The Coming of Enki X
The final part of a previously unpublished science fiction story
Welcome to the latest edition of Confections & Reputations! I’m delighted to present the last installment of ‘The Coming of Enki’!
Here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII and Part IX. All parts of the story will be free to read for at least a month so please do give the post a ‘like’ if you enjoy it and share the story widely!
I’m close to finishing a science fiction novel (more about that in a few months) and hope to be back here with more history of science soon.
The Coming of Enki
XV
Lieb hefted Chloe onto his back and ran out of the back door of the house. Serena directed them to a car, a few streets away, which drove them far from their wealthy suburb into a forest of rundown tower blocks at the opposite end of town. The car sped away. Serena’s presence had left them then, after transmitting to Lieb a map that would lead them to a safe place.
“When you get there,” she told him, “stay inside no matter what you hear. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
The map led them deep underground through a warren of passages and echoing steel staircases. Lieb had heard rumours that the government had built such places, their last decisive act. After the Funds averted war by starting up Vāc, they had slowly taken over all the government’s responsibilities. They had the confidence of the public. Many in government, aware of how close the world had come to disaster, also supported the move. The democratic shells that remained of governments now were as cavernous and empty as the labyrinths they had built so many years ago.
Two hours later they arrived at a stone pillar. Bewildered, but following the instructions he had been given by his wife, Lieb kissed it. The scanners did their work and he was allowed to enter. He went down the ladder first, helping Chloe on to it then descending gingerly into the darkness, gripping the rungs so that his arms encircled his daughter’s waist in case she should lose her footing.
Their neural interfaces were deactivated when they entered the room below, completely isolating them from the world outside. The only furniture in the room was a long solid-looking table made from wood and two cots. In one niche, accessed through a sliding door, was a basin and a chemical toilet. One wall was stacked with boxes and large canisters of water. The canisters each included a water heater, allowing hot or cold water to flow at the touch of a button. The boxes contained dehydrated meals. They found a screen. Accustomed to viewing everything in reverie using their neural interfaces, they were puzzled by this for a while until Chloe worked out how the touch screen controls could be used to play films and games. It also played a large selection of music including the rap music of the twentieth century that was Lieb’s passion.
The days passed. A large rectangular video panel embedded in the wall replicated the diurnal cycle. Pseudo-sunlight streamed in to the room from it during the day and they saw the moon and stars shining there at night. Every few days, the view it showed changed. When they first arrived, they looked out from a cliff-top house somewhere on the Californian coast. Then it was a white-washed cube overlooking a Mediterranean beach, with a volcano in the distance that gently erupted every few hours, expelling puffs of soot. They promised each other they would buy one for the basement as soon as they got home.
Once or twice, Lieb thought he heard explosions echoing down the halls from who-knew how far away. Neither he nor Chloe attempted to regain access to the outside world until, three weeks after their arrival, the screen suddenly switched itself off and they heard voices directly above them. Desperate for news now, Lieb ascended the ladder only to find that the pillar remained firmly closed. He fought with himself to avoid shouting out and banging on the walls. Minutes later, the voices were gone and Lieb, alone in the pitch black tunnel, began to cry. He had not caught a single intelligible word through the walls. He wondered if the translation algorithm was still down and if so, whether people were making themselves understood to each other at all. They heard nothing more at all after that.
Eleven days later, early in the morning when Chloe was still asleep, Lieb heard the hatch above them slide open and a pair of feet carefully descend the ladder. When Serena stepped into the room, Lieb initially felt a wave of anger welling up in him. Seeing the smile on his wife’s face change to uncertainty he mastered himself and they embraced. The questions he had been forced to suppress for so long came rushing out. Chloe, woken by their voices, sprang out of bed and ran over to her mother, who picked her up and kissed her.
“I’m so proud of you,” Serena whispered to her. “Have you told Daddy what you did?”
Chloe shook her head.
“Well, good, because he’s going to flip out. Let’s wait and tell him together, huh?”
Chloe smiled beatifically.
“What are you two plotting?” asked Lieb.
“Oh nothing. Just talking about how your seven-year old daughter saved the world.”
More questions started tumbling out of Lieb but noticing how weary his wife looked he stopped.
“I understand, Jon. We’ll tell you everything but there’s time for that later. It must have been terrible for you… for you both. Things have been crazy outside. But everything’s changed now. It’s all gone. I just wish…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Sorrow and regret clouded her face for a minute but then she was happy again.
“Look, c’mon. We don’t need to stay down here anymore. Follow me up the ladder,” she said, her eyes shining like a new dawn. “I want to show you. Something wonderful is starting to happen.”
She helped them climb out of the bunker. Lieb remembered he had felt claustrophobic in these catacombs when they had come seeking refuge. After a month in hiding, however, he was cowed by the space, as if the halls they were now passing through were the grandest of Gothic cathedrals.
After a while, Lieb saw the flickering of firelight reflected on the tunnel walls and the way ahead was blocked by a pile of sandbags. Two guards wearing scraps of body armour nodded to Serena and they entered the large chamber beyond. Groups of people clustered around oil drum fire pits. Serena took them to one and they sat down on a plank raised on cinderblocks. Chloe put her head in her mother’s lap and was asleep instantly. Someone passed Jon a bowl of soup.
“Jon, the Funds… they were controlling us,” Serena said. “Brainwashing us using Vāc. Even those that worked for them like we did. Chloe found out.”
“How?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know that yet. She’ll tell us how in her own time. But she did. Everything she knew was at the Net coordinates she showed me on her tablet.”
Lieb sat silently for a moment, turning his wife’s words over in his mind. He should have been shocked, but was not. He had been without the translator for weeks. A veil that had obscured his vision for a lifetime was gone. For the first time, he felt the truth of things, hard and bright, as if he had acquired a new sense beyond the five he already had.
“There are more joining us down here every day,” Serena said. “We’re telling people what we know and spreading the word however we can. I’ve been trying to reconnect to the Net. There’s a danger that whatever is left of the Funds could try to hack their way into our consciousness through our neural interfaces, so we’re using pretty crude rigs. VR helmets, haptic suits. Old tech. But even those that we haven’t reached… It’s as if they know, somehow.” She took his hand and squeezed it tightly between both of hers.
“We’ve pressed the reset button, Jon,” she said, looking him squarely in the eyes. “This time, no one’s going to own the future. This time, we all get to decide how things turn out.”
THE END
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