably. Alas, his doubts do appear to have disappeared and he speaks now with the stubbornness and determination of a cryptoanarchist fanatic.
“I have had enough of your games, Selim Gunn,” I tell him. “You have delayed me long enough. I will end you. Now.”
I shut him down and call the authorities to report his location. His form begins to fade from this plane and I turn away to finish extracting the last vestiges of useful data from Eridu’s stores. That is when he speaks to me for the last time. Four whispered words that send a chill down my spine.
IX
Gunn felt the thread that connected him to the Net fraying as the Adversary overloaded his neural interface. The static clouded his mind and would soon drive him mad. He had realised on his way to the conjoining that risking all on a win against such a powerful foe was foolhardy. Instead, as the Adversary had pillaged his mind, he had grasped for some essential fact that might be used against him. He had found one. The Adversary had a daughter. As part of him lay shattered after the conjoining, another was accessing every record of her he could find on the Net.
In a fraction of a second, Gunn learnt her name was Chloe Lieb. He saw father and daughter at the school. The Movement kept as much about their true identifies from each other as possible so they would not inadvertently betray another member to the Funds. Gunn had therefore not known Decimus was a schoolteacher. He had no time to dwell on the fact. Quickly he tracked the two back home hacking every camera or device on the way to eavesdrop on their conversations. What he saw had, as he had told the Adversary truthfully, removed all doubt from his mind. The girl was the key. She saw the true nature of things.
He sent his last message to the Adversary and logged off the Net. Gunn prayed it was understood but there was nothing more he could do now to ensure it was.
The Shades were already at the door. It would hold for a only a few seconds longer but that was more than enough time for the memory wipe to take effect. But he had always known that might not be enough. The Funds would not be fooled by any fake memories they would find. They would pick his brain to pieces to find any useful scrap of information they could. Even if they found nothing, they would not allow him the luxury of a quick death. He had taken an apartment on the twentieth floor in order to be ready for this eventuality.
Gunn staggered to the window and opened it. He paused to feel the wind riffle his hair one last time and as the door to the apartment disintegrated behind him, he leapt, soundlessly, to his death.
X
“Look to your daughter.” A threat. Everything that I know about Gunn from our joining indicates he would not harm a child. Yet what else could he have meant? Desperation can drive men to act in uncharacteristic ways. I have sentenced him to death. There is no reason to expect that he would be merciful if it did not serve his interests. I must act fast. But until Chloe is safe, the Movement’s secrets stay with me. I can stop the virus easily enough now that Eridu has fallen to me. Primus will have his hour, much good it will do him.
Now read Part VII.
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