The Coming of Enki
Part one of a previously unpublished science fiction story
I promised there would be science fiction on this blog so here’s the first tranche of a c. 13,000 word story I wrote more than five years ago. The story rated an honourable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest back in 2019 but has never been published before. Let me know what you think in the comments! The picture, by the way, was drawn by DALL-E, with the prompt, “A picture inspired by a science fiction story called 'The coming of Enki'”.
The Coming of Enki
I
Selim Gunn strode purposefully through subterranean steel corridors and cavernous concrete halls built for a war that had not come to pass. His steps were firm yet light, his face unfurrowed and his heart beat evenly in his chest. Three decades of training in the arts of psychological subterfuge ensured his demeanour did not betray his thoughts. Those were on the conclave ahead, which would be the most important meeting of the Movement’s clerics for a generation or more. Would they keep faith with him as their leader or would they decide they needed another? He knew his plan’s flaws. But he did not believe there was better.
At last, he came to a gallery flanked by concrete colonnades. Seemingly at random, he approached one of the pillars, bent forward and kissed it. Threads of infrared light lanced out of the column scanning his retina and analysing the molecular composition of his breath. A moment later, his identity established, a section of the pillar slid silently away. He entered and the panel moved back to seal the entrance seamlessly behind him. Inside, Gunn quickly descended a ladder into the room below.
The other nine clerics of the conclave were already in attendance, as he had expected. They hurriedly stood as he walked to the head of the oak table. “Enki’s footfalls grow ever closer,” he said, reciting the ceremonial lines that opened every meeting.
“How shall we prepare his way?” the others muttered in unison before sitting down.
His predecessor, Decimus, was the first to speak. “His footfalls are close indeed, Primus, as are those of the Adversary. He is almost at the gates of Eridu. My watchers tell me that if he continues to elude our traps, he is just days away. If he succeeds in storming the sacred place, our secrets will be laid bare.”
Decimus was in fact Decima, but Latin grammar had never been a priority for the Movement. She had, over her eight-year tenure, brought them to the very brink of Babel, when Enki, the confuser of tongues, would render all human languages unintelligible. In practice, that meant bringing down Vāc, the Funds’ universal translator. An indispensable tool for all communication and commerce, Vāc was the source of the Funds’ power.
Should the Movement succeed, the old world order would be overthrown and the wealthy elites that had ruled for centuries left penniless. Anarchy then, and after that, who knew? The founders had little to say about the matter. Presumably, Gunn thought heretically, because they had run out of Sumerian myths to inspire them. He felt Decimus’s steely, grey eyes on him. She had achieved much but had not expected the Funds to find someone such as the Adversary. No one had. But he knew Decimus did not take any comfort from that fact.
“It would be foolish for us to be complacent, Decimus,” Gunn responded carefully. “But we did not imagine those last line of traps would delay him for long. They were designed to sense weaknesses in him.”
“And? Does he have any?” this time, the voice came from Secundus, seated opposite him. He had given his all to the Movement and the fight had taken its toll. No one aged much outwardly anymore. But in Secundus’s eyes, Gunn could see great weariness. His time in the conclave was at an end.
“Our analysis is far from complete but preliminary results suggest that the Adversary’s Achilles heel is his self-belief,” he replied.
“His self… belief?” Secundus asked incredulously.
There was tense laughter from the table but Gunn’s face remained impassive. He had expected this. For three years, the Adversary had relentlessly hunted the Movement on the Net, exposing key cells and forcing from them desperate rear guard manoeuvres to avoid the imminent threat of annihilation. He had shown no doubt or hesitation that would betray a lack of confidence. Quite the opposite.
Gunn studied Secundus for a moment before replying. Soon, Gunn new, the old man’s memories of the Movement would be erased and replaced with filler: ersatz recollections that would, with luck, fool the Funds’ mind scans should they ever suspect him. All who served Enki would ultimately be rewarded in this way. It was a preferable end to being captured by the Funds’ security forces: the Shades. Their interrogation techniques slowly unravelled the mind, leaving just a glimmer of consciousness to witness the body’s agonising demise.
“The traps revealed an incident in his childhood involving a woman. The details are not clear but it is something that we believe should be possible to use against him,” Gunn paused. “However, it would be unwise to reveal any more at this stage. Even to members of this select circle.”
No one spoke. Gunn could see them chewing on this morsel of information to see if any hope could be extracted from it. Decimus was the first to break the silence.
“And if your analysts are wrong? What is our next line of defence? Psych traps are notoriously unreliable.”
This was true, Gunn knew. Mind reading was a tricky business. Disentangling conscious thoughts, fleeting impressions, recollections and emotions required dedication and some of the most sophisticated pattern recognition software on the planet. Not even Vāc was able to read a person’s thoughts in real time or determine which were meant to be communicated to another. The algorithm required those thoughts to be vocalised. The analysts would prime the psych trap to the best of their ability, of that he was sure. But its effectiveness would rest on whether they had interpreted correctly the melange of memories the probes had detected.
“We have none,” he admitted. “If the Adversary breaches the psych trap we are now designing, his way will be clear.” Gunn had known this for some time and most of the nine would have guessed as much. But to say it out loud was different. It was an acknowledgement that, win or lose, the end was near. “He will know the way to Eridu, where he will find me waiting for him.”
“Can you best him in a conjoining?”
Decimus was testing him. If he no longer had faith in his abilities then they would need to find another, fast. The Adversary had proved himself to be a master of the Net but more subtle arts would come into play should they conjoin. In the practice of those arts, Gunn had yet to meet his match.
“I believe so. That is why she and the other members of this conclave chose me to lead the Movement in its final days.”
A mere suggestion of a smile tugged briefly at Decimus’s lips. “And we are satisfied with that choice still, Primus. But let us hope that the fate of the Movement does not, in the end, rest on the outcome of a single conjoining.”
The conclave ran for an hour more. There was news of strikes against the Funds’ computational infrastructure but nothing that would trouble them or the markets much. Vāc could not be brought down by hitting a few hubs. Nearly every computer connected to the Net now ran her algorithms. Legions of programmers were devoted to her upgrades. The methods of past insurgencies – small surgical strikes to cause chaos and panic – were increasingly useless. As for terrorism, the Funds kept those it valued heavily guarded. The rest feared the wrath of the Funds far more than any threat the Movement could conjure to frighten them.
Targeting Vāc’s software was therefore the Movement’s only real hope of bringing about Babel. The actions reported at the conclave were largely diversionary; an attempt to keep the Funds distracted from their real goal of unravelling Vāc’s code with a virus that had been years in the making.
The meeting over, Gunn stood to dismiss them. “They who control language, control the people.”
“Only Enki can end the tyranny of language,” the nine others chanted in unison. “His coming is nigh.”
Gunn left the meeting first. Behind him, the conclave’s members departed one-by-one into the labyrinth, taking routes home known only to themselves. They would by the end of the next day each relay the outcome of the meeting to another three, bringing the number who would be informed fully of the proceedings to forty – Enki’s number according to myth. The forty would meet with others in the Movement over the following weeks to plan anew and those others would, if necessary, ask more activists for their assistance and so on. No one, not even the Primus, knew the length of that chain. Each member only knew by sight a few others; their neighbouring links.
Gunn’s next move would be to talk to his analysts and piece together what more there was to learn from the traps. Sudden bouts of illness would take them away from their jobs so they could labour day and night to understand the nature of the Adversary’s personality flaw and how it might be used against him. For Gunn knew Decimus was right: Enki’s coming could not be left to the strange vagaries of a conjoining. His record was spotless. But he did not wish to see it tested when the future of the human race was at stake.
Now read Part II.
I love getting comments or you can talk to me via email ananyo@substack.com or on Twitter at @ananyo
And now a word from our sponsors…
Good science writing is expensive. If you loved The Man from the Future and enjoy what I’m doing here, please support my writing by paying something to subscribe. Whether you buy me a coffee for $5 or a couple of printer cartridges for $50, it all helps.